“There Is No Try.”

One of the most famous Yoda quotes…

Yoda, that lovable little guy whose strength flows from the Force and not his biceps, spent all his time trying to keep Luke and the other Skywalkers away from the dark side, and what a job it was…

Of all the characters from George Lucas’s Star Wars movies, Yoda stands out as the most memorable fictional character, and his wisdom has forever become a part of our culture. It is power of Yoda’s words from which the jedi’s strength flows.

Back in the years of my youth (I was still a child when “Star Wars” sci fi classic movie was first brought to the bigscreen) I remember something you may think strangely unbelievable… but it’s true.

You see, we were living in the communist regime at that time. Go figure out yourself, American movies were really rare… especially the new ones.

But somehow, “Star Wars” managed to pass the censorship, come to my cinema downtown, and find me.  I was thrilled to find the path to the dark seat in the theater!

As I said, I was just a kid; and of course, eager to go watch it on panoramic screen.

WOW! It changed my life! It was like having my own battle ship!

Interesting thing was that tickets were limited and as such, the black market was flourishing.  I had to buy mine at triple the normal price.  However, I was an ‘early-bird’ as in fact, other kids that arrived later had to pay even five times the regular access fee.

Can you imagine that?

It was a another step down the path that forever dominates my thoughts…superb science fiction. Old obi-wan kenobi would surely approve.

This, my dear reader, IS passion!

How do I know that?

LOL

Because it happened again, later on, when “The Empire Strikes Back” came to town… it was exactly the same thing. Only this time I was not a kid anymore — I was a teenager.

Man, I don’t regret it… I LOVE Sci-Fi!
(science fiction on bread, that is what I eat… sci fi movies, sci fi novels – all the candies…)

Now, I think you may remember YODA, right?

Here’s a famous line of this character’s:

[Luke can't levitate his X-Wing out of the bog]

Luke: “I can’t. It’s too big.”
Yoda: “Size matters not. Look at me. Judge me by my size, do you? Hmm?.. Hmm. And well you should not! For my ally is the Force…”

Luke Skywalker and Yoda — Star Wars:
Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Yoda teaches young Luke here that size DOES NOT matter but other things (in his case, Force) is what you need.

Now, there are a lot more that quickly come to my mind…and some of these are as good as the great himalayan masters!

“Death is a natural part of life.  Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force.  Mourn them do not. Miss them do not.  Attachment leads to jealously.  The shadow of greed, that is.”

“May the Force be with you!”

“Grave danger you are in. Impatient you are.”

“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

These are fantastic quotations you can live by, and create your own destiny, to think of what he said, and then use your own mind to build your future, and join the other luminous minds and evolved beings.

Who ever said sci fi was fiction? The lessons given by Yoda, and his discussion of the force that surrounds us and binds us, is so close to our reality here, that perhaps we need only to feel the force everywhere around you, and learn to master it! You can become an apprentice with the wisdom of Yoda!

Here are 7 of the most well known famous Jedi quotes from Star Wars:
Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

Luke: “I’m looking for a great warrior.”
Yoda: “Ohhh! Great warrior!” [laughs and shakes his head] “Wars not make one great.”

___

Yoda to Luke: “Help you I can, yes.”

___

Yoda to Luke: “No! No different! Only different in your mind. You must unlearn what you have learned.”

___

Yoda to Luke: “Always in motion is the future.”

___

Yoda to Luke: “That is why you fail.”

___

Yoda to Luke: “No! Try not. Do. Or do not. There is no try.“

and summing up them all:

___

Yoda to Luke:

“Ready are you?  What know you of ready?  For eight hundred years have I trained Jedi.  My own counsel will I keep on who is to be trained.  A Jedi must have the deepest commitment, the most serious mind.  This one a long time have I watched.  All his life has he looked away… to the future, to the horizon.  Never his mind on where he was.  Hmm?  What he was doing.  Hmph!  Adventure.  Heh..  Excitement.  Heh..  A Jedi craves not these things.  You are reckless..”

___

You can add some more Jedi Wisdom Quotes, either Yoda quotes, or Darth Vader Quotes, or Emperor Palpatine Quotes or Obi Wan Quotes… but all should be Famous Star Wars Quotes.

If the quotes too many will add, another blog post write will I!

StevieVee, longing for a good Star Wars sequel…or Star Wars Prequel, still not satisfied after 3 trilogies.

James Cameron’s Avatar Movie 2009 is somewhat of a twisted Frank Herbert’s Dune in the jungle…

Let’s see:
Arrakis aka Dune (sorry, I meant Pandora) is a world unique in itself, being the only known source in the Universe for the invaluable ‘spice melange‘ hmm… Unobtainium! Expensive, resistant…interesting!

So there comes a presumably unstoppable army of invaders to spoil the native Fremens (I mean The Na’vi) of their wealth, regardless of their feelings, beliefs or sacred things.

During the process, the Fremens (err… the Na’vi people) will recognize the hero, Paul Atreides (Muad’Dib for the Fremens) – Jake Sully in Avatar – as one of their own.  Furthermore, the hero will lead the battle against the invaders and in the end, it is transformed for real into one of them (physically).

I rest my case…

That being set and said, let’s see what would be the more expensive commodity:

Dune Spice Melange or Avatar Unobtainium?

Which is the more expensive antimatter? Let’s leave no stone unturned (apparently this is extremely cool technology)!

Research

Here are a couple Dune quotes (collated from Dune 1984 motion picture directed by David Lynch, NOT from the Sci Fi novel Dune by Frank Herbert):

“He who controls the spice, controls the Universe! [...] The spice must flow.”
- Baron Vladimir Harkonnen

and from another source…

“Not without reason was the spice often called “the secret coinage.” Without melange, the Spacing Guild’s heighliners could not move. Melange precipitated the “navigation trance” by which a translight pathway could be “seen” before it was traveled. Without melange and its amplification of the human immunogenic system, life expectancy for the very rich degenerated by a factor of at least four. Even the vast middle class of the Imperium ate diluted melange in small sprinklings with at least one meal a day.”
- Children of Dune, Alia Atreides

In the days of the Corrino Empire the spice melange was the absolute rarest and most valuable commodity in the known universe – hard stuff to obtain. It was so valuable that one briefcase full of spice would be enough to purchase an entire planet. This material is a hard act to follow.

But to be clear, this is not handwavium, I mean, in our world of physics, this stuff is possible to create, based on our universe and everything we know.

Question for you: Anyone know about the tensile strength of unobtanium?  Leave a comment!

Let’s take this extreme comment and compare the technology with some Avatar Movie Quotes:

“This is why we’re here, because this little gray rock sells for 20 million* a kilo. This pays for the whole party.”
– Parker Selfridge (Avatar movie character – head administrator of the RDA operations on Pandora)

* Blogmaster’s Personal Note: as per our world here, this one decision allows trade to happen regardless of whatever the currency would be…

Conclusion

Now there’s no more proof needed.

Judge yourself: one suitcase from the Avatar movie universe would carry say… 20 kilos at max of Unobtain-
ium material (maybe even 30 or 50 if you want – if you could carry it)…

Would such a value buy a whole planet?  I mean, c’mon!  What would it be like, 1 billion of whatever materials?
No No No!  A planet, ANY planet should be more expensive than that…if such a commodity could exist!

I want to compare this to Tolkien’s mithril, and its eery similarity to titanium, although much more expensive.  And it makes me wonder which wondrous substances are we, mere mortals (and aliens, it seems), to discover in the future.  I’ll avoid some elemental trope now, before I go too tangential.  I think that’s a Pandora’s box we should keep closed for now…

StevieVee, bones filled with adamantium, longing to read a good Dune novel…

“The White Dragon” by Anne McCaffrey – the little Dragon that could…

Remember me, heading happily towards the US warship (USS Dale) moored at the visiting queue, but concerned at how I would get out in the end (as in fact my plan for smuggling a Sci Fi book was already growing in my mind?)  I didn’t know yet, but I was gonna get hold of my very first English written Sci Fi novel, The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey.

When I arrived nearby the ship, I had the chance to watch it more closely before I climbed the ladder to its bridge.  For me at that moment, it was a unique sentiment, to smell its gray paint and the grease smeared here and there on the hull, to feel the sea salted ropes of that ladder under my palms… quite an adventure for the teenager that I was…

After we boarded it, the tour was taking us from the port side, through the aft to the starboard (facing the sea at that moment) and then back again (the bow area was closed to the visitors for some reason.)  On the aft deck, a band of sailors was performing jazz loudly – maybe they weren’t that loud, but that is what I recall it; probably they weren’t so good at the job, he, he… – and some others were pumping helium into balloons with the ship’s name on them, to offer the visitors a souvenir.  I have also spotted a few of the visitor’s kids wearing caps with the ship emblem – I guess some sailors offered them more than just balloons…

I was hurting to engage someone in conversation, to exercise my newly acquired English Language skills.  And I just started throwing lines to a few guys who didn’t seem to have anything special to do (maybe they were off duty) but were enjoying themselves very much, taking pictures of the milling crowd on the queue, that was still waiting to get access to the ship’s bridge.  Hey!..  But I was already there, wasn’t I?

After so many years, I think I still remember the guy’s name: Don probably or Donald… anyway… He was the most communicative of all.

I’ve asked him a lotta questions, like why was he aboard the ship, since when, how long was he going to stay, about his family, etc…  He was from Texas and decided to join the Navy because he wanted to see as many foreign places as possible.  His dream was to travel a lot after being decommissioned, but told me he just signed up for a second term.  Hmm… a Navy addict, right?

Anyway, he had back home a little brother just like me, so when we talked about all stuff and told him about my newly found passion – Sci Fi – his face brightened and told me”

“Wait here!”

Then he disappeared for a few minutes.  I was almost ready to lose him, because more and more people were climbing on board and the crew wanted me to clear the aft deck for them and move forward.  But I was shrewd – claimed I lost something on the way there and returned, only to re-start my tour… but this time waiting for Donald.

And there he came, with a shiny blue cover paperback book in hand, depicting a powerful young man riding a dragon – a special kind of a dragon (The White Dragon, as the book’s title suggested); that was my first touch, my first encounter with Anne McCaffrey’s Dragons of Pern… it was the third book in the trilogy: The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey published by Ballantine Books in their Del Rey Sci Fi Collection only one year before, in 1979.

It’s a 470 pages thick book – I look at it right now – that I was playing with at that time and didn’t know what to do…  I wanted to give back something to Don in exchange, but he wouldn’t accept…

“It’s the book my little brother recommended me to read” he said.  “I did and I think it’s a beautiful lecture for any age.”

He was right – I can tell you now, after these years… The adventures of Lord Jaxom, the rider of Ruth – The White Dragon – are still in my mind, almost like a movie.

That was in fact, my first thought and memory that I had triggered by the newest to be released James Cameron’s movie, Avatar.  I think Cameron got inspired by Anne McCaffery’s dragons of Pern when he imagined all those Leonopteryx, and especially the Banshees, with that neural link between the rider and the beast, just as the telepathic link between the dragon and its life long impressing rider – I bet you can see the resemblances, right?

There is also even a deeper similitude… think… Jaxom had to fight between two sides: his duty to be a Lord Holder (as heir of the Ruatha Hold) and his loving to be a dragonrider (as the partner of Ruth)… just like Jake Sully’s avatar had to fight between his human origins and his newly acquired friends the Na’vi…

Now, back to my story – as at that moment there was no possible connection to James Cameron’s Avatar at all – I was so happy with my new book that I didn’t know exactly what to do first.  Find a secluded place right there, right then (in fact impossible, of course) and start devouring the book?  At least a few paragraphs?

Or run away swiftly, trying to take the book out of the harbor?  Remember that back in that era, this could have been considered capitalist Imperialist propaganda and at the best, I was risking to have it confiscated at the exit gate.

I was thinking feverishly and in the end I came up with a common and obvious (probably to anybody looking at me too) of squeezing it into my pants.  But the book was so thick, that it wouldn’t fit in there – no matter how happy I would be now to recall those moments…)

The thing I did in the end was to open it at the middle and put it back in place (the front of my pants) like that, becoming far less obvious this way…even if Del Ray could still be read if you peered closely.  And there I was, hurrying on the queue to the exit gate, hoping and praying in my mind (forbidden practice too!) that my ‘dragonrider’ was still at the gate…

Man, how happy, happy, happy I was seeing him there.  I still had smokes to offer and the first step was already taken since I entered…and he remembered.

Well, you can imagine his looks when he saw me like that.  He started laughing seeing me so bulged and asked: “Do you have some cigarettes hidden there?”

I just imagined that it wouldn’t make sense anyway for him to say  ”No, a book!”  So I just nodded and took a new pack from one of my jacket’s inner pockets and gave it to him… “Yes, I have.  Keep this one!”

As a result, I was taken outside the harbor with no more further adventures by the guard himself, walking a little bit in front of me, to mask my appearance to the other guards.

When I was out I thanked him and headed swiftly to the bus station.  I was successfully smuggled two items:  cigarettes I brought with me TO the port, and a book I have managed to take OUT of there.

Wouldn’t you say that it was quite the reverse of what a real smuggler would have done?  Heh, heh… sweet memories, by Anne Mcaffrey!

Back home, I have noticed though a bad thing.  Being squeezed so inside my pants, the book lost its front cover.  (I taped it back later on, but I, the holder, was still in pain, imagine!)

It didn’t matter, it doesn’t even today.  The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey was the first Sci Fi novel I ever read and I still consider it one of the best reads possible.  If your sci fi fantasy quest has left you looking up the meaning of weyr, or characters like Jaxom, then you’ll definitely need to read this novel.  Ever since sci fi became my first love, this master writer can kindle a passion that only a handful of scifi writers can create.

Many would claim it is not a Science Fiction book at all, but rather a Heroic Fantasy novel… Well… each and every one is entitled to their opinions, but if you read it you’ll see that apart from dragons there is pretty much Sci Fi there, classical Science Fiction themes like time travel, space colonization, teleportation, etc…

Nowadays, you may find it on Amazon for a good price, but also at other fine sci fi shops on their recommended reading list.  If you’re going to ask me, The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey deserves a good 9 out of 10 * (rating stars) at least, even if you enjoy fantasy…the kind of story where, if you start it, you may forget to eat…

In my next post I will share more details about my first Sci Fi movie I saw at the Cinema (Star Wars – the first one…) which is now in paperback, dvd and on eBay in VHS.

StevieVee, in a memory loop…

“Avatar” Movie 2009 (and 2010) – James Cameron to Set The New Frontiers…

Why does it say Avatar Movie 2010 in the title when we’re talking about Avatar The Movie 2009? Has Cameron gone off his rocker?

I guess it’s just because after finally seeing the story (not yet in 3-D, but that will come soon…) I can honestly say one definite pro is:

“James Cameron’s Avatar Movie is a Border Stone!” Not only for the year 2009 sci fi movies, but for the coming 2010 and the years to come, too…
and I don’t have a con to counter this just yet…but I found a news view with some negatives…

There are many people saying that the film:

• it is not an original story,
• it has influences from his previous movies and elsewhere,
• the Avatar characters are predictable,
• the Avatar movie cast is not exactly what was needed for a BIG hit…

BUT, you know what? This list can add more slurs, and I’d still buy the blu-ray version soon as it comes out.

They didn’t see the movie yet, I bet!  They were just supposing it would be so and so, after watching the Avatar movie trailers.

Maybe they thought it was a remake of the last airbender or something, but they would be dead wrong!

Let’s talk about these the avatar movie briefly (and not just the trailer):

Avatar is a movie which story takes place on a remote location - Pandora, a satellite to the gas giant planet Polyphemis in the solar system of Alpha Centauri B.   What is funny about this is that inside our solar system there is a satellite of Saturn with the same name Pandora.  This may be a sign of getting inspiration from things familiar to us already…or maybe the plot will thicken and link the director to old news that humans here on Earth have known for over a century.

BUT

it is no other resemblance, because the moon Pandora is full, I mean “literally” full of alien life.

The views (even 2-D, but I can only imagine diving into the scenery in 3-D) are spectacular – I simply find no other word to describe them.   I’ve got to see the floating mountains, the Mountain Banshee, HomeTree or in general, any kind of landscapes they are showing.   I felt like a kid longing for a candy and suddenly being handed a handful.  I didn’t know where to look first, believe me!

Have I seen such scenery elsewhere?  Well, glimpses of it, yes, here and there.  After all, they had to make them look at least remotely similar to what we are used to, in order to easily understand what’s going on, or otherwise, we would have had a lot of a hard time to figure out what we were looking at… hence flying medusae, direhorses with six legs but looking like – guess what? horses, of course!

Is this a lack of imagination, of originality?  I wouldn’t put it so.  As I said before, just a way to make us understand rapidly what is going on.

The main characters now…  Let’s see the Avatar movie cast:

Jake Sully played by Sam Worthington – the Australian makes, on my opinion, a credible role.  He’s a crippled marine who came to Pandora to replace his dead brother in an attempt to save the investment the mining company (RDA) has made building an avatar mixing his DNA with alien Na’vi… His loyalties are clear in the beginning.   Furthermore, he is tempted by the promise to get ‘real legs’ at his return to Earth.  But taken by the action, he falls in love with…

Neytiri played by Zoe Saldana – guys you won’t believe how sexy the alien she’s playing could be!   Honestly, the most gracious and beautiful 3m tall blueish tailed monkey looking like creature.  However, I can sincerely say that the imagination here is at rest somehow.  These guys should have had six limbs, to match all the other life evolution path on Pandora.
THAT may be, though, the next step on James Cameron’s success story:  a new kind of Avatar movie 2010 maybe?…with six legged aliens?

Now, before I risk being accused of un-natural inclinations towards alien life… he, he… I think you should first see the movie, ok?   Once again, I can hardly wait to watch it again in 3-D.

Next in line would be on the cast the secondary roles, starting with…

Dr. Grace Augustine played by Sigourney Weaver – who declared recently about Avatar 2009: “The MOST ambitious movie I have ever been associated with..” She is an exobiologist whose role in the events will take you by surprise in the end – but I don’t want to spoil you the pleasure of surprise.

Nevertheless, if you’re a hard core Sci Fi FAN as I happen to be, you can read more here about Sigourney Weaver’s Avatar performance. While she fights FOR the planet, its wildlife and such, the opposite is…

Colonel Miles Quaritch portrayed by Stephen Lang - is the Chief of Security on Hell’s Gate (the small area that humans have established their presence on Pandora.)

Now, if detractors would say that Quaritch is predictable, then yes, indeed they’re quite right.  He’s just doing what he was trained to do all his life, without too much concern for the ethics, but rather in a strict military way: hit and crush the enemy before they get you… kinda… well, you know what I mean.

The one who’s NOT predictable though, is Jake Sully.  You would think a man linked to his avatar body through technological means would stay on the safe side, wouldn’t you?

Back to Avatar movie cast though, there are a few more to be mentioned:

Trudy Chacon portrayed by actress Michelle Rodriguez is a retired marine pilot working for RDA.  Her role is crucial in the movie’s plot at certain moments, but then again, I hate spoilers, so I can’t disclose it here.  Again, a character who’s actions are more or less predictable up to a point.  But what is coming in the end is what counts most, isn’t it?

Parker Selfridge played by Giovanni Ribisi – administrator of the RDA.  If someone is indeed doing what you’d just expect them to do, then this guy is, definitely.

There would be a few more and of course even ten’s of them…it is a long cast indeed, but I think it’s time to see the natives, too:

Mo’at portrayed by actress CCH Pounder is the Queen of the Na’vi’s Omaticaya Clan.  She is Neytiri’s mother and married to…

Eytukan played by Wes Studi – the patriarch of the Omaticaya Clan

Tsu’Tey portrayed by actor Laz Alonso is one of all Na’vi finest warriors and archery experts, presumably the greatest warrior of the Omaticaya Clan.  He was originally intended to be the mate of Neytiri.   Now, could YOU blame the guy for assaulting Jake, especially when he finds out he was an RDA spy in Na’vi’s eyes?

All these being said, without further ado I’d say directly:

“All these characters are more or less predictable, just like in any other movie, but of course only up to a point.” Is this blamable?  NOT at all!

It’s just the way things are.  Makes our ‘job’ more easier when we watch them movies, ya know?

Brings that feeling that we’ve seen these before, to classify things more smoothly into our thinking patterns.  But in the end, all is just a mirrors game, a play of smokes.  James Cameron only uses these characters to show us what he truly intended:  a one-of-a-kind 3-D experience, so overwhelming – attacking our main senses (vision and hearing) with such a force that we won’t know how when and where we were hit.

There is on more thing I didn’t talk about too much in this post, that being the Avatar creatures:

• The Fierce Thanator,
• The Powerful Mountain Banshee,
• The Splendid Leonopteryx
• The Friendly Direhorse

and many others… all true marvels of CGI technology.  But don’t worry!   I’ll just stay for one more round on my armchair here and I’ll bring to you these mighty Avatar creatures here in my next post.

My conclusion is this.  The avatar movie cast is doing it’s job perfectly balanced, managing to pass the director’s message to us.  James Cameron’s Avatar movie is a state-of-the-art 3-D experience for sure and a milestone in the history of science fiction movies in particular, but also movies, generally.

Avatar, the movie 2009 is coming at a late time in December, making it the perfect candidate to be also the best one next year.  So my title Avatar the movie 2010 is more than deserved in essence, but time will prove it to be in nature too.

StevieVee, on a cold blizzardly night of December…

Michael Crichton and “The Andromeda Strain”

(continued from the sci fi books post)

…Fast forward a couple weeks later, one of the first Sci Fi novels I ever read – The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton -  was still with me…haunting me with its visions of science fiction and fantasy, travel to the future, but I was running short on time…

Well, the library rules were clear! While I wanted this to own, to hold, to reflect on, the library had other ideas.

I had to return it prior to borrowing any other title (I loved books, so I needed to be able to borrow more) but on the other hand, I was not willing to give back the most mind blowing story, the best (and only) sci fi book I had ever read!

What to do, then?…

I suspect you can see my side of the story in one way or another.  I had the work of the king of science fiction in my hand…the last copy available…and it wasn’t mine.  There was the dilemma – to do the right thing and put it through the return slot, or to find a solution…find something real, spin my own tale so they will let me keep the light and love of my life, and still let me devour more (I mean, to let me borrow other stuff).

They say every boy or girl feels that way now and then…isn’t it so?  But dear reader, how could I tell the librarian, without turning red from embarassment?

Be it books, or toys, or a good friend’s jewels… it really doesn’t matter what, but only the feeling that you HAD to have it, to KEEP it, to OWN it!  Isn’t it something, this need to possess?

Nowadays it would be simpler.  You go search for the book on Amazon and buy it, right?

But things were far different in this scenario, way back in the era of 1978.  Maybe you can remember…

The book I was in love with was out of print and…
There were no hopes to be re-released soon.
It was not to be found on any bookstore either.  Believe me, I tried as hard as any human!

Dark feelings enveloped me.

What to do then?

What would you have done in such a situation?  Imagine wanting something so bad, it’s all you can think of!

Well… my first childish impish elf thought was to go claim I lost it < Brilliant! isn’t it? Ha, Ha, Ha!  A ray of hope perhaps!
I felt hot around my collar…was I a sf vamp? I was just a child, but already I was being sucked into pop scifi culture, and the fantastic tales of fantasy and wonder.

Do you think they believed me?

I don’t remember… but one thing was clear; even so, I still needed to either find a replacement and donate it to the library, to be indexed, counted for, etc… OR I had to pay a fine – 3 times the price of the Andromeda Strain, and they would go buy it again themselves – which in the end is what I did!

So, Michael Crichton, I so love your sci fi book, The Andromeda Strain, that I gladly paid 300% of the cover price, just to have it.  And to this day, it’s not only in my top 100, not only does it have some of my favorite characters, not only is it my top pick for december…no, this book is still my all-time favorite, and sits proudly at the front of my massive science fiction book collection.

But hey, do you think the library bought the replacement?  Hell no, they didn’t!  I really got the last one!

However, I was safe with my book at home, even if it was costing 3 times the shop price.  But in fact, thinking hard… if it wasn’t available anymore, then the value was indeed, much higher.

This was the first seed that started to grow in my mind at that time and it became now what it is: an enormous, HUGE sci fi books collection, science fiction novels, fantasy and even some sci fi horror, sci fi magazines and science fiction anthologies, most probably, half of them published in English… but that is another story… that I am gonna tell you in my next post (hint: you’ll ’see’ me smuggling books from a very off-limits, highly secure area.

(Pssst! don’t tell anybody!)

http://scifisciencefiction.com/the-andromeda-strain-sci-fi-novels-book-changed-my-life

“The White Dragon” by Anne McCaffrey – the little Dragon that could…

This is a story about a novel, by a master writer, who i had love at first read, who helped me discover the depth and magic of character, and guide me on my scifi journey…

…and while she’s now a recognized fiction fantasy pro, and the book is in paperback, and the Dragonriders of Pern have appeared in more works…she was with me when I was young, in the stars, and one day I became the holder of a forbidden book complete with a white dragon….but let me start my story:

Time passed since my first Sci Fi book was added to my Science fiction books collection…and many others followed before I found The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey.  But those were all meaningless moments in time, up to that moment.

However, something was about to change;  here in Eastern Europe, on the coast of Romania, I was going to see it and I was going to be in the middle of, what would become…an undercover smuggler of… Sci Fi literature! Of McCaff no less!  Soon I would be feeling like Jaxom – a rider – a real dragonrider!

The event was unprecedented.  Somehow, an US Destroyer, the USS Dale, from the 6th Fleet was touring the Mediterranean and was going to throw anchor in Constanta, my native city, for three days.

I was a junior high school student at that moment.  There were lists made at school, with those allowed to get permits to enter the harbor and visit the warship.

Most of my colleagues were thrilled at the thought of climbing the hull ladder and see the guns and turrets and missiles from close range.  I’ve been there, so I will admit, all those were interesting, but…

..for me it was different!

I wanted to talk to those sailors.  I wanted to exercise my English; because you see, in the mean time I have been started to learn it as best I could.

Not to run from the country, as many others dreamed about that era, but to be able to read my beloved books as they were originally, untranslated.

So here the story goes…
I was NOT on the official list to be admitted on the visit; therefore, I had to go directly to the harbor gate and wait there for an opportunity; maybe, just maybe, I could get IN somehow.

We were, like, hundreds, waiting there…  Some were watching with great envy the people getting out from their visit, with balloons and caps and such.  I was becoming angrier and angrier because I was still outside, and here there was never ever anything to eat, and I was hungry.

But I was slowly advancing towards the gate with every opportunity I had… and after about two hours of waiting, there was my chance.  I was now near the barrier and a new group was preparing to enter when I blinked to one of the guards and offered him a cigarette (I was smoking back then… BAD habit!)
When doing so, I had to come closer to him, on the other side of the barrier – and the group was admitted at that very moment;  suddenly, I was mingling with them and on my way to the ship.  Hooray!

My happiness was shadowed only by the thought that I was so late; my visit was going to be short, because the visiting schedule was about to close soon – so my dreams of staying there all the day were blown up by now…

What I was not foreseeing, though, were the problems I was gonna face at exit (I was on no list and there was gonna be no more crowd for coverage) but I will tell you all about that in my next post…

Till then, just a hint: I’ve managed to get my first English written Sci Fi book from that ship – The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey – a good start for my collection of Science Fiction books… but to take it with me back home?  That’s another story worth telling (stay tuned!).

Sigourney Weaver Pushing Back Alien Frontiers Again in James Cameron’s Avatar Movie...

“The MOST ambitious movie I have ever been associated with..” said Sigourney Weaver – three times Oscar nominee – who plays Dr. Grace Augustine in James Cameron’s Avatar Movie released for the first time on Dec 18^th, 2009.

Well… I bet it is, according to what I’ve seen so far watching the trailers and reading reviews, wikis and stuff.  BUT there are people saying it is not such a cinematographical breakthrough as it was thought it would be.  Let us dissect things a bit then, here.

First, a few words about James Cameron’s Avatar plot, characters and

background…

Sigourney Weaver’s character is a xenobotanist, a scientist whose job is to mentor Jake Sully (Sam Worthington’s Avatar character) on the trip to Pandora.

Jake, an ex-marine wounded and paralyzed from the waist down, has enrolled in the Avatar program replacing his twin brother who died in an accident, seeking to get a new healthy body.

Dr. Grace is also using an avatar herself on the field on Pandora and takes it as a goal to help Jake through his battle against the diverse creatures they’ll encounter on Pandora.

Humans are having a hard time to work and even survive on the harsh environment of the planet, given its atmospheric composition and hostile aliens.

They are trying to mine ‘Unobtainium’ – a very rare and precious ore – from the sacred lands of the native Na’vi people.

If we are to blame something about this movie, I guess we should start with this word -
a lame concoction of a puerile ‘60 recipe for strange names to be used in Sci Fi…
C’mon!  We are in 2010 – almost!!!

Jake will be assigned to mingle with the Na’vi ‘Omaticaya Clan’ in the form of an avatar (a bio-engineered body grown from a Human/Na’vi DNA mix and telepathically driven remotely) and offer insight intel to the RDA troops, trying to move the tribe from there, as their Hometree ‘Kelutral’ is growing right on top of the most rich Unobtainium reserve of the planet (actually, a satellite).

Jake’s avatar is saved from a pack of ‘Viperwolves’ by Neytiri (Zoe Saldana’s Avatar character) yet he still betrays her and her tribe in the beginning…

But is that all, or do we see here something else happening?

We all feel how the movie should go from now.

Nothing new since Romeo and Juliet…

Some salt and pepper on the tail, brought to us by the marines having Colonel Miles Quaritch – the Chief of Security on Pandora – lead them in battle. Colonel Quaritch is portrayed by actor Stephen Lang.

And to add some more exoticism, some fantastic creatures – amongst them the Mountain Banshees (inspired maybe by Anne McCaffrey’s Pern Dragons?)

Detractors said… it’s like a ‘Dances with Wolves’ placed in a strange, alien environment, mixed with elements from former ‘Alien’ and ‘Terminator’ and some other clinches, both taken from the director’s previous movies as well as from a dozen other sources they found to be more or less resembling it.

Hmmm… YES, it is so, just like so many other movies before it and like so many more to come.  Some themes are simply taken from human lives and experiences, others are mythological legends brought to present, while others just historical metaphors…

BUT!

All that being said, the movie is filmed in 3-D and it’s a mashup of science fiction and fantasy fully packed with action.  An experience in the theaters around the world that will be like no other:

“It’s a serious film about serious issues, and it’s in 3-D. And when you see it, you go — well, of course!  This is so natural, this is the way it should be” said Sigourney Weaver in an interview dated May 11^th.
“It’s so state of the art, it’s going to transform, at least, what people expect of the big movies!”

More recently (Dec 8^th):

“You won’t have seen anything like it”, she declared.
“This film is going to change the way we look at movies. The whole movie is in 3-D, even normal scenes between two people. So you feel you’re in the room with these characters. You’re always in the best seat in the house.”

OR as she so fondly speaks of it here:

“The movie really becomes a lot of fun… ’cause you get to really live with the Na’vi and… [...] the fact that it’s 3-D it’s gonna blow everyone’s mind… I mean.. Then, you don’t have to go to Pandora to experience Pandora, you can just go to the movies with your glasses and… experience it there… ”

James Cameron’s Avatar is not a movie, nor is it even a new frontier that was pushed back in terms of technology, special effects and distribution thruought the world… It is an EVENT of epic proportions.  It will change the way we look at movies, it may even bring us all (not only FANS and snobs) to Cinema…

…because no matter what, the experience you could have there, surrounded by the images and sounds will never be matched by anything else.

I am a firm believer in the power of books over films, in general.

This time, there is no doubt:  Avatar needs to be seen at the Cinema first!

But then again, it is a very valuable collectible item.  I HAVE to have this DVD in my personal library.

And who knows?  The future may even bring us 3-D helmets quite soon enough to dive into this world of awe that Jim Cameron created in Avatar and the many others to follow (do I feel they left room for sequels?… he, he… I bet!)

Till then, you could pre-order a copy here, as the supply will most probably be less than sufficient at the beginning.  And start dreaming, just as I do, of riding on a ‘Banshee’ and fighting a ‘Thanator’ beast on the forests of Pandora, the far-away alien planet where James Cameron placed the action of his latest mega movie: Avatar.

This is StevieVee, eagerly waiting for 18^th of Dec

Michael Crichton and “The Andromeda Strain”

Back in 1978 I was just a seventh grader with no idea about sci fi novels.  In fact, Michael Crichton’s “The Andromeda Strain” sci fi book was my first encounter with the world of science fiction books, but it rocked my world like nothing else.

Stay with me! Here’s the story of what happened…

I was an avid reader. Back in time, movies were scarce here where I live and the focus was on going to the school’s library and borrowing something interesting to read.

{ Begin Rant } Maybe that’s the reason why I’m so pissed when I see our today’s youngsters not even thinking first at reading, but watching movies instead  { End Rant }

Anyway, back to my story…

The room was full of books – starting from the floor right up to the ceiling – stacked on wooden racks curved under their heavy weight.  Obviously, I wasn’t as tall as I am now; so I could only easily see about half of them around me.

But boy what a curious mind I had back then…  Heck, I still have it… maybe that’s why I’m still a Sci Fi addict FAN!

As such, I spotted a small wooden crate that served as a replacement for a stair. And there I was, in mere seconds, right on top of it, probing upper, farther than I could do it before at the eye level I had initially…there was something staring back at me that unleashed the real me!

No more Chemistry books.

No more Biology… or Math… or darn History!

But a whole new realm of something else, labeled: Science Fiction (even if my native language is different, they were still using the English words for it)

I seriously think that was a turning point in my whole life.

If I weren’t to find that stack – and subsequently the book I’m talking about – in a rather harder to find section of the library… who knows? Maybe I could have discover Sci Fi later on, but the impact might have been different. But that’s an other story.

As such, I was thrilled at the thought that I would be able to read something most of my colleagues may not even dreamed about (in fact it is ALL about dreaming, isn’t it so?) I scanned the titles. I can’t remember them now, after so many years (31 passed already, man… life goes so fast!)

As we were living in the Commie Era, most of them were Pinko Soviet Books, you know…

But then, I saw “The Andromeda Strain” by Michael Crichton and that was it: the magic moment!

The book had black covers and an intriguing image: A naked person, wearing a gas mask with a blonde doll toy strapped to his chest.  My heart started beating like mad!

The editor has chosen a nice graphical logo for the collection, a pen tip with wings. I know it was originally published in May 1969, but the translation I was looking at was rather fresh (1976) and the book was probably never touched before, because I could smell the fresh ink!

One of the greatest joys of reading books that I cherish is to really take them close to the nose and deeply inhale the smells of paper and ink. – BEWARE; I hear it is a dangerous habit! I just can’t stop it myself, but I’m not your guardian – don’t take my advice!

Now you may ask:

“Well, well… All good, but what’s so life changing in this story?”

Let me tell you the transformation that happened in me….not only did I discover Science Fiction books, but I began with one of the world’s best Sci Fi novels ever written (Michael Crichton’s first, and a unanimously appraised top Sci Fi book, the SF king’s best seller!)

In fact, it was so good that I couldn’t bear the thought of giving it back to the library. These views of fantasy books were pure art and science fusion, and I was unable to let go, without starting a war…

IT WAS THAT life changing!

Have you ever wanted some thing so bad, it ached?  I mean, I wanted it to freeze up the land until February so I could keep this great work of pure genius. If a mere human boy could love these stories, I was living proof.

I’ll tell you exactly what happened and how things evolved from there in my next post.  But don’t worry, no rat finked on me, nor did I use some thin veiled excuse…or maybe I did!  (I’ll give you a hint…I can still borrow books!)

I have to run now, but before I publish this I just want to mention this…

Dear reader, please leave your comments below.
I’d love to see what YOUR own experiences were, and how You made first contact with Sci Fi novels.
What was YOUR first Science Fiction book and why was that life changing for YOU?

Thanks!

StevieVee