Ends and Odds
Jun. 9th, 2003 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonte1. Batya has the coolest parents. This is based on what they got us for an anniversary gift, and how her father gave it to us.
First he tells us, with some buildup, that he got us The Animatrix. (As two of the 50 or so Matrix fans who liked Reloaded, we like such gifts.) But he got us the DVD,a nd he knows we don't have a DVD player. So at first, it looks like he goofed. And then he rushes off to the back room, grabs something and says, "I guess you'll need this then!"
I like my in-laws for getting us such gifts. And I like my father-in-law for being such a crafty character.
Of course, now we need to feed it. Guess we'll figure out what to rent, what to borrow (items like TV shows), what to get fromt he library, and what to buy. LotR, when it's out as one huge boxed set in fall 2004, of course. Some Buffy and Angel. Simpsons and MASH, maybe. Dick Van Dyke. And The Muppet Show. Gotta have that!
2. So we watched the first three shorts on The Animatrix. The Last Flight of the Osiris, which some may have seen in the theaters attached to Dreamcatcher (or may have seen and left before that film, if you follow Cadhla's advice about Dreamcatcher), was very pretty. It was computer generated and looked very realistic. So much so that you have to wonder why the Wachowskis bother with humans in the Matrix films anymore. But the story was very slim. Basically, if you saw the movie, you don't need to know more, excpet perhpas for the idea that crews aboard hovercrafts use the Construct programs for (shall we say)recreation.
The second and third shorts, "The Second Renaissance" tell of the rise of the machines. And given that the Wachowskis wrote this, it's very disappointing. For four years, I figured that the rise of "AI" meant mainframes and software bundles and the like achieving sentience along the lines of HAL. Instead, we see robots. Lots and lots of robots. It's all rather old-fashioned, and doesn't fit anything we've seen inside the Matrix, where the AIs all seem to be software packages cut free of the physical. it doesn't even match the way things seem to be going in the real world, where robots are not Asimovian humanoids but nanotech. The result is a vision of man's downfall that is simplistic and derivative, chilling in some ways but otherwise not that interesting or worth watching. I wish we could dismiss this as someone else's vision, but we can't. In the end, any comparisions between this and the Terminator universe are all too apt.
Hopefully, the other shorts will be smarter.
3. After five weeks and 1150 pages, I finished "Crytonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. The good news is that Stephenson is a fairly stylish writer, whose command of the English language is beyond that of many SF writers. The bad news is that he doesn't really know what to do with his use of language, and proceeds to write a massive, scattershot and ultimately disappointing brick of a novel. The book is about a present-day hacker whose life changes when he and his business partner start a venture in the Phillipines. It's also about the hacker's grandfather's adventures in WWII as a code-breaker, and about two soldiers, one American and one Japanese, whose lives are affected by the codes broken. At first, the pieces are fascinating, and the characters are interesting. But at about page 500, things slowly begin to fall apart. The present-day narrative shifts gears many times, and in the process the likeable hero becomes rather dull. The WWII stories mesh a bit better, but get increasingly scattered as well. I think Stephenson is trying to make a few points about cryptography and privacy issues, but I can't be sure if that was his purpose of not.
In the end, plots are hastily drawn together, though much is left hanging - the present-day hero never learns what we do about his grandfather - and one seeming death is undone without a world of explanation as to how it happened (or why the death was faked). What started out as a page-turner became a chore, and I started three other books before deciding I'd better finish this one first. I think that Stephenson would be better off if he tried to write a shorter book, and kept his focus. That's not likely to happen, as his next book will be a 944-page prequel featuring ancestors of this book's characters set in the 18th century.
All can I can say is, what a waste of writing skill. So few SF or adventure writers have any talent for words, and here's a writer who does. Alas, he has no talent for plot.
4. Pondering the New York Times again. With the resignation of its two highest editors and further revelations of bad editing and of infighting at all levels, the Times is pretty much adrift now. I wonder where I can get my news from now, whether I can still trust the Times at all. I don't trust CNN to be unbiased. I won't rely on any of the TV networks, even if their websites are much better than their TV coverage. I don't like the BBC's attitude towards Israel. I certainly don't care for any of the overtly conservative news sources. But I need something. Even right now, even with all its faults, the Times still looks good compared to the rest. Sad, ain't it?
First he tells us, with some buildup, that he got us The Animatrix. (As two of the 50 or so Matrix fans who liked Reloaded, we like such gifts.) But he got us the DVD,a nd he knows we don't have a DVD player. So at first, it looks like he goofed. And then he rushes off to the back room, grabs something and says, "I guess you'll need this then!"
I like my in-laws for getting us such gifts. And I like my father-in-law for being such a crafty character.
Of course, now we need to feed it. Guess we'll figure out what to rent, what to borrow (items like TV shows), what to get fromt he library, and what to buy. LotR, when it's out as one huge boxed set in fall 2004, of course. Some Buffy and Angel. Simpsons and MASH, maybe. Dick Van Dyke. And The Muppet Show. Gotta have that!
2. So we watched the first three shorts on The Animatrix. The Last Flight of the Osiris, which some may have seen in the theaters attached to Dreamcatcher (or may have seen and left before that film, if you follow Cadhla's advice about Dreamcatcher), was very pretty. It was computer generated and looked very realistic. So much so that you have to wonder why the Wachowskis bother with humans in the Matrix films anymore. But the story was very slim. Basically, if you saw the movie, you don't need to know more, excpet perhpas for the idea that crews aboard hovercrafts use the Construct programs for (shall we say)recreation.
The second and third shorts, "The Second Renaissance" tell of the rise of the machines. And given that the Wachowskis wrote this, it's very disappointing. For four years, I figured that the rise of "AI" meant mainframes and software bundles and the like achieving sentience along the lines of HAL. Instead, we see robots. Lots and lots of robots. It's all rather old-fashioned, and doesn't fit anything we've seen inside the Matrix, where the AIs all seem to be software packages cut free of the physical. it doesn't even match the way things seem to be going in the real world, where robots are not Asimovian humanoids but nanotech. The result is a vision of man's downfall that is simplistic and derivative, chilling in some ways but otherwise not that interesting or worth watching. I wish we could dismiss this as someone else's vision, but we can't. In the end, any comparisions between this and the Terminator universe are all too apt.
Hopefully, the other shorts will be smarter.
3. After five weeks and 1150 pages, I finished "Crytonomicon" by Neal Stephenson. The good news is that Stephenson is a fairly stylish writer, whose command of the English language is beyond that of many SF writers. The bad news is that he doesn't really know what to do with his use of language, and proceeds to write a massive, scattershot and ultimately disappointing brick of a novel. The book is about a present-day hacker whose life changes when he and his business partner start a venture in the Phillipines. It's also about the hacker's grandfather's adventures in WWII as a code-breaker, and about two soldiers, one American and one Japanese, whose lives are affected by the codes broken. At first, the pieces are fascinating, and the characters are interesting. But at about page 500, things slowly begin to fall apart. The present-day narrative shifts gears many times, and in the process the likeable hero becomes rather dull. The WWII stories mesh a bit better, but get increasingly scattered as well. I think Stephenson is trying to make a few points about cryptography and privacy issues, but I can't be sure if that was his purpose of not.
In the end, plots are hastily drawn together, though much is left hanging - the present-day hero never learns what we do about his grandfather - and one seeming death is undone without a world of explanation as to how it happened (or why the death was faked). What started out as a page-turner became a chore, and I started three other books before deciding I'd better finish this one first. I think that Stephenson would be better off if he tried to write a shorter book, and kept his focus. That's not likely to happen, as his next book will be a 944-page prequel featuring ancestors of this book's characters set in the 18th century.
All can I can say is, what a waste of writing skill. So few SF or adventure writers have any talent for words, and here's a writer who does. Alas, he has no talent for plot.
4. Pondering the New York Times again. With the resignation of its two highest editors and further revelations of bad editing and of infighting at all levels, the Times is pretty much adrift now. I wonder where I can get my news from now, whether I can still trust the Times at all. I don't trust CNN to be unbiased. I won't rely on any of the TV networks, even if their websites are much better than their TV coverage. I don't like the BBC's attitude towards Israel. I certainly don't care for any of the overtly conservative news sources. But I need something. Even right now, even with all its faults, the Times still looks good compared to the rest. Sad, ain't it?
