A Thousand Words: Jodorowsky’s Dune

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Jodorowsky’s Dune

In the early-mid 1970s, arthouse filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky ended up helming an “adaptation” of Dune. The quotes are deliberate as the movie and its tone would have been Starship Troopers/The Natural levels of intentionally different from the book. In 2013, the story of the most extravagant and absurd movie that never was was finally told in the titular documentary.

This is a great production. Everyone is clearly enjoying themselves as they talk about how the production got more and more crazy. Jodorowsky had his own son play a major role, and of course the son talks about it decades later. The art and effects brought together such figures as Jean “Moebius” Giraud, Dan O’Bannon, and H. R. Giger, the latter two of whom would make a monster movie that was a little successful. Yet the all-star cast was the craziest, featuring Orson Welles (paid in free food) as Baron Harkonnen, Salvador Dali, and Mick Jagger.

What makes the documentary shine is its soundtrack, with Kurt Stenzel’s minimalist electronic score being both a perfect accent and a great piece of music in its own right. (Although I’m biased because I like minimal electronic music, fair warning). The cinematography is also effective.

If I had to have one quibble, it’s that the documentary didn’t have the necessary devil’s advocate/reactor scram button to bring things down to earth. The movie is mentioned as being impossible, but in the sense it was too ambitious for Hollywood. In actuality, it would have been unreleasably bizzare, bound to burn money in its production, and simply strange. (There are scenes in at least some versions of Jodorowsky’s Dune that the documentary doesn’t mention, likely because they’re too weird and/or gross). If it actually got out the door, Jodorowsky’s Dune would probably just have been a bloated mess like Marlon Brando’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.

Still, this is a great documentary about a great story, even if it wouldn’t have been a great movie.

Review: Eastern Front 1945

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Eastern Front 1945

An Osprey book on the air war in WWII’s final year, Eastern Front 1945 is about the often-overlooked in the west clash in the eastern skies. It basically does every Osprey book thing right. While it’s not the most detailed, it provides an excellent overview of the somewhat different air war (ie, where the P-39 shined even as it flopped in other theaters).

One thing I particularly liked was how the book accurately showed the air campaign’s influence on postwar Soviet/Russian doctrine. Instead of a “big blue blanket” smothering every enemy in its tracks, it was focused on targeted air superiority and supporting maneuver formations. Which led to February 1945 when the Luftwaffe actually regained air superiority for a time. ( In short, they pulled more or less every propeller fighter away from the fruitless bomber interceptions and were were able to operate from intact developed airbases while the Soviets were worn and had their field strips wrecked by bad weather)

It’s a good look at both Soviet air doctrine being successful and at the eastern air war.

The Imperium Vs. The Death Star

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So the question has to be asked: What about this?

Original source

A Star Wars/Warhammer 40k crossover has to include the battles of evil vs. slightly more justified evil and feature a large Imperial Navy cathedral armada going up against the Death Star (presumably with its own array of Star Destroyers). Now I have put some actual thought into this.

  • The Imperium is not likely to be terribly fazed by the Death Star, thanks to confrontations with giant horrific superweapons being known as “Wednesday” over there.
  • If they cannot overpower it via masses of lances, nova cannons, and whatever other exotic tricks they’d undoubtedly pull out (ie psychic lashes, vortex torpedoes to just shunt it into the warp, etc…), for the main Imperial Navy it would be difficult to duplicate what the Rebel Alliance did. The reason simply is because Warhammer 40k space fighters are substantially larger than their Star Wars counterparts, and their ordnance is the same.
  • However, moving in for a pinpoint strike on a difficult but decisive target is the exact thing that Astartes were made for. So trench runs of Thunderhawks, vacuum chainsword fights, and tossing a melta bomb down the port would make for a fitting story.

Review: Stuck On The Drawing Board

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Stuck On The Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945

Passenger planes made in Britain followed an almost exactly stereotypical British pattern: At first bold and trend-setting, then fell behind due to both luck and skill, finally becoming just an international cog. The could have beens and never weres of this are shown in Richard Payne’s Stuck on the Drawing Board.

This is a fun, if niche, book for aviation enthusiasts. The big problem from the nature of the planes it describes. For passenger planes that are all essentially just tubes with different capacities, VTOLs and odd shapes are the absolute most different you’re going to get.

But this isn’t the book’s fault, and you’re left with a fun look at what could have happened before the 707 and its successors crushed any hope of a full-scale British aviation industry.

My Take On The Female Astartes

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So time for one of the biggest internet controversies surrounding the Warhammer 40k fandom. Note that I said “internet controversies”, not “controversies”. This post therefore might be controversial itself. Oh well.

This has to do with Female Space Marines. In-game, for basically all of 40ks solidified existence, the gene-seed that produces the super-space-knights who serve as the mascots of the setting only works with men. Games Workshop has been extremely strict and clear with this. Some online advocates have opposed this and wanted a change.

I’m pretty firmly in the the “no female space marines” category, and not just because my Imperial Guard doesn’t have this problem in the slightest.

“No female repre”-I’m sorry, she can’t hear you over the sound of her supertank’s engine.

I think one of my reasons is because a Space Marine has become a very specific thing. I would even argue that if you asked a layperson unfamiliar with the setting to describe one, you’d end up with either a Sister of Battle or a female Tempestus Scion (neither of which has any issue). Those can and do exist without any issue. Female techpriestesses can and do exist without issue, if you like someone so covered in augumentations that their initial number of chromosomes becomes irrelevant. Female Eldar and Tau can and do exist…

In fact, this is the diversity argument I have. If female space marines were adopted, they’d actually make the setting significantly less diverse. It means (even) more of the already pushed setting mascots and (even) less of the factions where this isn’t an issue.

(As for diversity in the setting overall, I have three big takes:

  • It’s still a pulpy sci-fantasy kitchen sink. Like Catachans are not anthropologist-approved examples of life in an inhumanly harsh jungle, they’re 80s action stars en masse. This is the least hard sci-fi setting imaginable.
  • Diversity means something a lot different in 41st millennium terms than it does in 2nd millennium ones.
  • SISTERS DO NOT JUST HAVE WHITE HAIR AND BLACK ARMOR, THEY HAVE AN ENTIRE RAINBOW OF COLORS IN THEIR MANY ORDERS, GW PLEASE REMEMBER THIS. )

Forge-ing ahead

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For pretty much my entire Stable Diffusion use, I’ve been using the A1111 web interface. Now Forge, a newer and faster/more efficient version of it, is out. I’ve installed it. The problem is moving over, both literally (ie all my extensions/models) and metaphorically.

Well, you have to start somewhere…

Review: Raven

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Raven

William Kinsolving’s 1983 novel Raven is an aviation pop epic about one Buck Faulkner and his family. Faulkner starts his aviation company in the 1930s, which starts with a 21 seat airliner and moves up. Like many other traditional pop epics of the time, we get a mixture of semi-spicy personal drama and big picture discussion about airline orders.

This is no technothriller and Kinsolving is clearly just modeling the planes on famous existing ones. However, (and this sounds like faint praise), he at least knows the basics. This is no Ian Slater. Some of the names may be a little goofy, but that’s it.

As for the novel itself, it’s a good 51% book. It’s not the absolute greatest, but as a brief time passer, it works. Plus it manages to avoid at least some of the pitfalls of authors writing about technology, so it has that in its favor.

Review: Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

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Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation

Every so often I get a textbook that is not really the best to conventionally review at all, much less amongst cheap thrillers. Nuclear Safeguards, Security, and Nonproliferation is one of those books. I feel a little guilty reviewing it because the target audience is scientists and the like who know the math, physics, and engineering subject matter a loooooooooooooooooooooot more than an armchair enthusiast like myself. So yeah, a lot of this goes over my head. And that’s fine.

If the “Type 1 Academese” was understandable and inevitable, the “Type 2” is a legit point of criticism. Despite the fact that anyone who’s read a single piece on the modern history of South Africa would instantly grasp why the post-apartheid government gave up the nuclear weapons, the book explains this in a long and pretentious way. Where I think this is more than a stylistic issue is how it wouldn’t be easy to get its points across to a non-scientist, whereas other similarly dense works on the same topic are still more understandable.

Review: Bloodlines (Warhammer Crime)

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Bloodlines (Warhammer Crime)

I love Warhammer 40k and have some connection to mysteries, so getting Chris Wraight’s Warhammer Crime novel Bloodlines was obvious. Then I started reading it and felt disappointed. Now as a mystery novel, it’s 51% all right. If this was a contemporary or original sci-fi mystery, I wouldn’t think much more of it.

The problem is that it doesn’t take advantage of its setting. Now I’m not expecting or demanding an Ultramarine and an Ork on every corner, but this just never felt like a Warhammer 40k novel. It felt like a basic post-Blade Runner dark sci-fi city mystery only with more skulls and 40k terminology. Which didn’t make the book bad but did feel it wasted its potential.