In a world dominated by trilogies and quadrilogies and sagas, it is refreshing to see that some people are writing stand-alone fantasy books. I've first heard of Brandon Sanderson when he ended up writing the last books in the Wheel of Time series, after its initial author died; those books were the best in the series, even if he had to work with Jordan's notes. Recently, I've stumbled upon this audio adaptation of Sanderson's book Elantris, produced by Graphic Audio, a company that doesn't just created narrations of books, but full audio plays - while changing nothing of the initial text.

Despite some parts being a bit too optimistic, some too slow and some really obvious - waiting for a character to catch up with you is not fun - the book was really entertaining and original. It also was Sanderson's first widely released book, so I can forgive his lack of perfection :). I really liked the story and the characters in the book. In truth, the book's message is one of hope, one of encouragement toward the human spirit becoming the best it can be. I couldn't help thinking that Sanderson probably portrayed himself in Raoden, and that guy is great.

Anyway, the plot revolves around the magical city of Elantris, populated by God like creatures that shine with the light of magic and are almost omnipotent. However, the story starts ten years after a horrible collapse of said city, which transformed every Elantrian into an immortal husk, heart not beating, hair falling, skin blotched by dark spots, incapable of healing the smallest cut or bruise, but fully capable of pain, unneeding of food, but fully able to feel ravenous hunger at all times. The process, called Shaod, has not ended, it still occasionally picks people at random and turns them into these creatures of eternal pain. The human inhabitants of nearby towns have quarantined Elantris and anyone affected by the Shaod is thrown inside the rotting city.

There are two main characters: prince Raoden and his bride to be, princess of a nearby kingdom, called Sarene. Not only them, but almost every actor is full of spirit (pun intended) and really likable, even the antagonists can be understood and sympathized with. The story is full of events that lead to character development, politics, smart plotting, drama and comedy.

Well, in the end, with all my talk of stand alone books, I was a bit sad to see the story end. I wanted more, and that's a good sign, right? Sanderson is supposedly considering writing a sequel, but it's not something that will happen soon and it will involve different characters. I liked Elantris and I recommend it to all fantasy fans.

And thus ends the fifth book in the Chronicles of Amber, and the last in the Corwin cycle. Written between 1970 and 1978 by Roger Zelazny, it was one of the most lazy fantasy series I've read so far. The Courts of Chaos is once again a book that has no connection with its title. Nothing really happens in the courts of chaos except at the very end. All previous developments in the story are discarded completely and it feels like the author slept through writing the book. It was one of the most WTF books in the series so far, as well. At every section there was at least one scene where I felt like those people watching football games and shouting at their TV about what the player should have done.

Let me give you some examples. The book itself starts with a circular time paradox, where we get to see Corwin cut off Benedict's artificial arm. This had already happened in the previous book, but from the other perspective. Thus the metallic arm was only there to be severed because it has been severed in the past, its origins non existent. Then each of the children are given orders by their father. Why would they listen to them is beyond me, as was his entire reason for leaving, reappearing, etc. Anyway, he sends Corwin on a quest to carry the Jewel of Judgement (nobody did any judgement with that stone!!) to the courts of chaos, where Benedict already went using a trump card. Of course, why call Corwin's grandfather to make another card so that he can get there instantaneously? Why indeed. So we are exposed to this totally boring expedition where people fight like children with swords and crossbows and throwing rocks at each other. No guns, of course, that would be cheating. When Corwin uses a stone to make his enemy drop his crossbow, he ignores the crossbow and almost dies in the process. When he gets to the crossbow again, he smashes it! Why use a ranged weapon at all? Oberon made a blood raven out of a bit of Corwin's blood, to accompany and protect him in shadow. Why not make a bloody (pun intended) army of ravens? Wouldn't that have been better? And it just goes on and on. They never use the cards in this book, for example, after it was already obvious they can be used as communication devices as well as offensive weapons.

Nothing really made sense, in a nutshell. I am pretty convinced Zelazny was stoned out of his mind when he wrote this, but with some bad shit, since it never seems to increase his creativity. The ending was like a slap in the face, as after their victory, using armies of pedestrians and cavalry, a funeral procession for Oberon appears out of nowhere, with a lot of people and dragons. I kid you not, they had dragons, but their only use was decorative, like some sort of Chinatown celebration paper-mache things. And they got there not by treading the land like idiot Corwin, they actually came directly there. Oh, and since Corwin didn't feel like being king, they crowned another brother. Who, you might ask? Is it the brilliant strategist Benedict? Is it the loyal and strong Gerard? Is it the devious and aloof Julian? No, it's totally Random (another pun, couldn't help myself).

The next book in the series is the first in the Merlin cycle and the first book was written in 1986. It gives me hope that in 10 years Zelazny learned to fucking write!

I don't usually post animal videos, but this really is very cute. It is space related, as well, as it is taken by a camera in Baikonur's space center. Check it out!



Got it from an article about the animals living near rocket launch pads: Launch Pad Animals, Ranked

More into the secret life of the gopher here: No one plays golf on Mars

The pattern (ahem!) becomes apparent once again: same lead character doing stuff in random order just to make the story be the way it was imaged by the author, same boring exposition, same artificial drama that could have been avoided easily if Corwin would have acted like a real character and not some cardboard placeholder of the lead, same stupid and obvious twist at the end, giving the name of the book even if most of it was about something else, same lackluster secondary characters, completely oblivious and helpless if not for the main protagonist and the mighty writer god. Indeed, the mock metaphor is not so far stretched when you think that in order to do anything worthwhile, people have to step on a pattern drawn on the floor and follow the lines exactly, without stopping, or they die. Maybe so we understand the villain better, trying to spill the blood of the children of Oberon, in order to destroy the existing pattern and build one anew: a book worth reading.

In The Hand of Oberon, Roger Zelazny again throws his Corwin character into a series of unlikely events, wooden dialogues and implausible behaviors. All strange events, that by all established rules should not be possible, are completely ignored by the characters until they appear relevant to some great reveal. Again a villain must walk the pattern and they must stop him, by posting guards, by walking the pattern after him, yadda yadda yadda. No one even considers taking a stone off the ground and hitting him on the head with it while they are hopping around the magical Hopscotch (not to mention a rubber bullet gun which would have solved everything in most situations). No one interrogates the corroborating witnesses or the people involved in the same situations until it is too late and they themselves don't act unless confronted later on in a sort of "oh, yeah" moment that is nothing but embarrassing.

The ending is just as muddled, with a scene that sees the villain put in storage for later use and a great reveal that had been obvious for a book and a half. No one seems to really care that the shadow realms have different rates of time passage either, so instead of using some trump to go to the fastest realm to talk or plan and return with entire plans made up, they sit around in feudal palaces in Amber, looking all important. I mean, Zelazny never truly describes their attire (unless it's some girl, and then he must describe her to the size of her cups), but I think that a kevlar shirt and some blue jeans and sneakers would have done wonders to the politics of the place. Oh yeah, kevlar probably doesn't work in Amber.

One book to go until the protagonist changes. At least there is some hope there...

Sign of the Unicorn continues where the second book ended and ends with another cliffhanger reveal that more or less has little to do with the content of the book! While I admit this book is slightly more interesting than the first two, the way the characters act and particularly the way Roger Zelazny completely ignores some of the main points in those books is becoming increasingly annoying. And just like the guns in The Guns of Avalon were a mere detail in an otherwise completely unrelated story, the Unicorn is something that just appears twice in the same book!

OK, enough ranting. This particular volume of the story (because it would be quite impossible to read the book without the first two, so in essence it is still the same book) is hinting about the origin of the strange forces attacking the realm, as well as explaining some more what had happened to Corwin and the court intrigues that led to it all. More of the siblings make their appearance, but their characters are reduced to conversation pieces in feudal Poirot-like instances, when they just come when bidden or do something that is instrumental to the plot going... in the same direction it was going. Instead of walking around with two Ingrams on his belt, Corwin continues to depend on his sword and reflexes, while sleeping underneath the same roof as his murderous and treacherous relatives. Instead of getting the man who sprung him from jail and using his unparalleled gift, Corwin seems to have forgotten about him completely. When he misses an important piece of jewelry that actually saves his life, he just abandons it and goes to do his usual business. And what about Bleys? After finding a solution for enhancing the power of the tarot cards, he just decides to use it once, on a single person. What about Oberon, man?! He's your dad!

Apparently, it wasn't enough ranting. It is kind of difficult for me to accept the layout of the story. Like any young adult movie recently, the author takes your sight and nails it to his narrow perspective, his favourite character and the things he feels he needs to do. Same unsympathetic shallow characters, same disaffectionate way of describing events, same predictable deus-ex-machina devices to promote the plot. Thank God these books are short!

The Guns of Avalon continues the story from the moment the previous book ended. Roger Zelazny is taking his Corwin character through some shadow land towards Avalon, where he might find the answer to his desire to claim the throne: an explosive agent that works in Amber.

His plans are soon thrown into disarray by several happenings. We meet the smart strategist brother Benedict, another blood relative Dara, we meet Gerard as well as learn a little bit more about the Amber world. However, the dispassionate style of writing as well as the dispassionate style of reading the book by its very author, made me feel close to nothing about the characters or events described. Again, I felt like learning nothing, as all the interactions between characters are very shallow and there is nothing described in enough detail to expand on the knowledge of the world or on some skill that the characters have. The author has attempted to show in the book that Corwin is a compassionate man, saving women from rape and wounded men from dying, helping his friends and being reluctant to dispatch or even harm his treacherous brothers, yet it all comes out like some guy playing a multiple option game: "Do you want to save the woman or keep going?" "Oh, what the hell, let's save the woman, see what happens". The ending of the book comes down brutally, solving several problems in a very lazy way, avoiding any controversial decisions that Corwin would (and should) have taken and introducing a magical nemesis that has no reason to exist that the reader would care about.

I am starting to feel that I've stumbled upon a dud. Two out of ten books to go (five if we consider that from the sixth book there will be a different main protagonist), and the only reasons I keep going are a promise to finish the series and my lack of strength for doing anything else.

Nine Princes in Amber describes a world in which only one place is "substance", the great city of Amber, while all others, including Earth, are just "shadow". Roger Zelazny doesn't really explain what is the difference, but we catch glimpses of the way Amber people can alter reality and that some of the things that happen in shadow cannot happen in Amber. Gun powder, for example, or perhaps even electricity. Great power can be channeled through tarot cards that hold the images of the children of Oberon or some other things, former king of Amber, while his numerous sons and daughters scheme and plan to take over the throne. The cards are drawn by a weird magician that seems to hold no political power, despite his amazing skill.

I took advantage of a flu that restricted me to bed in order to listen to the book in audio format, narrated by Roger Zelazny himself. While I enjoyed it, I didn't feel it taught me anything new. It was a pretty inconsistent story, as well. Princes and princesses and nobles, acting all smarty and aristocratic, dueling with swords and the occasional bow or crossbow, and some of the classic cliches encountered in this sort of context: like never killing your noble opponents, but imprisoning them or torturing/displaying them in order to demonstrate power.

In the end, the main protagonist remains a mystery. He starts with an amnesia, but soon he recovers his memory, making the entire memory loss kind of pointless. It is never quite spelled out who he is as a person, or what was it that he did on Earth. In truth, the book feels more like an introduction to the world of Amber, more like a teaser really, leaving the exposition of real character or description of the worlds to the following books. It is one of the first books from Zelazny, so maybe it will become better in the future. It is not explained why someone would want to rule Amber, either, as any other shadow world looks more appealing.

Even if I haven't fully enjoyed the story, I did promise a friend I would finish the entire Amber series, so we will see. After finishing it, I reserve the right to torture my friend in order to display my power by making him read something truly awesome and unsettling. I have not yet determined what yet, but a dark bird of my desire will carry my message and he will live in fear.

Zelazny himself died in 1995. I found a page written by George R. R. Martin, a beautiful remembrance of a mentor and friend. Apparently, he wrote the character Croyd (The Sleeper) in the Wild Cards series, one of the most interesting characters and appearing in many of the stories, even if very rarely as a main protagonist.

OK, I have no idea what most Japanese titles want to say. Is this about a parasite who is also a short, pithy statement expressing a general truth or rule of conduct? No, it is not. Parasyte is about a guy who gets infected by an alien metamorph, but somehow he manages to contain the infected area to his right arm. As a result, he maintains his personality, but now has a powerful alien as his right arm. It can change shape, it is very intelligent and it is generally useful when dealing with other afflicted, who usually have their brain infested, and thus are alien in their entirety.

Of course, being a Japanese anime, our hero is a high school male student after which a number of girls are pining for no good reason and that he has to fight to protect. No scenes of using his versatile tentacle arm on these girls, though. There are also some discussions about the role of these parasites and/or humans in the world, a vague ecologist propaganda that really has nothing to do with the plot and lots and lots of gore. The interaction between the human highschooler and the amoral and fiercely individualistic alien makes for most of the fun in the anime.

The series is ongoing, but I just watched the first 23 episodes and I can safely say that they could have stopped there. Probably they can come with fresh ideas, but for me the story started and ended satisfactorily with episode 23. The animation is good, but nothing spectacular, the Japanese cliches are abundant, but only barely overused and the main character is someone you can easily like and understand.

As far as I can see the anime faithfully follows the manga and episode 23 ends where the manga chapter 62 ends. There are just two other manga chapters published, so the anime and mange are pretty much synchronized. You can read the Parasyte manga online.

The News: A User's Manual is a short book that reads like a thesis for improvement of the way news is reported. Why, asks Alain de Botton, is news trying harder to be "accurate" than to tell the entire story so that people can understand and feel it? Basically it is the old Star Trek trope when Spock or Data or Seven of Nine tell the time in milliseconds when all was actually needed for the purpose on hand was how many hours more or less. Just like in there, the news, as seen by the author, does not understand either what the whole story is (lazy reporting) nor what people need (or indeed what the purpose on hand is). Like a global organization struck by autism, it just repeats the same terrifying and intimidating bits of human suffering, only to ignore the good, the humain, the inspiring and the overall effect on the audience.

I will put is clearly: Botton is right. However, he is discussing news from the perspective of human betterment. Just like people eating too much and exercising too little that the news organizations are being paid from, they couldn't suddenly do what is right as opposed to what brings the money or the audience likes to see. Some of the points he makes could, presumably, be used in national televisions, the ones that should be apolitical and tasked towards the education of the audience, not towards making profit. Alas, such televisions do not exist anymore, I think. I believe, however, that the book was never designed as a how-to manual for news organizations, but for the people watching it. Imagining the news style that Botton is describing can make us, the viewers, understand not only why we watch the news as they are, but also what they do to us.

The book is split into several chapters, all of them containing sections which contain at least an introduction, a description, a comparison, an analysis, a damage report and a suggestion for change:

• Politics
• World News
• Economics
• Celebrity
• Disaster
• Consumption
• Conclusion

What I found interesting was the psychological analysis of why we are attracted to some types of news items and what effect they have on us. I especially liked the comparison between "terrible tragedies" and the original Greek tragedies. According to Botton, telling what happened in 100 "unbiased" words is less engaging or instructive than going deeper and explaining the situation and the motivations of the people that did terrible things. Why, it is so much easier and comfortable to condemn a murderer of children as "sick" than to try to imagine what he has in common with you and in what situation you would snap that horribly. However, that teaches you and educates you more in life.

The Botton line (heh heh) is that without context, any information doesn't mean anything and makes us feel nothing. To overcome this, news makers are showing the most brutal and shocking things that they are allowed to show, just in order to elicit some semblance of interest. Instead, giving us the whole of the story, making us aware of how people from distant places live before stuffing down our throats how they died, might be more memorable and instrumental to make us feel something useful.

I found myself comparing news media to the justice system. There, a trial with no representation and due process is considered a sham. Both sides need to tell their story to the best of possibilities. If every news item is like a trial, its purpose making the audience judge a situation or a purpose, surely the same must be true. I do believe that Botton would have made his point more popular if he would have taken the stance of the lawmaker than the one of the psychologist. On the other hand, that would have deprived me of an instructive book that exposed many of the mechanisms through which the news is making us feel good while causing so much (hopefully) unintentional damage.

Not everybody is happy about his book, especially professional reporters. Here is one review from The Guardian: The News: A User's Manual by Alain de Botton – review

More helpful, here is a video of Alain de Botton himself discussing some points made in the book:

If you are interested in astronomy and the kind of space science that can be applied now, not in some distant future, this is the book for you. It describes the technical aspects of asteroid mining, an industry that is in its infancy (or should we call it still in the womb?), but is the only thing that can plausibly connect humanity to space. There will be no habitats on Mars, no colonization of the solar system, no interstellar travel - not for humans, not for robots, without the resources contained in asteroids. It is a short book, but filled with information and, as Lewis himself says, You presumably did not buy this book to be hyped by some huckster. If you did, I hope you will be sorely disappointed and not recommend the book to like-minded friends.

Dr. John S. Lewis is the chief scientist for Deep Space Industries, a space mining company that requires a separate blog post just to familiarize people with it. He is a world renowned asteroid resources scientist, with many written papers in the field, and also the author of Rain of Iron and Ice and of Mining the Sky. I hear you may consider these two part of the same series and, thus, you should probably try to get them before you read this book, even if it stands alone nicely.

Asteroid Mining 101 is filled with many pages on geology, minerals and general chemistry. I have to admit it is not what I expected, however true to its title. I thought I would read a little about asteroids, familiarize myself with the general concept outside my general knowledge of it, then read about the DSI's technical designs for spacecraft that would be used for prospecting and mining asteroids. Instead, it is a description of the concept of asteroid mining, followed by deep analysis of the issues that are involved and possible solutions. Reading it, one realizes how far we are from designing robotic miners when we haven't even developed the mining techniques that would work in space. Almost universally, the methods used on Earth rely on either gravity or heavy use of air, water or liquid fuels. It was therefore my first intention to criticize the book for being too geological in nature, but I end up praising it for it.



The book is structured as follows:

• a very short introduction on the structure of the Solar System and on various spacecraft that can help prospect asteroids
• a heavy geological description of asteroid composition, mineralogy and origins
• classification of asteroids, including a very nice list of techniques used to calculate the various characteristics used
• actual statistics on asteroids in the solar system
• economical analysis of a space mining based economy
• actual scenarios for finding, landing on and mining asteroids
• appendixes with even more detailed information

From these, mineralogy and classification take more than half of the book. The mining scenarios section is small, but understandably so: Lewis tried to make this book as lacking in speculation as possible, and I have to admire him for that. This is not a book to make you dream, it's a book to make you think. This has the downside that there are no discussions on the politics of the matter, with the exception of nuclear fission energy not being politically feasible for spacecraft propulsion. Even if requiring speculation, I would have welcomed a discussion on the possible uses of asteroids as planetary weapons, conflicts in space or even the legal chaos of who owns what and what enforces law. The author is neither a military man, nor a lawyer, so these are subjects for other people.

Several ideas stand out in the book. One of them is that the true valuable resource in space is water. It is abundant and useful for everything from propulsion to radiation shielding and sustaining of life. The so called precious minerals are completely different in space, yet bringing platinum metals to Earth would have a very little profit margin and a very short one, until the market stabilizes on the planet. On the opposite side of the spectrum, nitrogen would be the limiting factor of an industry that could theoretically sustain millions of billions of people, while fissionable materials like uranium or plutonium would be almost missing. Energy has the same problem. In space, solar power would be the main if not the only source of energy, while the types of fuel used on Earth would be either too expensive to use, impossible to produce or irrational to produce (like high energy fuels containing nitrogen). Metals like titanium and aluminum would require too much energy to extract from the stable compounds that they are found in and are of little general use in space. Return on investment cycles would be long in space, maybe longer than the average political cycle. And so on.

Actually, I would say that this is the main idea of the book: how different a space economy would be, from the technical to the administrative. Problems that are insurmountable on Earth are easy in space and the other way around. What we need to make this work is to develop the techniques required, from the ground up (I know that this expression presupposes gravity and a planetary surface, but let's go with it), because out there we need to relearn everything from the beginning. It shows the potential of the asteroids in the solar system, the possibility of expanding the human civilization millions of times its current size, then it presents you with the difficulty of planning all of this from Earth, where everything is different. It is one of the books that demonstrate unequivocally why we need to go out in space and why we need to stay there: we need to begin to "get it".

In a way, and that is my speculative contribution on the subject, it is also a sad book. It makes it obvious how difficult, if not impossible, it is for the average Joe, commuting to work every day, worrying about mortgages and child education options, to understand what awaits us in space. By extension, how impossible is for politicians to do anything about it, even if they understood the concept and wanted to actually do something. Therefore, the need for private initiative is made clear and evident.

Just days after I was saying how great Star Trek New Voyages/Phase II was, I stumble upon this gem of a story: Star Trek Aurora. It is a 3D animated full movie set in the Star Trek universe. Even if the animation is primitive, give it a few minutes. The acting is good and the story is really nice and original, with a believable female character and a fresh perspective on the Star Trek universe. I am embedding here the full movie, but also go to their web site and YouTube channel, since they have more work coming!

House of Cards - Psychology and Psychotherapy Built on Myth is a very good book that needs more recognition. It describes and really criticizes the lack of scientific method in psychology and debunks the myth of the experienced psychologist as well as many others that are now taken for granted in the field. Unfortunately the book is also very detailed, filled with expositions, repetitions of concepts and statistical information on the studies that prove the author's point, so it is rather difficult to read; it is certainly not a book you take to help you relax. Every psychologist in the world should read it, though, as well as any aspiring students or people considering going to therapy.

To make it clear, this is not an anti-psychology book. It continuously says that therapy helps. What it also says is that the amount of training and experience of the therapist is statistically irrelevant. That irritates the author tremendously, as he is a psychologist himself and desires that his chosen scientific field evolve and ... well... become a real science. Robyn Dawes unfortunately died in 2010, at the ripe age of 74. During his life he studied human irrationality, intuitive expertise and statistical applications in medicine and psychology. No wonder that in House of Cards, he is ranting against the practice of psychology as it is today.

A few concepts in the book are very interesting and quite frightening. After WW2, a lot of people came traumatized and needed mental attention. At the time, a psychologist needed to be a psychiatrist as well, having gone through the university and studied medicine; they were all doctors, with a Ph.D. degree. So what they did in the US was to create another type of degree, called Psy.D, letting people without medical training enter the field, with only minimal instruction. This created the myth of the intuitive expert who can tell things about people because he has experience, having little else. Dawes proceeds to mercilessly debunk this myth.

In order to do that, he uses - what else - the scientific method. He gathers data as objectively as possible and then tries to find correlations. One correlation that is not found is one between amount of experience (or indeed, formal training) and positive results. One that is, though, is that therapy does help. We just don't know (or better said, we don't know how to quantify) why. One obvious reason would be that, in order to come to therapy, people need to accept they have a problem and then make the first step in solving it: showing up. This alone shows that the person is already actively pursuing healing, a major step into healing themselves. He also analyses diagnosis, often using standardized tests that presumably can help a specialist determine mental issues and their type. However, presented only with test results, the experts don't really get to any useful conclusion.

Dawes is not stopping at psychology, even if that is his main focus. In one chapter he speaks of studies that have proven that doing a thing for a long time doesn't necessarily teach you anything, especially if there is no immediate feedback on whether what you did was good or bad. This also applies to some types of medical diagnosis. And yes, those people went through school - that has the main purpose to promote people who can get through it much more than to provide a comprehensive body of knowledge - and graduated, but when faced with ambiguous symptoms, they pretty much randomly guess what the patient is afflicted by. Think about that when you go to just one doctor and he tells you that he knows what you have because he's experienced.

Anyway, as I said, the book is difficult to read, it is more like a scientific paper and, as much as I wanted to finish it, I realize that I am not an aspiring psychologist, nor am I planning to go to therapy soon. Also, since I have people close to me interested in the field, it wouldn't help to talk to them about how they don't use the scientific method and they are not real doctors ;). Joke aside, this book is invaluable for anyone in the field. Not for me, though, and so I decided to indefinitely postpone reading it to the end.

In this post I want to talk to you about new stuff that links to the good old stuff of our own youth. You probably know what Kickstarter is, but just as an introduction, it is a place where people ask for money for future work. It's like a crowdsourced financing scheme for your public elevator pitch (just imagine a planet-sized elevator, though). And when I say Kickstarter, I mean the actual site and all the other similar things out there. Like... Kickstarter-like, like it?

First stop: Underworld Ascendant. The team that made Ultima Underworld, one of my all time favourite games, is doing a new one. As you can see on the Kickstarter page, it is two weeks from completing. If you loved the Ultima Underworld games (NOT the Ultima games), you could consider pitching in.

Second stop: Hero-U. Remember Quest for Glory? It was made by Sierra Games and the entire series was awesome! However the designers of the game are the Coles. They have been working on Hero-U, a modern version of the QG universe. They planned to release in the spring of 2014, but scope creep and public feedback turned the game from a simple little game to a complex and interesting concept that is planned for release in the autumn of 2015 and it is well on schedule. Check it out! They are at their second Kickstarter round.

Turning to movies and series, this time works made by and for Star Trek fans. And I am not even talking about random people doing really weird and low quality stuff, I mean real movie business people doing great stuff. Check out Star Trek Continues, a continuation of the original Star Trek series, as well as Star Trek Axanar, which seems to become a really cool movie! I can't wait for it to get out.

Update June 27th 2016:
The Axanar story has become a poster for corporate greed and stupidity. Soon after the trailers for Axanar were released, Paramount and CBS - the corporations owning the Star Trek franchise - sued the producers on copyright infringement. Funny enough, they did this before anything real was released. Their problem? The production was too big.

Having received more than 1.2 million US dollars from Kickstarter, the show was actually starting to look great. Top production qualities, professional actors, good CGI and - most of all - passionate people. Paramount and CBS alleged that this was already a commercial venture, having such budget, even if it was released freely on the Internet after production. To me, it feels as if Hollywood started to feel the heat. They realized that if this production and distribution model catches on, they will be left trying to combat piracy and hiring armies of lawyers to arrange and check distribution contracts when "the opposition" will just release free on the Internet once the budget for production is met. Consider the implications! This would be huge.

It felt like entrapment. First you let legions of people use the Star Trek moniker and universe, then you jump with a lawsuit on the people that make the most money. So the studios started to try to deflect the anger and consternation of fans and independent producers with dirty tricks like instructing J.J.Abrams to say in an interview that the lawsuit would go away, only for it to continue anyway and finally, with a set of guidelines for independent productions to which the studios would not object. The terms are ridiculous and pretty much break the entire concept of serialized Star Trek. More here, check this out: “The fan production must … not exceed 30 minutes total, with no additional seasons, episodes, parts, sequels or remakes.”


A long time ago I wrote a post about Vodo, what I thought was the future of cool little indie movies and series. Vodo didn't quite live to my expectations, but Kickstarter has taken its place and, since it is not only about movies, but all kinds of projects, it has a larger chance of surviving and changing the way the world works. Not all is rosy, though. There are voices that say that the Kickstarter ecosystem is more about promises than about delivery. Also some governmental and commercial agencies are really displeased with the way money are exchanged directly between customers and producers, bypassing borders, intermediaries like banks and tax collectors and so on. If you combine this with Bitcoin type currency, their job of overseeing all commercial transactions and taking their cut does become more difficult. I sympathise... not really.

I leave you with some videos of the projects above. Think about looking for others that are working on something you want to sponsor. You might be surprised not only by the ingenious ideas that are out there, but also about how it would make you feel to support people with the same passions as yourself.

Underworld Ascendant trailer:


Game play for Hero-U:


The full first episode of Star Trek Continues from the creators themselves:


Prelude to Axanar, a small mockumentary about the events that will be the context of Axanar:

This is a great film. It shows what it would look like to travel with the speed of light from the Sun to Jupiter. It takes 45 minutes (the length of the film) and it is one of the few things that show really how space is, how large, empty, unforgiving it is and how small and almost insignificant are the small islands of dirt we are fixated on. Don't worry, you have a little indicator of when something is about to appear, so you can fast forward. Really loved this. I only wish it would have continued to Pluto and beyond (just so you understand how awesome the New Horizons probe really is)

Childhood's End is a really interesting book. It is actually a series of medium length stories set in the same world. It starts with a sort of Independence Day kind of invasion - a peaceful one, though - it continues with the effects on the human world after decades have passed and then it ends with a human evolutionary leap that explains the entire book so far. The reason why I loved it so much is that a vast majority of the ideas in the book have withstood the test of time. Written in 1953, Childhood's End is remarkably modern and rational. Well, maybe today's world is not particularly rational, so maybe it is more modern that the present, which is remarkable :)

Arthur C. Clarke seems to have had an obsession with alien encounters - and by this I mean advanced species that have good reason to come to Earth, other than wanting to steal our water or mine our gold or other stupid thing like that. He wrote 2001: a Space Odyssey and Rendezvous with Rama, both about humans suffering of culture shock after a meeting with an alien species. Personally I think Rendezvous with Rama should not have had sequels, perhaps even Space Odyssey; for me it seems like Clarke continued some stories that had great success, rather than needing to continue those stories.

Anyway, Childhood's End is like that: alien creatures just oversee the evolution of our species on Earth, intervening only on minimal occasions. I loved the idea because it is a quick and dirty sci-fi solution for historical and all too present issues like borders, religion, corruption, politics and all those ugly things that appear like magic when enough people get together. I also loved the kind of Christian metaphor of daemons being directed to oversee and guide the human race, without them being privy to "God's grace", so to speak.

It is not an easy to finish book, as it isn't really an emotional story. There are no heroes that one can identify with; it is just a descriptive, rational, logical narration. It is a good book, though, one that I am glad to have read listened to as an audio book.