Saturday, 5 November 2016
Edge of Tomorrow
Remember seeing the posters and not thinking much of it. But it's a cool sci-fi time-travelling story. Almost not too Hollywood-ish.
Friday, 4 November 2016
Midnight Special
Boy shoots light from his eyes and moves to a higher / other plane at the end, while followed by FBI and whatnot.
"A cult classic in the making", the airline's description read. My bad for hoping that might even be slightly true.
"A cult classic in the making", the airline's description read. My bad for hoping that might even be slightly true.
Nightcrawler (2011)
With Jake Gyllenhaal.
Not bad. Lots of LA driving shots, him the dirty reporter that would do anything, including staging a shootout between mobsters and police, and getting his "partner" killed in the process, but it didn't really hit me. Good mood though.
Not bad. Lots of LA driving shots, him the dirty reporter that would do anything, including staging a shootout between mobsters and police, and getting his "partner" killed in the process, but it didn't really hit me. Good mood though.
Tuesday, 1 November 2016
Amy Hempel - "New Stories from the South"
Emily Quinlan - "The Green Belt"
It was hard to be a triplet! You couldn't blame anything on anybody. Always you were there, sitting right across from two copies of yourself who were doing correctly what you had just done wrong.
He didn't know what they were communicating to each other. He used to be better at that, that knowing. These days he brought Pamela coffee when she wanted to sleep, tried to kiss her when she was dreaming of salad.
Marjorie Kemper - "Discovered America"
this story blew me away completely
When we'd pulled up, Dr. Grueber had been working on a GM van in his driveway. He was middle-aged - I couldn't help thinking he was the right age to have worn a German uniform during World War II. He washed his hands at the sink with Borax. He dried them on a towel hanging off the kitchen stove.
"So! Poison ivy!"
"Right," John whispered. John's head had eaten his neck; John was the color of Paul's fire truck, he was in no condition to question his new doctor's credentials, his diagnosis, or his living arrangements.
"Cortisone," the doctor said briskly. "Some pinephrine for good measure, I think," he added, eyeing John.
Dr. Grueber opened the fridge and batted around in it. A family-size bottle of ketchup fell out on the floor. The doctor kicked at it, and it lodged beneath a baseboard that had never seen a scrube brush. He called to the woman in German.
She was leaning against a counter and answered him in English. Hefound was he was looking for in the door. Where she'd said it was.
Abortionists don't, as a rule, have green thumbs.
I knew from the start I couldn't take a chance on having John's baby. To have it was to be stuck with John forever because that's the way I am. And by then I believed that a woman had a right to a life not patched together from mistakes she'd made when she was too young or too dumb to know any better - like marrying a Yankee who talked too loud and didn't like her mother; a man who got midnight hang-up-calls and wanted it every night. (I never bothered hunting for her underwear.)
The bathroom was tiny. You couldn't have swung a cat.
With your automatics, I found driving a car is not that big of a deal. D is for drive. That's pretty much it. I had no need of reverse. The worst part is you can't close your eyes crossing bridges. I drove to Dallas.
But we'd none of us listened, and now it was too late. Death was on television like a beauty pageant; it was in my grandfather's familiar cigarette cough; it was enthroned trumphant in my empty womb; it was depicted on the front page of every newspaper, morning and afternoon, which each new day hit the porch with sickening thuds.
Elizabeth Spencer - "Return Trip"
Patricia got up from the porch and walked in th dark down to the New River. She kicked off her shoes, sat on the boat pier and put her feet in the cool, silky water. It was then she heard the Mississippi voices for the first time. She knew each one for who it was, though they had died years ago or hand't been seen for ages. Sometimes they mentioned Edward and sometimes herself. They talked on and on about unimportant things and she knew them all, each one. She sat and listened, and let the water curl round her feet.
Tim Gautreaux - "IDOLS"
"Take you back?" Julian gave him a startled look. "Didn't you tell me that woman beat you with a broom?"
Obie looked down at his plate and smiled a faraway smile. "Aw, she's just a woman. Can't hurt a man unless she buys a gun."
It was hard to be a triplet! You couldn't blame anything on anybody. Always you were there, sitting right across from two copies of yourself who were doing correctly what you had just done wrong.
He didn't know what they were communicating to each other. He used to be better at that, that knowing. These days he brought Pamela coffee when she wanted to sleep, tried to kiss her when she was dreaming of salad.
Marjorie Kemper - "Discovered America"
this story blew me away completely
When we'd pulled up, Dr. Grueber had been working on a GM van in his driveway. He was middle-aged - I couldn't help thinking he was the right age to have worn a German uniform during World War II. He washed his hands at the sink with Borax. He dried them on a towel hanging off the kitchen stove.
"So! Poison ivy!"
"Right," John whispered. John's head had eaten his neck; John was the color of Paul's fire truck, he was in no condition to question his new doctor's credentials, his diagnosis, or his living arrangements.
"Cortisone," the doctor said briskly. "Some pinephrine for good measure, I think," he added, eyeing John.
Dr. Grueber opened the fridge and batted around in it. A family-size bottle of ketchup fell out on the floor. The doctor kicked at it, and it lodged beneath a baseboard that had never seen a scrube brush. He called to the woman in German.
She was leaning against a counter and answered him in English. Hefound was he was looking for in the door. Where she'd said it was.
Abortionists don't, as a rule, have green thumbs.
I knew from the start I couldn't take a chance on having John's baby. To have it was to be stuck with John forever because that's the way I am. And by then I believed that a woman had a right to a life not patched together from mistakes she'd made when she was too young or too dumb to know any better - like marrying a Yankee who talked too loud and didn't like her mother; a man who got midnight hang-up-calls and wanted it every night. (I never bothered hunting for her underwear.)
The bathroom was tiny. You couldn't have swung a cat.
With your automatics, I found driving a car is not that big of a deal. D is for drive. That's pretty much it. I had no need of reverse. The worst part is you can't close your eyes crossing bridges. I drove to Dallas.
But we'd none of us listened, and now it was too late. Death was on television like a beauty pageant; it was in my grandfather's familiar cigarette cough; it was enthroned trumphant in my empty womb; it was depicted on the front page of every newspaper, morning and afternoon, which each new day hit the porch with sickening thuds.
Elizabeth Spencer - "Return Trip"
Patricia got up from the porch and walked in th dark down to the New River. She kicked off her shoes, sat on the boat pier and put her feet in the cool, silky water. It was then she heard the Mississippi voices for the first time. She knew each one for who it was, though they had died years ago or hand't been seen for ages. Sometimes they mentioned Edward and sometimes herself. They talked on and on about unimportant things and she knew them all, each one. She sat and listened, and let the water curl round her feet.
Tim Gautreaux - "IDOLS"
"Take you back?" Julian gave him a startled look. "Didn't you tell me that woman beat you with a broom?"
Obie looked down at his plate and smiled a faraway smile. "Aw, she's just a woman. Can't hurt a man unless she buys a gun."
Greg Egan - "Permutation City"
'But ... if the pattern that is me could pick itself out from all the other events taking place on this planet ... why shouldn't the pattern we think of as "the universe" assemble itself, in exactly the same way? If I can piece together my own coherent space and time from data scattered so widely that it might as well be part of some giant cloud of random numbers ... then what makes you think that you're not doing the very same thing?'
The djinn's expression hovered between alarm and irritation.
Squeek. 'Paul ... what's the point of all this "Space-time is a construct; the universe is really nothing but a sea of disconnected events ..." Assertions like that are meaningless. You can believe it if you want to ... but what difference would it make?'
'What difference? We perceive - we inhabit - one arrangement of the set of events. But why should that arrangement be unique? There's no reason to believe that the pattern we've found is the only coherent way of ordering the dust. There must be billions of other universes coexisting with us, made of the very same stuff - just differently arranged. If I can perceive events thousands of kilometres and hundreds of seconds apart to be side by side and simultaneous, there could be worlds, and creatures, built up from twhat we'd think of as points in space-time scattered all over the galaxy, all over the universe. We're one possible solution to a giant cosmic anagram ... but it would be ludicrous to believe that we're the only one.'
'We haven't structured the whole thing. The universe is random, at the quantum level. Macroscopically, the pattern seems to be perfect; microscopically, it decays into uncertainty. We've swept the residue of randomness down to the lowest level.'
The most that could be said, at anymoment, was that someone existed who knew - or believed - that they'd once been David Hawthorne.
Peer seemed to be making love ith Kate, but he had his doubts.
'A universe with conscious beings either finds itself in the dust ... or it doesn't. It either makes sense of itself on its own terms, as a self-contained whole ... or not at all. There never can, and never will be, Gods.'
Intriguing philosophical ideas about id and personality, spreading scans of people's minds over thousands of processors (where is the person), slowing them down (where are they in between thoughts).
As a story, not the best. No characters you truly care a lot about. Perhaps I read it too fast. I never got the part of the dust and its patterns well enough to appreciate it enough.
The djinn's expression hovered between alarm and irritation.
Squeek. 'Paul ... what's the point of all this "Space-time is a construct; the universe is really nothing but a sea of disconnected events ..." Assertions like that are meaningless. You can believe it if you want to ... but what difference would it make?'
'What difference? We perceive - we inhabit - one arrangement of the set of events. But why should that arrangement be unique? There's no reason to believe that the pattern we've found is the only coherent way of ordering the dust. There must be billions of other universes coexisting with us, made of the very same stuff - just differently arranged. If I can perceive events thousands of kilometres and hundreds of seconds apart to be side by side and simultaneous, there could be worlds, and creatures, built up from twhat we'd think of as points in space-time scattered all over the galaxy, all over the universe. We're one possible solution to a giant cosmic anagram ... but it would be ludicrous to believe that we're the only one.'
'We haven't structured the whole thing. The universe is random, at the quantum level. Macroscopically, the pattern seems to be perfect; microscopically, it decays into uncertainty. We've swept the residue of randomness down to the lowest level.'
The most that could be said, at anymoment, was that someone existed who knew - or believed - that they'd once been David Hawthorne.
Peer seemed to be making love ith Kate, but he had his doubts.
'A universe with conscious beings either finds itself in the dust ... or it doesn't. It either makes sense of itself on its own terms, as a self-contained whole ... or not at all. There never can, and never will be, Gods.'
Intriguing philosophical ideas about id and personality, spreading scans of people's minds over thousands of processors (where is the person), slowing them down (where are they in between thoughts).
As a story, not the best. No characters you truly care a lot about. Perhaps I read it too fast. I never got the part of the dust and its patterns well enough to appreciate it enough.
Kelly Link - "Pretty Monsters"
The monster stood and looked down adn grinned. "You," it said. It had a voice like a dead tree full of bees: sweet and dripping and buzzing.
She still has that magic touch of estrangeness in her shorts, but I felt like I knew the trick by now. I stopped reading them for some time, because they felt too much the same in voice and eeriness. Still, great writer.
She still has that magic touch of estrangeness in her shorts, but I felt like I knew the trick by now. I stopped reading them for some time, because they felt too much the same in voice and eeriness. Still, great writer.
127 hours
Good film, though the hallucination sequences seemed a bit much and piled up at some point.
Monday, 31 October 2016
7JK - "Star seed" (Ride the Solar Tide)
Its vocals, mixed with the synths, reminded me of that "uullaahh" track on War of the Worlds.
Ursula Le Guin - "The Dispossessed"
There was something lacking - in him, he thought, not in the place. He was not up to it. He was not strong enough to take what was so generously offered. He felt himself dry and arid, like a desert plant, in this beautiful oasis. Life on Anarres had sealed him, closed off his soul; the waters of life welled all around him, and yet he could not drink.
He forced himself to work, but even there he found no certainty. He seemed to have lost the flair which, in his own estimation of himself, he counted as his main advantage over most other physicists, the sense for where the really important problem lay, the clue that led inward to the centre. Here, he seemed to have no sense of direction. He worked at the Light Research Laboraties, read a great deal, and wrote three papers that summer and autumn: a productive half year, by normal standards. But he knew that in fact he had done nothing real.
Enjoyable but in a cold, theoretical sense. Seldom was I moved even a little bit by the characters or what happened to them. In retrospect, I wonder how I felt about Earthsea, whether it was the idea of the story that appealed more to me than its characters.
He forced himself to work, but even there he found no certainty. He seemed to have lost the flair which, in his own estimation of himself, he counted as his main advantage over most other physicists, the sense for where the really important problem lay, the clue that led inward to the centre. Here, he seemed to have no sense of direction. He worked at the Light Research Laboraties, read a great deal, and wrote three papers that summer and autumn: a productive half year, by normal standards. But he knew that in fact he had done nothing real.
Enjoyable but in a cold, theoretical sense. Seldom was I moved even a little bit by the characters or what happened to them. In retrospect, I wonder how I felt about Earthsea, whether it was the idea of the story that appealed more to me than its characters.
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