Abrams to helm Trek 11

CNN reprots today, based on a Daily Variety report from last Friday, that J. J. Abrams, director of Mission: Impossible III, is set to direct the eleventh Star Trek film. The movie is aimed for a late 2008 release, and apparently Paramount is going with the "Kirk and Spock at the academy theme." I sure hope they don't mess this up as badly as Berman and Braga messed up continuity with Archer and company—I don't recall any indication that Kirk and Spock knew each other at the academy, nor that they would even have overlapped there.

Rhapsodizing about Rhapsody

After my little rant about the PC-only limitations of CinemaNow and MovieLink, it's a joy to report that Rhapsody, Real Networks's subscription music service, is now available for Macintosh users. Admittedly, the software is still labeled as "beta," but I've had no trouble with it whatsoever since signing up for a 14-day trial yesterday. Kudos to Real—and all its programmers, especially Eric—for making Rhapsody available to "the rest of us."

I like to listen to motion picture soundtracks while I work—they're interesting enough musically not to put me to sleep, but unintrusive enough that I can actually think, read, and write while they play. Now, with Rhapsody, I have access to a much larger library of soundtracks to play under my work.

So far, the only downside I have found is that there is no Rhapsody To Go support for Mac at this point. Given Apple's iPod dominance, I don't know if there ever will be, though I can hope for it. It's a little weird not to be able to get content from Real Networks into RealPlayer software on my PDA just because I use a Macintosh. The only other disappointment so far is that some albums are only partially available on Rhapsody. For example, if you choose the right album, you can listen to all tracks on both discs of the soundtracks for A New Hope and Return of the Jedi, but not for The Empire Strikes Back. But that affects all subscribers equally, so it's just a limitation of the library and not a real big deal given the amazing value of this service.

Filed in: Real Networks, Rhapsody, Apple, Macintosh, Mac OS

Another Hugo nomination for Martin

Sci Fi Wire reports today that George R. R. Martin has been nominated for another Hugo award—his seventeenth!—for A Feast for Crows, book four of his A Song of Ice and Fire series. This nomination is richly deserved. A Song of Ice and Fire is an awe-inspiring, epic story, and A Feast for Crows is a spectactular installment in the series. If you have not already read this series, then by all means get started today. You have a little time before volume 5 is slated for release (2007). The full series consists at the moment of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, and the aforementioned A Feast for Crows. Be sure that you read the stories in order; otherwise, many things will make no sense to you.


Filed in: George Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire, A Feast for Crows>, Hugo awards

The Beekeeper's Apprentice

I finished listening to the audiobook version of The Beekeeper's Apprentice on my commute home today, and I must say that I liked it a lot. There were some parts of the story and of the reader's performance that were, admittedly, a little frustrating. But on the whole, Laurie King has created a compelling vision of Sherlock Holmes and a new, young apprentice, Mary Russell. I especially like the fact that Mary is Jewish, reads theology at Oxford, and has a penchant for quoting the Hebrew Bible. Psalm 137's phrase, "may my right hand forget its skill," became a kind of leitmotif in the latter half of the novel.

If you like Sherlock Holmes, and you don't mind a bit of retooling of the character, then I highly recommend The Beekeeper's Apprentice.

There's a whole series of Holmes/Russell novels by Laurie King, but I don't think I'm going to take up the next novel just yet. I know now that I like King's writing about Holmes and Russell, so I think I'll take a break and save the next volumes for my long summer drive across the USA.

Filed in: Laurie King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Sherlock Holmes

Digital movie sales ... but not for Macintosh

Major motion picture studios have thumbed their noses at Macintosh users by restricting the new MovieLink service only to Windows XP users. They also seem to have linked the service inextricably to Internet Explorer. Ditto for CinemaNow.

I'm the kind of guy who is more likely to buy a song for $0.99 from iTunes than bother to open LimeWire to search for a song. But restricting legal downloads to a pair of operating systems (Windows 2000 and XP) and a single browser (Internet Explorer) is just encouraging Macintosh users, Firefox users, and everybody who hates Microsoft, their bloated OSes and browser, and their stranglehold on manufacturers to patronize peer-to-peer illicit file sharing. It's frustrating to be willing to pay for legal digital content but unable to do so because the studios and vendors have shut you out by their stupid technical choices.

Filed in: MovieLink, CinemaNow

Sherlock Holmes overload

I seem to be on Sherlock Holmes overload at the moment. My current Audible audiobook—listened to mostly during my commute and while doing the dishes—is The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King. This is the first in King's series of Sherlock Holmes novels, which feature the familiar detective, John Watson, Mycroft, Lestrade, and so on, but introduce a new character, Mary Russell, a teenage girl (at the beginning of the series) whose intelligence and thought processes—but not yet her range of knowledge—rival Holmes's own. Holmes (the titular beekeeper) takes Russell on as an apprentice, and later as a partner. Although at first the novel seems to read like loosely strung together episodes, almost like an anthology, it turns out that there are overarching plot elements that bind everything together. In the listener reviewes at Audible, there have been some complaints about the way the reader, Jenny Sterlin, voices Holmes. I haven't been too bothered by that, but I do get annoyed at the long and seemingly inexplicable pauses in the reading. Sometimes there will be a pause of four or five seconds right in the middle of a paragraph, as if Sterlin stopped to take a sip of water, and nobody bothered to edit out the pause. Also, some readers have been unhappy about the adjustments that King makes to Holmes's character. For example, King postulates that Holmes was rather younger than Watson's stories made him out to be, which allows Holmes still to be active, though aging, circa World War I when The Beekeeper's Apprentice is set. King's story is so entertaining and engaging that I can live with it.

Shadows over Baker Street, on the other hand, is indeed an anthology, binding together Holmes stories from a number of different authors. Shadows is a different kind of Holmes anthology, as each selection melds, in its own particular way, H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos into a Holmesian milieu. Fans of Lovecraft will immediately recognize the anthology's title as a tribute to "The Shadow over Innsmouth." So far, I have read the first three, of which "A Study in Emerald," by Neil Gaiman, is by far the best. I can't say much about it without giving secrets away, so I'll just suggest that you read it. Elizabeth Bear's "Tiger! Tiger!" was unexciting, and Steve Perry's "The Case of the Wavy Black Dagger" was downright boring. I hope that some of the remaining contributions will approach the quality of Gaiman's.

Filed in: Laurie King, The Beekeeper's Apprentice, Shadows over Baker Street, Neil Gaiman, Sherlock Holmes, H.P. Lovecraft, Cthulhu

False Impression

I recently found myself between audiobooks, not sure what to hear next, and I took a chance on False Impression by Jeffrey Archer, on the strength of listener reviews. I'm glad I did. This book was a very enjoyable, globetrotting mystery. The protagonist, Ana Potrescu (I'm guessing at the spellings, since I was listening to the book rather than reading it), is an art expert, track star, and 9/11 survivor. The book opens on September 10, 2001, and on September 11 Ana gets fired from her job with a firm whose offices are the in the south tower of the World Trade Center. There were times when I thought the 9/11 connection was way overdone. The description of Ana's escape from the WTC was long and excruciating, and I almost chalked it up as exploitative. However, Archer skillfully wove Ana's "missing and presumed dead" status and the firm's change of offices into the story as critical plot elements, and in the end it all worked quite nicely. I don't have any idea whether the world of buying and selling multi-million-dollar artwork really resembles the depiction in this novel, but I found the whole story quite engaging and highly recommend the book as a fun read.

Filed in: Jeffrey Archer, False Impression

Titan: The Red King

I recently finished reading Star Trek Titan, Book Two: The Red King, and I must say that I had mixed feelings about the book. I am glad to see Captain Riker getting a book series, and I like the premise of Titan being the most species-diverse ship in Starfleet. I've also enjoyed the presence of the Romulans, including Commander Donatra, in the first two volumes. On the downside, this incredibly diverse crew takes a little getting used to—not the idea of a species-diverse crew, but just the sheer number of new characters to learn about. But then again, there is also a sense of "old home week" run amok, as Titan has been playing host to Admiral Leonard James Akaar, counts Melora Pazlar among its crew, and has now added Tuvok as tactical officer. It's as if the authors are trying to shoehorn in a token character from every incarnation of Star Trek, and that's a little tiresome. Also, I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in Ranul Keru's love life, and I hope that future novels in the series will minimize the romantic subplots and play up the space exploration. As for the plot of The Red King specifically, it wasn't horrible, but it wasn't all that great either. The explosion of Shinzon's Scimitar tore a rift in space, and the Romulan fleet "fell" through that rift, so Titan, the Valdore, and Romulan convoy (tailed by a Klingon ship) went through on a search-and-retrieve mission. On the other side—in the Small Magellanic Cloud—they found humans with strange evolutionary adaptations (that seem to have developed far too rapidly for real biology) whose culture was split over moral issues related to their long-ago enslavement of indigenous intelligent species. (The mutilated English behind these people's proper nouns got tiresome after a while.) Naturally, the rift turns out to be an even more threatening spatial phenomenon which threatens the entire sector of space. While all of this was fairly predictable, and even a little boring at points, I found that as the clock ticked down on the planet Oghen, I felt a sense of tension and excitement as I hurried from chapter to chapter to see whether Titan's plan for closing the rift would succeed. As Star Trek novels go, it's not the greatest, but it's far from the worst I've ever read. I recommend it, subject to the caveats mentioned earlier.

Filed in: Star Trek: Titan, Star Trek novels, The Red King

Shrek 3 plot teasers

Sci Fi Wire has a brief plot teaser today for Shrek 3. No, really. And Shrek, Fiona, Donkey, and Puss in Boots are all back, with the original voice talents. Sounds, um, charming.

Filed in: Shrek