- I admit, I find Star Trek Mistakes rather fascinating. A few of them are just little continuity goofs — a photograph used for a character they thought they’d never revisit, for instance — and a few could have perfectly reasonable explanations. But it’s sort of incredible just how many times the Trek writers contradicted not just the show’s long history, but also themselves. [via]
- Speaking of Trek, here’s a look at an alternate universe, where Sulu was black and Uhura was white. What might have been… [via]
- I’m naturally suspicious of most re-makes (as I may have mentioned before), but I just don’t understand the thinking behind this one. A Three Stooges “upgrade”? What made the Three Stooges funny were the actors, their chemistry and comedic timing, and it’s tough to see how any re-make will rise above the level of bad impressions. I don’t know about you, but I don’t really want to see Russell Crowe or Mel Gibson dressed up like Moe Howard.
- John Scalzi offers some advice to our new President-elect, based on the past presidencies of science fiction. For my money, his most important advice? “…if you do turn a major city into a prison, don’t ever, ever, fly over it.”
- All this time, I thought Speaker for the Dead was a direct Ender’s Game sequel. Orson Scott Card just proved me wrong. Well, it’s his universe. I’m guessing this book fills in the gaps — unnecessarily so, in my opinion — between the first two books in the series. There’s been a lot written recently against the Ender’s Game series, namely how it’s bad for us, and heaven knows Card’s politics aren’t always nice (or even well-hinged). But I genuinely liked the first two books. The third book…well, not as much. Xenocide felt like an overly talky companion to Speaker, tying up a lot of that book’s loose threads, but in the most polemically way possible. I haven’t read any of the Ender’s Shadow books, or even the final book in the original series. (Although I do own a copy.) I worry that Card is going the “Brian Herbert of Dune” route. We don’t need to know what every character was doing at every moment of a mythology’s lifetime. In fact, we probably shouldn’t.
If you didn’t like “Xenocide” there is absolutely no reason to read “Children of the Mind.” The simplest way to describe it would be to say that “Children of the Mind” is an overly talky companion to “Xenocide,” tying up a lot of that book’s loose threads, but in the most polemical way possible.
I just recently read the “Shadow” books, and they’re alright, but certainly not necessary in any way. They really feel like Card wanted to capture what made “Ender’s Game” and “Speaker for the Dead” special, but doesn’t quite pull it off because we don’t care as much about the characters. You also get a sense that he didn’t plan to have Bean be a super-genius when he wrote “Ender’s Game” and tried to shoe-horn it in, with only limited success.
That’s pretty much what I figured. I didn’t hate Xenocide; it was just a disappointment after Speaker. I do have a copy of Children sitting around somewhere, and someday I might get around to reading it. The other books, less likely.
Heh, that presidential advice thing is great. You really can’t go wrong with “Be Morgan Freeman.”