| Les-Mioux overleden |
[01 Jun 2012|05:31pm] |
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“’t Is een soort tennisbal met een pingpongbal erop, twee oren en een sliertje, maar dan wollig en pluizig! Hij is zo lief!”: zo omschreef ik Les-Mioux als kitten door de telefoon aan The Big Kahuna. Ondanks dat ik er op dat moment zo mijn twijfels over had, groeide die pluizige tennisbal echt uit tot een kat. Wollig en pluizig (tot de headeraanpassing vorig jaar jarenlang de ondertitel van dit blog) bleef hij echter zijn hele leven. Lief ook trouwens.
Hoewel hij misschien geen allemansvriend (lees: liefdevolle, maar toch invasieve dominante sticker) was zoals Rood, zat je als Les-Mioux je aardig vond voorgoed gebeiteld. En moest je hem vervolgens af en toe ongeveer van je toetsenbord/krant/boek/schoot af beitelen om nog iets gedaan te krijgen, maar dat nam ik voor lief. Zijn “hey-je-bent-er-weer-oh-nee-ik-ben-boos-op-je-want-je-bent-zonder-mij-op-vakantie-gegaan-en-nu-negeer-ik-jou”-acties waren legendarisch. En duurden, afhankelijk van hoe lang ik weggeweest was, van een paar uur tot een paar dagen. Nee, omkoperij met hapjes werkte niet. Dit was een Kat Met Principes.
Het merendeel van zijn leven woonde hij bij mij in Amsterdam, maar na het overlijden van zijn BFF Rood verhuisde hij eerst naar Kattenfluisteraar T. en vervolgens naar The Big Kahuna. Het wat pijnlijke hoe en waarom van deze verhuizingen heb ik in deze post beschreven.
Een aantal van zijn wat malle gedragingen (balletjes apporteren, anyone?) weet ik aan het huis waarin hij zijn vroege jeugd doorbracht: zowel de kat als de hond des huizes hadden op dat moment een nestje en de boel krioelde gezellig door elkaar. De kraambedden stonden in de badkamer, wat in mijn psychologie van de koude kat zijn obsessie met badkamers en (drinken uit) toiletten verklaarde.
Het feit dat hij Klinefelter was, leidde bij de jaarlijkse bezoekjes aan de dierenarts tot grote belangstelling van assistenten en stagiaires, want het komt relatief weinig voor en is vaak ook niet goed te herkennen bij katten. Bij Les-Mioux was het duidelijk omdat hij behalve zijn grijstonen ook rode stukken vacht had, wat hem technisch gezien een lapjeskater maakte.
Behalve een operatie door een heuse kattenchirurg na ernstig verkeersongeluk in 1998 (waarbij 1/3 van het midden van zijn darm verwijderd werd en de twee delen daarna weer netjes aan elkaar genaaid werden!) was hij altijd in uitstekende gezondheid. Ik schrok dan ook behoorlijk toen ik vorig jaar een flinke bult op zijn borst ontdekte. Hoewel die bult radicaal verwijderd werd, hield ik er rekening mee dat dit het begin van het einde kon zijn. Laten we het erop houden dat werken in een ziekenhuis waar 75% van je patiënten kanker heeft je een realistisch beeld geeft van prognoses en het ziekteverloop.
Een paar maanden lang ging het uitstekend met Les-Mioux: hij kwam weer op gewicht, zag er goed uit en was actief. Met Oud & Nieuw kwamen hij en The Big Kahuna zelfs bij mij logeren om aan het vuurwerkgeweld in Daar-Waar-TBK-Woont te ontkomen.
De laatste paar weken echter werd hij langzaam maar zeker steeds slomer en had hij moeite met eten. Ook had hij er duidelijk geen zin meer in. Ondanks stille hoop dat het “aan de hitte” of “aan het voer” lag, wisten The Big Kahuna en ik hoe laat het was. Een bezoek aan de dierenarts vanochtend bevestigde ons vermoeden: Les-Mioux woog nog slechts 3,4 kilo, was uitgedroogd en had een grote tumor in zijn buik. Behandeling zou zijn leven een paar weken rekken, we hebben besloten dat niet te doen. De Roze Spuit deed haar werk snel en effectief. Les-Mioux is rond 11.00 vanochtend rustig overleden op 16 1/2 jarige leeftijd.
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Les-Mioux op 31 mei 2012
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| Back from Montana |
[30 May 2012|11:09am] |
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Back home again from Missoula, Montana, where I spent the weekend as GOH at Miscon 26.
'twas my first trip to Montana, and I can't say I really saw much of it, but Missoula was a pleasant little city, and the con itself was great. They drew 1300 people, I'm told, a record for Miscon, and I think all of them had a great time. I know I did. Miscon fen party like we did in the old days, and the hotel -- Ruby's, a small indy with local ownership -- was really great. None of the nonsense with noise complaints and shutting down parties and elevators that has plagued so many cons of late. In fact, some of the hotel management partied with us.
So a tip of the hat to Justin, Cthulhu Bob, Clay, and the rest of the Miscon Miscreants, and to Tim, Dustan, and Vicky from Ruby's. You were great.
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| Social Gaming |
[22 May 2012|10:21am] |
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I don't know much about social media. I don't have a facebook or twitter account. But I've been told a few people have them, and that some of those people like to play social media games. I'm told the biggest social media game involves running a farm.
Surely, I thought, there must be something one could do on social media that would be more fun that growing turnips and feeding chickens. Like, say, scheming and plotting, murders and marriages, contesting for power.
HBO shared the feeling, and together we have granted the license for a social media game based on GAME OF THRONES to a great new start-up company called Disruptor Beam ((http://disruptorbeam.com/ )) Game development is already well under way.
Jon Radoff, CEO of Disruptor Beam, says:
"This will be the first Facebook game based on the TV series and books and, trust me, this game isn’t just going to be another Farmville! George RR Martin is working very closely with Disruptor Beam to ensure the game will deliver an authentic experience. I can tell you that it will not only be highly story and character-driven, but Game of Thrones Ascent will give you the chance to experience the world from your own perspective and with your own friends."
"Sounds fun, right!? Want to know more? Well, additional information about the game will be released in the coming months, including details about how to participate in a pre-release beta program. To follow its progress, be sure to “like” Game of Thrones Ascent on Facebook (http://facebook.com/gameofthronesascent) or follow on Twitter (https://twitter.com/#!/GoTAscent)."
I saw several early versions of the game demonstrated, and Jon and his designers took great pains to make sure the flavor of the novels is here. I saw alliance building, treachery, marriages, murders, and most of all the constant struggle to be the greatest house in Westeros.
So create a character, pick a liege lord to swear to, and start playing the game the way Tyrion would, because in this game you win or you die.
(No turnips will be involved).
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| THE VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE by A.E. van Vogt |
[22 May 2012|12:46am] |
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It's been a while since I bored into a book like a hopped-up literary woodpecker, so here's some brain spillage originally written last year and never posted.
Left: "Black Destroyer," 1939
Right: Current edition from Orb Books.
Hot jets, Kinnison! What a jaunt in the way-back machine this is. I first became aware of The Voyage of the Space Beagle via Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials as a kid, and once again waited a mere two decades before reading the source material. At this rate, I'll have all of my seventh-grade math homework turned in by December, 2013.
Voyage is a 1950 fix-up of four previously published short stories, forming a loosely chronological account of the titular Space Beagle's multi-year exploration beyond the confines of the Milky Way. Its thousand-man crew, chemically castrated for the duration to keep their minds firmly on Doing Science, is preyed upon by a series of increasingly dangerous creatures, and must also deal with internal pressures, scientific disputes, and a case of dreaded SPACE MADNESS.
The Voyage of the Space Beagle was influential as all hell, out of proportion to what's actually on the page. Philip K. Dick claimed van Vogt as a major influence; so did Harlan Ellison. You can see it here, a distinct flavor that was carried into Ellison's early SF work. You can also see this book's profound effect on Star Trek, with its strange planets, predatory aliens, and mysterious threats to the ship. Van Vogt even took legal action against the producers of the 1979 movie Alien, a suit that was settled out of court, based on arguable similarities between xenomorphs and his own egg-implanting Ixtl.
Voyage is an affable relic of the Big Science Done Big era of SF. The ship jaunts about at hyperluminary speeds, courtesy of Whoosh-Zoom engines powered by authorial whim. There are all the expected toys... gigantic heat-rays, semi-portable atomic furnaces, visiplates, vibrator guns. It has the same ludicrous-but-lovable feel of Doc Smith's Lensmen series, where scientific progress is almost always just a matter of dumping more power into a bigger thingamajig (if you yelled "BUS BARS!" just now, bless you).
What it isn't, curiously enough, is a true log of a voyage and its voyagers. The episodic nature of the story would be less stark if there were some context provided, some glimpse of home, some notion of how the Space Beagle compares to anything else humanity is doing. Exploring vacuum in a vacuum is not as interesting as it could be. No real narrative integument was provided when these short stories were stitched into the vague shape of a novel.
Also, the real heart of the book, for which the voyage is merely a framing device, is how an advanced interdisciplinary approach to the sciences called Nexialism proves the best solution to each of the Beagle's challenges when the more stratified and traditional sciences allegedly fall short of the big picture. This is all well and good as far as hobbyhorses go, but it would have helped the story if some of the solutions implemented to fend off each alien attack weren't so conveniently dim-witted.
For example, in the novel's first major incident, adapted from the short story "Black Destroyer," a panther-like creature called coeurl feigns harmlessness to get aboard the Beagle. Coeurl is actually a ravenous, ultra-strong, life-draining predator, with the ability to detect and manipulate energy using whisker-like appendages. It can neutralize the deadly force of human weapons, a fact the humans realize once the thing is on the loose and killing people. So, when coeurl (constantly referred to by the men as "pussy")* locks itself in the Beagle's engine spaces, what do they do? Do they even attempt to poison it? To asphyxiate it? Nope. They wheel out their gigantic heat-ray projectors and start melting their way into the engine room.
Yes. To deal with an energy-manipulating creature, they hurl more energy at it! While it's mucking with the ship's engines, no less. The Beagle is described as having a truly impressive workshop capacity, but even so, you'd think the notion of blasting apart your own engine compartment when your ship is thousands of light-centuries from home would give sober and non-libidinous men pause. What do they expect to do if they melt their propulsion center, break out the oars?
There is also a puzzlingly gimlet-eyed overuse of purely speculative social science (though van Vogt deserves props for making his social scientist, Korita, Japanese in a time when the Japanese were not exactly sympathetically portrayed in much American media). Korita is constantly brought on stage to speculate on the social structure and cultural foibles of the singular aliens the Beagle encounters, always in the complete absence of any shred of context or evidence. Yet Korita is made to accurately diagnose potential weaknesses in the hearts and minds of these creatures (nobody even brings up the possibility that these entities might be outcast or atypical) This ain't science, even in a context that generously allows for atomic rayguns and Whoosh-Zoom engines. It's bullshit without a scaffold.
Despite this, The Voyage of the Space Beagle still moves smoothly across the eyeballs in a way too many of its contemporaries couldn't aspire to even when they were fresh. It's reasonable and penetrable fun; penetrable, perhaps, because it had such a hand in defining a certain geometry of space opera still quite familiar to us decades later.
Damon Knight was often criticized for his perceived harshness toward van Vogt's work, but I think Knight judged fairly in 1950 when he wrote: "...this department's thesis on van Vogt is (a) that the man has a very respectable talent as a writer, and (b) that he consistently misuses it." Van Vogt operated energetically in both the thoughtful and thoughtless modes of invention, and if he fell short of constructing mature narratives, at least he had the ability to occasionally evoke real feelings of mystery and awe.
*****
*It is an exceptionally juvenile cheap shot, I admit, but it's difficult to keep a straight face at frequent reference to how the voyagers "beat pussy" and "chased pussy off the ship." They're two million light-years from the nearest woman and drenched in libido-deadening drugs; no shit they chased pussy off the ship.
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| Next Sunday |
[21 May 2012|05:46pm] |
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Coming next Sunday, to a television near you.
I'll be watching from Montana.
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| Last Chance for Longclaw |
[21 May 2012|11:43am] |
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Just got a note from Chris Beasley at Valyrian Steel.
He writes, "Just wanted to let you know that Longclaw is almost permanently sold out. I do not expect it to last through the month of June."
So if perchance you're one of the folks who has been saving your dimes and nickles to pick up one of the Longclaw replicas, act now, or you may soon be out of luck. These swords are limited editions, so once they are gone, they are gone. Valyrian Steel will not be making any more.
(I should add that Valyrian Steel has obtained a license from HBO to produce replicas of the weapons seen on the TV series, so they will be producing a "show Longclaw" at some point down the line. I don't believe that one will be a limited run. This post relates only to their current version of Jon Snow's blade, produced under a direct license from me -- the "book Longclaw," that is. That's the one that is almost sold out).
To order, head over to the Valyrian Steel website at
http://www.valyriansteel.com/shop/
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