Best Westeros Map EVAH

The title of this post says it all.

Source: Popped Culture.

How the Avengers Should Have Ended

Happy Saturday. This totally made my morning.

ALERT! New Book in Old Man's War Universe Announced

Just the other day, I reviewed REDSHIRTS by John Scalzi. I enjoyed it, but not as much as the OLD MAN'S WAR series. Incidentally, on his book tour (which I attended), Scalzi read a very, very good passage from an upcoming project taking place after the events of THE LAST COLONY.  He swore us to secrecy about this, so we wouldn't ruin the surprise for the rest of his tour. Now he's officially announced the project, so I can talk about it...and it's far, far cooler than I even imagined.

I know what the premise of THE HUMAN DIVISION is, but after reading the announcement, I'm going to keep it myself so as not to spoil their fun. So why is this newsworthy? Because of the format and distribution model. As per Tor.com:

The Human Division will be an experiment: an episodic novel, released initially in digitial, serialized form. Currently the plan is to publish these episodes weekly in, roughly, December 2012 through February 2013. Like the episodes of a good high-end cable drama, each one will have enough internal integrity to work as an enjoyable chunk of story on its own, but each will advance a “season”-long storyline as well.

Ultimately the entire work will be published as a normal printed book and a normal e-book, in the late spring or early summer of 2013. And we’ll be doing our best to make it so that buying the book in serial form costs about the same as buying the full e-book. There may be some small extra material in the full-length book, because we’re LIKE THAT.

So why this particular format? Scalzi explains:

The only problem is, the story I wanted to tell wouldn’t exactly work in straight-ahead novel format. Or more accurately, it could work as a novel, but it would better as episodes. While I was thinking this, the folks at Tor happened also to be thinking of trying new ways to work with storytelling, to take better advantage of the potential of the electronic medium. So in one of those nice coincidences that’s really probably not a coincidence at all, I wanted to do something different at the same time Tor wanted to see if doing something different would work. It’s nice when that happens. 

So what we have here is a bit of an experiment. It’s not a serialized novel, as each episode will stand on its own, story-wise. It’s not a typical short story collection, because each of the episodes features the same characters and builds an overall narrative arc. It’s not a “fix-up” novel, because each story is purpose-built for The Human Divison. It’s not the first time episodic story telling has been done online (see the estimable Shadow Unit for another example), but it may be the first time it’s being done by a major publishing house. Essentially, we get to see how this works, and whether it can work, on a large scale.

Why I Think This is So Cool

We've had ebooks for a while now, but it strikes me that few projects take advantage of the medium. Most are just weightless books read on fake paper and printed in digital ink. Or something close to that. But not having to deal with paper or physical distribution can and should open up a host of possibilities for new forms and modes of publication. Scalzi himself is no stranger to that--OLD MAN'S WAR, after all, was originally serialized on his blog--and serializing novels in fiction magazines has a long and storied history.

This is a bit different, though. Each chapter is a self-contained story, but which link together to create a cohesive narrative. Several of my favorite (non-SF/F) books use this format: THE THINGS THEY CARRIED, JESUS' SON, etc. And it's perfectly suited to the ebook format. Each week or so, for a dollar or two, you get a story with original art. You enjoy the stories in and of themselves. Then, when it's all done, you read them again.

Cover art for the first "episode"

You may be skeptical and ask: "what's so special about that? Sounds like the way comics are published." But the thing to keep mind here is, as Scalzi says, that this has not been done by a major publishing house before. It's a break with the general conservatism of the industry, and may perhaps serve as a model for future projects by other authors--or even collaborative ones among authors. Many of the best ideas are really updates of older ideas that have fallen out of fashion, but due to new circumstances are poised for a revival.

The serialized novel is dead; long live the serialized novel.

Microreview [comics]: Rachel Rising

The Meat


When devising a horror comic, most creators go one of two routes: they choose either to either fill their books with scary monsters or with gratuitous gore. Or they do both. The truly gifted comic auteur, however, chooses the path less taken. They go creepy -- which is not easily done in a comic. That’s why there been so few From Hells and Black Holes. It takes a mature storyteller, one at the peak of his or her career, to pull off creepy .

Terry Moore of Strangers in Paradise and Echo fame has done just accomplished this with Rachel Rising (Abstract Studio Comics). It’s a creepy story that I can’t get enough of.

Rachel Rising takes place in the small town of Manson, where the normal operations of life and death have gone sideways. People die, but they won’t stay dead. A mysterious and potentially demonic blonde haunts the town, causing a little girl to engage in some seriously f'ed up acts of violence. And, our eponymous heroine finds herself at the middle of this creeping apocalypse. Because she's pretty dead and can’t seem to get any deader.

If the above depiction seems a little short on detail, that’s due in large part to the deliberate pacing of Rachel Rising: eight issues in and we haven’t been told much more than this. In contrast to the hyper-kinetic, overly verbose plotting that Brian Michael Bendis has made the hallmark of comic book storytelling these days, Moore takes his time. Scenes go on for pages, panels are allowed to be uncluttered by word balloons and pointless dialog, characters are developed subtly, images tell the story as much as do words. The event that kicks off the series -- Rachel’s rising from a shallow grave -- goes on for 12 pages, half the first issue. There’s a certain sparseness to the story that is utterly mesmerizing. Moore allows his story space to evolve and grow, with each issue centering on a single revelation or development.

And this makes the reader want to come back for more. The reader being me. And you, if you like things that are great.

The book is creepy, Vincent Price creepy. But Moore does not let eeriness take over the book. The dark, gothic themes are balanced by lightheartedness and actual human emotion. The book's undead aren’t zombies, but human with a dying problem.. Rachel isn’t a morose, brooding Lestat, but a confused young woman who’s trying to get on with her life -- even though it has apparently ended, at least in the conventional "we got a pulse" sort of way. The dialog in Rachel Rising stands out. It's is funny, at times tender, counterbalancing the horror of the story perfectly. The book doesn’t take itself too seriously, an all too common shortcoming of horror stories regardless of media.

Moore’s art attains a similar sparseness and balance. There’s a simple, almost intentionally rushed quality to his pen-and-ink work here, a deft use of black and white that evokes both the beauty of his landscapes and the smallness of the town, serving to heighten the dread that drives the story. Like his plotting and dialog, his artwork looks almost intentionally uncluttered, but not without detail and realism.

Moore pays careful attention in particular to facial expression. His characters say more with their eyes and frowns than most comic writers manage with endless hackneyed dialog.

Some mention must be made of the violence in Rachel Rising, of which there is plenty. A murder in issue 2 is more chilling, more brutal, and more disturbing than anything Garth Ennis will ever imagine up. By and large, though, violence occurs off page. It is suggested, rather than thrown in our faces. This lack of gratuitous violence is refreshing, given the amount of gore that so many use in penning horror comics. Let’s face it, since Faust and Hellraiser, gore has been boring.

Terry Moore has said that he imagines Rachel Rising as more akin to TV show than to film. And the deliberate pacing of the first eight issues attests to this. He’s clearly taking his time, giving us only hints and suggestions of the larger plot that he’s developing. My only fear is that the series will go the Lost route, giving us only questions and more questions -- and very few answers. I sincerely hope he has the story planned out, that he’s not making it up as he goes along. Because I’m in for the long haul.

The Math

Objective quality: 8/10

Bonus points: +1 for cute girls

Penalties: None...yet. Don't go Lost on us.

Nerd Coefficient: 9/10 "Very high quality/standout in its category"

[Read about our non-inflated scoring system, where anything above a 5 is more good than bad, here]

Microreview [book]: Redshirts by John Scalzi

The Meat

Let me start off by saying that I'm a big fan of Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR series. They are fun, witty books that simultaneously pay homage to and question the morality of the kind of military space opera epitomized by Robert Heinlein. Needless to say, I was hoping for more of the same from REDSHIRTS.

As it happens, REDSHIRTS is a different beast. The story follows Ensign Dahl and his fellows, recently assigned to the Intrepid, a deep-space exploration vessel headed by a charismatic, action-tastic captain, a logical alien science officer, a grumpy doctor, a Russian pilot and so on. Sound familiar yet? Because it should--REDSHIRTS is, in essence, a satire of the original STAR TREK series, and in particular, its cavalcade of hokey plot devices, improbable solutions and bad science moments. The title of the book itself is a reference to the hapless and largely nameless ensigns who almost inevitably died when Kirk, Spock and the gang went on away missions. And that's the thing: Dahl and friends quickly realize that something odd is afoot on the Intrepid, something that makes their chances of survival slim to none...

As much as I'd like to discuss it here, I won't reveal what happens next, because Scalzi is on record as hating unnecessary spoilers. But I will say that it gets very "meta" and self-referential, in the style of tv show COMMUNITY. In many ways, I think your tolerance for this kind of humor, as well as your familiarity and interest in the subject of satire, will determine the degree to which you'll take to REDSHIRTS. People who feel that they are really "in" on the joke are probably going to love this book.

Unfortunately, that doesn't necessarily include me. It's a well-crafted book, to be sure, and there were some really funny moments that had me laughing out loud. But I think I have to characterize my own feelings as "like, not love." I found myself wishing that Scalzi had spent more time building up the big reveal, and using some of that extra space to explore the characters and introduce the idiosyncrasies of life on the Intrepid in more subtle fashion. For me, this would have been more effective than the codas in fleshing out the characters and the goofy world they inhabit [Edit: I should probably note here that coda 3 is quite good].

At the end of the day, though, I think my main issue with REDSHIRTS boils down to me just not being all that into "meta" comedy, and though I like STAR TREK, I don't really care enough about it to really feel "in" on the joke. On a personal level, I would have preferred another OMW-style space opera, where Scalzi's humor and wit integrate into what are otherwise serious science fiction stories. That's just me, and you, dear reader, have every right to retort, "well, he just didn't get it."

The Math

Objective quality: 7/10

Bonuses: +1 for the clever and creative concept

Penalties: -1 for it's too short

Nerd coefficient: 7/10. "An enjoyable experience, but not without its flaws"

[Read about our non-inflated scoring system, where anything above a 5 is more good than bad, here]

CONTRIBUTOR PROFILE: Molly

Nerds-Feather contributor Molly also blogs about words and cooking, but lately she's been writing music, so check out Molly & the Dreamers (and do that Like thing on the Facebook). 

NAME: Molly (@mollyocr) -- you know, the girl.

SECRET UNDISCLOSED LOCATION: Minneapolis, MN

NERD SPECIALIZATION(S): jossverse, vampires, Orson Scott Card, Marvel comics & movies

MY PET PEEVES IN NERD-DOM ARE: Sci-Fi Ghetto (or more generally, Public Medium Ignorance), You Keep Using That Word, Vampire Vords

VAMPIRES, WEREWOLVES, ZOMBIES, ALIENS OR ROBOTS: Anything but werewolves. Puh-lease. (...Except American Werewolf in Paris and Michael Jackson's Thriller. I gave them one last chance with 2010's The Wolfman... Comically bad.)

RIGHT NOW I'M READING: Pathfinder by Orson Scott Card

...AND A COUPLE BOOKS I RECENTLY FINISHED ARE: The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice, The Life and Death of Captain Marvel

NEXT TWO ON QUEUE ARE: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson, 1602: New World & Spiderman: 1602

WAITING REALLY IMPATIENTLY FOR: The Doors of Stone by Patrick Rothfuss

MY FAVORITE SUPERHERO AND SUPER-VILLAIN ARE: Hulk, because he's neither and both.

IF I WERE A SUPERHERO/VILLAIN, MY POWER WOULD BE: Plantbending or teleportation. 

THE BEST COMIC FILM OF THE PAST 5 YEARS IS: Avengers.

THE WORST COMIC FILM OF THE PAST 5 YEARS IS: Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer; but I'm pretty positive that Green Lantern was just awful too.

I JUST WATCHED [FILM X] AND IT WAS AWESOME: Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows. (Sometimes there are good movies on planes. It was sooooo deliciously slashy, you don't even have to resort of fanfiction.)

I JUST WATCHED [FILM Y] AND IT WAS TERRIBLE: Dark Shadows. Ok, it wasn't terrible, but it wasn't very good. Big Miracle was terrible. (Sometimes there are really awful movies on planes and you watch them anyway because your e-reader died and you're drunk.)

EVERYONE SHOULD SEE [FILM Z] BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE: Avengers.

BEST SCIENCE/SPECULATIVE FICTION SHOW OF THE PAST 10 YEARS: Firefly, of course. Followed by BSG & Dollhouse.

WORSE ENDING--LOST OR BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: BSG, but I also stopped watching Lost after the first two seasons. Yawnville.

THE OFFICE--BRITISH OR AMERICAN VERSION: American. There IS such a thing as too awkward to watch. (I'm also the person that cringes instead of laughs at people getting hurt on AFV.) 

GAME OF THRONES--LIKE OR DISLIKE DEVIATIONS FROM THE BOOKS: Like. But the deviation that should have made it into the series was that Jon Snow/Robb Stark/Jamie Lannister smex scene that was cut... from my dreams.

[Previous entries in this series: The G, Vance, Philippe]

Jean Grey cannot be killed (for long)

Apparently Jean Grey will be coming back to life. Again. I've lost count on how many times this will make it. I really don't care either.

Jean Grey's new old costume

Granted, she's one of my favorite X-Men. But you know who else I liked? Ned Stark. And I'm cool with him being dead. I've accepted it. I've moved on.

Now, if it turns out that Jon Snow is actually dead I might barricade myself in my room with a few gallons of rocky road and many bottles of Jameson.