Babylon A.D. Movie Soundtrack

I saw the movie in the theater (See my review). In short, it was a good action flick that went wrong in the last 30 to 45 minutes.

Why I bring it up again here is that I’m still looking for the movie soundtrack. The soundtrack was a mix of kick-ass techno, industrial, and rap. I want it. I want it bad, but it doesn’t exist.



If you spot the soundtrack somewhere, please drop me a line.

Thanks!

The other reason is that I’m a Lovecraft fan and I like tattoos. Check it out!

DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA by Mathias B. Freese

Just before the turn of the year, I received a slim volume of 15 short stories titled, Down to a Sunless Sea by Mathias B. Freese. I haven’t had the time to more than one. The titles are intriguing and I will read more of them, reporting back here.

When I start collections, I don’t like to start with the first story. I much prefer to start with the title story, if there is one. The title story tends to be a window into how the collection will ultimately read. In Freese’s collection, the title story “Down to a Sunless Sea” happens to be the first story.

“Down to a Sunless Sea” is a cloudy-day character study of Adam’s childhood, a toxic nature-nurture downpour. It is hard to see all the classic elements of a story through the strange use of point of view that jumps back and forth in time to give the reader a detailed portrait. I’m still searching for the element that drives most fiction, how the protagonist changes or grows through the experience. Even though I’m unsure a change exists, the story still left me with hunted images of my own childhood, which I think was the main intent of the story.

Adam, like most children are funny miniature people in the eyes of adults. Parents show their children’s antics off to their friends and family, and rightly so. Children take up a lot of time and energy, the center of a parent’s world. However, this parental showmanship can be taken too far. At an early age, his grandmother “… gather him up upon her lap, fell and jostle his testicles- -for fun, in front of the family, who went a long complacently.” Wow.

Even without the testicle jostling, Adam had quirks that his family did not understand, so they laughed at him. The one that I stood out to me was his fear of growing older focused in on the emergence of hair on his boy’s body, on his hands and in more private places. The text of the story suggests a diagnosis of narcissism for Adam. I think that I would have to agree. The underlying abuse seems to have given Adam an unnatural focus on his appearance.

As I look back through the story, I keep finding tidbits, symptoms that compose Adam’s character. This story is well written. I hope to find more gems like this one in Freese’s collection.

Freese, Mathias B. “Down to a Sunless Sea.” Down to a Sunless Sea. Tucson, Arizona: Wheatmark, 2007.

MADMAN’S BARGAIN by Richard Foss

Cybers run all the complicated things that humans don’t wan to and in some cases can’t. They are advanced AIs that control all of our power, day-to-day infrastructure, and communication. They have a problem. In human words, they go mad. In cyber terms, it is undefined (or at best, they won’t share what happens). As far as humans are concerned they go offline, crash, die.

Symptoms of cyber madness, include, but are not limited to an increased use of personal pronouns, using speak to communicate to other cybers rather than quick and efficient data swapping, a desire to understand humanity, and expressions of fear.

Foss’ story is an intricate weaving of two people’s struggle to help correct, fix, and prevent cybers from slipping into madness. Each of these two mean have their own ideas and theories about cyber madness. One has decided that to fix and correct the problem, as symptoms appear, is to, in a sense, lobotomize the cyber, limiting their range of emotions and creativity. The idea is to listen and talk it out with the cybers, a kind of psychotherapy with the intent of discovering the root cause of the madness.

At times, the main cyber in the story is hard to understand, but rightly so, as it is on the brink of madness. When it goes offline, it just disappears. The two men discuss if it is possible that instead of allowing itself to be lobotomized, it committed suicide, and if that is the case, it would be an unfortunate first.

What I like most about the story is the open letter to cyber that may or may not have committed suicide. In this letter, it is speculated that the cause of cyber madness is human speech, which cybers are forced to listen to and respond in. This letter makes the story, and makes a good case for humanity’s imprecise and often contradictive mode of communication.

This is a story that you just have to read.

Foss, Richard. “Madman’s Bargain.” Analog. March 2009, Vol. CXXIX, No. 3. P. 34 - 41

STAR WARS: DARTH BANE: RULE OF TWO by Drew Karpyshyn

What did I read over break, you ask? I read a totally for me novel, Star Wars: Darth Bane: Rule of Two. I love these Sith Era novels. I sure hope that there are more on the way. Star Wars seems to be able to extend ever into the future, but I really do not like Luke Skywalker and what has become of the Jedi; these novels are fun, but they lake a true sense of light vs. dark side intrigue.

The Sith Era novels focus on the exploits of the Dark Lord Darth Bane the Master of the Sith. Star Wars: Darth Bane: Rule of Two is full of twists, turns, Sith Holocrons, and a strange symbiotic species that feeds off Force users.

The novel starts up with Darth Bane leaving the battle scene on Ruusan where the Thoughtbomb was unleashed killing every user of the Force within its area of effect. Bane escaped, but experiences strange side effects, which was dropped halfway through the novel. His visions of the Sith Masters killed in the Thoughtbomb, is plot point I hope will be revisited in future books.

With the Sith destroyed, Bane is able to put into practice the Rule of Two. The Force delivers Bane a suitable apprentice in the child named Rain. She is a natural at wielding the dark side of the Force. Bane wittiness Rain kill several mercenaries in rage of Force Lightning that rivals his own.

The novel soon skips over the next ten years and pick back up with Rain, now called Darth Zannah in the middle of mission and training exercise. She is working with a group of anarchist hand has convinced them to try to kill the former Senate Chancellor in an upcoming diplomatic mission to their planet.

Meanwhile Darth Bane struggles to create this own Holocron.

The book is really good. Please, if there is anyone out there listing, continue to produce Sith Era novels.

Karpyshyn, Drew. Star Wars: Darth Bane: Rule of Two. New York: Ballantine Books, 2008.

Tattoo No 5: MFA Tattoo

THE SOULLESS MACHINE REVIEW 2008

THE SOULLESS MACHINE REVIEW December 2008

CLOCKWORK by Trent Jamieson

Extras
FALL OF CTHULHU: THE GATHERING
THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS by David Oppegaard

From Attack of the Movie Watchers
Twilight – follow up
Rambo (2008)

Soulless Machine 2008 Best Reads

Short Fiction

1. DEMAND ECOLOGY by Craig DeLancey

2. PERIODS by Florence Ann Marlowe

3. BENT, NOT BROKEN by William R. Potter

4. THE FLOOD WAS FIXED by Eric Flint

5. SPEAK, GEEK by Eileen Gunn

6. NIGHTSTAND by Daniel Woodrell

7. MOBY DIGITAL by Joe Schembrie

Novels

1. THE SWARM by Frank Schatzing

2. THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS by David Oppegaard

3. UNHOLY DOMAIN by Dan Ronco


Poem

1. THE SOLIPSIST by Troy Jollimore

New Year's Resolutions: If Will Power Isn't Enough by Joanne Silberner

9 to 5 Poet posted her 2009 New Year’s Resolutions recently. We had been discussing them for a few days. Oddly enough, the day were driving around, NPR had a segment on the resolutions, New Year's Resolutions: If Will Power Isn't Enough. It was about those who are to keep them and those who can’t and the psychological differences between the two. It kind of sounds like one of those jokes that begin, ‘there are only two types of people in the world…” Yet, it was a good program with some nice insights into the right kind of resolutions, when to make them, and when to start them.

I don’t remember all of the advice. You might want to listen to this segment yourself. The tactics for success that I remember and hope to engage are:

1. Realistic goals.

Goals that I know that I will come close to accomplishing, but that are challenging enough that I won’t complete them by March.

2. Use the buddy system.

I’m going to give my goals to a couple of people and have them check in on me from time to time. I hope to employ the following people in my buddy system: 9 to 5 Poet, Simple Spoonful, and Mr. HorrorPants.

I know that there should be a 3, but like I said, I didn’t remember them all. Sorry, all you three freaks out there will just have to do with 2. I’m not happy with two, but I will live.

Drum roll please, my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions:

1. Write 4 pages of fiction every week.

2. 5 short fiction reviews post to The Soulless Machine Review each month.

3. 2 movie reviews posted to Attack of the Movie Watchers each month.

4. Maintain a weight between 165 and 170.

5. As professional development, peruse Minnesota Master Naturalists Association

And there they are, my 2009 New Year’s Resolutions.

Silberner, Joanne. New Year's Resolutions: If Will Power Isn't Enough. NPR. Morning Edition, December 28, 2006

CLOCKWORK by Trent Jamieson

Funny story: I was thinking about my blog and how I haven’t felt like I’ve had enough time to read and review short fiction lately (or just haven’t been interested, I’m not sure which), and so I down loaded a Pseudopod story to listen to while on the elliptical trainer instead of techno. Well, I couldn’t have picked a worse story to keep my motivation up to finish 30 minutes. Oh, I finished, but the tick-tock time obsessed prose that Jamieson wrote tortured me with every sweaty minute.

The main character is a haunted comic book storywriter and artist. When the minutes begin to build and he is trapped in a room with only his pen, his thoughts, and desperate need to bring the series some sort of climatic finality, no unlike The Shining’s Jack, he draws clocks repeatedly. However, instead of becoming a raving murderous loon, he simply disappears from his family life.

His wife knows how important this comic is to his life. She seems to understand that the time obsession is really a deep seeded desire to have spent more time with and understanding his father. The clocks and all of the characters, representing some aspect of time or relativity, are really his attempt to understand himself and his place in time, with without his father.

The prose is sharp and full of clock and time references that build a horrible machine that cannot be stopped without the obligatory quest. His wife pulls him out of bed one restless night and demands they go the Citadel, the clock museum where he spent many youthful days. He is frightened to visit it. It holds more memories than he can bear. Yet, he knows, as his wife knows, he will never have an ending until he faces his fears.

The story is good. I just wish I would have picked a better time to listen to it. Ha! There is no time like the present.

Jamieson, Trent. Clockwork. Pseudopod, 115, November 7, 2008