Slightly over 4 years ago I yammered a bit about a game company called “Evil Hat” that was putting out a Lovecraftian game while not only hating Lovecraft but also *intentionally* not understanding the idea:
Making a *huge* point about bashing the creator of the IP you’re squatting on, while misinterpreting the importance of some of the most basic elements, points out that you’re just wearing the fandom as a skinsuit, a way to squeeze some of that filthy lucre from the nerds. Something we’ve seen far too often from the likes of those running Star Trek, Star Wars, Dr. Who into the ground.
Anyway, the producers of that Cthulhu game are back with another IP-cash-grab, this time in the “Tomb raider” franchise. I’ve never played any of the games; this franchise is not my thing. But for those of you who care about it… let me know if they got it right.
Someone did some digging around and found out some stuff about some of the people behind the game…
Fortunate is the man who has this coffee table. Fabulously wealthy is he if he has a woman who looks at that table and thinks “that’s awesome, I picked the right guy.”
It’s a spectacular piece, and I kinda really want one. However… before I’d plunk down money I don’t have for this sort of thing, I’d demand some improvements. From a distance it looks great, but in the closeup shots you can see the pretty strong layer lines. This appears to have been filament-printed, and little effort seems to have been made to smooth out a lot of it. But as a prototype, it’s fantastic.
It’s also interesting to point out that with 6 years worth of Star Trek to choose from, the stuff people *really* seem to like, to the point they’ll spend time, money and effort on, is the TOS and TNG stuff. A similar coffee table using the 1701D bridge? I can definitely see it. Ops from DS9? Meh. Bridges of NX-01 or Voyager? *Maaaaybe.* Kelvinverse Enterprise bridge? Unlikely. STD or SNW bridges? Literally no.
A lot of that is because the TOS and TNG designs were brilliant, while the later ones have been kinda bleh. But also, TOS and TNG are beloved. The shows themselves inspire interest in the designs. nuTrek inspire little more than dismay and fatigue.
I’d be interested to see a kickstarter for a production run of these, with the layer issues dealt with. Pretty sure it’d be far beyond my means, but I’d wish ’em well.
Good news: no cancer for Buttons. Bad news: he’s old, his colon is starting to malfunction. Things back up & turn rock hard (& apparently look like tumors on X-rays) due to some nerve problem or other. This requires a change in diet, which is a problem since his diet is special & keeps him from other problems (crystals in his urine).
After a system flush and several days of stool softener and wet food, he is very clearly feeling far better; he’s a happier cat and almost aggressively affectionate. But he’s still in quarantine… not because he’s infectious, but because I need to make sure he eats his food and not the other cats (and they eat their own and not his) and that he poops as he should. This separation is offensive to *all* of the cats. Not, I think, because they have a burning desire to share each others company; they’re just outraged at being blocked from going wherever they want.
With all the little publications I’ve written and illustrated, and all the years of blogging ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT political opinions and the like, it seems that at least *one* of my efforts will go down through the ages: my design for the Orion Battleship. We know to a fair certainty that such a craft was designed in the early 1960s, and that a mockup the size of a car was built; we know some of the components and features of that design. But other than that… we don’t know much. The overall size and configuration are unknown. So, fifteen years ago when I was working on an article for Aerospace Projects Review about large Orion vehicles, I went ahead and made a speculative reconstruction design. I did my best with what was available… and in the years since, nothing seems to have come out to refute the design. I do not contend that the design is an accurate reconstruction; I was never able to get in touch with anyone who knew the Battleship design first-hand to confirm my reconstruction. I could well be *badly* wrong, especially since the descriptions of the original design tend to be second-hand. One day we might find out for sure.
But in the years since I showed my design to the world, I’ve seen it recreated here and there. It seems to be the accepted Actual Design.
About 20 years ago I got it into my head to write a screenplay: an update of “When Worlds Collide,” based on the book from the 1930’s not the movie from 1951. When originally written, the question was “can we build a rocketship to fly to another planet?” My rewrite would set it a century later (mid/late 2030’s), when the question would be “how many rocketships can we build?” The arks would go not just to Bronson Beta but also to Mars, the Moon and asteroids, all of which would have already been visited by that point anyway. Nations, billionaires, corporations, organizations all slapping together ships of all sizes, to launch as many people, plants and critters as possible. The story would be otherwise much the same as the book.
The sequel, “After Worlds Collide”would remain possible. In the original, the Nazis and the Commies join forces to build their own ark and continue to be dicks on the new world. In my update, their place would be taken by, say, the ChiComs and the Jihadis… but again the story would be similar. One American ark lands on the new world, which they find to have once been populated, the original inhabitants having left a number of domed cities behind. The new world ends up in solar orbit, but an elliptical one… as far out as Mars, not quite as close in as Venus. So those domes cities will come in *damned* handy. But there are arks all over the place, with some working together, others working to take over.
Sadly, I never got around to writing the screenplay. News broke that Spielberg wanted to do a remake of his own and the idea of me writing a competing screenplay became monumentally stupid. Still, I’ve never forgotten the idea and I still think it has merit.
“U.N. experts argue there has been no evidence to suggest that nitrogen gas would not “result in a painful and humiliating death.””
Oh FFS. Nitrogen asphyxiation has been dangerous in industry specifically *because* it’s painless. If you find yourself in a volume filled with carbon dioxide – a small room, a tank of some kind, whatever – you are *instantly* going to know it. Your lungs will object, you’ll cough, you’ll hold your breath… and you’ll try to get the hell out of there. If you find yourself in a volume filled with *poison* gas, you’ll try to evacuate even faster. But nitrogen? You feel nothing. Your lungs are used to nitrogen… about 80% of every breath you take is nitrogen. You’ll continue to breathe it in, and continue to expel oxygen with each breath, rapidly getting rid of the oxygen in your blood as you continue to respire normally, until you rather quickly slip into a peaceful unconsciousness, and soon *die.*
All evidence points to nitrogen being a peaceful and painless way to go. And consequently one of the less humiliating, unless you find not thrashing about and screaming in pain and terror humiliating. I imagine the actual goal is to simply stop executions, rather than having any legitimate objection to nitrogen. Because if this is carried out and shown to be what history has shown it should be – effective and painless – other governments might adopt it. Given that unlike lethal injection it quires little skill – just strapping on a mask, rather than finding veins and jamming needles into them – and uses cheap and easily available nitrogen gas rather than difficult to obtain chemicals, nitrogen executions should be relatively inexpensive. One argument might be that this will incentivize bad governments to execute more; but bad governments have little trouble with just shooting people they don’t like. The counterpoint is that taxpayers shouldn’t be overly burdened if clearly easier alternatives are available.
Today’s Silicon Valley billionaires grew up reading classic American science fiction. Now they’re trying to make it come true, embodying a dangerous political outlook
This was written by Charles Stross, a sci-fi author whose work I tend to like. I kinda understand why he has reached the conclusion that he has… a *lot* of his work is heavily Lovecraftian, with the universe laden with horrible, horrible things. If you believe that the universe truly is filled with cosmic horrors just waiting at the edges for some fool to go poking at them, then of course you’re want to prevent people from pushing forward. You will, instead, live by this quote from Lovecraft himself (from “The Call of Cthulhu”):
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
But the thing is… those horrible things are out there anyway. You can’t hide from them. They’ll come and getcha. If we are to avoid colonizing space because “imperialism” is wrong, then we’ll be simply stepped on by the next imperialist species over. If you are afraid of the consequences of AI – and there are valid concerns – taking that tech away from Our Guys and leaving it in the hands of the likes of the Chinese Communists *guarantees* that some form of AI is going to come along and take a giant dump on us. If you want to stop “eugenics” because there’s been some bad history and because it could maybe lead to bad things, you’re stranding us in the reality we’re now facing of ongoing dysgenics which is *already* screwing society.
In particular the argument against space colonization is just vacuous and insane. The benefits are damn near infinite. The risk are comparatively minimal. If over the next millennium we lose a million habitats to a hard learning curve, taking with them a trillion lives… it will be a small price to pay to bring life to a trillion worldlets just within this single solar system.
Yeah, sci-fi provides warnings of potential bad futures. But it also provides innumerable examples of futures we *want* to bring about. Focusing solely on the dystopias of sci-fi is black-pilled doomerism at its worst. For every “1984” or “Brave New World” or “Star Trek Discovery” that show horrible worlds filled with horrible people living in horrible societies, there are “2001” and “Star Trek” and “Star Trek the Next Generation” and “Stargate SG-1” and “The Orville” and even “The Expanse.” The thing is… “bad” always sells better than “good,” because “bad” tends to have more interesting drama. Imagine any sort of plotline. What’ll be more interesting, or at least easier to write interesting: the story without some sort of villain or disaster, or the one where there aren’t such antagonists? A movie about, say, an architect designing and building his dream building, whatever it might happen to be, will almost certainly have competitors trying to sabotage it, or bureaucrats grinding it down, or local activists trying to stop it, or earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, asteroid impacts or alien invasions trying to trash it. So the fact that sci-fi – like *every* literary genre – includes Very Bad Things from time to time is no reason to avoid trying to see the best of sci-fi brought to life, anymore than heartbreak and rivals in romance stories are reasons to avoid trying to find love.
Movie and TV remakes are often garbage. But covers of songs? Sometimes the remake is a triumph. Some examples:
“My Body Is A Cage” by Arcade Fire, then covered by Peter Gabriel.
“Smooth Criminal” by Michael Jackson… then perfected by Alien Ant Farm.
“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails. It was good… but what Johnny Cash did with it is astonishing.
“Tainted Love” by Gloria Jones from 1964 was utterly eclipsed by “Soft Cell’s” 1981 cover.
Cylon and Garfunkel’s “Sound of Silence” is peak 60’s pretentiousness. But Disturbed’s remake kicks substantial ass.
David Bowie’s “Heroes” is OK. Peter Gabriels’ cover gives it emotional depth wholly lacking in the original.
And… what the heck. “All Along The Watchtower” by Bob Dyna was meh, the Jimi Hendrix cover was pretty good, but Bear McCreary reworked it into the best season-ending cliffhanger music ever.
Long story short: I’ve been a *casual* watcher of “Dr. Who” for 40+ years. From watching it from time to time on PBS back in the 80s – the Tom Baker era, mostly – to catching the revived version in more recent years, I would generally find it amusing if somewhat baffling. The fact that not only was it stories set over multiple episodes, meaning you’re in the dark if you’ve missed any, but that it was terribly *British* meant that it just didn’t quite hit for me. But still, I liked it well enough, and I respect the IP and the fandom.
But not everyone respects the IP or the fandom. This includes the makers of the show these days.
One thing I could always expect from any iteration of The Doctor would be that he was some flavor of “British Man.” Generally some variant of the Brit known as the “boffin,” a weird eccentric science type. But then came the “insufferably smug British woman” variant of the Doctor. And next up… gay sub-Saharan African Doctor, which seems to be meant specifically to annoy the long-time fans. So, yeah, I haven’t felt the urge to watch Dr. Who in a good long while. Recent events have not changed that. In fact, recent efforts by the makers of the show to gaslight fans of the show make me actively uninterested.
The latest nonsense has been the race swapping of historical figure Isaac Newton. For a British show to *intentionally* replace an important English historical figure with an Indian actor seems at best odd, at worst part of a wider ongoing and undeniable effort to replace the English within their own history. But the people behind this have themselves a new strategy to defend their decisions from those who don’t like it:
Behold: pointing out that Newton was English, or Cleopatra was Greek, or Hannibal was Phoenician, has gone from merely being a racist position to now “villainizing minorities.” If you say that so-and-so wasn’t black or Indian or whatever, you are now equating blacks or Indians or whatever with criminals. It is dishonest, it is unhinged, it doesn’t make sense, but it’s what they’ve got.
That’s their argument against those who point out the folly and malignity of race swapping historical figures. What’s their argument *for* doing this? The Dr. Who casting director says:
“It then becomes even more important to give people a voice and for people to be represented, especially for young people growing up who might be trans or from any minority. If they can see themselves on screen, then that can be a huge lifeline for some people. That can make them feel part of the world, which indeed they are.” … “Growing up as a gay man, I’m as aware as anybody else of how this stuff makes you feel when you see it. “
Uh-huh. So he likes to see his little subset “represented.” But he somehow doesn’t understand – or pretends not to – how a large *majority* of people do not like to watch their “representation” getting not just erased, but culturally appropriated and colonized by outsiders who didn’t earn it, don’t deserve it and don’t fit in it.
Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 song “Born in the USA” is famous not only for having been incredibly popular, bit for being “misunderstood.” Springsteen’s intent, as is pretty clear by a straight reading of the lyrics, is to tell the tale not just of a Viet Nam vet (the US was barely a decade out from that expensive but successful war and incredibly unsuccessful peace), but of a nation in disrepair. But it was grabbed onto by the political right – such as President Ronald Reagan – as a a rah-rah USA USA USA song to rally around. Then as now, leftists explain this as Republicans & conservatives being “media illiterate” or simply dumb. But is that really the case? Consider my own experience.
When it came out I was a dumbass early teenager with no particular political leanings. Yet I also saw the song as pro-USA, and I loved the hell out of it. And, yes, I listened to and understood the lyrics, and saw the darkness therein. But I – and I suspect a whole lot of other people – simply interpreted them differently from the intention of Springsteen. Yes, the lyrics reference the dire economic situation faced by *many* people at the time, coming out of the OPEC oil embargoes and Carters economic flailings and the collapse of the Apollo program and all the rest. But here’s the thing: two people can look at the same thing and see very different results… same screen, different movies.
Everybody in the US in the early 80’s knew that things sucked. You could hardly experience Carter and inflation and stagflation and Iran and the Soviets and the collapse of the iron, auto, farming and a bunch of other industries and not notice it. But there are two ways to deal with “things suck:” despair and determination. And thus we had two different approaches to understanding the song:
Leftists: “Things suck in the USA, therefore the USA sucks.”
Rightists: “Things suck in the USA right now. But we’ll fix it.”
In 1984, things sucked. But they didn’t suck quite as bad as they had a few years before, and things were clearly improving. Those in the middle and on the right saw this, and interpreted “Born in the USA” in that light.
And we got this for the 1984 Presidential campaign:
Essentially, “Born in the USA” was a negative ad against the US that got turned into a positive ad for the US. And that irritated the hell out of a lot of lefties who wanted to wallow in despair… and wanted everyone else to do the same. Turning it into a nationalistic anthem was a giant middle finger to the nattering nabobs of negativity.
Positivity and optimism can do wonders in an election, and in society. “I Like Ike,” JFK’s “Camelot,” “Morning in America,” “Make America Great Again,” etc. Turning a negative into a positive is a sign you’re on the right road.