Monthly Archives: March 2024

Re-Reading Dune Messiah

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More than 30 years ago I read Dune Messiah, the first sequel to Frank Herbert’s novel Dune.The continuing storyline did not quite capture my attention and I did not proceed down the course of the following novels. Now with the release of Dune part 2 completing Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the novel and its box office and critical success I decided to re-read Dune Messiah and see if I had a different reaction to it this time around.

The first thing I noticed was that in the passing decades I had forgotten nearly everything about the sequel novel. Vague aspects of the story’s final ending floated in my memory but of the actual plot and events, nothing.

Dune Messiah picks up a dozen or so years after the ending of Dune. Paul Atreides’ Jihad has swept the galaxy and the fanatical legions of Fremen have slaughter billions and destroyed hundreds of worlds for their Messiah. The vast powerful forces of the galaxy spanning human imperium, economic, political, and religious have crafted a plot to eliminate Paul and reclaim control of the empire. Paul, plagued by prescience, knows some aspects of the plotters plans but also sees that any misstep and error will lead to even more slaughtering and death than he has already unleashed on the galaxy.

With even more mind-bending concepts, Face-Dancers, people with such utter control over their muscles that they can assume the appearance of any person, and people reanimated after death and imposed with brain washing conditioning, Herbert’s sequel is challenging to read and even more challenging to adapt to a visual medium that the first novel in this classic series. The book makes more explicit Herbert’s premise that charismatic leaders are a danger to everyone, their enemies and their followers. While the reader may sympathize with Paul who never intended to do evil it remains clear that evil is the product of his actions no matter his intent.

With the most recent adaptation fresh in my mind, it was easy to ‘hear’ the voices of the actors playing in my head as I read the book and adding a few new member’s to the cast. I expect that should Villeneuve adapt this to the screen that Peter Dinklage will once again become part of a fan favorite franchise.

I can say that this time around I enjoyed the novel more than I had in the late 80’s when I first read it. Partly because of Villeneuve’s adaptation and partly because I have become more aware of the social and cultural antecedents that Herbert drew upon for his inspiration. I do not feel that this go around I wasted my time.

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Believe in Something, Do not Simply Oppose

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The title of this post is deceptively simple. Particularly when it comes to politics, everyone believes in something and by believing in that thing they come to opposes those who do not.

But therein lies the trap.

Once you are fixed on those who oppose you, it is so much easier to keep them in your sights than to question yourself or your fellow travelers. This sets you up to follow your fellow travelers down terrible paths because each and every one of you continue to stand firm against those you oppose.

My first election was back in 1980 and I voted Reagan over Carter. I did not believe Carter to be a bad man, but I did believe that he was in over his head. My political path went along with the GOP but even then, I took care to keep my own head. I never supported the more religious aspects of the party and there were times when my votes when to the Democratic politicians over such issues. I have always known that I supported equality, the right to choose, and other programs that set me apart. I cannot be dogmatic.

Knowing what I believed to be right and wrong made it possible for me to see that the GOP had taken a terrible turn when it embraced torture. My conservative friends saw me as a ‘one issue’ voter when I walked away from the GOP over that, but it is not that the ‘one issue’ was torture but rather it was right and wrong. (I had argued passionately against the invasion of Iraq.)

The follow the crowd mentality that continued to support the party after the torture debacle is *in part* what helped the party to fall into line behind Trump.

My conservative friends who have spent their entire political lives opposing the Democratic party have lost their way. If you could travel backwards in time to 1990’s and warn them that as they supported the impeachment of Clinton and the endless investigations of the couple that in the future, they would support an obvious conman and fraud who gave support to Russia as it invaded its neighbors they would steadfastly and with utter confidence tell you that would never happen. That their support of the GOP has limits. But of course, it doesn’t because the GOP continues to oppose the Democratic Party. Fixate on your opponents and you will lose yourself.

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The Doomsday Machine is not Dead

CBS Home Video

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Season two episode six of Star Trek (The Original Series) gave us The Doomsday Machine, where Kirk and company battle a automated weapon that destroys planets. Hampered by a traumatized Starfleet Commodore they eventually deactivate the mechanism leaving floating derelict in space.

With a hull of neutronium the machine had been impervious to the Enterprise’s weaponry the victory had hardly been assured.

You might be forgiven if you assumed neutronium was a fantastical substance invented by delirious writers much like ‘Vibranium’ or ‘Adamantium’, but you would wrong.  Neutronium is matter that has been so compressed by immense gravitational forces that the protons and electrons have merged with the neutron at the nucleus of the atom forming pure nuclear material with nearly unimaginable densities, Neutron stars have nearly enough mass to become Black Holes, but not quite.

It is unlikely that the ‘Doomsday Machine’, even though it was ‘miles long with a maw that could swallow a dozen starships’ possessed stellar masses of neutronium. (That would make for an interesting battle, fighting a machine with the gravitational effects of a star.) To maintain its shape and function the mechanism would need to counter the immense gravitational forces generated by the neutronium hull.

When the Enterprise departed the battle volume the machine still retained it shape. If it was truly and utterly dead, it should have collapsed into a sphere, but it did not. Something inside the doomsday machine still functioned, fighting the terrible crushing force of gravity.

It was not dead. Now, there’s a space for some fan-fiction or a tie-in novel.

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Movie Review: Late Night with the Devil

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A clever concept that can’t quite connect.

IFC Films

Late Night talk show host Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian) desperate to reverse a slide in ratings night books a parapsychologist (Laura Gordon) and supposedly demon possessed subject (Ingrid Torelli) for a live television event on Halloween night 1977 and gets far more than he bargained for.

Utilizing the ‘found footage’ conceit Late Night with the Devil is comprised of broadcast footage and off-air recording captured by the studio cameras to recount the events of Delroy’s final program. This setting circumvents many of the issues with found footage films by giving a rational and reasonable answer as to why the cameras are not only there but why as horrific events unfold people continue to operate them. Sadly, while having a quite intriguing concept and a talented cast, LNwtD, is hampered by both budgetary constraints and a script that needed another couple of passes.

The film opens with effectively a prolog telling the audience the backstory for both the central character of Jack Delroy and the possessed girl Lilly. In my opinion, this prolog blunders in two aspects, the greater error is attempting to leaving Lilly’s nature mysterious. The audience will have almost certainly seen trailers for the film and even if they had not, they purchased their tickets expecting to see a horror film. Trying to leave the question of Lilly’s possession as an unknown doesn’t create any suspense as that is our expectation before we have even walked into the theater. The second lesser failing is that the prolog tries to tell us two different backstories, Lilly’s and Jack’s, and the best prolog are simple and direct. They inform us of the one thing we must know in order to appreciate the story from the start. Splitting the prolog dilutes it and starts the movie of in a flabby manner.

The budgetary constraints appear in the final act of the film. If you do not have the budget for a VFX spectacle then you shouldn’t try to have one. The real tragedy is that if the directors had forsworn the effects and gone for a more ground simpler approach the horror would have hit harder, felt more real, instead of what looked like VFX that could be done at home pulling the audience out of the reality of the film.

I can quibble with some of the decisions here and there. The used of hypnosis by the skeptic to attempt to disprove the possession but these are minor things more about taste than failings of the film. A more subtle approach to backstory and exposition is something that always appeals more to me than more direct expressions but again that is a matter of personal taste. I am disappointed that Late Night with the Devil did not live up to my personal expectations, but neither was it insultingly bad. The film lands in the dreaded mediocre middle of horror.

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Vernor Vinge, Rest In Peace

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I do not often post about the passing in notable people here. While there are artists of all arts that I enjoy, admire, and are fans of, I rarely feel any great emotional tug when they pass. Losing a parent at a young age can impress upon you with great force the truth that everyone dies.

I do want to make a note of the passing this week of SF author Vernor Vinge. He was a celebrated author, often credited with popularizing the concept of the technological singularity, the point where advancements in technology change humanity so completely that what exists on the other side is incomprehensible to those before the event. The reason I am making this post is not because of his talented writing, his impact on the field, or even his influence on the wider culture but because I had the good fortune to have met him on a few occasions.

I cannot say I knew him. Sharing a few panels at local SF conventions is not enough to truly know a person, but I was acquainted with Vernor.\

He was a kind man, a local celebrity who did not throw that weight around at conventions. Even away from the dim spotlight of small local conventions he remained a friendly and approachable person. Our paths crossed at San Diego’s airport once as he was flying out to an eclipse and my sweetie-wife and were departing for a convention. The time we shared before boarding our flights was pleasant and affable.

It is strange, perhaps, that such a kind and seeming decent man created one of the most chilling and evil cultures in literature. The Emergence from A Deepness in the Sky and their viral form of slavery frightened me in a manner rarely found from pages of text. The book and those villains were so compelling that I was unable to resist reading it on the bus home from work, despite the intense motion sickness reading on a moving vehicle provoked.

Vernor was talented, kind, and he will be missed.

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All my Life I’ve Thought of Death

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I seriously cannot think of a time in my life, no matter how young, when I did not think of death. Oh, I don’t mean that it is every though in my head or that it is even a daily thought, but I feel certain that a week has not gone by that I can recall where it did not enter my mind.

I was nine when my father passed away. A terribly early age to have such a crashing trauma visited upon you but even before cancer took him I had repeated thoughts of death, so that tragic terrible event is not the genesis of my morbidly.

I don’t know how young I was when my puppy ‘snowball’, was killed by a passing car but that was my earliest encounter with death in the real world. Yet, I think, I feel, that the repeated visitation by thoughts of death preceded the dog’s passing.

I think my thoughts, my fascination with death, and with ghosts which have always been my most love form of horror, started before watching my puppy die on the road in front of me.

What I think really started this line of thinking, one which continues to the very day, is prayers.

As a child I was raised Southern Baptist, but the religion didn’t take hold. As an adult I have a lot of favor for a friend’s take on religion; “It’s Santa Claus for Adults.”

As a child in the 60’s I was taught a prayer say each night before climbing into bed.

Now I lay be down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I was boy with an active imagination that phrase If I should Die before I wake, proved to be a powerful catalyst.

My memories are very clear on this. Me in bed, wondering if I was going to die before I woke up. The clause had to be there because people did just up and die in their sleep for no reason at all. To this day I can be drifting off to sleep and the that seed planted when I was far too young to understand flowers, and I wonder about dying in my sleep.

Be aware of what you tell children, particularly those with powerful imaginations and vivid dreams for you may be implanting concepts that they will never shake off.

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Peer Pressure Isn’t Just Teenagers

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We tend to think of ‘peer pressure’ as something that is a trouble for teenagers. A scene in a badly scripted After School movie where the bad kid Tommy tells the good kid Jimmy that if he wants to be cool Jimmy needs to take a drag on the joint. Of course, it doesn’t work like that in real life at all. It’s not so much as pressure from one or two people as much as it is the Fear of Missing Out. People are doing something, having fun, being social. It’s rare that anyone verbally chastises someone into participating but rather the need to maintain the social life, to be accepted, to be with the group instead of outside it that sweeps people along. It’s far less ‘pressure’ as it is a swift river’s current. it can be fought but it is so much easier to flow with the waters.

This applies to adult as much as it applies to teenagers. It is a major component of why so many rational normal Republicans now move with Trump.

Oh, there are the true Trumpists, authoritarians and neo-fascists for whom the dream of state power is a one that frightens the rest of us, but I do believe that they are the minority. The trouble is that to maintain their social lives, their social contacts, and to avoid being ostracized by their friends and peers far too many simply swim with the current. They have lived their entire adult lives with the concept that the Democrats are not just wrong but evil. It’s beyond their imagination and conception that they are now the anti-Americans. So, despite their criticisms of Bill Clinton for dodging the draft, breaking the law, or unproved accusations of sexual assault and grifty financial dealings, or their charges that Obama was an unready novice with over inflated ego, they have wedded themselves to Trump. The hypocrisy of their support is unseen they are drowned in the swift river of the need to be accepted by their peers and our nation is worse off because of their weakness.

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Masters of the Air Rekindled my Annoyance with The Eternals

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(Minor Spoilers follow)

In the final episode of Masters of the Air Major ‘Rosie’ Rosenthal (Nate Mann) after being rescued by the Soviet Army following the crash of his B-17 sees with his own eyes a death camp that the Nazis had operated. This naturally has a massive impact on the pilot, but the scene also reawakened an irritation I had with the superhero film The Eternals.

The conceit of The Eternals is that a small group of immortal being and the source of many myths and legends have live with humanity from before history shaping and guiding our development. One of these beings is Phastos (Brian Tyree Henry) whose particular gift to humanity is teaching us technology.

Phastos’ faith in humanity is shattered with our use of technology and this is exemplified in the movie by having him break down crying amid the rubble of Hiroshima.

Yes, the nuclear bombs kill hundreds of thousands. Yes, they were the very cutting edge of science and technology at the time. But millions were murdered by the Nazis in Europe, millions. Their murders did not end the war, their murders were the point of the war. Murder on such a scale is impossible with the technology of industrialization. The vast incomprehensible scale of it is only achievable with the industrial revolution.

One can argue the terrible ‘trolley problem’ of ending the war in the Pacific with nuclear weapons. Would it have been more moral to forego the atomic attacks and launch a ground invasion that would have almost certainly cost far more lives? That’s a debate that cannot be resolved because it is a personal value judgement, but the slaughter of the innocent in camps built only for death? That is undebatable. That is a clear and perverse corruption of technology and that is what should have shattered Phastos belief in humanity.

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Django’s Cut Rate Corpses

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Before my sweetie-wife came into my life I had never seen any ‘Spaghetti’ westerns, not even the famous classics. She has introduced me to several and it is not unusual for us to find lesser known or forgotten ones on Ad-Supported Streams services such as Tubi. It’s no surprise that when we stumbled across Django’s Cut Price Corpses on Tubi that we would give it a spin.

With Luigi Batzella’s filmography in existence it is truly a slanderous crime that Ed Wood is often labeled the worst director. I have watched several Ed Woods movies, some even in a proper theater, and none are as clumsily constructed as Django’s Cut Rate Corpses, whose title honestly sounds like Django get his corpses factory direct and passes the saving on to you.

The plot, what little there is, is inconsistent. Django, a bounty hunter, is on the trail of the Cortez brother in Mexico, who have robbed a bank and kidnapped a woman. Along with large man seeking the brothers for the theft of a saddle and a laconic gambler, Django eventually faces the gang down in a chaotic shootout.

What makes this movie stand out is the utter incompetence of the filmmakers. Not once, not twice, even just three times, but several times I was distracted in scenes by the persistent and moving shadow of the camera operator. We were treated to the camera operator’s intrusion into the scene because Batzella insisted on hand-held, unsteady shots that were far too frequent and far too long. The editing was as terrible as the framing with the final battle’s geography an utter mess so that not only could you not decipher where anyone was in relation to each other, but it repeated appeared that characters fired upon their friends as often as the enemy.

Now was the writer immune from this level of incompetence. After our heroes are captured by the gang and suffer a whipping of such lackluster intensity that even a novice fetishist would be embarrassed the kidnapped woman sneaks up and cuts the heroes free. Django and the other man escape, but the kidnapped woman stays. It isn’t that she tries to follow and is recaptured, no, she just stays there, because the script insists upon it.

I have watched many a bad Italian/Spanish western that were far from good and even Ed Wood’s The Bride and The Beast with its suggestions of bestiality are quality films compared to this.

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Fragile Masculinity or Simply Incurious

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About 30 years ago I shared a 2-bedroom apartment with a fellow geek, gamer, and friend. I can’t recall what prompted this particular discussion that day but somehow we got close to the worn trope of body-swapping. You know, Freaky Friday, from the original Star Trek series Turnabout Intruder.

I asked my roommate if for a day it was possible to live life as a woman, in a woman’s body, would he do that. With the clear stipulation that there would be no need to engage in any sort of sexualized activity but be in that body for 24 hours.

His answer was not only ‘no’ but a very fast and very emphatic NO.

This has always puzzled me. My answer is the opposite. I would jump at the chance to see, to feel life from a perspective I can never truly experience and perhaps can only barely imagine.

Biology is not destiny, but it has a huge impact on our perceptions and on our concept of selves. We are not minds that exist separately from our physical forms but consciousnesses that arise from those physical forms. Our natures start at the biochemical level and build from there. Of course, a wholly different brain with its unique connections can never host an alien mind. That’s what makes body swapping the realm of fantasy and not science-fiction, but I have a hard time understanding not being so curious as to want to know what it is like, really like, for another.

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