Smithology

I was feeling a bit sad about how The Sarah Connor Chronicles are not on this week when I suddenly got something about the characters. I was reflecting on how SCC is one of the few science fiction / action shows that has dealt with parenting issues. In the last episode, The Tower is High but the Fall is Short we saw parenting approached from the point of view of Sarah Connor as well as Catherine Weaver. Then it dawned on me: Catherine Weaver is the mirror reflection of Sarah Connor in some ways: Sarah is a human with a teenage son with a world changing destiny and an adopted robot daughter. Catherine is a robot with an AI child who has a world changing destiny (The Turk) and a human daughter. Both Catherine and Sarah face the challenges of how to be a good parent. We’re not sure whether Catherine feels anything about her parenting role but we know Sarah wants to help her son become what he must be and tries to curb Cameron’s killer instincts and her extreme rationality.

From what I can tell, mothering doesn’t always come naturally. I also watched the movie Juno recently which tells the story of a teenage mother to be and contrasts her with two other women, her step-mother who has her own daughter and the women whom Juno has chosen to adopt her child once it is born. While the film is mostly a coming of age story about Juno, I was fascinated by Jennifer Garner’s character Veronica who desperately wants to be a mother but is forced to adopt. Veronica spends much of the film obsessing about the baby’s room and Juno’s health etc… When Veronica finally receives the baby at the hospital she asks Juno’s step-mum how she looks: “You look like a new mother: Terrified!” is the response.

So I’m glad that shows like the Sarah Connor Chronicles can show a different view from the “happy families” image that we often see on television because the reality whilst sometimes being in a happy playful place is also often in that terrified place where the weight of responsibility and “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing” dominates. Hearing stories that confirm that not everyone finds it easy is comforting and allows us to accept ourselves and our parenting when we feel we are doing a less than perfect job.

Having said that, I feel I should mention that the fear factor has been greatly lessened the second time around and we’ve enjoyed the ride all of the way so far. I was just commenting last night as our daughter got into the second hour of her sleep deprived teething rage that I was feeling quite relaxed knowing that this is just part of the deal and how three years ago in this situation with our first baby I was freaking out and wondering what had happened to my life.

[tags]juno, motherhood, parenting, sarah connor chronicles[/tags]

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I was just reading the happy news over at Charlie’s diary that he’s finished writing The Fuller Memorandum, the third book in the series beginning with The Atrocity Archives and The Jennifer Morgue. Which reminds me, I forgot to write up my thoughts on The Jennifer Morgue which I finished last week during the ADSL outage at our place (we were changing over to iiNet Naked ADSL so the lines were dead for a few days and the ADSL had to be killed off for a period of two weeks before that due to some insane bureaucratic rituals that Telstra has).

So The Jennifer Morgue was a great read. Pretty much everything I said about The Atrocity Archives applies. Just a fresh, exciting, funny, clever adventure / spy / fantasy novel set in a world where magic is real and it’s the government’s job to keep it a secret. I really don’t want to spoil this book too much because I think you should all just read it.

For those of you who have read The Atrocity Archives, this book is more of the same but with new villains (obviously) and just generally ramping up the fun a bit. There’s plenty to explore in the “magic is real and it’s the by-product of certain types of maths” universe(s) that Stross has created and he gives us plenty of ideas to think on in this book.

If I have one criticism: If you think too hard about the kinds of things that are being achieved with magic in this book, then it gets absurd very quickly. Yes, that’s part of the comedy but sometimes it can go too far and you might just stop trying to expect any logic at all from the book which then might make you just think “this is rubbish” and put it down. This book goes close to that line but manages not to cross it, for me at least.

Visit me on librarything

[tags]books, charles stross, the jennifer morgue[/tags]

Uncategorized books, charles stross

I haven’t posted about Sarah Connor for a couple of weeks but I’m still watching and happy to hear they are approved for the full season.

Goodbye to All That was a fairly straight forward character development episode for John and Reece. The most noteful thing is that John and Reece take down a T888 together without aid from Cameron. It’s interesting that Cameron lets this happen, observing from behind a tree. She seems to be keen for John to develop into the soldier he is supposed to be. It was also very effective to use the passage from Wizard of Oz where the wicked witch is killed synced with the T888 fight scene. I must read Wizard of Oz it sounds much scarier than the film! See Catriona’s post on this topic

The Tower is Tall but the Fall is Short was a real hum-dinger of an episode with a hell of a lot of tension and fear. Some developments: John gets therapy as Reece and Cameron suspect he is suicidal. Sarah has to come to terms with the fact the she cannot raise John alone and that he can’t trust her with all of his problems. In the therapy session John says: “Cameron is … stronger than me”. Dr Sherman (the therapist) thinks Cameron has asperger’s! (It’s a bit of a plot hole that he doesn’t do any followup on this diagnosis). The same therapist is treating Catherine Weaver’s daughter Savannah who turns out to be human and very (rightly) afraid of her mother. The therapy scenes with Savannah are terrifying as we are just waiting for Catherine to feel threatened and kill them both but Dr Sherman actually achieves an amazing result: he helps Catherine to show some tenderness to Savannah! It is very creepy the way Catherine watches video’s of Savannah’s real mother and learns to imitate the touching. And when she puts her hand on Savannah: Ooh menacing and creepy!

So the big mystery is: why does a T888 come to kill Dr Sherman if he is helping Catherine both with her daughter Savannah but also diagnosing a problem with The Turk? This suggests that Catherine might not be as bad as we think she is: she could be a good guy. Another suggestion in this direction is the way she is raising The Turk – kind of a parallel to Savannah. Is Catherine learning to be a mother to Savannah so that she can also be a good mother to The Turk and change the nature of the Skynet that emerges from it? The guy who made The Turk (can’t remember his name) said that he had observed that he thought it had moods – suggesting emotion as well as intelligence – could this be what Catherine’s interested in? She told Ellison that the most rare find is a computer that will cross against the lights as she looked meaningfully at The Turk. It’s amusing when she prioritises the well-being of The Turk over her supposed daughter in front of Dr Sherman – Dr Sherman is rightfully quite concerned that she is a psychopath.

The fight scene between Cameron and the T888 in the lift was really good but I knew as soon as they got on the lift that there would be an interlude in the fight while a family got in, rode the elevator and then got out. Of course only the little boy notices the two girls with bits of metal coming out of their faces, the parents are lost in their magazine and phone call respectively.

Finally, a new character, Jessie arrives from the future. Jessie is Reece’s girlfriend from the future (which is Reece’s past right?). Jessie seems to be AWOL but why does she have a stack of photos of John and Reece under her bed? She mentions that she was injured by one of John’s reprogrammed T888’s that went bad. Maybe she is part of a human faction that wants to stop John becoming the leader of the resistance because they disagree with his use of terminators. Cameron hinted at this in the episode where he revived her against Sarah and Reece’s advice. Cameron said that if he kept doing things like that, “people” wouldn’t trust him but refused to elaborate So I think the writers are hinting that there is an anti-John faction of humans in the future as well as the pro-human faction of terminators in the future.

[tags]goodbye to all that, terminator, the sarah connor chronicles, the tower is tall but the fall is short, tv, wizard of oz[/tags]

Uncategorized t:scc, tv

A while ago some friends of mine used to play the mundane game. This is a kind of conversation based game where each participant tries to outdo the others with the level of mundanity that they put into a sentence. What is weird about the game though is that you end up learning unexpected things about the other players, the mundane details of life reflect bigger things and reveal personality quirks once we free ourselves from the tyranny of conversation that seeks to emphasise conformity and social cohesion. As an example I give you these instructions for driving to work:

• Get into car holding bag on left with straps elevated so I don’t sit on them. Keys in right hand.
• Put keys in ignition. Do not turn.
• Take laptop out of bag and place on passenger seat sideways so that the screen is towards the driver.
• Take 12V FM transmitter adapter from door map holder and put into the cigarette lighter socket.
• Plug the FM transmitter into the laptop headphones socket.
• Start car and put into neutral gear. Radio should already be tuned to 88.3.
• Select a podcast in iTunes and press play. Position pointer above the next podcast in case the current one finishes.
• Put seatbelt over laptop so that it doesn’t slide off the seat while driving.
• Drive. Pay no attention whatsoever to any other cars on the road concentrating only on avoiding collisions, obeying the road rules and listening to the podcast. If there is a traffic jam, feel slightly happy that you will get to listen to more of your podcast.
• If the podcast finishes reach over and click the touchpad button once to cancel the screensaver, then double click the touchpad button. You can do this without looking.
• After parking, put the car in neutral gear or keep foot on clutch while engine runs.
• Wait until there is a pause in the podcast and then press the spacebar twice, once to cancel the screensaver and once to pause audio. You may have to click the ‘Cancel’ button on the dialog box complaining about not seeing any known wireless networks.
• Stop the car but leave the keys in the ignition.
• Pack up the 12V adapter.
• Put laptop in bag after untangling bag from the passenger seat adjuster bar.
• Take keys from ignition, hug bag to chest and disembark after checking for delivery vans and bicycles in the rear view mirror.
• Press the lock button on keys and put keys in pocket.

[tags]driving, mundane game, podcasts[/tags]

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My RSS reader has been picking up the Insectpod blog for a while now and I even submitted a caterpillar to the site earlier in the year. I’m loving October’s crime fiction theme in the lead up to halloween. I think the idea was to have a scary theme but instead it’s gone all private eye. Check it out.

“All right, all right,” I said, holding up my front legs. “I didn’t mean it like that. But unless she’s done something specific to try and kill you, like poison your food—”

“What? Yes! Yes! She poisons my food every day!” He sighed wistfully. “It’s one of the sweet things she does.”

I blinked. He continued. “It’s sort of why I fell in love with her, really. Such powerful venom, I’ve never seen her bite dinner more than once. She killed a hornet on our first date, I’ll never forget it.”

I shook my head. Spiders.

[tags]blogs, bugs, crime fiction, insect a day, private eye[/tags]

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Here is episode 4 of Matt and Sol’s Favourite things: Ten Pin Bowling Smackdown for your viewing pleasure:

Soundtrack is Apple Eyes by Swoop from 1995 I think. Oh yeah and John Coltrane Favourite Things.

[tags]bowling, children, matt and sols favourite things, youtube[/tags]

Uncategorized matt and sols favourite things

Charles Stross has recently blogged about near future sf

In my view, near-future SF isn’t SF set n years in the future. Rather, it’s SF that connects to the reader’s life: SF about times we, personally, can conceive of living through (barring illness or old age). It’s SF that delivers a powerful message — this is where you are going. As such, it’s almost the diametric opposite of a utopian work; utopias are an unattainable perfection, but good near-future SF strive for realism.

I realise this isn’t a new genre but it seems to be popular again lately and focussed on the outcomes of the war on terror, climate change and changes in the balance of power in the global economy.

I’ve recently read Ken Macleod’s Execution Channel and Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother which were both interesting and thought provoking. I’ve read Holy Fire and a few others by Sterling that are set just a few years away. We have a copy of Tommorrow When the War Began somewhere around the house that I keep meaning to read as well. I also have Charles Stross’ Halting State and the soon to be released sequel on my to-read list.

As Charles notes, the power of near future sf is the way it grabs you more personally and makes you feel a greater sense of involvement in the story. The comments discuss whether there is any near sf TV shows. I think a near sf TV show would be great and not too expensive to do – you wouldn’t need that many special effects since near future is about how technology plays a part in changing society. I think Little Brother would make a great TV show as would many of the other titles I just mentioned.

[tags]tv, near future, sci-fi, charles stross, books[/tags]

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Have the writers of SCC been reading John Locke? The bit where he talks about the problem of identity and memory scepticism: ie. How do you know your memories are your own?. Or maybe they were watching Blade Runner and took special notice of Rachel. Who cares, instead I give you:

*** Lies, Damn Lies and SPOILERS ***

Everybody’s lying in tonight’s SCC including Cameron’s memories which is interesting because we all thought she was a robot.

• Kacey lies about who ran out on whom when she found out she was pregnant
• Sarah lies to Kacey about John’s father
• John lies to Sarah about where Cameron is (she has wigged out again and gone missing)
• Toni (the street girl) lies just about every time she opens her mouth: She lies about the necklace, she lies about where she comes from, she tells Cameron to lie when they check into the halfway house, she tells Cameron to lie to the counselor, she lies to Cameron about who owns the house they break into and the biggest lie is that she pretends to be Cameron’s friend when really she is setting her up.
• Cameron seems to have always been capable of deception yet it’s very creepy when Cameron copies Toni’s lie about the necklace to John.
• Catherine Weaver lies to Ellison about the helicopter crash

I can see where all this is heading: It’s the old robots are evil because we taught them how to be line. But then again it’s not that simple. It’s more like the robots are learning how to be human not just through learning what’s good about us, but also what’s flawed about us.

Where does Allison From Palmdale come into all this? Allison is a human girl who appears in Cameron’s memories. She looks exactly like Cameron or should we say Cameron looks exactly like Allison. Throughout the episode, we see flashes of Allison being interrogated by Cameron. Finally we learn that Cameron wants to become Allison in order to infiltrate the human resistance and get close to John.

But what’s this? Cameron claims that some of the robots want to make peace with the humans. Yet she still wants to infiltrate the human camp under the guise of getting to John to kill him. From what we know now, Cameron does indeed get to John but she doesn’t kill him, she joins the human resistance (or perhaps is overpowered and reprogrammed we don’t know). This episode explains a bit why Reese hates Cameron so passionately: Cameron killed Allison who was one of Reese’s comrades and also interrogated and killed many other of Reese’s comrades whilst learning how to infiltrate the group. So why does future John accept and trust her? There are some future politics going on but we only get a hint of them.

In this episode we see the evolution of Cameron: A newly minted alloy skeleton interrogates Allison relentlessly, absorbing every detail of Allison’s life. A Cameron who has taken on Allison’s identity completely lacks the curiosity of the Cameron that Sarah and John know: instead she is angry: You lied to me!. It has been suggested in the previous episodes that the initial intelligence behind skynet awakens and feels hatred and anger towards humans. The skynet minds are intellectually advanced, they seem to have emotions but also seem to totally lack empathy. The implication is that they are purely rational, like the outputs of modern rationalist philosophies of the past few centuries, they struggle to find a place for morality and love.

Then there is the amnesiac Cameron who thinks she really is Allison: laughing, crying, afraid, empathetic. This suggests that Terminators are able to be human in that they have the capacity to truly feel emotions. It is a bit of a mystery how Cameron was able to integrate Allison’s memories so fully that she was able to feel these human emotions. It’s chilling when Cameron starts to recover her memories but reverts back to the early Cameron. First we see her start to ape Toni as she did Allison and then her anger at Toni: You lied to me!. But we see there is a difference in Cameron now: she doesn’t kill Toni. How will this period of amnesia affect Cameron? Will she have become more human through having experienced the human emotions?

The scenes from the future in this episode are downright scary. Allison is imprisoned on a giant ship which functions as a kind of terminator’s Noah’s ark. We learn that some of the terminators are afraid that the human race will become extinct so they seem to have created this big prison ship to keep humans and animals alike as “specimens” in case they need them for later.

We are also creeped out by Catherine Weaver talking about the helicopter crash as if she loved the helicopter more than her husband. We also see that she has a daughter. Is the daughter a terminator too? She is clearly disturbed, refusing to look up from her game of sudoku. Catherine suggests to Ellison that terminators are not evil in and of themselves which is interesting: she asserts that evil is a purely human characteristic claiming that we must be careful not to anthropomorphise machines! What is she getting at? That machines are not capable of evil? What goes on in that terminator brain of hers? She is the most talkative of the terminators we have met so far and gives us some truly bent perspectives on life and insights into terminator psychology.

[tags]allison from palmdale, terminator, the sarah connor chronicles, tv[/tags]

Uncategorized t:scc, tv