Tag: 2010s

Review: Dominion

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Dominion

CJ Sansom’s Dominion is a combination spy story and exploration of the classic Axis victory World War II alternate history. Britain is defeated but not “hard-conquered” in World War II, the Germans control the continent but continue to fight in the east, and with the Americans the only nuclear power, now everyone else wants the secret, with a man with nuclear knowledge trying to escape. And that’s basically about as much of a central plot there is in this novel.

It honestly reminded me a lot of Harry Turtledove’s In The Presence of Mine Enemies. Not the obvious divergence or setting, but rather the tone and pace. It’s a push through a dreary, dull, banality of evil world where evil triumphed over good. Which isn’t exactly the best to read about. Its biggest problem is that a lot of exposition is devoted to its background and worldbuilding, which just amounts to “the Germans won and a lot of bad stuff happened”. It’s a setting-first book in a setting that’s neither very pleasant nor interesting.

Plus while ‘plausibility’ is normally not the highest priority in alternate history, this just feels wrong. Britain becoming a satellite state of Germany without a military invasion and being able to not have its already eager-for-independence possessions secede? (Like India, which somehow hasn’t gone independent). I’d honestly accept a successful invasion over this.

The whole thing just feels unfocused, and when it does focus, it goes to the wrong thing. Not the best alternate history out there.

A Thousand Words: Initial D

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Initial D

One of the most famous car racing works of fiction and the biggest reason why people know the ‘eurobeat’ subgenre of electronic music, Initial D is the reason why there are so many memes of cars and “RUNNING IN THE NINETIES” and “GAS GAS GAS”. It’s the story of ‘touge’ racing through winding mountain roads, tofu deliveryman/prodigy driver Takumi Fujiwara, and the Toyota Corolla AE86, which thanks to it has gained popularity well beyond what a mid-80s Corolla would get.

Seriously, it’s like how in Red Storm Rising the Iceland invasion was a crazy jury-rigged gamble but so much else treats it like normal and standard. The whole point is that it’s an underestimated clunker. It’s like a tank novel with an M48 or T-54 or something with an ace crew and everyone thinks it’s the tank. But I digress.

This is basically an action show/manga with cars instead of glowing superheroes. The most famous “First Stage” initial (no pun intended) anime adaptation holds this to the core: With early CG and blaring music, characters dramatically take actions graaaaaduallly and somehow have the ability to hold huge monologues and conversations while roaring through perilous streets. It honestly sounds better than it actually is, with the pattern of ‘how is this ’86 winning’ being worn down even then.

But still, that music…

A Thousand Words: BeamNG Drive

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BeamNG Drive

One reason why Fuldapocalypse hasn’t been updating much is BeamNG Drive. It is an automobile sandbox with realistic physics that allows someone to do so much. Now on its own the game does not look like much. You can drive around maps that range from tiny to several virtual square kilometers, do some challenges like races or time trials or seeing how far you can get on an almost empty fuel tank, etc…

But that is like saying like sports is just throwing/kicking a ball around. With just the stock game (and the mods for this are numerous and excellent), you can control everything from big truck fronts to tiny old cars. The seemingly mundane can turn into fun, like towing a trailer with cargo many times the weight of the car pulling it, and doing so on a dirt mountain road without mishaps (easier said than done).

You have to make your own fun in BeamNG, but there’s a lot of it.

Review: The Athlete

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The Athlete

With football/handegg season now upon us, I figure a sports book is in order. As good as any other is Jon Finkel’s The Athlete, a biography of Charlie Ward, a quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy and then went on to a long and successful pro career…. as a basketball player. Especially since, by basketball standards anyway, Ward wasn’t even very tall.

To get the negative out of the way, this is a rose-tinted view of him that excuses one of his most infamous incidents (which thankfully just amounted to him saying something dumb and not doing anything). It also praises him as if he was Jim Thorpe or Bo Jackson, which is just a little too much in my eyes. But it’s still an interesting look at a man who succeeded in two places where almost everyone can’t succeed in one.

A final interesting piece is that Finkel doesn’t really try to answer the counterfactual everyone is going to ask: Could Ward have been a viable NFL quarterback? Could have been Russell Wilson two decades earlier, or an undersized runt who’d get crushed by pro defenders? The correct answer is “We don’t know”, but it’s a little disappointing to not even consider it.

While not the best book, this is a good look at someone I knew growing up from his time on the Knicks.

Review: Star Eagles

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Having loved Starmada, I eagerly embraced Star Eagles as a fighter equivalent. I wanted a small unit space fighter game that balanced customization with play-ability and am happy to note that it succeeded in sating that desire. Star Eagles is based on movement templates, activation dice, and special playing cards that a player can use.

It’s not perfect, but I’ve been able to do viable battles with a lot of ships adapted from a lot of different ideas, and that’s what matters. I recommend it to tabletop space battle enthusiasts.

Review: Xeelee Redemption

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Xeelee Redemption

Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee Redemption is not one of his finest literary moments. What it offers in both theory and practice isn’t any better than his other, better books. And it’d have to be to make up for the huge retcon that ranks as one of my least favorite of all time. Not that the rest of the book is anything special, given that the plot consists entirely of worldbuilding opportunities.

Anyway, after the Baxterian infodumps and excuse plots, the reader finally gets the chance to view a semi-retconned[1] actual physical Xeelee. And it’s just a space bug. Not Exultant’s so totally beyond lesser comprehension beings that effectively are whatever piece of technology they put their Clarketech spirits into, but just a slightly unconventional space bug.

Disapoint.

[1]The term “retcon” is hard when time travelers in universe are constantly changing everything, but it is a distinction.

Review: Is There Life After Football

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Is There Life After Football: Surviving The NFL

A look at life as an American Football player by sociologists and former NFL player James Koonce, Is There Life After Football is a very interesting and evenhanded tale of how football players (and to a degree many other athletes) struggle culturally. While very few of its points are surprising or shocking, it’s well-written and handled.

The authors are eager to debunk some of the skewed and sensationalist claims of football players recklessly spending piles of money and then ending up as brain-damaged hobos. Careful to cite formal studies, they point out that there isn’t a disproportionately high amount of either financial or legal trouble amongst NFL veterans (a point others such as former player Merrill Hoge have made)-but that it still can and does often happen, with a look at the cultural dynamics to see why.

Indeed this manages to mostly avoid the twin sportswriting perils of what I call the “Johnny Manziel” and “Colin Kaepernick” paths, to use two quarterbacks who both got (in?)famous for things that had nothing to do with their play on the field. The Manziel route is classic media focusing on the freak show excesses, portraying the players as overpaid, under-mature babies, often with moral scolding. (Spoiler alert: Some players are just that). The Kaepernick route is the more modern “sensibility” in which every single player is an underpaid exploited victim of Evil Capitalist Society.

If I had to quibble, I’d say that they lump NFL players too closely together. The stats are skewed by short-career replacement level players, and the compartmenalization of different positions and paths is well-known. Their talk of the “conveyor belt” should have brought more attention to hyped prospects who flame out. The authors mention old-timers who had to work in the offseason and bubble fringe players who knew very well that they were living on the edge. But I’d be curious to see the end result of the worst of all worlds-a sheltered pampered college stardom followed by just legitimately not having the talent to match at the pro level.

But these are minor concerns for an excellent book.

Review: Three Week Professionals

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Three Week Professionals

Though not the deepest sports book, Ted Kluck’s Three Week Professionals tells the story of the 1987 NFL replacement players with humor and the right tone. On one hand, the players had more of a justification for striking than was often the case given the lack of free agency and the sport being incredibly harsh. On the other, it was poorly handled and working-class people even at the time thought little of it.

As both a time capsule and a short breezy history, this book is good. Not deep, but it’s not supposed to be. It is fun and that’s what matters.

Review: Xeelee Vengeance

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Xeelee: Vengeance

I wanted to like Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee: Vengeance, a tale of time travel, Clarketech, and the most alien aliens that ever aliened.

Unfortunately, this book has one problem. One central problem that is common to all extreme setting-first stories. One central problem that it does absolutely nothing to try and fix: Namely it’s mostly exposition about worldbuilding and speculative physics and whatever. So we get a ton of detail on this futuristic Earth (and Baxter’s other stories), the aliens (and Baxters other stories), every little quirk and thingy (and Baxter’s other stories) and even… Baxter’s other stories. The problem is that if you’ve read a decent amount of the other stories, none of the twists or mysteries work.

When we finally get to the showdown between protagonist Michael Poole and the time-warped Xeelee nightfighter, the book has already dragged on forever and even that drags on forever as well. It’s conceptually interesting but the execution is just terrible. Like “have a detour of padding to reference the John Carter of Mars books” terrible.

Thing is, as an eager worldbuilder myself, I can understand why Baxter did what he did. But as a reader it becomes hard to like it. You have to balance, and this was intentionally unbalanced.

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.