0

Hugo Hurry Along

So I am falling more than a little behind in the Hugo Reading Race, two books left to go and not a great deal of time to read them. I had also hoped to read all of the short stories and novellas too if possible – though that goal may prove too ambitious at this stage.

Anyway, here is the latest, and boy did I get stuck on this one. It wasn’t that it was a chore to read, I just kept stumbling along all sorts of other material and found myself devouring it instead. Magazines, online content, comics, other books. Anything other than the novel in question. Which leads me to the novel in question -

Trade Secret – I actually do a draft copy of these scorecards. That is right, what you have been seeing are the 2nd, neater versions. (As I may have mentioned previously on this blog I grip writing implements like an ape unfamiliar with the tools of man, and the resulting writing gets pretty illegible I’m afraid…)

I enjoyed this book, I mean what’s not to enjoy – zombies, airships, lots of characters with a legitimite,  environmentally-based reason to dress like they are at a Steampunk ball. So yeah, I liked it. I did not love it. I’m not going to buy it, and I couldn’t see me ever picking up a copy that was laying about for a re-read. We had a nice time but it is not coming up for coffee, and I will not be calling it in a day or two.

A few reasons. It did not surprise me. I mean, ever surprise me. The closest there was to a plot revelation was a something that I had already assumed was the case a few chapters in. Not much really happened, I mean there was set pieces galore and plenty of furtive and adventuresome travel through a condemned and forgotten alternate-Seattle but I found it all a bit claustrophobic, the story never really took flight for me. (Also – I found the geography a complete mystery. I admit following such things is not my strong point but as far as I could tell it was all just “Up, we need to go up!” and “The only way out it down, try to head down!” If you say so….)

My next difficulty I can practically copy and paste from my earlier Wind-Up Girl post – I did not care about the characters. The mother and son duo I was supposed to be rooting for? Meh. Ezekiel was a brat, and Briar wasn’t much better. Am I just supposed to like them because they have cool names? I mean there names are cool, I am not arguing – but what were there defining characteristics? Briar was what… feisty? Good with a rifle? Ezekiel was.. 15? Pissed off all the time? As for the rest of the characters -with the notable exception of Lucy – they all seemed to a succession of broad chested men with different shaped helmets.  The few villains of the piece were very sketchily drawn. Dr Minnerecht I found uncomfortably cliche, he may as well have steepled his fingers and given an evil laugh or two as he trotted out the obligatory ‘you are my guests, enjoy my plush hospitality but you cannot leave speech’. (His right hand-man-lieutenant-type initially seemed quite interesting, but his role proved to be cameo-sized.)

The last thing that I found underwhelming, (and feel free to argue here) was the lack of any kind of levity. I didn’t crack a smile throughout the whole book. I mean sure – the world of the novel is a pretty grim place, but since when did that stop a chuckle or two? Personally I think if the author was  shooting for any kind of  ‘adventure-romp’ tone, adding a touch of black humour might not have been amiss. But apparently the people the Blight-gas didn’t turn into “rotters” had their funny-bones boiled away. (Along with their libidos it seems… but don’t get me started on that.)

All right. Only two books left, on to Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente we go!

This cover is about as Steampunk as you can get without featuring actual steam. Actually, the right lens of her oh-so-hip-with-the-kids brass goggles looks a little steamed, so there you go…

35

A Lawn Defence at Any Hour

The promised video:

Featuring in order of appearance-

Lizbt Action -  Sunflower, Co-Producer, and Tasty Craft Services

MJ - Road-cone Zombie, Assistant Dolphin Colourist

M13ky – Screen Door Zombie,  Constant Twitter Liaison

Wild Particle – Butter-On-His-Head Zombie, Co-Producer, Director and Sunflower Headgear Design

Lili – Gardener Zombie, Offal Wrangler and Road-cone Provider

OceanUnicorn – Football Zombie, Mistress of the Make-Up, Corn-Cob Stunt Girl

Look upon our mighty lip-syncing skills ye mortals and perish!

Another shot of the cast, looking much more glamorous now that they are famous on the internet…

0

I have been breaking up my important Plants vs. Zombies project with novel writing sessions.

Not entirely sure when things got switched around like that, but here’s the proof…

Zombies = 0  Wild Particle’s Lawn = 1

Procrastination = 2

Novel = 1.ehh

2

When Nothing But The Anything Else Will Do

Working on the novel just makes the lure of distracting things even more lur-iffic.

So in the spirit of self-torment I have been breaking up writing sessions by playing Popcap’s addictive, Plants vs. Zombies. I’m not really in the ‘casual games’ demographic, but Popcap’s Peggle was the crack-cocaine-like exception to this rule for me, and PvZ turns out to be a  very entertaining little tower defense game. I am hooked.

My other zombie distraction of choice is the copy of Left 4 Dead that arrived in the mail the other day. A surprise addition to my gaming swag. I had almost bought this game, having heard good things and read glowing reviews. What stopped me were the reports that it was purely multiplayer. I’ve never really been a multiplayer kind of gamer. LAN, yes, as I enjoy playing with actual real-life associates, but being shot over and over again by faceless 1337 14-year olds playing Counter-Strike never really caught on for me. (I have extremely warm memories of private Quake deathmatch sessions at a friend’s family-owned computer training business in the mid 90’s, though…)

Anyway I’ve been playing the Left 4 Dead single player (multiplayer with bots) campaign and I can see what’s to like. It does feel like a Zombie movie, (the film grain effect is nice)  and I have been genuinely startled once or twice by a horde of ‘infected’ rushing at me. The ‘AI controller’ sounds like an innovative game mechanic, though not sure exactly how it effects the in-game enemies behaviour. The whole thing is a tad repetitive though. Shoot zombie, turn corner, shoot zombie, go up stairs, shoot more zombies, make it to safe room, start new level, shoot zombies, repeat. I’ve tried to play online through steam once or twice, but couldn’t seem to find any active games. I’m probably doing something wrong, I know.

In the spirit of not writing and all things zombie I watched ‘28 Days Later’ at midnight last night, the first viewing surprisingly enough. (I know, I know, everyone else saw it 7 years ago when it came out. What can I say? I was waiting for just the right time…) So I know now where pretty much the whole Left 4 Dead concept came from, down to the graffiti on the walls and the behaviour of the ‘infected’. And yes, to concur with what the rest of the world was thinking 7 years ago, its a pretty solid film.

I also watched Terminator : Salvation yesterday (See? Anything to avoid writing…) so I had that expensive piece of cinematic nothingness to compare it to. I had heard lots of complaints about various plot elements and other things from people, but no-one had mentioned to me how utterly boring, humourless and empty a film it was. It was like a Michael Bay eye-candy actioner trying to be a worthy and thoughtful piece of cinema with something profound to say. Only they didn’t seem to have two ideas to rub together and I couldn’t care less about any of the characters. *shrug*

Okay, back to writing. I mean writing the book and not this blog.

A Boomer from Left 4 Dead. Not to be confused with Boomer from Battlestar Galactica. (It is also a good representation of how I felt after having three servings of home-cooked curry followed by gourmet chocolate and ice-cream on Friday night. Thanks Warren and Julia…)