In the movie-watching spree that constitutes the Ryan & Felicity holiday tradition, I have recently watched partial or complete arcs of the following movie franchises: Back to the Future, Star Wars, Alien, and Terminator. (Small spoilers only — and if you’re not spoiled on this stuff, welcome to my blog!)

Early on in this decadent parade of wonders, Ryan remarked to me that Empire Strikes Back is one of the best movie sequels ever. We talked about that and what it does so well. Then, just now, after rewatching the somewhat lackluster Terminator 3, we watched Terminator Salvation. We had been told it was bad. We decided to try it anyway, out of an unusual completionist urge. (I haven’t watched Alien 3 and don’t plan to, okay?)

Terminator Salvation was great. Surprisingly tightly plotted. New Skynet tech and types were logical, part of a burgeoning machine ecosystem. It was well acted, full of ties to the original movie and winks at the entire Cameron oeuvre.

This has cemented my desire to think (and therefore ramble) about what makes a good sequel (and in part, what does NOT.)

1. A good sequel expands the universe of the original. This should be true of a straight sequel, not just the second act of three. Yes, the viewer loved the first one, but if you rehash the same material, some part of them will wonder why they didn’t just watch it again. Empire Strikes Back took us to new worlds, showed us a hint of the Emperor we’d only heard of, brought us inside the Imperial Fleet.

2. It stays true to the original. This is tricky, but to my English-major self that means it develops at least some of the most important themes of the original. Aliens is a different genre from Alien, and some might argue not a true sequel, but it’s still about the same things: conflict between corporate and human interests, the relationship between human and artificial intelligence, social class, et c. It also means you don’t add a bunch of extraneous new characters that detract from the ones we know and care about.

3. It deepens the characters. The feelings between Han and Leia, the risk-taking prompted by Marty’s insecurity, Ripley’s motherhood…these are things that didn’t exist in the first story, but don’t contradict it. They breathe new meaning retroactively into the first story while using the increased space granted by success (a necessary condition for sequels) to increase the emotional attachment of the audience.

4. It follows through. If we were promised post-apocalyptic guerilla warfare, give it to us. If you hung a craft full of alien eggs on the wall like Chekhov’s gun, take that sucker down and start firing facehuggers. Don’t promise “I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see….A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries.” and then ignore those people to have boring fisticuffs with infinite agents instead.

5. It rewards the audience’s fidelity. This is perhaps the riskiest part. See number 1 — don’t rehash. The peril of the sequel, especially in action movies, is doing the same thing over, but bigger and fancier. Catch phrases become atrophied, meaningless, a string of checkboxes or gotcha moments. Chases become an obligation, not a thrill. The script serves the formula rather than the story. We didn’t need to see the T-101 shoot up a bunch of cop cars and smugly calculate 0 human casualties in T3. It was something we’d already seen, but shorn of the context that made it relevant in T2. A good reference is something that makes sense in the new context to someone who hasn’t seen the referent. If we haven’t seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, we don’t scratch our heads in Last Crusade when Indy says “Fly? Yes. Land? No!” Obviously it matters whether he can fly a plane, and his incomplete knowledge creates tension and humor. T4 was full of shots, sets and moments that made devoted fans point and grin, but those things served this movie. Rhyme, don’t repeat.

6. It surprises us. Keeping your promises doesn’t mean being predictable. We have expectations now, and you can play with them. Having the T-101 be the good guy in T2 reversed our expectations. (In T3 it was just a bit tired.) It surprised us. It surprised John Connor. It surprised Sarah Connor into an iconic image of surprise (I know I mentally fall down and backpedal against a waxed floor from time to time.) Set up a love triangle, then knock it down with a relative revelation. Make us expect the repeat, then play against it: a formidable swordsman menaces Indy, he reaches for his gun — but it isn’t there.

Really, what this all boils down to is respecting the original but showing us something new. The Star Wars prequels contradict the originals and depart from their spirit. Star Trek V, among its other sins, takes us past a Galactic Barrier we crossed in the series and acts like that’s where no man has gone before. This is simple stuff, really, but I imagine that deep in Hollywood, making something complicated and expensive with hundreds of other people, it’s easy to forget what you’re really doing. You’re gathering the children by the fire to tell them a story. They say, “Tell us another!” They say, “What happens next?”

Oh these holidays! why will they leave us some regret? why cannot we push them back, only a week or two in our memories, so as to put them at once at that convenient distance whence they may be regarded either with a calm indifference or a pleasant effort of recollection! why will they hang about us, like the flavour of yesterday’s wine, suggestive of headaches and lassitude, and those good intentions for the future, which, under the earth, form the everlasting pavement of a large estate, and, upon it, usually endure until dinner-time or thereabouts!

Who will wonder that Barbara had a headache, or that Barbara’s mother was disposed to be cross, or that she slightly underrated Astley’s, and thought the clown was older than they had taken him to be last night? Kit was not surprised to hear her say so—not he. He had already had a misgiving that the inconstant actors in that dazzling vision had been doing the same thing the night before last, and would do it again that night, and the next, and for weeks and months to come, though he would not be there. Such is the difference between yesterday and today. We are all going to the play, or coming home from it.
-The Old Curiosity Shop

I myself have been happily free from post-holiday blues this year. Perhaps such equanimity is the curse of growing maturity, for as Dickens’s closing figure suggests, the descent into melancholy is the obverse of a glorious ascent into joy. I am sure I do not enjoy Christmas nearly so much now as I did when I was a child, for all I do not grieve its going so bitterly.

Oddly, in spite of the Christian (culturally so, for I see that it’s imputed to a medieval abbot, not to Jesus) image of the road to hell’s paving stones, this passage reminds me of the Buddhist idea of samsara, as I learned it in high school. This churning rise and fall of desire and disappointment, aspiration and disgust, does seem to be cyclical, a bit sad, and oh so human.

So, I’m thinking of starting a new tradition. As some of you may know, if I froze my to-read list tomorrow and didn’t deviate from it until I was done, it would probably still take me 5 years to finish. This means that any individual book’s claims tend to get short shrift, and there’s a sort of triage at play: oh, I need to read that as research for a project; oh, I need to read that so I can return it to its rightful owner; oh, I need to read that because I know the author. This means that if I have a whole lifetime to read a book and no greater prompting than my own curiosity or its own merits, a book may keep sliding down the list indefinitely, especially if it’s long.

Well, I want to arrest the slide somewhat. I’ve been meaning to read War and Peace forever, and I have a perfectly lovely copy of it to read, and by jiminy, I’m starting it tomorrow. Do I promise to finish it by the end of January? No. I am not insane. But I think starting off the new year with an old classic will be a good experience, and hopefully, one worth repeating next January.

Who’s with me? Have you been meaning to dive into Moby-Dick? Our Mutual Friend? Persuasion? I, Robot? (I didn’t say whose definition of classic you had to use!)

In the course of acquainting myself with Ryan‘s childhood favorites, the Star Wars: X-Wing series by Michael Stackpole, I have come up with yet another of my kooky and largely impractical theories. I call it The Antilles Theorem. It is a litmus test for (old school) Star Wars fandom. Because, let’s face it, they’re lovable movies. Many people like them but are not fans. Fans watch and rewatch and quote; some know the Expanded Universe or play the roleplaying game. Before you jump to conclusions and start talking about mouse droids and assuming your interlocutors are aware that Han shot first, I suggest applying this.

The Antilles Theorem: Any real fan of the original Star Wars series knows who Wedge Antilles is.

So you just say, “One of my favorite characters in Star Wars is Wedge Antilles,” and if the respondent says “Get clear, Wedge, you can’t do any more good back there!” or starts babbling about Rogue Squadron tie-in novels, you are gold. (Likewise if they say, “Did you know that the captain of the blockade-runner in the first scene of New Hope was going to be named Antilles too?”) If they stare blankly at you, unable to recall this crucial and beloved but secondary character, I recommend smiling kindly and keeping the conversation general.

Many Bothans died to bring you this post. You’re welcome.

Because I recently named a vehicle, this burning question has been on my mind. (Wikipedia links contain spoilers, natch.) List subject to change without notice if I remember any more awesome vessels!

1. The Millennium Falcon – “I got your promise: not a scratch?”
2. USS Enterprise-D – Icon of my formative years. I still physically wince when I watch “Cause and Effect”. Or Generations, but please, who doesn’t?
3. Serenity – My favorite episode is “Out of Gas”.
4. (SSV) Normandy – Hey, giving me a ship is a good way to engage my affections. If you have a yacht on hand, I invite you to check if this works for non-fictional craft!
5. HMS Surprise - Yes, I know there are real HMS Surprises. But none of them have Jack Aubrey’s initials carved into the cap of the masthead, which this one does.
6. USS Enterprise (-A) – It is a classic, I’ll admit.
7. The Dawn Treader
8. The White Star – Despite the dilution effect.
9. USS Defiant – It looks like an anteater, but then, my high school mascot was an aardvark.
10. Johnny Dooit’s sand-boat – From The Road to Oz. If anyone reading didn’t need to be told, then I salute you!

Our household has taken a bold leap into the future: Ryan got me a Roomba for Christmas. While I insist I’m not sure I’m ready for the ethical conundrums of robot ownership, I also admit that those questions don’t really apply to a vacuum whose intellectual capacity is less than that of a mouse droid.

A much greater quandary attends the gift Ryan received from his mom, an aerial drone you control with your iPhone. I maintain that this is patently not a robot, because it’s not autonomous. However, I was soon contradicted by the drone starting and taking off by itself when Ryan switched away from the control app. I am now convinced we’ve invited a primitive agent of Skynet into our home.

I hope the Roomba is on our side.

I also “finished” my novel, for the record, last year at about this time in longhand, and some time later on the computer. But I wouldn’t let anyone read it, so the sense of “finished” which applied — has beginning, middle and end — was pretty farcical. Also, I later determined I’d chickened out on the ending and needed a new one. This “finishing” is a big, thorough revision — not the first, but the most thoroughgoing — with giant chunks of new material and a new end. It’s a whole thing, which someone is allowed to read. That’s today’s definition of “finish”.

This is the reason I hesitate to say anything about the state of the novel in public — or at least on the internet, which is like in public but louder and more persistent — the state is not determined. I know that what I have now is not what I’ll eventually send out. (Beta readers, start your red pencils! Yes, I know none of you probably use red pencils, and one of you at least probably doesn’t own one.) I know it will require more work. But getting it to this point, the point where I feel comfortable asking anyone, even Ryan, to read the whole thing and tell me what he thinks, was a job of work. Being here is a great and dizzy relief.

And how easy it was, now that it’s behind me! All that brain-mashing and despair, and really, it wasn’t so hard. All I had to do was write it! This must be the writer’s version of the endorphin rush that makes you forget the pains of childbirth. This is how we end up having more novels, and forgetting the horrible developmental stages we thought would never end. Just check back with me when the manuscript is in its Terrible Twos, when all the beta readers tell me how much they hate it. Then we’ll see who airily speaks of knocking out another novel or three!

As usual, I read very few recent books last year. (In fact, one of my favorite reads was the Tao Te Ching, so that shows you how far back I sometimes reach for reading material.) So here, regardless of original release date, are a few more of my favorite reads of the year, along with excerpts from my reviews:

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: A sweeping novel set before and during the Nigerian-Biafran war of 1967-1970. “Each of the point-of-view characters, who differ in age, race, gender and class, traces a believable and human arc….Adichie tells a complex and disturbing story with a large, vivid cast, and draws it to an ending that feels true. A remarkable book.”

Breath Eyes Memory by Edwidge Danticat: “This book started out as a quiet little story, and ended up thundering so loud I had to fall to my knees. It has similar extremes of gentleness and brutality, sometimes intermixed in a way that is so, so human.”

The Ghost Map: The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic by Steven Johnson: Perhaps my most timely read. I took it off the ‘to-read’ list because it was the Multnomah County Library’s “Everybody Reads” book — for once, I was a joiner and I liked it! “A fascinating nonfiction book about cholera, Victorian London, epidemiology, scientific breakthroughs, social patterns, and more. As that suggests, this book ranges quite a bit in topic and scope, but the transitions are excellently accomplished, so that the reader’s mind happily follows the author from bacteria to waste removal systems and back again, forging unexpected connections and learning as it goes.”

The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America by Timothy Egan: Seeing him speak at Wordstock made me finally heed my family’s call for me to read this book. “Come for the amazing stories of survival and inferno, stay for the perspective on the history of the American West, the Forest Service and conservationism!”

None of the books I read this year bowled me over sufficiently to join my list of all-time favorites, but these were solid, finely crafted books I enjoyed reading. I hope I read even more next year — I have such a stack to enjoy!

In my fine tradition of playing games long after they come out, I finally played through Mass Effect Two a few weeks ago. As that link I just threw attests, I loved Mass Effect with the force of several exploding suns. That’s right, several. I’d be embarrassed to find out, let alone disclose, how much time I’ve spent playing that game. And that was despite its flaws: the annoying vehicle and exploration issues, repetitive planetside encounters, inventory of doom, et c.

In the first post here I went over why Mass Effect is so incredibly awesome. In another post I outlined my hopes, as a storyholic player, for the sequel.

I didn’t focus too much on the gameplay quibbles for ME1, and that means I won’t focus too much on the way they fixed most of that stuff right up. They did fix the interminable off-roading over nearly undriveable terrain in order to do very repetitive planet missions; they did streamline inventory and equipment management. In general, they made the game much less granular. In some cases, like inventory, this delights, while in others it perturbs (the new, less driveable vehicle has no visual indication of its damage level or shield level. “Volume of klaxon” is not a system I embrace) and in others it’s likely to be a matter of opinion (fewer skills is simpler, but it does reduce the breadth of tactical options.)

That sort of game crunch aside, I’d like to assess how they did on my four suggestions (and suggested titles!) from that long-ago post.

My requests:
1. Plot-fanciers like to change the world.
2. We like our interactions to affect character actions.
3. Use your backstory to more effect.
4. Animate some object interaction.

Did they implement them?
1. Oh, heavens, yes. It would have to have been a shallow universe not to notice all the stuff my Shepard did last time, and this is not a shallow universe. There were at least whispers or news reports about all my doings — heck, even my non-doings were noted (I couldn’t get the Bring Down the Sky expansion to work, so apparently the sky was brought down.) They are making the world even more rich and multifarious, which just makes you hungry for Mass Effect 3. Huzzah for consequences!

2. They made the squad member rapprochement I used as an example before into a game mechanic, so I guess so! The relationships Shepard had with her ME1 squaddies did create lots of fun results in this game. I mean, I don’t know how it would have been different if I’d played through with a more Renegade Shepard in ME1, but the interactions with former squaddies mostly seemed rich. Mostly.

3. See #2. They’ve made the squad members’ histories a big part of the game. As for the history of the universe, well, I think that ties in pretty well, too. If I see one more “a civilization used to live here but they are ALL WIPED OUT” planet description, I may cry. As for the big moral questions like the Genophage — they are plumbing the depths of those issues.

4. Yes, they animated some object interaction. Not always well — while Shepard was wondering where in this large universe the Powers that Be had hidden her boyfriend, she took a few of the proffered drinks, and let me tell you, that animation is hilariously bad — but they did it. The world seems more endowed with useful objects: not just those you can actually interact with, but those the NPCs interacted with before they were (hey, it’s Mass Effect) slaughtered. Space coffee machines! Space TVs! Heck, we now have our very own space toilets. Men’s, Women’s, and Shepard-only. It’s the little things, you know?

My titles from the previous post:
Mass Effect 2: Now with 20% More Seth Green
Mass Effect 2: Kill More Things, Take More Stuff
Mass Effect 2: James Bond vs. Spectres
Mass Effect 2: Commander Effing Shepard Beats Up Everyone
Mass Effect 2: The Search for Liara’s Daddy

They fulfilled several of these — I think that was more than 120% the previous Seth Green levels. Joker forever! — and hinted at several of the others. (Okay, black tie garb does not a Bond make, but I said ‘hinted’.)

In general, Mass Effect 2 has done a fabulous job of continuing the narrative and deepening the universe of the first one while excising some of the things even die-hard Shepards like myself found incredibly annoying. Combat is smoother: taking cover works more intuitively and consistently, and my squaddies don’t run around with “press A to talk” on them, messing up my targeting. I love some of the new mechanics: the opportunity to do Paragon or Renegade actions as interrupts gets you very engaged during interstitial scenes. The new upgrade system is more sweeping, less fiddly. The game throws some amazing twists your way. There’s a lot of stuff here I wasn’t expecting. And there are a lot of fun in-jokes and touches for geeks like me, up to and including the stirring song “I am the very model of a scientist-salarian.”

This game still knows how to throw out geek references without sounding like they’re slavishly copying the latest hip thing. Example: Starcraft II’s attempt at Firefly fan-service was to make a previously non-cowboy character into one, with horrible accent, and ape its soundtrack instrumentation. Mass Effect II does stuff like name a colony “New Canton”. Subtlety, people. Subtlety and remixing creativity allows you to have a race in your game that lives in a nomadic fleet after losing their homeworld to an AI race they themselves created, and not have it seem a cheap BSG ripoff.

The game is not perfect (but then again, what is?) Some of the loss of tactical crunch was regrettable, especially the winnowing of biotic powers that move the adversaries around. As I said, while I appreciate not having to drive over endless mountainous terrain, I don’t like the new vehicle at all. As is unavoidable in these games, a few important character choices are made for you, which feels unfair when other characters cast those choices up to you. I already wrote about the way the new breadth of potential romances makes you feel harried and beset, and I suggested a social networking solution. This game felt a little shorter than the first, which means it felt a little less replayable — but we’ll see.

They even improved on some of the things they already did well: I think the soundtrack was better, and the voice acting is even more fabulous (it was already the best I’ve heard in any game save perhaps Uncharted — perhaps they used more multiple-actor recording sessions this time?). The cosmetic customizability of the armor adds a layer to the character-customization process they carried over. Changing the Captain’s Cabin from a useless room to a retreat that holds a few useful interfaces and accumulates souvenirs was inspired.

In general, this Mass Effect amply fulfilled the promise of the first: grand, epic space opera with lots of opportunity to affect and shake the world. Complicated politics, characters you can care about, fabulous performances. There were things I really wanted to do, faces I really wanted to punch, that I couldn’t — I’m assuming those will be forthcoming. I cannot wait for Mass Effect 3, and I’m already a little sad that that will be the last installment. I want to save this universe again and again.

P.S. Alenko spoiler: Saving humanity had better count as “things settling down,” Bioware. Shepard wants her boyfriend back.

My story “Apocalypse Daily”, whose sale to Asimov’s I trumpeted in an earlier blog post, has an ETA! It is slated to appear in the June issue of Asimov’s. I will post again when I know the exact newsstand date, but I believe it will be in April.

Click through to the original announcement if you would like to read a teaser from the beginning of this story. I’m excited for it to make its debut!