Britannia's Fist by Peter G. Tsouras is an Outstanding Work of Alternate History

I've finished reading Britannia's Fist by Peter G. Tsouras. I've been trying to find an email address for the author so that I could tell him how awesome it is, but to no avail.

Tsouras was an Army intelligence officer and a military historian, and it shows. The back of the novel is actually a full set of endnotes for his sources, both real and fictitious. It was a nice touch.

The story, in which Britain enters the American Civil War after the Laird rams controversy gets ugly, is meticulously researched and quite realistic. I await, with trembling pleasure, the sequel.

Grade: A+

Red Inferno: 1945 by Robert Conroy

Ugh. I have a fever of 102.1°F.

But I'm a blogger, dammit. You depend on me to entertain you, and I'm not going to let you down. So let's do this.

Today, I offer a review of Red Inferno: 1945 by Robert Conroy. It's an alternate history novel in which war breaks out between the US/UK and the USSR in the closing days of World War II in Europe.

Unfortunately, there isn't enough published alternate history to keep up with my appetite, so I've had to read mediocre authors rather than deprive myself of my favorite genre of fiction. His first novel, 1901, about a surprise German invasion of New York City, was historically preposterous. 1862, about the British entry into the American Civil War, and 1945, about the US ground invasion of Japan, were somewhat improved. But in all of these novels, major characters acted and thought like socially conscious 21st Century Americans, and lapsed into sanctimonious moralizing about the evils of American racism.

1945 is largely free of these problems. He takes a few swipes at racism, homophobia, and McCarthyism, but the novel features few preening lectures about social inequalities in American society. The characters act like real people.

Realism is the most essential quality in alternate history, and Robert Conroy has greatly improved. 1945 makes sense, both in historical variation and individual behavior. It's exciting and worth reading.

Archer is Worth Watching

Archer is an animated TV show created by the people responsible for Adult Swim shows Sealab 2021 and Frisky Dingo. It's a show about a dysfunctional family and spy agency. The lead character is superagent Sterling Archer, a handsome and occasionally competent jackass. But the show is more than the adventures of a spy; it's an office comedy that addresses the mundane tasks of running a spy agency.

It's quite funny and the jokes shoot out so fast that following the dialogue requires constant attention. The full run of Archer (9 episodes so far) is available for free on Hulu.

Note: this show is a cartoon, but not for kids.

Review: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls by Steve Hockensmith

It all started with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Editor Seth Grahame-Smith took the original text by Jane Austen and altered it into a Regency Romance set in the middle of a zombie plague. It was quite fun to read, given the juxtaposition of the tedium and banality of Austen with the seriousness and fast action of a zombie novel.

Now there's sequel to that book, or rather, a prequel, entitled Pride and Prejudice: Dawn of the Dreadfuls. Quirk Books, the publisher, sent me a copy in exchange for a review.

Dawn of the Dreadfuls is set about three years prior to the events of the first book. It centers on the Bennet family, especially on the sisters Elizabeth and Jane. The reader learns that Britain had fought a major war against the undead about a generation prior, but the nation has since become lax in his security. An outbreak occurs in Hertfordshire, and the Bennet sisters acquire a crash course on the martial arts from a young sensei. It's a fairly funny book, as the stuffiness of aristocratic life is feasted upon by Hockensmith. Here's a sample passage about the bloated and overindulged Lord Lumpley:

Then he rang the bell and sat back, wrist aching from the strain of unaccustomed toil, and waited for his man Belgrave.

"My Lord?" Belgrave said blandly when he walked in a moment later. He was a studiously stoic little fellow of forty-and-some years with gray at his temples and a pale gray complexion and a gray, gray soul. If he noticed that his employer was lolling about without a stitch on, he didn't show it. He never seemed to notice anything, which was one of the reasons why Lord Lumpley depended on him so. As a test, the baron had once strutted around an entire morning with half an apple clenched between his naked cheeks, and when at last Belgrave commented upon it, it was only to say, "Pardon me, My Lord, but you seem to have bruised your fruit. Shall I fetch something fresh?"

Now 287 pages of this would start to get dull after a while, but Hockensmith fortunately includes many impressive battle scenes, particularly in the last thirty pages. It's not World War Z quality, but Dawn of the Dreadfuls is a pretty good zombie apocalypse.

Grade: B+

The Domino's Test

Domino's Pizza, in a very frank ad compaign, admitted that their pizza tasted terrible. So they threw out their old recipe and started from scratch. James Rummel and Steven Den Beste put it to the test, and since I want to do whatever the cool kids are doing, I have, too.

I ordered a large with ham and pineapple -- my preferred toppings -- for pickup priced at $14. It wasn't too bad, compared to the overbaked cardboard substances that I remember from previous Domino's experiences. But some problems: the cheese was not fresh, the dough was unevenly spread, and there was a strange and unpleasant yellow powdered topping on the crust.

Papa John's is slightly more expensive, but substantially tastier. Domino's has improved its fare, but not really enough to make me switch.

Grade: B

The Series Finale of Dollhouse

Here, you can watch the series finale of Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. It aired last night, and I watched it today. It was very, very good. Whedon had only a few episodes after receiving his cancellation notice to wrap up a complex storyline, and he pulled it off. The finale has great writing, acting, and directing, and the closing scene was quite tender.

Movie Review: The Lovely Bones (2009)

This was the antithesis of a date movie. But it was very, very good. The Lovely Bones, based on a 2002 novel by Alice Sebold, is the story of a teenage girl who was murdered -- and then continued to watch over her family.

It is a dark, dark movie. Not deliciously dark, like a Batman movie, but tragically dark, like No Country for Old Men. It moves slowly, but not at all tediously. The trailer suggested that it is a thriller, but it is not. The Lovely Bones is a marvelously sad tale, and I recommend it.

Grade: A

The official trailer:


By the way -- my movie reviews will never reveal anything not evident from the trailers. I don't do spoilers without warning readers.

Why the Recent Star Trek Movie Was Awful

In the comments of the Star Trek waffles post, Rich asked me why I described the recent movie as "nightmarishly-bad". I responded in the comments, but I think that the issue is post-worthy. Although I've briefly noted the problems in the movie in a review at the time of its release, I can't find that post in my archives, so I shall address the subject again.

Re-inventing the series was fine. The old paradigms were stale and had been played out, and a franchise needs to take a fresh approach now and then. Stargate: Universe, for example, is written and shot very differently from Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis. Not only are the characters new, but the structure and tone of the story are radically different.

The recent Star Trek movie went beyond this, changing who people were, how they related to each other, and even how technology worked. This, too, was just fine. In fact, such complete re-imaginings were necessary to give new life to the franchise.

But they made critical mistakes. It was clear that the producers decided to make an action film, and came up with some fine action scenes to dazzle audiences who are prone to be attracted to random, shiny objects that come into view.

I approve of good action scenes and special effects. But I disapprove of coming up the action scenes first and then designing a plot around them. The story must always come first.

And the story was pretty confusing. It was unclear to me who this Nero was. I was able to discern his plan, but not how he was going to carry it out. It would be a stretch to describe Nero as a one-dimensional character. He might as well have been wearing a sign around his neck that said "NPC".

More importantly, it was not explained how Starfleet was able to figure out what the plan was. Somehow, they simply knew. And they had a solution, although this solution was never explained, and it was really never explained how Kirk was the only person capable of carrying it out.

Now, yes, I did actually understand what was happening. But I would prefer that Trek movies have a plot at least as sophisticated as an episode of Voltron, and this one didn't make it. And just as the dialog in that cartoon was just a vehicle to get to the point of Voltron slicing a robot in two with his Blazing Sword in every episode, the script to the Star Trek movie was just a means to get eyeballs on explosions.

I want a plot; I want a story in my Trek. Special effects are good, but they are secondary to the story.

The second issue bothered me for two reasons. And this is the issue: they promoted a 19-year old boy to Captain and gave him command of a starship.

This was wildly, impossibly unrealistic.

There's a trend in modern entertainment to worship youth. It's like Hollywood is living in the domed cities of Logan's Run -- once you're thirty, it's time to die.

A generation ago, it was possible to be a leading man and be 40. A generation before that, it was even possible to be a leading man at 50. But the recent Trek movie decided that a man is ready for retirement at 25. It declared, implicitly, that what is good in a man is that he is a sultry, moody teenager.

I disapprove of this youth-worship, which reduced Star Trek to Muppet Babies in Space.

That's the first reason that it bothered me. Here's the second: there is a central principle to speculative fiction. It is that although situations and technologies may change, people are the same. They have to behave like human beings; they have to follow an internal logic.

And it is simply not reasonable for a 19-year old punk to be plucked off the Iowa plains, given a prized appointment to Starfleet Academy, immediately promoted above all of his upper classmates, and then immediately commissioned as not only a junior officer, but a captain -- and then given command of a major vessel. This is stupid and asinine, and was only written because it makes 14-year old girls swoon.

Star Trek might attract 14-year old girls, but it should not be written with that as its primary goal.

The very first episode of Star Trek, called "The Cage", was rejected by NBC as "too cerebral." If the people behind this movie were desperately trying to avoid a similar critique on the re-launch of the franchise, they succeeded brilliantly. If they wanted to tell a good story, they failed spectacularly.

Movie Review: Harry Brown (2009)

It's basically a British version of Death Wish.

Harry Brown, a pensioner living alone in a bad part of London, sees society around him falling apart into drugs, violence, and barbarism. But he does nothing, tending to his own affairs, until his best friend is murdered. Then this old Royal Marine turns into a vigilante.

Michael Caine does a superb job in this better written, higher production take on the Death Wish story. It's as much social commentary as it is an action movie, as urban youths are depicted in nearly subhuman form and the police are either useless or helpless to prevent or punish random criminal violence.

Grade: A

Official Site | Trailer

Quick Reviews of the New DC Animated Movies

Today, I watched Batman/Superman: Public Enemies. In the midst of economic chaos, Lex Luthor is elected President of the United States. He immediately moves to bring superheroes under his control by co-opting those who accept official recognition and using them to capture those who won't join him. Batman and Superman become outlaws, all while an asteroid made of kryptonite continues its collision course with earth.

The movie is a 66-minute thrill ride and quite rewarding for the DC fan. The plot is fast, the action is well-directed, and atmosphere is serious. The movie features the original voice actors from the DC Animated Universe, which is a nice touch.


A few weeks ago, I watched Green Lantern: First Flight. Unlike Batman/Superman, which assumes that viewers are completely familiar with the characters and general mythos, this is a superhero origins movie, as well as a cop story. So its main failing is that it compresses a lot into 77 minutes. In the first twenty minutes, Hal Jordon learns of the existence of aliens, is recruited into an alien police force, and is dispatched on his first interstellar mission. He doesn't seem to suffer any mental whiplash at all of these changes, which is a bit unrealistic. Still, I don't think that a writing team could have done a better job of fitting the entire Green Lantern story into a short movie, so it's a forgivable error. Overall, it's a good superhero movie.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

I finally got around to seeing Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. This 43-minute film by Joss Whedon is a combination superhero film, musical, and tragicomedy. I can enthusiastically recommend it: funny, touching, and remarkably tolerable for a musical.

An unsuccessful mad scientist falls in love with a girl that he often sees at the laundromat. Can he win her heart and make it as a supervillain?

You can watch a full screen, high-quality definition here.

Without Warning by John Birmingham

I've just finished reading Without Warning, an action thriller by the author of the alternate history/future series Axis of Time. Birmingham wrote Without Warning after he heard an anti-war protester assert that the world would be a better place without America. In the novel, the protester gets his wish.

In February 2003, A strange energy force hits the earth, consuming almost the entire continental United States, as well as much of Canada, Mexico, and Cuba. It kills all life inside of it. America now consists entirely of Alaska, Hawaii, the northwestern corner of Washington State, and US military forces and citizens abroad. The world promptly goes to hell in a handbasket, suffering a global financial collapse as US capital and demand for goods has literally vanished. Worse, with the sudden absence of American "political ballast", political unrest ferments across the globe, leading to wars, both conventional and nuclear.

Without Warning is a fast-paced thrill ride. I highly recommend it.

Heresy!

I have seen the new Star Trek movie. It was a decent action film, but a bad Trek movie.

I realize and accept that the franchise must be re-invented in order to have new life. Still, it saddens this Trekkie's heart to see so many needless discontinuities. Especially the horrific one at the end of the film.

Still, the miniskirts were a nice touch.

This Onion news story is quite accurate:

Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film As 'Fun, Watchable'

Except the part about the plot making sense. It was never really clear what the problem was, or the solution to it. But by that point, I confess, the pain had become some overwhelming that it was hard for me to concentrate.

One Second After by William R. Forstchen

One Second After is Bill Forstchen's depiction of life in America after a nuclear bomb was detonated 300 miles above the earth directly over the United States. The ensuing blast produced no fallout or shockwave, but the electromagnetic pulse destroyed every electrical device in the country -- from car engine ignitions to radios, as well as the entire electrical grid.

Forstchen writes about the land and work familiar to him as a professor of military history at Montreat College near Black Mountain, North Carolina. The main character is a retired U.S. Army colonel who teaches military history at that same college, a widower who cares for two daughters and continues to mourn the death of his wife four years previously. When the EMP suddenly changes life as he knows it, Colonel John Matherson helps organize the people of the valley to survive from the ravages of famine, disease, and a horde of looters known as The Posse.

The novel starts out slowly, but became a captivating read in the final one hundred pages. Much like Forstchen's Lost Regiment saga, One Second After is the story of men and women overcoming tremendous hardship and their own fears to stare down destructive forces of nature and man.

It is an intentionally political novel, designed to drive home to the reader the dangers of an EMP attack, which the book's forward and afterward warn is very real.

3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommended: Murder, She Wrote

Lately, I've been watching through a bizarre TV show from the 80s and 90s called Murder, She Wrote, starring Angela Lansbury.

Ostensibly, it's a show about a mystery novelist named Jessica Fletcher who travels around the world solving murders, as well as those that take place in her own sordid village of Cabot Cove, Maine. The wrong person is always fingered for the crime, often one of Jessica's relatives, and it is up to her to find out the true culprit.

But beneath the surface, it is a story of a demented and manipulative serial killer. No one ever pieces together the fact that no matter where this woman travels, someone dies. No suspicion ever falls upon Jessica, but instead upon her friends and relatives who she sets up to take the fall for her crimes. She then "rescues" them by redirecting blame to someone else, thus destroying the lives of her family members while becoming their hero; she simultaneously weakens them and draws them under her control and in her debt.

It is a subtle, thoughtful social critique on American culture. Even in the final episode, Jessica Fletcher's true nature is never revealed. It is up to the viewer to discern the madness that lays within her lifestyle. On the surface, she is an ordinary small town widow who tends to the garden, enjoys tea with friends, and writes banal novels. But beneath the veneer of this everyman (or woman) lies the heart of demented sociopath. What were the writers, I wonder, trying to say about our ordinary lives and the secrets that we keep?

So check out Murder, She Wrote. But don't watch it just before going to bed.

Wolverine vs. Rorschach

[Video Link] Via Geekology.

Pretty funny. I saw Watchmen a few weeks ago, btw. A seriously hard-boiled movie. Don't see it if you want something to cheer you up. Not a date movie. Not as bad a date movie as Teeth (possibly the worst date movie ever made), but expect to stagger out of the theatre depressed. Also: more male full frontal nudity in an American film since the director's cut of Earnest Saves Christmas. That may be a plus or a minus for you, I don't know.

Recommended: The Venture Bros.

My favorite currently-running show on TV now is The Venture Bros. It's an animated comedy, but beyond that, it's quite hard to describe. It could be described as a parody of Johnny Quest and similar shows from the 70s, as well as the superhero genre. It is a completely unserious, character-driven comedy drenched in dry humor.

The show centers around the family Dr. Rusty Venture, the son of a famous scientist/adventurer who has never lived up to his father's reputation, despite his own talents. His two dim-witted sons, Hank and Dean, constitute the Venture brothers, who imagine their lives as filled with adventures on their enormous family compound. Super agent Brock Samson is their bodyguard who possesses, literally, a license to kill and uses it frequently.

The Ventures are often pestered by a pathetic, wanna-be super villain named The Monarch (in reference to the monarch butterfly), who is the sworn archnemesis of Rusty Venture. He does so even though the Guild of Calamitous Intent -- the licensing bureau of villany, sort of the American Medical Association or Bar Assocation -- has not paired him with Dr. Venture.

One of the best things about The Venture Bros is that the dialogue is completely realistic in a way that I don't think I've ever seen on TV. Costume-wearing maniacs think and talk like ordinary people about mundane things. It's hard to describe, but it makes the show even funnier because it consists of ordinary people doing bizarre activities without realizing how bizarre they are.

You can catch new episodes as they appear on Adult Swim.com. Here's one of the earlier episodes:

[Video Link]

Review: Diary of the Dead (2007)

Diary of the Dead is a documentary reminiscent of The Blair Witch Project. It is taken from footage recovered from a group of college film students in Pennsylvania. Compiled and edited by world-renowned zombie expert George Romero, it is an interesting exploration of how people respond differently to undead outbreaks. Here is the trailer:


[YouTube Link]

The film highlights this critical component to survival in the midst of a zombie apocalypse; what I like to call "mental turn-around time". Some people, upon encountering attacking zombies, are able to rapidly adjust their worldview to accommodate the new, harsh realities of survival. More often, however, people cannot pull themselves out of the mall-shopping, frappiccino-sipping numbness of the suburban mundanity. This is why slow-moving creatures with less intelligence than cockroaches are able to slaughter and eat faster and 'smarter' humans.

Mental agility is the single-most important contributor to survival in the event of a zombie attack. The cameraman and his girlfriend are a study in contrasts of this factor. In the midst of the destruction of human civilization, Jason is most concerned about capturing events on film and posting the videos on his blog. While his girlfriend Debra seems to grasp the catastrophic nature of the risings, Jason is thrilled that his blog traffic has surged to gargantuan proportions -- until the collapse of the Internet.

If you want to survive, you have to have the attitude of survival. You have to be able to quickly accept catastrophic situations without panicking, but also without denying the reality of them.

Review: Flight of the Living Dead

Flight of the Living Dead is a 2007 documentary about a zombie outbreak onboard a US transatlantic jetliner. Here's a sample scene, not for the faint of heart:



A dwindling number of survivors battle against an ever-increasing number of the undead. Possessing only three handguns and limited ammunition, they improvise weapons as they struggle to regain control of the plane and land it safely.

They use a number of fire-based weapons, which, as I previously noted, are usually more trouble than they are worth -- especially in the contained atmosphere of an airplane. However, given the choice between getting bitten and using an improvised flamethrower, their choices are understandable.

This film highlights the airline industry's lack of preparedness for mid-air zombie attacks and is an ominous warning for the future of air travel unless the TSA enacts immediate changes.

Until that time, you, the air traveller, must take safety into your own hands.

In Praise of the Nick Seafort Saga

Recently, my wife presented me with used copies of the entire Nick Seafort Saga. I began reading this seven-volume science fiction series by David Feintuch for the second time. It has been a great joy.

I have never found a character in fiction as compelling as Nicholas Seafort, the central figure of these novels.

Beginning with the 1994 novel Midshipman's Hope, Feintuch's creation is a combination of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, C.S. Forrester's Horatio Hornblower, and Jonathan Edwards' Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Or perhaps, better put, imagine a science fiction series written by Richard Baxter, and you have the Nick Seafort Saga.

Nick Seafort begins his journey as a seventeen year-old midshipman on board an interstellar starship, making a year-long journey to a distant colony. After a series of fatal accidents, he finds himself the senior officer on board and therefore the captain. In the years that follow, he saves his ship and Earth from great calamities, often at the cost of the lives of the troubled young men who seem drawn to him.

Along the way, he maintains a very troubled relationship with the distant and harsh God that he knows. Nick's God is a reflection of his own stern father who was devoid of affection and was never pleased with Nick's performance or attitudes. Nick becomes convinced of his own damnation after breaking an oath, but maintains personal honor as the compass of all of his decision-making.

I am now reading the last novel, Children of Hope, written before Feintuch's death in 2006. Nick appears to be in his late 60s. His explosive temper has mellowed and been replaced with a gentle and forgiving manner. When a boy attempts to murder him, Nick's response is not to execute him, but to adopt him. When an old enemy appears, Nick sees an opportunity to find redemption that had been lost from him for forty years.

As I said, I know of no more compelling character in fiction than Nick Seafort. I highly recommend reading the Nick Seafort Saga.