Noel Rappin Writes Here

I’m granting myself amnesty for about six months of unreviewed books to mention a couple of recently read books. Pirate Sun, Karl Schroeder I think that of all the authors I enjoy, Schroeder is the most criminally under-read. If you like SF, I tell you that Virga – the background of Pirate Sun and its two predecessors – is the coolest SF construct since Ringworld. Schroeder could write novels in it for the next forty years and only scratch the surface of what’s possible.

It’s been a while since I lost my geek heart to a TV show that was so obviously doomed. Which brings us to The Middleman, on ABC Family of all places. I had been avoiding this on the grounds that it was just a silly-looking summer series and also the whole obviously doomed thing but a series of positive mentions on io9 and other Web sites (including a plug by Justine Larbalestier) led me to try the thing once.

I have about seventy-million little things to say about this movie. I will try, and probably fail, to keep this brief. Spoilers definitely ahead: The movie is really, really good. It’s not flawless, but it covers it’s flaws through a very strong sense of what Batman means and doesn’t mean as a character, and also because it’s very intense. The movie spends most of the time feeling like its on the very edge of chaos and conflagration – it’s probably the first time that I’ve genuinely felt that the hero wouldn’t “win” in superhero movie.

It seems like I’m forever mentioning that I’m not posting here as much as I’d like. I said a while back that between here and the Pathfinder blog I’d be posting two to three times a week. Turns out that’s actually been more or less true, just that all of it has been on the Pathfinder side. I do miss it here, and there are a few big genre/geek things in the last couple weeks that I really wanted to write about here, where nobody can interrupt me.

Battlestar Galactica 403 (or 405) “Ties that Bind” That was dark even by the really, really high standards this show has set for being dark and unsettling. It was an unrelenting parade of deeply screwed up people in torment, and the relationships that torment them. Naturally, I loved it, but if it wasn’t so well written and acted, it’d be insufferably gloomy. Bullet points – if you haven’t seen it, and plan to, look away.

Battlestar Galactica 402ish “Six of One” Some quick bullet points before the next one comes down the pike. Very pleased with the first two episodes of the season – I think it’s encouraging that this episode, credited to a writer whose last couple were not that strong, was arguably better than the first. Katee Sackhoff had an amazing week – Starbuck was all over the place, on the very edge of hysteria of not past it, a lot of great scenes.

Battlestar Galactica 4-1 “He That Believeth In Me” I’m relieved, frankly. Not surprised, exactly. I liked Season 3 more than a lot of people seemed to, and I’m optimistic that Ron Moore and his crew understand what the problems were and how to avoid them. Still, it’s good to see the show starting out it’s final season with a strong episode. This was basically the episode I was hoping for, with two extra plusses, and one kind-of minus.

SF Movie Review: Battlestar Galactica: Razor (Continuing the enlargement of things I write about on this site, and I think this will be the last post containing a disclaimer about topics…) I’m not sure what this says about me or my relationship to this show, but the following is all true: I bought this DVD the day it came out (I don’t get Sci-Fi at the moment…) I then let it sit for three entire months while waiting for the right time to watch it in one sitting.