Battlestar Grammactica

And here, for the time being, directly from the servers at Hulu is the pilot episode of Stargate Universe. Yes, the cheese factor is a little high on this one. It steals liberally from just about every other other Science Fiction ( Not Syfy) show in recent memory…. Battlestar, Voyager, DS9, Heck, even “Lost in Space” (And “Lost” for that matter…). Yet I kinda enjoy it. It’s like a spicy Mulligatawny stew- You know what the pieces are, but the broth holds it all together. Enjoy.

How Can a Game Get so Much Wrong, and Still Be So Much Fun to Play?

Recently I picked up the Sins of a Solar Empire Game. Besides the Title, which I took as a play on BSG’s ” Saga of a Star World“, I thought the gameplay looked interesting, if Generic. Kind of Like “Homeworld” meets “Any Generic 90’s syndicated sci-fi.” I’ve been eyeing it at the local Wal-Mart for a while, and figured Father’s Day was as good a time as any to pick it up and install it.

I wasn’t sure it would run: The “Recommended” requirements were a little over what my computer has. the “needed” a little less.  But it was worth a chance. At Least until the opening Video:

Never Judge Book:

Oh God. How bad is that? 10,000 years ago, 1,000 years ago, 10 years ago… WHat a mish mash of generic cliches, badly animated paintings, and amateurish  writing. The “Advent?” the “Trader Emergency Coalition?” No Seriously, you guys need to hire a writer.

Start the Game up and it doesn’t get much better. There’s not much variety to the different factions abilities: Each ship looks different, but plays the same. The same old Tech trees and resource mining that we’ve seen before.  Diplomacy? Forget about it. The Ambassadors from the other factions just randomly ask for bribes and missions. There’s no real single player campaign, just some scenarios to get your feet wet. Think of it as an open-ended sandbox type game. What to Try it? Here’s the Demo.

But something funny happens when you start playing the game. It’s incedibly fun.

Suddenly, at Three AM…

First, the game runs extremely well even on older computers.Scrolling from a galactic view to an individual ship is fast and easy, and fun. there’s a good selection of planets, stars and background effects. Each game looks unique. And the animations for the battleships and buildings are pretty neat.

The game is complex, without being complicated, and Science fiction writers should appreciate that. There are three basic Resources: Cash, Cheap Metal and Scarce Crystals.Upgrade planets, buildings, tech and ships with these. One interesting wrinkle is with Capital Ships: You have to upgrade you’re command structure to train more crews, making them twice as expensive.

And as you play, certain plot points come together. This isn’t a Sim game where there’s just too many variables to keep track of, where the relationships between them aren’t well known. In Sins of a Solar Empire , the relationships are right out there in the open, but that doesn’t make the choice any easier.

Take planets, for example.There are Four main types of planets: Terran, Ice, Volcanic and Dessert. Each can support so much population( Cash) and have different asteroids (Metal or crystal). But each also has a random gravity well around it. These gravity wells are where you park your fleets buildings. each becomes a battlefield, taking time and antimatter to attack and defend. Each planet also has just a couple “Phase Lanes” that allow jumps to the next planet. Tese have to be defended and become choke points.

So you send a few scouts out. Here’s an undefended Volcanic planet with lots of metal. Here’s a Terran Planet that can support a larger population and has mixed asteroids to mine. Do you develop the vulcan planet, and defend the vast resources for little profit? Or the Teran? What if the Vulcan has 4 phase lanes? Can you still defend it? Where do those phase lanes reach? And do you have enough influence to keep farther planets from revolting and joining the enemy?

Suddenly, It’s three AM, And the game that seemed so iffy just a few short hours ago has begun consuming you.

But Wait there’s More!

Did I mention the lack of a proper Single player Campaign?

No Matter. There’s an active online fan base- and the battles get huge fast.

And Mods. You know you were waiting for the mods. The background, the story that the developers came up with is just too lame to rest. There’s an active Mod Community…Star Wars. Babylon. StarGate. There’s even an Alternate WWII one and of course..

Sins of Alethia- Sins Battlestar Mod

So, Have we covered it all? Plays well, nice graphics, complexity, Online battles and Mods…I Think That’s it. Give it a shot

I really enjoyed the new Star trek: Sure, it destroyed both the original canon and the ethos that made the show great, replacing it with Star Wars Lite . But all the call backs and references to classic TOS moments left me with a big stupid grin on my face for the majority of the film.

So, In honor of the film’s $80 Million dollar opening, here’s a sample of Star Trek Wallpapers from PhotoBucket :

The New Cast (800 X 640):

The New Action:

The Enterprise:

Old School:

LCARS:(Teeny):

PhotoShop Rules:

Let’s say you’ve published your novel. You’ve won a couple awards, appeared as a panelist at a couple of conventions. Now, you’re ready to teach a class in science fiction at the local college. You’ve got a semester, can make your students read ten books, tops. In those ten books, you’ve got to show a little bit of our genre’s history, a little bit of the masterpieces. But you’ve also got to keep them entertained. You don’t know who your students are. Some might be fans, some might be looking for an easy A. The lectures have to move at a quick, entertaining clip and be informative. also, the bookstore will only stock a book if it is in print. You can’t be obscure.

Using this criteria What Science fiction Works would you consider Canonical? Why? What Criteria would you use? What Would you focus on in your "Survey of Sci-fi 101"?

Here’s my list. I’ haven’t listed them in chronological order, but by Importance. Those on the bottom might change over time, but the top of the List? No Way. These will stay no matter what..

1.Dune
- Arrakis still rules the universe. And Why Not? A sprawling Space opera on the surface, it’s a richly textured work with "Wheels within Wheels" that never talks down to its audience. Dune retains its popularity despite all attempts to kill it off: Unnecessary sequels, horrible movies and games, even Brian Herbert.. Dune is the gospel of Science fiction: you cannot understand the genre without having read it.

2. Foundation
- Asimov’s masterpiece is more of a "Science fiction" cult thing: It hasn’t passed into popular culture like Dune has. Which is a shame. Asimov sets up a thought experiment and runs with it; What if we could use scientific procedures to predict the future of Humanity? Where is "Free Will" If the future is known? What happens if information is withheld and the equations are changed? Are we doomed to repeat the same mistakes?

3.Rendezvous with Rama
- What? Not 2001? No, not 2001. Let’s face it, the movie is what people remember. But Rama, with it’s totally alien spacecraft that doesn’t even seem to acknowledge the humans aboard, remains the best story of first contact. Stay Away from the later Sequels, They get worse the older Clarke Got.

4.Rendezvous with Rama
- If you Grok, you know why this is here. Heinlein’s most metaphysical work, it also is his most strangely prophetic. Sure, It’s got all that Hippie-Dippie stuff. but it also asks some important question on what it means to be human.

5. The Martian Chronicles
- The reason this post isn’t titled "Canonical Novels." Bradbury’s collection of loosely intertwined stories mat be more "Science Fantasy" than "Science Fiction." but that doesn’t mean these stories of transformation and a culture’s passing are any less important.

6.Neuromancer
- The Cyberpunk movement may be passe, and may eventually go the way of Flash Gordon and Edgar Rice Burroughs . But there’s no denying that Case and Molly forever altered the landscape of Science Fiction.

7. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
- We need a little lighter reading heading into the home stretch, and Hitchiker is it. The book takes sci-fi cliches and uses them as a springboard to some pretty dark places. A great way to laugh through the tears.

8.20,000 Leagues Under the Sea- One of the first recognizable science fiction novels. Forget the kid films, this is a travelogue and adventure tale featuring two of the greatest characters ever, Nemo and the Nautilus.

9. Snow Crash
- Neal Stephenson ’s humorous Take on the Cyberpunk Movement. Who can resist a main charachter called Hiro Protagonist?  Like a lot of the other books on my list, this one takes a look at how technology will mutate the human race, this time a visual virus that re-wires our language so we can all understand each other.

10.A Canticle for Leibowitz
- I was going to put the stand here, but that’s more fantasy. In fact, many post-apocalyptic works have a high fantasy quotient. Maybe looking at the end of our world and the horrors that could replace it require a little bit of magic.

SO there you have it. My 10 Canonical Science Fiction books, taken right from my shelves. What do You Think? Any others that you would add?

Obi Wan: Anakin, Chancellor Palpatine is evil.
Darth Vader: From my point of view, The Jedi are Evil!
Obi Wan: Well…Then you are lost.

"Revenge of the Sith "

Point of View is one of those basic things that writers understand is important, recite back to you, post on the wall, and then ignore in the heat of the moment while drafting.  The rules of Point of view are simple:

• Pick one POV and Stick with it to avoid confusing your readers.

• If you must have multiple POV, make it clear where one POV ends and another begins.

What is POV?

POV is related to your narrative voice as the author. If you think of your main character as your viewppoint character, POV tells us how closely the narrator (That’s your role) is following that character around. Luckily, there are only five main POVs worth worrying about:

First Person:

The first person POV is the closest to the viewpoint character : It’s their story told by them using "I" and "Me". The author is pretending to be his main character, and letting us in on their thoughts and emotions. It’s the most immediate POV and instantly brings us into the world of the story. A lot of classic Science Fiction is written in this POV- Wells, Verne, Burroughs- they all used the immediacy of someone telling this amazing tale to give their fantastic stories veracity. However, it can be limiting. Your character cannot know the motives, thoughts or emotions of the other characters.  If you have a grand, sweeping war story to tell,you’re limiting yourself to one small part of the action. Not that this hasn’t been done before:

All this time I saw no human beings, and no signs of the Martians.
I encountered a couple of hungry-looking dogs, but both hurried
circuitously away from the advances I made them.  Near Roehampton I had seen two human skeletons–not bodies, but skeletons, picked clean–and in the wood by me I found the crushed and scattered bones of several cats and rabbits and the skull of a sheep.  But though I gnawed parts of these in my mouth, there was nothing to be got from
them.    — H.G. Wells"The War of the Worlds "

Second Person:

The second person is tricky. It is seldom used, although science fiction readers probably remember it from the old "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. In the Second Person POV, the narrator directly addresses the reader as the main character. "You do this and You Feel That," the narrator says. "Oh Yeah?" you respond. There have been a few successful books writiten in the second person, notably "Bright Lights, Big City" and "A Prayer for the Dying," but second person works better for short forms: Stories or connective passages:

You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes, shivering all the while, but less from bodily chill, than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are Iying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins, through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver, when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks, and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb.     —Nathaniel Hawthorne "The Haunted Mind"

Third Person Limited:

In the third person limited, the narrator follows the viewpoint character around from somewhere over their right shoulder, kind of like their guardian angel. The Narrator knows what they are thinking and doing, and can notice things that the viewpoint character might miss, but is still attached to them. Important plot points can happen offstage, other characters can have hidden motives and feelings, but we’ve put a little distance between the reader and the character and can get a little larger picture:

He heard shouting, quarreling voices, but nothing made sense through the
haze of his agony. He felt someone grab at him–more than one person–and they were dragging him willy-nilly across the ground. Something was clutched around his throat, almost choking him. He opened his eyes just as something clicked behind him.   —Lester Del Rey "The Sky is Falling"

Third Person Objective:

A little farther out, and we’ve lost the psychic comnnection we had with our viewpoint character. Third person objective is still focused on the viewpoint character, but now our narrator can no longer see inside that character’s mind. This POV is journalistic and cinematic. the author can spend time on description and action.

Manning waited for him to finish, then he turned back to the rest of the men in the room and spread his hands. “Now that, gentlemen, just shows how much we’ve found out so far.” He looked over at Rynason again. “Has it occurred to you, Lee, that if these horses are the Outsiders, that maybe they know a little more than we do? I suppose you’re going to say you had a telepathic hookup with one of them and you didn’t see a thing to make you suspicious … but just remember that they’ve been using telepathy for several thousand years and that you hardly know what you’re doing when you try it.  —Terry Carr, "Warlord of Kor"

Third Person Omniscient:

And finally, farther out, we have the narrator as God. Third person omniscient is just that: The narrator can switch characters, knowing all thoughts and feelings. He can view things away from any characters, knows what’s happening on the far side of the world. While this POV gives the author the most leeway, it can be confusing to the reader. Perhaps it’s best to narrow your scope a little?

Jellico, with Van Rycke at his shoulder, halted before he stepped from
the ramp so that the three Inter-Solar men, Captain, Cargo-master and
escort, whether they wished or no, were put in the disadvantageous
position of having to look up to a Captain whom they, as members of one
of the powerful Companies, affected to despise. The lean, well muscled,
trim figure of the Queen’s commander gave the impression of hard bitten force held in check by will control, just as his face under its thick layer of space burn was that of an adventurer accustomed to make split second decisions–an estimate underlined by that seam of blaster burn across one flat cheek.  —Andre Norton "The Plague Ship"

Which should I use?

Well, That all depends on you.  Each POV has it’s advantages and disadvantages. Generally, the wider the POV, the less connection with the main character. Each story has a unique POV that suits it best. A war story can have either a first person POV, in which we’re stuck in the mud with the main character, or an omniscient POVwhere we can see the generals make their errors, the politicians bicker, and our characters suffer.

The main thing is to try to stick to one. Switching point of view is confusing to the reader. The narrator becomes a character, and changing narrators is like changing characters:

I had thought that Ben had the egg, but he didn’t. Instead the Dark Lord, high in his obsidian castle, chuckled to himself as he stoked the velvet shell. Ben was scared that i would find out, of course, but I hadn’t yet and if he kept up the ruse, there was a chance that he would get my egg back from you.

Huh? I guess I know what I was trying to say there. But it’s hard to follow. If you have to change POV, Do it on a chapter or page break, and let the audience know the POV is Changing: Go from first to third, go to a character we haven’t visited before, do something that let’ss us know something fundamental has changed about how we view this world.

Which one’s right for your story?

It all depends on your point of view.