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The visor is a long story. Please try to disregard it.68. Elaan of Troyius. Shatner doesn’t get enough credit for being funny. Because he undoubtedly is. “The Trouble with Tribbles” was the high water mark of humor for the series, but there are some clear similarities here that put Kirk in the same position with a lot of the same results. In both episodes, a number of problems are keeping Kirk moving, but the most pressing is one involving someone Kirk simply doesn’t want to deal with. His irritation is expressed as humor: rich barbs and smarmy comebacks. And so richly satisfying. Although, the irritating character here isn’t a lovable Federation bureaucrat but a spoiled royal princess. And “irritating” doesn’t begin to describe her. I don’t think the character is actually all that interesting, to start with. But she whines, she throws tantrums, and she tries to kill a guy. Oddly, the attempt is shrugged off by Kirk. Girls will be girls, he guesses. Also the victim is some blue dude rather than a regular. Her eventual turnaround is a little clumsy to me. It happens almost in an instant, and then she’s completely docile. It’s not a trick, and here’s where I think TOS’ regular shortchanging of its female characters has an effect. Any male villain worth his salt would be doublecrossing someone at this point. Elaan is actually just lovesick now and hangs on Kirk the rest of the episode. The actual villain is revealed to one of her entourage who is in cahoots with the Klingons. So then there’s some Klingon fighting and some extra reveals to flesh out the episode. Mostly it ends up being pretty effective, though there are some things that were a little puzzling. Killer Spock line: some sexist crack about the only logical women in the galaxy being Vulcans maybe, but I’ll go with his fantastic near- eye roll when McCoy is describing the enchanting beauty of the women of Elas. Overall: irritating at first but came around with a complex plot and ended up being a good watch. 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

  • Enemy allowed easy access to highly sensitive area of the ship
  • Anonymous redshirt killed
  • Kirk hits it off with alien babe (with surprising kinky spanking references)
  • Highly experimental plan with low probability of success somehow works anyway
  • Only Kirk can truly make command decisions

69. Whom Gods Destroy. When you work in a library, sometimes you get random people off the street who come in and ask questions. They might start out normal enough, something like, “Where can I find some information on patents?” As a helpful librarian, I start pointing out the Patent and Trademark Office site and explain some of the–oh wait, I’m being interrupted by the questioner, who is now telling me that he has an idea for a new type of dog food. I say that’s fine, you can do a search for terms like “pets” or “nutrition” to determine the appropriate USPTO classification–and I’m getting interrupted again to learn that he has eaten this dog food himself several times and he thinks some Purina corporate spies might be listening, so could I e-mail some of this information to his secret Yahoo address? This is when I realize I’ve quite unintentionally crossed the border into crazytown. Or like how you ask someone on the street for the time and it’s only then you realize they are carrying six bags of aluminum cans and oh no please get me out of here now. All of this goes into saying that “Whom Gods Destroy,” as it portrays inmates who have taken over their asylum, has some longish scenes that feel like you’d suddenly found yourself in a conversation with someone about their homemade dog food. Now what you also need to know about this episode is that those are some parts in an otherwise mostly enjoyable hour. Kirk and Spock are visiting an asylum planet and quickly learn that they’ve been trapped by delusional ex-Captain Garth, with the power of transmogrification no less, bent on taking over the Enterprise. And then the galaxy. Unfortunately for him, he’s stymied by Kirk’s cleverly pre-arranged passphrase to beam aboard. Numerous plots to obtain the code are undertaken, and Garth’s transformational powers make for a number of plot twists. There’s some really good and some sorta bad all mixed in here. Good: fantastic performance by Steve Ihnat as Garth, some clever reveals of various transformation tricks. Bad: long scenes of crazy ranting or odd tortures, including (for serious) blowing someone up. Really bad: Scotty and crew spend the whole hour simply standing around trying to think of something to do. At one point they try shooting at a weak part of the planet’s forcefield, and nothing at all is done after that. I honestly think they simply forgot to include what the result of that action was, or ran out of budget to film it. Which might also explain why some scenes just went on and on: (“Guys, we filmed them, we’re not throwing them out.”) A similar thing happens earlier when Kirk and Spock whisper to each other a quick escape plan, then, uh, don’t ever actually. escape. One last thought: I just realized that the guy who plays Dr. Cory is Han from Enter The Dragon. I looked him up and he’s also the shopkeeper in Gremlins (among other roles). Wow! Killer Spock line: “She’s worked out an infallible method of assuring permanent male fidelity. Interesting.” Also right after that it sounds for the life of me like he addresses Captain Kirk as “Ted.” Overall: the more you think about it the crazier it gets (wait, Garth just sort of learned to become a shape shifter? yes, this is the explanation) but fresh from viewing it I give it 3 out of 5. It retrospect it’ll probably be more like a 2.

Trek tropes:

  • Shatner showcase
  • Kirk hits it off with alien babe
  • Highly experimental plan with low probability of success somehow works anyway
  • Lighthearted banter to close episode (again, not good, but an attempt)

70. Let That Be Your Last Battlefield. As a franchise, Star Trek obviously has a lot to say on racism and on occasion does a fantastic job creating a story around that idea (just throwing out a few off the top of my head: Star Trek VI or a multitude of Klingon eps from TNG). Other times it’s just clumsy and as subtle as a brick to the face. I will let others decide about which category this episode belongs in, based on three things. 1. There are two aliens that are half black and half white, and the Enterprise crew notes this repeatedly, as if we need reminding that there are two black and white cookie people on the ship. 2. One of the guys is white on the left, black on the right. The other is the opposite. 3. At some point, one of the aliens denounces the other precisely because of which side of his face is the black side, and which is white. WHAT COULD THEY BE GETTING AT? Anyway, here is where I further note that I saw this episode many insane days ago now, and am therefore relying on my memory of it, which doesn’t give me much to go on. It wasn’t that memorable. It seems like there was a bunch of milling around while these two dudes tried to settle their differences. I loved “Return to Tomorrow” (ep49) for being a show where the Enterprise crew weren’t really the protagonists of the story, but something’s missing this time around. Maybe it’s that the crew not learning anything, or the story just isn’t nearly as interesting (the ship is going somewhere! oh wait, no it isn’t! wait, going somewhere back on! maybe!). Mostly it’s just saddled with a flatly simplistic message and not that effective or novel. Killer Spock line: “Change is the essential process of all existence.” Overall: just not a lot here to get excited about, and a waste of a Frank Gorshin appearance, 2 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

  • Enemy allowed easy access to highly sensitive area of the ship
  • Invisible Space Powers
  • Only Kirk can truly make command decisions
  • In the future, computers are magic, but still make teletype sounds

71. The Mark of Gideon. People who actually devote lots of their lifetimes to watching these kinds of shows (much less writing about them, much less on an unpaid personal blog read by some very small number of other humans–heh, can you imagine?!) understandably want to formulate opinions on whether or not TOS or TNG (or even some other series) is the “best” one. Five years ago, before I’d watched any Trek series only haphazardly, I felt that TOS was fun and TNG was stuffy and boring. Actually watching through TNG, well yeah, sometimes it is a little stuffy. But many episodes are terrifically well-written. The production and acting are routinely excellent. TOS on the other hand, though undeniably more lively, and with a better ensemble cast, has some writing problems on the vast majority of episodes, and that’s really what it comes down to for me. I’m certainly enjoying the series, but I don’t really imagine re-watching it, whereas TNG has such great stories I could envision picking it up again. So at present I’m definitely coming down on the side of TNG being a better series. Now, understand that I’ve been slogging through season three of TOS, which would damper anyone’s opinion, and things could change once I get back into its prime. Along these lines, “The Mark of Gideon” is a prime example of how TOS often fails when it tries to achieve any kind of dense plotting goals (whereas TNG often succeeded). For the first thirty minutes of this show, I was riveted. There were two stories going, both intertwined and both totally mysterious. TNG had lots of episodes where halfway through, I was just mystified as to what was going on and really involved in how they were going to figure things out. More often than not, there was a clever resolution (although there were a fair share of technobabbly reversings of polarities to fix things, too). But TOS seems to simply not know what to do with itself at these crucial plot fulcrums. The A story kept going but went haywire, and the B story just sort of went away. The show’s typical approach is to have Kirk beat up someone, or have the dame fall for him. The latter happens here, and it not only gets dead slow but the whole plot unravels like the inside of a golf ball. Because frankly the Gideons didn’t make a lick of sense. The planet is so overcrowded multiple characters compare it to hell. But at the same time, they won’t negotiate with the Federation to join up and spread out a little. No, instead the boss thinks it’s better to introduce a killer disease to thin things out, starting with his own daughter. It’s like hell’s ultra-conservative isolationist policy, complete with insistence on the sanctity of life as a reason to avoid any form of birth control (please name me a good nerd who could watch this episode without expecting a chorus of “Every Sperm is Sacred”). But so much more stupid. Killer Spock line Scotty antic: Spock had some decent lines but the absolute highlight was Scotty’s blow-up over the Gideons’ suggestion that something might have been mechanically wrong with the Enterprise. Not only did it set off a substantive rant, but he stormed off the bridge grumbling in fury. Wonderful. Overall: First half was a 5, second half was like maybe a 2 or 3. Still, opened up a lot of themes and has a lot going for it. Let’s average (and round up), and call it 4 out of 5.

Trek tropes:

  • Kirk hits it off with alien babe
  • Scotty goes berserk when the Enterprise is insulted

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My book-reading fiscal year (BRFY) ends April 30. Here is my report, submitted for your approval.

This year I read 48 books (well, depends on how you count: I read half of two others which I didn’t count, but read several novellae and novelettes which I did). Employment and the biological need for sleep continue to hamper me. I never seem to quite make that 50-book goal, and have fallen short yet again. I always seem to have one or two months during the year where there is some extreme stress or busy-ness that just kills my pace, and it happened again this year over the past month. It’s probably unrealistic to ever count on having 12 consecutive months of peace, at least until I am named King and make some serious changes to the structure of society. When will that be happening, by the way??

Anyway, books. I did have a nice year of reading, although kind of a different one, defined by my getting a membership to WorldCon last spring with the intention to vote for the Hugo awards and do all of that reading over the summer. But: I got started too late and procrastinated a bit with all of it and had to bail on the novels. I did eventually read all of them but didn’t complete the last one until, uh, last month. And to be honest, they weren’t a strong crop. Of the six nominees, I’d say I liked two a lot, thought two were just OK, and didn’t particularly like the other two.

Whoa: I just realized something while writing this. I would have voted for Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. It happened to TIE for the win with China Mieville’s The City and The City. Had I gotten all my reading done and cast that vote, Paolo would have won outright and China would not have won a Hugo. Sorry, Paolo! Although I guess you still count as a winner. I inadvertently gave China a win share, though. You’re welcome, China.

Other highlights:

  • Some great re-reads, including Snow Crash and White Noise. I generally consider these two of my favorite books, and re-reading did not disappoint. More broadly, re-reading is awesome. I need to do more of it. It’s nice to read new books, of course, but when you re-read, honestly most of the time you get just as much or more out of it, with the foreknowledge that it’s something you will like.
  • One benefit of the 2010 Hugo voting was that I tried a number of new things I wouldn’t have otherwise thought to read. However, I’ll probably bail on doing the membership/voting thing again anytime soon. It’s really for people who want to read ONLY that stuff for months. The graphic novels, in particular, were disappointing. Most were parts of LONG series and not really my taste.
  • Gah, I only read three Hugo winners.  That puts me at 43 out of 62 total.  I had been reading 6 or 7 a year, which would put me on pace for a finish in 2013, but I fell off that a bit. Might still be that year, but not sure. I’d intended to plow through a bunch this year but after my 2010 Hugo voting  push I was off of them for a while. I am not setting any goals about this for the year, though I’ll certainly try more than 3. Yuck. One thing: I probably read next year’s Hugo winner already, in Connie Willis’ Blackout/All Clear.
  • I got through another Pynchon book! I think I can tackle Gravity’s Rainbow again when the time is right.
  • Read a few good series, including Robert J. Sawyer’s Hominids and Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games. Both worthwhile.

Best read of the year (among new reads) is either Isaac Asimov’s The End of Eternity or Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale. The Asimov book was classic Ike, and just a great read. Just a perfect Golden Age sci-fi novel, of which I am spending way too much time not doing more of (like right now! I could be reading Isaac Asimov right now!). Winter’s Tale, though, is a special book. I just finished it yesterday so I probably need more time to let it settle, but I think I can say it was the most interesting book I read this year. Really unique, modern magical realism. Among the funniest books I’ve read, too.

Some goals for the upcoming year: more rereading. Didn’t get to the Baroque Cycle, but will absolutely do so soon. Between that and the new Neal Stephenson coming this fall (NEW NEAL STEPHENSON) I don’t know if I’ll get to Gravity’s Rainbow, but I’m not ruling it out. Fill out my Asimov reading. I’d like to carve a big chunk out of the remaining Hugos. Read a few of the things that have been unread on my bookshelf forever.

The complete list, favorites in bold:

  1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, 5/8/10
  2. Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology, James Patrick Kelly (ed.), 5/14/10
  3. Brian Eno’s Another Green World (33 1/3), Geeta Dayal, 5/29/10
  4. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon (33 1/3), Amanda Petrusich, 5/30/10
  5. The Fall of Hyperion, Dan Simmons, 5/31/10
  6. Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, Neil Gaiman et al, 6/10/10
  7. The Windup Girl, Paolo Bacigalupi, 6/13/10
  8. Shambling Towards Hiroshima, James Morrow, 6/16/10
  9. Palimpsest, Charles Stross, 6/18/10
  10. The Women of Nell Gwynne’s, Kage Baker, 6/19/10
  11. The City & The City, China Mieville, 6/29/10
  12. The God Engines, John Scalzi, 7/13/10
  13. Fables: The Dark Ages (#12), Bill Willingham, 7/15/10
  14. Girl Genius Volume 9: Agatha Heterodyne and the Heirs of the Storm, Phil Foglio, 7/25/10
  15. Laika, Nick Abadzis, 7/27/10
  16. Little Fuzzy, H. Beam Piper, 8/2/10
  17. Fuzzy Sapiens, H. Beam Piper, 8/9/10
  18. Fever Pitch, Nick Hornby, 8/11/10
  19. The Android’s Dream, John Scalzi, 8/21/10
  20. God Save the Fan, Will Leitch, 8/26/10
  21. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer, 9/4/10
  22. Blackout, Connie Willis, 9/18/10
  23. Physics for Future Presidents, Richard Muller, 10/4/10
  24. V., Thomas Pynchon, 10/11/10
  25. The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins, 10/17/10
  26. Hominids, Robert J. Sawyer, 10/26/10
  27. All Clear, Connie Willis, 11/15/10
  28. Humans, Robert J. Sawyer, 11/26/10
  29. Neutron Star, Larry Niven, 11/26/10
  30. Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins, 11/29/10
  31. Mockingjay, Suzanne Collins, 12/5/10
  32. The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov, 12/15/10
  33. Hybrids, Robert J. Sawyer, 12/23/10
  34. Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon, 1/5/11
  35. Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America, Robert Charles Wilson, 1/11/11
  36. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, 1/21/11
  37. White Noise, Don DeLillo, 1/30/11
  38. Boneshaker, Cherie Priest, 2/8/11
  39. Nova, Samuel R. Delany, 2/14/11
  40. This Immortal, Roger Zelazny, 2/20/11
  41. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, 2/23/11
  42. Zodiac, Neal Stephenson, 3/2/11
  43. Star Trek: Klingons: Blood Will Tell, Scott Tipton et al., 3/13/11
  44. WWW: Wake, Robert J. Sawyer, 3/14/11
  45. Palimpsest, Cathrynne M. Valente, 3/27/11
  46. House of Stairs, William Sleator, 3/28/11
  47. Newton and the Counterfeiter, Thomas Levenson, 4/21/11
  48. Winter’s Tale, Mark Helprin, 4/29/11

List is stashed here and on GoodReads (which has ratings and very occasional reviews)

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Today’s junk fax: roofing! The business itself is certainly still an important one. But…

You are a small business. You would like to reach more customers. You approach an advertising agency for help.

They say: “We will hit up the public with a junk fax barrage! They are sure to be swayed by your grasp of one of 1987’s top technologies.”

Do you:

a. Sign up, celebrate with a Seagram’s Golden Wine Cooler.

b. Walk away from cash money like a fool.

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I do not know how to operate our fax machine. I have sent approximately three faxes in six years of employment here. (So: I fax biannually. The next time I send a fax, if there is a next time, I will use the joke that I am sending my biannual fax. Be ready for this!) Though I’m not saying society as a whole no longer employs faxing as a means of transferring documents. Students ask us if we have a fax service all the time. However, that is not to say I am not baffled by this need.

This topic emerges out of my love for our ceaseless flow of junk faxes. It is, to my knowledge, 2011. We get junk faxes daily. It is, evidently, still a viable business model. We easily get more junk faxes than real faxes. Somehow this makes me happy. It makes me think the world is a simpler place. Many days I spend time thinking about ways to effectively monetize my interest in doing largely nothing, and failing of course, and realizing that I will need to continue to do something for someone else who has thought of a way. Then I think of the junk faxers. Somewhere, there are people who report to work every day to send out junk faxes. I don’t know how it works–I like to think someone is standing over a fax machine, feeding an ad in, and punching up numbers from a prospect directory. They wait for it to go through for the 15 minutes or however long a fax takes, then they flip the paper over, re-feed it, and punch the next number on the list. They have no further questions about the proper orientation of the paper. They have mastered this craft. However, I suspect that despite the end product it’s exclusively done with automated faxing programs. Regardless, the rate of return is such that everyone still goes to work every day.

The junk faxes seem to mostly be for travel agencies, no less, which is even more mystifying.

However, today’s junk fax implores me to fix my credit for a mere $89. I cannot think of a more reliable way to repair my credit than via an agency advertising via junk fax. Oh wait, there are those handwritten signs advertising this service taped to streetlight posts…

My favorite bit from today’s fax is the text: “Never get turned down (for credit) again!” They just wanted to specify that all promises made therein were it regard to credit, on this document advertising credit services. You can of course expect to continue to be turned down IN LIFE. But not for credit, my good sir.