He’s Got Personality

 

He’s Got Personality

Henry is a lot of fun. If I smile at him he smiles back. If I laugh sometimes he’ll laugh. If I tickle him he laughs. If I make faces I can get him to smile for the camera.

We play all sorts of games together, I dangle his legs on the floor and lift him up and pretend like he’s making big moon jumps. I carry him around and pretend he’s flying like Superman.

Carol says he’s really happy when I get home, so I guess he likes all of dad’s silly games.

Henry is six-months-old and he has learned how to roll across the room if he want to, but lately he’s been happy to sit up and play. We put a boppy pillow in back of him so even when he falls over he’s fine. Sometime I sit in back of him instead of using the pillow, but usually he just thinks that it’s a game and he’ll fall over into me and laugh everytime I try and sit him up.

He sleeps from about 7:30pm-4am, which I think is great, but Carol is the one that wakes up at 4. Most of the time he goes back to sleep for another 2 or 3 hours after that feeding, but Carol wishes he’d sleep just a little more.

He’s eating more and more solid foods. He gets solids for breakfast, lunch and dinner and he get bottles in-between. The kid eats better than me. :)

Some of the new foods he’s had are peaches, apples, pears, and avocados.

He hasn’t been favoring his left hand anymore so who knows if he’ll be a rightie or a leftie, only time will tell.

We got him his second car seat, which luckily can be converted into his third car seat (transformers!) so this is the last one we'll have to buy him.  

He’s just such a happy kid. He’s always got a grin on his face. Infants really are a joy to be around.

Thought on "Hunger Games"

Spoilers...

I was disappointed with “Hunger Games” (2008) by Suzanne Collins because I’d heard it was a great novel. It was entertaining and exciting at some points, but that was it. I felt like it was all surface with no deeper meaning. I don’t think it ever managed to transcend what it was, just a YA novel.

Characters

Katniss- Clueless about her looks and the effect she has on boys and men. Doesn’t understand social situations other people’s motivations. Thinks people in the Hob are nice to her because of her dad instead of realizing her own worth.

Peeta- He’s the “perfect” romance novel guy: Sensitive yet strong, loving, but brave and manly.

Gale- Only in the book at the beginning, but he is a presence throughout the novel. It is hard to know whether or not there is something there romantically between him and Katniss. Gale would have been the perfect excuse for Peeta and Kat to not have a relationship, but instead he’s a weird obstacle in a novel where Kat and Peeta’s relationship is the central theme of the novel.

Ending

The last 3^rd of the book needed to be rewritten. I was with it until after Tresh lets Kat go. After that there was never anything that was as exciting as that confrontation at the Cornucopia. Instead it was anti-climaxtic since Thresh’s death, which I felt should have been significant, happened off-screen and the details were never revealed.

The bad guys on a whole were not developed. They were all just district numbers. So you felt nothing when they died and really had little reason to fear them. Tresh seemed to be the main villain. He stayed in this one area and feed himself and grew stronger. And yet no details about what he eat or where he stayed emerged. I think the ending should have been a confrontation with him on his own turf and Peeta and Kat only win by working together.

I loved the part with the poisonous berries. When Kat kept some of the berries in here pack I knew they would be important later, but I never suspected they might end up using them themselves. But the story should have ended with them about to eat. It would have been a great cliffhanger!

Instead we have a slow ending where after the games Kat is worried about saying a wrong thing and being arrested, but the reader in thinking, “how many more pages of this are there?” It was like a 30 page epilogue in which you never really gain any new information or have any major character developments. Yes, Kat doesn’t know if she likes Peeta because she doesn’t know what she has with Gale. We already knew that!

Kat may or may not have grown as a character. Certainly what she went through should have changed her, but it isn’t really clear how her experiences changed her. I don’t think the author ever really challenged her enough. I mean obviously she was put through an adventure, but at no point did I feel like she experienced anything that changed her. For instance, for the 2 times she had to actually kill people she never gives it any thought. Killing seems to be no big deal. She should have had some self-reflection. She should have felt guilty about the killings. She is supposed to be a human being and not a sociopath, right? I figured the only way she would win the games was to realize that even if she didn’t like killing that it was something she was good at, but the simplicity of the story didn’t seem to have any room for any kind of self-reflection.

Other Books in the Series

I wondered what the sequels were about. I saw three possibilities.

1)      Kat somehow ends up back in the arena the following year (My thought was Gale’s name gets drawn and she volunteers again hoping the district team rule will be applied again).

2)      Kat has to work behind the scenes during a Hunger Game because she is a girl’s sponsor.

3)      Kat somehow becomes involved in a military conflict against the Capital.

I looked up the next two books and it seems like 1 and 3 to some degree are going tot happen in the next books.

Miscellaneous 

Peeta knowing how to make himself camouflaged because he knew all about making icing for cakes is like saying he’s an electrician because he made the candles for the cakes.

Hunger Games is fantasy rather than science fiction because no attempt is made to make the world-building in the story make any sense. In this universe California and the areas west of the Rockies are the overlords of the rest of the area that was America because they had nuclear weapons and the rest of the country didn’t. Why didn’t the rest of the country have nuclear weapons?

It doesn’t make any sense that the servant girl made it all the way to Kat’s territory, the furthest territory from the Capital. Did she walk that whole way?  And what are the chances that Kat would be given her as a servant? And what purpose did it serve other than to make the story that much more implausible?

The Movie

The movie version of Hunger Games seemed to put the novel on fast forward. The movie was 2 and ½ hours long, but in order to fit everything in the book in that time frame it had to move quickly. This is especially evident at the end of the movie. One of my complaints about the novel was that the ending dragged; well the movie turned that 30-page epilogue into about 5 minutes of screen time. But while the pacing improved that problem it made other problems even worse. For instance, I said that I wished Tresh had had a bigger role in the novel. In the movie he was onscreen for about 30 seconds.

Jennifer Lawrence made a pretty good Katniss, but she seemed too normal. When I read the book I pictured Kat as really socially awkward (like a few steps away from Lisbeth in “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo”). Peeta also seemed really normal looking; I pictured him as a big bruiser of a guy. The book makes a big point of the fact that since he was a baker’s son he never missed a meal and he’s supposed to be able to throw 100 pound bags of grain. Josh Hutcherson, the guy that plays him looks like he weighs close to 100 pounds. In fact the only casting I liked was Woody Harrelson as Haymitch; he was excellent.

The other major difference in the movie is that there are constantly cuts to the control room of the game and also sometimes you see reaction shots in the Capital and various districts including an all out riot in District 11 when Rue dies. When I read the book I thought the complete isolation from the outside was a weakness of the novel, but after seeing the movie I think it is one of the novel’s strengths. It was better to wonder what was happening then to see weird scenes of Donald Sutherland (as the President) gardening and making vague threats. But I suppose it is the movie’s way of setting up the story for the sequel. 

The impossibility of Collin’s universe is only more evident when it starts to be explained. The movie suggests that the game environment is a computer simulation. Dogs are created from nothingness, Tree are created and set on fire instantly. So if nothing is real how are the tributes not all starving to death? How can you gain nutrition from computer-generated wildlife? And wouldn’t those berries at the end of the movie not really be poisonous, the game master could have instantly made them blueberries if he wanted to, right? In the novel as far as the reader knew the trees and everything in the arena were real. Did they uproot trees and move them there or build an arena around a forest? I have no idea. but I do know, that the dogs were cyborgs of some sort. That's what made them terrifying to Kat, that they were partially made from parts of her fallen friends and enemies.

And I have to mention my least favorite scene in the entire movie. When Kat gets to the Capital and she goes to the room they’ve given her and she is suddenly wearing this bright yellow nightshirt and the shirt perfectly matches the curtains and various yellow accents in the room. It looked ridiculous!

Short Story of the Week (July 2012)

Each week at the Classic Science Fiction Message Board we read a short science fiction piece (short story, novelette or novella). These stories are always available for FREE online so that anyone can participate in the discussion. The stories are chosen by a different member every month, so that we get to read a variety of stories. July's stories are being picked by Andreas, here is what he had to say about himself:

 

My name is Andreas. I was born in Germany and live now in Austria together with my wife and two kids (6+9). Besides reading and collecting books I love travelling and I regularely play chess in a club. My favourite animal is the hippo and I have a small collection of hippos made of wood, plush, glass and china. 


My love for SF must be blamed on Jules Verne and on the neverending German pulp series "Perry Rhodan". Somewhen in the late 90's I started to read short fiction as well and never got away from it! I have a project running to read all stories listed in the Locus All-Time Poll from 1999 and I track the progress in my blog. My favourite authors are Gene Wolfe, Theodore Sturgeon and Jack Vance. 

Week #1 "A Dry, Quiet War" by Tony Daniel

A Colourful and exotic story of a battle-weary veteran who returns from a bewilderingly strange high-tech future war only to face his greatest and most sinister challenge right at home.

Week #2 and 3 "The Moth Moon" by Jack Vance

Jack Vance, who is still alive, doesn't need a big introduction. He is more famous for his various novels but he has also written quite a lot of short stories. In "The Moon Moth" we can see why he is so popular among his fans. He describes an exotic society  in which the consul from earth has to deal with an unpleasant affair...

Week #4 "Sinner, Baker, Fabulist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast" by Eugie Foster

This 2010 Hugo nominated novelette is similar to "Moon Moth" it deals with "masks" but in another way. Enjoy!

Henry Is Getting Older So Fast.

Henry is getting older so fast.

I think that’s the only sentence I need to write. I’ll just copy and paste that sentence each month and post a couple of pictures…

Okay, I guess I better get into some more details.

Henry is five months old now, he still hasn’t learned how to roll over from his stomach to his back, but he fell asleep the other night on his stomach which is much better than what he had been doing for weeks, rolling over onto his stomach in his sleep and waking up crying when he couldn’t get himself back over. For a week or so he was rolling over onto his stomach and crying so often that Carol or I had to sleep on the floor next to his crib so we could roll him back over and still catch a couple of Zs.

Henry has started eating solid foods and he really, really likes it. He’s had carrots, sweet potatoes, squash, and bananas. We mix the baby food vegetables/fruit with some baby rice cereal and he can’t get enough of it. Half the time he cries when you finish feeding him because he wants more. He’s drinking less and less milk and eating more and more solid foods. Feeding him is probably one of the most hilarious things ever. You have to put a bib on him because he manages to get food everywhere! He keeps getting better, but there are still times when you put the spoon to his mouth and he just doesn’t open up. My solution has been to sing to him or make sounds like a train or plane. Carol doesn’t have to do any of that silliness, Henry eats just fine for her; she’s the no nonsense one I guess. Another thing he does is that sometimes he really wants to hold the spoon himself. Sometimes he puts the spoon in his mouth, but sometimes he puts the wrong end in his mouth and sometimes he just plays with the spoon, so what I do is get two spoons and give him the second one to play with when he wants it. 

Henry is grabbing things more and more. He seems to favor his left hand when grabbing things so Carol is convinced we have a southpaw. I wear my wedding ring on a chain around my neck and Henry loves to grab it.

Henry got baptized at my parent’s church in Queens this month, a lot of my friends and family that hadn’t gotten to meet Henry yet got to see him and even hold him for a while. Lots of my friends can’t believe I have a kid. I don’t know if that’s because it makes them feel old or because they never pictured me as the responsible type. Maybe it's a little of both.

Both photos were taken by my Aunt Lawren who drove all the way from Rhode Island to meet Henry and see him get baptized. Lawren, thanks for coming to the baptism and taking these great shots. 

When Did the Doctor Become a God?

Spoiler...

I’ve been having more and more trouble with Doctor Who lately and I think I’ve finally put my finger on what the trouble is, the writers have fallen into the classic trap of making their hero too powerful. Superheroes like Superman go through this all the time. I mean if they do a story where Superman survives a nuclear explosion one month, it’s hard to find something to up the stakes the next month.

On the original Doctor Who series, the Doctor was a renegade Time Lord. Most of the time he was on the run from his own people. But, the Doctor didn’t elude capture because he was invincible or smarter than other Time Lords, he eluded capture because the Time Lords occasionally had a use for the Doctor, and so they let him get away. You see the Time Lords didn’t like to get their hands dirty fixing incongruities in time. They preferred to sit on Gallifrey and twiddle their thumbs. They were the Lords of Time, they had mapped out history until the end of time and they didn’t feel the need to worry about small details that would most likely resolve themselves or not affect the larger picture much. But even they had to admit that every once in a while a wrench was thrown into their grand plans.

The Daleks, for instance, were a large problem. They should not exist and yet they did. When they became a large enough problem, the Doctor was sent to the time of their creation in Genesis of the Daleks. They hoped that the Doctor would destroy them before they could ever be a problem, but unfortunately that’s not what happened.

But, that was the original series; at the start of the new series, we meet the 9^th Doctor. This incarnation of the Doctor has been through “The Last Great Time War,” a war between the Daleks and the Time Lords that results in the mutual destruction of both races. (With the exception of the Doctor, the Master who was hiding, and the Daleks that pop up from time to time) Eventually we find out that the Doctor was responsible for not only stopping the Daleks, but also for destroying his own race.

When the new series started the writers must have thought that it was more exciting for the Doctor to be “flying without a net.” After all he’s the last of his kind, if he doesn’t solve the problem he can’t go back to Gallifrey and get help. Also, they thought that the Doctor would seem like a tragic figure who sacrificed his entire species to save the universe from the Daleks. But unfortunately, the time war also changed the Doctor from a happy-go-lucky adventurer into the most powerful judge, jury, and executioner in the universe.

As I said before, the Time Lords are called the Time Lords because they mapped out time until the end of the universe. The Doctor visits the end of the universe in the episode Utopia and humans are there. The Doctor says, “End of the universe and here you are. Indomitable!” Humans are the ultimate survivors, maybe that’s one of the reasons why the Doctor has taken such a shine to humanity.

The Time Lords are able to map out time because, the way time works on this series, there is only one path, one history. The TARDIS can’t normally go to alternate realities. That’s not to say that a time traveler can’t alter history, the TARDIS goes to tipping points in time every episode, but these tipping points are small potatoes, whether or not the Earth gets destroyed is only a footnote in the history of the universe.

But, it’s not small potatoes to the Doctor, so he goes from tipping point to tipping point and makes sure no one messes with his view of history. But why does the universe need constant saving? The Time Lords mapped it out. Did they miss that much stuff? Well, the Doctor typically encounters two types of problems. Problem one is an alien where he/she is not supposed to be. Typically, this is an alien invader on Earth. My theory is that these tipping points aren’t in the Time Lord master plan because it is the Doctor’s destiny to clear all this mess up. You see one of the running gags in the last few seasons with the Doctor’s girlfriend/wife River Song is that she leaves the Doctor notes with time coordinates in museums or on ancient cliff faces and the Doctor always comes to her rescue. But each time he claims he’s not going to help her again. “I'm not gonna be there to catch you every time you feel like jumping out of a space ship,” he says in The Time of Angels. But, River just laughs and says, “And you are so wrong.” You see there are a near infinite number of these tipping points, but it is the Doctor’s destiny to visit them all and fix them. How do we know this? He’s the last of the Time Lords, who else is going to do it? Therefore he can’t die before all the points are dealt with. Therefore the Doctor can never die while dealing with alien invaders hence why the Doctor often gets so cocky.

However there is a second kind of problem he deals with, other time travelers. And this type of problem can get him in trouble. A time traveler can kill the Doctor because time travel is an x-factor, the Time Lords were the Time Lords because they were the only ones with time travel, and therefore other people time traveling wouldn’t fall into their master plan.

But, the Doctor is still too powerful. He is just one man (Gallifrian) and the fate of the entire universe is a lot to put on his shoulders alone. With the rest of the Time Lords gone he is effectively the God of the universe. He decides what species can and can’t do based on his morality and no one can stop him!

I think the last straw for me was in the season finale of the last season, The Wedding of River Song, where the Doctor tricked time. Yes, the Doctor tricked time itself into believing that the Doctor was dead. What?? How do you trick time? It’s not a person or an alien or a consciousness; it’s time. So we are now to believe that the Doctor can outsmart the very fabric of the universe. If that’s not like unto a God, I don’t know what is.

I think it is time for the Doctor to be de-powered, either he needs to lose his TARDIS or be told by some hereto-unseen powers of time and space that he exists only at their pleasure or he needs to meet an enemy that poses a real threat. Anything, to bring back the happy-go-lucky adventurer we all know and love.

Short Story of the Week (June 2012)

Back in March of 2010, when I started moderating the discussion of a short science fiction story each week, I didn't know much about short stories, but I knew that the stories we used had to be available online for FREE or the whole thing really wasn't going to work. One of the first websites that became a real resource for me was Best Science Fiction Stories because it not only had links to the stories online, but it also had reviews of the stories. Anyway, one day Rusty the man behind Best Science Fiction Stories joined my message board and at first I admit I felt like we had a celebrity in our ranks. But now I've gotten to know him a little bit and I no longer feel intimidated, now I feel like he's one of the guys.

Rusty is picking this month's short stories; here is what he had to say about himself:

Rusty is a person whose life is entwined with and dependent upon the Internet. Not only does he make his living as a web developer, but he uses the World Wide Web to further his passion of reading novels, short stories, comic books and ethnographies. (And he considers the Internet the ultimate way to do his Christmas shopping as well!) 

His first love affair with reading started with fantasy novels: "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant," however once he discovered the great Asimov he has only had eyes for science fiction.  He considers the "Foundation" series to be the greatest science fiction novels ever written, followed closely by the books of several other great SF authors, including Gene Wolf, Alastair Reynolds and China Mieville.
  
You can find Rusty reviewing a science fiction short story each week at his web site Best Science Fiction Stories, or you can learn more about him on his somewhat new and only occasionally updated personal web site The Rusty Boat.

Week # 1-  "Flower, Mercy, Needle, Chain" by Yoon Ha Lee (2010)

This is the story of an old woman who possesses an ancient weapon that is both extremely powerful and exquisitely unique. I read this story last year when I was a pre-judge for The Million Writers Award, and it has stuck with me ever since. And apparently I'm not the only one who liked it, because it was a finalist for the 2011 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and it also appeared in 4 best of anthologies for 2010! An unbelievably cool story from an author whom I had never read before! This story, about some very creative weapons, was an absolute joy to read, and my only complaint was that it was too short! I highly recommend this story to anyone who loves great science fiction – you won’t be disappointed. 

Week # 2 "A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury (1952)

Well, I had different story all picked out for this week, but in light of Ray Bradbury's passing I figured it would be appropriate to honor his memory by reading one of his short stories. This is the story of a man who travels back in time to hunt a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and the "little" mistake he makes while there. I first read this story in English class over 20 years as a sophomore in high school. I was blown away by it, and it helped spur my lifelong love affair with science fiction short stories. So, yeah, you could say it influenced me a little bit!

Week # 3 "Discerning Women" by William Highsmith (2009)

This week is a bit of a break as we take a look at a flash fiction piece about a woman who is called in for a bizarre interview by the ruling Braxian aliens. This is a funny story and is only a few pages long - so relax and let it put a smile on your face.  Then come back here and tell us what you thought of this little gem!

Week # 4 "Little Lost Robot" by Paul J. McAuley (2008) 

A story about a huge robotic war machine that cruises the galaxy destroying all intelligent life forms it can find.

Here are some orders of magnitude for seconds that may come in handy when reading the story:

120 Kiloseconds = 33 hours 20 minutes

.6 terraseconds = 19,013 years

1 terrasecond = 31,688 years

81.577 terraseconds = 2,585,012 years

Week # 5 Old MacDonald Had a Farm by Mike Resnick (2001)

It is about a company that creates a genetically engineered animal that will solve all the world's hunger problems... if people can overlook one small thing...

Book cover is from is from Books Should Be Free

Trip to the abandoned Sideling Hill Tunnel

Last year, Stefan and I explored a ghost town, Centralia, PA. Centralia was a bit disappointing because all of the buildings had been demolished and it wasn’t really as isolated as we thought. But this year's trip was a different story. 

I never get tired of walking down a stretch of abandoned road. It evokes a sort of primal emotion in that I think about the end of things, that all of our mighty human civilization could one day be just as abandoned as this one stretch and it shows you how fragile our civilization is that without maintenance our roads would begin to becomes patches of weeds and overgrown trees.     

This year, Stefan and I visited an abandoned stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike and braved the complete darkness of the 1.3 mile long abandoned Sideling Hill tunnel.

I just read the short story “Nightfall” by Isaac Asimov this week. In that story a civilization developed on a planet that orbits 6 suns. On this planet at least one of the suns is always shining. Therefore these people have almost no concept of darkness. They have a level of technology comparable to ours and yet they never even invented the light bulb and only recently developed the candle. Their scientists have theorized that there is soon to be a total eclipse and their world will be filled with darkness for 15 minutes. One of their religions tells a story that when darkness fills the skies you can see stars in the sky, but no one knows if the story is true. On the planet, there was a once a ride at an amusement park. In the ride people where taken into a long tunnel for several minutes and put into complete darkness. This ride had to be shut down as 1 in 10 people were driven irrevocably mad by exposure to the darkness. When astronomers studied the upcoming eclipse they  theorized that the eclipse occurs every 2000 years. And it seems that their civilization has risen and fallen 6 or 7 times and each time it mysteriously collapses after 2000 years. Will the eclipse cause 10% percent of the population to be driven insane? Will their civilization collapse?

Well, you’ll have to read the story to answer those questions, but I will tell you whether 1.3 miles of darkness drove me insane. No, it didn’t, but I had my penlight and my good friend to get me through it. The two of us sang songs into the darkness and played chicken, each one refusing turn on their flashlights on or admit that we couldn’t see in the complete darkness.

And when we’d gotten through the tunnel there was nothing to do but go back, but we didn’t go back the way we came, we explored the building and found our way to the air vents on the top of the tunnel. When the tunnel was used there were two sets of huge turbines on either side of the tunnel that pushed the hot air that collected in the vents out of the tunnel.

 
This shot shows you how big those turbines are.
 

The darkness of the main tunnel was bad enough, walking through more than a mile of this completely dark “attic” was an almost unbearable idea at first. After every few feet there were holes cut into the concrete for the air to flow upwards, so these had to be avoided. And, I’m afraid of heights so from the second I first stepped onto the “attic” and saw one of the holes, I started shaking a little bit. Not to mention the fact that neither of us was 100% sure they were safe. I mean we’d just walked the tunnel and hadn’t seen any signs of structure problems, but the tunnel was completely dark, we hadn’t exactly seen every inch of it. And as we walked we started to realize that the shaft was getting smaller. Suddenly we both had to stoop while walking. Being a short guy I’m not used to having to stoop and so I kept hitting my head on the ceiling. Every step of the way we’d wonder if the next step was safe, but we shined our lights and looked for signs that someone had been up there and there were occasionally empty beer cans or cigarette butts, which proved to us we were the only people crazy enough to make this journey. When we got halfway through the tunnel we saw a brick wall up ahead. This was obviously to separate the area controlled by one set of turbines from the other. For a couple minutes as we walked towards the brick wall we didn’t know if we’d be forced to turn around and walk all the way back the way we’d come. Fortunately there was a small metal door in the center of the brick wall, which had been left open.

By the halfway point, I was no longer scared, I knew with every step we were closer to the end and we had figured out the pattern of the holes in the floor. We started singing again and making jokes. The vent was a tremendous echo chamber so no matter what you sang or said it reverberated all around the tunnel. I had to wonder whether anyone was walking through the main tunnel while we were going through the air vent and I wonder what they made of suddenly hearing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” vocals and background vocals, coming from an unknown location in the tunnel. Did they guess where we were? Did they think we were nuts?

Eventually we made it through the tunnel. We had faced the heart of darkness or the darkest depth of the darkest darkness and survived unscathed.