As many have noted lately, frequent blog commenter Matt "DanielJacksonMPC" Carpenter (and the unofficial ST-v-SW.Net forums at Digital-Breakdown.com which he ran) have gone missing, and there was much concern in the community.
He is alive and well. But, Digital Breakdown won't be back for the time being.
There are so many things that can happen in our lives that remind us how silly little hobbies like this one really are ... I went through one recently myself. As I told him, take some comfort in the fact that people you've never met were concerned about you.
In this already-decadent age, the additional dehumanizing effect of the internet makes that a wonderful thing, indeed.
2006-07-03
2006-06-29
NASA, Hubble, and Europa
It appears that Congress wants a Hubble servicing mission in 2007. Hopefully the launch of Discovery on (or about) the first of July will go flawlessly and make that possible. The Spitzer and other similar tools are cool and all, but we love our Hubble eye candy too.
The above I learned from here, which also has the following comment I found amusing:
"One of [the House] recommendations includes $15 million for NASA to study and plan for a new start on a Europa mission as part of its fiscal year 2008 budget request."
Not only do they love eye candy, but in addition they've been reading Arthur C. Clarke and realized we're about five years late right now and need to catch up. I'm cool with us going to Europa, though, so long as we attempt no landing there.
The above I learned from here, which also has the following comment I found amusing:
"One of [the House] recommendations includes $15 million for NASA to study and plan for a new start on a Europa mission as part of its fiscal year 2008 budget request."
Not only do they love eye candy, but in addition they've been reading Arthur C. Clarke and realized we're about five years late right now and need to catch up. I'm cool with us going to Europa, though, so long as we attempt no landing there.
2006-06-02
Reviewing Karen Traviss
The quickie prelims: If you hate eco-terrorists with a passion, you'll probably be at best irritated and at worst pissed off if you go read City of Pearl and its sequels. Similarly, if it irritates you to have military personnel idolized solely because they're military professionals, you probably won't like any of her work.
And now you know why Lucas Licensing asked her to write Commando books.
Star Wars: Republic Commando - Hard Contact, Triple Zero
I'll start with the Star Wars books. Karen Traviss says she thinks her franchised work under the Star Wars title is better than her original work.
I agree wholeheartedly. Although I am myself a fan of hard sci-fi, her own work seems a little burdened. Under leash, lock, and key at Lucas Licensing, however, she shines. I am not the least bit surprised she's been gaining fans swiftly among the mainstream SW community; I think I enjoyed her Republic Commando books as much on the first reading as I did the Thrawn trilogy.
I am reminded of Zahn here, incidentally.
Timothy Zahn's career hit the limelight when he put out the Thrawn trilogy, but he's never been known for his other work, which usually sells and reviews fairly poorly. I've read and enjoyed some of his original titles, but he's always going to be known as "that guy who wrote the Thrawn trilogy," and the odds are not many of you have read anything else he's written.
Of course, the Thrawn trilogy doesn't fit nearly as well now that the prequels have been released. Spaarti cloning cylinders? Katana fleet? Dreadnaughts and Victory Star Destroyers? At best, we can go for creative retcons; at worst, we just can't fit it in with the canon anymore. I hate to say it, but the newer Star Wars novels set in the Clone Wars and inter-trilogy period are probably going to fit much better with the movies than the "modern" New Republic and post-New Republic era EU, which had diverged too far by the time the prequels came along and chopped all their tails off.
This is not the case with Traviss, who need fear no retcon. She does write a little worshipfully of the commandos, and there's a character who clearly "feels" like the author trying to write a version of who she'd like to be in the Star Wars universe, but aside from that, it's great reading. I finished both her Republic Commandos books before I could bring myself to go through Crossing the Line.
She knows how to write action, and she's managed to bring the faceless clones alive in ways I hadn't really expected. Forced within someone else's morality play, she does a wonderful job bringing up issues of conscience, dehumanization, and identity, all packed together with the trauma that is an active war. We feel for the clones. OK, sure, they're the chief bad guy's personal legion of doom, but they're human all the same. And what a crappy childhood they've had.
I won't spoil anything by telling you it's a great look into the notion of the Clone Wars - and when I think of what was notable in the details of ROTS, I can say Traviss and Lucas seem to be on the same page regarding the clones right now.
Ok, so let's talk about the material, OK?
And now... a word to the EU completists in the audience. If you truly believe that EU novels are canon unless contradicted, you're stuck with all of this (and if you don't, well, you can skip straight to the review of her original work):
While, of course, there are the obligitory references to how Republic ships can "burn" whole worlds from orbit, or slag facilities, which Saxtonites should be happy with, they should be particularly unhappy with the way she's further defined the conflict within Lucas Licensing's continuity. As recent events have confirmed, Karen has full support from the folks running things at Lucas' merchandising machine, and the picture she paints is antithetical to the traditional Saxtonite claims, so it's going to be reflected in all subsequent literature.
One year after Geonosis, the Republic army has roughly a million clones in the field. Traviss' interpretation of a "million more on the way" is clearly that it was Kamino's batch for that year. When you take into account how long the Clone Wars lasted, we see exactly where the famous three million figure comes from, and it fits quite well with AOTC.
They're fighting on hundreds of worlds at a time - sometimes just a squad, sometimes thousands. "But the Empire has fifty million systems," you may say. Well, that's not how many are being fought over.
Many of the worlds have practically nothing there, and there are partisans floating around. Traviss introduces a civilization of shapeshifters who've thrown in with the Republic, for example.
But the troops the Republic moves around? Clones. All the pilots? Clones. Which means the fleet is fairly limited. If there are only 500 clones permanently attached to every capital ship as fighter pilots, and half the clones are fighter pilots, that's 1,000 ships. Even at the end of the Clone Wars, practically all the pilots and ground troops are still clones.
And the Republic seems to have space superiority, even with something along the lines of 1,000 cruisers.
Those of you trying to figure out how the insanely high figures for droid troops available may now rest easy. The question isn't how many droid troopers you have - it's how you move them! The entire clone army can be mobilized in transports; the Droid army can only be mobilized in the numbers that you can get at them. Sure, if you can drop all those droids somewhere, you can overwhelm the whole place. Odds are they'll get shot down in space, most of them are sitting in space, and the absurd ICS figures for those will probably get retconned down to a reasonable "billions" in a few more publications.
Saxtonites will also be disappointed in transit times. An extra "day or so" transiting back from the battlefield is not a significant change, and the nearest Republic ship available to extract some stranded commandos has a 1 hour 40 minute ETA. It's not bad, mind you, but they're not in the middle of nowhere, and we're not talking about the sort of "across the galaxy in moments" speeds Saxtonites are always claiming. Just the regular, solid, "we'll get over to the next sector in a few days" sort of speed.
OK, a couple more technical points. In the Republic Commando books, blasters are clearly projectile weapons that shoot glowing bullets; the Republic has just now discovered PEP weapons, which are irritating even through Katarn armor. They also have some nifty explosives, but for the most part, it feels like a 21st century army that's gotten all the toys they want, with lots of neat combined functions and some extra miniaturization.
Katarn armor apparently rocks the house compared to regular clonetrooper armor. Lets them survive grenades, blaster bolts, etc - although in Hard Contact they're vulnerable to subsonic bullets from a rifle. Don't worry - by the end of Triple Zero, they've come out with a new version of Katarn armor that stops those dang soft-metal subsonic bullets. These guys are supposed to be walking tanks.
So I guess Traviss agrees with G2K that regular clonetrooper/stormtrooper armor isn't bulletproof, of course - regular trooper armor is quite a bit less substantial than Katarn Mk I.
City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before
In her original work, I found I could often predict the action a hundred pages ahead. Sometimes half a novel ahead - I knew well before finishing the second book exactly what the major plot twist of the third book would be, and I was already disappointed in her using such a transparent Genesis ploy. I suppose I had two problems: I'd read up on Traviss before reading her books, and I've probably read most of her influences. So I was surprised by nothing, and whenever she made a mistake, it showed.
What also showed is that she was writing straight out of experience. Well, OK, it's a good idea to do that for the first book - but after that one makes it on the market, start to branch out a little. I would've enjoyed the second and third books more if they'd showed more breadth of perspective.
We've got a reporter, we've got some military types, we have an environmental activist or two. There are some scientists, but they come off flat until one turns out to be a spook, and there's the obligatory character or two that feel like "this is what the author wants to be" characters. The aliens stay nicely alien about 90% of the time, and then they start acting out of character for a couple pages here and there.
OK, so here's the other thing that bugged me. Karen Traviss is billing herself as hard sci-fi, right? So she's visibly making use of the fact that you can't travel faster than light (although there seems to be a continuity gaffe or two on that account, she's mostly stuck to it). On the flip side, the bio and nano technology? Magic.
I had hoped for either a truly imaginative assumption to hook the plot on, or careful projection of the future; instead, in the first few pages, the hook becomes a magic drug that suppresses memories until you need them. The Suppressed Briefing strikes me as impossible to do with a simple injection - and it doesn't even serve much of a point in the long run.
I don't know... I just wasn't impressed. I really think Traviss is going to be the next Zahn - widely acclaimed within Star Wars, but little known for her own work.
And now you know why Lucas Licensing asked her to write Commando books.
Star Wars: Republic Commando - Hard Contact, Triple Zero
I'll start with the Star Wars books. Karen Traviss says she thinks her franchised work under the Star Wars title is better than her original work.
I agree wholeheartedly. Although I am myself a fan of hard sci-fi, her own work seems a little burdened. Under leash, lock, and key at Lucas Licensing, however, she shines. I am not the least bit surprised she's been gaining fans swiftly among the mainstream SW community; I think I enjoyed her Republic Commando books as much on the first reading as I did the Thrawn trilogy.
I am reminded of Zahn here, incidentally.
Timothy Zahn's career hit the limelight when he put out the Thrawn trilogy, but he's never been known for his other work, which usually sells and reviews fairly poorly. I've read and enjoyed some of his original titles, but he's always going to be known as "that guy who wrote the Thrawn trilogy," and the odds are not many of you have read anything else he's written.
Of course, the Thrawn trilogy doesn't fit nearly as well now that the prequels have been released. Spaarti cloning cylinders? Katana fleet? Dreadnaughts and Victory Star Destroyers? At best, we can go for creative retcons; at worst, we just can't fit it in with the canon anymore. I hate to say it, but the newer Star Wars novels set in the Clone Wars and inter-trilogy period are probably going to fit much better with the movies than the "modern" New Republic and post-New Republic era EU, which had diverged too far by the time the prequels came along and chopped all their tails off.
This is not the case with Traviss, who need fear no retcon. She does write a little worshipfully of the commandos, and there's a character who clearly "feels" like the author trying to write a version of who she'd like to be in the Star Wars universe, but aside from that, it's great reading. I finished both her Republic Commandos books before I could bring myself to go through Crossing the Line.
She knows how to write action, and she's managed to bring the faceless clones alive in ways I hadn't really expected. Forced within someone else's morality play, she does a wonderful job bringing up issues of conscience, dehumanization, and identity, all packed together with the trauma that is an active war. We feel for the clones. OK, sure, they're the chief bad guy's personal legion of doom, but they're human all the same. And what a crappy childhood they've had.
I won't spoil anything by telling you it's a great look into the notion of the Clone Wars - and when I think of what was notable in the details of ROTS, I can say Traviss and Lucas seem to be on the same page regarding the clones right now.
Ok, so let's talk about the material, OK?
And now... a word to the EU completists in the audience. If you truly believe that EU novels are canon unless contradicted, you're stuck with all of this (and if you don't, well, you can skip straight to the review of her original work):
While, of course, there are the obligitory references to how Republic ships can "burn" whole worlds from orbit, or slag facilities, which Saxtonites should be happy with, they should be particularly unhappy with the way she's further defined the conflict within Lucas Licensing's continuity. As recent events have confirmed, Karen has full support from the folks running things at Lucas' merchandising machine, and the picture she paints is antithetical to the traditional Saxtonite claims, so it's going to be reflected in all subsequent literature.
One year after Geonosis, the Republic army has roughly a million clones in the field. Traviss' interpretation of a "million more on the way" is clearly that it was Kamino's batch for that year. When you take into account how long the Clone Wars lasted, we see exactly where the famous three million figure comes from, and it fits quite well with AOTC.
They're fighting on hundreds of worlds at a time - sometimes just a squad, sometimes thousands. "But the Empire has fifty million systems," you may say. Well, that's not how many are being fought over.
Many of the worlds have practically nothing there, and there are partisans floating around. Traviss introduces a civilization of shapeshifters who've thrown in with the Republic, for example.
But the troops the Republic moves around? Clones. All the pilots? Clones. Which means the fleet is fairly limited. If there are only 500 clones permanently attached to every capital ship as fighter pilots, and half the clones are fighter pilots, that's 1,000 ships. Even at the end of the Clone Wars, practically all the pilots and ground troops are still clones.
And the Republic seems to have space superiority, even with something along the lines of 1,000 cruisers.
Those of you trying to figure out how the insanely high figures for droid troops available may now rest easy. The question isn't how many droid troopers you have - it's how you move them! The entire clone army can be mobilized in transports; the Droid army can only be mobilized in the numbers that you can get at them. Sure, if you can drop all those droids somewhere, you can overwhelm the whole place. Odds are they'll get shot down in space, most of them are sitting in space, and the absurd ICS figures for those will probably get retconned down to a reasonable "billions" in a few more publications.
Saxtonites will also be disappointed in transit times. An extra "day or so" transiting back from the battlefield is not a significant change, and the nearest Republic ship available to extract some stranded commandos has a 1 hour 40 minute ETA. It's not bad, mind you, but they're not in the middle of nowhere, and we're not talking about the sort of "across the galaxy in moments" speeds Saxtonites are always claiming. Just the regular, solid, "we'll get over to the next sector in a few days" sort of speed.
OK, a couple more technical points. In the Republic Commando books, blasters are clearly projectile weapons that shoot glowing bullets; the Republic has just now discovered PEP weapons, which are irritating even through Katarn armor. They also have some nifty explosives, but for the most part, it feels like a 21st century army that's gotten all the toys they want, with lots of neat combined functions and some extra miniaturization.
Katarn armor apparently rocks the house compared to regular clonetrooper armor. Lets them survive grenades, blaster bolts, etc - although in Hard Contact they're vulnerable to subsonic bullets from a rifle. Don't worry - by the end of Triple Zero, they've come out with a new version of Katarn armor that stops those dang soft-metal subsonic bullets. These guys are supposed to be walking tanks.
So I guess Traviss agrees with G2K that regular clonetrooper/stormtrooper armor isn't bulletproof, of course - regular trooper armor is quite a bit less substantial than Katarn Mk I.
City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before
In her original work, I found I could often predict the action a hundred pages ahead. Sometimes half a novel ahead - I knew well before finishing the second book exactly what the major plot twist of the third book would be, and I was already disappointed in her using such a transparent Genesis ploy. I suppose I had two problems: I'd read up on Traviss before reading her books, and I've probably read most of her influences. So I was surprised by nothing, and whenever she made a mistake, it showed.
What also showed is that she was writing straight out of experience. Well, OK, it's a good idea to do that for the first book - but after that one makes it on the market, start to branch out a little. I would've enjoyed the second and third books more if they'd showed more breadth of perspective.
We've got a reporter, we've got some military types, we have an environmental activist or two. There are some scientists, but they come off flat until one turns out to be a spook, and there's the obligatory character or two that feel like "this is what the author wants to be" characters. The aliens stay nicely alien about 90% of the time, and then they start acting out of character for a couple pages here and there.
OK, so here's the other thing that bugged me. Karen Traviss is billing herself as hard sci-fi, right? So she's visibly making use of the fact that you can't travel faster than light (although there seems to be a continuity gaffe or two on that account, she's mostly stuck to it). On the flip side, the bio and nano technology? Magic.
I had hoped for either a truly imaginative assumption to hook the plot on, or careful projection of the future; instead, in the first few pages, the hook becomes a magic drug that suppresses memories until you need them. The Suppressed Briefing strikes me as impossible to do with a simple injection - and it doesn't even serve much of a point in the long run.
I don't know... I just wasn't impressed. I really think Traviss is going to be the next Zahn - widely acclaimed within Star Wars, but little known for her own work.
2006-05-31
Outsiders Astonished
G2k here ... pardon me for largely being in a state of hiatus this month. If you'll pardon my French, things have been just batshit banana-f***ing crazy.
In this mini-hiatus-break, though, I chanced upon some entertaining links related to recent entries. The Talifan are gettin' famous:
http://www.youaredumb.net/node/608
http://www.youaredumb.net/node/609
In this mini-hiatus-break, though, I chanced upon some entertaining links related to recent entries. The Talifan are gettin' famous:
http://www.youaredumb.net/node/608
http://www.youaredumb.net/node/609
2006-05-09
"Saxtonite" at Wookieepedia
I just received an entertaining link from a site visitor, who prefaced it with the comment that it was "a little gem for you from the greater SW community (i.e. those that dont zerg sites a la Wong)..."
(Note: if you're uncool like me and didn't know what zerging was, it refers to attacks without tactics in which sheer numbers are used to overwhelm the enemy. In other words, a perfect term to describe SD.Net board invasion tactics against enemy boards. But I digress . . . )
The link is to the Star Wars wiki entitled Wookieepedia, and mentions in broad strokes what it is to be a Saxtonite (or one who opposes them).
However, there is a grave error.
On the one hand, the entry reads "the difference is also a function of the gap between a group of fans who viewed the films as they first came out, and thus hold special reverence for them, and a group of fans who do not differentiate as strongly between the movies and other material."
And yet, later it is said that "Supporters of Saxton and his work point out that the films are the definitive work on the Star Wars universe, and that other sources in contradiction are incorrect. They point out that the movies are considered the most exact record of what occured, and therefore such analysis is justified."
In other words, the entry suggests that Saxtonites are focused on the canon and hold it in reverence, whereas anti-Saxtonites do not.
Those familiar with my opinions will realize that I was quite confused by the entry. After all, the problem I have with Saxton is not his method of pixel-counting and overanalysis of film frame captures . . . you can analyze something via any methodology you wish, and the one he uses is no worse than any other. (The fact that it is the standard of the Versus stuff online does bias me in favor of it, but still.)
The issue, of course, is that Saxton and friends will happily ignore the films if the need arises. This is how he exagerrates his canon-based Death Star II scaling of 270km to 900km (based solely on an incomplete matte painting that doesn't appear in the film) . . . this is where he gets the idea of a red moon around Hoth (based on an image from some EU source with extraordinarily bad color balance) . . . this is how he ends up getting his yield requirements for Star Wars weapons (where ISD firepower is based off the non-canon BDZ, a comic book image, and the necessity of blasting through non-canon neutronium hulls ... and Slave I firepower is based, not on Episode II, but on comic book renditions of the ship's guns in action).
So really, if the Wookieepedia entry were more correct, then perhaps it might say that those two camps are really just different as to whether they pixel-count at all, since the extra-canonical cherry-picking habits are the same.
(Note: if you're uncool like me and didn't know what zerging was, it refers to attacks without tactics in which sheer numbers are used to overwhelm the enemy. In other words, a perfect term to describe SD.Net board invasion tactics against enemy boards. But I digress . . . )
The link is to the Star Wars wiki entitled Wookieepedia, and mentions in broad strokes what it is to be a Saxtonite (or one who opposes them).
However, there is a grave error.
On the one hand, the entry reads "the difference is also a function of the gap between a group of fans who viewed the films as they first came out, and thus hold special reverence for them, and a group of fans who do not differentiate as strongly between the movies and other material."
And yet, later it is said that "Supporters of Saxton and his work point out that the films are the definitive work on the Star Wars universe, and that other sources in contradiction are incorrect. They point out that the movies are considered the most exact record of what occured, and therefore such analysis is justified."
In other words, the entry suggests that Saxtonites are focused on the canon and hold it in reverence, whereas anti-Saxtonites do not.
Those familiar with my opinions will realize that I was quite confused by the entry. After all, the problem I have with Saxton is not his method of pixel-counting and overanalysis of film frame captures . . . you can analyze something via any methodology you wish, and the one he uses is no worse than any other. (The fact that it is the standard of the Versus stuff online does bias me in favor of it, but still.)
The issue, of course, is that Saxton and friends will happily ignore the films if the need arises. This is how he exagerrates his canon-based Death Star II scaling of 270km to 900km (based solely on an incomplete matte painting that doesn't appear in the film) . . . this is where he gets the idea of a red moon around Hoth (based on an image from some EU source with extraordinarily bad color balance) . . . this is how he ends up getting his yield requirements for Star Wars weapons (where ISD firepower is based off the non-canon BDZ, a comic book image, and the necessity of blasting through non-canon neutronium hulls ... and Slave I firepower is based, not on Episode II, but on comic book renditions of the ship's guns in action).
So really, if the Wookieepedia entry were more correct, then perhaps it might say that those two camps are really just different as to whether they pixel-count at all, since the extra-canonical cherry-picking habits are the same.
2006-05-03
Star Wars TV Show: Bounty Hunter
Call me out of the loop . . .
The guys at IESB.Net posted a video of a quickie interview with Rick McCallum. TheForce.Net has the link.
The part I found most interesting was the mention that the TV show would be dealing with bounty hunters. Past information has mentioned that it would involve events which occur between Ep3 and Ep4 in the timeline.
I don't know about you, but I smell a young Boba Fett. That would be pretty sweet. But you can just imagine events carrying him to Tatooine where, upon seeing the Sarlacc, he shudders with some deep, mysterious sense of dread. ;)
The guys at IESB.Net posted a video of a quickie interview with Rick McCallum. TheForce.Net has the link.
The part I found most interesting was the mention that the TV show would be dealing with bounty hunters. Past information has mentioned that it would involve events which occur between Ep3 and Ep4 in the timeline.
I don't know about you, but I smell a young Boba Fett. That would be pretty sweet. But you can just imagine events carrying him to Tatooine where, upon seeing the Sarlacc, he shudders with some deep, mysterious sense of dread. ;)
An Open Letter to Karen
Dear Karen Traviss,
You may wish to thank the "Talifan" who have been pestering you lately. It is through their attentions that your books have come to my attention. As a long-time fan of hard speculative fiction who also enjoys the occasional romp through franchised novels (including, but not limited to, Star Wars and Star Trek novels), I thought your books might be a worthwhile purchase.
Ordinarily I would cautiously buy a single novel from a new and unfamiliar author, but you come so highly recommended by the so-named Talifan of the Stardestroyer.net community that I failed to resist the impulse to buy all five paperbacks on Amazon today. Seeing as they have become the focus of so much controversy, I feel it fitting to acquire, read, and publicly review the novels as soon as possible.
I apologize in advance for my posting scathing reviews of your own most original work should you not prove to live up to the grand literary tradition of Murray Leinster, Arthur C. Clarke, etc; I also apologize in advance for saying you completely depart from the vision of Lucas in your Star Wars books. I might not find it in me to say such things, but in case I do - don't take it personally. I certainly don't mean it personally.
If you don't feel up to thanking the Talifan for giving you that little extra bit of internet press that brings you that little bit of extra business, I understand. After all, they were so rude and abusive about it that I would be hesitant to thank them were I in your shoes. Still, no press is bad press for a new author on the market.
You may wish to thank the "Talifan" who have been pestering you lately. It is through their attentions that your books have come to my attention. As a long-time fan of hard speculative fiction who also enjoys the occasional romp through franchised novels (including, but not limited to, Star Wars and Star Trek novels), I thought your books might be a worthwhile purchase.
Ordinarily I would cautiously buy a single novel from a new and unfamiliar author, but you come so highly recommended by the so-named Talifan of the Stardestroyer.net community that I failed to resist the impulse to buy all five paperbacks on Amazon today. Seeing as they have become the focus of so much controversy, I feel it fitting to acquire, read, and publicly review the novels as soon as possible.
I apologize in advance for my posting scathing reviews of your own most original work should you not prove to live up to the grand literary tradition of Murray Leinster, Arthur C. Clarke, etc; I also apologize in advance for saying you completely depart from the vision of Lucas in your Star Wars books. I might not find it in me to say such things, but in case I do - don't take it personally. I certainly don't mean it personally.
If you don't feel up to thanking the Talifan for giving you that little extra bit of internet press that brings you that little bit of extra business, I understand. After all, they were so rude and abusive about it that I would be hesitant to thank them were I in your shoes. Still, no press is bad press for a new author on the market.
Sincerely,
The big hairy mountain man.
The big hairy mountain man.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)