Broken Promise

Image by Myles! via Flickr

Who is the character from a book that has made you feel so close to him/her that you simply can’t stop thinking what’s gonna happen next?

Gonna?  Really?  In what purports to be a serious question?

I’m annoyed: I had taken up Nancy’s challenge not to make fun of the WordPress prompter for a stretch but, really, ‘gonna’?  Now I have to start all over again.

Gonna have to cut&paste an old post for some of my answer because I’m too irritated to write anything new:

Desperate for something to write about, I turned to Plinky Prompts again. It asked me ‘What book would you read over and over again?’

I would have to say, Ender’s Game, by Orson Scott Card. It started life as a short story that became a novel and then a series of books, the Ender Saga and the Bean Saga (Bean is a minor character in the first book). I prefer the Bean Saga because they are more like Ender’s Game; the Ender Saga is dreadful, apart from the first book.

Ender’s Game is the story of a child trained to save the world; but also the story of a child who has to survive the world. When my boys came up against bullies, I gave it to them to read. I must confess, however, that putting your enemy’s nose through his skull is not a path I hope they take: it is the philosophical angle I hope they will consider.

Above all, it is the story of negotiating childhood. In space.

Here’s a review from I know not who on Amazon:

Whenever I talk about this book, it’s hard not to make it sound like I am a science fiction junkie. I love and defend sci-fi, but I am not limited to the genre. Neither, I think, is this magnificent book. To label it simply a sci-fi classic would be like labeling “Moby Dick” a great book about boats. All great books, regardless of the genre, say something truly profound about the human condition.

Ender is a good child trying to do the right thing, but circumstances forced upon him make him a killer.  He is sweet and vulnerable and ruthless.  I love him. 

It’s such a shame that the rest of his story is dull dull dull.  He deserves better than OSC gave him.

There are constant rumours that there’s going to be a movie of Ender’s Game.  Now that technology has caught up with Card’s imagination, I’m hopeful that eventually the rumours will prove to be true.  This is probably the only instance, however, where I hope that if they do film it, the sequels don’t follow the book’s sequels. 

Ender deserves better.  Ho!

V. Okay

I finally got to watch the new V last night.  It wasn’t bad.  I enjoyed it enough to sit through two episodes and set up a series link.  The hero is now a heroine (Mrs Clause, Elizabeth Mitchell) and the collaborating female journalist is now a collaborating male journalist (a creepy-looking Michael J.Foxonbotoxalike).  The vulnerable teenage girl is now a vulnerable teenage boy and…I think you might get where they’re going with it.  The priest is still male (we haven’t moved on that far since the Eighties) though he is much younger (Taken and 4400‘s Joel Gretsch).

I can’t decide if it was ripping off every sci-fi movie, series, game and cliché it could find, or paying homage to them.  The intro was straight out of Independence Day but there was a character who said as much.  There was also a scene at a warehouse with an address beginning, 44oo Whatever Street.  Spud said there was something from the game Resistance in it as well.  It could be fun spotting the references or it could become tiresome, but I suspect I’m going to watch it all anyway; though nothing could replicate (see what I did there?  Star Trek reference?  Just paying homage, honest) the shock of Diana and that jaw in the original series.

V is showing on SyFy.  You may not know the channel because, up until ten o’clock last night, it went under the name of Sci Fi.  They had a big launch that I missed because of my habit of fast forward(!)ing (don’t mind me, I am just trumpeting science fiction references in the style of the new V) the adverts.

As much as we all love science fiction, we never watch the SyFy channel; I don’t know why.  We might start, however, because there is a new series coming on called – wait for it – Painkiller Jane.  How cool is that for a title?

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Yesterday’s prompt required us to start a poem with a line from a choice of eleven, from the poetry of Norman Dubie.  I know I am supposed to take the prompts seriously but sometimes I can’t help myself.

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Poem Starting With A Line From Norman Dubie

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Her breasts filled the windows like a mouth;

her stomach blew up like yeast

and her chins went south.

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I missed my Dad yesterday so I wrote this one:

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The Last Time

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Last time I saw Dad

he lay in state, refusing

to laugh with me or

at me.  He gave me

away in that suit.  I gave

him away in that 

suit.  Too young to die;

too sick to live.  Cigarettes

did for him, at last.

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Have a great day!