Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
I read…a lot. Here’s where I ramble about books and printed media.
Yes. Horrible title. Bad blogger. No donut.
Still.
As much as I enjoy Trek, I’ve never really explored the literary Trek work terribly much over the years. As it stands, my entire Trek book collection spans all of twenty volumes, only a few of which are novels.
So — any recommendations from others out there who might have explored more of the printed Trek universe? I’m always up for more additions to my “to read” stack….
Khan Noonien Singh, long one of the most famous and most loved villains in the Star Trek universe, has over time presented some (extraordinarily geeky) issues to fans who know his story.
Namely, the Eugenics Wars of the 1990’s. According to Star Trek canon as established in the original series episode ‘Space Seed‘…
From 1992 to 1996, Khan was absolute ruler of more than one-quarter of Earth’s population, including regions of Asia the Middle East.
In the mid 1990s, [Khan and other genetically engineered] Augment tyrants began warring amongst themselves. Other nations joined to force them from power in a series of struggles that became known as the Eugenics Wars. Eventually, most of the tyrants were defeated and their territory re-captured, but up to 90 “supermen” were never accounted for.
Khan escaped the wars and their consequences along with 84 followers who swore to live and die at his command. He saw his best option in a risky, self-imposed exile. In 1996, he took control of a DY-100-class interplanetary sleeper ship he christened SS Botany Bay, named for the site of the Australian penal colony. Set on a course outbound from the solar system, but with no apparent destination in mind, Khan and his people remained in suspended animation for Botany Bay’s (nearly) 300-year sublight journey.
Of course, when this was all dreamed up in the 1960’s, no-one knew that Trek would survive until the mid-’90’s, let alone grow into the phenomenon that it did. Once the ’90’s rolled around, though…well, yes, as fans, we are perfectly aware that Trek is fiction. It’s just more fun when we can find ways to make the Trek universe and our universe overlap. When Trek takes place tens or hundreds of years in the future, that’s easy. Once we get to a point where we’ve moved solidly into the decades referenced in Trek with no sign of genetically engineered supermen or Eugenics Wars…well, that’s when things start to get creative.
A couple of years ago, I picked up two Trek novels by Greg Cox: The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh, Volume I and Volume II. Cox does an incredible job of retconning (that is, ‘retroactive continuity‘: “…the adding of new information to ‘historical’ material, or deliberately changing previously established facts in a work of serial fiction. The change itself is referred to as a ‘retcon’, and the act of writing and publishing a retcon is called ‘retconning’.”) as he merges the established Trek universe with the known recent history of the real world.
In Cox’s version of history, many of the perceived minor skirmishes and events around the world during the ’90’s, from middle-eastern conflicts to terrorist incidents were actually the public result of conflicts between the supermen as they battled with each other behind the scenes. It’s done quite well, and nicely filled in the details of Khan’s life on Earth up to his exile on the Botany Bay.
Hundreds of years later, of course, the Enterprise discovers the Botany Bay drifting in space and has their first encounter with Khan, culminating with Khan and his crew being marooned on Ceti Alpha V. Then, eighteen years later, Khan is rediscovered and eventually killed during the events of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
While long recognized as one of the best (if not the single best) Trek film, Khan left a number of unanswered questions regarding Trek continuity:
Yesterday while on lunch and browsing the bookstore shelves, I noticed that Cox had a new Khan book out, To Reign in Hell: The Exile of Khan Noonien Singh, in which he explores the eighteen years between ‘Space Seed’ and The Wrath of Khan. I’ve only read the first chapter so far, but Cox is continuing to display his ability to construct believable retcons. The majority of the book is concerned with the last of the above posed questions, telling the story of Khan’s years in exile. The first chapter, though, in addition to setting up the framing story of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Sulu returning to Ceti Alpha V to investigate and assuage Kirk’s guilt over the deaths of his crewmen, family, and ship during the events of the second, third, and fourth Trek films, also quickly and concisely answers the first three questions.
Cox even comes up with an explanation for the fourth — though he did fail to use Koenig’s “Chekov kept Khan waiting in the restroom” idea.
Khan’s long been Trek’s best villain, and Greg Cox is doing a bang-up job of filling in the holes outside of established canon. It’s well worth picking up his books if you’re in the mood for a little Trek-based fun.
(Incidentally, consider ‘retkahn’ or ‘retkahnning’ to be my proposal for Greg Cox’s ability to flesh out Khan’s story. The word amuses me, and neither seems to show up in Google yet [retkhan, retkhanning], which actually surprised me a bit.)
I’m not entirely sure about this one — Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will be starring in a film version of Atlas Shrugged.
According to Hollywood trade paper Variety, the Mr. And Mrs. Smith co-stars, who are both fans of the Russian novelist, would play the lead roles of Dagny Taggart and John Gault [sic].
Brad Pitt I can see as Galt — while Pitt isn’t one of my all-time favorite actors, I know he can act (and occasionally actually impress me), and from what’s bouncing around inside my head from the last time I read Atlas Shrugged, he has the right look. And for people who aren’t huge fans, he’s not a huge character until towards the end of the story, though he does pop up from time to time throughout.
I’m not sure about Angelina as Dagny, though. Here are two descriptions of Dagny from early in the book:
Her leg, sculpted by the tight sheen of the stocking, its long line running straight, over an arched instep, to the top of a foot in a high-heeled pump, had a feminine elegance that seemed out of place in the dusty train car and oddly incongruous with the rest of her. She wore a battered camel’s hair coat that had been expensive, wrapped shapelessly around her slender, nervous body. The coat collar was raised almost to the slanting brim of her hat. A sweep of brown hair fell back, almost touching the line of her shoulder. Her face was made of angular planes, the shape of her mouth clear-cut, a sensual mouth held closed with inflexible precision. She kept her hands in the coat pockets, her posture taut, as if she resented immobility, and unfeminine, as if she were unconscious of her own body and that it was a woman’s body.
[…] She looked like a young girl; only her mouth and eyes showed that she was a woman in her thirties. The dark gray eyes were direct and disturbing, as if they cut through things, throwing the inconsequential out of the way.
To my mind, Angelina seems too overtly sexual and womanly, too consciously sensual to be Dagny, but Prairie thinks that she can pull it off.
It may be time for me to re-read Atlas Shrugged, too. I first picked it up without knowing anything about it, simply because it had the single best titled I’d ever seen for a novel (and I still think it holds that position for me). Now I tend to re-read it every few years — I don’t agree with everything Ayn Rand proposes, but there are certain central themes that I do like (working for what you receive rather than expecting handouts). I just don’t tend to carry them quite as far as she does (to the point of decrying all forms of social welfare).
“ToriMix v1” by Amos, Tori from the album Difficult Listening Hour (2000, 45:31).
Another “X greatest Y” list has appeared. This, of course, means it’s meme-time!
Working from the Guardian’s list of the 50 best book-to-film adaptations (discussion as to what films should or should not be on this list is in progress over at kottke.org), I’m tagging each line with a B if I’ve read the book, and an M if I’ve seen the movie.
And with that, we’re off…
Of the many contributions Robert Heinlein made to the world, I think the word ‘grok‘ is my personal favorite.
Grok (pronounced grock) is a verb roughly meaning “to understand completely” or more formally “to achieve complete intuitive understanding”. It was coined by science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein in his novel Stranger in a Strange Land, where it is part of the fictional Martian language and introduced to English speakers by a man raised by Martians.
It should be made clear that there is no exact definition for grok; it is a fictional word intended not to be “understood completely”.
In the Martian tongue, it literally means “to drink” but is used in a much wider context. A character in the novel (not the primary user) defines it:
“Grok means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed—to merge, blend, intermarry, lose identity in group experience. It means almost everything that we mean by religion, philosophy, and science—and it means as little to us (because we are from Earth) as color means to a blind man.”
I’m working my way through the last few chapters of my MAT097 (Elementary Algebra) assignments (factoring, rational expressions, working my way towards quadratic equations), and while it’s not quite as difficult as it was back in high school, and as long as I follow the patterns, plug all the numbers and letters in the right places, and don’t make any stupid mistakes swapping positive and negative signs around, then I end up getting the right answers more often than not.
But I sure don’t grok it. Don’t think I ever will, either.
Still…as long as I’m getting the right answers the majority of the time, then I’m doing okay. Not great…but okay. And that’s fine with me.
“Groove Radio pres. House (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album Groove Radio pres. House (full mix) (1997, 1:13:46).
Prairie and I just got home from seeing The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We were a little nervous going in: not only was this a movie adaptation of a favorite childhood book (something which all to often suffers when translated to the screen), but Prairie’s sister Hope had seen it last week and hadn’t been terribly impressed. Once all’s said and done, though…
So. Very. Good.
Story-wise, the movie is very nearly — and quite successfully — a direct adaptation of the book, with only a very few changes made along the way. The most major change is the addition of a few minutes of prologue to the film, expanding a single sentence from the book (“This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from London during the war because of the air-raids.”) in order to help modern audiences get a feel for the time period and the reasoning behind the children’s visit to the country. A later addition — a confrontation at the base of a frozen waterfall — doesn’t insert itself quite as smoothly, but still doesn’t come across as too jarring.
Effects-wise, the film does wonderfully. Aslan, while not perfect, is quite acceptably realized, but the real standouts are the creatures created by Lord of the Rings veterans Weta. From Mr. Tumnus and his fellow fauns to the centaurs, from the Minotaur to the harpy, from the gryphons to the phoenix…across the board, absolutely stunning creature effects. Both the centaurs and the phoenix were deemed “better than in the Harry Potter movies” by Prairie and me, and the harpy in the White Witch’s army was, for me, a true jaw-dropper. So much stuff, so beautifully realized.
Last — but, of course, far from least — the characters themselves. The children were wonderful (especially Georgie Henley as Lucy), James McAvoy was suitably charming as Mr. Tumnus, and Tilda Swinton as the White Witch…oh, I got such a kick out of her, especially during the ending battle as she drives her polar bear-drawn chariot across the battlefield with Aslan’s shorn mane fashioned into a battle headdress. Simply gorgeous.
And as for the “Christian element”…eeeh. Sure, the allegory’s in the movie as in the book, but without it being pointed out, I don’t think most people would care one way or the other. Those who look for it will find it, but it’s certainly not like there’s a big neon “Christ Figure” sign pointing at Aslan every time he comes on screen. If anything, there’s a bit less overt references to Christian mythology in the movie than in the book — while both refer to the children as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve, the movie never mentions the White Witch’s origins as the daughter of Adam’s first wife Lilith and a giant.
All in all, both Prairie and I came out quite satisfied. Some small quibbles here and there, to be sure (neither of us particularly cared for the stylized approach to the moments after Jadis is defeated), but on the whole a marvelously successful job of translating the book to the screen. Hurrah!
And now I’m off to find some turkish delight…
After reading Terrence’s ‘Saying No to Narnia‘ and Pharyngula’s ‘Narnia as an inoculation‘, both of which pointed to a Guardian UK article titled ‘Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion‘, I was somewhat annoyed. As an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal who was brought up in a Christian household and counts Christianity as a major part of who I am and why I’m an open-minded, pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, anti-Bush liberal, it occasionally gets under my skin when I’m reminded yet again that ‘Christian’ has become a dirty word synonymous with the worst of the bigoted bible-thumping set, tainting anything that it touches.
It was quite nice to see Arcterex’s take on the same article, then:
I read the Narnia books as a child, and absolutely loved them. They had a similar draw as modern day Harry Potter. The downtrodden who think they aren’t anybody in the world finding out that they are a heros in a magical world.
Of course, then I found out later on in live about the religious overtones in the books…
And couldn’t care less. A good story is a good story, and personally I find this sort of ignorant reporting as bad as the Christian groups who go around saying how Harry Potter is promoting kids to become satanists and how it’s an evil book. It’s a friggin’ book and a good story. Geez.
Damn skippy. Sure, there are Christian overtones to the Narnia stories. There are Christian overtones to the Matrix stories, the Lord of the Rings stories, the Star Wars stories, and countless other stories (both printed and filmed), too. Why all the rancor? Just because the religious right (who all too often seem to embody the antithesis to the Christianity I grew up with) has jumped all over The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is it suddenly impossible to go out and enjoy a fun fantasy movie?
Sure, you can read all sorts of meaning into the stories and why they’re being brought to the screen now — religious indoctrination, right-wing propelled mass media conspiracy theories, whatever. You can also tell your inner Fox Mulder that every so often it doesn’t matter and go watch a movie.
That’s what I’m planning on doing.
Well, it took a few hours (spread over the past few days) of free-time puttering, but my entire book collection (that isn’t loaned out, loaned out and not returned, lost, or still sitting somewhere at my folks’ house in Anchorage) is now entered into my LibraryThing catalog.
A paltry 373 books in total. Meh. I thought I’d be doing better than that…but then, I know there’s quite a bit that’s missing for one reason or another (books I remember having that aren’t there, series that are only half-complete, and other similar things). Still, it’s not a bad overview of my reading habits.
I may end up creating another account for Prairie and cataloging her collection also. That particular project is going to wait for a little while at least, though…getting mine done in two days is a good enough accomplishment for now.
Neat new web toy I just found: LibraryThing — catalog and tag your book collection. I just spent some time putting in a few shelves worth of my library…here’s my current profile. Neat!
The Guardian UK ran a survey voting for the top 20 geek novels written since 1932, and in ‘net meme tradition, here’s the list with those I’ve read in bold.
13 out of 20…65%. Not bad, but I could do better. Time to add to the ever-growing reading list!