As was also true of its predecessor, this would have been a much better movie without all the pop psychological redemption crap. Last time Atilla the Hun really just needed a hug; this time George Armstrong Custer needs to be convinced he’s not a complete dipshit—and these are just two examples of the eyeball-rolling awfulness. It’s fine that everyone wanted to make this a feel-good film, but in general, being genuinely entertained makes this viewer feel better than does bludgeoning her on the head every five minutes with a club and yelling “feel good, dammit” at her.

What saves the film from being complete crap are two people: Hank Azaria and Steve Coogan, both of whom are obviously absolutely conscious that they’re being asked to play ridiculous roles and have just chucked it all and gone for it. Miniature Roman general versus a squirrel? Sure. Wannabe Pharoah who can’t take criticism on his attire (“It’s not a dress, it’s a tunic” he keeps complaining to Ivan the Terrible – without ever commenting on how Ivan himself, in the traditional Boyar kaftan, is pretty much also wearing a dress)? Why not.

It is also, and I say this without shame, tremendously satisfying to see Ben Stiller get repeatedly and resoundingly slapped.

HOUSE OF SUNS proves that Alastair Reynolds is still very much on his game. It’s not everyone who can write a novel that takes place over millions of years - about the same few characters - without its indulging in silly conceits. Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION series didn’t even try; it coped with these kinds of time-scales but in bite-sized pieces, ebbs and flows of civilizations, individual lens-views through normal human lives.

There are still people living that way in HOUSE OF SUNS – there is frequent talk of “turn-over” civilizations, regarded as human may-fly colonies by the protagonists. These protagonists, all cloned “shatterlings” of a common fore-mother, travel the galaxy at relativistic speeds, their lives prolonged by periods in abeyance (kind of like the Ultranauts in his REVELATION SPACE series, without the dreadlocks and extreme body modification and overall gothiness), are feeling their way toward solving a troubling mystery: why the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy seems to have disappeared.

The answer is surprising; the ending not, perhaps 100% satisfying but I forgive this because the trip on the way to that ending is worth it.

The characters are more sympathetic than usual for Reynolds; clearly he is only getting better at this. Campion and Purslane, the two point-of-view shatterlings, are utterly believable and true; Hesperus, the Machine Person who is swept up into their story, even more so. I found myself loving him most of all.

I took this in slowly because I didn’t want it to end, and was genuinely sad when it did. More please!

More and more, Piccirilli is reminding me of William Gibson. There is a similar quality to the prose, and a similar flavor to Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy – always characterized as high tech/low life. So if you think you’d like a non-cyberpunk Count Zero give Piccirilli a try.

This is a sequel to his excellent THE COLD SPOT, and continues the story of professional getaway driver-gone-straight Chase and his fantastically warped family life. In THE COLD SPOT Chase’s wife, a cop, is gunned down in the process of a heist and the thrill is in watching him hunt down the gang and give them what they’ve got coming, tangling with his old pro grandfather and seeing that the old boy is still at it—and has started a whole new family.

THE COLDEST MILE picks up the story as Chase is trying to gather resources to make another run on dear old grandpa, who murdered his babymama and now has a two-year-old child, Chase’s aunt, in tow. Or does he?

There is plenty of action to keep the ADD readers happy and Piccirilli goes satisfyingly deep into trying to figure out what it’s like to grow up in “the life” and attempt to transcend it.

Nicely done.

Of course there is ample room for a sequel…

This little 90-minute prequel has left me with very high expectations of the upcoming Caprica series. Very high indeed. I was already very willing to be pleased—I miss Battlestar Galatica a lot, uneven as it was toward the end, and any show that can boast both Esai Morales (Joseph Adama) AND Eric Stoltz (Daniel Graystone), well!

An early look at the Cylons’ origins, Caprica also, as is well known, introduces some earlier Adamas. I had understood from the advance publicity (at one remove because I don’t have cable) that the show would concern Bill’s grandfather but the timing and the name of Joseph’s child and Joseph’s work as a lawyer tell me otherwise. This is THE Adama as a cute, solemn little boy. Hmm.

More hmms… hints of serious friction among the twelve colonized planets up to and including inter-colonial wars… monotheism as a rebellion among the young and hip… the idea that there is enough data in cyberspace about most of us already to duplicate our personalities as constructs once someone writes the proper software… in short, everything I liked best about Battlestar Galactica is here.

Hope the series lives up to its promise.

If you’re not visiting the wondrous Wondermark webcomic several times a week for a good belly laugh/coffee snarf, why aren’t you? Perhaps you are like me, a latecomer to the party. I discovered this and its companion BEARDS OF OUR FOREFATHERS in the comics PREVIEW book at my Friendly Local Comics Shop and said, and I quote, “What the hell is this madness?”

Nineteenth century line drawings and engravings worked into topical 21st century comic strips with a slant toward the surreal. Hence a Victorian gentleman on a pennyfarthing might advise a companion “I know. I read your blog.”

Reading these bizarre and hilarious gems in a nice little hardcover collection is an exercise in convulsive laughter. Part of me wants to save up the experience for the next collection… but moments of ennui always send me clicking for more www.wondermark.com

If you’re like me and kind of roll your eyes at all the crap fantasy that clots the shelves of your local bookstore’s science fiction section, you might already have written this one off as more of the same. You would be wrong.

Thank goodness a friend on Twitter (who is thanked in the author acknowledgments!) told me about this book!

Yes, the technology and civic development is medieval, horses and carts, guilds and aristocrats and peasant, but it in a post-apocalyptic, Canticle for Liebowitz way rather than a lame Tolkein-clone way. A serious disaster has driven humanity back to its dark ages; somehow “demons” (or aliens? it’s very much left up to the reader) have entered our world in a very specific and deadly way. Every night humanity is under attack all over again, and only the drawing and maintaining of magical symbols - wards - gives any hope of safety.

Enter three very different protagonists, all of whom have lost everything and have to make their ways more or less alone. Their tragedies are believable and moving, as are their very determined ways out of them: Arlen, who becomes a “Messenger” (one of a rare kind of person who makes long journeys between towns and risks being out in the open at night), Rojer who becomes a “jongleur” or general entertainer, and Leesha, who becomes a medicine woman of sorts. Their stories do not come fully together until the end of the book but all three are involving and there is no foot-tapping through anyone’s bits while the reader waits to get back to someone else’s excitement.

I’m told Peter Brett wrote this novel on his mobile phone on his daily commute. This book belies that disjointed origin; it’s a pleasure to read and full of surprises. Good stuff.

It’s been… four months? since I rented this from Netflix and it’s still on my mind. I want to see some sequences again and while there are YouTube snippets, they’re not complete. There are, of course, also sequences I never wanted to see again (Mole Brothers. Oy). The former outweigh the latter and so… I have it out from Netflix again, something I rarely do.

This time around I’m more taken with “Guitar Brother” than before (and this coming from a big fan of Tadanobu Asano) and less annoyed with the “Babbling Hot Springs Vixens” but my favorite sequences are still Notti & Takefumi, especially Takefumi’s dream. Weirdest. Music Video. Maybe. Ever.

I recommend this only for the bizarre little experience of watching it dubbed (something I rarely do) and hearing the exact same Viz voice actors (including Alessandro Juliani) not terribly well-synced with the Japanese cast. And the shinigami look exactly the same in 3D. Weird.

Whether you like this will depend a lot on how much you like Tilda Swinton, who plays four roles (and invests each character with a different style and personality very well and with subtlety) in this weird little film. She is simultaneously Frankenstein and her three monsters, a computer scientist who has somehow created living code. The products of her secret research reminded me a little bit of Michel Houellebecq’s idealized post-human race that is the outcome of his weirdly sad THE ELEMENTARY PARTICLES, while the main character evoked the scientist in Greg Bear’s BLOOD MUSIC.

That’s a lot to live up to, but that’s where it falls flat. For all that the creations’ antics put over 30 men in an isolation ward with an unknown disorder, there is strangely little consequence for the characters’ actions – nor is that the only element of the story that borders on the implausible.

The film is visually striking and Swinton and the always-under-utilized Jeremy Davies are great, but the rest of this film just gets from me a MEH.

There need to be more novellas about Mongol hordes in space.