Horizon Zero

Storms Gather in the Drizzle

Picked up my copy of The Gathering Storm at lunch time. It sits here on my desk, mocking me.

It's a mere 766 pages long.

UPDATE: Finished book at 1:30AM. Well satisfied, but now I have to wait a year for the next part. Grr.

Spoiler Blackout

Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson's The Gathering Storm is due out in bookstores next Tuesday. Spoilers are already beginning to appear from copies that have been sold before the street date. Which means no Wheel of Time sites for me. Just once, I'd like to go into something completely unspoiled.

Wheel of Time: The Gathering Storm Chapter Available at Tor.com

The first part of the Wheel of Time wrap up will be out next month, and Tor.com has made the first chapter (not to be confused with the prologue, which if it follows the pattern will be nearly a novella itself) available for free. Registration is required.

Before it was announced that he would be finishing off the WoT series, I had never read anything by Brandon Sanderson. Since then, I've gone through his Mistborn Trilogy to see how he handled the epic fantasy genre. I was favorably impressed. I'm equally satisfied with this first chapter for The Gathering Storm. Sanderson has said several times now that he's not going to try to ape Robert Jordan's writing style, but rather try to get the 'voice' of the characters while handling the narration in his own way. And that shows - descriptions seem a little brisker than Jordan's, not as many vivid descriptions of dresses and such. But once the characters start talking, I forget that I'm not reading Jordan anymore, which is key.

So I think the conclusion is in the right hands. My only concern is that there are so many things up in the air that it will be a herculean task to give proper attention to all the various plots, subplots, allusions and intimations scattered throughout the preceding eleven novels and still have time to actually resolve the story.

Keeping my fingers crossed.

Leviathan Has Mouse Ears and Web-Shooters

I haven't commented on the big Disney buys Marvel!news, mostly because I think the sturm und drang coming from some quarters of the fanboy community is, quite frankly, silly.

No, I don't believe that Disney is going to put safety nubs on the end of Wolverine's claws. Nor do I think that suddenly all the Marvel super heroes are going to relocate to Duckburg.

Disney's interest, I think, lies in the vast repository of characters and intellectual property that Marvel represents. Compared to that, monthly comics publishing is just a drop in the bucket. Oh, there might be some pressure to 'synergize' events in the comics to match the big blockbuster of the summer, but Marvel itself has been doing that since the Bill Jemas period.

Disney is a big enough entity that it can support the House of Mouse, Lost and Pulp Fiction without any wires getting crossed. It's not time for the bunker just yet.

Michael Crichton Has Passed Away

The author of Jurassic Park, Rising Sun, The Andromeda Strain and a host of other titles died last night after a long struggle with cancer.

Aside from being a prolific writer, Crichton was a vocal opponent of junk pseudo-science and media fear mongering. He will most definately be missed.

Goodbye, Arthur C. Clarke

HAL-9000: What is going to happen?
Dave: Something wonderful.
HAL-9000: I'm afraid.
Dave: Don't be. We'll be together.
HAL-9000: Where will we be?
Dave: Where I am now.

Who Will Turn the Wheel?

Read today that Robert Jordan passed away this weekend. Jordan had been seriously ill for a while now, and was essentially in a race against time to get the last volume in his Wheel of Time series finished - a race he, sadly, did not win.

I have said some not so nice things about the later books in the WoT series. I'm not sorry I said them, because I think my criticisms were accurate. But I thought the last published book, The Knife of Dreams was a great improvement, and I was confident that Jordan could end his sprawling work on a high note. It's reassuring as a reader to discover that he planned for the possibility that he might not be able to finish A Memory of Light himself - the novel's outline is detailed and Jordan recorded his notes on the last book. His wife Harriet, who was also Jordan's editor, will finish the last 10% or so of the unfinished work. According to Jordan himself, the already completed ending has been kept under lock and key for years now.

This is also a lesson for any of us would be creators - you only have so much time to tell your story, and once you're gone no one will ever tell it the same way again.

Sandworms of Dune - A Review

Short Version: Utter Abomination

Longer Version: I could have slammed my head into a wall two hundred times and hallucinated a better ending. You will never in a million years convince me that this pile of dreck was conceived by Frank Herbert.

How do I hate it? Oh, let me count the ways:

Genetically engineered sandworms - They live in the ocean (Great Ghu, did either of these two 'authors' even read Children of Dune? If they did, did they skip all the 'boring' parts about ecology?) and produce ultra-spice (All the Prescience! But Just One Calorie!).

Evil Twins!: If one Paul Atredies ghola is cool, then two must be twice as nice, right? Especially if we make one evil!

Deus Ex Machinas - Thrill as each member of the ghola brigade, one at a time, manages to trigger their old selves and their 1337 powers just in time to overcome the unstoppable threat of the chapter! Wow to randomly appearing fleets of warships, vastly overpowered tertiary characters, and a lamely executed endgame that drags on for chapters after the only slightly interesting part has happened.

Writing - I realize that Frank Herbert is a hard act to follow, but if you set out to continue his work you're inviting the comparison. Characters from earlier books are one-note caricatures of themselves - which would be acceptable in the gholas since they're copies of the originals but isn't forgivable in characters like Sheeana, Murbella or Duncan, while newer figures like Omniss and Erasmus aren't nearly as clever or precious as we're supposed to think they are.

Misunderstanding the Universe - This is the central problem with all the post-Herbert Dune books, I think. The authors just don't seem to grok the vibe. Under the new regime, the universe has devolved into just another sci-fi setting. Bene Gesserit become Jedi. Prescience and spice derived abilities substitute for the Force, and just as Anderson fell into the trap of cooking up bigger and bigger spectacles of Force use in Star Wars (C'mon, tossing fleets of Star Destroyers across space? Did he even notice how much effort it took to lift a single X-Wing fighter in ESB?). Most egregious of all, however, is how seriously the duo seem to misunderstand one of the core concepts of Herbert's works. The story of Dune begins with Paul Atreides, a man who can see ahead through time and comes to the realization that prophecy is a trap. He is succeeded by his son, Leto II, whose central lesson is the danger of consolidating all of humanity under one immutable ruler. So, what then is the grand culmination of the series as imagined by Brian Herbert and Anderson? Why, the immutable rule of one man guided by prescience, naturally.

I can buy the idea that Herbert was building towards Duncan Idaho, the continually reborn man, as being a final Kwisatz Haderach. But I can't accept Herbert making him exactly the kind of Heroic god figure he spent so many pages deconstructing.

Posting from the CBT Iron Writer Challenge

It's like Iron Chef. Just without the squid. Or any other food, for that matter.

They give us a topic, we write a story. One hour.

The Geekiest Time of the Year

I refer, of course, to the greatest annual cultural event of my people - the San Diego Comic Con.

It's been over 15 years since I've attended one. Every year I tell myself that perhaps next year I'll get to go back, but inevitably things conspire to keep me away. Still and all, at least I've made the pilgrimage once in my lifetime.

Ironically, the last few Comic Cons have seemed to focus less on comics and more on comic related ventures in other genres. SDCC has become the place to spill news regarding the latest super hero movie, or provide exclusive clips of upcoming television series or showcase new next gen games. As a result, the bulk of the truly epic comic news seemed to have shifted to other events, like the Wizard World conventions in Philly and Chicago, and the recently revived New York Comic Con. (Not to knock any of those august affairs, but SDCC remains king in my inner geek's heart, and likely always will.)

There's a lot of stuff just over the horizon that is likely to be discussed at this year's shindig. At the end of this year we get two more fantasy franchises in The Golden Compass and The Dark is Rising. Next year features The Dark Knight and Iron Man. Lost and Battlestar Galactica are moving into thier respective final phases. JJ Abrams is keeping busy with the Star Trek remake (rumor has it that Zach Quintos, aka Syler from Heroes, will be playing Mr. Spock) and his mysterious "Cloverfield" movie. Lucas, Spielberg and Ford are busy on Indiana Jones IV. And there are still a raft of Narnia movies to be made yet, as well as the last two Harry Potter films.

So, still lots to see and lots to do.