fans of sf, fantasy, horror & whimsy
Just as we have a regular segment as part of critical Mass for news and quick reviews, we’d like to add snippets and thots to the website.
If you’re interested in being a semi-regular contributor, please email me and I’ll add you as a user of the website, and arrange a short training session to point out some features of the site (including the possibility of emailing in your contributions!)
If you’re interested, email me (Roman): websmith@internode.on.net
A recording of the critical mass talk
It is the secret river that not only greens the soul but also runs under walls and gains entrance to all fortified and walled places of the world and of the mind. Regard your own estate and case. Is your own town not built on two rivers which are separated by a firmament between? One of them is the impossible river by which all things may enter anywhere. We’d be robbed of our celestial birthright without it.
Ignace Wolff, The River Inside quoted by R. A. Lafferty in Rivers of Damascus
Raphael Aloysius Lafferty was a brilliant Irish-American fabulist whose amazing works are little known nowadays.
Lafferty’s words belong to an ancient, invisible river which nourishes and greens our imagination. The river made up of storytellers’ voices, ancient and modern, weaving myth and legend, whispering ghost stories and telling folk-tales. An oral tradition which stretches from cave mouth to radio studio, from the Halls of Asgard to the main street of Lake Wobegon.
R. A. Lafferty is not recognized as the brilliant fabulist he is because he belongs not to the literary tradition, but to the oral tradition. If his stories were recorded, podcast, or broadcast on radio, he would have a huge following and would be kept constantly echoing.
Last Wednesday, Roman Orszanski reprised his talk from the February 1989 Critical Mass.
Here is a recording of it
There are some nice visuals in this tale of alien invasion and deceit. Unfortunately, the story makes little if no sense.
Tom Cruise plays a drone repairman, who for some reason is house in a luxurious sky palace with his partner. He’s got a combination VTOL jet/bat cycle to play with, as he zooms over a planet devastated by loss of its moon, occupied by “scavs” (scavengers?) as the rest of the planet’s human population has scarpered to Titan (!!). In another ten days, the massive floating automated vacuum cleaners will have finished sucking up the planet’s oceans (did I mention the story makes no sense?) and he can retire to join the rest of his species on Titan.
Unsurprisingly, he seems reluctant to leave the planet of his birth.
Who is he? How did he get his maintenance job? Who is the strange woman in his dreams? He doesn’t know, because he’s been brain wiped (was he a criminal?) and shows little interest in discovering why the scavs are trying to kill him.
The drones are flexible, highly armed and fast. Strange ordinance for what appear to be just repair drones. And why are daily orders coming from a giant floating pyramid?
Given that Titan is a frozen moon, with its own supply of water, what logic is there in sucking up the earth’s oceans? (Aside from some nice shots of beached and rusting tankers.) If the floating vacuum cleaners are processing the seawater to generate energy, why not locate them on the seabed, or afloat? (not as spectacular visuals). Are these two really the only humans left on the planet?
The whole charade starts to unravel when a spacecraft crashlands in response to a signal beamed aloft by the scavs. The contents, several bodies in cryonic suspension, are almost all destroyed before our hero can salvage one, containing (surprise?) the woman from his dreams.
The rest of the film is taken up with gun battles, destruction and explosions, as our hero discovers what’s actually happening, and reacts accordingly.
We get some nice scenes with Morgan Friedman as we are fed the expository lump. And no, the real story doesn’t make much sense either.
But it is a visually stunning action film. And there’s an evil AI which pays visual homage to HAL (love those red rings around cameras). If you like Tom Cruise, see it on the big screen. I doubt it’ll be worth watching on DVD.
And no, there’s not enough of Morgan to make it worth seeing for him.
Spoiler Alert! Continue reading “Oblivion”
Woody Allen’s latest, Midnight in Paris, has few surprises, but many delights. This small fantasy opens with a panoramic tour of the city of light, to a jazzy soundtrack, echoing the opening of Manhattan.
Owen Wilson plays a budding novelist in Paris on holiday with his fiancee and her family. He’s talking about walking in Paris in the rain; she hates the place and can’t wait to get back to the US.
One drunken night, he decides to walk back to the hotel. Hours later, he is lost and sitting on some steps. An old car pulls up, and drags him away to a party. Cole Porter’s playing the piano, and he’s introduced to F Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. He listens to Hemingway muse on the meaning of love and life, and eventually staggers home in the wee hours.
So entranced is he that he develops a habit of taking these midnight strolls: he meets painters, surrealists, writers and becomes a regular at the open house of Gertrude Stein, who offers some sound advice on his novel. (Kathy Bates steals the show with her portrayal of Stein.) And, of course, he falls in love with an artist’s model of the 1920s.
Owen Wilson makes a remarkable Woody Allen standin, and you can picture Woody speaking the lines as the film proceeds. It ends, as it must, with our hero walking through Paris in the rain.
A gem of a film. Highly recommended.
10am — 4pm, Saturday October 8thThe third in a series of small conventions, this one will look at various aspects of Joss Whedon’s creations.
Programme:
We’ll look at Podcasting with special guests Gerri and Eugenia from Women talk Sci Fi, and Peter from 80 page Giant.
We’ll select the best SF/fantasy film ever from 100s of candidates, launch a new website and consider what’s new and exciting in the world of speculative fiction.
Interested? Then come along on Saturday!
Registration from 9:30am.
James Fosdike, from Adelaide, wrote and illustrated ‘Deadly’ for Zuda Comics, DC Comics creator owned webcomic site.
Ewart Shaw caught up with him to talk about his art.
Listen: Download (16:09, MP3) 7.8MB
The Adelaide Fan Review 
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