SpaceGypsies

There is just something about Fringe that makes me fangirl like a complete loon. I’m not sure there are enough words in the whole English dictionary for me to describe the feeling I get when I watch it. Let me put it this way, not since Stargate SG-1 has a show captivated me in a way that Fringe does.

Last night, the season four finale aired; it was the second part of the continuation. For me to properly explain all my thoughts and feelings on the epic ‘Brave New World’ two-parter, I need to take you through the journey that has been the story so far.

If you’re a watcher of this amazing show, then this recap is not for you, well it is if you want to see me try to explain it all in a paragraph or few, which is no easy task (Challenge Accepted). Beware: Spoilers below.

Leads Jackson, Noble and Torv

Fringe is really centred around three main characters, FBI Special Agent Olivia Dunham, Doctor Walter Bishop (Australia’s Anna Torv and John Noble) and Peter Bishop (Mighty Ducks star, Joshua Jackson – who has amazing beard scruff).  The work they investigate usually has ties back to the wacky fringe science experiments Walter performed in the late 70s and 80s with William Bell (Star Trek’s Leonard Nimoy), founder of Massive Dynamic – the largest privately owned R&D facility in the world.

In short, Walter is released from a mental institution to help save Agent Dunham’s partner, who was exposed to a cocktail of chemicals that turned his skin completely translucent. This whole thing created a domino effect and led Dunham to be pulled into working for Fringe Division to explain events that could mean the end of the world. Season one is centred on The Pattern and ZFT where David Robert Jones heavily features. We are also introduced to the Observers, who turn up at important points in history. However, their origin and purpose are relatively unknown until season four. Season one finishes with William Bell taking Olivia across to another universe – the ‘Red’ universe (ours is Blue – it helps to differentiate during the episodes).

During season two we learn that Peter is not actually ‘our’ Peter (he was taken from the other side as a boy) and Olivia discovers

William Bell (Nimoy) and Walter Bishop

more about the experiments that Walter and William performed on her when she was a child living down in Jacksonville, Florida. Did I forget to mention that in the previous paragraph? Whoops. Anyway, Olivia is special; she was given ‘Cortexiphan’ – a drug that enhances innate mental abilities. Due to the Cortexiphan, Olivia has a gift that Walter wanted to exploit – she can cross over to the other universe.  So anyway, back to the story. Basically, Peter felt betrayed and decided to join his real father back on the other side. However, Walternate wasn’t the man Peter thought he was and so, with help from other Cortexiphan subjects, Olivia crossed over with Walter and William Bell to bring Peter back. Only the main trio manage to return safely home, or do they?

Season three is a story about both of the universes, so you got to see the similarities and differences between the two worlds – they didn’t have coffee; could you imagine that? I’d die! I don’t want to give too much away because season three is quite awesome, but lets just say, the Olivias are a little bit different; one of them has an ‘evil vagenda’.  The season focuses on finding and building a machine that has the ability to destroy universes, to which somehow Peter and Olivia are the keys. The two universes are basically on the brink of war with one another and it is up to Peter to save them; only a trip to the future gave him the idea of how.

September (Michael Cerveris)

So finally, season four… I don’t know how to explain this season. It brought the story from season one full circle to an ‘end’ of sorts… in a Fringe way of course. The central storyline was the creation of a new universe and the destruction of the other two. Unknown to anyone was the bankroller for the idea. Season four started out with Peter having been wiped from existence and therefore, the timeline had changed, almost drastically in some instances. He was the lynchpin. Without giving away the whole story, Peter eventually found his way back into existence, but no one knew who he was. Memories of the past were lost. The key line of the season, which explains pretty much everything, was said to Olivia by one of the Observers, September: “In every version of the future, you have to die.” After the finale, the line finally makes sense. And let me tell you one thing, the William Bell of this world is like ‘Alternate Universe Spock’ – he just didn’t have his goatee.

I love storylines, and Fringe has one of the best storylines I have ever followed. For those of you who know me, that’s not the only thing I love about television shows… I am a major shipper. In this show, it is no exception. The thing is, the writers don’t jerk you around with following a couple, oh no, Peter and Olivia have been together on and off since the end of season two. I can’t tell you why they were ‘off’, but one thing is for sure, Peter and Olivia are forever destined to be together. The season four finale just cemented that…

SPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILERSPOILER

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Last Sunday brought the long awaited and highly anticipated return of the PBS Mystery series Sherlock to the US. Lucky UK fans feasted their eyes on Series Two several months ago. Sherlock is a highly entertaining modernization of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, where Victorian era ideals and technology make way for the 21st century. It can be enjoyed by both fans of the books, previous shows set in the Victorian era, and viewers who have no prior experience with Sherlock Holmes. As someone who grew up watching Jeremy Brett and has recently made a project out of reading the mysteries but is far from actually accomplishing it, I feel I have a mixed perspective on the subject.

WARNING: If you are familiar with the Sherlock Holmes mystery ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, this review will not entirely spoil the plot for you, nor will it give away the ending, but it will reveal the modern twists that were added in Sherlock. Reader beware!

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I first visited the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo (known as C2E2) last year and was very impressed! Held at McCormick place, which may be Chicago’s largest convention center, this con was all set to impress. With a star studded lineup of guests and vendors galore, C2E2 certainly doesn’t disappoint! Here’s the Good, the Bad and the Meh from C2E2 2012.

The Good-

Honestly, I loved this con so there were a lot of good things!

John Barrowman takes a video of the crowd for his mum.

- Organization! Reed Pop, the lovely folks that bring you C2E2 and PAX, have conventions down to a science. The full color programs are a great tool along with the mobile app, to help convention goers navigate the vendors and programming schedules.

- C2E2 Staff! I have to give a special shout out to the C2E2 staff. Those folks work hard! Not only do they work hard, but every staff member we spoke with was friendly and polite. If they didn’t know the answer to our question they quickly went to find it for us! The staff was simply lovely and made the convention all the more enjoyable.

- John Barrowman! Seriously, this man is FANTABULOUS! I admit I didn’t know much about him before his panel. I had seen Torchwood and enjoyed it, but that was about it. I left his panel wanting to watch everything this man has ever been in! He was amazing! I’m always impressed by actors who are appreciative and great with their fans. John Barrowman goes above and beyond. Yes, his autograph line was 2 hours+ long, but that was because he joyfully spent a moment with each and every fan.  You don’t see that often.

- John Cusack!Speaking of amazing celebrities, the opportunity to see Chicago legend John Cusack in person was a once-in-a-lifetime treat! He was everything you would expect John Cusack to be. He even had gracious answers for some of the rather awkward questions during his panel. I left his panel with a new appreciation for him as an actor.

With the wonderful David Newell

- David Newell! The name may not be familiar, but I guarantee most people will know him by his catch phrase “Speedy Delivery!” For more than 30 years, Mr. Newell played Mr. McFeely on the childhood classic Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood. We met Mr. Newell at the Toonseum table on the vendor floor and the childhood memories came flooding back. The videos Mr. McFeely delivered to Mr. Rogers had always been my favorite part of the show. It was a honor to meet such a T.V. icon. His panel was also one of my favorite panels to date. He revealed behind the scenes stories, showed old clips and bloopers, and told the story of a man, Fred Rogers, who had touched children’s lives for generations. For me, this panel was the highlight of the weekend.

- Jake Rueth! Ever since I spotted Tiarala and Mythandros’ prints by Jake Rueth, I knew I had to have some. His art is colorful, whimsical and, well…it makes you smile. I purchased two prints from Mr. Rueth, my favorite, “Rainbow Shower” and the beautiful, “The Universe.” I can’t help but smile every time I look at these prints hanging in my home.

The Bad-

There wasn’t much bad when it came to C2E2. Overall, I have to say that nothing was particularly “bad” about this convention!

The Meh-

The Science Fiction Outreach Project was one of the many great booths at C2E2

- Programming. While C2E2′s programming was more varied than say, Wizard World, Cyphan Con (a smaller convention) had more when it came to variety of programming. If C2E2 adds more panels such as costuming and gaming, their programming line-up would move from decent to excellent.

- Food. This is more McCormick Place’s issue than C2E2′s. There wasn’t much in terms of food options. The food offered was your general cafeteria-style fair. Nothing flashy and certainly nothing healthy. Setting up food carts on the convention floor may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but ended up emitting a lingering funk in and around the food area that was a little nauseating.

- Artists’ Alley. This is the one place where more organization, or a better labeling system, would have been helpful. PlayItGrand and I spent a good hour looking for Ant Lucia, the amazing artist behind the Star Wars pin-up posters, only to walk right past him. I ended up purchasing one of his prints from a vendor who was kind enough to direct me to Mr. Lucia’s exact location in the Alley. Thankfully, Mr. Lucia was incredibly gracious and even signed my poster for me.

Original costumes from Captain America.

- Costume Contest. Granted C2E2 isn’t as big as Dragon*Con for costumes, but their costume contest was rather disappointing. First, it was limited to the first 30 contestants/groups to sign up. Given the size of the stage this ended up making sense. The PA system for the stage, however, was muddled and it was very hard to hear what the announcer was saying. (I’m sure the foam encasing our heads didn’t help either). Rather than using a pre-show judging system like Chicago TARDIS does, C2E2 used an applause-based system to determine the winners. Again, this is great if you have a costume that allows you to play to the audience, but it doesn’t really have much to do with the actual quality of the costume. A team of “celebrity judges” would have been awesome, as well as categories like Best in Show, Best Construction, Audience Favorite, etc. would have made this costume contest 100 times better.

- The C2E2 App. After having experienced an app like Dragon*Con’s, C2E2′s was kind of a disappointment. Mostly the app wasn’t fully updated and offered a poor search function and only marginal information in some cases. This made it difficult not only to find where a guest could be found, but when they were appearing throughout the weekend. For example, guests were listed as signing from 10:00 until 7:00. That’s a large window of time. If it were broken down to the actual times the guest would/should be sitting at their table signing it would eliminate the need for fans to constantly be returning to the autograph area to see if the guest was there.

A steam-powered computer...and it worked too!

- The Mailing List. Apparently registering as press for C2E2 automatically puts you onto a mailing list for various vendors and companies related to the convention. Pre-convention this is a great resource. It gives you an inside to some of the cool previews available at the con. After the convention it’s just annoying. We’re still receiving e-mails from companies who have clearly gotten our information off of the C2E2 press list. I don’t think this is C2E2′s fault. Obviously they can’t control what these outside persons do. Perhaps in the future, Reed Pop’s Media Relations staff should give guidelines to those who receive the press list and request that they not send informational e-mails post-convention.

Overall, C2E2 is a great convention. The location is great and so are the guests. Fans are just as friendly as you would expect convention goers to be. And the variety of vendors, artists, and guests is refreshing. This is a convention where you go to have fun. The expert way Reed Pop runs this con makes it relaxing for the con-goer. There’s very little frustration here. No unorganized lines or crowds. No rude or inexperienced staff members. This is, quite simply, a FUN convention!

Cairo
G. Willow Wilson, writer
M.K. Perker, artist
Urban fantasy
November 2007
Vertigo Comics
ISBN: 978-1-4012-1734-1
Format: Trade paperback
accquired: purchased

this review cross-posted from On a Pale Star: A Book Blog for Speculative Fiction

 The blurb, from the back of the book:

A stolen hookah, a spiritual underworld, and a genie on the run change the lives of five strangers forever on the streets of the Middle East’s largest metropolis.

Cairo interweaves the fates of a drug runner, a down-on-his-luck journalist, an American expatriate, a troubled young student, and an Israeli soldier as they race through the bustling present-day Cairo to find an artifact of unimaginable power, one protected by a dignified jinn and sought by a wrathful gangster-magician. But the vastness of Africa’s legendary City of Victory extends into a spiritual realm—the Undernile—and even darker powers lurk there…

The review:

Cairo opens with a man telling a story. I’m a bit of a sucker for storytellers, so honestly, that was all it took to hook me into the graphic novel. Of course, it helps that the story he’s telling starts with “So today, I hit one of those stoned camels with my truck.”

I’ve never thought of camels being stoned before, or of drug runners crashing into them while trying to smuggle drugs into Israel…but now I have, and it makes perfect sense. Cairo is like that; full of situations I haven’t thought of before, but that slot right into reality perfectly, even if it’s jinn and the Undernile we’re talking about.

Ashraf is, I think, the perfect introductory character. He’s a drug runner, unrepentant about it, but knowing he ought to walk away. As he sits smoking with a hookah, telling his mother about his day, you get a feel for his personality, and when the scene pans out and Ashraf gets up to leave and you realize that he’s been talking to her grave, Ashraf suddenly has depth.

The story of his day leads to the next character we meet, an injured Israeli soldier who was found in the desert by a group of Bedouin heading into Cairo. When Tova wakes up in their care, she’s grateful they cared for her. When she realizes where they are headed, her response is an appropriate “fuck.”

Cairo is like this—one person’s story blends with another until we’ve met all five. Kate and Shaheed meet on a plane ride from the U.S. to Cairo; pretty soon we as readers realize that Kate is an idealistic middle-class young woman and it’s not hard to make a leap to “naïve” as she talks to Shaheed. Shaheed, though, is less transparent and it’s not until the narration follows him more closely that you realize that he’s very troubled, indeed.

Soon we find that Ashraf knows a journalist, Ali… and then Ali meets Kate, and Shaheed meets (and gets conned by) Ashraf, who has a run in with Tova. And like that, five disparate characters are connected and Wilson manages to make it feel completely natural. It would’ve been easy for this to feel contrived, so I’m impressed at how well orchestrated this string of meetings was.

The plot is pushed forward by Ashraf’s drug-running history coming back to bite him in the butt and a jinni (in, and then not in, a hookah). It’s a fantastic blend of the region’s mythology and religion with modern day Cairo. Shams, the jinn, is not at all the comedic blue guy from a Disney movie. He’s motivated, earnest, and a teacher–an example of a benevolent jinni.

Shams, benevolent being that he is, helps these five—one in particular—reach their potential. At one point in the story, he tells Shaheed that he manipulates probabilities, rather than creating items or events from scratch. With the cast he had to work with, I’m inclined to think that guiding this group might have been a bit like herding cats. They each have free-will, and own their own choices, but with some gentle and un-subtle nudges from Shams, they learn that they can choose differently than they have in the past. The message for readers isn’t subtle, but I think that’s okay. Sometimes we need clue-by-fours to smack us over the head with an idea, particularly a worthy one.

Wilson’s story is beautifully complimented by Perker’s art. The characters and setting are rendered beautifully, the panels accenting and expanding the text to make the entire story rich and nuanced. If you haven’t gathered by now, Cairo is not stereotypical comic book/super hero fair. There are no spandex or leather-encased vigilantes here, just excellently drawn men and women and a jinni who want more from life than what they’ve already experienced.

If you get the chance to read Cairo, do. It’s well worth your time.

Visit the author’s Website. Visit the artist’s Website.

Road to Hell
Krista D. Ball
Science Fiction
December 2011
Mundania Press
ISBN: 978-1-60659-286-1
155 pages, according to my e-reader
format: electronic
accquired: author sent it for review

This review is cross-posted from On a Pale Star: A Book Blog for Speculative Fiction

The blurb, from the publisher:
Captain Katherine Francis is about to disobey every Ethics Law the Union of Planets throws at her. After the Union’s enemy destroys her home planet and murders her family, she makes the decision to bring an end to the war–whatever it takes.

When an opportunity arises to ally with the neutral Alliance and turn the tide of war, Katherine throws aside her moral code, partners with a known spy, and risks sacrificing the very core of who she is.

And when faced with choosing between her conscience and stopping the bloodshed, she realizes that, either way, she’ll lose.

The review:
Shortly after Road to Hell opens, Katherine Francis, captain of the space port Perdition, receives terrible news about her family’s fate in the on-going war that is costing millions of lives and slowly chipping away at the Union of Planets. She’s devastated. More than devastated, she’s furious, and she nurses that rage until it’s what sustains her.

The Union’s Fleet Command puts out a request that all captains come up with a “local action plan” that might help the war end sooner, and Katherine begins to toy with an idea that skirts the Ethics Law, bending it without breaking it. And then, there’s an opportunity that goes against everything she’s been taught about honesty, trust, ethics, and the higher ground.

Bereft of her family, with her estranged wife somewhere out near the front, Katherine is faced with a question: just what are her ethics–the codes and values enforced by the Ethics law and the foundation of her and of the Unions’ way of life–worth?

We all know what the road to hell is paved with, and Krista Ball, by way of her tall, strong, grieving captain, reminds us that “hell” isn’t just a physical place but a state of mind and of being. Katherine decides that ending the war and defeating the Coalition is an end that will justify her means. What she doesn’t expect, I think, is just how much her methods will cost her personally and how much her decision will ripple outward to affect others in her life.

It wasn’t easy to read Captain Katherine Francis’ struggles in this novel, but I’m glad that I did, even my own personal moral code wouldn’t have struggled with what to do as Katherine’s did. She’s well written and consistent even as she does things that she never, ever dreamed she would do. I very much appreciated her character development even as I found that I sometimes had more in common with her (much less morally rigid) cohort-in-espionage, Salim.

Salim is a Coalition exile, both familiar to Katherine and utterly, utterly foreign. Not being Union means Salim hasn’t been raised on the strict Ethics Law, and doesn’t have the same boundaries as those he live among. He breaks Coalition codes for the Union and does so to benefit himself: agreeing to decode only in return for upgrades to his access to technology or for similar rewards. Early on Katherine comments that she’s fine with Salim as long as she remembers that “he will do what benefits him most.”

Of course Salim becomes her go-to person when she decides to go full-out, ignore the Ethics Law, and end the war. They are excellent foils to one another.

I’m not going to spoil the book and tell you if her plan comes to fruition and her end goal is met because while it is important, it is not really the point of the novel. Katherine’s constant struggle to reconcile herself to this path she’s chosen, her horror at the bad (very very bad) events that occur because of her choice, and even her inability to change a lifetime of conditioning and habits to effectively lie, those are the important parts of the story.

When does practicality win out over ideals? What would you do if you were told you have carte blanche to act as you want, as long as you don’t get caught? What are your personal morals and ethics worth? What’s your price?

Visit the author’s Website. Follow the author on Twitter.