Musings of a Babylon Lurker

Hugo Awards Novellette : “It takes Two” by Nicola Griffith

Sunday, June 27th, 2010 | awards, books, scifi | No Comments

A very well chosen title for a cautionary tale. Nicely ambiguous. Are we talking about Richard and Cody, or about Cody and Susana.

Going deep into the question of how reliable our memories are, and how we could be influenced to do things we would not otherwise do.

While the idea could be said to be lifted from the “Red Pill/Blue Pill” choice in “The Matrix”, this story has a quite different take on the concepts of memory and reality.

8/10

Tags: Hugo Awards, scifi

Hugo Awards Novellette : “Eros, Phillia, Agape” by Rachel Swirsky

Sunday, June 27th, 2010 | awards, books, scifi | No Comments

Interesting take on the possibilities of Artificial Intelligence evolving into consciousness. In this case involving a robot, or should I say android.

I found the story a bit longer than I would prefer for this relatively simple plot, on the other hand I found the writing itself interesting and somewhat captivating.

Also the relationship between robots/androids takes an interesting turn when the robot is set free to evolve. Maybe a good example why most robot stories abide Asimov’s rules.

8/10

Tags: Hugo Awards, scifi

Hugo Awards 2010 Fan Art

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010 | awards, fantasy, scifi | No Comments

Finally I decided to become a “supporting member” of Worldcon2010 (Aussiecon).

This means that I have been downloading the “Hugo Voter Package” with the majority of the material nominated for the Hugo Awards. When unpacked this amounts to a whopping 700MB, including 5-6 each of Novels, Novellettes, Novellas and Short Stories, as well as a fair bit of Fan and pro magazines, fan and pro artworks.

Last year I started out with reading the novels ( the short stories had already been listened to as podcasts ) and I think that was somewhat of a mistake, since I never got to anything shorter than the novels (apart from the short stories) before the time to vote had come.

This year the plan is to go the opposite way, so I started looking at the:

Fan Artist category in the package :

Brad W. Foster,
David Howell,
Steve Stiles and
Taral Wayne

All were nominated for graphics art in different styles, except David Howell who designed the base for the 2009 Hugo award.

David Howell will be my choice of Fan Artist for the Hugo Awards 2010. I like the design a lot and I think he deserves to be recognized for the work he did.

Will I be disappointed if someone else wins ? Not at all, this just reflects my preference.

Tags: fantasy, Hugo Awards, scifi

Brief review : “Dr Horrible’s Sing Along Blog”

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 | awards, film and tv, funny, scifi | No Comments

A web story by Joss Whedon.

After having heard most people rave about this little show I finally got the DVD and watched the thing.

The beginning is quite funny, but for me the fun wears off quite quickly. I find it too repetitive and to me that gets boring. I probably have heard too much hype about how hilarious this is.

I have no problem with the production as such, and it probably deserved winning in its Hugo category.

It just did not bring much *to me*.

Sorry about that, guys. Don’t let this take away any of your enjoyment of the show.

6/10 on the Lurker’s scale

Tags: Dr. Horrible, Hugo Awards, scifi

Review : Doctor Who : ‘Silence in the Library’/'Forest of the Dead’

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009 | Doctor Who, awards, film and tv, reviews, scifi | No Comments

From the beginning of the first new season I have always loved the episodes written by Steven Moffat, from ‘The Empty Child’/'The Doctor Dances’ over ‘The Girl in the Fireplace’ and the brilliant ‘Blink’ to this double episode. I am looking forward to see what he will bring to the series as show runner.

Like the other stories (when they were written) this story stands a bit by itself in the Doctor Who time line.

We find The Doctor and Donna arriving (in the 51th century) at a planet full of books. In essence it is a library of all known books, known just as The Library. Something is very wrong, since the library seems completely empty. Well, there are the books, but no people at all, just a cryptic computerized warning message ‘Count the Shadows !’ .

Another party arrives, with among others, a certain professor River Song who appears to have a past with The Doctor, in his future. It turns out she even knows the name of The Doctor, something unheard of in the series until now, of course not counting The Doctor posing as John Smith, clearly an alias.

The “monster” of this story is the invisible, but very deadly Vashta Nerada, residing in the shadows and being a kind of “piranhas of darkness”.

In the story we learn enough to know why the Vashta Nerada act like they do, and of course The Doctor, aided by professor Song saves the vast majority of the people trapped on the planet.

The Little girl, living an imaginary life, does raise the questions of “what is reality” when Doctor Moon tells her that the life she thinks of as her own is not real .

For me the story has the best of the elements creating a good Who adventure, a good “monster”, a mystery or two, some good characters accompanying the Doctor, etc.

This was my first choice in the category for the Hugo Awards 2009. ‘Dr Horrible’ won that one, and that is fine.

‘Spoilers !!’ (River Song)

9/10 on the Lurker’s scale

Tags: Doctor Who, film, Hugo Awards, scifi

Review : Doctor Who : ‘Turn Left’

Saturday, December 19th, 2009 | Doctor Who, Uncategorized, awards, film and tv, scifi | No Comments

Hugo Nominee 2009 Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.

This is Russell T. Davies’ writing at its best, aided by Graeme Harper’s directing. With all due respect for his team reviving Doctor Who Davies’ writing has not always been the best during the new Who era – probably due to the pressure of being the show runner.

While we have seen indications of inner strength in Donne Noble, this episode pulls all that to the fore. She has a little help from a friend she did not know she had : Rose. This is, for now, the culmination of the small glimpses we have had of Rose since the beginning of the season

The story finds Donna tricked into living a version of history where she did not meet the Doctor, and it is not a pretty picture. Guided by Rose from a different reality she finds her inner strength to change history back to what we know from the third season of the 10th Doctor.

The story has a good deal of fine drama, some fine character development of Donna, and a stunning conclusion, as a prelude to the two final episodes.

I consider this episode better than the two final ones, although I find those quite good as well.

This is certainly one of my favourites of the season, mainly rivaled by the double episode ‘Silence in the Library’/'Forest of the Dead’

9/10 on the lurker’s scale.

Tags: Doctor Who, film and tv, Hugo Awards, scifi

Update, and visit to DK

Sunday, September 6th, 2009 | cons, general, scifi | No Comments

Just back from holidays in DK

Got the blog software updated to the latest version.

I went to the small Danish convention “Fantasticon” (organised by the Danish Scifi association Fantastik)

Nice little con with about 150 people, Guests of Honour were British authors Charles Stross and Gwyneth Jones. Thinking of going to the Easetercon in London next year, and possibly the Eurocon in Stockholm 2011.

Tags: events, scifi

Long time no see

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009 | blog, books, events, film and tv, general, novel, scifi | No Comments

It has been a while since I last had an entry here, things have been a bit hectic.

I became a supporting membert of the Anticipation Worldcon 2009, and with that came the right to vote on the Hugo Awards.

So for a month I was – among other things – busy reading 4 of the nominated novels, listening to the short stories, and a few other things.

Also, I have been more active building some radio equipment, and have had a successful attempt of receiving the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

I went to see the new Star Trek movie with a friend in Denmark, and finally I have been active learning more Tai Chi and Qigong.

Some of those activities will result in some new entries in the near future. Right now I am taking it a bit easy – and watching the new “Torchwood” series : “Children of Earth”. The first episode looks very promising, so let us hope that carries through the whole story.

Tags: busy, general, scifi

Looking at Hugo Awards nominees 2009

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 | cons, events, scifi | 2 Comments

This year I decided to become a supporting member of the Worldcon/Anticipation that takes place in August in Montreal, Canada.

With a (supporting) membership of the Worldcon comes the right to vote on the Hugo Awards, the science fiction fans’ own awards.

Not just that, this year a big part of the nominee’s works are made available to the voters, so last week I downloaded the “Hugo Voter’s package 2009″, a zipped file of about 180 MB.

The file contains 4 novels, several novellas, short stories , a graphic novel (as far as I can see, have not opened that file yet), and other contributions, in order to facilitate an enlighttened voting process.

Now I am very happy that I got myself an eBook reader – it would be far too tiring reading that much on the iPod Touch. Still I am not tied to the computer screen, but can read anywhere I want – the Sofa or lazy chair is a good place.

I started reading “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross, partly because I expect to see him at a small local con (Fantasticon) in Copenhagen this year.

With 4 novels and all the other material I have a quite sufficient amount of reading to do before the Worldcon, even if I am not going to Montreal. I would like to go to a Worldcon once, especially if it takes place somewhere in (Northern) Europe.

Tags: Add new tag, Hugo Awards, scifi, worldcon

The Next Doctor

Thursday, January 29th, 2009 | Doctor Who, film and tv, scifi | No Comments

Since I was away from here, I missed the Christmas Special of Doctor Who, “The Next Doctor”.

Having missed, I ordered the DVD from Amazon – it has arrived, now for some fun in the week end.

Tags: Doctor Who, film and tv, scifi