in the name of Scalzi!

My pal John Scalzi got this phenomenal mention from SFFAudio:

The name of John Scalzi can now stand in Science Fiction pantheon proudly beside the likes of Orson Scott Card, Joe Haldeman and Robert A. Heinlein.

I recently put out my call for SF anthology suggestions, so let me return the favor: Get Old Man’s War, and move it to the top of your Giant Pile of Books You Bought And Won’t Ever Have Time To Read.

Then make time to read it. Yes, it’s that good. It’s Forever War good. I promise.

In related SF news, I took Nolan out to dinner last night, and he wanted to go into the bookstore when we were done. To my surprise and delight, he went directly to the SF section and began to browse.

“I want a new book,” he said, “but I don’t know where to start.”

I suggestedEnder’s Game, which I loved when I was his age and was something he could relate to, but for reasons that only make sense in the teenage mind, my enthusiastic endorsement had the opposite effect than that which was intended: “Meh.”

“Meh?” I said.

“I don’t know, it just doesn’t seem . . . I don’t know. Let’s find something different.” He said.

I thought about all the SF I love, but couldn’t come up with anything I thought he’d like. Ringworld wouldn’t interest him, I doubt he’d relate to Old Man’s War, as much as I love it. I suggested Fragile Things, October Country, and a couple of Gardner Dozois anthologies that readers had recommended to me. None of them got the dreaded “Meh,” but nothing was grabbing his interest.

I saw a golden opportunity slipping away. Nolan enjoys fantasy, but this was the first time in his life he’d expressed any interest at all in the science fiction that I so dearly love. I didn’t want to blow it by suggesting something that would turn him off from SF forever, so I sent a text message to my friend, Andrew, who is wise in the ways of science fiction.

“Did you suggest Ender’s Game?” He sent back.

I told him about the Meh.

He thought for a long time, before suggesting Heinlein’s Red Planet“I read it when I was a little younger than Nolan, and I really liked it then. I read it again this year, and it holds up surprisingly well.”

I grabbed it off the shelf, and read the back.

“This looks like a really cool book,” I thought to myself. Then, “Well, here goes nothing.”

I found Nolan on the other side of the rack, and showed it to him.

“Andrew says that he read it when he was your age and loved it.” I said.

Nolan looked at it.

“Have you read this?”

“No, I haven’t.” I said. I cautiously added, “it looks cool, though.”

He read the description on the back. I tried to act nonchalant while I watched him.

“Okay,” he said, “this looks really good.”

A bell rang in my head, and I smiled.

“Cool,” I said. “Can I read it when you’re done?”

“Maybe,” he said, thoughtfully.

“Maybe?” I said.

A mischievous glint flashed in his eyes.

“Now would be a good time to talk about you letting me get Assassin’s Creed . . .”

TNG Review: Datalore

Happy Monday! (You’re twisting my melon, man . . .)

My Datalore review is at TV Squad:

After a bit of exploring, they find themselves in the lab of Data’s
creator, Dr. Noonian Soong. Riker, Geordi, and Tasha all join forces to
be sort of an Exposition Voltron, informing the audience that Noonian
Soong was the Earth’s foremost neuroscientist, until he tried to build
Asimov’s positronic brain and failed. Everyone thought he did the walk
of shame off the planet, but it turns out he just moved to Omicron
Theta to continue his work until he got it right. (Coincidentally, on
Omicron Gamma, there’s a group of former Microsoft employees still
working on an MP3 player).

As I mentioned on Friday, this episode was a massive disappointment to me, because I had such fond memories of it as a child. I said, "I liked this episode a lot when it first aired, but watching it now,
all I can see are gigantic plot holes and inconsistencies that never
should have made it past the first draft." Well, I re-read the original script over the weekend, and it doesn’t suck nearly as much as the final episode does, and I honestly can’t figure out how they screwed it up so badly.

Well, actually, I have an idea: we shot several episodes in the first two years where the producers and writers were rewriting the script while we filmed it, and on some of those episodes we’d get new pages in the morning for a scene we were filming that afternoon, and then we’d get pages to replace those pages right after lunch. It’s incredibly hard to keep any sense of continuity when we don’t know what’s going to happen before and after the scene we’re working on, and it’s equally difficult to turn in nuanced and well-prepared performances when we’ve only had a few hours with the material (that we haven’t had much time to look at because we’re shooting other scenes.)  Despite this, I think the performances in Datalore are fine. In fact, Picard and Data’s scene in Picard’s ready room, where Data asks Picard to stop calling Lore "it" is a fantastic one, and shows depth from both actors that we hadn’t really seen, yet. So the problem with Datalore isn’t the acting. I’m biased, of course, but I believe now (and remember) that everyone did the very best they could with what they were given.

Maybe someone who was working on the show in a production capacity at the time — Diane Duane, I’m looking in your direction — can confirm or deny this, but it seems like there was fighting among the producers, and this episode got caught in the power struggle. I said this in fewer words in my bottom line:

The pitch was awesome: "We find Data’s evil twin brother, who he never
knew he had." Sure, there’s nothing original about the evil twin story,
but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be told again in an interesting
way, especially with a cool character like Data, played by a great
character actor like Brent Spiner supported by a brilliant dramatic
actor like Patrick Stewart. How could they screw up this story this
badly?

I think it comes down to lazy writing that has things
happen because they’re supposed to happen, rather than having them
happen organically. The characters are credulous when they should be
skeptical, the audience isn’t surprised by anything after the second
act, and there are story problems that should have never gotten past
the first draft.

When you’re getting lots of conflicting orders from different producers, and the big, ultimate boss (in this case, Gene) wants one particular thing to happen, I think you must end up writing like that, having things happen because they’re supposed to happen, which is why this episode has so many holes in it.

I have a deadline chasing me like a pissed off Big Daddy in Rapture,
but I’d love to hear your memories of this episode, or any comments you
have on this review. I’ll be checking in at TV Squad throughout the day, or until readers get bored and stop commenting.

Propel it!

Come sit with me at the Child’s Play charity dinner!

I’m going up to Seattle in a couple weeks for the Child’s Play dinner and auction, so I asked my friends at Penny Arcade if I could do something to contribute, other than my ticket and whatever I decide to buy in the auction.

"How about two seats at your table?"

Normally, this sort of thing never ends well for me, but that’s because it often comes at the end of a long day at a Star Trek convention, and rather than hanging out with people, I really need to be recharging all by myself.

But this is different. I liked everyone I met at PAX, and had so much fun there, I thought that this was actually a great idea.

So if you are going to the Child’s Play dinner, want to support the charity, and want to see what it’s like to sit with me, Robert Khoo, and some awesome Penny Arcade people while we shove food in our faces, check out the auction and place your bid.

But do it soon, because the auction ends tomorrow night.

Mythology for kids

I read a post at GeekDad this morning about Beowulf and introducing mythology to kids. It reminded me of an an awesome book that I used to introduce Ryan and Nolan to mythology when they were in 3rd and 1st grade called Classic Myths to Read Aloud.

The book collects “Great stories of Greek and Roman mythology, specially arranged for children five and up by an educational expert” and divides them into two “listening levels” based on age (5 and older for Level 1, 8 and older for Level 2) which is quite handy for parents who are worried about holding their child’s interest. The myths are all retold in a way that stays true to the story while making them appropriate for children — there’s no Disney-fying the myth of Hercules here, but Zeus isn’t gong around nailing every nymph he sees, either.

The stories themselves are wonderful, but my favorite part of the book is a section called “a few words more” that goes with each myth. It gives the adult who’s reading them something related to each myth to paraphrase for their child. I loved it, because I could make the myth I’d just read to my boys relevant to their lives (with the added bonus of appearing to possess vast and mysterious knowledge about everything from the origin of the word “capital” to why a marathon is 26.2 miles.)

The book made it easy to share some of my favorite myths with my kids while they discovered favorites of their own along the way. Ryan still talks about when I read him the stories of Theseus, and Nolan loved anything related to the Trojan war. In fact, at the end of the book, there are six stories in a row that tell the story of the Trojan War including the Judgement of Paris, the Trojan Horse, and Odysseus’ journey back to Ithaca. I loved that they were serialized that way, because I could make it into a week-long event with my kids. I introduced them to the concept of a truly epic story, and they didn’t even realize it!

This book, and its sequel, helpfully titled More Classic Myths to Read Aloud (which I couldn’t find online, but have on my bookshelf, nyahh) make perfect bedtime stories for kids of all ages, and if you’re lucky, will lead to your 13 year-old asking you if he can buy Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, because “mythology is awesome.”

i am from space and the future

I’m putting the finishing touches on my long-overdue Datalore story for TV Squad. It’s taken so long, because it just wasn’t coming together the way I wanted it to, and I couldn’t figure out why until this morning. I’d written some really funny raps for Picard, but they just didn’t fit in with the rest of the story. It’s funny, but it wasn’t serving the larger piece, so it had to go.

Talk about killing your precious babies! This is part of what I sent upstate to live on a farm with other words:

I’m Jean-Luc Picard, I’m chillin’ in my yard
Underneath my chrome dome in the ship I call my home
Kickin’ it with Data, my homeboy, my brotha
I wanna get freaky with Wesley Crusher’s motha!

It’s hilarious to me, but that’s probably because I can hear the music in my head (and other voices that want me to do bad things, but I won’t! I’ll show them! I’ll show them all! HAHAHAHAHAAAAaa!!11)

Cutting out all the rapping let me write stuff that’s far more amusing to me, like:

Riker looks around the bridge, sees all the commissioned officers he has available to him, does a quick scan of the ship’s manifest to see who’s on duty . . .  and decides to send Wesley Freakin’ Crusher to "discreetly" sneak a peek at Data. Worf says, "Uh, excuse me, Commander, but since I’m kind of in the security department and all, and I’m a big old Klingon, shouldn’t maybe I go check this out?"

Riker replies, "I’m not going to lie to you, Worf: we all know that if there’s anything funky going on down there, you’re just going to get your ass kicked. So I’m sending the Boy Wonder and his giant brain instead."

Wesley jumps up from his console and shouts, "Wheee! I’m in Starfleet!" as he runs like a pixie to the turbolift.

Worf growls, but inside he’s secretly grateful that he’s staying safely on the bridge.

Lore, disguised as Data, is contacting the crystalline entity when Wesley shows up, and discreetly checks up on him thusly:

Wesley: Hi Data! Look at how totally in Starfleet I am!
Lore: Hello, Wesley! I am not Lore, I am Data! Look at Lore who is on the floor while I, Data, am standing here doing nothing suspicious!
Wesley: Wow, that sure does look like Lore! Neat! I’d better not call security or anything since nothing suspicious is going on here. Oh, before I leave, here are all the reasons I, and everyone else on the ship would suspect that you were actually Lore, disguised as Data, contacting the crystalline entity so it could come and eat our brains.
Lore: Hey, it’s not unreasonable, I mean, it’s not going to eat your eyes.
Wesley: Hey, did you know that I’m in Starfleet? I talk to the captain! I think I’ll go talk to him now! Wheeee!
Lore: Thanks for dropping in and observing that there’s nothing suspicious going on here. Run along now, you little scamp!
Wesley: Wheeee!

I also realized that my memory of Datalore is as divorced from reality as George W. Bush. I liked this episode a lot when it first aired, but watching it now, all I can see are gigantic plot holes and inconsistencies that never should have made it past the first draft. Gene is credited as the writer on this one, but it was done at a time when his health was rapidly failing, and I see Maurice Hurley’s hacky fingerprints all over it.

I’m turning it in to my editor at TV Squad later today, and I’ll link it when he pushes it live.