“We Love Deena” by Alice Sola Kim
Filed Under: Recommended Media, Short Story
Strange Horizons Fiction: We Love Deena, by Alice Sola Kim, illustration by Hellen JoIt’s the classic tale of love lost, obsessive love. Girl meet edgy girl, who kills people professionally for the government. Girl loses edgy girl. Girl possesses half the other women on the planet attempting to seduce edgy girl once more. Haven’t we read this one a million times before?
Well, no, actually. This is actually pretty good. The protagonist is believable, even sympathetic in her stalker ways. The story moves along at a very nice clip, and it ends in the only way it could. I’ve never heard of Alice Sola Kim before, but I will be looking forward to more.
Still have that death obsession going a little, Strange Horizons. This story was perky, but still kinda dark and twisted like everything else lately.
Why Giant Mecha Robots Are Totally Awesome
Filed Under: Speculative Fiction, Top Post
Sci-fi rant: Why giant mecha robots are stupid | Geekend | TechRepublic.com
Jay Garmon has written a very well thought-out article on why giant mecha robots are stupid and will never work. I am afraid I must provide a counter to this article. Giant mecha robots are also totally awesome, and I think he’s wrong. Here’s why:
1. Collateral damage.
Okay, so yeah, it’s hard to make robots that can walk bipedally. They fall over a lot. That’s part of the charm! Who wants a giant robot that doesn’t smash everything in it’s path? Tanks can roll over cars and stuff, but can they shove other tanks so that they go flying through the air, crashing into skyscrapers and causing massive gasline explosions everywhere? No? Tanks are stupid.
2. Giant energy swords are awesome.
Robot hands exist on giant mecha so that they can wield giant energy swords. Do you think lightsabers are cool? Of course you do. A four story energy sword is like, 400 times more awesome than a lightsaber. That alone is enough reason for me to have giant mecha hands. However, there is one other thing that Jay Garmon has overlooked here. If giant mecha robots did not have all-purpose hands, they could not rescue kittens from trees. You are not going to build a special kitten-rescuing attachment for a mecha. That would just be silly.
3. Giant Mecha Robots make cool sounds.
If I could fill my iPod with just the sounds of giant mecha robots walking around and shooting up shit, that is all I would ever listen to. And millions of people just like me would do the same. The music industry would collapse. Thanks to giant mecha robots. Bonus!
4. Giant Mecha robots are our only defense against the Daikaiju threat.
What else are we going to build to protect us from giant monsters? As the recent Daikaiju documentary Cloverfield demonstrates, conventional military weaponry is not sufficient to defend our citizens against the menace of giant monsters that rise up from the sea. As to the cost? $725 million is a small price to pay to prevent some damage to New York City. I say some damage of course, because it is inevitable that in fending off the beast, the giant mecha robots will do considerable damage itself. But sometimes you have to burn the village to save it.
5. Giant Mecha battles will be cooler than any other sport ever made.
Giant mecha wars will be televised. All the violence of Ultimate Fighting combined with the metal-on-metal crunching of demolition derby. Sports bars will turn to the Giant Mecha Battles channel and throw away the remote. All other sports will fall before the juggernaut of Giant Mecha Robot Wars!
6. Giant Mecha Robots when damaged explode.
Some giant robots will undoubtedly be powered by nuclear reactors. I think you know what that means. Explosions are totally awesome. If you cannot agree to this, you should stop reading my blog.So there it is. Six very good reasons why, despite the cost and technical difficulties, we will build mecha robots. Because they’re totally awesome should be the only reason we make anything at all.
This post brought to you by the Infernocrusher Movement.
Memories of Africa
Filed Under: Science
Besides my ostrich encounter, there were really only two occasions where I felt that my life was threatened by wildlife in Kenya. There were several occasions of fearing for my life involving other people, but that’s another post.The incident happened in Tsavo. Tsavo is famous for one thing in particular. Man-eating lions. Around the turn of the century, Colonel Patterson was tasked with building a bridge for the British Empire (a bridge that still stands today, and is not remotely impressive). He watched in horror as worker after worker (mostly “coolies” from India) were dragged away, killed, and devoured. Eventually, Patterson killed two lions, but only after unbelievable difficulties. The lions were named The Ghost and The Darkness, and a film about this incident starring Val Kilmer came out in the mid-90s. The lions’ bodies are on display in the Chicago Museum of Natural History. They are male lions, but they have no manes. None of the male lions in Tsavo have them. Upon seeing the area, you would immediately realize why.
Tsavo was green and dense with thorny thicket when we camped there. It was not like the rest of the African savannah. It is almost certain that the male lions of Tsavo do not have manes because if they did, they would never make it ten feet through the underbrush.
The first night we made camp, we could hear lions roaring as the sun set. It was the first time we had heard anything like it, and we were all thrilled. We put our tents, which were made for three people. After an evening around the fire, we all retired to our tents. I slept for a few hours, but woke some time after midnight with a pressing need to ah, relieve myself. There was only one problem.
The roaring continued, but it was much, much closer now. Without opening the tent, it sounded as if a lion was not more than 30 yards away. Another lion was answering this lion from the opposite side of our camp.
I tried to hold it as best I could, but eventually, I absolutely had to go to the bathroom. I roused my tent mates and we opened the ten flap just a bit and pointed our flashlights into the darkness. The eyes of something flashed green at the very edge of the light. The roaring stopped.
“Okay,” I said. “I’m going to step right outside the tent, and piss to the left. You guy watch those eyes, and if they start coming towards me, say something.” And that’s what I did. It seemed like I was urinating the contents of a small ocean. I kept my eyes on my business and did not look at the lion. If I did, I, well, froze up. Finally, I squeezed out the last drop of fluid and not even pausing to zip my fly, I dove inside the tent.
The eyes never moved. We sealed up the tent and went back to sleep as best we could with massive cats roaring all night. In the morning, the lions were gone.
I can’t remember where the second brush with death happened. It was either Tsavo also, or Amboseli. We were riding in a Land Rover down a muddy road in the park, and the brush was fairly thick on either side of the road. Everything that wasn’t green with life was a dark red from the clay mud. Wildlife was hard to spot. I stood on my seat, holding onto the edges of the hole in the roof, and scanned with binoculars, looking for something interesting. Then, the driver spotted it.
A bull elephant came out of the brush not even twenty feet from us. His skin was streaked red, and his tusks were almost four feet long. He took a hesitant step, then flared his great ears forward. I snapped a shot with my camera. Then, he charged.
Our driver gunned the engine, and we tore off down the road. The elephant stopped in the road behind us and raised his trunk in disdain. For less than a second, I was pretty sure I was going to be thrown from the Rover and trampled to death. Everyone in the vehicle laughed hysterically, and I mean that literally, for half an hour afterward.
