The Evil Eyebrow

Category: Books

  • David Weber Book for Sale

    I am a big fan of David Weber’s Honor Harrington Series, which is on book 11, with several side novels* and 4 short story anthologies.

    To the dismay of his Honor fans, Mr. Weber writes in other worlds than just that one. I think we’re on a two and a half year hiatus (something like that) since the last one was released. In the interim, rabid fans of his other work are slavering over another of his series, which has been getting most of his time. Book number two is being released in July, but if you’re really interested, you can go to ebay and bid on an Advance Readers Copy (ARC) of By Schism Rent Asunder which someone is selling. Current price, with one day left, $200.

    Crazy people. Mr. Weber’s books are good, and for genre readers they are a gold mine, but I don’t think they’ll ever be worth that much. And from the comments I’ve heard in various places, the people bidding on this book aren’t looking for a collectible, they merely want to read it 3 months early.

    Geeks with too much disposable income.

    3/16/08 Update: As of right now, the bidding is up to $270 with twelve hours to go. We’ll see what it does in the last 5 minutes.

    *Actually, in the Honor Harrington universe, the side novels are really parallel mainline novels that take a great deal of the political and other maneuvering out of the main novels and keep them to a reasonable page count.

  • Harry Potter 7 is to be Two Movies

    I saw on the newswire that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be broken up into two movies.

    “It was born out of purely creative reasons,” producer David Heyman told the Times. “Unlike every other book, you cannot remove elements of this book.”

    I call bullshit. There’s no reason they can’t perform the surgery on this movie that they’ve done on every other. The movie franchise only has the vaguest resemblance to the book storyline, so saying that they can’t remove elements is crap. It might be born of a desire to do the whole book, which I applaud, or it might be more for financial gain, which wouldn’t surprise me.

  • Children of Men: The Movie!

    This is such an old draft, I’m not sure why I never finished it. I watched this movie in October.

    Alert readers may recall that I read the P.D. James novel, Children of Men, last summer. I didn’t like it. See the link for why.

    Now, I’ve finally gotten around to watching the Movie that prompted me to read the book. I didn’t like it, but it was a good movie, I think.

    For one thing, it’s depressing as hell. I don’t really care for depressing movies, no matter how “quality” they are. Almost all of the major characters die (true to form from the book) but without the tragic majesty of Hamlet. Some of them die suddenly, some pointlessly, and some forseeably.

    For another thing, they flipped the bitch in the movie. In the book, it’s men who can’t father children. In the movie, it’s the women who are sterile. I’m not sure what that change was supposed to accomplish, except maybe the screenwriters agreed with my point from the earlier post that if a man was suddenly found to be fertile, go find him and get him to impregnate every single woman possible! Flipping that makes it much more about the pregnant woman, which lends to the drama.

    For a third thing…I’ve got no third thing. Did you read that note up above about how I sat on this draft for 4 months? Back in October I was all full of righteous fury; now, not so much.

    I wouldn’t watch this movie again, and I’d only recommend it to people who are interested in dystopian depressing movies. It’s not scifi in the sense that there’s any science fiction going on. The only SF bit is the assumption that every man is sterile, for some reason.

    But, that’s another movie off of my list of summer (2007) movies to watch. Maybe I’ll finish the list before 2009.

  • Lord of the Rings News

    I know I’ve been ignoring all of my normal blog sites when I have to get news like this through AP.

    Tolkien Estate Sues New Line Cinema.

    My geek card just lost a corner, I think.

  • Harry Dresden News

    Other than the fact that the next book in the Harry Dresden series will be coming out in April which I’m very much looking forward to, there a novella being published that features Harry’s older brother Thomas. Here’s a quote that is entirely sweet:

    I’m not Harry Dresden.

    Harry’s a wizard. A genuine, honest-to-goodness wizard. He’s Gandalf on crack and an IV of Red Bull, with a big leather coat and a .44 revolver in his pocket.

    According to the link, the special edition with the leather cover is already sold out, but I’ll look forward to the trade paperback anyway. I’m not a hardback book snob; I like softback.

  • Presidential Politics

    At some point in the next several months, I’m going to have to decide who to vote for in the 2008 US Presidential Elections. I am a citizen, and it is my right and duty to vote.

    Usually, I’ll weight the issues and the stances the various candidates have taken on them. Plus I’ll allow for basic quirkiness and head-up-assitude.

    Unfortunately, some issues outweigh others. I must now declare that Mitt Romney will not receive a vote from me if he is selected to be the Republican party candidate. Why? From the NY Times:

    …and when Mitt Romney revealed in an interview that L. Ron Hubbard’s “Battlefield Earth” was one of his favorite novels.

    It is an unforgivable sin to call that piece of rotting crap a “favorite novel”. Although it gives me great warmth to think that L.R.Hubbard is spinning in his grave to have a Mormon [gasp] liking his stuff.

  • The Golden Compass = Antichristian?

    Phillip Pullman’s books and the movie based upon the first one, The Golden Compass, have been receiving a lot of hate-press recently due to their perceived anti-christian outlook. The gist is, “Pullman is an atheist [true], who is trying to turn our kids to the devil [only true from a certain perspective].”

    I could discuss the pros and cons of these viewpoints, but I’d rather do an end-run. Question: Why didn’t these people come out of the woodwork for Battlestar Galactica? There’s a show where the good guys are polytheistic and the bad guys, bent on the destruction of the human race, are doing it because their sole God (obviously based on the Bible) is telling them to. BSG is much more blatant about it then Pullman ever is. Or what about The Lord of the Rings? Despite Peter Jackson’s pandering to the religious writers on his team, there is NO GOD in the Lord of the Rings. Nobody complained about that. And what about every horror/demon/antichrist film out there? Why do none of them get this sort of treatment?

    I think the truth is that the religious don’t think they’ll be able to sell their religions in the face of competing viewpoints. Also, given the control that christians have over this nation, they only fear what is perceived as anti-christian messages. No worries about the push to make “Jihad” a bad word (even though its actual definition doesn’t mean “kill everyone in God’s name”). Notice no complaints about all of the anti-muslim press that bandies about.

    The hypocrisy of some people just boggles my feet sometimes. I wish I could blame the media, but their motiviations are strictly monetary; they go where the stories are.

    In the interest of full disclosure, I think I should mention that I did not like The Golden Compass, but I’ll still see the film adaptation.

  • Top Science Fiction Authors

    The top 16 science fiction authors, as measured by Hugo and Nebula awards, are listed by SF Signal

    I find it interesting that of the sixteen authors, I don’t like the works of eight. Does this make me shallow?

    I also find it interesting that the number one awarded author on this list, Connie Willis, with 15 Hugos and/or Nebulas, is a complete mystery to me. Not only have I never heard of her, I’ve never read anything by her (those two things aren’t mutually exclusive for me. I can read novels and totally forget who wrote them).

    Looks like I have something to add to the look-for-in-the-library list.

  • Gay Dumbledore

    Jenn alerted me to the news fracas caused by J.K. Rowling saying that Dumbledore was gay (is gay? Do the portrait people have love-lives?).

    Apparently, there’s always been suspicion amongst fans that he was gay, due to his lack of a love interest and other items. Personally, I never pulled up a hint of gayness from Dumbledore until the seventh book, so this “always has been a suspicion” thing is a crock. It’s along the lines of crackpot fans everywhere coming up with unlikely scenarios for the most mundane nuances, then springing forth with an “Aha! I told you so!” when their particular nuttiness is revealed as truth. I won’t say that there weren’t any “hints” about Dumbledore being gay in books 1-6, but frankly, who cares? It’s immaterial to the story. Dumbledore didn’t have any subtextual motivations that weren’t clearly explained in book 7. This is not the type of book with imagery and metaphor coming out the wazoo. It’s an entertaining (but epically paced and written) story.

    I think that J.K. Rowling should start making stuff up about her characters, just to see how much more whacked out the movies will get.

  • Holy Racism, Batman!

    Through a fluke set of circumstances, I ended up beginning to read the story, “Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle.” You may recognize this as the derivation of the acronym TASER (Thomas A. Smith Electric Rifle).

    Not knowing much about the story, who wrote it, or when it was published, I dove in. As I read, I gathered through context that it was written earlier in the century (airships, monoplanes) and that it was a youth adventure story (both true). Then I hit this dialogue [emphasis mine]:

    “Rad! I say, Rad! Where are you?”

    “Heah I is, Massa Tom! Heah I is” called a colored man as he came around the corner of a small stable where he kept his mule Boomerang. “Was yo’-all callin’ me?”

    “Yes, Rad, I want you to help make a scarecrow.”

    “A scarecrow, Massa Tom! Good land a’ massy! What fo’ yo’ want ob a scarecrow? Yo’-all ain’t raisin’ no corn, am yo’?”

    “No, but I want something to shoot at when Ned Newton comes over to-night.”

    “Suffin t’ shoot at? Why Massa Tom! Good land a’ massy! Yo’-all ain’t gwine t’ hab no duel, am yo’?”

    “No, Rad, but I want a life-size figure on which to try my new electric gun. Here are some old clothes, and if you will stuff them with rags and straw and fix them so they’ll stand up, they’ll do first-rate. Have it ready by night, and set it up at the far end of the shooting gallery.”

    “All right, Massa Tom. I’ll jest do dat, fo’ yo’,” and leaving the colored man to stuff the figure, after he had showed him how, Tom went back into the house to read the paper which he had purchased that morning.

    I was born in the 70’s and raised in the 80’s and 90’s. I have no concept of being able to think like this. I think the most egregious part of this dialogue was Tom Smith showing Rad how to make the scarecrow. Who the heck, even then, would think a black man couldn’t know how to make a scarecrow? It’s obviously assumed that anything that Tom (white) doesn’t tell Rad (black), won’t get done.

    This novel was published in 1911. Only 48 years after the Emancipation Proclamation. And I am intellectually aware of the climate surrounding race relations prior to World War II, which was 28 years after publication. Still, this shocks me. Is it a good thing that I’m shocked, indicating a deep acceptance of racial equality, or a bad thing, showing that I just don’t grok history?

    At least I am not famed scientist James Watson, co-credited-discoverer of DNA, who thinks africans are less intelligent than caucasians.