Christopher L. Bennett's Blog, page 56

Syfy’s CHILDHOOD’S END review (spoilers)

Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End has always been one of my favorite books. I still have my first copy of the book, the 1973 Del Rey edition. So I was nervous when I heard that Syfy was doing a miniseries adaptation of the book. The initial reports and promos were discouraging. They suggested that the emphasis would be on the early “Are they invaders?” stuff that the book got out of the way quickly. And the casting news was disheartening. The book was incredibly progressive for 1953 in that perhaps its most central human character, Jan Rodricks, was a biracial Afro-Scottish man. Yet the miniseries over 60 years later had reportedly promoted the supporting character of Rikki Stormgren to the lead role and reinterpreted him as a Middle-American farmer (Ricky Stormgren, played by Mike Vogel), with no hint that Rodricks was being included at all. I was very disturbed by the implied whitewashing. Later on, it became evident that Rodricks (renamed Milo, played by Osy Ikhile) would be included after all, but it was unclear how prominent he would be. The first advance reviews seemed to suggest it was closer to the book than I feared it would be, so I went in with hope, but I still had my concerns. The following reviews reprint the comments I posted at Tor.com in their review threads.

Part 1: “The Overlords”

Well, it’s better than I feared, and truer to the book than I feared, but still imperfect. Mike Vogel was less bland and boring than he seemed in the trailers, and I suppose there was merit to the idea that a spokesperson from outside the existing authority structures would have less “baggage” than, say, a UN Secretary-General. Still, I’m hoping that now the focus will shift away from Stormgren and more toward Rodricks as in the book.

And I could wish for a more global focus. We hear about the international impact of the Overlords, but almost all the featured characters are Americans, except for Peretta, who’s supposedly Brazilian but has an American accent.

Colm Meaney’s character was way too one-dimensional. The Wainwright of the book was described as an honest man, even if his followers weren’t, and Stormgren’s abduction was by an extremist subsect of the Freedom League. I can understand the need to conflate characters, but even so, it would’ve been nice for the voice on the side of human freedom to be less obnoxious and hateful.

I also found the Overlords’ technology a bit too magical in its portrayal. Why erase the photos of the dead people used as illusory messengers? And while I suppose Karellen’s appearance fits the intent of the text and other artists’ renderings I’ve seen, I’ll always prefer Wayne Barlowe’s version from Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials, which was more plausibly alien and not quite as literal an interpretation. (It’s included among some other artists’ interpretations in this article from io9.)

Still, it hit a lot of the high notes of the first portion of the book, and the directing and script were reasonably good overall. They rode a bit too heavily on alien-abduction scare tropes when the pod came to Ricky’s house, but in retrospect, it seems like maybe the Overlords played it that way intentionally to attract coverage of the “abduction” so that the world would be watching when Ricky was returned safe and sound.

(Speaking of callbacks to earlier tropes, when Wainwright’s subordinate suggested calling the aliens Visitors, was that an intentional nod to V?)

Part 2: “The Deceivers”

Man… I thought part 1 was okay, but part 2 was awful. It had hardly anything to do with the book, and the parts that were used from the book were handled poorly. As I always feared would happen, the novel’s black main character (Rodricks) was marginalized in favor of a bunch of white characters, including Stormgren, whose role in the book was over by this point and whose inclusion here seemed to be mostly padding until late in the episode.

(I’m also not crazy about the way the miniseries perpetuates the tendency of American fiction to treat “Africa” as a single undifferentiated place that’s defined mostly by wildlife and/or poverty.)

Peretta, like Wainwright in part 1, was too broad and fanatical to be an effective antagonist. The miniseries can’t seem to make up its mind; it keeps trying to make the Overlords ominous and suggest they’re up to no good, but the characters who believe they’re up to no good are such crazy, unlikeable extremists that they have no credibility. I also don’t like the suggestion that Karellen drove Peretta to kill herself by using the image of her dead mother to lead her out the open door. In the book, the Overlords had far subtler methods to neutralize threats without the need for violence.

The worst part was the Ouija board sequence and what came after. In the book, the Ouija scene was a hint that humans were starting to develop telepathy, and Rodricks was present when someone asked the location of the Overlords’ home planet and the board spelled out an answer. Here, the board seems to have been some Overlord communication device, so there was no reason for it to be a Ouija board at all. And there was no reason why the Overlords would ask the magic baby to tell them the location of their own homeworld. And the way Milo figured that out was unconscionably stupid. Why would a communications beam between the ground and the ship have visible letters flying through it? Why would aliens use an alphabet based on the constellations as seen from Earth? That’s an idea ripped off from Stargate, and at least the Stargate movie (though not the series) had the sense to acknowledge that a different star system would have different constellations. But this miniseries doesn’t even know the difference between a constellation and a star system, having Milo use them interchangeably in his spiel. The gibberish explanation Milo gave for how he found the Overlords’ homeworld was so ignorant of basic grade-school astronomy that it’s an affront to Arthur C. Clarke to put it in an adaptation of his book, and at this point I was literally shouting at the screen in betrayed outrage. Okay, the book’s credulity about psychic powers and Ouija boards is one of its major shortcomings from a plausibility standpoint, but at least Clarke did his homework about the ideas he included in his books. This was an aggressively inept failure of research.

The one part that really works is Dance’s performance as Karellen. I’ve always liked Karellen in the book, and I think Dance is doing a good job capturing his intelligence, urbanity, patience, compassion, and humor, even though the somewhat cheesy makeup design isn’t helping him much.

Part 3: “The Children”

The first half or so of the final installment was quite tedious. In the book, Rikki Stormgren was featured only in the first part of the novel, and the miniseries never really established a good reason for keeping Ricky Stormgren around beyond that. He didn’t do anything in part 3 except slowly die, and continue to be obsessed over his lost love Annabelle — which was ridiculous, since he’d been living with Ellie for something like 25 years at this point. It’s poor writing to have a story that spans so many decades and have the characters undergo no real change or growth in that interval. And having Ricky still be obsessed with someone he lost half a lifetime before just made him pathetic and was an affront to Ellie’s character. This didn’t work, and it had no bearing on the overall story. It was totally pointless. When Ricky eventually died, my reaction was “Finally, now we can get on with the actual story.” I kind of liked his character in part 1, but his and Ellie’s story should’ve ended then.

And the time wasted on Ricky could’ve been better spent fleshing out the plots that actually mattered and came from the book — the Greggsons in New Athens and Milo’s journey to the Overlords’ planet. The New Athens part was handled superficially — we just got one introductory scene with the guy in charge of the place, and the script’s heavyhanded approach to villains was still very much in effect — he seemed all nice on the surface, but was surrounded by garish artwork celebrating war and bloodshed and talking about how he’d rather burn New Athens down than lose it, and it became obvious what was going to happen. In the book, the fate of New Athens was a consensual choice by its citizens, with those who disagreed allowed to leave. Making it one lunatic’s unilateral act was more shallow and came off as gratuitous.

As for the children’s evolution and ascension, that was poorly handled as well. The scene where they floated up into the air was risible. I was staring at the screen in disbelief and asking, “Seriously? Seriously?!” Even before that, the miniseries seemed to be trying to rip off Torchwood: Children of Earth rather than adapting Childhood’s End. But the levitation scene was where they really lost it.

The one part of “The Children” that worked for me was Milo’s journey to the Overlords’ planet. This was the part I was most worried about — I feared they’d either leave it out entirely or have their white farmboy hero get to make the journey instead of Rodricks. So it was a relief that they kept it basically intact. It wasn’t perfect. They sort of lost the spirit of pure scientific curiosity that drove Rodricks in the book, instead having Milo do it because he feared a danger to Earth, and having him more concerned about that danger and his lost love (a relationship that was never sufficiently established to justify his pathos at its outcome) than about the discovery itself. And the depiction of the Overlords’ world was too hellish and not as rich and interesting as the visuals Clarke described. Still, they kept the essence of it intact, and after a night and a half that was mostly padding and lame subplots, the miniseries finally anchored itself in Clarke’s story again and brought it to essentially the same resolution. I’m not sure if I’m actually satisfied by that so much as relieved, but at least it wasn’t a total disaster in the end.

—

In the final analysis, I feel this miniseries should’ve been told over two nights instead of three. Lose all the Ricky/Ellie stuff after part 1, lose Peretta altogether, keep it to the plots that actually came from the book. It’s certainly possible to add new ideas to a book adaptation in a way that works and enriches the story, but they failed to do so here. The material invented to pad the story out over three nights was weak and ultimately rather pointless. Even cut down to four hours, this would still be a flawed adaptation, but it would be less flawed.

All in all, the miniseries never succeeded in establishing a consistent tone. It kept trying to make things seem ominous and suspenseful and scoring everything with scare cues, but the Overlords’ invasion and the children’s ascension were so gentle and benign that the attempts to make it feel dangerous and sinister never really worked. Especially when the human antagonists were consistently so fanatical and cartoonish. People often say this is a dark or pessimistic story, but I’ve never really found it to be such, because it’s a story of humanity ascending to become something greater. Sure, the transition is sad, in the way that letting your children grow up and leave home is always sad, but it’s not portrayed as something evil or unjust. It’s a natural transition that the Overlords make as comfortable as possible. This is what the title means. The end of childhood is the beginning of adulthood — in this case, for the human species. The irony is that it’s the grownups who are trapped in the child form of the species (because their mental patterns are too fixed to allow the transition) and the children who metamorphose into its mature form.

And the attempt to pass off that solemn and thoughtful tale as a horror story just didn’t work. At least, not for someone like me, who’s known the book since childhood. For someone coming to the story for the first time, I imagine that being set up to expect something evil and then consistently not getting it might’ve been off-putting too. It was trying too hard to pretend to be something it wasn’t. But then, maybe this was just too contemplative and nonviolent a narrative to work well on television.

Or does it…?

Well, here is what I posted on Facebook this past Tuesday:

“Okay, that’s worrisome… I turned my new (refurbished) laptop on this morning and it just made this repetitive clicking noise for a while, and after the initial pre-Windows startup text and a black screen for a while, I just got a cursor blinking in the corner and more clicking. I finally turned it off and back on again, and it booted up fine. Is this potentially serious?”

I was told this could be a sign of imminent disk failure, but checking online about clicking sounds indicated that it could be anything from normal operational noises to a harbinger of doom. I ran a disk check on bootup and it showed no damage, but I decided to take it in to Best Buy today and see what they could tell me. According to their Geek Squad guy, the sound is definitely a hard drive noise that it’s not supposed to be making. He couldn’t find any clear sign of damage aside from a slight dent in the drive’s casing, and the diagnostics showed no problem. Still, with his input, I concluded it was probably best to send it in for replacement or repair. It turned out they had no others of this model in stock, so it would have to be repair. We were just about to send it out when I thought to show the guy the paperwork that had come with the laptop, including a sheet revealing that it was covered under a different warranty than their usual, so they couldn’t do the repairs themselves. Instead, apparently, I have to arrange with the specified company to handle the shipping and repairs. Which means I still have the laptop with me now, until I can arrange that. It’s working fine, and I’m almost tempted to keep it around, but that’s tempting fate.

Although it’s somehow not quite working fine. When I got it home and tried plugging my external keyboard back in, it wouldn’t work. The touchpad built into the keyboard eventually started to work, but then the keys wouldn’t work. The computer seemed to be having trouble finding the drivers, even though it worked fine this morning. I’m using the laptop’s own keyboard and screen for now, but I don’t know what the problem is. This is the first time I’ve disconnected and reconnected the keyboard and monitor since I first plugged them into this laptop. It’s a pretty old keyboard, and I’ve been afraid it might be close to giving up the ghost, but the backup keyboard and mouse I have on hand wouldn’t work either; the computer took too long to search for driver software for the mouse. Which I’ve just realized is because it’s on a CD that I still have, so I guess I can install that later if I need to. The keyboard is another matter, though. The problem might be with the adapter I’m using, since both keyboards use those old circular purple connectors and I only have the one adapter from that to USB. If that’s the source of the problem, then I’m sunk until I can get a new one or a new USB keyboard. Still, it seems unlikely that I’d have a hardware failure with the keyboard or its connector at the same time I’m dealing with a laptop problem. It seems logical that the problem is with the laptop, but I’m not sure what could’ve changed since this morning.

So this is a mess. I guess I just need to send it in for repair and hope my old laptop survives until this one comes back. Or, according to the guy at the store, I could potentially trade this laptop in for a different one, but it’d probably cost more. In theory, they could install a new hard drive and Windows at Best Buy, but the cost of the drive, OS, and labor would come out to about the same amount I spent on the laptop itself. So that’s probably off the table.

And even in the best case, I’ll still have to reload all my data and reinstall all my software all over again. At least I have recent practice at it. Sigh…

EDIT: Oh, I don’t believe this. No sooner did I publish this post that I received an order from Amazon including two coffee mugs… and one of the mugs arrived broken. Arrgghhh! And the socks I ordered from Amazon and received a few days earlier were the wrong size. That’s three things I’ve bought in the past month that have turned out wrong! Am I cursed or something?

Well, the new laptop works…

Been about a week now with the new laptop, and so far it’s working pretty smoothly. I’m able to watch streaming video again, so I finally managed to watch Marvel’s Jessica Jones, which was very impressive (though I don’t think I’m up to a review right now). I’ve been able to go back to Firefox as my main browser, which has a few drawbacks, but it’s easy enough to open Chrome as an alternative when I need to.

The neat thing about Windows 7 is that it’s combined the quick-launch buttons with the taskbar, so that when you click a button in the bar, it expands in place into the tab. I like that because I like having my open tabs in a certain order on the taskbar, so it’s easy to remember which is which. Before, I had to open the programs in the right order to achieve that, and if I had to close one and reopen it, it would throw off the tab arrangement on the taskbar. Now, the tabs stay in the same left-to-right order no matter when they’re opened, and having two browser buttons next to each other makes it easier to swap between them. It’s my favorite feature so far.

The main problem so far is that the damn thing keeps trying to get me to upgrade to Windows 10, even trying to download some preliminary upgrade thingy without asking first (with small print about how additional fees might apply), though I was able to stop it in time. I really resent the strongarm tactics they’re using to try to push me to accept the upgrade. Come on, I’ve only been using Windows 7 for a few days now! If I’d wanted Windows 10, I would’ve gotten it in the first place! But I gather it’s still too new a program and not entirely debugged yet, so I’d prefer to wait. I wish there were a way I could opt out completely, to tell Windows that I don’t want to be pressured to upgrade. Don’t call me, I’ll call you, that sort of thing. But they’ve designed the system so that there’s no evident way to do that, and I resent that imposition. The more aggressively you push something on me, the more I resist it. If I do upgrade to Win 10, I want it be at my own time and on my own terms.

Oh, I’m also getting the hang of the new edition of Word I’m using. So far it seems pretty much the same as the older version in most respects, but there are some annoying quirks. For one thing, it doesn’t remember my preferred window size when I reopen it. It insists on opening in a window that’s shorter than the screen height, and I don’t see the point in that. It also takes one more step to open the file directory because it’s inserted a new “Open” screen giving a bunch of options that are mostly irrelevant to me, rather than defaulting to browsing my drive. Plus I have to click “Open” to get the list of my recent files, instead of just getting it as a dropdown menu. And I’ve had to relearn how to access the search-and-replace function. Plus the cursor’s been animated to slide more smoothly between positions, which is kind of distracting, though I suppose I’ll get used to it. All in all, so far I don’t see much functional improvement over the 8-year-old version I had been using. But the important thing is that it works, and I’ve been able to get back into the swing of things with writing.

Up and running

I’m posting this from my new (err, refurbished) laptop, which arrived on Friday night and which I’ve spent the past two and a half days getting set up. I couldn’t do anything when it arrived, since it came with a totally discharged battery and the instructions said I needed to charge it for 8 hours. So I let it charge overnight, but I was concerned, because the power light didn’t go on and the AC adapter didn’t get warm. I wondered overnight if maybe the battery or the adapter was defective and I’d have to take it into Best Buy in the morning. But when I tried turning it on the next morning, it powered up fine. But it went through a bunch of initial system tests first, and I was worried when it couldn’t do the disk test because, so it said, “Disk not installed.” Egad! So I shut it down and just let it be for a while, because I wanted to focus on my writing and take my time easing into the computer situation. But when I turned it on again, it did boot up and load Windows just fine. Whew. And it automatically detected my wifi, so I just had to download the software I needed. I do wish I hadn’t bought MS Office at Best Buy with the laptop, because it turned out I could’ve saved 50 bucks if I bought it online. Oh, well. At least all my other software is free.

I spent most of yesterday using the “Network” capability to transfer my documents and settings between computers. I think I was doing it via ethernet cable, but I found today that the two laptops are still in contact via wifi, so I’m not sure if the cable was doing anything. The best evidence is that the transfer was pretty slow with the older cable I was using, but when I switched to a newer cable, I got a somewhat higher data transfer rate. Still, it took most of Sunday evening and part of this morning to finish the transfer. But I finally got to the point where I was ready to swap out the two laptops and start browsing with the new one.

And so far it works great. The performance is a lot faster than with the old laptop. Sites are loading faster, and so far, Internet videos are playing at least as well as they did on my old XP system before it started having problems, and seem to be loading faster. So that means I should be able to start watching Jessica Jones on Netflix at last, yay! Also, the new laptop is running much cooler and quieter so far than the old one did. That’s a good sign.

Hardware-wise, the new laptop has a silver metal exterior instead of black plastic, and the opening latch is different. Annoyingly, it doesn’t have a USB port on the right side like the old one did; that’s the side I have facing forward when my laptop is plugged into my desk setup, because the left and rear sides are where all the plugs go in and that way I don’t have any cords sticking out to bump into with my legs. (I have a couple of stacked wire racks that I use to hold the computer and power cords underneath the desk, a setup I put in place years ago when I had a desktop CPU that ran very hot and needed a lot of airflow — as did my former laptop. It also helps keep the cords nicely out of the way.) I guess I’ll just have to make sure the USB hub stays easily in reach, ideally by securing it near the front of the rack somehow.

Also, I think the laptop has a built-in webcam and mike, although the ordering info said it didn’t. But I haven’t been able to find any means of activating it to confirm that it’s there; I just know that there’s a lenslike opening above the screen and the Device menu in Control Panel says they’re there. But it doesn’t really matter, since I usually keep my laptop closed as part of my desk setup. Still, on general principles, I stuck a piece of sticky note over the lens to make sure it isn’t watching me unless I want it to.

Oh, and there was a button next to the lens that I assumed was to turn the webcam on and off, but when I tried it, I discovered that it’s actually a built-in white-LED light that shines down on the keyboard so you can work in the dark. That’s really neat!

Now I’m still going to have to get used to working with the newest edition of Word after writing with the 2007 edition for so long. So far, to my disappointment, it has the same problem that the older edition started to have after my XP-to-Vista “upgrade” — it lost the ability to interpret smart quotes from older formats, turning apostrophes into equals signs and close quotes into @s and the like. It’s easy to search-and-replace those, but it turns opening quotes into capital As, which display in a different font but which the search function is unable to differentiate from actual As, so I have to search and replace them manually. I really, really hoped that the newer edition of Word would be advanced enough not to have that problem, but no such luck. (Although the problem could be that I’d modified and saved the file on the old laptop before trying it here.) Anyway, I’d just managed to get some real momentum going on my novel when the laptop came, so I need to get back to that now that I’m set up.

Oh, well, I guess everything’s a tradeoff — for all you gain, there are some losses. For now, though, I seem to have a fully functional computer again, though there are a few things I probably still need to install here and there.

As for the old laptop, it’s ironically been behaving itself quite well, without a freeze in maybe about a week or so. So I think I’ll keep it around as a backup, maybe use it to work in the bedroom, or on the balcony in good weather. Its problems have resulted from online activity, so if I use it mainly for writing, maybe it’ll be okay. (And I should probably finally get rid of my much heavier, slower first laptop which I’ve kept for four years as an emergency backup, but which is too outdated to be any good for that now.)

So anyway, after dealing with a recalcitrant computer for more than two months, I finally have my new one in working order. Let’s just hope it stays that way…

LIVE BY THE CODE cover and blurb released!

And the news keeps coming. StarTrek.com has just posted the covers and blurbs for my Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code and Dayton Ward’s Star Trek: TOS — Elusive Salvation. You can check out Dayton’s book over at the link, but here’s the LBTC cover and info:

Admiral Jonathan Archer has barely settled in as Starfleet Chief of Staff when new crises demand his attention. The Starfleet task force commanded by Captain Malcolm Reed continues its fight against the deadly Ware technology, but one of the task force ships is captured, its Andorian crew imprisoned by an interstellar Partnership that depends on the Ware for its prosperity. Worse, the Partnership has allied with a renegade Klingon faction, providing it with Ware drone fleets to mount an insurrection against the Klingon Empire. Archer sends Captain T’Pol and Endeavour to assist Reed in his efforts to free the captured officers. But he must also keep his eye on the Klingon border, for factions within the Empire blame Starfleet for provoking the Ware threat and seek to take revenge. Even the skill and dedication of the captains under Archer’s command may not be enough to prevent the outbreak of the Federation’s first war.

Artist Doug Drexler consulted me about the cover some months ago, and we picked out a scene from the novel that would make for a good cover. This is the scene we discussed, although I didn’t expect the image would be this close-up. But I’m glad to have a cover emphasizing one of Starfleet’s Andorian ships, as a companion to the Tower of Babel cover showcasing Endeavour and Pioneer. The emphasis is very appropriate for this novel, for reasons that will become apparent.

I’ll be at Cleveland ConCoction in March

The folks behind the Cleveland ConCoction science fiction/comics/gaming convention have invited me to appear this year as their Guest of Honor on the literary track, as they’ve just announced on Facebook. The convention will be held from Friday, March 11 to Sunday, March 13, 2016 at the Cleveland Sheraton Airport Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio. You can find more information at their website here.

I’ve never been a Guest of Honor before, so I’m not quite sure what that will entail, but in some respects it won’t be too different from my annual Shore Leave appearances. I’ll be on at least a couple of panels (as well as their opening and closing ceremonies, apparently), and I’ll have a table where I can sell and autograph copies of my books for as long as they hold out, and I’ll just generally be around for the weekend. Hopefully the timing will be right for me to have copies of Star Trek: Enterprise — Rise of the Federation: Live by the Code for sale, but we’ll see.

It’ll be nice to attend a convention that’s actually within my own state, although it’s a big state and Cleveland’s pretty much in the opposite corner, so it’ll still be a fair drive. I don’t recall if I’ve ever actually been to Cleveland before. Well, now I will have been.

DTI: Time Lock now available for preorder!

I’ve just learned that my next Star Trek: Department of Temporal Investigations e-novella, Time Lock, has been listed for preorder online, with a publication date on or around September 5, 2016. Here’s Simon & Schuster’s ordering page for it, which has ordering links to all the various e-book retailers on the lower right. (More efficient just to send you there and let you take your pick, rather than try to track down all the links myself. My freeze-prone laptop just froze when I tried clicking on a link on an Amazon page, so I’d rather not take chances right now.)

And I know September is kind of a long wait. I don’t know why that is — presumably that’s just where they could fit it in the schedule. Still, let’s just say that a long wait is kind of appropriate for this one…

And now we wait…

Well, I’ve bought a new laptop. Technically. The consensus of the people who’ve commented on the matter to me was that I should get a Windows 7 computer, that Windows 10 was still too new and buggy; and my online research seemed to confirm that 7 was the most stable and reliable. But all the stores are pushing Windows 10 now, so the only way I could get one with 7 was to have the store clerk order one for me online and have it shipped to me. I could’ve done that from home, I suppose, but I wanted to consult with someone who could explain things to me. Anyway, I’ve ordered a refurbished laptop of the same brand and vintage as my current one, but supposedly the refurbishing means it’s been tested and affirmed reliable. It was reasonably inexpensive, and it’s better than my current one in a number of respects — twice the RAM, processor about a third faster, hard drive about two-thirds roomier, screen resolution higher, and with a CD/DVD drive that burns DVDs, while my current one only burns CDs. And it’s old enough to have a VGA port so I can plug in my desktop monitor, although I gather there are VGA-to-USB adapters available if I needed one. It doesn’t have a built-in webcam, but that’s fine, since I usually keep it closed and use it as a desktop CPU anyway, and I have a separate webcam/mike that I’ve only really used once since I bought it (and that I keep unplugged when I’m not using it, for fear of online spying). The main thing I need is something that’s stable, that I can write on and browse on without freezing, and hopefully something I can watch streaming videos on effectively. I gather the doubled RAM and faster processor should facilitate that, along with the fact that Win 7 is less RAM-heavy than the Vista I’m currently saddled with. (I tried watching some Hulu last week, but my laptop froze up during the loading of an ad — the first time it’s actually frozen while I was watching a video, rather than later in a session while I was doing something else. The freezes seem to be coming more frequently.)

I also had to buy MS Office separately so I could install Word on the thing, and that was pretty pricey. The place where I bought my current laptop loads various software on their computers for free, including Office 2007, but I don’t trust that place anymore, and I figured it was worth investing in a newer edition of Word. (And my need to have Word for professional reasons limited my laptop buying choices — for instance, I couldn’t get a Chromebook, because they don’t yet have a Word app for the Android operating system they use.) But it’s been so long since I bought a major piece of software that things have changed. They don’t sell boxes with discs in them anymore — I spent a hundred-plus bucks for a palm-sized piece of cardboard with a product key number underneath a scratch-off pad, so I can download the software online.

The problem is, I have to wait for the machine to be delivered, which is expected to be sometime between next Tuesday and December 3. So I have to keep using my current one for another week or two and hope it stays functional. And I can’t trust it to watch videos on, which sucks, because Marvel’s Jessica Jones premieres on Netflix tomorrow. I’ll have to wait a while before I can watch it. (I really, really wish that when I got my smartphone a while back, I’d accepted their offer to add a tablet for another 50 bucks. I could use a tablet now.)

The other downside is that, between the money I’ve had to spend on the laptop and software, the prospect that it might be delivered next week, and the degree to which my laptop troubles have delayed my work on my Star Trek novel, I’ve had to reluctantly decide that I can’t spare the time or expense right now to drive to Maryland and have Thanksgiving with my cousins, aunt, and uncle. It stinks, but the timing just doesn’t work out. Hopefully I’ll get another chance to see them before long.

Anyway, now that I’ve actually bought the darn thing, that means I don’t need to spend any more time searching, so I’ve been able to refocus on the novel and make some real progress at last. And with my online TV-watching options constrained, I guess that’ll be one less distraction from writing. So hopefully I’ll be able to make up for lost time over the next couple of weeks.

—

Meanwhile, I’ve seen the recent news reports about how moderate coffee drinking is good for you, so I’m thinking I should drink more of it. Fortunately, I seem to have acclimated to the taste, even maybe kind of started to like it. Yesterday I dared to try drinking my morning coffee black, and it was actually palatable. Or maybe I’ve just burned off enough taste buds to tolerate it.

The local weather has been fluctuating between highs in the 40s and highs in the 60s, which is awkward for living in this apartment building with its strictly binary central-heat settings and its large mass making it slow to change temperature. Last week, it was chilly in my apartment and I had to bundle up and sleep under a heavy comforter; now it’s only a sunny 57 degrees outside but it’s stuffy and practically sweltering inside. So maybe I won’t have another cup of hot coffee just yet…

At last…

I’m pleased to say that I got my outline advance for Star Trek: The Face of the Unknown yesterday, just four days after getting my second royalty check for Only Superhuman (which was much smaller, but decent). So I’m now in a relatively more comfortable place financially than I’ve been in for several months.

Which is good, since I’m still probably going to need a new laptop. I thought I’d gotten to a point where the laptop worked fine so long as I didn’t open Firefox, since the freezes only seemed to happen in sessions (i.e. intervals between reboots) during which I’d earlier used Firefox to watch something on Netflix. But this week I’ve had a couple of freezes in Chrome, even though I haven’t used Firefox in some time. In one case, it was when I tried closing a tab, which was what tended to set it off in the earlier freezes; in the other, it was when I hit stop and reload on a page that was hanging. If there’s a common thread, it may have something to do with trying to interrupt unfinished processes. Then again, in both cases I had several programs running at once — and in both cases it was after having hibernated the laptop overnight instead of shutting it down, if that matters. If this is a memory problem, as I suspect, it may be that I was using too much memory and forced the computer to access a bad part of the RAM, or use too many resources, or something.

Anyway, now that I have the money, I guess buying a new laptop isn’t as onerous an option as it seemed before — though I’m still not sure where the best place to shop would be (and I’m open to suggestions from anyone in the Cincinnati area). Still, I think that just for due diligence, I should go to the repair place I’ve been to before (not the same as the place I bought the laptop) and at least get their opinion about the problem and whether it’s worth trying to fix. I do need some way to watch Netflix reliably soon, what with Marvel’s Jessica Jones about to arrive.

If anything, these latest freezes simplify my decision a bit. Before, it seemed that the laptop was functional for everything but streaming video, and I’d been planning to look into whether adding a tablet to my phone plan or buying an Internet-capable TV would cost less than getting a new laptop. Now at least I know that I’m going to need my laptop either repaired or replaced, period. (Although I’d still like to get a new TV sometime.)

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On the plus side, I finally found a solution for a minor domestic annoyance I’ve had for a long time. Since my apartment is at ground level and overlooking a row of shrubs, and since the groundskeepers are profligate in their use of (very noisy) leafblowers, my windows and balcony doors tend to accumulate a coat of fine dirt, and when I have my bedroom window open in the summer, some of it gets onto the sills and the Venetian blinds. And keeping Venetian blinds clean is not easy, especially since I’m not all that diligent about dusting. But a while ago, it idly occurred to me to wish I could just take them down and dump them in the detergent-filled bathtub. I had no idea if there was a way to take them down without tools of some sort, though, so it remained an idle thought — until yesterday, when I got sufficiently sick of the problem to look into just how the blinds were attached to the windows. I finally discovered that the brackets holding them had front panels that could slide out, and once that was done, the blinds came out easily. It wasn’t exactly easy to wash them thoroughly, but it was easier than it would’ve been if I’d left them in place. So now, finally, I have clean blinds again.

Latest thoughts on fall SFTV

Continuing my irregular series…

Updates:

Doctor Who has gotten stronger since the first couple of episodes this season. The stories have gone to interesting places and handled them well. The Zygon 2-parter currently underway has done a remarkable job bringing depth and complexity to a race I always saw as rather goofy before.

Minority Report has also gotten stronger as it’s moved beyond case-of-the-week stuff and delved more into the past and present of the three Precogs. The worldbuilding is still a mixed bag, though — sometimes there are some nice bits of plausible prediction (sea level rise, vat-grown meats), but sometimes the world is too similar to the present (e.g. no improvements in firearm safety in households with children). There are only a few episodes left now; FOX has already decided to end the show at episode 10, which was already planned as a midseason finale of sorts. I hope it isn’t too much of a cliffhanger.

Sleepy Hollow has been pretty solid — not as good as season 1, but not as frustrating or uneven as season 2. However, the constant shoehorning in of Betsy Ross, Colonial Superspy is irritating and the actress hasn’t gotten any better.

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has been puttering along just fine, with one exceptional showing in “4,722 Hours.” It’s a reminder that, for all that we celebrate serialization these days, the standalone stories are often the most memorable ones.

I’m still watching Blindspot, but I’m not quite sure why. I don’t really care about any of the cast other than Jaimie Alexander and Ashley Johnson. And it’s way too gunplay-driven for my tastes. But I am still vaguely curious about the mystery. Some viewers, myself included, are starting to suspect that this is a stealth time-travel show, since that seems the only way to explain the foreknowledge of whoever’s behind Jane’s tattoos.

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The Flash and Arrow have been solidly fun so far, even though they’ve mostly been busy setting up the upcoming Legends of Tomorrow spinoff. But The Flash has introduced the multiverse and Jay Garrick, which certainly opens a lot of possibilities. And last week’s Arrow did something rather marvelous, which was to bring back the star of last season’s cancelled NBC series Constantine (based on a DC/Vertigo comic) and retroactively fold his show into the Arrowverse, as well as leaving the door open for his return in the future. The last time anything like that was done, I think, was when Homicide‘s Detective Munch was added to the cast of Law & Order: SVU. There was also that episode of Diagnosis: Murder in the ’80s (or early ’90s?) that was a sequel to an episode of Mannix from the ’70s. Not quite the same thing there, though.

But the big premiere from DC and Greg Berlanti is CBS’s Supergirl, which I am absolutely loving. Melissa Benoist is marvelously charming and likeable, and she brings enormous warmth and credibility to the character of Kara/Supergirl. She has a personality that reminds me of Lindsay Wagner from The Bionic Woman, along with a gushing charm and ready smile that are evocative of Lynda Carter in Wonder Woman. I’m glad we’re past the point where a female heroine has to be all tough and cold and aggressive to be seen as strong. Supergirl is unapologetically girlish and adorable, but the fights she gets into are intense and no-holds-barred, and the show is perfectly matter-of-fact about both, recognizing that there need be no contradiction there.

As for the rest of the cast, Mehcad Brooks is pretty good as James Olsen — not what you expect from Jimmy Olsen, but that’s the point, since he’s grown out of the cub-reporter years and is a grown man now. The rest of the cast is mostly okay, but I feel that David Harewood’s performance suffers a bit from being saddled with an American accent, and Chyler Leigh is a bit bland as Alex.

I like it that the show makes no apologies about being feminist. That’s not a dirty word, and it’s good that the show embraces it. At least, I hope it gets to continue to embrace it. I remember the ’70s Wonder Woman pilot having a front-and-center feminist message that got totally quashed after just a few episodes. Hopefully we’ve gained some ground since then. I hear a lot of fanboy whining about how they changed Jimmy Olsen or whatever, but I also hear a lot of people saying how excited they are to have a superhero show they can watch with their daughters, and that is so much more important.

I also love it that Kara is spending more time in Supergirl attire than in street clothes, something I don’t think we’ve seen in a live-action superhero show since Adam West hung up his cowl (except maybe for some Power Rangers episodes). I’m also really impressed with the Supergirl costume. People like to make fun of superhero capes and tights and trunks, but I just can’t see it. To me, it’s not silly-looking at all, because it’s Superman’s costume, and that makes it a cultural icon, a symbol of truth, justice, and the neverending battle against corruption and prejudice. Granted, some attempts to realize it in live action have been better than others. But when they get it right, it looks to me like something that should be worn with pride. And Colleen Atwood’s version of the Supergirl costume gets it right. I think Benoist looks very classy in it.

I also love how much time Supergirl spends in the air. This is like the anti-Smallville. That show promised “No flights, no tights,” because those things were seen at the time as goofy and embarrassing. But these days, the culture has embraced superheroes, so this show gives us flights and tights all the time, and it’s wonderful.

(One thing bugs me, though. Supergirl has earrings. Not clip-ons, but studs. How the heck did Kara pierce her ears? Heat vision? For that matter, why don’t the piercings instantly heal up after being made? Although I gather there are such things as adhesive or magnetic earrings.)

It’s interesting that this shares something in common with the ’84 Supergirl movie, aside from Helen Slater’s presence. Both stories are about Kara becoming Supergirl in order to fix a problem that she herself inadvertently caused — sending the Omegahedron to Earth in the movie, bringing Fort Rozz to Earth here. (Although I suspect that there’s a deeper story behind just how the fort got out of the Phantom Zone.)

I like it that there’s a clearly defined melodic theme, though episode 2 seemed to use a different one (or a different part of the same one?) than the pilot. It’s not one of the best Super-person themes in the history of the franchise — it doesn’t hold a candle to the Goldsmith Supergirl theme from the movie — but it’s appropriate for a superhero, especially a Super-hero, to have a clear fanfare like this. Most Superman-related shows have had strong themes for the hero, though this is something Smallville totally dropped the ball on until late in its run, because it went with Mark Snow’s atmospheric droning instead of something with actual melody, and then it just copied John Williams’s Superman theme, which just didn’t fit with the rest of the music. (Although later composer Louis Febre did finally concoct a decent heroic theme for Clark in the last couple of seasons.)

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One last side note: People may notice that I haven’t said anything yet about the news that CBS is producing a new Star Trek series. This is because we hardly know anything about it yet, so the sensible thing is to wait and see. It’s not necessary to fill the voids in our knowledge with rampant speculation just so we have something to base an opinion on. There’s nothing wrong with having no opinion at all.

Well, I will say that every single time a new Star Trek project has been announced, it’s immediately provoked doom-and-gloom reactions from fandom. And here’s an item from Starlog #117 in which the TOS cast responds to the news that TNG is being made:

https://archive.org/stream/starlog_m…ge/n8/mode/1up

Shatner and Nimoy were skeptical, Kelley didn’t understand the idea, and Doohan pretty much called it a fraud. Nichols and Koenig sounded open-minded… and Takei was pitching a Captain Sulu series even then.  But of course, we all know how TNG turned out. So any opinions or assumptions at this point are hardly worth the effort.