Last night on American Idol, after each contestant sung, they did the usual “call this number to vote for this singer” bit. But this season, they’ve added another fillip: “Or text this number!” Just like that, no explanation of what the word means. Fox knows its target audience, I guess. Or they’re just trying to look hipper.
Population: One
The Retrosheet folks are more obsessive about a larger quantity of data (not to mention more productive) than you. I can almost guarantee this. They are engaged in the slow process of compiling as much data as possible about every Major League Baseball game ever played. They have the day by day standings for every season since 1900. Here’s April 11th, 1912. They have play by plays for most games between 1967 and 1990. They find it disappointing that they don’t know which umpires were assigned to all their games. I am in total awe.
I have a very clever idea regarding all this data, which I will debut sometime. Woot!
A generation ago, the City fell. The world fell. It is said that a great disaster marked the date, but that none knew of its significance until it was far too late. It is said that once, men did not believe in demons. If that is so, then disbelief was washed away by a torrent of winged creatures who eat memories and leave only shadows where men once walked.
You are brookers, heirs to the tradition of your fathers, who fought the good fight on the Street of the Walls. You bargain with the merchants of the mainland, to ensure that every resident of the City can eat. You battle the demons that live in the tops of the fallen towers with sword and fire, because that is what your fathers did before they died, and you are better trained than your fathers.
You are curry men, who fearlessly ride the metal steeds of a dead era, with the sacred bags slung over one shoulder. You carry dispatches throughout the City, so that the brookers always know what to buy and what to sell. You are in more danger from the demons than anyone, as you dance around the hulks that litter the streets, but you know no fear.
You are barrers, who know the secrets of words and clauses, and the ways in which a sentence shapes those who read it. You bind the demons of the City, weaving webs of pacts and treaties, to create safe places for the curry men to ride and for the brookers to live. You worry, sometimes, that the demons take your soul even as you take their free will, but you know that the world would end without you, so you stay true to your path.
In the southern section of the City, the aged foreign wizard Soros crouches at the top of the Empeer Spire, watching all below him. He is not of the City, and it is well rumored that he treats with demons. None other safely lives above the ground, and one man can not stand against the hordes, so his corruption seems self-evident.
Far to the west, the Children of Buffet keep the spirit of Ampire pure in the great wheat fields of Witah. But that is very far from the City.
Den Beste misses the point yet again. “What I think is that they [the nations of the world] already do hate our guts, and that at this point acting unilaterally won’t increase that to any significant degree.” OK, let’s let that be a given for the purposes of argument. Now cast your mind back a year and a half. How did we squander all that good will?
Kevin Drum highlights a different problem with that statement here.
(And yeah, I know the nations of the world don’t hate us. Den Beste doesn’t, though, and I don’t want to argue points I’m not trying to make.)
I Love Your Work is a weblog about the filming of Adam Goldberg’s film I Love Your Work. Alternatively, it’s a promotional piece. One of the burning issues of the weblog world is whether or not webloggers are journalists. Many webloggers are very indignant about the possibility that they aren’t journalists. Many journalists roll their eyes at the entire question.
Helen Yeager, who writes I Love Your Work, can’t talk about certain things she saw. She’s part of the promotional effort for the movie; she’s part of the crew (and says as much). It’s an interesting blog but I think that she’s damaged the cause of weblogs as real journalism; by allowing the medium to be coopted, she’s made it harder for other webloggers to be taken seriously. As Film Threat pointed out a while back, “the old press tends to be lazy and a little nearsighted when it comes to making distinctions between groups other than themselves…” Fair? Nah, but still true.
Compare and contrast: Peshawar Lancers and Shanghai Knights.
We’ll do the movie first so you have time to skip it in the theaters. OK, that’s a little harsh, but it was really pretty uninspired. Good martial arts from Jackie, good comedy from Owen Wilson, rather lackluster script. I’m a sucker for Victorian pulp adventure, but this was really by the numbers without anything to distinguish it conceptually. I think moving the setting was a mistake. Leave the duo in the Old West where they’re working against our Western tropes, don’t move them to London and run them through the same dull paces every pair of Victorian pulp adventurers goes through.
Peshawar Lancers is decidedly more interesting, albeit still a failure. There are two sizable problems with the book. First, and most fatal, the plot really makes no sense. The entire book revolves around the need to foil an evil plot, and not surprisingly the plot is foiled, but it’s not foiled conclusively. There’s nothing at all stopping the baddies from making another run at the brass ring. The ending, as a result, was anti-climatic since I couldn’t really read it as anything other than a temporary triumph.
The second problem is that the alternate history is pretty flawed. Concept in a nutshell: a comet hits the earth in 1878, causing a second ice age. England survives by moving wholescale to India and points south. Japan builds itself up as a major power, as do the Ottoman Empire and a France that’s moved to Northern Africa. So far so good.
Russia survives by embracing a cannibalistic religious frenzy. Uh? Cannibalism isn’t going to provide enough food for a country to survive the ice age depicted; it’s just not a varied diet. There aren’t any plants growing in Russia. Where’d the vitamins come from, huh?
So what makes the novel interesting? It’d make a really rambunctious pulp setting, once you embrace the improbability of the evil Russians. (Hard to do that with the novel, since there are five appendixes given over to outlining the probability of the alternate history.) Huge swashbuckling fun, and you wouldn’t have to contend with a hobbled plot. If Peshawar Lancers had been an RPG sourcebook, I’d be recommending it.
Saith Steve Lieber, comic book creator:
Thanks for asking. I’m working with a novelist on his first comic book project, and doing the research for another one that’ll be all me.
A fan replies:
Sounds good… Any publishers lined-up, or is that much further down the line?
(And any hints on the novelist’s identity?)
And Lieber spills:
No publishers lined up yet, but I guess there’s no reason to be coy. It’s Sean Stewart. He’s an s.f./fantasy writer, probably best known for GALVESTON, an amazing novel that won the World Fantasy Award in 2001. (Actually folks here might know him better as the story guy behind the webgame for the Spielberg film A.I.) He’s taken a serious interest in comics recently, and has a really good feel for how they work.
Woo hoo!
The FBI is warning of lone extremists, who “represent an ongoing terrorist threat in the United States.” Well, it’s a good thing we’re going after all those rogue states to eliminate terrorism, then.
Mr. Sterling — no, it’s OK! This is a technology post, not a review. Read on.
Mr. Sterling, which is continuing to be mediocre, had an interesting little moment last night. Senator Sterling was sitting in a committee meeting tilting at a windmill, while a press conference raged outside. One of his aides was at the press conference, keeping Sterling updated via BlackBerry. No explanation of what was going on, just a flash of one aide typing on a BlackBerry and the aide with Sterling getting the message. You know a technology’s becoming prevalent when it shows up in a TV show without explanation.
These remixes of the new government warning labels cracked me up harder than anything I’ve seen or done all week. New-clear’s knocking but no-body’s home! (Via regis.)