Why Stargate is pants

Today’s archive piece, from the “Time Trap” regular feature of Death Ray 12, sees me take out one of SF TV’s most sacred cows and shoot it in the face with a bolt of critical reason.

I’d been waiting a long time to say what I said here. Lots of people love SG, and so for years I was forced to remain silent (repeatedly demolishing one of the few truly popular SF shows of the time would have alienated a large chunk of the readership). Not lie, you understand, just not scream “Can’t you see how bad it is?” at every opportunity I had. Reviews were one of the rare places I could vent, but these were often given to fans of the show. No one on SFX or Death Ray had much time for it, to be honest.

To save the feelings of these misguided others (not least the SG cast and crew, who were generally very nice people) I tried to be reasonable in this piece, but frankly I thought the entire franchise dreadful television. If I were writing this now for this blog, it would be a lot more ranty, with more swearing. I reckon a large part of its popularity is down to the fact that there was very little SF on telly at the time, or am I being generous?

I like the film though. That counts for something, eh?

Stargate

1997 saw the beginning of what was to become the longest running SF show besides our own Doctor Who. But it was hardly groundbreaking stuff. Just why was Stargate so popular?

1994, and an SF movie called Stargate hit the screens. Meeting with middling reviews, it made a good return, but sank out of the popular consciousness with rapidity.

Stargate was yet another SF concept that drew inspiration from Von Danniken’s Chariots of the Gods, which suggests aliens were behind many of the ancient world’s technologies. A disgraced archaeologist named Daniel Jackson (James Spader), who regards the pyramids as landing platforms for alien spaceships, is recruited by the US government to help in deciphering the writing on a mysterious artefact found in 1928 in Egypt. He succeeds, and activates a wormhole to the alien world of Abydos. Jackson is sent along on a military expedition led by Colonel O’Neil (Kurt Russell) to Abydos, where an offshoot of the ancient Egyptian civilisation lives, and once there they must do battle with a parasitic alien who is worshipped as the sun god Ra.

Live4 Blogs

Here’s a trio of pieces I’ve written recently for Aussie website Live4.

Some cool internet hoaxes.

A little layman’s look at graphene…

…and by way of warning, a number of other supposed “wonder materials” from the recent past that carried hidden costs.

A trio of archive pieces

From Death Ray 09, written and released in 2007 but with the cover date of January 2008 (magazines are silly like that), today I have for you:

A review of the CGI animated film Beowulf.

A review of Beowulf and Grendel, a film starring Gerard Butler released on DVD to cash in on the other Beowulf.

A brief run down of Brian Aldiss’s brilliant book, Non-Stop, which is kind of apposite as this week I’m doing the final pass on my own “colony effort goes horribly wrong” story, Crash.

Today’s archive: Truth in print, and a review

A review of straight-to-DVD remake sequel (not looking good, is it?) Return to House on Haunted Hill.

And an opinion piece on the truthfulness of reviews in magazines.

Both of these pieces come from Death Ray 08, whose carcass I have now almost picked clean. Next week, onto Death Ray 09.

Black Library Live 2013

The most satisfying thing about this job is connecting with people who love the same stuff you do. And I don’t mean in a “Gosh, your books are so cool, have my babies” kind of way. I’m talking about my visits to events both now as an author and when I was a journalist, those occasions when you just get to chew the fat with fellow fans. You can do this anyway, but being a guest or a crew member carries certain advantages. Your time is structured, which I like, you feel like you have a license to talk to anyone, and a lot of people want to talk to you. Connection, right? I might protest misanthropy and snarl at the world from the safety of my garret, but we’re social creatures at heart.

Meeting people who have actually read your work is also damn cool. It demonstrates you’re not sat alone in said garret shooting words out into the inky void, but actually into the minds of fellow geeks. It reassures you that someone is willing to  invest the time and effort to read what you put so much time and effort into creating. That affirmation  means I can dial back on my medication, and my therapist gives me that  special smile that indicates progress and perhaps, one day, release into the community. If the reader likes your work, so much the better, but it’s not crucial, and friendly negative feedback is intensely useful.

This is not about ego, but you know, being at one with your fellow man and all, in the grand communion of science fiction. The gang from Fifty Shades of Geek I was particularly impressed by. Check out their website.

Attending Black Library Live delivers even more for me on the communion front, because I’m a MASSIVE fan of GW (I bought new toys. Shh! Don’t tell the wife). And as I used to work there, I got to see a lot of old friends. Most precious of all, I got out of the house for two whole days!

I wanted to say thanks to all the pleasant people I met, and double thanks for making the 120 preview copies of Baneblade sell out in 25 minutes or so. I was the day’s first sell out! (Um, that could be read two ways. The nice way, folks, the nice way).

I had such a good time that it didn’t matter that my 2500 point Ork army, the largest fielded in some time, was utterly annihilated by Jes Bickham’s Hive Fleet Eumenides the Friday before the big day, nor that my Dakkajet, so loving painted over so much time, was shot down the turn it arrived having achieved precisely nothing. Such is the fate of  all freshly finished miniatures, however. I bear no ill will. (The final beer after the game though, probably a mistake…)

A great game followed by beers followed by a great event = a great weekend. See you at the next one.

Living the Life Technological, on the cheap – Live4

My latest tech blog for Live4. Enjoy.

Living the Life Technological, on the cheap – Live4.

What’s in a name?

Here’s a piece I did for that really rather top fellow, Abhinav Jain, to publish on his blog, Angels of Retribution. It’s part of Names: A New Perspective, a series of guest blogs by writers about what their attitude is to naming and language in speculative fiction. Re-reading mine, I sound like a grumpy bastard. Hang, that’s because I am a grumpy bastard. Ah me. I also use the word “important” a lot. Makes me sound pompous. I’m probably that too.

I’ve republished it below for ease of use, if you want to see it in its original habitat, click here. For more articles on the same topic, try this.

The Third Industrial Revolution

Here’s my latest article for Live4, on three-dimensional printing.

Ten Minute Guide to Flash Gordon

Ah, Death Ray, how fruitful plundering your corpse is for my blog… This article originally appeared in Death Ray 08, back in 2007, as part of our insanely crammed “Ten Minute Guide…” series. These were among my favourite articles to write; packed full of detail, and no transcribing involved. I’ve put this one up as my review of the Flash Gordon TV series of 2007/2008 is one of the most viewed articles on this site by a long, long way. General searches for “Flash Gordon” take people there, so curiosity about this primal member of the modern SF heroic pantheon still abounds.

Flash Gordon: Perennially popular cosmic adventurer

The original, and the best. Click the pic for more on the comic.

Golden-haired saviour of Earth, Flash has been protecting us from the art-deco hell of Ming the Merciless’s Planet Mongo for 70 years, often in a pair of tight trunks. In a word: Pulp.

Flash’s adventures are ones of swash-buckling, over the top, Prisoner of Zenda style derring-do in space. The stories are simple stuff, simply told, their enduring popularity down to the sumptuousness of Alex Raymond’s art and the on-screen extravagance it inspired. If scantily clad slave girls, finned rocket ships, weird alien kingdoms and decadently luxuriant palaces are your thing, step this way…

SFSignal Mind Meld entry

Here’s a short opinion piece I wrote for SFSignal’s Mind Meld. A regular article on this wonderful SF site, Mind Meld asks numerous scribes and pundits one question, and they all answer in their own special way. My special way is that of curmudgeon, judging by my reply. Published just before Christmas, the last I was involved in asked:

Q: How do you feel about the state of storytelling in video games? What do developers do right? What could they be doing better? What games do you think tell excellent stories?

And below is my answer. Click on the link above to see what the other fine folk had to say, although you can read my bit right here, if you wish.