Category: Science Fiction

Movie Review: Godzilla, King of the Monsters!

Before I begin with my review of ‘Godzilla, King of the Monsters’ I feel I need to make a full disclosure. Godzilla and I are the same age (His premiere was about a month and a half after mine!) , we’ve known each other a very long time, in fact we grew up on different continents together!

Original Poster for the 1954 Movie Gojira (Godzilla) (Credit: Toho Studios)
For years Godzilla was nothing more than a guy in a rubber suit (Credit: Toho Studios)

O’k, I’ll stop being silly. The plain fact is however that I have seen every Godzilla movie, as a kid I spent many a Saturday afternoon watching monster movies and one of my favourite childhood memories is that of dragging my father to the movie theater to see ‘King Kong versus Godzilla’ back in 1962. So I guess you’d have to say that I’m predisposed to giving a good review to any movie starring Godzilla and his ‘friends’. Hey, just giving you a warning.

Was King Kong versus Godzilla the most titanic fight of all time. As an 8 year old I thought so! (Credit: Toho Studios)

Now the plot of ‘Godzilla, King of the Monsters, that is the story that the human actors are involved in is both convoluted and quite frankly, silly. That’s to be expected, you don’t go to a Godzilla movie to see a well-developed story and good acting, you go to watch the monsters stomp on things and fight each other!

Anyway according to the story it seems that for the last 60 years a secret organization called Monarch has been keeping several dozen ‘titans’ captive. (Why they’re called titans in the movie while the movie’s title explicitly says monsters is never explained!) The only titan not contained by Monarch as the movie begins is Godzilla himself. Anyway the government says the monsters, excuse me, titans are dangerous and should be destroyed.

However there are also those who say it is humanity that is dangerous. We are destroying this planet with our pollution and greenhouse gasses and the titans are Earth’s way of restoring the balance. They want the titan’s released so that they can do their job, what exactly that job is however, is never really explained.

In a Godzilla Movie the humans are really just an afterthought! (Credit: Warner Brothers)

The action of the movie starts when a group of eco-terrorists, with some help from inside Monarch, succeed in stealing a device that allows them to control the titans and they proceed to start to releasing them but something goes wrong. (How could anything go wrong? They’re just releasing dozens of monsters hundreds of meters tall all over the World! Nothing dangerous in that.)

The Eco-Terrorists cause all the trouble (Credit: Warner Brothers)

As I said, you don’t go to a Godzilla movie to see what the humans are doing, you go to watch the monsters fight each other; in particular you go to watch Godzilla fight Ghidorah, the three headed monster. These two monsters have been enemies since 1964 and their enmity for each other hasn’t mellowed with the years. The fights scenes between these two should be the highlights of the movie.

Should be, but it’s precisely here that ‘Godzilla, the King of the Monsters’ disappoints. This movie really needed the absolute best CGI possible in order to make the monsters seem as real as possible. In fact however the CGI in ‘Godzilla, King of the monsters’ is not nearly as good as in the recent ‘Avengers’ or other SF / Fantasy films. A sure sign of this is the way so many scenes are filmed with a bluish hue to them. Studio’s do that in order to cut down on the effort, manpower and computer time, needed to give every different object in a shot it’s own individual colour. Just make everything kinda bluish and it’ll be cheaper!

When Godzilla fights Ghidorah does everything have to be tinted blue? (Credit: Warner Brothers)

Still in the end Godzilla does get to fight Ghidorah and to make things a little interesting their final battle takes place in Fenway Park, home to the Boston Red Sox and famous for its close but tall left field wall known as the ‘Big green Monster’! I hope I’m not giving the movie’s ending away by pointing out that it is called ‘Godzilla, King of the Monsters’.

Rodan (l) and Mothra (r) also appear as Ghidorah’s and Godzilla’s respective sidekicks (Credit: Warner Brothers)

The studio behind ‘Godzilla, King of the Monsters’ is Warner Brothers who hope to create a monster universe similar to Disney’s Marvel universe. ‘King of the Monsters is actually the third film in the series after 2014’s ‘Godzilla’ and 2017’s ‘Kong of Skull Island’. The next film is supposed to be ‘Godzilla versus Kong’, scheduled for release in 2020 but I really hope they put a little more effort into that film. I’d hate to come away from seeing that movie thinking that ‘King Kong versus Godzilla’ from my childhood was a better-made film!

 

 

Book Review: Survival by Ben Bova.

‘Survival’ is the fourth installment in a series of novels from six-time nebula award winning author Ben Bova. The series began with ‘New Earth’ where a human starship encounters a machine intelligence that calls itself ‘The Predecessors’. The machines inform the human crew that a ‘Death Wave’ of gamma radiation is spreading out from the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy that will destroy all life on the planets in our galactic neighborhood.

Front Cover of ‘Survival’ by Ben Bova (Credit: Amazon)
Six time Nebula award winning author Ben Bova (Credit: From his Facebook page)

The Predecessors want to make a deal with humanity. They will give us the technology to survive the death wave if we agree to spread that technology to other intelligent species that are also threatened. In the second novel ‘Death Wave’ the crew returns to Earth and succeeds in convincing humanity to undertake this task, see my post of 31 May 2017.

The Death Wave series prior to ‘Survival’ (Credit: Ben Bova.com)

The third novel ‘Apes and Angels’, see my post of 31Mar 2018, tells the story of one such expedition to save an intelligent, albeit primitive alien lifeform. In the latest installment ‘Survival’ the crew of the starship Intrepid undertake a 2,000 year long journey, the crew is in suspended animation, to a star system inhabited by another machine intelligence.

If you think about it, with this Death Wave idea Ben Bova has created for himself a fictional Universe that can support any number of novels. A human starship travels to a distant star, has whatever adventure Bova has thought of and so long as he can loosely connect it to the Death Wave concept it fits into the series.

The main plot in ‘Survival’ concerns the way the machines treat their human visitors. They don’t need the human’s help in surviving the Death Wave and the machines don’t really trust organic life to begin with. “Organic life is ephemeral,” the crew of the Intrepid is told several times, “Only machines are immortal.”

There are a couple of subplots in ‘Survival’ as well, one being the way that successful scientists often wind up becoming administrators who no longer have the time to do any research. The second is buried kind of deep but you catch it by the end, it’s the simple question of which is the better survival strategy, competition or cooperation?

If all of these concepts sound familiar to you maybe it’s because they’ve been storylines in science fiction for decades now, the old Star Trek TV shows did versions of all of them.

The Star Trek episode ‘Return of the Archons’ was just one of several to depict a conflict between man and machine (Credit: Desilu Studios)

Indeed ‘Survival’ does have a Star Trek sort of feel about it, although without any of the action sequences. In fact there is little of anything that could be called action in ‘Survival’ and maybe that’s a good thing. Right now it seems as if SF novels are just full of violence, the last four novels I’ve reviewed all have a significant amount of murder and mayhem in them. (See my posts of 25Nov2018, Freefall; 12Dec2018 Planetfall; 13Feb2019, One Way and 3Apr2019, The Children of Time)

So an SF novel that succeeds, that makes you think without anybody getting killed is a nice breath of fresh air. It’s easy to use SF as just an excuse for a variant on a cowboy story with ray guns in place of six shooters and starships in place of wagon trains but the best Science Fiction is about thinking, not shooting!

Movie Review: The Avengers, Endgame.

So which did you like better, ‘Avengers, Endgame’ or ‘Game of Thrones, The Long Night’. If you think about it they have a lot in common. Both are the climax of story lines that have been developed over a decade or so. Both have had major subplots. Both have introduced major characters along the way. Both wind up in tremendous battles between the forces of good and evil. I could go on but I’ll just add one more because both include the loss of several characters that we have all grown to care about over the last ten years! No spoilers here, I promise!

Poster for ‘Avengers, Endgame’ (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

However this post is about the ‘Avengers, Endgame’ the 22nd movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). Now while ‘Endgame’ is a direct sequel to ‘Avengers, Infinity War’ each of the previous 21 movies have contributed to the overall story arc if only, as in the recent ‘Captain Marvel’ by adding a new character who plays a role in ‘Avengers, Endgame’.

The First ‘Iron Man’ movie is considered the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) (Credit: Marvel Disney)

‘Endgame’ starts where ‘Infinity War’ ends, with the bad guy Thanos triumphant. Thanos has managed to possess all six infinity stones and used their power to eliminate half of all life in the Universe, which he thinks is a good thing to do. (The motive of Marvel villains may be strange but they are rarely just purely black.)

Obviously our heroes aren’t going to just let Thanos win. So ‘Endgame’ begins when the remaining Avengers, who happen to be the original six, are joined by Captain marvel and together they go after Thanos to get back the infinity stones in order to use them to bring everybody back. Unfortunately Thanos has used the stones to destroy the stones and I’m not going to go any further, you’ll just have to go see the movie!

And plenty of people are going to see ‘Endgame’. As I write this it’s just been announced that the movie is now the second highest grossing movie of all time, and it’s only been out for ten days. It seems to be only a matter of time until ‘Endgame’ takes the top spot from 2009’s ‘Avatar’.

James Cameron’s ‘Avatar’ currently holds the record as highest grossing film of all time. But for how much longer? (Credit: 20th Century Fox)

Without giving too much away I would like to mention a couple of the subplots within ‘Avengers, Endgame’. The first concerns the relationship between Iron Man and Captain America, arguably the two most central members of the Avengers. (Thor is an alien with his own home planet and Bruce Banner doesn’t want to be The Hulk). From the first time they met these two superheroes have had a bit of a completion over just who was the group’s leader. Steve Rogers (Captain American) is the old fashioned kind of commander, all courage and an iron will while Tony Stark (Iron Man) is a modern leader, all brains and technology.

The conflict became open war in the movie ‘Captain America, Civil War’ and ‘Endgame’ is in fact the first time the two have been together since then. Their first meeting is tense but later on the two are forced to go off alone together for 15-20 minutes and almost without their even noticing it they settle their differences and become comrades once again.

The conflict between Captain America and Iron Man came to a climax in ‘Captain America, Civil War (Credit: Marvel / Disney)

The second subplot is the whole question of whether a superhero can have a personal life. In previous movies in the MCU the superhero Hawkeye had basically retired to be with his wife and children, he was the only original member of the Avengers not to appear in ‘Infinity War’. Hawkeye returns in ‘Endgame’ only because Thanos’ use of the infinity stones has eliminated his family.

So not only is Hawkeye fighting to get his family back but during the course of ‘Endgame’ Iron Man, Captain America and Black Widow are all faced with the effect being a superhero has had on their personal life. This subplot is particularly poignant today because our society is wrestling with the problem of how much we demand from the members of our military and police, the cost to their personal lives for protecting us.

Members of the Military are often separated from their loved ones for long periods of time. This is a sacrifice they gladly accept to serve the greater good! (Credit: Military One Source)

This layer of real life social and psychological conflict has always been a hallmark of Marvel. Whether it be superheroes who don’t want to be superheroes or those whose flaws make them seem more human than superhuman. ‘Avengers, Endgame’ may really be just a comic book made into a movie but somehow the Marvel characters seem like normal, relatable people despite their comic book superpowers.

Season Eight of “A Game of Thrones” Premiers tomorrow night on HBO.

(Note: This post mentions several incidents and characters from the first seven seasons of “Game of Thrones” so if you haven’t seen seasons 1-7 yet…well, in that case I doubt you’ll be watching season eight!)

Medieval human kingdom uses fire-breathing Dragons to fight army of ice zombies! If you think about it, that’s really the whole plot of George R. R. Martin’s “A Song of Fire and Ice” the series of seven novels that became the basis for HBO’s long running series “A Game of Thrones”. Everything else has just been subplots and character arcs.

The Actual War for the Iron Throne is really just a Subplot in ‘A Game of Thrones’ (Credit: HBO)

But what subplots and character arcs. Let’s just take Daenerys Targaryen as an example. The daughter of a murdered king whose throne has been usurped, she starts the story by being married off by her brother to a barbarian chieftain. She receives three dragon eggs as a wedding present which she hatches to become ‘The Mother of Dragons”. Then she has to protect those baby dragons for about five years until they grow big enough for her to try to use them to regain her father’s throne. Except that she is then forced to make peace with the usurpers in order to fight the ice zombies.

The ‘Mother of Dragons’ with one of her babies! (Credit: HBO)
We Still don’t know what the Night King (King of the Zombies) wants? (Credit: HBO)

That’s a brief summary of about one tenth of everything that’s happened that’s happened to Daenerys so far! I could easily name another dozen characters whose story lines have been equally eventful. That is the characters who are still alive after seven seasons because Martin has justly acquired a reputation for seducing us into caring for a character only to abruptly kill them off.

Each of these Characters, and many others, has a well developed personality and history giving ‘Game of Thrones’ a realistic feeling even though it’s a fantasy! (Credit: HBO)

All of these different lives weave in and out to form the intricate tapestry that is “A Game of Thrones.” As a viewer you get caught up in the story of one or two characters and before you know it you’re sucked in to the entire saga, waiting breathlessly for the latest installment.

Part of the lure drawing you in is the detailed fantasy world that Martin has created in his setting of the nation of Westeros. Like many fantasy authors, Martin has started with a society similar to feudal Europe; the war over the iron throne has many parallels with the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses.

The Battle of the Bastards in ‘Game of Thrones’ clearly resembled a medieval battle (Credit: HBO)

Even some of the characters seem based on characters from medieval literature. For example I think Brienne of Tarth has to be a female version of Don Quixote. Think about it, she talks about chivalry and honour more than any other character in the saga and for the first several seasons in which she appears she’s unsuccessful at everything she tries to do! She’s even given a page who in many ways is just a younger Sancho Panza.

Brienne of Tarth or Don Quixote? You decide. (Credit: HBO)

To this feudal base Martin then adds in his fantasy elements. Some are tried and true like his dragons while others are wholly his own creation such as the three eyed raven or the disguises used by the assassins who serve the faceless god. Some of these magical plot devices work better than others.

As an example, in one episode Jorah Mormont was infected by the stonemen of Valyria and his body began turning to stone. After a little more than a season wandering around looking for a cure he finds Samwell Tarly the scholar who finds a possible cure in a library and just cures him. We never find out anything about the stonemen or Valyria, we don’t even get a good reason for why Jorah went there. I have a feeling Martin thought the stonemen were a great idea but then couldn’t figure out how to tie them into the rest of the story and since he need Jorah later on he decided to just get that whole subplot over with.

The Stonemen of Valeria was a plot device that just didn’t fit in to the rest of the story! (Credit: HBO)

Of course loose ends and subplots that don’t work are going to happen when you’re writing a huge epic with hundreds of characters spread over an entire world. So we shouldn’t be too hard on Martin if Bran Stark completely disappears for six episodes while just going from Winterfell to the wall. Martin had so many good ideas for things that could happen to other characters that Bran got lost for a while.

A bigger problem, at least for me is the unrelenting bloodshed, it really becomes depressing at some points in the story. Now I know that the historic Hundred Years War and War of the Roses were terribly violent but there are times when Martin just seems to be piling it on. Even in his most violent plays Shakespeare still managed to have a few light moments to momentarily relieve the gloom, check out the clowns in Act V, Scene i of Hamlet.

Even the most Dramatic of stories needs a little Comic Relief! (Credit: PD)

The epic “A Game of Thrones” has often been compared to J. R. R. Tolkein’s monumental “The Lord of the Rings”, even by George R. R. Martin himself. In my opinion “A Game of Thrones” has a good deal more diversity, both in types of characters and societies than “Lord of the Rings” while at the same time not being built around such a heavy Good versus Evil basis. On the other hand Tolkein’s deep history of his imagined world, especially the many languages Tolkein created make it the more elaborate tapestry.

‘Game of Thrones’ Author George R. R. Martin freely admits he was inspired by J. R. R. Tolkein’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ (Credit: Ballentine Books)

 

So that’s where we now are. The army of the dead is past the wall and moving south. Amongst the living there is still distrust, envy and a thirst for revenge. Will they unite in time? Winter has come, will humanity survive it. Season eight of “A Game of Thrones” is about to begin.

Book Review: Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke award for science fiction book of the year in 2016, ‘Children of Time’ is the first science fiction novel of fantasy author Adrian Tchaikovsky. Receiving an award like the Clarke first time out is quite an achievement so hopefully we’ll be reading a lot more from Mr. Tchaikovsky.

Adrian Tchaikovsky, author of ‘Children of Time’ (Credit: Adria’s News)

‘Children of Time’ begins at least a few hundred years from now. The exact time frame of the novel is never given but humanity has colonized most of the solar system and is starting to Terraform planets around nearby stars so its not in the near future. There is a heated debate however over just how to Terraform these new Earths. There are those who simply believe that Earth’s biosystem, human dominated of course, should be transferred to these new worlds. Others however, feel that these planets should be seeded with life but be allowed to evolve on their own.

Cover of ‘Children of Time’ (Credit: Amazon.com)

Doctor Avrana Kern belongs to the latter group of experimentalists; in fact she is the leader of one such project. The Green World, that’s all it’s ever called in ‘Children of Time’, around which her starship orbits now has a functioning ecology and is ready to receive a collection of primates, ‘monkeys’ who will evolve into the planet’s intelligent masters, or so Kern intends.

Kern has even cooked up a special ‘nanovirus’ that will speed up the evolution of the monkeys! This nanovirus (and aren’t all viruses kind of nano?) is the biggest ‘suspend your belief’ concept in ‘Children of Time’. Designed to work only on primates, not other vertebrates it quickly becomes a ‘deus ex machina’ to solve any plot problems Tchaikovsky encounters in the novel.

‘Deus ex Machina’ or ‘God from a Machine’ has been used to solve plot problems since the days of ancient Greece! (Credit: Writing.stackexchange.com)

Anyway, a mutiny on the starship by the conservatives leads to both the shipment of monkeys and even the ship itself being destroyed. To make matters worse a general war has broken out back on Earth obliterating civilization and leaving the Green World to evolve as it will.

At this point ‘Children of Time’ really breaks into two novels, and at 600 pages it is long enough for two complete novels. One story line involves the evolution of a race of intelligent spiders on the Green World, remember I said the nanovirus doesn’t work on vertebrates other than primates, it works quite well on arthropods however, especially spiders.

What is it about Spiders that People find so frightening? (Credit: Science Explorer)

The second storyline involves a group of the last human survivors from Earth. The planet is now so completed poisoned that the survivors’ only hope is a huge space ark, a sleeper ship with a cargo of thousands of humans in hibernation. The plan is to travel to one of the Terraformed worlds and try to rebuild civilization. Guess which world they’re heading for?

The space ark is involved in several mutinies, a maniac commander and has people popping in and out of hibernation more often than in any story I’ve ever seen. By the end of their several hundred year long journey the ark is barely in working shape, humanity’s only remaining hope is the Green World.

Hibernation is a common plot device in Science Fiction Stories (Credit: Newsnation.in)

The two storylines collide at this point and I’m sure you can guess what the climax consists of. That is the weakest part ‘Children of Time’, after reading one third on the novel you pretty much know how it’s going to end, at least in general terms. Another thing is that nanovirus, for me at least it was just a little too good to be true. It becomes a bit too integral to the development of spider civilization. Finally, after all of the problems that the ark ship encounters during its voyage you can hardly believe it’s working at all by the time it reaches the Green World. Space is a very hostile environment remember!

Still, ‘Children of Time’ was a very interesting read, it managed to keep my attention quite well through its entire 600 pages. I’ll be looking forward to seeing what other science fiction novels Mr. Tchaikovsky comes up with in the future.

Movie Review: Captain Marvel

Well the Marvel Comics Universe (MCU) is alive and well with its latest installment, Captain Marvel. After its second weekend Disney’s latest superhero movie has raked in about three quarters of a billion $USD worldwide and seems poised to go over the billion mark very soon.

Captain Marvel Poster (Credit: Disney / Marvel)

Captain Marvel is important to the Disney / Marvel Comics collaboration for several reasons beyond just money however. Recently several of the actors who portray some of the most popular superheroes have publicly announced that they are growing tired of their rolls, Robert Downey jr. / Ironman and Chris Evans / Captain America being the two best known. That means that the MCU is going to need a new franchise superhero to pick up some of the slack.

The Original Avengers (Credit: Disney / Marvel)

Then there’s the gender issue, Captain Marvel is Marvel’s first attempt at a superhero movie centered around a female character. Now Marvel has tried to develop several female superheroes, Scarlett Johansen / Black Widow and Elisabeth Olsen / Scarlet Witch for example. However neither of these characters has proven to be strong enough for a stand alone movie, they are really second tier superheroes, and I really hate to say that about Scarlett.

The MCU has really been built on a foundation of four very male characters: Ironman, Captain American, Thor and the Hulk and now adding in Spiderman, Doctor Strange and perhaps most importantly Black Panther. Captain Marvel represents Disney / Marvel’s best shot at a stand alone female world saver who can also hold her own with the boys!

Captain Marvel looks like she’s ready to do just that. The story is set back in the 1990s with Carol Danvers (Actress Brie Larson) training to become one of the US Airforce’s first female pilots. Without giving away too many details of the plot she looses her memory and becomes a warrior for an alien race called the Kree. While chasing the enemy of the Kree she is stranded on Earth where she meets Shield Agent Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson). Together they recover Danvers memory, rescue a source of immense power and beat the real bad guys, all while releasing the powers of Captain Marvel that the source of power has placed in Danvers.

Brie Larsen as Captain Marvel (l.) and Carol Danvers (r.) (Credit Disney / Marvel)
Samuel Jackson as a young Nick Fury in Captain Marvel (Credit: Disney / Marvel)

As in any Disney / MCU movie the special effects are state of the art, even those that make Jackson look 20-25 years younger. The acting is also quite good; although of course superhero movies don’t require Oscar caliber dramatics. The focus in Captain Marvel obviously is on Larson who does manage to stand out amongst more experienced actors like Jackson, Jude Law and Annette Benning. Throughout the movie Larson has a nice way of showing determination rather than rage that to my mind makes her a stronger image than some male actors who think that roaring like a gorilla is the best way to show their emotion, think Sylvester Stallone in Rambo.

And that’s important because remember this is Marvel’s first female centered superhero movie; they need to get it right. O’k DC got it right with Wonder Women, but one example of a women centered superhero movie could just be a fluke, a token female success.

DC has had better Success with its Female Superhero, Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, than their men (Credit: Warner Bros. / DC)

And there is one scene in particular where Captain Marvel really does get it right. Early on in the film we are shown a bit of Carol Danvers childhood. We see her getting knocked down at the plate by a pitched ball, see her having an accident while driving a go-cart, see her loosing her grip while climbing a rope. Then, at the movie’s climax the bad guy gets inside Captain Marvel’s head, reminding her of all of her failures, telling her she can’t hack it, that she isn’t strong enough, isn’t good enough.

But in Captain Marvel’s mind we see that after each of those failures little Carol Danvers got right back up and tried again. That’s the message of Captain Marvel; when you get knocked down get back up! And it doesn’t matter what sex you are; get back up!

O’k, this is just a superhero movie, it’s not meant to be profound or to try and change the world, but a lot of young woman are going to go see this movie and I think that they’ll get the message.

Book Review: One way by S. J. Morden.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the possibility, within the next few decades, of humans not only visiting the planet Mars but actually staying there. However the mechanics of spaceflight are such that the costs of a round trip to Mars could be considerably more than twice the cost of a one-way trip. With that in mind the concept of people taking a one-way trip to Mars with the intent of establishing a self-sufficient settlement is being seriously considered.

A Typical Idea for a Mars Base (Credit: Christian Gruner)

There are many in the spaceflight community who are convinced that this is the best path to follow for colonizing Mars. Elon Musk and Space X in particular have made this concept a central part of their future plans. It’s also the idea behind the novel ‘One way’ by author S. J. Morden but with a twist.

Cover of ‘One Way’ by S. J. Morden (Credit: Amazon)
Author S. J. Morden (Credit: Worlds Without End)

The twist is that the people who are going to be spending the rest of their lives on Mars are convicts, prison inmates who also happen to possess some kind of technical skill. In the novel Xenosystems Operations Corp. (XO) not only runs prisons for the State of California they also have a contract with NASA to design, fabricate and assemble on location the first Mars base so why not combine their expertise and use cheap convict labour on the Red Planet?

While not Exactly a Chain Gang, ‘One Way’ does suggest Prison Labour be used to Build Mars Base (Credit: Warner Brothers)

Cheap is the operative term here. Every chapter of ‘One Way’ begins with a memo, email or transcript from a meeting at XO where ways to reduce cost are given or at least hinted at. The convicts are given only enough training to perform their own tasks, only the bare minimum of supplies are provided and even their personal effects are left behind simply because it would cost so much to send them to Mars! Not surprisingly, once on Mars it isn’t long before murder and mayhem are rampant.

The problem for ‘One Way’ is that it’s all so predictable, even from the brief outline I’ve given above you can probably guess who the bad guys really are. Seriously, I pretty much had the ending figured out before the seven convicts and one guard / handler had even left Earth. Since the story is at heart a murder mystery knowing what’s coming and whodunit is not a good thing.

Which is a bit of a shame because the story is crisply told and filled with the kind of technical details that gives you a real feeling of being there. In fact Dr. S. J. Morden is a bona fide space scientist with a degree in planetary geophysics so he easily gets high marks for accuracy. In fact ‘One Way’ almost seems as if Dr. Morden just took a rather trite crime plot and thought he could make it fresh by putting it in outer space.

Which leaves me in something of a dilemma. ‘One Way’ is a well written book, the pace is good, there are no long dry spots and again, the details are meticulously drawn. However the clumsy plot means that it simply isn’t exciting, you’re left with just trying to guess who’s the next victim even though you know who will be left standing for the final battle. So in the end I suppose I’d only recommend ‘One Way’ to those of you out there who are the true lovers of hard science fiction.

What if Human Beings could Regenerate Lost Limbs the way some Animals do?

We all learned back in high school biology how some animals, the lower animals we were usually told, were capable of regenerating a significant portion of their body if they should happen to lose it. A Starfish who had lost one of its arms and regrew it was often used as an example of this power of regeneration. All living creatures possess some ability to regenerate tissue to some degree, after all, if you trip and skin your knee on the sidewalk doesn’t your skin heal itself in time.

Examples of Regeneration in Invertebrates (Credit: Memorial University of Newfoundland)

Other species of invertebrates are also known for seemingly amazing powers of regeneration. Animals like the hydra and flatworms can literally be cut in half and regenerate into two complete individuals. Among the arthropods those species that can regenerate most easily are those that continually molt like the crustaceans. I know this for a fact because I once had a crawfish in my fish tank who got into an argument with a catfish and completely lost one of its claws. It took two molts but eventually the crawfish was completely healed!

Here’s a Maine Lobster Regenerating it’s lost right claw (Credit:Good Morning Gloucester.org )

Regeneration among the vertebrates is more limited but there are many species of lizard that can lose their tail, usually to an attacking predator, and regrow a brand new one. The group of vertebrates that possess the greatest power of regeneration however are the amphibian salamanders and newts. One species in particular that have long been studied are the axolotl, a threatened species whose only habitat is a lake near Mexico City. The axolotl in fact can completely regenerate not only their tails but entire limbs, their jaw, the retina of their eyes and even a portion of their heart!

A Gecko can Regenerate its Tail (Credit: Feast or Famine)

Axolotls are fascinating creatures not only because of their regenerative abilities but also because unlike other amphibians they never completely metamorphose into an air breathing creature but retain their water breathing gills throughout their lives. This retention of juvenal characteristics into maturity is technically known as neoteny and scientists would very much like to know is whether the two curious characteristics of neoteny and regeneration could actually be related.

The Axolotl is a Species of Salamander that never Looses its Gills! (Credit: Quanta Magazine)

In an effort to learn the axolotl’s secrets Doctor Randal Voss at the University of Kentucky has succeeded in mapping the animal’s entire DNA genome. Now many species of animals have had their DNA sequenced over the last few years but the axolotl is once again remarkable in possessing 32 billion base pairs split into 14 chromosomes. That’s fully ten times as many DNA pairs as is in the human genome and getting all of those genes in the correct order is a very complicated task.

Even though Dr. Voss and his co-author Jeramiah Smith are still assembling the axolotl’s genome they hope to soon begin the work of identifying which specific genes are responsible for the animal’s remarkable tissue regeneration abilities. While the day when human beings can regenerate body parts lost in accidents or due to disease may be years away thanks to the complete sequencing of the axolotl’s genome we can now actually see the road ahead.

There’s a lot that We’d like to learn from the Axolotl (Credit: YouTube)

 

Quick Post Script: Free Science Fiction!!!

I just came across a very interesting website that is offering a free collection of science fiction stories, all in electronic format ready for download. The collection is called “Everything Change Volume II” and is being offered by Arizona State University. The collection comes with a forward by noted SF writer Kim Stanley Robinson, whose novel 2312 I reviewed in my post of 26 September 2018. Click on the link below to be taken to the website.

https://climateimagination.asu.edu/everything-change-vol-2/

Cover of ‘Everything Change Vol II (Credit: Arizona State University)

All of the stories in the collection follow the theme of the effect of climate change on future societies, a theme that is central to many of Kim Stanley Robinson’s own works. The stories themselves are written by new authors but the chance to acquire some free science fiction is certainly something worth looking into!

Book Review: Planetfall by Emma Newman.

Emma Newman is a British Fantasy and SF writer and podcaster. Nominated for a British Fantasy Award as best newcomer in 2014 she already has published the urban-fantasy series ‘The Split Worlds’ along with the SF Novels ‘Planetfall’ and ‘Before Atlas’ which was nominated for a Clarke Award in 2017.

Author Emma Newman at a book signing (Credit: Joe’s Geek fest)

The novel ‘Planetfall’ takes place sometime in the not too distant future, in a human colony on a distant, unnamed world some twenty years after the colonist’s arrival, twenty years after planetfall in other words.

The colony was founded by Lee Suh-Mi, a self styled ‘pathfinder’ (Read Messiah) who ‘knew’ that god was waiting on the planet for human beings to come and be with him (her?, it?). Lee Suh-Mi, Suh to her followers, has not been seen since planetfall, she is communing with god in god’s city the colonists have been told. God’s city is an alien structure not far from where the colonists have built their settlement. Here they have been waiting twenty years for the ‘Pathfinder’ to return with god’s message to them.

Renata Ghali, ‘Ren’ is the colony’s manufacturing engineer, that is she takes care of the colony’s 3-D printers that produce everything the colonists require right down to their food. Ren was Suh’s roommate and lover and was present when, back on Earth Suh ate the alien plant that caused her to begin having visions of god.

Not an Alien Plant but it sure looks like one (Credit: Io9-Gizmodo)

Cillian Mackenzie ‘Mack’ is the colony’s leader, who has kept the colonists together even after the disaster at planetfall that led to several of the colony’s members becoming lost and presumed dead. Problem is it’s all a lie and Mack and Ren are the only one’s who know the truth.

Right at the start we learn that Ren is not strong psychologically, she has mother issues and was pretty much dependent on Suh even before they ever left Earth. Now however the strain of keeping the lies is really taking its toll on Ren.

Half the fun of ‘Planetfall’ is trying to figure out just what is going on! What happened back at planetfall and just what are all of Ren’s problems? Author Emma Newman does a very good giving you clues here and there so that, as in a mystery novel, you’re soon caught up trying to put all the pieces together.

I think I did pretty well. I figured out what Ren’s big problem was and the hidden cause of it. I also had a good idea of what had happened at planetfall. The climax at the ending however caught me completely by surprise; I never saw it coming. Writers are often told that you want the climax of your novel to be ‘totally unexpected and completely inevitable’. In ‘Planetfall’ Emma Newman succeeds very well in that goal.

‘Planetfall’ isn’t prefect by any means however. The middle sags a bit as it becomes so dominated by Ren’s mental problems that you lose sight of the main plot. Cutting out maybe ten pages worth of groaning and moaning would be a bit of an improvement. Then at the very end as Ren passes the alien ‘tests’ that Suh failed you can’t quite believe it, she’s been such a neurotic mess the entire novel after all.

I may be a little biased toward liking ‘Planetfall’ because I’ve been working on a novel idea about a group of religious ‘pilgrims’ traveling into outer space in order to pursue their vision of god for a long time. Still ‘Planetfall’ is a well-crafted SF mystery that, once you get started you’ll have to finish in order to not only find out how the story ends, but how it started as well!

After Atlas is Emma Newman’s followup to Planetfall (Credit: Amazon)

 

Book Review: Freefall by Felix R. Savage. Earth’s Last Gambit Book 1.

‘Freefall’, a novel by author Felix R. Savage is a first contact with aliens story that has a strong dash of a Tom Clancy techno-thriller in it. Just a word of warning however before we start, Freefall is the first in a series of novels, the ‘Earth’s Last Gambit’ series so don’t expect the entire story. In fact ‘Freefall’ only covers the discovery of an alien ship which has entered our solar system and the preparations for an Earth expedition to travel to rendezvous with the aliens.

Freefall by Felix R. Savage (Credit: Good Reads)

Now whenever a science fiction author starts a novel they have to make a decision as to the time period in which the story will be set, present day, near future, far future or even the past (few SF novels are deliberately set in the past).

Author Felix R. Savage (Credit: Amazon UK)

Felix Savage decided to set ‘Freefall’ in the present day and personally I think that’s a dangerous thing to do because as the years go by your novel can quickly become simply wrong! For example in H. G. Wells’ classic ‘The War of the Worlds’ Martians invaded the Earth around the year 1900! Well of course that didn’t actually happen and the fact that every radio broadcast or movie version of the story since it was first published has had to perform a considerable updating illustrates the problem of a story becoming out of date.

Setting your novel in the near future at least gives you some breathing space. When Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey he at least knew that he’d have more than thirty years before the story becomes historically inaccurate. To be completely safe from this problem many novels are set in a distant future, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation stories are an excellent example.

Now don’t get me wrong, I still love both ‘War of the Worlds’ and 2001, but nevertheless I wouldn’t write a story that suffered from this problem before it evens gets published! This is exactly what happens in ‘Freefall’.

‘Freefall’ begins with the final mission of the space shuttle Atlantis in 2011. During the mission Atlantis suffers a collision with apiece of space debris and is so badly damaged that it is unable to land back on Earth. Thanks to the heroism of the pilot however, the shuttle succeeds in reaching the International Space Station so that the crew can be rescued. The shuttle itself however plunges uncontrolled back into Earth’s atmosphere and is destroyed.

Well of course that didn’t happen, the shuttle Atlantis is now a museum exhibit sitting safely at the Kennedy Space Center. But in a sense does historical inaccuracy really matter in a SF novel? Well, I guess you’ll have to decide that for yourself. Once again however, I wouldn’t write a story that I knew would be obsolete before anyone had read it!

The Shuttle Atlantis safely at the Kennedy Space Center (Credit: Wikipedia)

One more little criticism. Since ‘Freefall’ is set in today’s world author Felix Savage decided that allowed him to do a lot of what I call ‘Product Placement’. It seems that every page has one or two references to modern culture, everything from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups to Jimi Hendrix to the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. Of course it is true that such details can often help an author make their story seem more real but too many can make it feel campy, make it feel as if the author is trying too hard, which can be as bad as not giving enough detail.

All of which is a shame because ‘Freefall’ is an exciting story. It definitely has a bit of the ‘Can’t put it down’ quality to it. Seriously I am looking forward to reading the second installment ‘Lifeboat’ in order to learn something about the aliens. By the way ‘Lifeboat’ is followed by ‘Shiplord’ and the series ends with ‘Killshot’.

Lifeboat by Felix R. Savage Cover (Credit: Amazon)

I’ll be sure to tell you all about it when I do!