My buddy Ethan has been pestering me to read this book for quite a while, and I am so happy that I finally followed his sage advice!

Live From New York is described on the cover as “an uncensored history of Saturday Night Live as told by its stars, writers, and guests.” The book is an oral history of SNL. There is almost no prose to be found in the entire 600-plus pages. Instead, the entire book is a collection of interviews with a dazzlingly dense array of the writers, performers, guest hosts, directors, producers, network executives, music coordinators, production assistants, and many, many more of the folks who worked on Saturday Night Live since the show’s inception in 1975.

Moving chronologically through the years, the books moves from one person’s recollections to another. The interviewed subjects’ comments weave in and out of one another as authors (perhaps they should almost be called editors) Tom Shales and James Andrew Miller piece together the story of the show.

And what a story. To say that Shales and Miller delved deep would be a dramatic understatement. It is staggering to see how many people they interviewed in putting together this book. The result is an incredibly revealing peek behind the curtain of how SNL got made – filled with stories of all the painful struggles and bitter disputes and moments of pure creative genius that have been going on at 30 Rock for the past 35 years.

I feel like I know a decent amount about SNL – I’ve read a lot about the show, and I’ve certainly seen many of the behind-the-scenes specials and retrospectives that have been made over the years (usually to mark one of the show’s anniversaries), but this book was filled to overflowing with stories both hilarious and heartbreaking that I had never heard before. It kicks off with a perfect opening line from Rosie Shuster (former writer for SNL, as well as former wife of Lorne Michaels) that sets the tone for the book perfectly – and things just go from there.

My personal favorite anecdote was Al Franken’s recollection of a terrible, terrible prank that he played on the women assembled for his wife’s baby shower. This page of the book had me literally howling with laughter.

The cover describes the book as uncensored, and it certainly is. Not so much in the sense of being raunchy (though it is at times!), but more to mean that this isn’t a white-washed, everyone-was-happy sort of corporate-approved history of the show. Quite the opposite – Shales and Miller seem to almost revel in all of the juicy stories of arguments and disputes and turmoil from over the years. And I loved every page of it.

I was also impressed with the book’s thoroughness. Yes, the most time, percentage-wise, is probably spent on the first five years of the show. But Shales and Miller don’t brush over any season of the show from 1975 until the book’s publication in 2003. They devote an enormous amount of pages to all of the different eras of the show, from the catastrophic Jean Doumanian season in 1976, to the Dick Ebersol years in which Eddie Murphy came to the fore, to the 1984-85 season in which SNL broke with its format to bring on already-framous stars like Billy Crystal, Martin Short, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer; to the early, tough years of Lorne Michael’s return to the show; to the years of Dana Carvey, Jon Lovitz, and Phil Hartman; to the more-recent seasons with Will Ferrell, Darell Hammond, Ana Gasteyer, Molly Shannon, and Cheri Oteri… and so many other stops in between.

The book is 600 pages long, and I could have easily kept reading for another 600 pages.

If you have any interest in television… if you have ever enjoyed Saturday Night Live… then Live From New York is not to be missed.

Whew!  At last, today, we come to the end of my journey through the Odyssey series of films and novels by Arthur C. Clarke.  Over the past several weeks I have written about 2001: A Space Odyssey the film and the novel,  the follow-up novel 2010: Odyssey Two and its film adaptation, 2010: The Year We Make Contact, and the third novel in the series, 2061: Odyssey Three.

I mentioned in my review of Odyssey Three my recollection that, when I first read this series of novels around 15 years ago, I didn’t enjoy 2061 or 3001 nearly as much as 2001 and 2010.  I wondered if my opinions would have changed now, many years later.  That didn’t turn out to be the case with 2061 (which had some fun bits but that didn’t, I felt, add anything to the epic story begun in 2001 and 2010), but I had high hopes that I would enjoy the saga’s conclusion, 3001: The Final Odyssey, more upon my rereading.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.

The novel starts out strong.  There’s an intriguing hook — the body of Frank Poole (believed to be long-dead as a result of his murder by HAL 9000) is found and resuscitated, and through his eyes we are introduced to the astounding developments of human society a millennia in the future.  I have commented before about how much I have enjoyed the scientific speculation that Mr. Clarke has woven into his Odyssey novels, in which he takes the time to explore his ideas about how science and technology might progress in our future, and how that can explain some of the sci-fi activities found in the stories.  Mr. Clarke goes to town during the first 100 pages of 3001.  As Frank learns about life in the year 3001, so too do we.  There’s a lot of fun to be had as Mr. Clarke fleshes out this world of tomorrow, and I relished all of the fascinating scientific speculation.

Unfortunately, all of that interesting set-up never leads to a story that goes anywhere.  In my review of 2061, I commented that I didn’t feel there was much significance to the goings-on in that novel — the rescue mission that provided the main thrust of the book’s plot paled in comparison to the cosmic story-lines of 2001 and 2010.  Sadly, 3001 has even less plot to speak of.  (I tried to keep things vague, but some SPOILERS are ahead, gang, so beware.)

I kept waiting for the book’s story to kick into gear, but every-time it seemed like something interesting was about to happen, things stopped cold.  After Book I (3001: The Final Odyssey is divided into six “books”), when Frank Poole once again finds himself on a ship heading for Jupiter, I started to get excited.  But hardly anything happens in Books II & III.  We get caught up a bit more with human colonization of the solar system in the year 3001, and we are provided with a lot of information about the moons of Jupiter that feels familiar and repetitive to readers of the first three novels in the saga.  Finally, at the end of Book III, Frank makes contact with the entity that once was Dave Bowman.  Aha!  Here at last things are picking up, I thought.  The confrontation between these long-separated former shipmates is going to be potent stuff, and maybe will lead us towards some definitive answers about what Dave had become, and the true nature and larger purpose of the Monoliths.

Unfortunately, after Frank and Dave exchange their first words, Mr. Clarke cuts away, shifting to a first-person narrative in which Frank recounts his meeting with Dave to one of his new colleagues.  Throughout the novel Mr. Clarke chooses to advance the plot by having one character — usually Frank — tell another what has happened.  Shakespeare was able to pull that off pretty well — Arthur C. Clarke, not so much.  I found that this device totally deflated any dramatic tension.   (Since Frank is alive and well to recount the story, clearly everything turned out OK.)

Then, before we learn anything new, Book III ends and Book IV picks up the story THIRTY YEARS LATER.  I was stunned by the total lack of consequence, significance, or impact of Dave and Frank’s meeting in Book III.  Nothing happened as a result of their encounter — clearly the universe had continued peacefully apace for three decades.

Then in Book IV, Frank receives a message from Dave — a warning.  A thousand years earlier, the Monolith transmitted a message about humanity to its far-off masters and now, at long last, the Monolith has received a reply.  Dave, who still maintains a small connection to his human origins, is afraid about what actions the Monolith might take next.  OK, I thought, maybe the whole novel to this point has been a prelude to this plot twist that would lead to much larger, universe-shaking events, and perhaps provide to some of the greater mysteries of the series that I alluded to above.

But again, this goes nowhere.  The scant information that Frank (and we the readers) learn from Dave about the Monolith were long-ago clear to careful readers of the original novel, 2001.  The terrible danger about which Dave warns Frank never seems to materialize.  And the plan that Dave and Frank devise to render the Monolith harmless to humanity is so ridiculously simplistic as to be laughable.  (Hint: Independence Day has the same ending.  That’s a bad sign.)

I have only the highest of praise for Arthur C. Clarke’s novels 2001: A Space Odyssey and 2010: Odyssey Two.  But I advise readers to stop there.  2061 is a decent story but one with zero significance to the larger Odyssey storyline, and 3001 ends with a stunning anticlimax.  I expected a novel whose subtitle is The Final Odyssey to be filled with cosmic drama on the level of the first two novels, and I had hoped that we would be provided with some answers to readers’ lingering questions in a way that would bring closure to the saga.  But that was not to be.  What a letdown.

Despite my disappointment with 2061 and 3001, it has been great fun to revisit this epic film and novel series!  I’ll be back next week with another book review, of an entirely different sort: my thoughts on the new book Looking for Calvin & Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip.  See you there!

My journey through the Odyssey series continues!  Over the past two weeks I have written about 2001: A Space Odyssey the film and the novel, as well as the follow-up novel 2010: Odyssey Two and its film adaptation, 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Only five years after writing 2010: Odyssey Two, in 1987 Arthur C. Clarke released the third Odyssey novel, 2061: Odyssey Three.  (This would prove to be the shortest span of elapsed time between the novels. 2001 was written in 1968, and Mr. Clarke did not release the final novel, 3001: The Final Odyssey, until 1997.)

Fifty years after Heywood Floyd and the crew of the Leonov’s journey to Jupiter, and the cataclysmic re-ordering of the solar system that resulted from the wakening of the Monolith they encountered there (I am being vague here so as to avoid spoiling the wonderful ending of 2010), interplanetary travel has become, if not commonplace, at least much faster and more convenient.  Mankind has established colonies on several bodies in the solar system, including the Jovian satellite Ganymede, and the wealthy Chinese tycoon Sir Lawrence has created a fleet of luxurious interplanetary space-liners.  His newest and most elaborate vessel, Universe, has been tasked with an extraordinary maiden voyage: to rendezvous with and land upon Halley’s comet, making its regular journey through our solar system.  Sir Lawrence has invited a number of world-famous celebrities to make the journey on-board Universe, including a very elderly Heywood Floyd, aged 103 (still alive and remarkably fit due to a lifetime spent living in low-gravity environments).  But this scientific (and PR) mission is cut short when news arrives that another of Lawrence’s space-liners, Galaxy, has been hijacked and forced to land on the forbidden world of Europa (go read 2010 for the full story on why mankind is not supposed to set foot on the Jovian satellite Europa).  Now Universe must speed across the solar system in an attempt to rescue the crew of Galaxy, as its crew hopes to avoid another confrontation with the Monolith (and the mysterious entities responsible for their creation).

My recollection, from the first time I read through Arthur C. Clarke’s four Odyssey novels about a decade-and-a-half ago, was that I found 2061 and 3001 to be far inferior to the first two installments.  I was curious if I would still feel the same way, re-reading those novels now.

Sadly, the answer is yes for 2061: Odyssey Three.

Don’t get me wrong: 2061 is an enjoyable read.  Mr. Clarke’s prose is engaging and fast-paced.  Although the novel is filled with Mr. Clarke’s scientific ruminations (about the mechanics of interplanetary travel; the nature of various bodies in the solar system including, in this novel, Halley’s comet; and many other digressions), the text is never dull and the story moves along at a brisk pace.

2061 boasts more of Mr. Clarke’s educated guesses at the progression of our technology, culture, etc. over the course of the next almost-century (from the time of his writing, in 1987).  I particularly enjoyed moments in chapter 3, “Reentry,” in which Mr. Clarke details a wonderfully optimistic prediction for a growing cooperation amongst the nations of the world.  He writes: “By the decade of 2020-30, a major war between Great Powers was as unthinkable as one between Canada and the United States had been in the century before.  This was not due to any vast improvement in human nature, or indeed to any single factor except the normal preference for life over death.  Much of the machinery of peace was not even consciously planned: before the politicians realized what had happened, they discovered that it was in place, and functioning well…”  It’s a lovely, utopian vision.  While Mr. Clarke did not predict the struggles with terrorist groups — groups not necessarily tied to one particular Great Power — that currently occupy a great many nations of the globe today, I certainly hope that, in the long run, his efforts at foresight on these issues prove to be as well-founded as many of his other scientific predictions!

So why do I feel that 2061: Odyssey Three is inferior to 2001 and 2010?  It is primarily a question of scale.  2001 and 2010 were both enormous, epic tales.  Those stories spanned the entire course of human history, and the events in those novels affected the very development of human evolution and the lay-out of our solar system in Mr. Clarke’s fictional universe.  2061 is a much smaller-scale adventure.  The story of a hijacked spacecraft and the attempted rescue certainly make for an interesting basis of a sci-fi story, but those events pale in significance to the cosmic nature of the stories told in the first two novels.

Given the nature of Galaxy’s predicament on Europa, readers of 2001 and 2010 might be expecting the story to lead to another significant encounter with the Monolith, or perhaps with the entity that was once Dave Bowman.  But that is not the case.  The only encounter with the Europan Monolith is a very brief moment in which two members of Galaxy’s crew land nearby, late in the novel.  There is one mysterious event that happens (which I won’t spoil here), but it is nothing of any earth-shattering significance.  Dave Bowman appears only once, at the very end of the book, in a chapter that has no real connection to the story being told.  (It’s a great chapter — one of my favorites of the entire book — but it feels more like a set-up for the final novel.)

All in all, the story feels a bit like much ado about nothing.  It’s a slight adventure story set in the universe of 2001 and 2010, but it is not a story with anything approaching the significance of the solar system-shaking events of those two novels.  It’s an enjoyable, quick read, but not much more.

On now to 3001: The Final Odyssey.  I’ll be back next week to let you know how I feel about Mr. Clarke’s conclusion to his saga!

On Monday I wrote about Arthur C. Clarke’s magnificent novel 2010: Odyssey Two.  After completing the novel, I couldn’t resist taking another look at Peter Hyams’ film adaptation, with the revised title of 2010: The Year We Make Contact.  (It’s a film I had only seen once, back in the mid ’90s on video.)

Somehow it seems acceptable to me for Mr. Clarke to choose to write a follow-up to his own novel (2001: A Space Odyssey).  Yet the idea of a movie sequel to Stanley Kubrik’s iconic and influential film — particularly a sequel helmed by another director, and one whose story would set out to answer many of the questions that Kubrik so pointedly left unanswered — seems almost sacrilegious.

2010 is not a film that should be any good.  It could have so easily wound up being Blues Brothers 2000.  And yet, somehow, while  it’s nowhere near as great as the novel, it is a far better film than it has any right to be.

Whereas Stanley Kubrik’s 2001 was slow and lyrical and notably short on any actual plot or character development, 2010 is more of an adventure film.  There is no shooting and there are no fist-fights, thank goodness.  But there’s solid narrative thrust throughout the film, as we follow Heywood Floyd (recast here as the wonderful Roy Scheider) on his odyssey towards Jupiter.  Once there, tension mounts as the mysteries deepen and an enormous potential danger is discovered.

I was very pleasantly surprised, rewatching this film, at how many talented and familiar faces make up the cast.  There’s Roy Scheider, of course, who makes a potent lead.  His Dr. Floyd is a man of great intelligence and integrity, and a bit more of an action hero than the rather administrative version of the character as played by William Sylvester in 2001.  John Lithgow plays the American engineer Walter Curnow, and he brings a lot of warmth and humanity to the role.  I was disappointed that the Indian character of Dr. Chandra, HAL 9000’s creator, was recast in the film as an American — but when that American is played by the terrific Bob Balaban, I really can’t complain.  Then there’s Helen Mirren — yes, THAT Helen Mirren — as the Russian captain of the Lenov (the vessel launched towards Jupiter in an attempt to rescue the Discovery and discover what happened to Dave Bowman).  She doesn’t have a whole lot to do in the film, but she’s great whenever she’s on screen.  It’s fun to see her in this type of sci-fi/adventure role.

While the visual effects of the film don’t quite hold up as well as those in 2001: A Space Odyssey — they don’t have quite the same degree of stately grandeur — 2010 looks pretty great for a film made back in 1984.   Leonov and Discovery are very well realized, as are the different environments of Jupiter and its moons.  The sequence in which a flaming Leonov sling-shots around Jupiter is probably the film’s dodgiest sequence, effects-wise.  But on the other hand, the tense climax — in which the Monoliths multiply on the surface of Jupiter and begin to consume the planet — comes off fantastically well.  The set design and art direction also suffer somewhat in comparison to 2001 — the sets mostly look like, well, sets — but, as with the visual effects, they’re still pretty darned good.

I give great credit to director (and screenwriter, working from Mr. Clarke’s novel) Peter Hyams for pulling this off.  He’s created a fun, tight little adventure film that honors its predecessor and seems of a piece with it, and yet doesn’t seek to slavishly emulate Mr. Kubrik’s film.  Rather, Mr. Hyams has taken the characters and settings established in 2001: A Space Odyssey and created an entirely different type of film set within that narrative “universe.”  This is a stunningly brave thing to do, and I think it’s the key ingredient to the film working as well as it does.

My main quibbles with the film mostly deal with the areas where Mr. Hyams & co. diverged from the source material.  Although, on the whole, 2010 is a pretty faithful adaptation, there were some changes that rubbed me the wrong way.  The most major change to the film was the elimination of the novel’s storyline involving the separate Chinese mission to Jupiter.  This means, for example, that in the film it has to be our heroes on the Leonov, rather than the Chinese, who make an important discovery on Europa.  That makes sense in theory, but the way that sequence was shoehorned into the story felt awkward to me.

The narrative tension from the Chinese competition has been replaced in the story by the addition of a subplot about rising Russian-American tensions back on Earth.  Here too, I understand the reasons behind this decision, but sometimes I found its execution to be awkward, as references to the problems back home had to be continually inserted into scenes so that we wouldn’t forget about it.  The is change also affected — not for the better — the very first scene of the film, in which Heywood Floyd is visited by a Russian who imparts some key information that gets the story going.  In the novel, the Russian was an old friend and colleage of Dr. Floyd’s, whereas in the film it’s established that the two have never met (I guess because of the US-Russian problems), and they have a somewhat antagonistic relationship in which they shout to speak to one another.  I get that the filmmakers wanted to emphasize that Americans and Russians aren’t really getting along — but without that prior friendship, there’s no real reason for the Russian to trust Dr. Floyd with the information that he gives him.  There was also, incredibly, a change made to the critical final message given to mankind at the end of the story.  Now this message directly addresses these political issues on Earth.  I found that change to be heavy-handed and silly, whereas Mr. Clarke’s original, briefer text made the same point far more gracefully.

But these are, on the whole, minor complaints, and they say more about my great love for Mr. Clarke’s novel as opposed to any serious problems that I have with the film.  While I’d love to see this saga brought to life using today’s visual effects tools, 2010: The Year We Make Contact stands as a very successful (if somewhat forgotten, today) science fiction film for adults, in which the issues confronted by our heroes are intellectual, scientific, and moral, and they’re not solved by shooting guns or blowing things up.  If you’re a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey, but have never seen this follow-up film, it is well-worth your time.  Hard to believe that we’re actually living, today, in the year 2010!!

Last week I wrote about Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as the novel by Arthur C. Clarke!  I enjoyed both of those so much that I decided to continue onwards with the rest of the series of novels (as well as the film sequel).

2010: Odyssey Two is one of my very favorite science fiction novels.  It’s my favorite of Mr. Clarke’s Odyssey series, superior in my opinion even to the original novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The disastrous Discovery mission of 2001 gave mankind no answers about the mysterious Monoliths and the ancient extraterrestrial entities behind their creation.  So, after several long years of work, a new mission towards Jupiter is finally ready — a joint US/Russian endeavor aboard the Leonov (named after cosmonaut Alexei Leonov).  Their mission: find the Discovery, determine what went wrong with HAL 9000 and what happened to astronaut David Bowman, and find some answers about the enormous Monolith floating in space.

Aboard Leonov is a familiar character from 2001 (the novel and the film): Heywood Floyd.  As one of the architects behind the Discovery mission, Floyd has long felt responsible for the lives lost on that doomed expedition.  He hopes that his involvement in this follow-up mission will allow him to finally answer some of the questions that have been gnawing at him for a decade, since his first glimpse of TMA-1 on the moon, and to help in some way to set things right.

Leonov is crewed with an extraordinarily skilled mix of Russian and American officers, but their journey is complicated when they learn that the Chinese have also launched a mission to Jupiter, one that will beat them to Discovery by several weeks.  When the entity once known as Dave Bowman returns to Earth, and the Monolith in orbit of Jupiter begins to multiply, the successful completion of Leonov’s mission might take a back-seat to the preservation of their lives.

2010: Odyssey Two is a ripping yarn.  It is a much faster-paced tale than 2001, one filled with a lot more narrative twists and turns.  In addition, I enjoyed Mr. Clarke’s increased emphasis on character development in this installment.  The Leonov has a large, diverse crew, and over the course of the novel I felt that we got to know each member of the team better than pretty much any character in 2001.  Also, 2010 is, I think, superior to 2001 in that it has a central protagonist, Heywood Floyd, who readers can invest in and follow through the tale.  Now, 2010: Odyssey Two isn’t a character study, that’s for sure.  It’s clear that Mr. Clarke’s interest lies far more in the science fiction story being told than he is in delving deeply into the inner lives of his characters.  But I enjoyed getting to know the crew of the Leonov, and setting up Heywood Floyd as the main character was a smart decision.

But the great joy, of course, of 2010: Odyssey Two is the way it answers many of the intriguing questions left hanging by 2001.  Whereas 2001 was the set-up, 2010 is the follow-through.  We get to learn a great deal more about what exactly happened to Dave Bowman after his encounter with the Monolith.  Even more intriguingly, we learn the purpose of the enormous Monolith floating out by Jupiter.  (This is one of the novel’s biggest twists, and I still consider it a kicker even when re-reading the novel knowing what’s coming.)  After the monumental and famously cryptic 2001: A Space Odyssey, it would be all-too-easy for a sequel intended to answer some of those famously unanswered questions to be a let-down.  I am happy to report that that is not at all the case here.  No midichlorians to be found.

As with 2001, here in Odyssey Two Mr. Clarke puts his apparently extensive scientific knowledge to use in telling the story.  2010 takes the reader on what is essentially a tour of the solar system.  In particular, Mr. Clarke spends a great deal of time describing the environments on the various Jovian satellites, around which much of the major action of the story is set.  Written in 1982, much of this description is pure extrapolation — Mr. Clarke’s highly-educated guesswork based on the knowledge available at the time.  That he hit so close to the mark in so many places is astounding — and what few guesses have been proven wrong don’t detract in any way from the descriptions in the novel “feeling” right.

The only aspect of the novel that took me somewhat aback was its inconsistency with Mr. Clarke’s original 2001 novel.  In his introduction, Mr. Clarke writes that where 2001 the novel and the film differed, he decided to make 2010 consistent with 2001 the film.  I suppose that makes a certain amount of sense, as probably more people saw the film than read the novel.  But reading 2010 immediately after finishing reading 2001 was a weird experience because of those inconsistencies.

I mentioned in my review of 2001 the novel that one of the areas in which the novel and the film differed was that in the film, Discovery’s destination (and the location of the Monolith) was Jupiter, whereas in the novel it was Saturn.  Here in 2010, the Monolith is described as being located near Jupiter as seen in the film — and all references to the Discovery mission refer to Jupiter not Saturn.  Additionally, over the course of the Leonov crew’s investigations into what went wrong with the Discovery, there are a lot of references to Frank and Dave’s confrontations with HAL.  Many of these references describe events that occurred in the film but not the novel (such as Dave’s use of explosive decompression to re-enter Discovery when HAL refuses to open the pod bay doors).  This was a bit confusing for me, and I was surprised by Mr. Clarke’s choice to contradict his own novel in favor of the film version.

But this is a minor quibble overall.  2010: Odyssey Two is a towering work: big and bold and epic.  Mr. Clarke brings the wonders of our solar system, and the exciting potential of space exploration, to vivid life.  It makes me a little sad, frankly, that the world of interplanetary travel as described by Mr. Clarke is still, now that we’re living in the year 2010, quite a ways away.  Luckily, we still have our science fiction.

I’ll be back on Wednesday with my thoughts on Peter Hyams’ film adaptation of 2010, and next week I’ll be here to tell you about Arthur C. Clarke’s 2061: Odyssey Three!

On Monday I wrote about Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

After re-watching that film last month, I was driven to pick up Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001: A Space Odyssey off my book-shelf to re-read that as well.

I had read all four of Arthur C. Clarke’s Odyssey novels many years ago, back when I was in college.  After so thoroughly enjoying seeing 2001 the film again, I was excited to take another look at the novel.  As Mr. Clarke explains in the introduction (to the 25th anniversary edition, which is what I have), the novel and the film were created simultaneously.  Neither was an adaptation of the other, which is pretty unique.  Instead, Kubrick and Clarke developed the story together.  Then, while Mr. Kubrick assembled his film, Mr. Clarke crafted his novel.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a terrific read.  It succeeds as an engaging creation in its own right, and also as a fascinating companion to Mr. Kubrick’s film.

The novel and the film share many similarities.  Since they were created simultaneously and in partnership, the basic structure of both tales is identical.  There are none of the dramatic revisions found in even the best film adaptations of novels, which is refreshing.  The themes and “tone” of both works are remarkably similar.

The novel also shares some of the film’s, er, more challenging aspects.  There isn’t a whole heck of a lot of “plot” that actually happens over the course of the tale.  And the somewhat episodic structure (in which the story is divided into several distinct parts, set in different locations and wildly differing eras of human history) is unusual, to say the least, and provides something of an obstacle to the narrative building up a full head of steam.  (Just when we’re “settling in” to one setting and group of characters, the story moves away from that location, never to return.)

There are also a number of interesting differences between the novel and the film.  In the film, Discovery’s ultimate goal (and the location of Dave Bowman’s encounter with the Monolith) is Jupiter, whereas in the novel it is Saturn.  (Indeed, Mr. Clarke devotes a decent chunk of time towards describing the mechanics of Discovery’s journey through the solar system towards Saturn.)  One of the film’s most iconic sequences, in which Dave and Frank discuss their concern over HAL’s increasingly erratic behavior while hiding in one of Discovery’s small pods (in an attempt prevent HAL from hearing their discussion which proves fruitless when HAL reads their lips) never occurs in the novel.  There’s also a lengthy stretch of time, in the book, in between the final confrontation with HAL and Dave’s decision to leave the ship to investigate the Monolith.  In the novel, it seems, Discovery is still a ways away from its final destination when things go wrong with HAL, so several chapters are devoted to the next few months in which Dave must attempt to control Discovery on his own in order to arrive at their final destination.

What’s really interesting to me is the way the novel sheds light on some of the film’s more enigmatic aspects.  Whereas Kubrick used, for the most part, a combination of imagery and music to tell his story (and very little dialogue), Mr. Clarke, of course, must rely on his descriptive narration.  As a not-surprising result, Mr. Clarke’s telling of the story brings a lot of clarity to the elements left more mysteriously open-ended by the film.

In the “dawn of man” segment, for example, 2001 the novel makes clear that the Monolith was studying, and eventually influencing, the development of early man.  There’s an intriguing sequence in the novel in which we read of several stages of the Monolith’s experiments on these early apes.  In the chapter entitled “The New Rock,” we read: ”They could never guess that their minds were being probed, their bodies mapped, their reactions studied, their potentials evaluated.”  Thus what is implied in the movie is spelled out more specifically by the novel.

The enigmatic end sequence of the story is also significantly clarified by the novel.  First of all, the title of the novel’s final section, “Into the Star-Gate,” clarifies that what Dave Bowman encountered in orbit of Saturn (Jupiter in the film) was, in fact, a star-gate.  (The trippy lights Bowman witnesses in the film could be interpreted many different ways.)  In the novel, what Bowman encounters is much closer to what Elie Arroway encounters in Contact: a sort of Grand Central Station in deep space — a complex system of interstellar gates that shunt him indescribably far from his solar system of origin.

What happens next to Dave Bowman is elaborated significantly from the glimpses we were given in the film.  This elaboration is one of my favorite parts of the novel.  Not only do we get a more fully fleshed-out culmination of Dave’s journey, but also Mr. Clarke’s prose connects us more strongly to him and what he is thinking and feeling than did the film.  This provides a powerful grounding to the incredible things that happen to Dave once he travels through the star-gate.

I also enjoyed the novel’s brief, but tantalizing, glimpses into the nature of the powerful, ancient entities who created the monoliths.  The film leaves this entirely to our imaginations.  One could make a strong argument that that is a STRENGTH, rather than a weakness of the film.  I would probably agree.  Nevertheless, it is fun to get a little bit more information in the novel.  Chapter 37, “Experiment,” gives us some wonderful hints.  Here’s an excerpt, describing these entities: “And because, in all the galaxy, they had found nothing more precious than Mind, they encouraged its dawning everywhere.  They became farmers in the field of stars; they sowed, and sometimes they reaped.  And sometimes, dispassionately, they had to weed.”

In my review of 2001 the film, I discussed the significant portions of the film’s run-time that Stanley Kubrick devoted to immersing us in the realities of the world that he was creating (such as all the logistical ins-and-outs of Heywood Floyd’s journey from the Earth to the moon).  Arthur C. Clarke does that as well, and more.  Part of the fun of 2001, the novel, is the way in which Mr. Clarke delves deeply into the details of the extrapolated reality of the near-future.  Mr. Clarke’s scientific background and keep intellect allowed him to posit some very educated guesses about life in the future — from the nature of the Jovian satellites (and remember, the novel was written before man had set foot on the moon!!) to the technological advances that we would achieve by the end of the 20th century.

(Chapter 9 contains both a terrific example of Mr. Clarke’s educated guesswork as well as one of the few things that he guessed wrong about — well, other than our not having moon-bases by the year 2001!  He describes Heywood Floyd’s small “newspad,” an electronic device that Floyd uses to scan all of the world’s newspapers, even while traveling.  This newspad sounds remarkably similar to the many pocket-sized devices that we use today to access the internet from any place we choose.  So where did Mr. Clarke go wrong?  He writes that “the text was updated automatically on every hour” — whereas we all know that internet headlines can be updated every minute!)

It was a delight to dive back into Arthur C. Clarke’s novel 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It’s a quick, engrossing read — heady, cerebral sci-fi at its best.  I enjoyed re-reading the novel so much that I have decided to revisit Mr. Clarke’s three sequels as well.  I’ll be back next week with my thoughts on 2010: Odyssey Two!  (And I guess I’ll probably take another look at the film adaptation of that novel as well, while I’m at it!  Should be fun!)  See you soon…

Deep Space Nine remains, by an order of magnitude, my favorite of the Star Trek series.  Not surprisingly, then, it was the terrific DS9 relaunch of novels set after the series finale (which I wrote about in depth here) that rekindled my interest in (and love for) Pocket Books’ Star Trek novels.

But after the publication of David Mack’s phenomenal novel Warpath in April, 2006, the DS9 relaunch series hit something of a snag.  Warpath ended on a brutal cliffhanger, bur for whatever reason the next installment in the series, Fearful Symmetry, wasn’t scheduled to be published until a year later.  Unfortunately, it was actually over TWO years until that next novel was finally published (written by Olivia Woods, a different author than the one originally announced) in July, 2008.  Fearful Symmetry wound up being one of the shortest DS9 novels published (in the relaunch series, at least), and then we all had to wait still another year for the next novel: The Soul Key, also written by Olivia Woods, released this past August.

Such a long a wait put a lot of pressure on The Soul Key.  Things were exacerbated even more (in my mind, at least), when, a few months ago, Pocket Books released their schedule of novels for 2010.  Only one DS9 novel was included, and according to the description it will be set several years after the events of the entire DS9 relaunch series of novels, so that it can be a part of next year’s “Typhon Pact” Next Gen crossover story.  That sounds like a cool novel, but one that will be much more about the post-Destiny Next Gen stories as opposed to all of the DS9-centric stories of the DS9 relaunch.  So it might be another two years at least before more actual DS9 proper novels are published.  All of that means that Ms. Woods’ two novels (Fearful Symmetry and The Soul Key) could conceivably be the only new DS9 relaunch stories published for FIVE years.

That means that The Soul Key would have to be really magnificent to live up to all of the expectation placed upon it.  Sadly, it is not.

Although not as short as Fearful Symmetry, The Soul Key is still a fairly short novel — and it feels even shorter than it actually is.  That might be because, while there is a lot of PLOT covered in this novel (we do, at last, get some resolution to several of the story-lines that have been running through the past several DS9 novels, which means the last several YEARS of my life), there doesn’t seem to be a whole heck of a lot of depth to the proceedings.  Many of the great previous DS9 novels really explored individual characters (like Garak in A Stitch in Time) and/or explored in detail the situations that certain characters found themselves in (such as, just to pick a recent example from Warpath, the page-count Mr. Mack expends to involve the reader in Ensign Tenmei’s experience as a captive of the Jem’Hadar soldier Taranatar).  I didn’t really feel that depth in The Soul Key — the story moved along at such a brisk pace — boom, boom boom — that I didn’t really feel like sufficient time was spent focusing on any of the events that occurred.  There’s nothing wrong with fast-paced story-telling — that can make for a really exciting, action-packed novel (as Warpath was), but to me it almost felt as if Ms. Woods was just in a rush to get some of these long-running story-lines resolved already.

I also felt that Ms. Woods spent way too much time in the first half of the novel filling us in on the back-story of the characters and situations (particularly that of the two Iliana Ghemors).  This back-story is interesting stuff, but I really felt that it should have been included in the previous novel, Fearful Symmetry, whose raison d’etre seemed to me to have been the filling-in of important backstory before the story-lines moved forward.  I have no idea why some of this important info was left out of Fearful Symmetry.  It’s inclusion in that novel would have helped Fearful Symmetry feel like more of a complete story, and it would have left more room in this novel for the events depicted herein to be fleshed out more.

So… is there anything that I liked about Fearful Symmetry?  Well, yes.  There is a lot of exciting action here, and there is (as noted above), some nice resolution (finally) to some long-running story-lines.  Most of the major DS9 players have a role to play in the proceedings, which I appreciated.  In particular, I’ve been really enjoying the continued development of the created-in-the-novels character of Elias Vaughn, who gets some more tough breaks here.

I was also happy to see that, as the novel reached its conclusion, we got some tantalizing hints that other long-building DS9 story-lines (such as the emergence of the mysterious and dangerous Ascendants) had not been forgotten.  (And — small spoiler alert!! — I was quite surprised and pleased to read about the return of the Even Odds to the storyline.)  Who knows when the DS9 saga will continue (in addition to the lack of DS9 in the 2010 schedule, Pocket Books’ Star Trek line has been in upheaval recently with the firing, within the past year, of the two editors primarily responsible for shepherding the Trek novels: Marco Palmieri and Margaret Clark), but the final pages of The Soul Key give me hope that the same story-lines and questions that are on my mind are also on the minds of the Trek authors, and that we will see these stories continue (and reach a hopefully compelling conclusion).

I just hope I don’t have to wait too many more years!!

Pocket Books did publish one additional DS9 novel this past summer, albeit one that didn’t directly connect to the main story-line: The Never-Ending Sacrifice, by Una McCormack.  Was I more satisfied by that novel than I was by The Soul Key?  Indeed I was!!  I’ll be posting my thoughts on that novel next Friday.  For now, have a great weekend!

Alan Moore is one of the undisputed masters of the comic book form, and that’s putting things mildly.  He has authored a quite astounding body of work, including V For Vendetta, From Hell, and, of course, the magnum opus that is Watchmen.

TwoMorrows Publishing has, for the past few years, been publishing a wonderful series called Modern Masters, in which they spotlight a variety of the greatest artists in the field: Alan Davis, George Perez, Arthur Adams, John Byrne, etc.  The format of those books (I suppose I should call them books — they are the size of magazines, but they are square-bound and much lengthier than your average magazine) is a lengthy one-on-one interview with the subject.  Through these series of in-depth questions and answers, the reader is taken on a detailed journey through the life and career of the subject, and is also given great insight into his/her style, approach, and techniques.

First published in 2003, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore adheres to the format of the Modern Masters series.  The entire work is a lengthy interview with Mr. Moore, conducted by George Khoury.  But while the Modern Masters volumes are all in-depth, this work puts those volumes to shame, clocking in at a hefty 237 pages.  The new “Indispensable Edition,” which is what I have, was published a few months back, presumably with the intention of meeting the renewed interest in Mr. Moore’s work following the release of the Watchmen movie.  This new edition has a great new interview with Mr. Moore, conducted in 2008, that serves as a fine epilogue to the whole piece.

For anyone who has ever read and enjoyed any of Alan Moore’s amazing comic books, I cannot recommend this publication highly enough.  I thought that the early chapters, dealing with Moore’s youth and childhood, would be boring — but Mr. Moore’s wit brought great humor to those stories of his “early days.”  And once the story moves to his break-though stint writing Swamp Thing, the narrative really kicks into high gear.  The book is filled with behind-the-scenes stories of Moore’s time working on all of his seminal works.  I’ve read a good deal over the years, for example, about his run on Swamp Thing and the making of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, etc., but the stories found here quickly move beyond the familiar “legends” connected with those projects.  It’s endlessly fascinating to hear Moore’s thoughts on the development of those works, as well as his opinions about them now, looking back.  (I was quite interested to read about the reasons for his dislike, for example, of The Killing Joke, which — despite his feelings — I continue to regard as one of the definitive Batman stories.)  I was also pleased that the book spends a significant amount of time discussing some of Moore’s less well-known works, from the tantalizingly unfinished Big Numbers, to his time writing for Jim Lee’s Wildstorm and Rob Liefeld’s Awesome Comics universes, to his well-regarded but all-too-brief (to me, at least) development of his very own comic book “universe,” America’s Best Comics.

As if anything else was needed, The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore is supplemented by a number of illustrated tributes to Mr. Moore by some of his best artistic collaborators: Brian Bolland, Rick Veitch, John Totleben, Mark Buckingham, Dave Gibbons, Chris Sprouse, and more.  There is also a wealth of imagery from all of Moore’s varied works that accompanies each page of the interview, including some great samples of his earlier, hard-to-find work from 2000 A.D. and other British publications.  I was also tickled to see that lots of samples of Mr. Moore’s own illustration work was included.  I had read that Moore had a decent talent for illustration himself, but I was quite blown away by the skill of his work (even drawings from 20-30 years ago!!) that was reprinted here.  The man has talent, that’s for damn sure.

I thought it would take me a while to read The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore in its entirety, but it was so enjoyable and fascinating that I blew through it at great speed.  Now I want to go back and read all of the Alan Moore comic books in my collection!!  (And I also have a list of other projects by Mr. Moore that I need to track down, such as A Small Killing, which he apparently holds in great esteem.)  For any comic book fan, this is indeed an indispensable work.

You can find more about The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore, the Modern Masters series, and lots of other fine TwoMorrow publications at www.twomorrows.com.

Yesterday I began reviewing a collection of short-stories entitled The Sky’s the Limit, which was part of Pocket Books’ 20th anniversary salute to Star Trek: The Next Generation.   In my last post, I reviewed the stories set during the run of the Next Gen TV show.  Today I’ll turn my attention to the stories set after “All Good Things,” Next Gen’s series finale.

‘Twould Ring the Bells of Heaven, by Amy Sisson — Set soon after the events of “All Good Things,” this tale finds Deanna Troi leading an away team assigned to help a group of scientists studying the ring system of a planet nicknamed Heaven.  There are some interesting scientific notions mixed into the story, which I enjoyed, and a nice sci-fi mystery.  It was a good idea to focus on Counselor Troi at this point in Next Gen’s history, as she began stepping into more of a leadership role among the Enterprise’s command structure.

Friends with the Sparrows, by Christopher L. Bennett — The classic Next Gen episode “Darmok” introduced us to the Children of Tama, a race of aliens who speak only in metaphor.  With this story, Mr. Bennett really dives into many of the fascinating questions that a consideration of that episode would bring: How do the Tamarians teach their vocabulary to their children?  How do they communicate technical information?  How do they convey to one another the full stories behind their myths in the first place?  It’s hard to avoid asking those questions after having watched “Darmok” a few times, and I was tickled by Mr. Bennett’s attempts to provide answers and flesh out Tamarian culture.  This story also focuses on Data’s struggles with his emotion chip (from Star Trek: Generations).  That aspect of the story is a quite a leap beyond what we saw of Data in that film, but nonetheless works when you consider how many more challenges Data must have had to struggle with (beyond what we saw in Generations) in terms of adjusting to his newfound emotions.  (I should also mention that this story contains the best line in the entire collection: “Mirab-his-sails-unfurled factor what, sir?”  Brilliant.)

Suicide Note, by Geoff Trowbridge — After the Federation’s alliance with the Romulan Empire (to fight against the Dominion, as depicted in the later seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine), Captain Picard is finally in a position to fulfill a promise made long before.  In the excellent third-season episode “The Defector” (one of the first scripts by Ronald D. Moore), Romulan Admiral Jarok defects to the Federation in an effort to prevent the outbreak of war.  When he discovers that he has been deceived (the evidence he thought he had discovered of Romulan war plans was just an elaborate test of his loyalty), the Admiral kills himself, leaving a message to his wife that Picard promises to one day deliver.  This is a wonderful, emotional story, and a great follow-up to a classic episode.  Just terrific.

Four Lights, by Keith R.A. DeCandido — Another great follow up to a classic Next Gen episode.  In the waning days of the Dominion War, Captain Picard and the U.S.S. Enterprise-E rescue a Cardassian survivor from a Dominion attack — Gul Madred, the Cardassian who brutally tortured Picard in the two-part episode “Chains of Command.”  Major credit to Mr. DeCandido for choosing to follow up on such a fascinating dangling story-line.  I was enjoyably surprised at the unexpected ways that Picard’s interactions with Madred unfolded.  I also loved the glimpse into just what the crew of the Enterprise was up to during the tumultuous years of the Dominion conflict.  This is a fertile ground for stories, and while a few novels have given us glimpses of some of the Enterprise’s adventures during this time period, I still feel that there are still a lot more stories to be told…

‘Til Death, by Bob Ingersoll & Thomas F. Zahler — When a terrible attack on an away mission leaves Will Riker near death just a few weeks before his marriage to Deanna Troi, he must contemplate what his final message to his imzadi could possibly be.  This is a sweet story with some fascinating connections to an episode of the Original Series.  But I must confess to some disappointment.  When I saw that there was a Riker story in this collection set before Star Trek: Nemesis, I had hoped that it would shed some light on something the films glossed over: what really prompted Riker and Troi, after years of friendship on board the Enterprise, to finally decide to resume their romantic relationship and then get married?  Yes, I know they hooked up under the sort-of-influence of the youthful properties of the Briar Patch in Star Trek: Insurrection, but was that really the only reason?  I’ve always felt there was more to that story.  This is nothing against ‘Til Death — it’s a lovely tale.  Just not the story I was hoping for.

On the Spot, by David A. McIntee — Worf deals with adopting Spot after Data’s demise in Star Trek: Nemesis, and a bizarre alien creature causes trouble on board the Enterprise.  Portions of this story are told from Spot’s perspective.  That’s an interesting choice, but not one that appealed to me.

Trust Yourself When All Men Doubt You, by Michael Schuster & Steve Mollmann — At a crossroads after the traumatic events of Star Trek: Nemesis, Jean-Luc Picard must decide whether he his truly ready to resume command of the Enterprise.  He finds some comfort in a letter to him written years earlier by Captain Thomas Halloway.  This final story is a nice bookend to the first story, also by Mr. Schuster and Mr. Mollmann, and the revelation of Captain Halloway’s ultimate fate is a powerful one.  If I have a complaint, it’s that the resolution of Picard’s emotional turmoil is a little too easy.  I think Picard’s mental state following the events of Nemesis probably warranted a longer story.

So there you have it.  The Sky’s the Limit is a terrifically entertaining collection of stories from some of Pocket Books’ most talented authors.  I really enjoyed the variety of the stories — they cover the entire time-period of the Next Generation and spread the focus amongst all of the characters.  While some stories spoke to me more than others, the over-all quality was very high.  In the end, it’s a worthy salute to The Next Generation, and reading this book made me want to go back and watch many of the episodes referenced within.  What more could I ask?

2007 was, believe it or not, the TWENTIETH anniversary of the launch of the very first Star Trek spin-off, Star Trek: The Next Generation.  The pilot episode, “Encounter at Farpoint,” is terribly clunky when looked at today, but as a kid watching that very first episode I was blown away, and hooked for life.

During 2007, Pocket Books released a number of great novels celebrating Next Gen’s 20th anniversary, but one that I missed was a short-story anthology called The Sky’s The Limit.  I’m glad that I have remedied my oversight, because this collection is a delight.  The fourteen stories are presented chronologically, spanning the years between a time immediately before “Encounter at Farpoint,” and the time immediately after the last Next Gen feature film, Star Trek: Nemesis.

Meet with Triumph and Disaster, by Michael Schuster & Steve Mollmann — As Starfleet prepares for the launch of the Enterprise-D, the man who supervised her construction, Captain Thomas Halloway, is faced with a momentous choice.  One of the shortest stories in the collection, it’s a great introduction to the era of Next Gen, and a delightful fleshing out of a man only glimpsed very briefly in one episode.

Acts of Compassion, by Dayton ward & Kevin Dilmore — Beverly Crusher and Tasha Yar are tasked with seeing to the safe return of three Starfleet Officers who were captured in Cardassian territory.  Needless to say, the mission hits a few bumps along the way.  I was glad to see that Tasha was not ignored by the authors contributing to this anthology, and I really enjoyed this glimpse at the relationship between these two women.  I can’t think of any first-season episodes that gave us much information about how Tasha and Beverly interacted, but Ward & Dilmore do a great job in conveying the very different ways that these two officers viewed the world.

Redshift, by Richard C. White — Set during Next Gen’s second season, this story focuses on the early days aboard the Enterprise of new Chief Medical Officer Dr. Katherine Pulaski.  Pulaski was an interesting character who, I feel, was done a disservice by the writers when she vanished off the show at the end of that season.  It’s nice to see her character fleshed out here, and White creates a crackling adventure scenario that keeps the story moving.

Among the Clouds, by Scott Pearson –A mishap in the lower stratosphere of a Jovian planet sends Geordi LaForge plummeting down through the clouds of ammonia ice to his certain death.  The story moves at a rapid pace, bouncing back and forth between the events that lead to Geordi’s situation and his efforts to save himself.  This is a wonderful story of exploration, and Mr. Pearson creates a vivid alien world in his depiction of this planet and the strange life that the Enterprise crew discovers living within it.  There’s a nice grounding in real science mixed with some delightful sci-fi extrapolation, all wrapped up in a great story of Geordi’s good heart and incredible engineering abilities.  One of my favorite stories in the collection.

Thinking of You, by Greg Cox — Mr. Cox sends some love towards two great Next Gen supporting characters: Ensign Ro and Lieutenant Reginald Barclay.  The unlikely pair is sent to provide engineering assistance to Lwaxana Troi, but quickly find themselves caught up in a diplomatic negotiation gone terribly wrong.  Cox has a great ear for writing the dialogue of these three distinct characters — I loved the way he bounces the three of them off one another.  There are also some fascinating digressions that explore the dynamics of just how a holodeck would work.  Great stuff.

Turncoats, by Susan Schwartz — This story is a follow-up to the sixth season episode, “Face of the Enemy.”  I am not a big fan of that episode, but was nonetheless taken by this tale.  ”Face of the Enemy” introduced the character of Stefan DeSeve, a Federation defector to Romulus who returns to the Federation bearing critical information from Ambassador Spock.  That is an intriguing idea for a character, but DeSeve doesn’t get a lot of attention in the episode — he’s there more as a plot device, and after the episode he’s never heard from again.  Ms. Schwartz sets out to tell us more of his story.  It’s an interesting choice, to focus on so minor a character, but the result was successful (although I was less taken by the Enterprise-in-jeopardy side of the tale, as that didn’t seem to track all that consistently from where “Face of the Enemy” had left off).

Ordinary Days, by James Swallow — My favorite story in this collection.  Wesley Crusher is married and living on Dorvan V when Starfleet informs the colonists that they need to relocate, because a new treaty has ceded the planet to the Cardassians.  When the colonists resist the idea of leaving their home, Starfleet sends the U.S.S. Enterprise, commanded by Edward Jellico, to supervise their relocation.  This story is a bittersweet, emotional glimpse at the life that young Wesley Crusher COULD have lived, had he suppressed his unique gifts in an effort to live a more ordinary life.  The story unfolds at a leisurely pace, allowing the reader to slowly discover what is going on (and also to get to know and sympathize with Wesley in a way that we seldom did on the show).  Mr. Swallow resists any urge to present things simplistically — while Wesley’s absence from the Enterprise resulted in some terrible tragedies befalling that ship and crew, in many ways Wesley was able to find a home and personal connections in this life that he never did in the life we saw him live over the years of Next Gen.  Ordinary Days is a sweet, sad story, and it’s absolutely dynamite.

I’ll be back on Friday to discuss the rest of the short stories from The Sky’s the Limit, set during the period of the Next Gen movies.  See you then!

Click here for a terrific three-essay series that delves into the first three Indiana Jones films.  These are all really well-written pieces, filled to the brim with love for the cinematic adventures of Dr. Jones.

Clever tourists wrecking the world one monument at a time.  Don’t think — just follow that link.  You won’t regret it.

Click here for a fascinating list of the twenty best non-fiction books for people who think they hate to read non-fiction.  I need to get on this, having only read two of the items on this list!

I’m not exactly recommending this lengthy essay, because I disagree with it wildly, but it’s sort of bizarrely fascinating two see two individuals who really don’t seem to like Star Trek at all go on an enormous length about it as they revisit the first six Trek films.  (Well, one of the two authors seems to be a fan, but he doesn’t seem to put up much of a fight whenever the other one bashes the series.)

Speaking of Trek, here is a link to a lengthy, fascinating Q & A that’s been going on over at Trekmovie.com between Star Trek screenwriters Bob Orci & Alex Kurtzman and a number of fans who, like me, had lots of questions about elements of the new movie’s plots.  I really respect Mr. Orci for engaging with the fans in this way — though I feel most of his responses are pretty flimsy.  Check it out and see what you think.  (UPDATE:  Still MORE Q & A with Mr. Orci & Mr. Kurtzman can be found here!)

It’s pretty obvious that the new Star Trek movie was pretty heavily influenced by the action and dynamism of Star Wars.  But have you considered just how deep those similarities run?  Shocking!  (And hysterical.)

Let’s close with three intriguing trailers: Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Junior, the bizarre-looking Nine and (can you believe it?) Toy Story 3.

That should keep you all good and busy until tomorrow!  See you back here then!

After my lengthy series of posts about Star Trek novels from last month, I bet people think that’s all I read.  And, its true, sci-fi novels make up the bulk of my regular reading list.  But every now and then I do branch out, and I’d like to share several great books I’ve recently read that peak behind the scenes of Hollywoodland.

What Just Happened?, by Art Linson — Mr. Linson has been a producer in Hollywood for a few decades now, and this book covers a period of several years in the late ’90s in which he went to work for 20th Century Fox and proceeded to produce a large number of bombs.  Now, did these movies bomb because of bad luck and ridiculous studio politics and lack of support (as Mr. Linson contends), or is Linson just bereft of talent?  Well, I don’t know the man, so I can’t really judge.  But either way, this book is relentlessly entertaining as Linson takes us through the making of several movies that, to put it gently, did not do well.  Linson is a good storyteller, and in the book he focuses on anecdotes — putting the reader right in the middle of a series of hilarious (and painful for the people involved in them) situations.  We join Linson as he tries to deal with Alec Baldwin who, tapped to play the young and handsome photographer in the David Mamet-scripted The Edge, shows up to the set overweight and bearing an enormous mountain-man beard which he refuses to shave.  We see him trying to respond when studio head Tom Rothman asserts that they absolutely positively cannot cast Gwyneth Paltrow in Great Expectations because she has no chin.  We see him flummoxed the day he finds out that a central scene in that movie, that of a young man sketching his female paramour in the nude, is also a centerpiece of another soon-to-be-released Fox movie, James Cameron’s Titanic.  And we’re right there with him the first time he and David Fincher screen Fight Club for a room full of horrified Fox execs.  

If there’s any weakness to the book, its the framing device that Linson uses for these anecdotes — that of a series of lunches he has with a former studio head.  There are some funny interactions between these two, but each time the book cut back to their lunches, I kept thinking “let’s get back to the real stories!”  Despite this, Linson’s book is really engaging — and at less than 200 pages, you’ll breeze right through it.  Its a lot of fun.

By the way, this book is being adapted into a film starring Robert DeNiro.  (This is very amusing, since in the book Linson makes a number of references to his friendship with DeNiro, and to his many failed attempts to get DeNiro to star in one of his pictures.)  Two trailers have been released — you can see them here and here.  It looks from the trailer like the movie is a fictionalized story of the making of a film that incorporates many of the real-life stories that Linson detailed in his book.  By the way, they’ve also released the version of the Alec Baldwin beard-shaving argument, in which it is Bruce Willis who is refusing to trim his locks.  Check that out here.

Billion-Dollar Kiss: The Kiss That Saved Dawson’s Creek and Other Adventures in TV Writing, by Jeffrey Stepakoff — Since Dawson’s Creek isn’t exactly the type of TV show that I watch (to put it mildly), one wouldn’t think that this book would be of any interest to me.  But there’s much more to this book than just stories from the Creek.   It is partly a memoir of Stepakoff’s twenty years as a TV writer, freelancing scripts as well as spending several seasons on staff at TV shows as varied as The Wonder Years, Sisters, and eventually Dawson’s Creek, and partly a history of the TV industry during that time.  We first meet Stepakoff as a completely inexperienced college graduate who heads to LA right at the start of what he describes as a Hollywood gold-rush for writers, in which the studios began to throw huge amounts of money at any writer they felt had a hint of buzz.  We follow his early efforts at writing spec scripts, getting an agent, and finally winding up as a staff writer on The Wonder Years.  Stepakoff takes us through the explosion of writers in the late nineties and the collapse of the market for writers in the early aughts, as the number of writers all competing for a limited number of staff positions on TV shows reached its breaking point at the same time as the networks began having great success with reality programming that did not require highly-paid union writers.  Stepakoff balances stories of many of his bizarre and wonderful experiences working for various shows with a detailed but easy to understand description of the various ins-and-outs of the industry.  This includes details about the salaries available for writers at various levels of the staff writers’ totem pole, the way studio and network politics can impact the quality of a new or established series, and the structure of the Hollywood year from pilot season onward.  

Stepakoff is a skilled writer, and he is able to write well about various background topics (salaries, contracts, etc.) that might otherwise seem dry.  And he has lead quite an interesting life for the last twenty years, working on a number of successful and not-so-successful shows, so he doesn’t have to work too hard to make his stories interesting.  I will admit that there were some times, when he would go into great detail about the enormous amount of money he was making as a “baby writer” in Hollywood, that I started to lose my connection with his stories.  How could I empathize with someone making such an insane amount of money??  But the exorbitant sums thrown at young writers in the ’90s is an important part of the rise-and-fall-and-hopefully-rise-again story of writers in Hollywood that Stepakoff is telling, so I suppose those details are important.  Overall, its a great work.  I’ll definitely be paying attention for his name as I read  the credits for current and upcoming shows.

After reading What Just Happened? and Billion-Dollar Kiss, I decided to revisit one of my very favorite works about adventures in Hollywood:

Fortune and Glory, by Brian Michael Bendis — Mr. Bendis has become, over the past few years, one of the pre-eminent writers working in comic books today.  He’s one of the top stars at Marvel Comics, responsible for writing books such as The Avengers, Ultimate Spider-Man, the current company-wide crossover Secret Invasion, and many others.  Bendis started out in the world of independent publishing, writing and illustrating several (really great) black-and-white crime comics: Goldfish, Jinx, Torso, and others.  Fortune and Glory is a graphic novel written and drawn by Bendis (it was originally published as a three-issue series by Oni Press in 1999-2000), that follows his experiences trying to get his series Goldfish (and, later, his series Torso) made into movies, in hilarious detail.

Well, needless to say if you’re thinking to yourself, I don’t remember seeing Goldfish or Torso playing at my local google-plex, well, that’s ‘cuz they never got made.  (Maybe someday???  One hopes!!)  But the story of how these films sort-of-almost-nearly got made is the subject of this fall-on-the-floor-laughing work.  From Bendis’ opening explanation of what it means to be in alternative comics (”alternative to what?  I don’t know…alternative to popular?”), to his initial contacts with Hollywood (”Pauly Shore is Goldfish!”), his attempts to pitch Goldfish (”Is this one of those comic books?  Man, I hate those comic books!”), his attempts to pitch Torso (”This Elliot Ness.  Who owns him?”), and lots more fun and ridiculous goings-on in between, this is a tough work to put down.  (It’s also got a terrific title.)

If Billion-Dollar Kiss helped me understand why there are a lot of crappy TV shows out there, then Fortune and Glory helps me understand why there are a lot of crappy movies.  The comic is — I say again — absolutely hilarious.  I can’t recommend it higher.  Check it out!