Big Eyes, Small Mouth, Huge Heart

Is anime the quintessential medium for telling science fiction stories?

Isn't it obvious?

The question sprang to mind the other day, after checking out one of my absolute favourite movies, Summer Wars. What's that, you say you've never heard of Summer Wars? Well, that's no surprise, since it's an anime and, unlike Evangelion, hasn't ever played on a big screen in North America. On the surface, Summer Wars is about the omnipresence of technology, and the threat of a rogue AI. Or, actually, it's a young man's coming-of-age story. Or a family drama. Or a love story? A comedy? A meditation on the role of the elderly? A warning about the depersonalizing nature of modern society?

Really, it's all of those things, and probably one or two more that I, having already watched it several times, haven't quite managed to catch yet. And that is why, I think, anime may be producing the best science fiction stories at the moment, certainly the best on film or video. Partly there are obvious reasons for that, like the simplicity of depicting non-terrestrial locations or biologies in animation, or the relative cheapness of fantastical effects. But there's more to it than that, and I think what it comes down to, in the end, is the trouble I had in explaining exactly what Summer Wars is 'about'.

This is Summer Wars, for the record.  Yeah.  Both of them.

See, that's not a problem you get in North American science fiction. Think of the big science fiction movies. What are they about? In Time is about how awful capitalism is, and a bit of a love story. The various Avengers lead-in movies are about superheroes doing classically superheroic things, like learning humility and punching Nazis. District 9 is about racism and prejudice. The Matrix series is about a war between humans and machines, and also fate vs. free will. I Am Legend is about isolation and the need for human contact, and if you've got the version with the better ending, mutual respect. The Transformers films are about two movies too many. Simple.

Now, what is Ghost in the Shell about, exactly? Or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time? Or Akira? Or Voices of a Distant Star? All of these movies have an obvious plot, just like North American films do, but they've got not just one sub-plot running, but several, and usually they're quite well done, too. And sadly, that's not really something you see in North American science fiction anymore. The Matrix, the first one, might justly be hailed as a stylistic and technical trend-setter and a relatively deep man vs. machine/man vs. society story, but Neo has no real character growth, nor do any of the other characters, all of whom are basically interchangeable and forgettable, and the love story is, frankly, embarrassing. If it weren't for Hugo Weaving, I'm not sure the whole thing would've got off the ground.

I kid, of course, but only about that last part. The more North American science fiction I consume lately, and I'm talking largely about films but television doesn't escape this either, the less impressed I find myself. Or, perhaps I should say the less challenged. It just seems as though the storytellers can't be bothered to really stretch themselves. Story after story, lately, is the same; a not-too-young disaffected/outcast male who finds himself pushed to become some kind of decisive figure, usually with a love story tacked on there and perhaps with a token bit of character growth. Where are the family dramas? Where are the meaningful love stories? Where are the comedies? The funny ones, I mean; Bay's Transformers absolutely do not count. And yes, I know there are exceptions, and that even some of those films that aren't exceptions are great films, just because they managed to do the one or two things they did really, really well. I still stand by my accolades for In Time, absolutely. But, for instance, why was Sylvia Will's age, instead of being his grandmother's age? It wouldn't matter in terms of casting, or the aesthetics of them as a couple on screen, but that small change could add such an interesting extra little touch to their admittedly formulaic relationship. It's those sorts of small things that science fiction seems to miss, time and again, to the detriment of their stories.

Behold, the romance of the summer (blockbuster)!

For all its translation and localization and dubbing issues, and for all its very real problems in terms of the portrayal of women, anime is simply the superior medium when it comes to telling science fiction stories. And the reason seems to be, at the end of the day, that anime directors and producers actually still care about telling really good stories that just happen to be science fiction, rather than science fiction stories that just happen to be good.

It's such a tiny thing, but it makes all the difference in the world.

A Fine Time, Indeed

In Time is high concept science fiction, and I don't hesitate to say that it's high concept science fiction at its best. It takes a single, simple idea, though one that could nevertheless fundamentally change the way human beings understand their lives, and uses it to hold a mirror up to modern-day society, to comment on some particular peculiarity of modern life.

 No, it's not on the new trend of day-glo tattoos.

The conceit in this film is two-fold. On the one hand, at some point in the past a technology was developed which stopped the physical ageing process at 25, offering immortality (barring violence, accident or disease) and some slight confusion when meeting a new person as to whether or not they're a peer. On the other hand, at an equally unspecified point, a system was put in place whereby life-time became money, obliging people to literally work to live and solving what some characters claim would be the problem of an ever-expanding number of immortals draining the earth's resources. So between the two, we have a world in which everyone looks young and beautiful, but one in which poor people die in the street when they 'time out' and the immortal rich are deathly afraid of risk and chance.

One of the trickiest things, when constructing a world that has changed in some fundamental way, is to create a coherent image of society. Pleasantly, the writers of In Time appear to have devoted some considerable amount of time to the issue. There are all sorts of little things throughout the movie that reflect the very different relationship the poor and the rich have to time. The poor run everywhere, they scarf down food, they never sleep in or show up late, and they're not especially afraid to do apparently crazy things, like jump from second-storey windows or play 'strong-arm', a game actually seen in the background well before it becomes a plot point. The rich, meanwhile, walk slowly, drive slowly, eat slowly, gamble huge amounts of time in casinos (though never enough to actually risk their own lives), live in fear of mischance, surround themselves with bodyguards and hoard eons. The poor ghetto is rough and dirty, but full of a certain vibrancy, while rich New Greenwich is drab and clean and monochrome, a subtly appropriate aesthetic since it's populated primarily by the very old. In fact, the lack of more science fiction elements (there aren't even cell phones) initially struck me as silly, but then I wondered; in a society in which the most powerful are the most directly concerned with maintaining the status quo and can do so for decades, even centuries, how quickly would technology advance? Particularly since the social system is built on isolation and segregation, both within areas like the ghetto and New Greenwich and between the 'time zones' themselves.

Justin Timberlake does a solid job as blue-collar Will Salas, a member of the working poor who suddenly finds himself with over a century on the clock after a run-in with a wealthy man who's grown tired of living. After one too many of Will's close associates dies in the street, succumbing to a system that is explicitly stacked against their survival, he decides to head for New Greenwich, with the intention of taking that self-same system for everything he can. In New Greenwich he meets Vincent Kartheiser and Amanda Seyfried, as Phillipe Weis and his daughter Sylvia, and just as importantly has his first run-in with Cillian Murphy's Raymond Leon, a law enforcement officer (Timekeeper) investigating the death of the man who gave Will all that time. The intersection of Will, Sylvia and Raymond sets the plot in motion, and from there it unfolds in ways both expected and surprising, constructing a solid chase narrative that keeps the film absolutely humming with energy. The romance never overtakes the story, pared down to just one or two small, intimate scenes that convey the connection between the two characters without becoming semi-pornographic, and the obvious social commentary never becomes preachy, remaining entirely within the bounds of the world constructed at the beginning of the film. This is a world where time is literally money, and that almost primal drive suffuses the film from start to finish.

The characters are, for the most part, fairly stock, but very well-played stock. Will is the good-hearted, quick-witted boy from the bad side of the tracks, and Sylvia is the naive, sheltered but ultimately well-meaning rich girl who falls for him, with Phillipe perhaps the ur-example of the controlling and heartless rich father. The real stand-out is Cillian Murphy, and his Timekeeper Raymond Leon. Throughout the film, I found myself vacillating on just what, exactly, Raymond was. He refuses to be bribed, and seems dogged in his pursuit of Will not because he dislikes him, but because Will is suspicious and eventually an outright criminal, and Raymond is an officer of the law. And he's not a bad person; he appears to be relatively well-liked by at least some of the ghetto's inhabitants, even having a small, friendly back-and-forth with a prostitute. But he shows no apparent interest in apprehending the local Minuteman, Fortis, a gangster who steals time from those in the ghetto and kills two people over the course of the film itself, and there's a suggestion that in coming out of the ghetto himself, Raymond is working to make sure nobody else can follow after him. I didn't necessarily buy that moment, but it does exist in the film, and it's part and parcel of the pleasantly complicated character that is Raymond Leon. He's easily the standout character of the piece.

I mentioned, earlier, that the lack of cellphones seemed strange, and initially it does. This is a world in which some sort of techno-organic engineering has taken place to produce functional immorality and an off-switch in the human body, after all; surely an iPhone isn't beyond them? But the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. Technologies like the internet and cellphones are trans-temporal; they compress space and time. In our world, a world in which the greatest amount of utility must be wrung from an extremely finite amount of time, that is a definite value. But that isn't the world of In Time. Instead, their world is one in which a potentially infinite amount of time must be whittled away to nothing for the vast majority of the population. Of course there are payphones on street corners, and not a cellphone or laptop to be seen in the ghetto, these technologies would be explicitly contrary to the entire thrust of the culture in those areas. The system would want to force the poor to spend minutes on awkwardly-positioned payphones, or run home to meet up with someone, because that burns away a few more of the minutes the system can't abide them having in the first place. In Time is one of the better, subtler representations of the systems of control that make up society cinema has provided us in quite some time.

Though it may be bad form, there is something I'd like to say about the end of the film. I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but if you are thinking of going to see In Time, you should probably stop reading here, and come back once we're both on the same page.

So. I went to see In Time with the lovely Madam Meagan, and after the film she expressed a certain dissatisfaction in the resolution. It wasn't that it was badly scripted or acted or shot, but rather, that it wasn't a total resolution. In a science fiction film, in particular, she prefers when things end in a way that is decisive and all-encompassing; the Good triumph, the Evil are destroyed, and Everything Is Fixed. I wouldn't have had any objection to such an ending myself; indeed, as an outside observer it seems almost silly that the characters didn't push for that last great step towards total victory. But, and this may just be the aftereffects of a recent bout with Herbert Marcuse and his theories, not only was I untroubled by the ending as presented, it actually rang truer to me than the alternative would have. Of course the ending doesn't produce a fundamental change in the status quo, of course it doesn't. It couldn't. For all that Will is out to take the system for everything he can, he is still, ultimately, operating under the constraints of the system. He can't fundamentally challenge it, because he, like the vast majority of human beings, is simply incapable of really understanding what it would take to produce that level of change. Yes, he hates the system, yes, he thinks the rich are parasites, yes, he balks at immortality for a few at the cost of death for the masses, but he is still, at the end of the day, incapable of conceiving a challenge to the system itself. His solution is redistributive, rather than reconceptual, because Will, like most people, cannot break free of the systems into which he is born, because that system defines the horizons of his experience.

That, more than the vicious representation of naked capitalism, was what felt to me like the true philosophical heart of the film. In Time is, more than anything else, an exploration of the inability of humans, even those with the most powerful motivations and best of intentions, to truly force the world to take the shape they desire of it, or even understand what, exactly, they desire in the first place. The timing of this film, coinciding with the Occupy Wall Street protests, is particularly interesting. The OWS protestors are likewise incapable of really challenging a system that is specifically and purposefully designed to exploit the greatest number of people for the good of the smallest number of people, because they are still defined by the boundaries of it. They aren't calling for communism or socialism, for the radical redistribution of wealth to create a truly level playing field, or for a reordering of society such that the utility of a McDonald's counter girl is equal to that of an elite banker. And why not? After all, that McDonald's girl is more useful to a greater number of people than that banker, and McDonald's staff have never crashed the economy. But the OWS protestors are a product of their society, a society that is viciously anti-communist, -socialist and even sometimes -socially just, so they can't make the leap from a system that is steadily failing more and more people to one that might work better for more people.

Almost nobody can. And maybe recognizing that limitation, even if we can't bring ourselves to transcend it, is the true value of In Time.

Though, the gunfights and chase scenes are pretty cool, too.

The Darkest Hour - Trailer

 

This is by far the most imaginative alien invasion scheme I've seen in some time, and the Russian setting lends it a pleasantly different feel from aliens continually invading Washington or New York.  Here's hoping the script can hold up under the demands of its creative premise.  It's scheduled for release in December, just two days before Christmas in fact.  Might be a pleasant way to pass Boxing Day?

The Fourth Sphere Pt. 6 – Special Characters

Traditionally, as far as the format of these articles are concerned, I would pick one of the three Tau Empire special characters to take apart and put back together again. But I'm going to break with my own tradition, and see what I can do about all three of them. Because, unlike every other slot on the Force Organization chart, and frankly unlike every other codex out there I can think of, the special characters section of Codex: Tau Empire really has no redeeming features. At all. The best of the best are 'not awful', and it just goes downhill from there.

To start with, let's think out loud a little. What should a special character be? Back in 2^nd and 3^rd edition, special characters were heroic powerhouses, pricey but more than capable of making their cost back by the sheer amount of damage they could personally do to the opponent's forces. In 4^th and 5^th edition, however, the emphasis has been more on building an army rather than directing a hero, so with some exceptions special characters are meant to impart some sort of characterful improvement to their army. That's why Ghazghkull lets you take Nobz as Troops, and Kayvaan Shrike gives your units Fleet instead of Combat Tactics. It's not so much about the special character itself, any more, but about how it can improve the performance of the army, either directly (unit buffs) or indirectly (FOC swapping).

So, what do the special characters in Codex: Tau Empire offer? Not much. Aun'Va is worth more dead than alive, since alive he only offers a pretty lousy conditional bonus while dead he makes Tau at least theoretically capable of accomplishing something on the charge, though his refusal to affect the only three units who would really benefit from it (Kroot, Vespid and Gun Drones) offsets even that. O'Shovah pays an extra 70 points for a few stat increases and a power weapon, the only one in the entire codex, but his seven-strong bodyguard squad is largely useless because you simply won't have the points to actually field it (O'Shovah and seven Deathrains, the cheapest useful suit, would be 569 points on their own), his earlier 'Ork Fighter' rule has been downgraded to the very particular Preferred Enemy: Orks, and his 'Breakaway Faction' restrictions mean that in the games large enough to actually make use of O'Shovah's big bodyguard you'll be incapable of fielding a decent army to back it up. O'Shaserra is the aforementioned 'not awful', but even there you get a muddle of a character; the stealth field suggests staying back, her Command-link drone suggests hanging out at midfield, her 12" guns suggest getting up close, and she doesn't even count as an Independent Character until her Command-link Drone and two Shield Drones have been shot away from her, that is, until she's had to take at least, and possibly three, break tests. Like I said, she's not awful, but she's hardly a must-have.

Now, what don't we see? Three things. First, we don't see anyone offering to swap FOC slots. If I take O'Shaserra, why can't I take a unit of XV15/25/22s as troops? If I take O'Shovah, where're my XV8s as scoring units? If I suffer brain damage and decide to actually pay for Aun'Va, why doesn't he let me take an Honour Guard or two in place of a regular Fire Warrior Squad? Nobody changes up the FOC or unlocks new potential for existing units, which puts Tau Empire special characters at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to comparing them to others, or just justifying them against what those points could buy otherwise. Second, why doesn't everyone affect everything? The idea behind the Tau Empire is that not just the Tau, but various other alien races, are working and fighting together. So why do the two buffing units, Aun'Va and O'Shaserra, ignore Kroot and, in the case of the former, Vespid? And why does O'Shovah strip out not just the weak Vespid and the useful Kroot, but all sorts of pretty essential general Tau Empire stuff? These guys are cripplingly specialized in a way nobody else's special characters are, and it shows. How many Marine special characters, with their army-wide upgrades and unit-enhancing buffs, do you see, compared to how many overcosted and underperforming Tau Empire special characters? And third, why doesn't anyone enhance what Tau are supposedly good at, or at least blunt what they're particularly terrible at? Isn't that what special characters do? Tau have more weaknesses than any other army in 40K; they can't fight in close combat, they don't have psychic powers, they can't stop other people's psychic powers, they have low LD, they aren't very good shots, they're fragile, and they're often in pretty small units. And none of the special characters actually address any of these deficiencies in any kind of useful way. It's as maddening as it is mind boggling.

So. Let's start with the worst of them; Aun'Va, Master of the Undying Spirit. First thing's first, this guy needs a shirt. It was ludicrous when generic Auns were running around with no armour, but it's inexcusable when the 'supreme Ethereal within the newly won septs of the Third Sphere' can't be bothered to throw some carapace over his withered frame. And no, a cover save doesn't do it, because all it means is that in addition to having no protection at all in close combat, all it takes is a flamer or two and this unit is toast. And unlike the regular Auns, Aun'Va can't even buy shield drones! So, give Aun'Va and his two bodyguards at least 4+, and throw in a real 4++ save while we're at it. And speaking of his bodyguards, what's this 'two' nonsense? A regular Aun can be accompanied by a dozen elite Fire Warriors, but Aun'Va only gets a couple of guys with axes? If they're going to do this, they might as well go all the way and throw another two or three models into the unit, and either make Honour Blades count as power weapons or two close combat weapons, because as it stands the guys with no guns who are supposed to protect this venerable old troll hit last and hit lightly, assuming there're any of them left. If this unit is shot at, it will probably die, and if it's charged, it will definitely die. Can you think of any other special character who is so unbelievably fragile?

As for his special rules, I mean, good gods. It's like someone looked at Aun'Shi from Codex: Tau and decided that nonsense was just absolutely inexcusable. Aun'Shi joins a unit and makes it Fearless, gives it +1I and +1A, allows it to stay a scoring unit, and allows every Tau unit on the table to re-roll all morale checks; Aun'Va only grants a bonus if you can draw line of sight, and it's affected by Night Fighting, and it's just Stubborn. Comparing the two it's no contest, and that's before adding in Aun'Shi's 4++ save, his photon and EMP grenades, his 'no armour saves on a to-hit roll of 6', his parrying ability, or his greater WS, I, W and A values. And, just in case it wasn't blindingly obvious who the better Aun is yet, Aun'Shi does all this for a hundred points less! It's just... I mean, my gods, how did anyone look at Aun'Shi, and then Aun'Va, and decide the latter was a reasonable character to include in Codex: Tau Empire? But I said I'd fix Aun'Va, so I guess we'll give it a try. Let's start by expanding his 'inspiring presence', so that Aun'Va allows all Tau and Drone units to re-roll all LD-based tests, and recover if they're below 50%, just for starters. He's also so important a character that he's only seen with elite cadres, so taking Aun'Va means any and all Fire Warriors can be upgraded to Honour Guards, +1BS for one point per model. And let's face it, the Tau Empire badly needs some psychic defence on the table, so let's say Aun'Va's 'Paradox of Duality' is actually some kind of anti-warp field emitter, that works like a psychic hood with a 36" range. With an invulnerable save to protect him, no need to draw LOS to Tau squads, an effect on at least one type of non-Tau unit, the chance to upgrade Fire Warriors to actually being seriously useful and the only provider of psychic defences, Aun'Va suddenly looks like he might be worth taking, after all. He can even keep 'Ultimate Price of Failure', since at least now it's a real price.

Next up, O'Shovah. Like pretty much every Tau special character, he's going in too many different directions at once, so let's see if we can't give him some focus. Giving bonding knives for free is a little thing, but a useful one, and the restriction on Vespid make sense, so they can stay. Kroot makes less sense, though, since they're mercenaries who have been known to work against the Tau Empire if the pay is right. But the restrictions on vehicles and non-XV8 suits is just awful. It's got to go. This is a character you can't take below 1500 points, and at that level one unit of Piranhas, XV88s and a single Hammerhead are not going to do it. When you force a player to seriously consider Sniper Drone Teams, you've done something wrong. His 'Preferred Enemy: Orks' special rule is also awful. It was at least moderately useful in Codex: Tau, when it let you upgrade your WS and I for 5 points, but limiting it to just re-rolling to-hits when he's fighting Orks makes it so specialized as to be worthless. As for his gun, the plasma rifle is good and all, but O'Shovah is a special character, why not give him a special weapon like the Imperial Armour commanders? At least make it Assault 2, or Str 8, or twin-linked, or something!

Now that we've torn him down, let's build him up again. O'Shovah has decent stats, a 4++ save and the only power weapon in the codex; clearly he's intended to get in there and mix it up, especially since an O'Shovah army can't have Kroot. So let's give his bodyguards a chance to actually help him out. Give the unit Furious Charge, and let them buy some kind of power weapon of their own, some slightly inferior copies of the Dawn Blade. Boom, all of a sudden the unit's capable of fulfilling not just the role GW apparently envisioned for it, but one that no other unit in the codex can. If for no other reason, O'Shovah suddenly becomes a useful special character. As for his special rules, like I said the restriction on Vespid, and even Kroot if we must, work well enough, but the 'XV8s are 1+' is just silly. Who isn't going to have at least one squad of XV8s at 1500 points? Instead, let's make his focus on battlesuited warriors a little more useful, and say that taking O'Shovah allows you to field XV8 units at a strength of, say, 2-6. A lot of players find it very easy to max out the Elites section, since it usually consists of a whopping nine models, so this is actually an improvement. And to represent his ferocity and commitment to fighting on the front, O'Shovah, and any unit he's attached to, is a scoring unit, while to represent the close-knit militarism of his enclaves every unit gets a bonding knife and +1LD. This makes an O'Shovah army play very differently from a regular Tau Empire cadre, but not in a bad way, which is how O'Shovah affects the army currently.

And last, and in the scale of terribleness least, O'Shaserra. She's got the least to take apart, because she's got the least there to start with. Her gear makes decent sense, though the 'close vs distant' battle between her guns and her stealth field is even worse than for a regular XV15/25 squad. The Command-link Drone is potentially useful, the 4++ save is solid, and the ability to engage two units at once is interesting. The only things I don't like about her is that she must come with three drones, which means one casualty and she has to take a break test and that she can't join a unit until they're all dead, and, well, that's pretty much it. She's not that bad, and it means there's not a lot there to dislike. Unfortunately, there's not a lot there to like, either, because she is so basic. For the cost of not-quite-two Shas'Els with a fusion blaster, targetting array and shield generator you get two fusion blasters, an 18" leadership-granting bubble, and a Shas'o in a stealth suit with a shield generator and a couple of shield drones. The phrase 'that's it' springs rather quickly to mind. O'Shaserra needs an upgrade, and fast, if she really wants to be able to compete with, well, anything.

So, first, because 5^th is all about manipulating the FOC, let's say that taking O'Shaserra allows you to take one unit of XV15/25s as Troops. Not only does it give the army a moderately solid scoring unit, it's also pretty much the only way GW is going to sell XV15/25 models, since as-is they're so totally beaten out by XV8s that almost nobody bothers with them. Then, take out the two shield drones, and fold the Command-link drone into Shadowsun's armour, making her an actual, independent character. The model can stay, but like the Watcher holding Azrael's helmet or the Grot oilers accompanying a Big Mek, it doesn't actually do anything. There, now she can join other units and actually help out, rather than just staying back with her bubble-edge brushing a squad. And let's give her guns at least a little more oomph; say, 18" Assault 1, or perhaps 12" Assault 2? And speaking of, you don't give someone two fusion blasters unless they're serious about taking down big problems, so let's open up some big alternative solutions. EMP grenades; nobody bothers with them because they're expensive, but what if they came free, or at a point per model or five points a squad, in an O'Shaserra-led cadre? And you could get them on battlesuits? Suddenly vehicles are even less safe than they thought they were facing a twin-linked missile pod- and railgun-equipped force, which given the emphasis on vehicles in 5^th is no small thing. And since O'Shaserra is leading the most advanced cadres in the Empire, perhaps all markerlights count as networked, and all special-issue wargear is universally available. Again, it's all about making an O'Shaserra cadre fight differently from a regular one, and this would definitely fight differently.

So, as far as I can see, that's what it would take to make Tau Empire special characters worth taking to the field. And frankly that's not even getting into what kinds of other special characters should be there, like Kroot or Vespid or elite Fire Warrior shas'ui. More than any other, this section needs so very, very much work...

Tommy Douglas: Father of Medicare, Grandfather of Cyborgs?

The cyborg is a common feature in science fiction, so much so that it has transcended its particular genre audience to develop a pleasant little place for itself in pop culture at large. Ask someone on the street to name a cyborg, and chances are good they'll be able to, at least with relatively little prompting on your part; Robocop, the Borg, Inspector Gadget, Darth Vader, something along those lines. Those more attuned to current events may even be able to come up with the name of the South African runner, Oscar Pistorius, whose attempts to compete in the Olympic Games was questioned based on his prosthetic legs. And of course, there are the now utterly mundane real-life cyborgs, people with cochlear implants, pacemakers, and artificial limbs that run the gamut from 'barely better than a peg-leg' to 'actually functional robotic hand'. The cyborg is no longer the fever dream of the science fiction writer, but more and more they're the reality of your neighbour or your coworker.

And that raises a pretty fundamental question in a capitalist society; who's paying for all these cyborgs?

And how do we make sure they don't cheap out on them?

Traditionally, fiction has usually looked at the cyborg as being a piece of private investment, either on the part of the individual or a corporation. Robocop is legally the property of OCP, after all, and Emperor Palpatine appears to have paid for Anakin's en-Vader-ing himself, since there's not a Property of the Republic stencil to be seen on any of the extremely complicated and expensive medical equipment around them. And when it hasn't been the preserve of the rich, it's usually the result of a particular purpose, spies and assassins being upgraded by their government employers to make them better at their jobs. Cyborgism is a reward as much as a status, and tied with a certain elite classification in fiction. The cyborg is a main character, antagonist or protagonist. Sure, there's Lobot and Geordi and the like, but as secondary character cyborgs they're the exception, not the rule. As cyborgs become less fantastic, however, and more just a societally normalized response to people who have lost some degree of 'human standard' functionality, it becomes less clear why that elite status should be so. This is particularly the case in advanced non-American countries, where the state already pays for citizens' health care. In those cases, why is it that the state can afford to implant a pacemaker, but not fit a pair of 'cheetah legs'? Or introduce the kind of brain-computer interface that can restore damaged nerves and retrieve functionality in extremities? Obviously purely cosmetic procedures could be exempted from national health plans, in the same way that current, purely cosmetic procedures are, but as the technology progresses the definition of non-cosmetic prostheses is only going to grow more and more broad. Because of course, there is not actual 'human standard'.

States like America may at first decide that it's every (rich) man, woman and child for themselves when it comes to personal enhancements, but there are plenty of 'friendly' states that could challenge America's '99% human, 1% cyborg' distribution of enhancements across society as the norm. And what about less friendly states? What about, say, China? Think about it for a moment. A large, prosperous state, with a great deal of accumulated savings, and no history of the citizens being treated as anything but extensions of the state. What would it mean if, ten or fifteen years from now, when the technology has advanced far enough, the government of China paid to have every citizen fitted with a computer-brain interface that provided them with a fundamentally significant advantage in the knowledge-based economy? Or what if they provided increased-functionality sensory suites, little clusters of cameras and audio pickups and the like, that gave every Chinese person 20/20 vision and perfect hearing, and allowed them to record everything they saw and heard while they were at it? If China decided to invest in even 1% of its billion-plus population, the definition of 'human standard' could certainly start to inch away from 'a healthy un-augmented person with a full range of naturally-provided functionality' and towards something a little more competitive. And the higher the bar is raised as far as the maximum possible achievements of a human being, the more pressure there's going to be on everyone else to catch up. If you live in a world of people who can run as fast as a car, lift a piano, compose software in their heads and enjoy absolutely perfect recall, what choice do you have but to try and match those people?

 She can do everything you can do, faster and better.  And she fills out that leotard pretty well, too.  Why should they hire you, again?

These ideas, far-fetched as they may sound, are still safely on the conservative end of the predictive spectrum; in another generation, it's entirely possible the technology could have already surpassed much of what we see even in the more imaginative works of science fiction. And once it has, there will be enormous pressure, from all sorts of groups and institutions, to put it to some kind of use. After all, why just have one Darth Vader, a 7" tall killing machine with the ability to hold a human being off the ground with one hand and casually snap his neck, who should have increased endurance to go with that strength, whose wounds can be instantly healed thanks to the wonders of plug-and-play technology and who could have a permanent audio/visual up-link with headquarters, when you could have whole special forces teams of Darth Vaders? Or whole armies of them?

Once the replacement parts surpass the parts they're replacing, the entire equation changes. At the moment there's no sense chopping your hand off, or gauging out your eyes, just to become a cyborg. Current prostheses are fine for replacing damaged or non-functional parts of our bodies, but they have yet to really out-do what an average, healthy human being can accomplish with their normal body. But technology progresses, sometimes slowly and steadily, sometimes vaulting ahead in great leaps and bounds, but always moving forwards. So soon enough, well within my own lifetime and probably within that of my parents', the day will come when a prosthetic isn't a second-rate replacement, but an upgrade. And when that happens, society is going to have to decide a few very important things. What is a 'human'? What is 'normal'? And perhaps most importantly, who is going to pay to make sure all 'humans' are 'normal'?

And you thought Canadians were sensitive about their health care system's performance before...

Munitorum Series #2 - Bolter

So, Saturday has come and gone, and with it the second in the four-game tournament series Black Knight Games is running.  And how did I do?  Read on, and find out!

Round 1

Opponent: Blood Angels (Craig Simms)

Librarian

2 x 10 ASM w/2 x Meltaguns, Power Sword, Sanguinary Priest

10 ASM w/2 x Meltaguns, Power Sword

5 x Sanguinary Guard

2 x Vindicator

Deployment: Pitched Battle

Major Objective: Capture and Control

Minor Objective: Headhunter (Points for Close Combat Kills)

As far as starts go, this was a less than auspicious one. It's hard to imagine a list Tau would struggle with more than deep striking Assault Space Marines with Feel No Pain, and a less realistic Minor Objective for Tau to go after than Headhunter. My opponent lost the roll-off and I decided to take first turn; I was fairly certain he wouldn't deep strike his Vindicators, so at least I could hope to deal with those before they caused me too much trouble. I deployed as spread out as I could be, hiding my objective in a small ruin off to my left with 6 Fire Warriors and one of my XV88s camped out on it, while my suits hid behind my two Devilfish and the Hammerhead, my other XV88 snug behind some rocks on my right, my other on-foot Fire Warriors clustered around that XV88. His two Vindicators deployed together behind a small copse of trees on my right, the Librarian hiding behind it. He rolled a 2 to Seize Initiative, and we were off.

And boy, was I ever off. My Pathfinders managed to put one markerlight token on the Vindicators, which I used to boost my Hammerhead to hit on 2+. It managed that, but only just barely, and against the AV13 front its penetrating roll of 1 didn't help me much. Nor did the inability of the XV88 on my left to hit, or the XV88 on my right to roll more than a 1 for its own penetrating roll. The Vindicators endured my firepower utterly without concern, which seemed a remarkably bad omen. In return, he managed to blast my Hammerhead to shrapnel with his own heavy tanks, though thankfully it didn't kill anyone when it went. On turn 2 I had spread out enough that my Deathrains could threaten the leftwards Vindicator's side armour, and a few solid missile strikes managed to tear the massive cannon clean off. My XV88s, meanwhile, immobilized the other tank, which was pretty much useless, and stunned it, which was slightly more. Again I spread out, one squad of Deathrains going up the left behind a Devilfish, the other squad going up the right, while my Fireknives and my Shas'el's squad covered the middle. I was hoping to be able to dance around his army as it came in piecemeal, and hopefully at least threaten to defeat it in detail. Alas, it was not to be. His Sanguinary Guard and one of the Priest-backed squads turned up from reserves; the former dropped in, shot up and broke my Fireknives, while the latter put down one of my 'El's bodyguards. Just like that, I'd gone from 5 plasma rifles to 1, before they ever had a chance to fire.

Predictably, my Deathrains, Fire Warriors and Devilfish were unable to put wounds on the Priest-backed Assault Space Marines, and the one plasma rifle left managed to miss them, while the Sanguinary Guard went unmolested. With no loss to his army on its first two, weakest turns, there was no hope of holding them off when the rest of them turned up on turn 3. He left one squad around the back, to hold his objective, while the rest rampaged through my cadre, slaughtering with near-impunity. Amusingly, the two best killers on my side turned out to be my Devilfish, one of which took out three Assault Space Marines with its Flechette Dischargers, and both of which exploded, killing a few other Marines when they went up. The rest of my army was utterly ineffectual, my XV88s failing to even destroyed his Vindicators (they were smoking crippled hulks, but still not dead) before they were overrun, and my suits mercilessly hunted down and dispatched. The game ended on Turn 6, not because of the dice, but because there wasn't a single Tau model left on the field. I had been tabled.

Results: Major Loss

Round 2

Opponent: Necrons (David Quirk)

2 x Lords w/Resurrection Orb, Gaze of Flame

2 x 20 Warriors

2 x Monoliths

Deployment: Dawn of War

Major Objective: Capture and Control

Minor Objective: Thin the Heard (Points for Getting Squads to Half Strength)

Once again, I wrote the Minor Objectives off before the game started; he could give up a maximum of 2 points, while I could offer a whopping 8. This was actually my first game against Necrons, and I went in not knowing much of what to expect. We deployed 4 objectives, more or less in the four corners of the board, and I won the roll-off, picking the side with greater cover, and first turn. I put my 'El's squad in the centre, so they could use their Blacksun Filters to take potshots early, and deployed a Fire Warrior team in a Devilfish, for cover to hop back into. He put down his Warriors together on the left side, one one of the objectives, a large landing pad in the midfield on that side hiding most of them.

Turn 1 did not go well. I brought my army on save for two squads of Fire Warriors left in reserve, my XV88s getting decent rolls to put them in position on the flanks of the table, while my Hammerhead blocked the left approach, the Pathfinders' Devilfish came up to sit beside the Fire Warriors', and my suits spread out along the back of the board. My Hammerhead scattered its shot well off the Warriors, which was my only real shooting, as I couldn't see anything else so far. I sent a Deathrain squad up the right side and one to reinforce my Hammerhead on the left, and hunkered down. I did not, however, hunker well enough. His Monoliths and second Lord arrived, and while the latter did little but try and catch up to his squad, the former were devastating. They managed to blast my Devilfishes to pieces, killing the Fire Warriors and all but 1 of the Pathfinders; my mobile bunkers/terrain, one of my scoring units and two Minor Objective points given up, from the get-go. Yikes. Thankfully, my XV88s rallied on Turn 2, taking advantage of the Monolith's utter inability to find obscurement (seriously, those things are -tall-!) to railgun one of them into pieces. My Hammerhead and Deathrains sent as much fire up the left as they could, knocking down a few Warriors, while my other Deathrains headed up the right, keeping terrain between them and the surviving Monolith. The centre of my army didn't manage much, being mostly unable to see their opponents without getting dangerously close to the Monolith, which had claimed the centre-left. It floated up onto the landing pad and lashed out at my Hammerhead, tearing the railgun from it, and teleported the forward Warrior squad up there, putting them in threatening range of the remains of my Hammerhead and my Deathrains. Thankfully, my 88's dealt with the surviving Monolith next turn, leaving it a matter of manoeuvre and concentration of fire, neither of which, sadly, I could quite manage well enough.

His forward Warriors shot up my Deathrains and their Lord detached to charge and kill my Fireknives, earning him a third and then fourth Minor Objective point and therefore putting it safely beyond hope of contesting. My Hammerhead's burst cannons and the 'El's squad chipped away at the forward Warriors from another angle, the second Deathrain unit continuously poking away at the Warriors on his objective. I claimed my own objective on my 5^th turn, my Fire Warriors finally sitting most of the game out right when they were least threatened, but I simply could not fight through the first Warrior squad, nevermind shift the second. With both of us claiming an objective and nobody in range to contest, it came down to the Minor Objective to decide the winner.

Result: Minor Loss

Round 3

Opponent: Tyranids (Clayton Carkner)

2 x Tyrant Prime w/bonesword, lash whip, deathspitter

2 x 25 Termagants

24 Termagants

7 x Genestealers w/toxin sacs

6 x Genestealers w/toxin sacs

5 x Ymgarl Genestealers

Doom of Malantai w/mycetic spore

Venomthrope

5 x Raveners w/rending claws

Trygon w/adrenal glands

Deployment: Spearhead

Major Objective: Annihilation

Minor Objective: Breakthrough (Points for Non-Vehicle Units in Opponent's Deployment Zone)

Okay. So. On top of 'ASM with FNP', I think I can safely add 'Doom of Malantai delivered via mycetic spore' to the 'list of things Tau seem incapable of handling'. Sweet Christmas, that thing was an absolute monster!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. After a brutal beating first game and a narrow defeat second, I went into this one feeling moderately confident. It was Annihilation, and he was drowning in units, just waiting to be blasted apart by my superior long-range firepower. I won the roll-off and chose an urban ruin with a pathway in on the two sides and a third 45 degrees up the middle, leaving him with a wide-open plain. I left the Fire Warriors in reserve, used my Devilfishes to block the side entrances, placed my Hammerhead and 'El's squad forwards on the middle, scattered my suits around the backfield and prepared to engage.

It went well, at first. For once I didn't lose anything at all first turn, and even managed to do some damage. My railgun submunition and airbursting fragmentation projector chewed up the front edge of the aggressively-deployed termagant squad, while burst cannons, drone carbines, and missile pods pecked away at them around the edges. One of my XV88s was supposed to be safely deployed up on top of a tower, a good 2" tall structure, with the other hanging at the back, but in an utterly flabbergasting move my opponent just charged his hormagaunts straight up the outside wall on his turn. I should have called him on it, but I was just so stunned by the sheer audacity of the move that I didn't say anything until we'd already fought a round of combat, and at that point I felt embarrassed to bring it up. Silly, but there you go. And it cost me, too; he could only get a few hormagaunts up there, meaning the combat kept drawing turn after turn, leaving his squad completely protected from my shooting. Maddening! Not that my shooting would stay threatening for very long, though. The aforementioned Doom of Malantai, deployed via the equally aforementioned Mycetic Spore, dropped into my backfield second turn, and just started laying the place to waste. That 3D6 LD test, with a wound for every point over, is brutal against Tau, whose elites are lucky to get LD8; just its presence killed one of my 'El's bodyguards and most of my Fireknife squad, along with half the Pathfinders. I hid the latter in my Devilfish, which didn't last long when a unit of Raveners came calling, while the Fireknives were dragged down by infiltrating Ymgarl Genestealers and I lost the last bodyguard to a bit of psychic shooting from that bloody Doom.

Outside the ruins my Hammerhead, supported by a Devilfish and the Deathrain's flamers, managed to completely destroy one of the termagant squads, moving up into his quarter as they went, but inside the ruins things were too bleak. The Doom blasted my Hammerhead apart, the surviving Ymgarls and a second squad of outflanking Genestealers (not declared before game; I really have to get better at forcing that issue) chewed up my XV88, surviving Fire Warriors and my 'El, and the Raveners chased my forcefully disembarked Pathfinders into a shattered building, where they were set upon by a squad coming in from the plains and hideously killed. His Trygon didn't make it onto the field until Turn 5, but at that point it was just the icing on the cake. I had a few units in his deployment zone and three kill points, while he had most of his army in my zone and more than twice as many kill points.

Result: Major Loss

Overall Result: 17^th, of 18 entrants

Aftermath:

So, what did I learn? Well, sadly, I learned that Tau are even more under-equipped to deal with particular armies than I'd thought. It's true I'm not a very good general (a better one could have beaten that Necron army, I'm confident), but there are just so few tools in the Tau kit to deal with threats. I can't fight Assault Space Marines, or any close combat unit for that matter, I can't shoot through 3+/FNP, or even through any 3+ reliably, I can't block psychic powers, I can't get rid of invulnerable saves... It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools, perhaps, but I think the army and I need to share pretty equal amounts of blame on this one. This codex is just so dang far behind the curve.

Now, that's not to say it's impossible to do well, even win. Dealing with deep-striking, FNP'ing Assault Space Marines is always going to be the next best thing to a fantasy, but I had the Necrons on the ropes; another turn or two and I could have contested his objective, maybe even have forced a Phase Out as I picked away at his Warriors, and he didn't have the speed or range to seriously threaten my units or objective. And if I'd played more aggressively against the Tyranids, broken out earlier and forced him to chase me rather than trying to blast him to pieces from inside the 'safety' of the ruins, I might've been able to blunt the damage the Doom could inflict when it arrived, preserving some of my units and blasting a few more of his squads apart in the process. It's tough to know just how aggressively to play Tau, since they're so fragile and vulnerable to even a halfway-decent counter-assault, but I think I'm going to have to start erring on the side of risk. I don't have the numbers in my cadre for a gunline, so it's got to be manoeuvre and defeat-in-detail if I'm to have any hope of coming out on top. It goes against the grain to fight forwards like that, but I'm not sure I can see an alternative with my cadre and the enemy armies I tend to face around here.

There's another 1500 point tournament, the Two Day 40K event, coming up in the end of November. Let's see if I can't apply a little hard-won wisdom, there, shall we?

Who Doesn't Like Saying SCOTUS? Really?

For all the commenters raining praise down on Vonda N. McIntyre's SCOTUS Defines Personhood, you'd think there was some, I don't know, content there.

I'm as big a fan of the corporatocratic dystopian fiction as the next guy; heck, I've got a series of short adventure stories set in the Incorporated States, a universe of my own devising, though one in which I wanted to demonstrate that corporations are not by definition evil, and that a corporatocratic system would no more have to be tyrannical than a democratic system has to be egalitarian.  I absolutely agree that our current construction of a 'proper' capitalist system is unsustainable, not least because it privileges those who produce nothing of value so much more than those who still provide a good or service that benefits society.  There is simply no justification for a wage gap as high as the one that exists between, say, the Walton family and the people who actually do all the work at any given Wal-Mart location.  The CEO of Wal-Mart simply does not work a thousand times as hard as the store's employees.

And yes, exaggeration for the purposes of satire is a fine tradition, in science fiction as much as in any other genre of artistic expression.  I doubt Orwell really believed the future of 1984 was exactly what was going to happen, any more than Alan Moore thought V for Vendetta was a reliable prediction of the future of Britain or Margaret Atwood thought genetic engineering was just a few years away from exterminating nearly the entirety of the human species.  Just because a work is over the top doesn't make it bad, though it usually means it has to work harder to be good in order to balance out the goofiness of such exaggeration. 

And yes, the ruling by the SCOTUS that the First Amendment protects corporate spending during an election is a worrying one.  And yes, corporate donations and funds spent on lobbying just go up and up, year after year, election after election.  And yes, President Obama had the exact same sorts of people working on his economic recovery plan as those who caused the disaster in the first place.  And yes, and yes, and yes. 

Still.  With all due respect to Ms. McIntyre, this story is just... well, there's just nothing to it, really.  It's a hodgepodge of background and worldbuilding, without much of an actual story hanging from its bones.  Its 'flash fiction', true, but that doesn't excuse it from at least having some kind of narrative structure.  And just because it's written in the form of a newspaper article doesn't excuse it, either, since most newspaper stories are written with exactly the sort of narrative structure that gets people invested in a work and reading through to the end.  Really, it's not even that it's bad, it's just that it's, well, it's not much of anything at all.

And just to raise a quick point; while it's an interesting idea, such a fundamental change to the status quo would be bitterly resisted by the most profitable corporations and wealthiest individuals precisely because it is a change to the status quo.  These entities made their money based on the way things are.  The last thing they want is a massive change.

About as Much as Meets the Eye, Actually

As a child of the 80s, I've never really needed to grow up; the entertainment industry apparently decided to prey on my nostalgia long ago. Which explains why, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, I still find myself immersed in the saga of the Transformers. And why the most recent book I read, relevant to this particular blog of course, was Alex Irvine's Transformers: Exodus.

Read, and quite enjoyed.

Irvine was given an interesting task with this book, which was to basically fold together as many different Transformers backstories as humanly possible. Now, this is no mean feat, because even when they were first introduced back in the 80s the Transformers had two different, nearly incompatible backstories given, and that number has only reason as the series has been reinvented time after time. At this point, trying to come up with a coherent system that can incorporate the 80s cartoon and comic book, which diverged from each other quite quickly, along with Beast Wars/Beast Machines, Transformers: Prime, the War for Cybertron video game and Michael Bay's movies, is roughly equivalent to asking someone to write the definitive version of, say, Power Girl. And if you don't know why that would be problematic, take a quick read-through.

But I digress. Irvine was given a rather difficult task, and he manages to pull it through quite nicely. He incorporates historical events and locations not just from the original or most recent series, but from a variety of sources all along the life span of the franchise. And in an interesting twist, Irvine himself has stated that the descriptions of the Transformers themselves are sparse to non-existent on purpose, to allow readers to slot in whichever version, or versions, they think most appropriate. It's a very nice touch, and one that raises the enjoyment level of the book noticeably, especially given how polarizing certain depictions of some of these characters have been. That degree of consideration for the fandom is largely seen throughout the rest of the book as well, with Irvine managing to do interesting things with a rather well-worn narrative, both in terms of the Transformers in particular and fiction in general. Two brothers, or 'brothers' at least, torn apart by civil war, rising to lead opposing forces until there's nothing but hatred between them, isn't exactly a new story, but Irvine puts a solid spin on it, and keeps the action moving along at a good enough clip that it never gets bogged down by the weight of its own tropes. Which is good, because there are a lot of them.

As is often the case with licensed media, it's tough to say whether this book would appeal much to a non-fan. There's not a great deal of context provided beyond the immediate, and the lack of descriptions, for instance, would rather hinder someone who doesn't already have favourite versions of the characters to slot into their mental slideshow. As well, some of the characters' actions wouldn't resonant nearly as much with those who don't already have a vested interest in them, particularly the now-ubiquitous 'one shall stand, one shall fall' moment, which leans heavily on the gravitas of earlier engagements and is rather slight on its own.

But at the end of the day this is licensed media, and the chances are that if you're picking up a book that says Transformers on it, you know what you're getting into. So long as that's the case, Exodus is an entirely enjoyable read, a Transformers tale that can easily stand shoulder to shoulder with the best the franchise has offered in the past.  Whether that will be good enough for you, in the end, depends entirely on how much that franchise's past means to you.

Dusting off the ol' Cadre

So, with my regular 40K opponent a good two day train trip away until January or so, my evening class securely placed on Black Knight's Open 40K Night and a standing engagement with friends on Sunday afternoon, pre-empting Black Knight's General Open Gaming, it's been rather a while indeed since I was able to take to the field of battle.  And hence, quite a while since I've had anything worth talking about.

Thankfully, there's at least a small change coming up.  The second of Black Knight Games' four-part Munitorum Series is coming up next Saturday, and good heavens am I ever looking forwards to it!  It's 1500 points, a 500 point jump from round one, and I've been tweaking and squeezing my list for some time now.  In fact, I'm still doing so, as I can't quite figure out how best to use about seventy or so points left over after filling up on must-haves.  A piranha?  A third scoring squad?  Shield drones and vehicle upgrades?  Decisions, decisions.

For the moment, at least, my cadre looks like this:

HQ:
Shas'el w/Airbursting Fragmentation Projector, Missile Pod, Multi-Tracker, Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter
2 x XV8 Bodyguard w/2 x Plasma Rifle, 2 x Missile Pod, 2 x Targeting Array, 2 x Hard-Wired Multi-Tracker, 2 x Hard-Wired Blacksun Filter

Elites:
3 x XV8 w/3 x Plasma Rifle, 3 x Missile Pod, 3 x Multi-Tracker

3 x XV8 w/3 x Twin-Linked Missile Pod, 3 x Flamer

3 x XV8 w/3 x Twin-Linked Missile Pod, 3 x Flamer

Troops:
6 x Fire Warriors in a Devilfish w/Disruption Pod, Flechette Dischargers

6 x Fire Warriors

6 x Fire Warriors

Fast Attack:
6 x Pathfinders in a Devilfish w/Disruption Pod, Flechette Dischargers

Heavy Support:
XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

XV88 w/Advanced Stabilization System

Hammerhead w/Railgun, 2 x Burst Cannons, Multi-Tracker, Disruption Pod, Blacksun Filter

So, there we are; hopefully, 1500 points worth of death-dealing.  I may yet swap out the third Fire Warrior squad, a Pathfinder and the HQ's Blacksun Filters for a Piranha with Disruption Pod, Fusion Blaster and Targeting Array.  The Piranha would give me one more hull to block enemy movement with, and a hull that isn't needed to protect objective grabbers at that, but in exchange it would be one less unit to grab said objectives with.  So hard to choose...

There's Hope, Yet

In Time

See, now this is what I like to see in science fiction filmmaking.  Yes, Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots the movie looks like fun, but In Time seems actually willing to play around with big ideas, and explore how it would change society to have something like this running around.  Just the fact that you can't tell someone's mother from their daughter, that alone seems really weird, but in a delightful way.

So, here's hoping that In Time is worth our time!