I’ve Moved :)

I got myself a domain a few days ago and have been putting together a website at http://www.starshipteapot.com. Anyway, I have decided to host my blog myself for the time being but will keep this one in case things do indeed go pear shaped and what not – you can now find me at http://starshipteapot.com/blog/

Recommended Books: ‘Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror’ by Steve Alten (1997)

Synopsis: There is a rather long synopsis for this book but all you really need to know is that it it’s ‘Jaws’ with a much bigger shark! In fact this stars a megalodon, and the LA Times sums the book up very well with it’s review “Two Words: Jurassic Shark.”

(I was going to do an awful pun involving that immortal line from ‘Jaws’ “we’re going to need a bigger boat” but putting ’shark’ instead of ‘boat’… you get the idea.)

Review: Published in 1997 this was Steve Alten’s first book and by all accounts it hit the best-seller charts and was a bit of a runaway smash. A film was on the cards and is somewhere in hiatus hell as of 2008, although I would love this to be a film – it’d be up there with ‘Shark Attack’ and ‘Deep Blue Sea’ as one of those cheesy as hell monster films full of bad clichés but oh-so brilliant fun. That pretty much describes the book, brilliant fun…definite airport fodder (possibly not cruise ship fodder) and certainly a brilliant commuting book.

Let’s not beat around the bush, good literature this is not and neither is it particularly good science-fiction but it does win some points for originality. The idea that the greatest living predator of all time is still roaming around, albeit a long way down in the Marianas Trench is fairly original and a wonderful idea… I found myself wishing that perhaps this theory holds water and there are million year old mega-sharks still around.

As with every book trying to do a Clive Cusslar (or even Michael Critchon) it has it’s stock genius (a somewhat Dirt Pitt type character called Dr Jonas Taylor) who due to some accident involving a submarine/wedding cake/gerbil is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, has an inexplicably hot wife who is a wannabe be media star who also happens to be shagging the husbands best friend… there’s the enemies of the genius who you know are all going to be eaten somewhere around the half-way mark.

I particularly loved Taylor killing the megalodon from the inside (seriously).

You know what? I loved this book so much that I’ve bought the sequel ‘The Trench‘!

Oh, the pain, the pain of it all!

I got hit with one of those 24hr bugs which resulted in me being sent home from work on Friday after the matinee and then having a horrible night of aches, pains and constant shivering. On the plus side the incredibly painful sore throat I had went pretty quickly and it does seem to have been only 24hr hours of feeling like I’d run into a brick wall, over and over.

Things that have helped this experience be less painful:
1) Futurama, the ultimate feel good cold cure.
2) Reading ‘Starship Titanic‘ by Terry Jones, who can’t be cheered up by random little gems like this?

“They lay there waiting for the forever-ending explosion that would terminate their brief affair. But, unlike the two overs, it didn’t come.”

3) Late night ‘phone calls to mummy

In honour of this experience I’d like to call ‘hell’, I’ve written a little ode

Ode to the 24-hour ‘Flu Virus

I want a cup of tea
I want a hug,
but most importantly
I want my mum.

Why? Oh Why?

(Completely randomly before I moan, I’m very pleased to hear that the writers of the new Trek film used ‘Spock’s World’ as inspiration )

I’m not sure I can do it any more.

With the positive tests of Stefan Schmacher and Leonardo Piepoli, not to mention the drug lord Lance Armstrong coming back and Frank Schleck being suspended by his team for suspected doping I don’t think I can believe in the Tour de France any more. What’s more, I’m beginning to doubt the wonderful performance Mark Cavendish put in – his poor performance at the Olympics only makes me suspect more that he was using the same hard-to-detect thing as Schmacher & Piepoli. I hope he rode clean…

I want to believe that things are changing for the good with great young riders coming through who aren’t looking to the dinosaurs, but then I remembere that a lot of the team managers these days are ex-drugs cheats and these are the guys who are training and advising.

Oh please let next years Tour be good and clean.

Recommended Books: ‘Spock’s World’ by Diane Duane (1988)

Synopsis: “Captain’s Log, Stardate 2410.500; the 23rd Century. From halfway across the galaxy, Captain James T. Kirk and the USS Enterprise are summoned by the ruling council of Commander Spock’s home planet – Vulcan. At stake is the planet’s future as a key member of the Federation. At issue is Vulcan’s mysterious past and its historic struggle for the meaning of logic. Torn between his duty to Starfleet and his unbreakable ties to Vulcan, Spock must find a way to reconcile his own inner conflict and the external threat his planet faces – or the Federation will rip itself apart.”

Review: You might be thinking (and quite rightly I suppose) “a Star Trek book?!”, well bare with me because believe me this is not only a brilliantly written Star Trek book but it is also an excellent piece of political science fiction.Diane Duane explores not only Vulcan’s past, but it’s future in this cleverly written and well-plotted story which is just as much a mystery as a conspiracy. Duane looks back to the original series and uses elements from the popular ‘Amok Time’ and can be congratulated for developing a character beyond what we saw on screen.

One of the ruling groups of the Vulcan council has posed the vote that Vulcan leaves the United Federation of Planets, it’s a vote that has personal ramifications for Spock and Sarek as they must ultimately make the decision if the vote is successful to leave their loved ones and remain on Vulcan or leave their home and be cast out.

Sarek faces a battle of concious, does he speak from his heart or do what his government requests of him? He makes the decision to do what ever ‘cthia’ – reality-truth, a word that has been mistranslated as meaning ‘logic’ and misunderstanding seems to be at the heart of the matter – tells him to do.

Duane has interestingly created characters, such as K’s’t’lk a twelve legged glass spider type being who is a physicist who more or less exists in a different plane of existence and her work with physics reflects this… as well as the now-famous Horta crew member. She deals with the established characters very well, no one seems out of character including characters we’ve only briefly met.

In typical Vulcan fashion, they want to hear all the reasons, all sides from pro-succession presentations to anti-succession and T’Pau has called upon Kirk, Spock and McCoy as not only voices of the Federation but as people who have a more personal relationship with Vulcan.

McCoy though has a bee in his bonnet, something doesn’t seem right. He starts digging into the archives and asking the right questions and soon uncovers a deep conspiracy that lies at the core of the matter, McCoy’s evidence eventually gives reason for Vulcan to stay after throws apart the whole matter.

It was refreshing to see McCoy the ‘hero’ for once, particularly as the plot itself gave little opportunity for Kirk to be an action hero and I loved that McCoy went off and learned Vulcan via RNA (basically language by absorption!).

Another character, who had a minor role, that I think was very well written as Uhura. Early in the story we see some of the posts on the internal bulletin board and discover that Uhura is working on a thesis that is going to essentially re-write everything to do with the universal translator. I thought that was a nice touch.

Keep an eye out for the sentient computer on the Enterprise’s rec’ deck, not only is it a clever idea but you find yourself becoming attached to it without realising that it is the computer.

One thing that I haven’t dealt with yet is the chapter framing. Each chapter set in the ‘present’ is followed by a chapter set in Vulcan’s past. These chapters are brilliant, it’s fascinating to see how Duane has established historic Vulcan from the dawning of their civilisation through the violence of the tribal days, finally up to the teachings of Surak and eventually the uniting of Earth and Vulcan by the marriage of Sarek and Amanda.

This book is a breath of fresh air in the Trek-genre, and is a good piece of science fiction writing. Whilst it pays to have at least a passing knowledge of the main characters, I think you could pick up this book without really knowing much about the world of Star Trek. A definite recommendation.

Recommended Books: ‘Kiln People’ by David Brin (2002)

Synopsis: “In a perilous, future, disposable duplicate bodies fulfil every citizen’s legal and illicit whim. Life as a 24-hour ‘ditto’ is cheap, as Albert Morris knows. A brash investigator with a knack for trouble, he’s sent plenty of clay duplicates into deadly peril, then ‘inloaded’ memories from copies that were shot, crushed, drowned… all part of a day’s work. But when Morris tackles a ring of crooks making bootleg copies of a famous actress, he trips into a secret so explosive it incites open warfare on the streets of Dittotown.”

Review: David Brin presents a complex vision of the future where mankind has mastered the art of perpetual procrastination, where war is a pre-arranged sport with league tables and armchair experts and anything goes. With the aid of ditto-technology, you can send off a ‘ditto’, a blank clay person which you ‘copy’ yourself into and send off to do whatever you need them to do for the day. Send one to work, another to school to study advanced quantum mechanics, another can watch Alfred Hitchcock’s entire back catalogue in preparation for a film club discussion… at the end of the day you can ‘inload’ all the memories/experiences from the day and they’re all yours.

It’s the perfect existence.

Or it is?

Albert Morris is a private investigator, he’s sent dittos off into dangerous situations and later ‘inloaded’ memories of copies that were shot, drowned, beaten up and sometimes worse. He’s just broken an illicit bootleg copying ring run by his Moriarty, ‘Beta’, but there’s something more going, something deeper, something that could change the entire course of humanity.

The story is brilliantly written with great concepts, especially the idea of dittos. Humanity has become lazy, buildings are condemned because people no longer work there just disposable copies, and only people with specialist skills are needed in person (such as Albert Morris). Society keeps ticking over but seemingly on the edge, you get the impression that it all could collapse at any moment and it’s hardly surprising that there are the ‘crazies’ either screaming that ditto’s are an affront to ‘god’ or screaming that these 24hr people deserve rights.

The mystery soon becomes deliciously deep, Brin creates twists and turns that give the best mystery writers a run for their money. The different stories from the dittos come together very well and the shift between them is smooth and unlike other multi-angle stories it doesn’t begin to frustrate.

I liked the characters, although I did feel that they were a little one-dimensional and very much like every other character in science fiction. There didn’t seem to be much more going on with them but the plot is so vast that it can be entirely forgiven. I was hooked by the plot and concepts not the characters.

For me the last few chapters got a little too much metaphysical and contained fantastical concepts of life that flew a little over my head, but it was gripping to see it all wrapped together. The final reveal felt a little weak, particularly after being lead on such a roller-coaster ride but despite feeling weak it felt ‘right’. If you’re an Isaac Asimov fan, particularly of his Elijah Bailey/R. Daneel books, you will like this book. David Brin has a similar writing style to Asimov and it’s no surprise that he is one of the writers continuing with the ‘Foundation’ series.

Jack the Ripper, still going strong 2008

I wonder what it is about Jack the Ripper that inspires people to try to copy him? Peter Sutcliffe is doing time in a high security mental hospital for his claim to fame and it looks like another wannabe Ripper is to join him. There’s an original series Star Trek episode called ‘Wolf in the Fold’ where they discover that an entity called ‘Redjac’ is really Jack the Ripper (it possesses people), I wonder if that is going on here, after all Jack the Ripper does seem to have inspired a lot of copycat killers.

Convicted rapist, Derek Brown (from Lancashire, Sutcliffe was a Yorkshire man – not exactly great publicity for us Northerner’s is it?) was found guilty of murdering and dismembering Xiao Mei Guo and Bonnie Barrett who he picked up in the Whitechapel area of London. Neither body was found but blood from both victims was found in the kitchen, corridor and bathroom of his flat in South East London, it’s unlikely that the bodies will ever be recovered. Brown assmebled a murder kit and even borrowed a book about serial killers (‘Killers: The Most Barbaric Murders of Our Time‘ – either sales of this book will go up or it will mysteriously vanish from the shelves). He’ll serve a minimum sentence of 30yrs, and will probably become one of the few prisoners to whom life really does mean life.

Serial killers do fascinate me, particualrly the ones with a big question mark over ‘who?’ – there are times when I get worried that if police (for some reason) search my flat I’m going to get into trouble for the many books I own on this topic. I’d like to therefore state, I have no intention of killing anyone I’m far too much of a wuss when it comes to things like that and I’m the least organised person on the planet.

Disliking Wesley

I’m reading ‘Just a Geek‘ by Wil Wheaton, enjoying it very much and loving the honesty that Wheaton has when talking about his career, family, life after Star Trek and his writing. I’m only familiar with him from TNG but I do have a copy of ‘Stand by Me‘ sitting on my desk that at some point I will get round to watching (along with ‘The Goonies’).

On the way home from work tonight I was thinking about my feelings towards Wesley Crusher. I’m twenty-two, too young to have seen the original run of TNG but do have fond memories of watching the re-runs on BBC 2 (which for me was the first time seeing them).

Originally I hated Wesley because the episodes he was in were usually the rubbish ones (or at least early on) and always featured him saving the day somehow. Re-watching them now I can appreciate what the producers had tried to do; Wesley was aimed at the younger viewers in order to make them go “wow, he’s a kid like me I could be on the Enterprise and save the day!” I still dislike the character but for different reasons than I did when I first watched the show.

If I had been a member of the crew, got through Starfleet Academy and been good enough to get what was probably the most sought after posting in the universe, and then this kid comes along who is not only smart but the son of one of Picard’s closest friends and he gets given a prestigious position as a helm officer on the Enterprise just because a strange alien creature told Picard to give him encouragement and opportunity… I’d have been pissed off.

I’m imagining that to be a helm officer you need to pass some sort of flight test and get certified (basing this on my knowledge of the RAF and Royal Navy), so that poor crew member who had worked hard got all the right qualifications and experience who put their name forward for consideration as primary conn officer, missed out.

Having been in a similar situation not so long ago, I can’t begin to tell you how angry and upset I was by what happened.

We were having a restructure at work as the production lx was leaving and the rig maintenance was being brought in-house. I went off for a week off and came back to discover that the dep who was coving for me was now full-time in-house, responsible for operating the lighting board and overseeing the followspots… I opened the show as a followspot there, I’d been through the technical period and two years down the line you could consider me sort of head followspot as I was responsible for overseeing teaching and making sure the show was always spotted well. Prior to that I was the board operator at a different theatre, and I’m a qualified electrician.

This dep had been with the show for what I would say equalled a month, during the times she was in for maintenance with us we’d found out she actually knew less than she said but since we were all learning that sort of thing doesn’t get mentioned.

I made the decision that it was going to be my last night working there, I couldn’t stomach what had been done and I was angry that no one even bothered to tell me there was a job going that people knew I would have been more than interested in (I’d been asking since the show opened if I could learn the board and that had been what my original terms of employment had been).

I was angry and my boss came to speak to me, I told him exactly what I thought of his decision (I didn’t care by that point, I was leaving as far as I was concerned). I went home that night and wrote my letter of resignation, then spent the night panicking about getting another job and coming to the conclusion that I’d have to go back North.
 
I got a phone call in the morning from my boss which was basically “you were right, I’ve screwed this up. Can you come in for an interview this afternoon?” – I went in for what turned out to be just a formality, I had the job.

I hope that doesn’t sound like I got my way but that’s what happened. To me now it seems like someone got screwed over by Picard putting Wesley in as the helm officer and either this person just swallowed their pride and carried on with their job or they asked for a transfer.

That’s what makes me dislike Wesley, was that the producers made him into the character that other people resent. Even when he gets to the academy I imagine that he’s isolated again, not just by coming into an already established group but because he’d be perceived as someone who got given an extra special opportunity.

I don’t hate Wil Wheaton though, he’s just the actor who played Wesley and you can’t blame him for the material he had… although the fact he told the script writer of ‘Nemesis‘ it was the best Star Trek film since ‘Wrath of Khan‘ and the best TNG movie, which looses a few points from me

(This is random but my boss was a child sci-fi star, he was Steven in ‘The Tomorrow People‘)

The Ripper on the Enterprise Pursued by Holmes

Ever since I was quite young I’ve been obsessed with three things, Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek and Jack the Ripper – bizarrely you can link them together as the original series did a Jack the Ripper episode (‘Wolf in the Fold’) and there’s also a TNG comic called ‘Embrace the Wolf’ that features Data as Sherlock Holmes and the entity Redjac from TOS ‘Wolf in the Fold’.

Other things that link Star Trek & Holmes include:

- Nicholas Meyer (he wrote several Holmes pastiches, including ‘The Seven Percent Solution’).
- In ‘the Undiscovered Country’ Spock says “An ancestor of mine maintained that if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains – however improbable – must be the truth.” his ancestor is either Arthur Conan Doyle or since we’re in a fictional universe a relation of Sherlock Holmes (Holmes never married).
- TNG episodes ‘Elementary, my dear Data’ and ‘Ship in a Bottle’

On Saturday I went to the ‘Jack the Ripper and the East End‘ exhibit at the Museum in the Docklands with a friend, this is a stand out exhibit in the way it looks at the conditions of the time, the social structure (with a lot of stuff about Charles Booth’s poverty map), culture and media involvement in the story. Not only that but it talks about eleven possible Ripper murders rather than the traditional five.

I don’t believe that of the five traditionally mentioned victims that two of them were murdered by Jack the Ripper, I think that Elizabeth Stride had her throat cut by a client or a street gang trying to rob her and Mary Kelly doesn’t fit the pattern (far too much mutilation and she was indoors).

I do think however that the ‘Whitehall Mystery‘ and the unknown woman found in Pinchin Street was a victim – the autopsy showed that her abdominal region was mutilated in a very, very similar way to the other victims. Her head and legs were severed in a manner that was similar to remains discovered in the Thames, Battersea Park and on the Chlesea Embankmant.

My list of victims would be:
31st August 1888 – Mary Ann Nichols
8th September 1888 – Annie Chapman
30th September 1888 – Catherine Eddowes
3rd October 1888 – ‘Whitehall Mystery’
June 1889 – Elizabeth Jackson
10th September 1889 – Pinchin Street Murder

As for who did it… well, there are many ‘famous’ suspects (including a very stupid royal conspiracy one when Prince Albert wasn’t in the country at the time and William Gull was overweight and had recently had a stroke…) but I think it’s far more likely to be some annomous soldier. Several of the victims were seen talking to soldiers before they were found dead and the police did consider the fact he could have been a soldier. If it wasn’t a soldier then my three ‘favourite suspets are (in order):

1. Dr T Neill Cream
2. Aaron Kosminski
3. Walter Sickert

The exhibition is brilliant and is great fuel for the imagination, it closes on the 2nd November so there’s not that much time left to go see it.

Game Addiction

I’m sure I’m not the only one to find that certain games take over your life and don’t let it go until you (a) completed it on ever possible difficulty setting (b) completed every little side quest and unlocked everything (c) remove it from your computer/console to prevent you ever going near it again (or for a reasonable level of time).

I think I’m somewhat fortunate in that MMORPG’s aren’t really my thing otherwise things might get rather ugly. Although that might be broken by ‘Star Trek Online’, before then though I need to move into a bigger flat so I can build myself an awesome desktop computer that will run it.

The first game this happened to for me was ‘Simon the Sorcerer’ when I was about 9/10yrs old, it was also a time when my dad was home on leave (he’s a systems engineer in the Navy… incidentally, Lt. Barclay is a systems engineer on the Enterprise) and trying to take an active interest in what his kids were doing – it failed as he soon got very bored.

A little while later I’d completed the game and moved on to a game that my uncle recommended called ‘Civilisation II’ (he even bought the ‘Ultimate’ edition for Christmas, it included the massive strategy guide, scenario’s & guide as well as a giant wall poster of the achievements tree) this one my mum (she’s a programmer) took an interest in and we spent hours together playing it. I own ‘Civilisation III’ but I don’t think I love it as much as the second one, I also have ‘Alpha Centuri’ which is fun but not as good. My mum had to do something about this game as part of her Computer Sciences degree she did whilst I was in my last few years of secondary school, not quite sure what the project was about but playing computer games with your mum is fun.

I have vivid memories of playing ‘Theme Hospital’ so much that every time I closed my eyes I saw doctors with little dollar signs above their heads! When I got my first laptop (in ‘04, a rather shit refurbsed thing) I bought the game as part of one of those 3 for £10 deals… many nights staying up trying to get to that last level!

Other games that took over my life were ‘Star Trek 25th Anniversary’ (actually this still has control of my life, it’s a permanent fixture on my hard drive!), ‘Fallout 1 & 2′, ‘Starfleet Academy’ (there’s still a level I was never able to get past and sadly I no longer have the game), ‘Ripper’ (it was one of those real-actor games, starting Christopher Walken… I thought it was ace) and ‘The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Rose Tattoo’.

Currently, ‘Black’ (a FPS for the PS2… ooh, abbreviation fun) has control, each level takes between 50 – 90 minutes to complete and it’s driving me up the wall! I will defeat the game! It’s made more frustrating by the fact I’ve had to lower the difficulty setting – I like to play a lot of my games on ‘Hard’, it gives you a nice challenge and I find it’s more fun and you definitely learn strategy (ammo’ conservation and the use of cover are lessons everyone should learn in FPS’s) but this game I’m really struggling with… so it’s down to ‘Normal’ and I don’t think I’m going to be able to complete this one on ‘Hard’.

I’ve played the game so much in the last few hours that my left arm is killing me, I’m a little worried I’ve pulled the ligaments (they’re weak from a previous non-gaming related injury). That wouldn’t look good when I go back to work on Monday, “sorry guys, I can’t lift the battery for the Genie. I pulled the ligaments in my arm playing a video game.”