Monthly Archives: May 2009

My Town Mondays: The Ascent

Posted on by eviljwinter

If you look at the skyscrapers that have sprung up over the past decade in Northern Kentucky, they all look like… Well… Skyscrapers. Not that Cincinnati can brag. The PNC Tower and the Carew Tower are two classic icons of the Queen City skyline, but the rest are somewhat bland. The new Queen City Square tower will be a welcome addition to both sides of the river.

And then there’s The Ascent, anchoring one end of the Roebling Suspension Bridge.

ascent01

It’s the strangest looking building on the Ohio River in Greater Cincinnati, an example of building as scultpure.

[More My Town Mondays posts with Travis]

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Since I Have Homework, You Have Homework

Posted on by eviljwinter

I’ve decided to resharpen my scifi chops after a loooooong absence.  There are two reasons for this.  First, there are more paying SF markets than there are crime markets.  So one is for credit, the other is to pay off the new heat pump I have to buy for the former Rancho Winter.  (I hate being a landlord.  Stupid housing market!)  Second, I’m sick of explaining to people I went to high school with that I’ve been doing crime fic for the better part of a decade.  (They also seem puzzled that I’m more into Garbage and The Foo Fighters now than The Beatles.  Hey, I kept all my Led Zep albums, too!  Doesn’t that count?)

However, let’s be honest here.  My science fiction chops came from Star Trek, Star Wars, 2001, and Terminator.  I could have probably spun some decent tie-ins for Babylon 5 or done one or two episodes of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica.

But aside from a couple of Robert Heinlein novels and John Scalzi’s output, I am utterly clueless as to written SF.  Here’s where you come in.

I need a list of 1.) classics every SF reader should know and 2.) which modern practitioners are must reads.  Some restrictions.

  • John Scalzi is off-limits.  I’ve read all his work, including the novellas (well, almost all of them), and it’s a forgone conclusion I will be pre-ordering The High Castle as soon as Tor begins teasing us on Amazon with it.
  • Heinlein:  He’s a given, so let’s just assume I’m going to be pulling two or three of his off the shelf.
  • No fantasy.  If I wanted to read fantasy, I’d go back and reread Harry Potter (which is really science fiction when you think about it.  The magic has rules and is so technobabble-laiden one wonders if Rowling isn’t one of Scotty’s ancestors.)
  • Hard SF:  I’m not really a fan of hard SF.  I read fiction for the stories.  I read it for the characters.  I do not read it for someone’s dissertation on the gravitational effects of supermassive blackholes.  It’s not that I don’t find it interesting.  I read A Brief History of Time, and that was interesting enough without Hawking pretending he could spin a yarn.  “Here’s the neat stuff I make my living studying.”   Blathering on and on for the entire length of a story about some scientific theory or discovery and calling it “fiction” is kinda like calling Ann Coulter’s books philosophical studies.  (Exception:  “They’re Made of Meat.”  The whole point of that story was irony.  Me digs irony.)
  • Media tie-ins.  Read them.  Some were good.  Most sucked.  And I’ve already seen all the Star Treks and Star Wars movies.

That’s it.  Have at in the comments section.

MTM Cincinnati: The Roebling Suspension Bridge

Posted on by eviljwinter

One of Cincinnati’s oldest landmarks was built between 1855 and 1865.  However, it was a banking scare, not the Civil War, that nearly scuttled the project.  In fact, fear of the war coming to Cincinnati and a need for solid transportation between Cincinnati and Kentucky after the war, which ever side Kentucky ended up on, forced its completion.

That would be the Roebling Suspension Bridge between downtown Cincinnati and Covington.

roebling01

At 1057 feet long, it was the longest bridge in the world until another Roebling-designed bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, was completed in the 1870′s.

[More My Town Monday posts with Travis.]

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OMFG! That Frakking ROCKED!

Posted on by eviljwinter

Abrams calls this a prequel, the sneaky bastard.  And it most certainly is.

But it’s also a sequel.  Or rather, it picks right up where Nemesis left off, then promptly fraks with Trek continuity.

Within Trek continuity.

Yeah, don’t try to think about that too hard.  You’ll go cross-eyed like Austin Powers in the second movie.

Anyway, without getting into specifics, that effing rocked my nuts off!

Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto were pitch perfect as young Kirk and Spock.

Quinto manages to say “Live long and prosper” and make it sound like, “Eat shit and die.”  And yes, that’s exactly what Spock meant when he said that.

Simon Pegg and Karl Urban nail Scotty and McCoy.

I was glad to see Uhura and Sulu get fleshed out a little more, including getting first names.  Uhura’s name is a running gag to torture Kirk for the first half of the movie.

Nero:  Khan amped up on meth with a kernel of sympathy.  The perfect villain.

There is a reference to every single Original Series movie, including the much-despised Star Trek V, and (Surprise!) Galaxy Quest.

Leonard Nimoy’s elderly Spock seems almost like a whimsical Jewish old man.  As befitting a character played by a whimsical Jewish old man.

This movie rocks!

Oh, and to anyone who mewls about a heretofore never-filmed romance between two major characters, I will require documented evidence that you and your mother do not live in the same house.  Failure to provide such evidence will permit me to tie you to a chair and force you to watch the Shatner “Get a life!” skit on a loop for 24 hours.

Don’t think I won’t do it.