Well, we are home and safe after Loscon 38. I had a great time, came away with lots of new information, and a few news story ideas. I had far more panels that were fun than were not fun could ask little more of a good convention.
Now I am tired and unlikely to stay up late, so there will be no Sunday Night Movie this weekened.
Happy Holidays to all.
Good morning world, Here it is Sunday Morning I;ve had my breakfast and ready to take on day three, the last, of Loscon.
So what did I do yesterday?
I started with a presentation
This was presented by Dr Jim Buby and it covered in a lot of detail, quite a bit unknown to me, the history of the early parts of the space race. Verdict: Thumbs Up
Next was
This weas presented by Michelle Evans (no realation) who has spent 30 years working on a book about the x-15, man’s first spacecraft. The X-15 was part of a program that was trying to reach space with fully reusable vehicles, but was derailed by the race to the moon. Verdict: Thumbs Up.
After that I hurried over to
Riding Rockets: The X-racer experience. This was three of the founding engineers from X-Cor, and really great space start up, and one of their test pilots Col. Rick Searfoss former shuttle astronaut. Their work on the Lynx continues, and they report about a 25 month plan to start paid trip to space very much Virgin Galactic.
The final presentation did not work for me. It was a survey of fantasy and Sf set in ordinary home environments. Unfortunately the presentation was a bit dry and so I just bounced around this final hour.
After dinner we hit the parties where I heard some good readings, met friends I had not seen in quite a while, had many good conversation and enjoyed ice scream. Sadly, my arthritis began flaring, my knees began hurting and when it got to me limping from room to room I called it an evening and retired for the night.
The drive up to Los Angeles was quick and traffic free. I’m supposing more people were out shopping thank celebrating Evacuation Day as they should have been.
We checked into hotel, registered, and had a spot of lunch at Carl’s Jr. (A fast food chain on the west coast, if you are on the East coast think Hardee’s.)
Programming I attended yesterday:
. This was supposed to be about what was going on in manned and unmanned space, but it turned into 60 minutes about the Mars Science Lab which launched this morning. Verdict: Interesting but could have been better.
This was a panel of three Fx, Make-up, and film actors talking about the biz of special effect particularly in low budge film making. Verdict: Pretty good, we saw a number of props and heard interesting behind the scenes stories.
NASA’s DAWN mission arrived at the asteroid Vesta earlier this year, after a long cruise using an ion drive. (Only the second spacecraft to use an ion drive.) This presentation was from one of my favorite peoples from JPL and very informative. Verdict: Thumbs up
: This was a presentation by scientist and author Gregory Benford bbased on his book of the same title. It’s a look back as the future as predicted by Popular Mechanics. What they got right (the Microwave) what they got wrong (Nuclear piles in the home.)and what we might have made. An interesting talk from one of my favorite authors. Verdict: Thumbs up
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11/24/11 Awoke with a headache, mild, but took 1 dose of Treximet and head was relieved within 90 minutes.
So a few weeks ago for my Sunday Night Movie I watched Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. In my comments I mentioned that there had been three remakes of the classic SF film, one in 1979, one in the 90s and the most recent in 2007, this film The Invasion with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. I remember when this film was released in the theaters and having heard it was yet another remake I skipped seeing it. (While I liked the 1979 version, Ā 1993s The Body Snatchers was so awful I had no desire to see this material abused once again.)
However, having watched the original I became curious about this remake and with Netflix to aid me, I had a blu-ray sent to my home. Now, I am sorry I missed this fin film in the theaters.
This is most certainly a remake, no doubt about that. It is not a whole cloth reinvention, nor it is not a cookie-cutter slap-dash copy of the original, and because of that it succeeds. Part of the nature of these alien invaders has been changed, no longer are there large seed-pods from which perfect copies emerge, but what has replaced that is a much more credible premise, infection. Alien spores that invade your body, and activated by R.E.M. sleep, transform you into the classical pod person. (Now you just let them have the whole alien life form infecting a species from an entirely different evolutionary path, but once you do the rest follows logically and credibly. There is a fungus I think that infects acts and changes their behavior into something beneficial for the fungus and fatal for the ants.)
The original film took place in a small California town, something easily containable, the 1979 remake was set in San Francisco, and this one the infection breaks out across a swath stretching from Dallas to Washington D.C. a vast infected area. This film also go further along and gives us a peek as what happens one the pod-people no longer need to maintain their masquerade. At this juncture it felt almost like a zombie film, but for me much more frightening.
The actors all turn in wonderful performance, including one child actor who goes far beyond creepy.
The only downside to this movie, was a critical mis-step in my opinion by the filmmakers in the opening. The film starts with a shuttle breaking up while reentering the atmosphere. That alone in 2007 would be enough to make some people uncomfortable, just 4 years after theĀ Columbia tragedy. Including actual footage of Columbia breaking up for entertainment purposes is simply wrong, cheap, and tawdry.
That aside I really enjoyed the film and look forward to one day adding it to my collection.
I will make a Sunday Night Movie entry tomorrow. We had a meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group tonight and that took up my evening. I really want to do my Sunday Night Movie because it was a film I had not seen and it surprised me that I liked it.
So in the face of the rain of rejections I received last week I am starting the outline for my new novel Command & Control. Yep, that’s me too stupid and too stubborn to give up.
C&C is another Seth Jackson novel, and last night as I lay in bed waiting for Mr. Sandman to send me a dream my mind gnawed at the plot and how the first third of the book is going to work. (The last third is what I know best right now.) Suddenly the particle of inspiration smashed through the creative centers of my noodle and I had a great idea.
Of course it was late, I was already in bed and nearly asleep. Other nights I might have leapt out of bed and rushed to my computer to note the idea, but not last night, not after the cold I have been fighting. I worked the solution over in my minds, saw how it created a very nicely character arc that the story had been lacking, and then went to sleep.
Because I spent so much time thinking about it before I went to sleep. I did not forget it Yup, it still looked good today. The outlining has begun.
Now your moment of musical horror…