Science Fiction

Love Minus Eighty, by Will McIntosh published in June 2013 from Orbit where I got it: received copy from the Publisher (Thanks Orbit!!) . . . . . . . . . . .       This review has exactly one spoiler. And the [spoiler] mentioned happens right at the beginning of the book, so I don’t feel too bad about it. Insurance of the future has nothing to do with health, and everything to do with death. In the  future, the wealthy pay for extended freezing insurance, to be cryogenically frozen at the time of death, ideally to be thawed out later when their family can afford it. Even for those without the monetary means, the idea of being buried in the ground is distasteful.   Revival is big business, and one company has hit on a jackpot idea: allow wealthy patrons to speak with beautiful dead women at a dating center, and if a relationship develops, they can revive her and marry her. Sit down and think about that for a moment.  It’s like a futuristic version of The Bachelor, only worse. The “bridesicles” are only awake, only alive, for a few minutes at a time. Like a speed dating system from hell, she has five minutes to convince whoever has awoken her to visit her again.  Running the dating center isn’t cheap, wealthy patrons pay by the minute to speak with women who will do anything to stay awake, stay alive for just a few more seconds. what would you do to stay awake, when awake is the only time you’re alive? Love Minus Eighty is based on Will McIntosh’s short story, Bridesicle (listen to the audio, here). While there is some character overlap, the endings are very very different. If you’re already familiar with Bridesicle, you’ll recognize Mira, whose chapters alternate with everyone else’s.  As might be obvious from the title, the story focuses on interpersonal relationships, often of the romantic variety.  Rob Mashita is living far beyond his means. Shacked up with wealthy socialite Lorelei, Rob has dreams of being a professional musician.  Lorelei chooses a particularly vicious way of telling Rob that it’s just not working out between them. Hurt, confused, and just a teeny bit drunk he [spoiler] hits a young woman with his car, killing her [/spoiler].   Terrified and confused, Winter wakes up at the Cryomed Dating Center. She’s afraid to die for good, she doesn’t want to wake up just to flirt with dirty old men either. Being chosen for the Bridesicle program is advertised as an honor, as something only the most beautiful are chosen for. As Winter learns, it’s hell. When Rob learns that the woman he killed, Winter, has been put into the Bridesicle program, he makes a vow to help her. Of the lower classes, and living in Manhattan’s Low Town, Rob barely has an up-to-date skintight system, let alone the funds to visit Winter.  If she doesn’t get enough visits, if she isn’t profitable enough to Cryomed’s dating center, she’ll be removed from the system. She’ll be buried in the ground, and Rob will be a murderer. Elsewhere, in High Town, Veronika and Nathan enjoy making fun of their clients together.  We get a lot of the story from Veronika’s point of view, and she quickly became my favorite character, even though at first I wasn’t even sure if I liked her very much. Like Nathan, Veronika is a dating coach, helping people improve their online profiles to be more attractive, feeding them flirtatious and witty lines through a private messaging system. It might be the future, but dating still sucks.    Love Minus Eighty is about love and death, and the sides of ourselves we choose to show to others, and something that hooked me right away was the characters. They all have backstories, they all have goals and fears and dreams and insecurities. None of them want to compromise, or face their denial, or give up what they’ve worked so hard to achieve. For a not-romance, this book is painfully intimate. Don’t get hung up on the “romance” thing, this is angst and schmaltz free. On top of the beautiful story and deeply developed characters, the

Time for a new poll! A more tasteful one!First, lest's return to the last one. My question was "Do you have book hangovers?". A majority of respondents, 64% of you fellow Fantasy readers, answered with a yes. Immersion in another universe, escapism, imagination, you name it, the results show that it isn't easy to let go when we stop reading a good book.The comments were unanimous, when a novel or a series of them are compelling and we grow attached to the characters and their world, cutting the cord creates a feeling of 'post book depression' (as one of the commenter put it) of various degree. Can that hangover degree be a sign of greatness?Let's get to the other type of hangover!***Taverns, inns and pubs have always been a wonderful trope of Fantasy. The classic innkeeper with his dirty apron and corpulent stomach, most often than not with a beard and not much more hair high up, is welcoming his customers with a low voice. A gleeman sings a song, a fight breaks up, the tankards are being filled by the waitresses, the company is good and a strange fellow is observing the crowd from under his hood!I have to admit that thinking of scenes set in the taproom of an inn makes me grin. How often have we read about this type of establishment in Fantasy books? It also made me think about the scenes or taverns/bars/inns I remember the most from my reading experience. I'll share some with you and I hope that you'll add your share of names and memories to add to the list of answers I'll come up with for the poll.The inn of the Prancing PonyThere's no ignoring this one. It's the first worldly inn that the hobbits visit in the Fellowship of the ring, in the city of Bree. The meeting of Aragorn and Frodo, how couldn't this be a nice memory. A nice place worth sitting at? That's another question, maybe not on dark and rainy nights!The Queen's BlessingRun by the innkeeper Basel Gill, it's where Rand and Mat meet with Loial in The Eye of the World. They were directed there by Thom Merrilin when he sent them to Camelyn. Another mythic place for the Fantasy readers.The Crossroads InnPerhaps not as widely known, this is the inn in A Song of Ice and Fire along the Kingsroad where Catelyn meets with Tyrion and where Sandor Clegane and Arya Stark stumbled upon Gregor Clegane's men. Maybe not the best place to find good company...The Phoenix InnThe inn is one of the settings at the heart of the story developed as a role playing game by Steven Erikson and Ian C. Esslemont that ended up as Darujhistan's homebase for the operations of a modest and rotund individual. This Malazan point of interest would surely offer good conversations with the like of Coll, Crokus, Kruppe, Meese, Murillio and Rallick Nom!K'rul's BarAgain from the Malazan world and the city of Darujhistan, K'rul's bar would offer a good competition for a night of conversation around a drink with mighty figures like Duiker, Fisher and a bunch of Bridgeburners in hiding. Want a pickled Seguleh?Waystone InnKote's hideout, the Kingkiller himself as a bartender with the mysterious Bass and Chronicler as his companions? Another interesting place from the Name of the Wind to visit but I don't think that we could be privy to the recounting of Kvothe's story...The EolianCare for some music? What better place to go then than the Eolian, the famous tavern in Imre. We could watch the performers try to win their silver Talent Pipes or a patron. Beware of the entry fee though!Any other Fantasy bar/tavern/pub/inn come to mind? And for the poll, at which Fantasy tavern/inn would you stop for a drink?

After a brief Twitter discussion with Paul Weimer, I've decided to move the Shoot the WISB segments over to The Skiffy and Fanty Show. There are a few reasons for this, but the fact that this blog is, well, a blog is the most obvious of those reasons. In any case, if you want to hear the latest episode, you can do so here. Paul and I are joined by David Annandale and Michael Underwood to discuss Man of Steel! Thanks for listening!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sa19Qmy_b8Y There's a surprising degree of consistency of opinion here.

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/in-conversation-with-joss-whedon Total Film talks to Whedon about, well, a lot of things: Shakespeare, Much Ado, Avengers 2, Firefly, Buffy, Angel, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

You can now download Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn: The Final Empire for only 2.99$ here.Here's the blurb:Brandon Sanderson, fantasy’s newest master tale spinner, author of the acclaimed debut Elantris, dares to turn a genre on its head by asking a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails? What kind of world results when the Dark Lord is in charge? The answer will be found in the Mistborn Trilogy, a saga of surprises and magical martial-arts action that begins in Mistborn.For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the “Sliver of Infinity,” reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler’s most hellish prison. Kelsier “snapped” and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.Kelsier recruited the underworld’s elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel’s plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she’s a half-Skaa orphan, but she’s lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.Readers of Elantris thought they'd discovered someone special in Brandon Sanderson. Mistborn proves they were right.

Star Wars: Legacy, Book 1 Story by John Ostrander and Jan Duursema Art by Jan Duursema, Brad Anderson, Sean Cooke, Adam Dekraker, Travel Foreman, Dan Parsons, Ronda Paterson, Colin Wilson, Cover by Adam Hughes Dark Horse Comics Release Date: June 5, 2013 Cover Price: $34.99 There are very few series within the Star Wars Expanded Universe that are universally celebrated by fans, so much so that their content would stand up on its own in film adaptations. Star Wars: Legacy is one of these. Boldly setting the storyline 125 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, the creative team of John Ostrander and Jan Duursema established a new saga in the Star Wars universe that fans have since embraced as some of the most outstanding Expanded Universe material since Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy. Star Wars: Legacy, Book 1 collects the first three volumes of the Dark Horse series (nearly 20 issues, massing an impressive hardcover collection of 482 pages!), and is most certainly a must-read for any Star Wars fan. The series follows Cade Skywalker, descendant of Anakin and Luke, though ripped from his original destiny to become a Jedi, he finds himself torn between the light side and the dark side of the Force, unwilling to face his future, and tormented from visions of the ghost of Luke Skywalker appearing before him [...]

Journalist and publisher Kim Thompson (b.1956) died on June 19. Thompson began reading comics as a child in Denmark and his letters began to fill the Marvel letter columns in the early 1970s. Thompson published articles in comic fanzines prior to arriving in the US in 1977, when he became friends with Gary Groth and began working at Fantagraphics. He took over the ownership of The Comics Journal in 1978. From 1982 through 1992, Thompson edited Amazing Heroes and helped champion the publication of European comics in the US.

Hot off the news that Sony has announced the release dates for The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 4 comes word that The Spectacular Now star Shailene Woodley, who was set to make a brief appearance as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and have an expanded role in the third film, will not be appearing in the sequel after all. It's been confirmed that the Mary Jane role has been cut from the second film entirely, and that her character will be introduced in the third film. Not only that, but it looks like Woodley might not be there to play the part. [...]

The lands of Ferelden are threatened by a Blight, a horde of monstrous creatures known as darkspawn erupting from underground and destroying everything in sight. The Grey Wardens are charged with defending the land against the darkspawn. In alliance with the King of Ferelden, the Grey Wardens are assembling an army to face the Blight at Ostagar, but treachery awaits and it falls to the order's latest recruit to help save Ferelden.Dragon Age: Origins is BioWare's reflective look at their own origin (so to speak). It's a big, broad, swords and sorcery epic meant to evoke memories of the Baldur's Gate series, where BioWare got started in RPGs. It's also in 3D, with streamlined controls, inventory management and in-engine cut-scenes. It's BioWare's attempt to blend their original, more hardcore RPGs with their later, stripped-back and more cinematic games like the Mass Effect series. It's a game that tries to balance the old with the new and does not quite succeed.Which is not to say it doesn't have a go. The game is huge, taking upwards of 50 hours to complete. Cleverly, the game reorganises its opening two hour prologue based on your race and class: a dwaven noble starts in a separate location to a human mage, with a totally different cast of supporting characters, enemies and opening quests. The fact that you can replay the game several times and get a different opening, with the various versions not aligning until you reach Ostagar, is quite clever and rewards replaying the game. Indeed, the choices in these sections reverberate throughout the whole game, with your eventual return to your starting location allowing you to address unfinished business. It's the game's main selling point and is something that is handled very well, making it all the more bemusing that the concept was completely chucked out the window for the two sequels.As is traditional with BioWare games, your main character is fully customisable but the supporting cast are set in stone. You can accumulate up to ten companion characters throughout the course of the game and take three of them with you on missions. Your inactive party members hang out at a campsite you can periodically visit to exchange information, form friendships (and even romantic relationships) and improve everyone's equipment. The game has a reputation system for each character, and winning their trust will give you bonuses in combat and open up additional questlines. It's a nice idea but also one that's easy to neglect. The game also treats morally ambiguous sorceress Morrigan and sarcastic warrior Alistair as almost the secondary main characters, each with huge roles to play in the endgame, which is rather bizarre if you've just gone through 95% of the game favouring other characters instead. All of the companion characters are nicely-developed, though it's far from the strongest cast BioWare have produced for a game and some self-derivation can be detected: Shale is awesome, for example, but feels a little too reminiscent of Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.You spend the game doing what you usually do in a BioWare games: a broad variety of quests, varying from the mundane to the epic, and getting into lots of conversations and fights. A lot of fights: you seem to spend the overwhelming majority of the game in combat, and violence seems to be the solution to almost every problem in the game. There's a few quests based on diplomacy and dialogue, and a few fights can be avoided through intimidating or persuading the enemy, but otherwise be prepared to do a ton of fighting. Fortunately, the old 'hit space to pause' option is still present and correct, allowing you to assign orders to characters and take stock of the battle as it develops. A quickbar allows easy access to abilities, spells and weapons. Combat is generally satisfying, although health spells feel a little weak (at high level they restore so few hit-points it's almost not worth bothering with them). The biggest weakness