Various Bits of SF Geekery

Because apparently I can't blog anything of subtance for more than a paragraph or two lately.

• In a similar vein that Tor.com hopes to tap, I've been trolling through io9.com to see what was up. Found some neat spoilers on the upcoming Battlestar Gallactica and lots of speculation about the summer SF goodness coming at us. And then, in a lovely piece the likes of which don't appear on the site often, a fab essay on rules for writing short fiction. Though I must say that the art work is a head-scratcher. I mean, I get that women are depicted as sex objects first in most comics and SFnal art work, but wow. Never have I seen such attention given to breasts so that I understand that the lady in question used to wear a more substantial bra but has recently opted not to. Tan lines are a bitch.
  



• It was all over the internets last week that the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons died. Many great tributes were paid, nearly all of them referencing the game play in some fashion or another. My favorite was Charles Stross's spin roll, as he lumped in current politics, and he's a Brit at that. All I can say is, as long as the Cheney card is in play, looks like we're stuck between Barack and a Hard Face. (My experience with D&D is limited to some guy who was sweet on me trying to introduce me to the gaming life, and I got cross-eyed at all the rules and rulebooks. Though, later, I did get to enjoy a RPGer condescending to me in horrid, sexist fashion so he didn't have to leave the game he was playing at a con. Must say, between the two exposures, I've not really been interested in learning more.)
  


• Watched the SG1 movie, The Ark of Truth, last night and came away mostly disappointed. Most of this is because the movie was sending me cues left and right that it was supposed to be EPIC, and I just didn't buy it. Intense and grand music scores, sweeping panoramas, save-two-galaxies-at-once stakes, etc. The problem with trying to make this movie epic was that the story was essentially a two-hour season finale. It's hard to get into the standalone epic feeling when you've got two seasons of television shoring up all the backstory and characterisation so that the plot can be hurled at you with big 'splosions. (And, actually, they still ended up cheating us out of a decent build up to the whole concept of the ark and its origins and moral ambiguity. Also, there's direct Deus Ex Machina that further flattens the feel of the movie out of its epic aspirations.) That being said, I am very much looking forward to the second movie as the story is not a direct continuation of a plotline developed in the series. It seems much more likely to offer a good standalone movie with a universe and characters I enjoy.