The morning started off with sleeping in a bit—there were no 9:00 AM panels that grabbed our interest more than sleep did, and so it was at 10:00 AM that we hit up the “Movements in Fantasy” panel, which talked about the rise of literary movements within the genre.  Among the key points discussed were that such movements are usually only identified after the fact, often arise from a group of like-minded authors reading each other’s work and responding to it (usually pre-publication), and need a defining work to kick them off and an ideologue to promote it.  Interesting and entertaining stuff.

At 11:00 AM, my girlfriend went to the “On Editing” panel featuring David Hartwell, while I went in search of autographs from Charlie Stross, Julie Czerneda, and John Scalzi.  I was happily successful, and they were all very warm and friendly, though due to the lines for each, it meant I could only get to “On Editing” for about the last 5 or 10 minutes.  What I saw of that panel was good—Hartwell is a very entertaining and engaging speaker.

After lunch, we took in the panel on “Hard SF: Is It What You Do, or How You Do It?”, which explored whether the definition of the genre is fixed in the rigorous application of science, or in the appearance of the rigorous application of science.  They did admit that hard SF could still incorporate “magic” technology, but otherwise no one held forth a conclusive answer, which, I suppose, it not terribly surprising.  Interesting, but after an hour the audience ran out of questions and a lot of ground had been covered, so it ended early.

We did a brief run through the Dealers’ Room again, though thankfully did not spend any further money, and then we went to a reading by Robert J. Sawyer.  He’s a generally entertaining reader and pretty genial guy, and he entertained us with a reading of his story “Mikeys” and a prose poem (not in that order), and then I got him to sign my copy of the Distant Early Warnings anthology I’d been collecting signatures on all weekend.

Next, at the request of the girlfriend, we went to a reading by George R. R. Martin from his forthcoming and eagerly-anticipated book A Dance With Dragons.  Fans of the series (which has been optioned by HBO, and a pilot episode is currently in production) seemed to enjoy it, and I thought it was okay—a little too descriptive and verbose for the kind of reading I’m into these days, but I could see why he has a huge fanbase.  I will no doubt pick up this series when I’m back into reading big books.

And then it was the closing ceremonies, which were brief and too the point, handing off things to the Melbourne Worldcon organizers for next year.  It was surprisingly well-attended, and a sort or sad send-off back to the real world.

Almost.

After successfully acquiring dinner at Le Steak Frites, we hung out back at the hotel for a while, before heading to the Dead Dog party at the Consuite at the Delta.  It was surprisingly packed, and we ended up in some long and varied conversations with some very nice people before heading back to our hotel after 11:30, because I seem to have come down with the plague.

Or a slight sore throat.

I’m not sure which.

Anyway, that was the Worldcon.  Once I’m back in Toronto, I may do a wrap-up post of my thoughts about it, post some pictures, and possibly update these posts with panelist names and such.  Yesterday, however, was about seeing a bit of Montreal.

This proved to be more problematic that we could have imagined.  We first decided to go back to Le Steak Frites, but found them to be booked full until 8:30 or later, which was no good, since the awards started at 8:00, and, well, we didn’t want to wait that long.  It seemed to be full of Con people, and perhaps there were officials being dumped there, and such.  So we went back to the convention center to try a restaurant there, only to find that was full.  We had had trouble finding a place that was open near the convention center the evening before, so we decided to go back to our hotel and try the restaurant there.

Food was only being served at the bar, and was not especially cheap or appetizing.  So we set out again, thinking maybe of the nearby Dairy Queen, before ending up at Eggspectation, where I had a satisfactory panini sandwich.  After all that questing, we were running a little later than expected, but still arrived at about 7:55 PM, where we had to sit toward the back of the massive Main Tent, as it was quite full.

The Hugo Awards ceremony was generally well-run.  There were a few tech mis-cues, and a few times we had to wait slightly long before somebody came out or got to the stage, or whatnot.  None of the speeches were unnecessarily long, and so the evening went by quickly and pleasantly.

The results can be found here, at the official Hugo Awards site.  It was nice to see Neil Gaiman win for The Graveyard Book at the Worldcon where he was Guest of Honour.  David Hartwell also won Best Long-Form Editor, and he was Editor Guest of Honour, and also damned entertaining.  I enjoyed all of the winners, and felt a little bad for the “losers”, many of whom were my first choice, but it was a fun and exciting evening overall.

After the awards ceremony, we did one more panel, from 10 to 11 PM, called “Young Turks”.  It featured a few writers who were basically emerging as forces to be reckoned with, and because the audience was small enough, it became a sort of cooperative Q&A whereby they talked about why they wrote, how they got to the point they were each at, techniques and tools they had found helpful for their writing, and the like.  For a panel so late, and day 4, after the Hugos, it was a pleasant surprise to have such an engaged and active set of panelists, and such a fun and interesting panel.  Kudos to them for pulling it off.

At that point, we called it a day.

We started at 9 AM once again, with a panel on “How Not to be a Jerk Online”.  I went to this because John Scalzi—whose blog and work I am a fan of—was one of the panelists, and I suspected it was a topic he would hold forth entertainingly about.  I was right, although the other panelists (whose names I will call forth in a later update) also had excellent and amusing contributions.

The next panel I wanted to see was “Deities and Demigods”, because I wanted to snag panelist Paddy Forde to sign a book I had, but alas, it was cancelled.  That did leave me free to join my girlfriend at another panel I was interested in, on “English-Canadian Small-Press SF Publishers”, which was an illuminating and honest look at the business and economics of small press publishing in Canada, with the attendant advantages and disadvantages.  Kind of interesting and depressing.

Next was another panel on “The Singularity: O RLY”, which was pretty entertaining, although with my own reading in the area and the panels I’ve been to this weekend, I may be singularitied out.  I did get a signature from Peter Watts after, though, and had an entertaining conversation with him about genetic algorithms as they might be applied to FPGAs that was punctuated him him being mind-boggled when he noticed my {Terror} t-shirt form Dr. McNinja.

Then it was lunchtime, followed by spending too much money in the Dealer’s Room, where my girlfriend bid on a print in the art show, and I bought a Con t-shirt, another book, and ended up subscribing to OnSpec.

The next panel we saw was “Which Histories Get Alternates?”, wherein the panelists discussed why so many alternate histories focussed on the same events (eg. American Civil War, WWII, etc.), and partly concluded that it was needed because the audience had to have strong familiarity with the events in question to understand how it is alternate.  A list of other types of alternates was also volunteered by the audience.

Then it was on to “Economics of Star Traders”, which discussed whether it could ever be worthwhile to have trade between planets, first in a relativistic universe, then opening it up to FTL-capable universes.  Some interesting ideas bandied about.

We were pretty exhausted by panels, so we wandered around a bit, outside, before heading back so I could get some books signed by Robert Charles Wilson.  Then it was in search of dinner, about which I will complain in the next post.

The next panel we both went to was “Online Magazines Represented HERE: A Good Market”, in which several people who work in various capacities at online fiction magazines discussed the advantages and disadvantages of the format.  Advantages were mostly in the negligible cost of distribution and international reach, but the downsides were the lack of a business model and combatting obscurity—how does your magazine get found among everything else online?  The panelists were all good and played off each other well.

Then there was a panel on “How to Pitch Your Novel… and how not to”, which was good at offering practical advice from publishing professionals on how you can get someone to look at your novel.  Thankfully, I had encountered most of the information before, so it seems like my research into publishing in the field has been successful.

Next up was a panel titled “Aunts in Spaceships”, which my girlfriend was interested in seeing.  She was hoping it would more be about why aren’t there more characters with extended families (or families at all) in SF literature, but it was concentrated more on older women characters, and became something a chance for the panelists and audiences to list examples of such characters.  Given that it was a 90-minute panel, and wasn’t quite what we were looking for, we ducked out a bit early and visited the dealer’s room again.

At 6:30, there was a short event, featuring author Karl Schroeder and his Tor editor David G. Hartwell talking about the process of working together, and how their relationship and working approach has changed over the course of working on 7 novels together.  It was really interesting, and actually felt like it ended too soon.

Then we went looking for dinner, but found a large number of places were closed, so we ended up going to an Italian place that was fine, but a bit slow because they were overwhelmed with other Con-goers.  As a result, we were late getting back, and missed the first hour of the Masquerade costume show.  We saw a few minutes of it, but I was interested in another event, “Gaiman Reads Doctorow”.

As an experiment, Cory Doctorow is releasing his next short story collection as a self-published Creative Commons title, and using it to explore a number of different ideas a business models, including a free audiobook read by friends (in this case, Neil Gaiman, star of the Worldcon), print-on-demand, and high-cost hand-made limited editions.  Gaiman read quite well, as he is wont to do, and then they both fielded questions after the recording was done.  Gaiman and Doctorow were both gracious, funny, and passionate speakers, and I felt the event was well worth missing the Masquerade.

The last event of the night was a fireworks display that we could watch from the top floor terrace of the convention centre.  The fireworks were not part of the Worldcon (it was for the Festival of Fire, I think, being a South African entry), but it was a nice way to end a very long day.

The morning started early, as we went to line up to get tickets for the Neil Gaiman signing.  We arrived at about 8:30, and (thankfully) the line was still pretty small then.  We got moved around a little bit, but by 9:10 they started handing out the tickets, seeing no reason to keep us all there until 10.

At that point, some food and hydration was the order of the day, and so a visit to Tim Horton’s—where they had the blueberry glazed donut for sale, much to my delight—was in order.  There, in the line, we chatted with another Worldcon attendee, just as we had in the Gaiman lineup and on the way over to the convention centre.

After that, we hit up the dealer’s room, since there were a few things I had hoped to acquire for signings later in the day.  I was disappointed that I couldn’t find Karl Schroeder’s The Sunless Countries, but since he is a Toronto author, I’m certain I’ll have other opportunities to get a copy signed in the coming year.

Next up was a panel on “Relativism and the Superhero” (I don’t remember the panelists names right now, but will look them up later).  They panel was interesting and well-balanced, talking about how heroes and villains have gone from straightfoward all-good or all-evil to more grey and ambiguous states, with a focus on comics.  All the panelists had thoughtful things to say, and shared the stage well with each other, so it was fun.

At noon I got a few other things signed by Schroeder, and then we (being me and the girlfriend, not me and Schroeder) hit up some lunch.  This meant we kind of forgot the panel she wanted to see, on “Legal Systems, Past and Future” was starting at 12:30, and so we arrived a bit late.  The last bit (well, hour, I guess, which was most of it) was sufficiently entertaining though, with the panelists and audience having a good set of questions going back and forth.

After that, despite having a plethora of intriguing options to choose from, we decided to actually go outside, which meant walking back to the hotel, running some errands, and napping.  Then, we had to head back to line up a second time to actually get our stuff signed by Gaiman.

But that is a story for the next post, as is the rest of day 2.

I thought it was okay.  It entertained me, but didn’t make a whole lot of sense, and there were huge plot holes.  It also heavily truncated Wolverine’s history from the comics.  It was, however, much better than X-Men: The Last Stand or Spider-Man 3, and light years ahead of some Marvel-inspired films.  (Ghost Rider, I’m looking at you.)

So, the movie worked reasonably well as a mindless summer blockbuster—some cool bits, nice action sequences, and, well, that’s really all.  It didn’t really offer any deep insight into the character, or if it does, the ending sort of makes that irrelevant.  It suffers in comparison to some of the recent excellent superhero movies by just being a summer action movie.  So, pretty darn entertaining, but sort of empty.

I’ll get more specific after the cut.

SPOILER ALERT

First of all, a minor complaint… Could they pick a more awkward name name than X-Men Origins: Wolverine?  When they do the inevitable sequel, is that going to be X-Men Origins 2: Wolverine Harder, or X-Men Origins: Wolverine 2, or what?  Is the Deadpool spin-off going to be X-Men Origins: Wolverine: Deadpool, or somesuch?  I understand there’s probably going to be a Magneto origin movie, and possibly a Professor X one, but really, pick a better way of naming them.  Honestly.

Ahem.

Also, why was there no blood in this movie?  Wolverine has massive bone/metal claws on the back of his hands, and frequently uses them to slice and stab people, yet they never get bloody and you never see people bleed.  I know they wanted to appeal to kids, but really, would a PG-13 movie about a superhuman killing machine be too much to ask for, really?  I hope they release a director’s cut in which people actually bleed when they get cut.

Onto the story.  The first part of the movie really just felt like a montage or flashback.  It loosely adapted the Wolverine Origin comic, inexplicably made Sabretooth his brother, and then jumped to being recruited out of Vietnam for a version of Team X.  It jumps ahead again, to Logan’s final mission before quitting, and then cuts again to a few years later.  It just made this whole chunk feel like a flashback that was a smaller part of a bigger movie, but it wasn’t framed as such.

We finally get to the start of the actual story of this movie.  Logan (which is either a fake name, or was made into his last name despite the comics, or something) is living with this chick, who, as stated by Jenn, was an amalgam of several characters from Wolvie’s life.  Sabretooth shows up, kills her, and kicks Wolvie’s ass, which convinces him to let Stryker fill him up with adamantium.  It turns out that Stryker was more interested in the experiment than Wolvie’s revenge, and this pissed off Logan, so he runs away, naked.

So, at this point, from the comics, we would know that Wolverine has been driven insane and lost most his memories.  He would run around in the Canadian wilderness for a number of years, until found by the founders of Alpha Flight, who take him in and rehabilitate him.

But that’s a fun part of his past they have decided to remove in the movie universe.  Instead, he runs into an old couple (the Hudsons, named for the honeymooning couple that found him in the comic), who help him out and die in short order.  Wolvie kicks some serious ass, and sets out to do some more.

The plot unfolds in a fairly straightforward fashion, thereafter, except for the inexplicable inclusion of lots of popular but unnecessary characters (*cough*Gambit*cough*).  Ass gets kicked, deceptions revealed, and Wolvie ends up shot in the head and loses his memory.

That was all well and good, but much of this stuff happened to serve the plot, not because it made any sense.

Take Gambit, for instance.  He starts to fight Wolverine because he thought he was working with the guys who had captured him before, including Sabretooth.  Moments later, when Wolverine is about to kill Sabretooth, Gambit inexplicably interrupts, rather than running away, because, well, it was too early to end the movie.  Once Sabretooth escaped, Gambit and Wolvie naturally teamed up.

Or at the end, when the kids are escaping, and Professor X guides Scott telepathically to lead them to a helicopter and escape.  Why speak only to Scott?  And how did he know they were escaping?  Did he know they were there all along and do nothing?

(Actually, in my desire to satisfactorily explain this, I came up with an idea: What if Gambit and Professor X were working together?  Xavier knew about the kids, and knew Gambit had escaped, but together they didn’t have the resources to break into the Island.  When the unstoppable Wolverine showed up, however, they realized they could use him to get the kids out, and that is why Gambit broke up the fight—so that Logan would have a reason to go to the Island.)

Also, why the hell didn’t Sabretooth betray any recognition of Logan in the first X-Men movie if they’re brothers?  He also seemed a lot dumber than in this movie, too.

So, apart from these sort of plot holes, I found the movie pretty enjoyable.  It just lacked depth.  There are a number of things that could have made the movie better, I think.

First of all, at one point, when Wolverine has Sabretooth at his mercy, he doesn’t pop the claws through his head, and knocks him out instead.  I think he totally should have done it—there’s precedent in the comics, and a bit of brain damage might explain some memory loss and stupidity.

I would have liked Wolvie’s life to be a bit more tragic.  In the comic, he’s ended up causing the death of nearly every woman he ever loved—part of his memory loss is a defense mechanism to save him from the deep emotional trauma.  From the movie, we see he’s had a violent life, but no continual tragedy.  Even when his girlfriend dies, it was heroically.  And memory loss from being shot in the head?  Those bullets (according to those who know these things) didn’t even hit anywhere near the memory centres of the brain.

I would have preferred that either Kayla (his dead touch-telepath girlfriend) made him forget, before dying, to spare him the pain.  Or else that he actually met up with Xavier and asked for a mind wipe, since there was nothing about his life he wanted to remember.  Those would have been interesting character directions (and tie in better to comments in X2: X-Men United).  Instead, the headshot takes his memories.  Not conscious choice, or compassion, or overwhelming pain and trauma.  Just a lucky shot to the head.

Frankly, if they had started at the bit where we was working as a lumberjack—waking up from his nightmare, perhaps—and used flashbacks to reveal all the stuff that came before, in a timely fashion, the movie might have felt more coherent, too.

On a final note, they did something in the end credits that I can’t decide whether its sneaky or clever.  When I saw it, there was a little clip showing that Deadpool survived, and could speak, and this set up a Deadpool spin-off.  However, other people who saw it indifferent places said it showed Wolverine, in Japan, drinking in a bar and trying to remember.  This sets up the Wolverine Origin sequel that has been approved.  So there are two prints out there.  I find it neat, but also sneaky.

So, yeah… I’ve rambled on quite a bit about this one.  Perhaps because I know so much about the character, and how this movie could have been better, even though it was pretty okay as it is.  It was fun and entertaining, and if a movie can manage that, it does better than most, these days.

The intrepid investigator House had scoped out the Pulp Show and Sale, but that was not the only mission that lay before him.  After completing his search there, he set out to the Toronto Reference Library, to battle the faceless hordes of the 2009 Toronto Comic Arts Festival.

Lighthouse Comics presents…

The House Always Wins #54: “Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls…”

Scene: Outside the Toronto Reference Library, 4:15 PM, Saturday, 09 May 2009.

House (monologue): Time is running out.  Hiding from the weather and investigating the Pulp Show set me back more than I had anticipated.  But that didn’t matter.  I had a mission, and I’m the best there is at what I do.  And what I do is buy webcomic merchandise.

Scene: Lobby of the Toronto Reference Library, beyond which the main exhibition area can be seen, filled with people and exhibits.

House: I hadn’t anticipated so many people.  The place was crowded.  Too crowded.  If a fight broke out, there’d be trouble.  The main show area was six of seven floors high; why couldn’t flight be one of my powers?  But no, I had to fight my way through the crowds.  I’m good at that, too.

People are going every which way around me; I have no idea where anything is, and nothing I see looks familiar.  I push my way through to the back, where, out of the corner of my eye, I see a sign directing me to the webcomics pavilion.  Bingo.

This room is much smaller, with the exhibitors set up around the edges, leaving the middle free.  From the middle, I’m able to scan each of the tables.  I see Bryan Lee O’Malley, behind stacks of Scott Pilgrim books, signing away, and this confuses me—that’s no webcomic.  I feel a flash of regret, not having brought any of my Pilgrim stuff to be signed, but that’s not why I’m here.

I finally see my target: Chris Hastings, of Dr. McNinja fame.  I recognize him by all the merch in front of him.  I buy two shirts, though in one size smaller than I’d prefer, and a poster and a book, which he very coolly sketched and signed.

House: “I’m a big fan of the comic.”

Hastings: “Yeah, I can tell.”

House: “I even went as the Doctor for Halloween a couple of years ago.”

Hastings: “Nice.”

House: “Keep up the good work.”  I’m a man of few words.  And my mission was accomplished.  I got out with ten minutes to spare, because I’m the best there is at what I do.

Scene: Toronto Reference Library, 1:15 PM, Sunday, 10 May 2009.

House: Mother’s Day.  I got here too late to get into the panel on Newspapers, Comics, and the Internet, and so I took the time to give my mother a call instead.  That went well enough, but I still had time to kill.  This proved to be mistake—I ended up with Two-Fisted Science and Galaxion, as well as an art book.  Like I’ve said before, I’m the best there is at what I do, and what I do is buy stuff.

Scene: Learning Centre 2, Toronto Reference Library, 2:30 PM.

House: After running into a friend, I took in a panel on Editing in Comics.  This may have been a mistake.  Unfortunately, the venue was not very sound-proof, and the noise from the main exhibition floor readily made its way through the glass walls of the Learning Centre.  Coupled with the low volume of the microphones meaning the panelists couldn’t be heard, it was challenging to pay attention.  Ultimately, the take-away was that comics editing usually amounts to either censorship or selection, and there’s not usually much back-and-forth with creators.

Scene: Main Exhibition Space, Toronto Reference Library, 3:45 PM.

House: My cash was used up, and so was my interest in panels.  Still, the Comic Arts Festival was good.  It was nice to see so many excited people out to a comics event, and it showcased the huge variety of comics that are out there today.  This thing will come around again in another couple of years.  I’d better start saving up….

Fin.

So, I took her to see Dragonball: Evolution, not because I had much hope of it being good, but because I’ve long been a fan of the manga and, to a lesser extent, the anime.  (I rather feel the anime dragged on far too long….)

I had very low expectations going in to this movie, and, thankfully, I was not disappointed.  It was surprisingly faithful to the major story elements from the source material, and was reasonably well-paced and coherent.  The cast was pretty good, too, although Justin Chatwin looked a little too wimpy to be convincing as bad-ass martial artist Goku.  Joon Park absolutely nailed the Yamcha character, though.

I suppose my biggest complaint is that the fighting looked too lightweight.  In the source material, the fighters are shattering boulders and mountains with their attacks, shaking the earth as they gather their power, and unleashing blinding energy attacks.  In the movie, however, the wire stunts made every movement look soft, and even the visual effects for the energy attacks looked wispy and insubstantial.

I know the movie hasn’t done especially well in North America, but they apparently have sequels in mind if it is successful enough.  I wonder whether they will ramp up the carnage as the fighters get stronger.

Anyway, I couldn’t really recommend this to a general audience, nor to a long-standing fan of the manga or anime.  Perhaps the best I can say is that if it happens to be on somewhere, it might reasonably entertain you, but I don’t think it’s worth seeking out.  And yet, I kind of liked it, and hope they make another.