Author Archives: Henry

My Apologies to Iron Man: Why Power Armor Doesn’t Make Sense

Posted on by Henry

Spam-Can

The contents of Iron Man’s suit after the third explosion.

My argument is somewhat more elaborate than this, but the gist of it is thus:

  1. Place monkey in tin can.
  2. Shake can vigorously.
  3. Remove pulped monkey from can with preferred utensil.

***

What’s the deal with power armor?

I love science fiction, and I often enjoy seeing science fiction become science fact (even if it is scary at times).  Plenty of things that we’ve dreamed up in our stories eventually come to pass in real life, whether it is because they inspired others to make them or because they were the product of careful forethought on the part of an author.  But what about power armor?  It’s been a staple of military-oriented science fiction for decades.  For the sake of simplicity, I’ll assume that power armor is an armored exoskeleton which offers its onboard human operator enhanced strength, mobility, and protection (sounds pretty cool, right?).  Yet while I’m usually pretty excited about science fiction becoming reality, I’m not so sure about seeing power armor become real.  Let me explain.

The Army’s TALOS project is now pushing for an armored exoskeleton, something which is essentially power armor.

R&D has a reputation for being a little bonkers sometimes; people fixate on really cool ideas and try to make them work, regardless of whether or not the ideas are practical or have any clear application.  That’s perfectly alright, in my opinion, as we never know where such things might take us.  Military R&D often turns that fixation up to eleven, which becomes a bit more problematic.  Sometimes the things we develop are impractical or nonsensical to implement (like 747s mounting lasers to provide missile interception), sometimes the tactical or strategic role intended for a weapon disappears before it is completed (as with Japan’s WWII submarine aircraft carriers), and sometimes the intended capabilities don’t make very much sense in the first place.  In the case of power armor, it all has to do with these things called “bodies.”

Continue reading →

Playing Hooky

Posted on by Henry

Sorry everyone.  My post for today is just the news that I am once more utterly consumed by Worm.  If you want to hear why, you can read my first post on the subject.  It turns out that the later arcs are also extremely compelling (and no, I’m not actually surprised).

If you want something else of mine to read and you haven’t yet read my Monday post, check that out.  I’ll have more for you next week!

And Then You Die: A Good (Character) Death

Posted on by Henry

boromir-death-three-arrows

Bye bye Boromir.

I love Boromir.  I know I’m not the only one who does.  And however much I like Boromir when he’s alive, there’s something that’s almost even more (tragically) appealing about him dead.  This is less because I like his ruggedly handsome corpse, and more because of what Homer touched on thousands of years ago: in his death, because of how he died, Boromir becomes something more than he was in life.  Boromir had what we might call a good death.  Key to this, Boromir dies before he truly succumbs to the power of the Ring, and in his death he tries to make up for some of the mistakes that he has made previously.  His act of self-sacrifice protecting the Ring-bearer is a fairly hefty weight in his favor on the scales of Judgement, making up for some of his earlier errors.  Interestingly enough for such a perilous setting, he is also the only member of the Fellowship to die and stay dead.

It turns out that that single heroic death is pretty standard.  Most stories, like most role-playing games, don’t have lots of character death.  In reality, people engaging in the same activities that most adventurers and main characters pursue with wild abandon have a fairly high casualty rate.  People are killed while fighting, they’re permanently injured, they get sick… and in many cases, their deaths and debilities feel meaningless.  For every handful of people that die doing something we would idolize as heroic, far more are killed or injured in an almost banal fashion.  Would we feel the same way about Boromir’s death if he had, I don’t know, been killed without having a chance to fight back?  Stepped on a landmine?  Slipped in the shower and broken his neck?

Continue reading →

Julia Griffin’s Retelling of The Snow Queen

Posted on by Henry

0f335c32b4513b6bb0224fa05af76f00_large

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Julia Griffin’s Snow Queen.

I admit it: I’ve long been a fan of pretty pictures.  It’s no surprise, then, that I’m a fan of Julia Griffin’s work.  For example, I just cannot get over this kid’s hair.  The fine detail, the shimmer of light, and the delicacy of each strand seems incredible.  And the Snow Queen’s fur stole is similarly impressive; I feel like I’m looking at the fur of one of my ferrets.

Done entirely in colored pencils, this is just one of many images created by my friend Julia Griffin for her retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s Snow Queen.  She’s been working on this project for the past three years, and the time has finally come for her to turn her collection of images into a book.  If you like that picture, or if you like stories about young heroines, or even if you just like the idea having a pretty picture book, you should check out Julia’s Kickstarter project.

You want to see more art?  There’s more good stuff where this came from:

6c776f78a3e3e8b3da6790fd04c21dc3_largeI continue to be amazed by the semi-stippled effect she’s created, as well as by her impressive attention to detail.

You know, I was going to wax loquacious about how cool I think this stuff is, but I think I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves.  You should totally check out Julia’s work, and take a look at Julia’s Snow Queen.

You can see some of Julia’s other work here.

A Mighty Fortress, by David Weber

Posted on by Henry

Funny how these things work.  I was going to write an article about this book for last Wednesday, but then I was caught up by Worm.  If you haven’t read that article already, I strongly suggest that you do.  The truth is, I’m still torn by the temptation to just fall back into reading more instead of writing this.  But A Mighty Fortress deserves its dues, and it’s best for me to write about it before all recollections of my previous life are completely washed away by Worm.

A Mighty Fortress returns to the world of Safehold, with all of the previously established intrigue, religious strife, and budding world-wide warfare that David Weber has thrown together into this meaty fictional stew.  At the end of the previous book in the series, I was feeling a little let down: it wasn’t that the book was bad, it was simply that it followed my expectations so completely that I didn’t feel inspired to immediately grab the next book.  But now I’m glad that I did; while it wasn’t some magical honeymoon moment, like the first denouement of a radiantly new setting, it was most definitely a lot of fun.  Still true to form and somewhat predictable, but totally worth the read.

Continue reading →

Worm, a superb story about supers

Posted on by Henry

Lock up your doors, close your shades, phone in sick.  You’re about to disappear, pulled down by the rapturous embrace of another internet fic.  It will keep you up late, and get you up early.  For those of you with a hankering for excellent stories and an intelligent treatment of what happens when the superhumans come home to roost, I have to share the new drug in town.  As with all good drugs, the first hit is free.  Unlike most, the other hits are free too.

I was jonesing for more Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality yesterday (you know, that fic that I liked so much), and thought I’d check in to see whether there was a new post.  While I was out of luck on that front, the author, Eliezer, did post a new note on November 1st.  Better yet, he recommended another piece of internet-based fiction: Worm.  The name isn’t much, I know, but bear with me.

Worm is excellent.  As I write this, I’ve just lost an hour and a half of my afternoon to its charms, and I’m only pulling myself away because I absolutely have to force myself to write something.  As soon as I have enough of this written that I can put off finishing it until Wednesday morning, I’m certain I’ll dive back in.  It is compelling and appealing, and I really don’t want to stop.  I don’t want to write my own material, I just want to read more Worm.

Whew, ok.  That was all I got down before I fell back into the fic.  If you want to know more about the story that’s grabbed me, read on. Continue reading →

The Lone Ranger: Better Than Expected

Posted on by Henry

Another plane ride, another unexpected movie review.  I seriously hadn’t planned on watching The Lone Ranger, but boredom plus free makes for some powerful incentives.

I didn’t watch the film in theaters because it just didn’t seem worth $10 – $12.  I’m still not sure whether it’s worth that much, but the movie passed the “acceptably fun” test for being stuck without other entertainment on a plane, and it didn’t explode with the offensiveness I had expected.  That’s not to say that others won’t find it offensive, since some clearly already have (Hanay Geiogamah, for example).  In fact, coming around to it, I had such low expectations for the movie that it can’t help but have exceeded them.  Please bear this in mind.  I’ll do my best not to spoil anything too much, and I’ll warn you before the spoilers get hot and heavy… but some are inevitable.  Read on as you see fit.

Continue reading →

Girls und Panzer will blow you away

Posted on by Henry

Girls-und-Panzer-06b-8

Surprised to find that I like the show?  So was I!

Girls und Panzer is an anime about girls in their early teens being (mostly) nice to each other.  It’s also about tanks, and about young girls shooting at other girls driving other tanks.  Don’t think too hard about it.  The show is actually fairly high quality; the tanks are lovingly rendered in well-done CG that meshes with the rest of the art, and the writing delivers pretty much everything you could want from an anime about young girls and their tanks.  Besides which, the premise is just too much fun: Girls und Panzer offers heavily armed and armored vehicles cavorting across the landscape as their adorable and irrepressibly friendly crews wrestle them into thrilling mock-combat.

If that doesn’t pique your interest, don’t bother.  If, on the other hand, you think it sounds interesting… read on!

Continue reading →

Dune by any other name: Twilight Imperium Rex

Posted on by Henry

Twilight-Imperium-RexPretty cover art?  Check.

Fantasy Flight is good at making fun games, and their rehashing of the original Dune boardgame is no exception.  Though they were unable to nab the necessary IP, they’ve cleverly injected the mechanics and flavor of the original Dune into the universe created for Twilight Imperium.  But simply recreating an old game was not enough; they then streamlined and shaped it into something that you can pick up through one round of experimental play.  The end result is a highly entertaining game with excellent group dynamics, one that introduces just enough complexity to give you lots of material to work with without overwhelming you with its intricacies.

Continue reading →

First Thoughts on Agents of SHIELD

Posted on by Henry

Agents of SHIELD doesn’t deliver the unexpected in the same way that previous Joss Whedon projects have.  The world in which it takes place is already fairly well defined, and so the sense of discovery and wonder that I had when I saw Firefly for the first time isn’t replicated here.  That said, Joss Whedon is good at what he does, and his skill at establishing an interesting and precarious status quo is clearly shown in this most recent project.

Agents of SHIELD doesn’t occupy that category of stellar TV shows which are unassailably good right off the bat, but it seems to me that the foundation is being laid for a much longer story which should gradually grow in complexity and appeal.  To be honest, I think I may prefer it this way, provided it pans out: a carefully designed and cultivated story that grows into an excellent favorite would be much better than something that starts off promising only to go sour.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that while I’m not yet rabidly enthusiastic about this show, I do think it holds promise.  I don’t constantly foam at the mouth in anticipation of the next episode, but I want to keep up with what happens next.  And I can see the potential for this show to be really great.

What’s good?  I like the characters, brief as our exposure to them has been, and I want to see them given more chance to grow into bigger, deeper people.  It seems like Joss Whedon is moving them in that direction, though we haven’t truly seen that yet.  The writing and wordplay is predictably enjoyable, with the fun and funny banter I’ve come to expect from something with Whedon’s name on it.  Perhaps most importantly, Joss Whedon’s previous successes give me hope that this will become a more powerful and gripping story.

But what about my concerns?  Well, it seems like the characters haven’t had the time to really show themselves as the more interesting people I suspect they are.  I don’t have much sense of the characters beyond the role that they play for the team, and I want that to change.  The problem is, I don’t know that the current constraints of the show will allow them to; “find problem, investigate, solve problem” doesn’t leave much room around the edges, especially if the “problem” is always some SHIELD-specific mission.

Similarly, I worry that Whedon is constrained by all the other Marvel stories that he has to juggle at the same time.  That constraint seems like a real risk for a show like this, since it automatically means that the scope of the show can’t grow to larger proportions.  Anything that the heroes (or villains) do above and beyond the farm-league level would have to be acknowledged as a development by the big-time superheroes, and it’s unlikely that the eponymous stars of the various Marvel franchises would show up in person (regardless of how much sense it might make for the story).  Then again, Nick Fury shows up… so perhaps I’ll be proven wrong.

Finally, I really want there to be a big bad that I can sink my proverbial teeth into.  Unfortunately, despite the most recent episode’s hints (1.05 Girl in the Flower Dress), I still feel like I’m chewing a dry bone in search of meat that isn’t there.  It’s a very unsatisfying experience.

But I still think that this show could be great.  In fact, I’m hopeful enough that I’ll probably keep watching even if I don’t feel that it’s changing in the ways that I want.  I’m a little sad that SHIELD can’t (and shouldn’t) be the next Firefly, but I believe that Joss Whedon can still deliver on the promise that I think is here.  I really hope that he and his team do just that, because that would be great.

Screenrant is unhappy with Agents of SHIELD as it currently stands, and you can read one of their articles here.