Wargaming Wednesday: eBay Miniature Rescues

Today I just wanted to spotlight a great YouTube channel, eBay Miniature Rescues. Casey is a talented painter and a very nice hobbyist (I've exchanged emails with him before and he was polite and very helpful), who specializes on - you guessed it - finding used and often ill-treated miniatures on eBay, buying them, and then doing a paint-stripping and repainting project with them. His channel appears relatively new, with only a couple dozen videos, but the quality has progressed enormously over time, and the production value of his video work is now absolutely fantastic.

Here's a recent video where Casey strips and repaints an older Warhammer Fantasy Battles model.

As you can see, pretty darn cool. Although he tends towards the fantasy side of the miniature spectrum, Casey will also do Warhammer 40,000 rescues, such as this squad of Chaos Marines:

Although Casey's painting talents far exceed my own, he's given me some of the confidence I needed to begin my own eBay rescue projects. If you are interested in going out onto eBay and finding your own miniatures, as I talked about in a previous blog post, Casey even has a video on some good searching techniques:

So, if you have any interest in the second-hand miniatures market, you absolutely should check out eBay Miniature Rescues.

Media Monday: Enjoy Entertainment For What It Is

Another short but hopefully thought-provoking post today.

First, I know this has the potential to draw in issues of social justice and other real-world problems that we are all struggling with in one way or another, and I get that. Entertainment is there, first and foremost, to entertain us, and that usually means some element of escapism. That kind of escapism is different for everyone, and while there are certainly some issues that should always be addressed, there are a lot of people for whom escapism means being able to step away from those issues. I am not going to say this is a good or a bad thing, just that it is a sentiment often expressed, and for those people, that sentiment is real. I guess that is my wishy-washy way of saying that I am trying to not directly address social issues here, but instead a more all-encompassing philosophy of entertainment.

For me, that philosophy breaks down to "Enjoy entertaining things for what they are, don't hate them for what they are not". No body of entertainment is perfect, nor can any one body of entertainment media address perfectly all aspects of itself that all consumers may find entertaining. If your go-to for entertainment is gross-out comedy movies, clearly that is not going to appeal to people whose go-to entertainment excludes gross-out humor. I see no point in anyone who dislikes gross-out humor watching such films and then complaining about them. This holds true for almost any form of entertainment, and while we might all be forgiven decades ago for going to movies or watching television shows that we were ignorant of, now that we have the Internet, that is a lack of due diligence on the part of the viewer.

OH NO!

I first started (recently) thinking about this when I saw the fan-rage over the teaser trailer to the latest Star Wars movie, Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker. There's a moment with a folding lightsaber - yes, that moment, I can see you folks in the back already twitching in your seats - and within hours, never mind days of that trailer going live, the internet was flooded with people screaming and foaming at the mouth over how stupid a gimmick this was and so on. One particular YouTube channel had a 23-minute long video complaining about the lightsaber. Do you know how long it takes to produce a reasonably professional 23-minute long YouTube video? With props and everything? This person likely invested days worth of work to make it, all to complain about something in five seconds of a trailer for a move about laser swords and space magic.

And you know why? Because the video got tens of thousands of monetized views. But that's a whole other article for another day.

People like to get outraged about things. Yes, there are issues worth getting outraged about, but the shape of a science fiction laser sword isn't one of them. This obsessive, fandom-ish need to explain and legitimize and pick apart and deconstruct every single aspect of our entertainment media is not only exhaustive, it's honestly annoying. It becomes this battleground where people spend more time arguing over their entertainment than actually enjoying anything. This is one of the reasons I don't visit Facebook groups around WW2 films or books - everyone in there is a rivet-counting asshole, and if they aren't, they get shouted down by the rivet-counting assholes. Every single movie you bring up in such a group, there's going to be someone who hates it because some aspect of it was displeasing to them.

THE PAINT JOB ARRRRGGGHHH!

I remember someone complaining about the end of Saving Private Ryan because when the Tiger tank is destroyed by the airplane, the plane didn't have empty bomb or rocket racks attached to its lower fuselage. I also remember someone complaining about the movie Fury, and how "laughably stupid" it was that the Tiger in that movie - in real life the only operational Tiger 1 in the entire world, acquired from the Bovington Tank Museum for use in the film - was in its 1943 Tunisian camouflage paint pattern, and not what one would see on a Tiger in mid-1945. Yeah I am sure the staff at Bovington are just going to paint over and then painstakingly strip and re-paint the only operational Tiger tank in the world just for some asshole in a movie theater. I mean, yeah, this is a bit silly.

I guess my overall point here is, be honest about what you want from entertainment, seek that out, and don't complain about what was never intended to be there. Don't watch Wizards in Space for realistic engineering and physics demonstrations. Don't watch war movies if you'll have an aneurysm over the smallest historical inaccuracy. Don't watch horror movies if you're not prepared to see stupid horror movie tropes in action. Don't watch stupid raunchy sex comedies if you're not prepared to see cringe-worthy sex and gender stereotyping. For a large percentage of the population - for good or for ill - humor is about that which causes discomfort. The Office was all about "cringe humor". America's Funniest Home Videos was all about dads getting whacked in the crotch by whiffle bats. There is no getting away from this - it is at the heart of what is entertaining for some people.

Now, to circle back to my opening statement, you can be justified in being upset at something when it tries to do that thing, but actively fails to do so. If your entertainment is about female empowerment, but you fall back on cringy, decades-old stereotypes, or if your message is that female empowerment is in some way bad and you're trying to be edgy by subverting this...than people should call you out for what you are, because you are trying to do that thing and doing it badly. This also doesn't mean you can be left off the hook for obvious racism, sexism, homophobia, and so on just by saying "well this movie was never intended to address that". We live in too-aware a society for that to be a legitimate excuse anymore. I sort of look at it like the old doctor's premise, "First, do no harm". As long as you can avoid being actively racist, sexist, and so forth, I feel you are not required to actively address those and other social issues if that is not the nature and theme of your entertainment.

At the end of the day, as I mentioned in a recent post about modern reading habits and sources of entertainment, we only have so many hours in the day in which to consume entertainment, so why would we purposefully seek out entertainment that doesn't fit with our entertainment comfort zone? Life is too short and blood pressure too high already for us to do that to ourselves.

Wargaming Wednesday: Don't Feel Guilt Buying on eBay

Maybe this is a more controversial topic than I believe it is, but I find weird the pressure people feel against buying second-hand or portioned out miniatures on eBay. To be clear, I am not talking about buying re-casted (aka, illegally copied) miniatures - that's a no-no and should never happen. I'm talking about buying out-of-production miniatures, or second-hand miniatures owned previously by someone else, even if that person just bought a large boxed set (like Games Workshop's Dark Imperium boxed set) and is selling the individual miniatures a few at a time.

These out-of-production models were purchased like this on eBay

There can be a lot of reasons why you'd want to do this. For the out-of-production miniatures, you might just like a particular sculpt of a miniature, but it isn't made anymore. For me, I want to eventually buy and paint one of every GW Space Marine Chaplain, but there are only a handful still being made, while plenty of models with perfectly viable equipment loadouts are still usable in the current version of the game. Another reason might be that you're building, for example, a small display army using older, "retro" models. A lot of people these days are making small Rogue Trader-era forces more for the fun of rediscovering the models than anything else.

Some of the above, now stripped of paint and ready for rebirth!

Another aspect to buying online might be to find a model you want that's not available on its own. For Primaris Space Marines, for example, you cannot buy a Primaris Ancient (aka, Standard Bearer) as its own model anywhere except eBay, since it only comes in the Dark Imperium boxed set. The same goes for the Gravis Captain. In the past, this was likewise the case with other armies. The first official generic Ork Warboss to come with a power klaw didn't arrive until the Assault on Black Reach boxed set for 40K's 5th edition, along with Ork Deffkoptas mounted with rokkits (and the old Deffkopta model is absolutely hideous and ancient).

Tactical marines from the 1993 (!!!) 2nd Edition 40K boxed set.

And of course, another reason might be that you want that ONE particular bit for a model you're making. Maybe you like the look of a certain helmet or sword or gun. Maybe it fits with a theme, maybe the normal kit the part comes in only has 1 per box, and you need five. Sure, you're going to pay more money for it, but this is a leisure hobby, and eBay bits sellers are working from a sellers' market. I've bought plenty of little bits over time in order to build units of a certain theme, and while you're paying a premium for having that degree of choice, I never once felt cheated by the prices.

This Chaplain model has long been OOP. His gun is also an eBay bit purchase.

The biggest criticism or worry I've seen from people who don't want to buy on eBay is that you're not giving money to your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS). Sure, that's true, but the same reasons you'd be buying on eBay are the same reasons you're not buying at your FLGS - the models and bits are either out of production, or they come in a larger boxed set and aren't sold individually. No one should feel guilty you're not buying a $160 boxed set from your FLGS when all you want is a handful of miniatures you can get on eBay for a fraction of that cost. And as for the idea that Games Workshop isn't getting your money - well, that's bullshit. They got their money for that particular model when that model was first purchased. It doesn't matter if the miniature is 30 years old - at some point, someone gave the company money for that object, and that's that. I hear this as an argument against used book stores pretty frequently - that it keeps the money from the hands of the author - but that's just a guilt trip. A paperback novel is an object, and there's no reason to not sell or give away an object when you are done with it. Conversely, there's no reason you should feel guilt buying it second-hand.

So, with that in mind, if you're looking to build a miniatures army, and you're willing to give older miniatures a little TLC, go onto eBay and do a little investigating. You might be surprised at what you find!

For the Emperor!

Wargaming Wednesday: Not Just Dungeons and Dragons

Dungeons and Dragons was the first pen-and-paper tabletop role-playing game I ever encountered. I started playing in the summer of '93, when two of my friends had the "Big Black Box" edition of the DnD Basic Rules set. For those of you who know what the BBB version is...well I don't need to tell you anything. For all you newbies out there, this was a really big intro boxed set that had a ton of "rules cards", a big map adventure, tiny cardboard monsters and PCs...basically everything you'd need to play the first few levels of your characters - which is not unusual for the D&D boxed sets - but in a larger format, with full-color maps and cardboard counters.

Up until this point, I really hadn't been into "Fantasy", but I had read the first three Dragonlance books (that's a post for another day), and so I had some idea of what I was getting into. Needless to say, I was immediately hooked - in fact, far more than the two other people I was gaming with. I quickly bought the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook, Dungeon Master's Guide, and Monster Manual, and the over the next few years, I bought EVERYTHING that TSR produced - settings, Class handbooks, DM's guides...the works. The biggest problem, unfortunately, was lack of players, since I was living in a fairly rural small town in Maine, and my high school peers, for the most part, weren't interested in gaming.

When I moved off to college in 1995, I brought most of my gaming materials with me, certain that I'd be able to find a DnD group at a large urban university. But of course, as soon as I found some nerdy brethren and asked who played D&D, I received mocking laughter. "We don't play that game, you dork. We play White Wolf games. Those are real role-playing games".

I got sucked into a Werewolf: the Apocalypse game, and really enjoyed it, and I played a little Vampire and a little Mage as well. My RPG tastes began to grow, and I started buying other games, surprised that there were dozens of games put out by a wide variety of publishers in any genre you could think of. And of course, this was the late '90s, when the Internet gave us the ability to communicate around the world and share documents online with each other, enabling the explosion of what is commonly known as the "indie gaming" revolution. New voices emerged in the industry, edgy people with games that strayed far from the staid boundaries of D&D, GURPS, Rifts, World of Darkness, and other, more established platforms.

Fast-forward twenty years, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dungeons and Dragons is now well into its fifth - and most popular - edition, and most of the old guard are still around in one form or another. But smaller, indie presses and self-published games continue to arrive on the scene almost daily. In addition, the disdain most D&D folks had for the 4th edition rules, coupled with the death of D&D co-creator Gary Gygax back in 2008 sparked the "Old School Renaissance", where many gamers went back to the old editions of the game, breathing life back into them and using the bones of their rules sets to create a huge variety of different games.

Over the decades, I've collected a lot of role-playing games. Far more than I ever have, or ever could, play. I don't know what the current number is, but it is probably creeping up towards a hundred different RPGs and/or editions. And yet, that barely scratches the surface of what's out there, even from larger game companies, never mind "indie" developers. It's interesting that Dungeons and Dragons is more popular and more mainstream than it has ever been, and yet, most people have no idea of the immense variety of games out there - settings, play styles, rules types - whatever your interests might be, there is likely a game for you. And, just to give a minuscule taste, here's a YouTube video I watched last night, which dips a toe into the fathomless pool of games out there:

Yes, the video is a bit long, but if you have any curiosity about role-playing games, it is definitely worth your time to watch, and certainly better than me trying to pitch a bunch of different games. Oh, and it is worth noting that of the ten games they mention, I only own one of these - Call of Cthulhu - and it's an old edition. So if I own nearly a hundred RPGs, and only 1 of them is on this list, that gives you some idea of the variety out there.

Fiction Friday: Matthew Phillion's THE INDESTRUCTIBLES Series

Although I have, over the years, dabbled in reading comics and following along with various comic book characters, I was never really particularly drawn to the super-hero genre specifically. I preferred characters like The Punisher or Conan the Barbarian, or comic book stories that weren't really super-hero focused, at least in the traditional sense, like the PREACHER series, or WATCHMEN (which has super-heroes, but wow, not so super or so heroic).

All that having been said, with the meteoric rise in Young Adult fiction over the last twenty years, especially as it touches on sub-genres like Urban Fantasy, I've seen several authors out there who tie in YA fiction with more traditional super-hero tropes (Percy Jackson kinda feels like this, although the characters are technically Greek demi-gods, but whatever). Again, this really isn't my cup of tea, so for the most part, I've ignored this genre, feeling it's not really something I find interesting.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to give Matthew Phillion's THE INDESTRUCTIBLES a shot. I've been social media pen pals with Matt for a few years, and I've read his DUNGEON CRAWLERS novellas (also highly recommended). I knew he was a skilled storyteller, so I took the plunge, and I read Book 1 of his YA supers series.

To say that I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was is a bit of a slight to Matt, so I will say instead that I was surprised how easy it was for me to slide into the YA superhero genre with this first book. The characters were fun and engaging, and his writing style is clean and evocative, without feeling simplistic or dumbed-down for a younger audience. I have since read books 2 and 3, and I am currently well into book 4. The series currently extends to a fifth book, as well as several associated short stories, and there is a separate two-volume book series that exists in the same world and timeline as the Indestructibles characters.

If you enjoy super-hero fiction, or if you have or know a young adult reader who enjoys this kind of fiction, please go check out Matt's work on Amazon. His books are available in Kindle and paperback formats, and he's also made them available via Kindle Unlimited.

Wargaming Wednesday: The Pure Insanity of Warhammer 40,000

Continuing with my push to deliver more blogging content, I'm dedicating Wednesdays to wargaming and role-playing games. Although in recent years I haven't been able to get in much (or really any) of either tabletop wargaming or pen-and-paper RPG playing, I still count both among my hobbies and interests.

Today I just wanted to highlight the wargame I am most invested in on an emotional level - Games Workshop's Warhammer 40,000. For those who don't know what it is - I'll do this REAL QUICK - a bunch of British tabletop miniatures folks had a set of wargaming rules called Warhammer. It had armies of Elves and Dwarfs and guys with swords and pikes, and orcs and goblins, even skeletons and ghouls and "chaos" warriors and monsters. Basically every fantasy trope you can think of circa 1985 or so, thrown into a blender. Warhammer became super popular, and as it grew, they decided to do a version of the game as a sci-fi skirmish game, which they decided to call "Warhammer 40,000".

Just Another Day in the 41st Millennium

The universe of Warhammer 40,000 has changed somewhat in the 30+ years since its inception, but, well, I'll just cut and paste in the quote that appears at the beginning of most of their products:

It is the 41st Millennium. For more than a hundred centuries The Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the Warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor's will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst his soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

Yeah, it's like that. This is the kind of science fiction wargame you dream up when you're a young British nerd who subsists on a diet of heavy metal, Michael Moorcock, Tolkien, the punk aesthetic, European political chaos, Dungeons & Dragons, Star Wars, the Alien franchise, Hammer horror films, and a thick, heady dose of Generation X nihilism.  The "good guys" in the Warhammer 40K universe are the Imperium of Man, but you quickly realize that in 40K, "good" just means not quite as demonically horrifying as the "bad guys", but still pretty goddamn awful. The Space Marines, genetically modified super-humans in a suit of nigh-invulnerable power armor, might be call "the Emperor's finest", but they're also know as "The Angels of Death", and they'd stomp your skull into paste as soon as look at you if they thought you were a threat.

'Ello Guv'ner!

Even the Imperial Guard, the "good little guys" who were just your normal humans in basic body armor and carrying basic guns - somewhat analogous to regular army guys of today, just with sci-fi trappings - are often portrayed as psychotically violent and xenophobic, or just plain insane. Many of them come from "death worlds" where everything there tries to kill you, and it's basically Rambo with a plasma rifle and a chainsaw sword.

Some of my favorite parts of 40K are when things get delightfully subversive. There are nuns in 40K, but they are sociopathic religious zealots running around in black powered armor with all-white hair (white head covering, black outfit, like a nun's habit), blazing away with guns and flamethrowers, slaying heretics and the "impure". The Space Marine chaplain isn't a kindly older man giving you spiritual guidance...well okay he is, but he's also an eight foot-tall crazed murder machine in coal-black armor with a skull-shaped helmet, smashing people to pieces in the name of the Emperor and driving on the troops with his "inspiring presence". Yeah, it's like that. Even the Librarian is a force to be reckoned with, as "Librarians" are actually Space Marines with psychic powers, who can blow your body apart with their minds, set tanks on fire, and cause all sorts of supernatural havoc.

Yes, this is one of the Good Guys.

If anything, my biggest criticism of 40K in recent years is that they seem to be toning down the darker, more punk-rock elements of 40K in favor of something a little more family-friendly. There are still demons and mutants and heretics, but the Good Guys are a little more Good and the Bad Guys are a little more Bad. While 40K has always bee appealing to teenagers, I think Games Workshop knows that they need to aim for a younger audience, in order to get brand loyalty at an earlier age *and* tap into the "toy money" of the parents, rather than 30- or 40-somethings who have discretionary income, but who can also say "$35 for a single model an inch and a half tall? Ehhh...".


And that's my other big complaint - the cost. New model kits and new pricing structures mean that a playable, "competitive" army can set you back $400 or more if you buy everything at store prices. Sure, hobbies can be expensive, but the nature of wargaming is such that you feel the need to buy the newest, coolest stuff, as the rules and the "meta" changes to give different armies an advantage.

Glorious Old-School '90s Boxed Set Artwork!

But despite these problems, I really like the universe of Warhammer 40,000. It's cruel and violent and cynical and bloody as hell - in fact, it reminds me of that other British dystopian setting, JUDGE DREDD, in a lot of ways - but back in its earlier times, 40K didn't take itself as seriously as it does now, and I think the new, more serious 40K has lost a little something because of that.

Now, pardon me while I go burn some heretics - I mean, search on eBay for an out of production miniature...

20 Random Thoughts While Binging TRUE BLOOD

When it first aired, I watched all but the final season of HBO's series TRUE BLOOD, based on the Southern Vampire Mysteries series written by Charlaine Harris. The television series took extensive liberties with the characters and plot of the books, but I'm guessing since Harris is likely sunbathing on a mountain of gold doubloons thanks to all that HBO money, she didn't really mind.

Now, over the last few months, I binge-watched the series in its entirety, because while vampire-related things aren't really my bag, the show did have some hilariously over-the-top moments, and I wanted to finally see the last season and close out the series. Being able to watch it a second time and muse over other aspects of the show, I had many random thoughts while watching. So, in no particular order:

1. By the end of the series, I felt the same way about Sookie Stackhouse as I did about Jack Bauer - I was so damn tired of people saying her name, that the sound of it made me cringe every time. Especially when Bill said it. "Sookie!" Ugh.
2. Speaking of Bill, he's just such a dick. Despite being one of the main characters throughout the series, I just hate his guts the entire time.
3. Eric, on the other hand, is AMAZING. He is everything awesome which Bill is not.
4. Sam really is that handsome, middle-aged guy who manages to charm the pants off of every single (and not so single) woman in a hundred mile radius. When he gets called "silver fox" by his girlfriend's mom, I just lost it. Howls of laughter.
5. Werewolves really get the shaft in this series. Clearly, Harris/HBO aren't using World of Darkness rules as reference material.
6. At some point in this, we definitely needed a werewolf to go full Crinos and tear a truck in half, then beat a couple of vampires to death with the scrap metal.
7. Why don't these damn vampires use swords? If you move faster than the eye can see, and you're strong as hell, a sword would just be an amazing force-multiplier. Especially since many of these vampires were around before the gunpowder age.
8. Seriously, how can you have a thousand-year old vampire viking who never uses a sword?
9. Okay, he takes a couple of wakizashi from some Yakuza guy and double-stabs him, but that doesn't really count.
10. If I was a vampire, I'd also be rocking some body armor with a ballistic hard plate over my heart front and back. Try getting that broken-off broom handle through a half-inch plate of hardened steel, buddy.
11. I love how vampires, with their preternatural senses, almost never use guns firing wooden bullets to kill each other (which would be the easiest way to close the age power level gap), but some redneck hillbilly dipshit who has no idea how to shoot a handgun can make an offhand shot at a centuries-old vampire and hit the vampire's fist-sized heart without aiming, killing them.
12. I'm not sure if vampires turn into a blood ragout in the Harris novels when they die, but it is hilariously disgusting in the TV show. Especially when the death is dramatic and emotional and someone is embracing said vampire. Gross.
13. The behavior and intelligence of the average Bon Temps resident can be confirmed as realistic by spending five minutes in any political group on Facebook.
14. I don't care if it has magical healing properties, drinking blood is disgusting.
15. The single coolest kill in the show is a shifter turning into a fly, then getting swallowed by a vampire, and shifting back to human inside the vampire, causing the vampire to explode like a blood grenade.
16. Given that vampires aren't really alive, and I'm guessing their hearts don't actually serve a functional purpose, why doesn't someone open up a business implanting vampires with titanium heart-armor inside their body cavities? You could totally make some kind of armored housing that just snaps together around the vampire's heart without severing the arteries.
17. It's really kind of sad how the Harris novels were meant to use vampires as an analogy towards viewing discrimination and society in the South, but HBO just largely turned it into a show about sex and violence...like they do just about everything else.
18. Jason Stackhouse is a moronic dipshit, but man, he's pretty much what every guy wants to have as their pickup-driving, beer-drinking, horsing around best friend. Although he really is the personification of that "you versus the guy she tells you not to worry about" meme.
19. Not killing Lafayette at the end of season 1 was the smartest decision HBO ever made, aside from writing that big goddamn check to George R. R. Martin.
20. And, finally:
    
    

BOOK REVIEW: William Gibson's NEUROMANCER

There's nothing I can say about NEUROMANCER that hasn't been said ten thousand times in the 34 years since the book was published. I read it first maybe...fifteen years ago? Some time not too long after college, so in the first couple years of the 21st century. At the time, we didn't have a lot of the advancements we had today, such as smart phones with the sort of power we enjoy now, or a lot of the social media available to us, but we had a good idea where things were leading, and a lot of the technical capability was there, we just weren't taking full advantage of it quite yet.

If you have any interest at all in Science Fiction literature, you know something about the Cyberpunk genre, and if you know Cyberpunk, you've either read NEUROMANCER, or you feel somewhat guilty not having read it yet. It was the defining work in the genre, with pretty much every written or visual work coming after it in the genre taking elements from it, and some elements even bled into more traditional science fiction. For example, in THE EXPANSE series, full-sized computers are referred to as "decks", which is the term Gibson uses for the computer systems used to interact with Cyberspace. Point of note: while Gibson didn't invent the term "Cyberpunk", he did invent "Cyberspace", a term that has become almost universally used by people who don't quite know what they're talking about to discuss That Which Is Accessible On The Internet.

Gibson's imagining of Cyberspace, while tremendously evocative, has never caught on, despite decades of computing advances. The idea that you would access the Internet through some kind of neural interface, and "fly" through a vast cyber-space landscape in order to reach and access data is the sort of thing that Hollywood salivates over (see also: Jurassic Park's "Unix System" scenes), but even in the here and now of 2018, it's just easier to tap an icon on our phones, or click on a bookmark. In fact, when it comes to traditional desktop and laptop computing, the way we use computers is, I would argue, not much different than the way we used them in 1983, when Gibson wrote the novel. Computers at the time had all the basic components of the modern desktops of today, some even using very basic Graphical User Interfaces and mice. Indeed, I would imagine that if you took a computer user from 1983 forward in time 35 years to today and set them down in front of your average modern desktop, it'd take them only a short while to understand that you clicked on icons to launch programs rather than type commands, and from there, you used the mouse to select functions and the keyboard to enter data. The difference lies more in what we use the computers for, rather than how we use them.

Of course, I do not in any way fault Gibson for not predicting the future, especially since the world in which NEUROMANCER takes place is probably well over a century from now, some place likely in the mid-2200s. There are references to a dynastic family existing for over two centuries, so depending on when they started, the book could even be set in early 2300s. By that point, it may very well be that the easiest way to access data is through direct neural interfaces. Of course, there are some odd anachronisms in the novel, such as using traditional telephones! Indeed, like may other science fiction writers Gibson didn't anticipate the pervasiveness of wireless connectivity, except on the largest scale, such as satellite transmissions. Decks are carried around and jacked into wall interfaces, often requiring special jack adapters in order to make them compatible. Data is also quite often carried around and transferred physically, either in the form of tiny sliver-like "microsofts" or larger data cartridges. I always enjoy reading older science fiction works (and truly, NEUROMANCER isn't even that old) to see what older technological paradigms they imagine will still exist in the future.

But of course, that's not what people really read this novel for - they read it for the atmosphere. In fact, it's probably got one of the greatest opening lines in the history of science fiction:

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." 

If you can picture that image in your mind's eye, you're most of the way to understanding the aesthetic of the dystopian Cyberpunk setting. The glaring, clashing intermingling of the old world and the new, the gleaming cities of chrome and glass built on the crumbling brick and iron of the old. There's a layer of grime on everything, even new tech, and everyone's got an angle. Anything you eat or drink is recycled from something else, and non-artificial environments are difficult (and expensive) to come by. Weapons are a mix of highly lethal new tech and battered but reliable old tech, and absolutely everything has a price. It is a largely amoral world, where people are simply trying to cling to a life worth living, because if they let go, even for a second, there is no merciful net to catch them, no social welfare program worth giving them the security they need.

So, is there anything NOT to like about this book? Well, to be fair, there are times when Gibson's (usually successful) attempts to be evocative of the setting wander a bit, especially when detailing Cyberspace itself. These moments aren't so much poorly written as they are a bit too lingering, causing breaks in the action, especially at the end of the novel. I suppose this is inevitable in describing something that most people in 1983 couldn't really imagine, so I have no problem with this. The other big pain in my butt with this book is one of my pet peeves in fiction and visual medium - that moment when, in the middle of a climactic moment, the protagonist finds themselves in some kind of idyllic dreamland, where they suddenly are offered paradise, if they just didn't wake up / accept their fate / whatever. I hate this device pretty much every time I encounter it, and there is a moment at the end of this book where that occurs, and it seems to go on forever.

Other than that, and a couple of other quibbles here and there, I enjoyed the novel immensely, and although I don't read a lot of the Cyberpunk genre, it did whet my appetite to go out and find more titles in the genre - specifically, I want to re-read Neal Stephenson's SNOW CRASH, which is a *great* novel.

Movie Review: FLIGHT WORLD WAR II (2015)

Note: Not actually based on true events...

There are a lot of cheesy, low-budget World War Two movies out there, especially in the last few years. IRON SKY is one of my particular favorites, a "Nazis on the Moon" film full of good, dorky fun. A few days ago, I happened to notice another low-budget WW2 movie pop up on Netflix, FLIGHT WORLD WAR II, about a modern passenger airliner that time-travels back to the beginning of the Second World War and "must change the course of history" in order to return.

Okay, this sounds kinda dumb, but for a lazy Sunday morning, I'm intrigued. So I gave it a view, and like most movies put out by The Asylum, it was pretty corny. The only actor of any note at all is Faran Tahir, who plays the airliner's captain, and is the same actor who played the captain in the first few minutes of 2009's STAR TREK reboot. Aside from him, it is the usual cast of C-grade direct-to-video/streaming talent, some of whom do a decent job with what they have to work with, while others are just cringe-worthy. The SFX were actually pretty good, which says something about a "shoestring budget" movie studio being able to put German fighter planes into dogfights, or depict an entire city being bombed to rubble.

Plot-wise...well...things get rough. A 757 en route from Dulles to Heathrow flies through an "anomaly" and winds up in June 17th, 1940. They overfly a city being bombed, and a couple of history professors (WW2 buffs, of course) identify some German bombers, and that the city is on the coast, but we also see an Me262 do a fly-by of the airliner. The history nerds surmise that the city is St. Nazaire (thus the date), but are boggled that the German jet fighters are operational in 1940, about four years before they'd take to the air in force. And, after contacting a British radio operator, they find out that the Dunkirk evacuation was a complete disaster, resulting in the loss of half a million people (in reality, it was the exact opposite). In addition, they learn that the British don't even have working radar systems - they're still in development (again, not true to actual history).

After some confused head-scratching, the nerds postulate that they've fallen into an alternate timeline, where the Germans are much more technologically advanced at this point in the war, having operational jet fighters while the British don't even have radar. The Germans attack the airliner several times in the hopes of shooting it down, but the pilot manages to avoid death (the 757 somehow survives dozens of 30mm cannon shell hits, but hey...Hollywood, am I right?). The British are worried that, if the airliner *does* have radar (the way in which all this gets concluded is very odd), they must shoot the plane down to prevent the Germans from possessing it and getting even more of an advantage. Eventually, the airliner crew cut the radar free from the nose of the plane, drop it down to the British, who then use it (!!!) to direct Spitfires out to defend the airliner just before the plane flies through another anomaly and back into our normal timeline.

I'd like to point out that, as ridiculous as this plot is, a half-decent film could have been salvaged from this wreckage. The 1980 film THE FINAL COUNTDOWN postulates what might happen if a 1980s era aircraft carrier wound up in the Pacific just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. With the premise of FLIGHT WORLD WAR II, a story of how a modern airliner (with its far superior air radar), as well as two nerds who know everything about the war, could turn history around in an alternate past where the Germans are clearly dominating even more than they were in our own 1940.

EDIT: Apparently modern airliners don't carry any kind of radar, relying on their transponders and Air Traffic Control systems to guide them around potential hazards. So, basically, this movie is pointless when it comes to the whole radar angle.

But instead, things are just bungled. My biggest complaint is that the plane flies across the Atlantic and winds up over the French coast. Fine - no big deal. They even claim at one point to have (I think), just under half of a full fuel load. I just looked it up, and Dulles to Heathrow is a little under 3,700 miles, while the 757 has a range of around 4,500 miles. So, this jet winds up over St. Nazaire with about 800 miles of fuel left - certainly a lot less than "just under half a tank". However, any pilot will know that if you're somewhere near the coast of France, just pointing your plane north and flying for (in this case) about half an hour will put you over England, at a 757's cruising speed of a bit over 500 miles an hour.

Instead, somehow, this plane spends the entire movie flying *east*. At one point they even figure out they're near (IIRC) Reims, which is to the north-east of St. Nazaire by several hundred miles, and at another point they're near Metz, *four hundred* miles from St. Nazaire. Hey, guys! You're going the wrong way! And, what makes things weirder, by the time they are near Metz and drop the radar system, it is picked up by British forces after a brief firefight against some Germans, and within a couple of minutes, it is in the hands of the radio operator they've been talking to the entire time. So, apparently, despite Dunkirk being a total slaughter, this radio operator is *hundreds of miles* behind what are now the enemy lines? How does this even make any sense? Even if the radio operator was behind enemy lines and the salvation of the war effort was to get radar into the hands of the British, the operator should have just said "Fly north for half an hour and get to Blighty, you bloody fools!". The British are even trying to shoot the airliner down "to keep the radar from the Germans". You know how you could also do that? Tell them to fly to England. Shooting down a great big, obviously not the usual 1940s prop plane, over enemy territory is probably the worst thing they could do!

At one point, one of the passengers tries to take over the plane, insisting that, with the help of the history nerds and their books, they could find and kill Hitler and re-write history. An Army sergeant flying aboard the plane talks sense into him and the rest of the passengers, pointing out that pulling something like that off is highly unlikely, and the most likely scenario is them letting both the airplane, the history nerds, and all their history books fall into the hands of the Nazis, making everything worse. This was probably the moment of the film that made the most sense.

To conclude, this movie was more disappointing as a story than it was as a technical production. I'll always give The Asylum a pass on production values and acting - all that requires a lot of money and time, which they don't really have - but a good script and a plot that makes sense just requires a competent storyteller and a modicum of research. This movie *could* have been made on the same budget, with the same cast and production values, and made a lot more sense.

Movie Review: MAD MAX - FURY ROAD

It has been many years - too long, really - since I've seen any of the original three Mad Max movies in their entirety. I know I've seen THE ROAD WARRIOR a couple of times, but it's probably been over 20 years since I've seen the first or third movies. Still I know I enjoyed them all, and I'm a big fan of post-apocalyptic movies like these, relying on desolation and desperation rather than a zombie outbreak as their main settings.

So when they announced FURY ROAD, and I saw the first pictures and the trailers, I knew I was going to be first in line for this new movie. Thankfully, through a connection with a couple of friends and podcasters over at Nerd Spastics, I was able to score early premiere tickets due to Boston Comic-Con's movie promotions. I saw this film last week, and I have to say, I was utterly floored by how much of an incredible spectacle it was.

The plot of the movie is pretty dead-simple. Mad Max is captured by the "War Boys" of Immortan Joe, a warlord living in a massive fortress carved into the side of a mesa. He controls water and food and commands an army of young, fearless men, who follow him without question because he's indoctrinated them all with a Viking-esque belief in Valhalla, where he will make sure they will go if they die gloriously in his service.

Given his relative good health and lack of mutation or disease, Max is set up as a blood donor for the War Boys, many of whom have diseases or tumors and need regular transfusions to live. When Imperator Furiosa, one of Joe's war-rig drivers, goes rogue and escapes with all of Joe's "brides" (aka, sex slave breeding stock), Joe sends out all of his Boys to hunt her down. Nux, one of the younger drivers, is getting a transfusion from Max, and to ensure he doesn't miss any of the action, brings Max along, chained to the front of his car while still transfusing blood via IV needle.

Thus begins a massive, insane chase across the post-apocalyptic wasteland of Australia, as Furiosa and her war-rig try to escape Immortan Joe's seemingly endless horde of other war-rigs, armored cars, and motorbikes. Along the way they run into several different factions in the wasteland, some of them allies of Joe's, some of them hostile to everyone. It doesn't really matter who they are, because in this hellscape, resources are thin, and everyone is a potential source of something you're willing to kill for - bullets, gasoline, food, whatever.

Overall, the movie is an amazing assault on the senses. The score is brutal and powerful and perfect for this kind of insane road-rage taken to its natural conclusion (one of Joe's war-rigs is a massive war-stereo on wheels, complete with war-dummers and a gimp-like madman guitarist thrashing away on a guitar that doubles as a flamethrower). On the big screen, the wanton destruction of men and machines, all moving at suicidally high speeds, looks just phenomenal. While I am sure aspects of the action sequences were augmented with CG effects, all the major action looks like it is (amazingly) practical, real-life carnage of cars smashed into other cars at high speed, with fire and smoke and flaming pieces of twisted metal spinning through the air. The whole effect, from the sound to the visuals, it utterly mesmerizing.

I have to give special props to the folks who handled the production design. Everything looks totally organic to the world in which they're living, from the rusty, beatup weapons to the improvised machinery, to the cobbled together vehicles and their own armor and weapons (like the bucket loader turned into some kind of anti-vehicle weapon, or the buzzsaw on the mechanical arm). Those of you who are fans of the Warhammer 40,000 universe will see how the Orks' love of high-speed mechanical death fits perfectly into this world (and was, indeed, influenced heavily by the Mad Max universe). It feels to me like that influence has reflected back, when you consider this Ork Battlewagon Model:

Or perhaps, one of the Ork Wartrukks:

This isn't a movie that's deep in any meaningful way, it is simply a story of a contest of wills, two forces pitted against each other in the middle of the desert. The Mad Max world has always, for me, been a mythology - a series of campfire tales, told generations after they'd taken place, perhaps to eventually make their way into history books when the world finally picked itself up and began to put itself back together again, centuries later. If you watch these movies with too literal an eye, they might begin to fall apart, but if you think of them like post-apocalyptic version of the Iliad or Odyssey, they make more sense in my opinion.

In conclusion, if you enjoyed the original movies, and if you're more a fan of post-apocalyptic stories that don't involve zombies or viruses or games of hunger, go and see this film. I highly recommend seeing this in the theater, because it simply won't have the same impact on your TV, or - god forbid - on your computer screen.

MOVIE REVIEW: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

I'm not a huge comic book fan. Not because I dislike the medium - I think comics can tell some amazing stories - but because they can hook you into an obligation to buy more and more as your understanding and interest in the universe grows. Marvel has a huge line of comic titles stretching back decades, and it is really easy to lose track of what is going on with your favorite characters.

Because of this, I think Marvel Studios took a calculated risk when they decided on Guardians of the Galaxy to be their grand introduction to the greater, off-Terra setting that is the Marvel (Cinematic) Universe (aka, the MCU). Would the non-geeks understand what was going on? Would they have interest in the characters? Would it tie together with the previous movies in a meaningful way? Would audiences accept a talking raccoon with a machine gun and a walking plant-man as heroes?

Thankfully, I think the answer to all of the above is a resounding "Yes!".

This was an extremely well-crafted film, carefully designed to ease an unfamiliar audience into the vast, epic scale of the MCU. Starting on Earth in 1988, we meet the young Peter Quill on the night his mother dies of cancer, and Peter is abducted by aliens. We then fast-forward 26 years, to a dead planet, where we find Quill, now an artifact-hunting thief who (unsuccessfully) goes by the moniker of "Starlord". Smartly, the filmmakers tie the young boy to the man he's now become with one simple connection - the Walkman he had with him when he was abducted. Even if you were completely oblivious to the pre-screening promotions and knew nothing about Quill, the simple act of him putting on the headphones ties us back to that young boy on Earth, and we know just what's going on.

As an aside, the Walkman also serves as the instrument through which one of the movie's best features is presented - the soundtrack. For the last 26 years, Quill has been listening to "Awesome Mix Vol. 1", the cassette in the Walkman when he was abducted. It's full of great music and these tracks are used perfectly throughout the film, also providing a diegetic source for the soundtrack (a trick I usually really enjoy when done in a clever manner).

The plot of the story is actually pretty simple. Quill steals The Orb from the dead planet, and it turns out Ronan (the Big Bad Guy) wants it to do Bad Stuff. Ronan chases Quill and his ragtag band of unexpected allies across the galaxy. Will the Guardians figure out how to stop Ronan before he blows up the planet Xandar? Take a guess, hotshot. But while the plot is very basic, I think it serves as a good means of introducing the vastness of the MCU. You don't have to worry much about following a twisty-turny plot with complex character arcs, in addition to trying to figure out what the Kree Empire is, or who the Ravagers are. The information is delivered in succinct, bite-sized pieces, easily digestible by folks such as myself who couldn't tell you the difference between the Kree Empire and the Nova Empire if we tried.

This is probably a good time to mention another really strong aspect of this film - its great sense of humor. There are funny moments in all of the Marvel films, but GotG is the first to come across as a borderline comedy. There are moments which are laugh-out-loud funny, mostly orchestrated by Chris Pratt in his role as Peter Quill, but also Rocket Raccoon, the all-too-literal responses from Drax, and even the straight-man comments from many of the other characters. I don't think any of the other Marvel movies would have been able to get away with dropping "turd blossom" in the middle of a deadly serious moment and have it work, but GotG pulls it off in a way that feels natural to the spirit of the film; it is a rollicking adventure ride through space, filled with gun battles, spaceship fights, fisticuffs, madcap hijinks, and more than anything else, a great sense of fun. I've seen every film in the MCU lineup multiple times now, and Guardians of the Galaxy is easily the most "fun" film of the lot. I think that was a deliberate choice by Marvel (given a film with a trigger-happy raccoon, this makes sense), but it would have been all too easy for the fun-factor to come off gimmicky or forced.Thankfully here, that is not the case at all.

In conclusion, if you like fun, fast-paced sci-fi adventures, and/or you're a fan of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I think you'll enjoy Guardians of the Galaxy.

GUEST BLOGGER: Sean McLachlan Discusses Post-Apoc Novel RADIO HOPE

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Sean McLachlan's new novel, a post-apocalyptic story titled RADIO HOPE, is now available on Amazon for the Kindle. I was lucky enough to read an advance copy, and I thought the story was spectacular - strikingly realistic, but with enough action and adventure to satisfy even the most demanding bullet-junkies.

Here, Sean discusses some of the thought processes behind creating The Toxic World of RADIO HOPE.

Constructing A Destroyed World

One of the rewarding things about a career in writing is that you get to try new things and extend your creative boundaries. My first novel, A Fine Likeness, was a historical horror set in the American Civil War. I used many real characters and situations, and even bits of real dialog culled from contemporary newspaper accounts.

My second novel was a radical departure. Radio Hope is a post-apocalyptic tale. No zombies, no alien invasions, just regular people living with their grandparents’ mistakes. I had to extrapolate a series of disasters from our current world situation to get the toxic, ruined world that was the setting for my novel.

Writers tend to lump themselves into “plotters” and “pansters”. I’m about in the middle of the spectrum. While I do tend to think out the world situation and the basic plot, I leave plenty of room for winging it. I had the three main characters and the setting—New City, the last settlement that could really be called a town. I also traced out the fall of civilization, but many of the details of how civilization fell came to me while I was facing the keyboard, and sometimes those details filled out my world’s background.

For example, I knew that New City was going to be threatened by a bunch of zealots called the Righteous Horde. I didn’t want them to show up until near the end because the story isn’t so much about their attack as it is about how the threat of their attack brings out all the best and the worst in the settlers, and highlights the divisions between citizens and noncitizens. So I wanted to have New City know the Righteous Horde was coming but have plenty of time to stew in the knowledge that their days might be numbered.

Then I asked myself, “Why isn’t the Righteous Horde galloping over the plains and swooping down on an unsuspecting New City like a Mongol army?”

Simple solution: no horses.

So where did all the horses go? My subconscious informed me they got killed off, along with a large chunk of the human population, in the Biowars. Part of humanity’s fall into chaos included deadly biological warfare that killed hundreds of millions of people along with several major species of animals. Horses were one of them, as were cows. It killed off the dogs too. How could my subconscious do such a thing? Because icing Man’s Best Friend will tug at my readers’ heartstrings as much if not more than destroying most of humanity.

The fall of civilization didn’t happen overnight, and so there are bits of high technology still lying around. Most, of course, have since fallen apart, and the lack of electricity except in a few places lucky enough to have solar panels means that most future inventions are useless. I do leave a few hints of advanced tech, though—advanced medicines such as blanket antivirals and weapons like the DShK-4, which is obviously a later model of the Chinese DShK. Actually there are a lot of Chinese-made weapons lying around, but I can’t talk about why that is because I don’t want to be found guilty of Blame. In New City that could get me branded and exiled. . .

So while the future is bleak, it’s a fun place to play if you’re a writer. As you build up your setting often the demands of the story will dictate details. You get to mix the old and the new, science fiction and the 19^th century. People wear homespun and grind their grain in handmills while looking up at the bright dot of the International Lunar Base and wondering if humanity will ever make it that far again.

Sean McLachlan is an archaeologist turned writer who is the author of several books of fiction and history. Check him out on his blog Midlist Writer.

Movie Review: The 13th Warrior (1999)

Recently, I popped this movie in the DVD player and gave it a viewing for the first time in a year or two (I've probably watched it over a dozen times, however). My objectivity surrounding The 13th Warrior, I'll admit, is somewhat shaky. Okay...it's pretty much non-existent. A few of you out there who know me were there, that fateful summer day in August of '99, when we went to see this at the Cheri theater downtown as a matinee. At the time, the main hall of the Cheri was probably one of the biggest, if not the biggest, screen in Boston proper, and so this movie was definitely given a real "cinematic" presentation. I'll always maintain that certain movies need to be seen on the big screen, in the theater, and even today's mega-televisions and home theater sound systems don't compare to what a real movie theater can provide. Perfect evidence of this was when I saw Conan the Barbarian in the theater for the first time about six years ago, and my already favorite fantasy movie suddenly became one of my greatest cinematic experiences, period.

But I digress. The 13th Warrior is adapted from the Michael Crichton novel, Eaters of the Dead, which was in turn his attempt at writing a "historical" interpretation of Beowulf, using some fake "found documentation". Written in 1976, it was one of his earlier novels, written way before Jurassic Park, when he was just another writer turning out cool books in various genres. The premise, in a sentence or two, is that the story follows an Arab diplomat as he gets caught up with a band of Viking badasses as they venture far into the hinterlands of Scandinavia to do battle with a horde of, to put it simply, cannibalistic Neanderthals. Crichton uses the cave-dwelling, fire-toting savages as the stand-in for Grendel, the Dragon, and Grendel's Mother.

Right there is the first problem - when you explain the plot of the film, it sounds a lot dumber than it is. there's a great deal of superstition and mystery surrounding the "Wendol" as they are known, and the Vikings all believe them to be actual supernatural creatures, a race of legendary were-bear creatures that are half man, half beast, lurking in the deep forests and appearing in the night with the mist, to raid and kill and make off with the heads of dead men, and most disturbingly, "...it is said...they eat the dead...". Thus, the name of the book.

The movie also had a very difficult birth. John McTiernan started directing it, and then there were severe creative differences between him and Creighton, to the point where McTiernan left and Crichton finished directing the film (at this point Crichton had already directed a successful film, so this wasn't necessarily a dumb decision on the part of the studio). The movie does exhibit a kind of mixed personality disorder; it doesn't know if it should be horrifying and scary, or more straight action-adventure. The Vikings are also very..."Mythical" is how I like to put it. All the badasses wear armor and clothing that come from a wide range of cultures and time frames, many of them anachronistic. There were a LOT of people who tore the movie apart on this factor alone. I look at it as simply representing the Vikings as widely traveled adventurers, who've been to a lot of different, exotic locales.

In addition, there is the infamous "I listened!" language montage. If you're actually paying attention, it is pretty clear that Antonio Bandaras' character is spending weeks traveling with the Vikings, and as an educated man who probably speaks a couple of languages already, he over time picks up bits and pieces of the Viking's language, until he surprises them by being able to speak their tongue pretty well. Many folks thought this process took a couple of days, perhaps as short as a single night, which isn't really supported by the montage unless you're not really paying attention. Ultimately, it is a gimmick to get around a language barrier that would've killed the story before it even began (not that some critics would be upset by that). Ultimately, I think it is fine; if the Stargate television series can get away with EVERYONE IN THE UNIVERSE speaking perfectly understandable English, then I think we're okay here.

Beyond these and some other criticisms of varying merit, I think this movie is flat out one of the best historical action-adventure movies of the last twenty years. The Viking Band is so perfectly cast, so well-populated with these tough, gritty, steely-eyed asskickers. The dialogue might be a little hammy, but it is so well-suited to the badassitude of the movie that it just plain works. A few quotes snagged from IMDB:

Herger the Joyous: When they come, we form a circle in the center of the room, backs to one another.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: I am not a warrior.
Herger the Joyous: Very soon, you will be. 

Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Have we anything resembling a plan?
Herger the Joyous: Mm-hm. Ride till we find them... and kill them all. 

Buliwyf: I have only these hands. I will die a pauper.
King Hrothgar: You will be buried as a king.
Buliwyf: A man might be thought wealthy if someone were to draw the story of his deeds, that they may be remembered.
Ahmed Ibn Fahdlan: Such a man might be thought wealthy indeed.

I also want to emphasize that, although this movie at some points isn't sure if it wants notes of horror or pure adventure, in many ways, it is still a good blend. The Wendol, until you get what they are later on, are a creepy, evil, almost goblin-esque race that hide in the shadows and "come in the mist". It isn't until about halfway through the movie that the characters can confirm that their opponents are simply men who dress and think of themselves as bears. The dark, misty, foreboding nature of the landscape, as well as the more disturbing scenes inside the caverns of the Wendol also contribute to the eerie quality of the movie, as does Jerry Goldsmith's incredible score. In fact, for years I used the soundtrack as tabletop role-playing game "mood music" because it just carried such a sense of adventure, mystery, suspense, and horror, all mixed together. Like another one of my favorites, The Brotherhood of the Wolf, the "supernatural" elements lend a horror to the story that complements the action in my mind, rather than subtracting from it.

All in all, it is a shame this movie is considered such a disaster. It was extremely expensive to make, re-shoot, and market, and made back only a fraction of its costs ($60m in revenue vs. $160m in expenses). The financial failure of this film, I think, colors for many people the overall quality of the film, as many probably were introduced to it over the years already knowing it was a flop. On the other hand, there is a small, but quite strong, following for this film out there, mostly folks who understand it for what it is - an epic, mythic adventure story. Novelist and movie critic Stephen Hunter reviewed the film when it came out, and his review from the Washington Post can still be found here. Hint: he opens with, "Think of "The 13th Warrior" as Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven Samurai" jacked on amphetamines."