David J. Williams

So the plan seemed simple enough: retire the Shuttle in 2010 and bring the new spaceship online in 2015 (at the absolute earliest). And in the meantime, pay the Russians to deliver astronauts to the International Space Station via the Soyuz. After all, they’re dirt poor and need hard currency, right? And since the Berlin Wall collapsed they’ve been more than happy to help out whenever we need it, right?

But now there’s Georgia. And the realization that if our diplomatic relations with Russia turn to shit, it’s going to difficult to persuade Moscow to continue to provide the world’s most expensive taxi service. All the more so as allowing NASA to contract with Russia will require Congress to pass a special waiver, as the Washington Post reports this morning. Which is highly unlikely to happen in an election year.  And even less likely to happen in a year in which Russian tanks are busy plowing Georgia.

Of course, the real question is What the Hell Did We Expect?  Defense Secretary Gates was quoted this morning as saying that Russia’s Georgian incursion has “called into question the entire premise” of U.S.-Russian relations.  That premise being, I suppose, that we can do whatever we want on Russia’s borders and if they say anything about it, then they hate freedom almost as much as, well, everybody else.  And when it turns out we can’t hitch a ride on the Soyuz, you can be sure the prez (whoever that might be) will decry Russia’s attempt to dominate the entire solar system.  Georgia today, tomorrow Mars:  it’s certainly a better gameplan than anything NASA has managed to come up with.

With the invasion of Georgia, Russia has signaled that reports of her demise are greatly exaggerated, and more than a little premature. Thanks in part to the U.S. being mired in an endless Middle Eastern war, Russia is in a position to define a sphere of influence, and operate within it with impunity. Many are focusing on the legalisms involved: in particularly, how the secession of Kosovo from Serbia opened up the door for Russia to play the same game in South Ossetia/Georgia. But the truth of the matter is that U.S. moves in eastern Europe (in particular the prospect of U.S. missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic) meant that Russia has been backed into a corner. Now we see her response.

And we’re also getting a glimpse of the new face of warfare. Even as the tanks started to roll, it became evident that Georgia was under massive cyberattack; now the New York Times has reported that this online incursion (or rehearsals for it) commenced last month. The NYT calls this the “first time that a known cyberattack has coincided with a shooting war”, which I find strange, as there’s more than a little evidence that the U.S. did the same thing in its assault on Iraq in 2003 (and if they didn’t, then they were fools not to).  At any rate, it won’t be the last.

But the exact contours of this new type of war will take some while to play out.  As with space warfare, the topography of cyberwarfare remains relatively undefined.  A fascinating article in Wired pointed out how some countries are cyberlocked:  just as a landlocked country has no access to the sea, cyberlocked countries rely to too great an extent on nearby countries for their access to the net.  (In this case, Georgia is dependent to an alarming degree on Russia infrastructure.)  The road from here to THE MIRRORED HEAVENS (in which the World Wide Net actually sunders along geopolitical lines) remains a long one, but I think we’re starting to see the first signs of it.

And meanwhile Georgia had better pray the cease-fire holds.  Vladimir Putin may not use computers, but he’s pretty good at employing people who do.

During my WorldCon roundup yesterday, I mentioned that my agent Jenny Rappaport first embarked upon her literary career during junior high. And now, in a stunning move, she has published on her blog the long-lost story “The Tragic Demise of the Quack-Quacks.” Written by Jenny when she was in the seventh grade, this legendary tale is packed full of surprise twists and teaches us a valuable lesson on the capriciousness of life. I particularly like the fact that we first meet two of the lovable duck characters when they’re dead.

Moments after they’ve killed each other.

By drowning.

And now you know you have no choice but to read on.

In no particular order:

The NORAD tour. What could be more fun than hanging out in the chambers from which World War Three would have been fought? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Having dinner with the folks from io9: I met editor Annalee Newitz on the NORAD tour; later in the con, I had the chance to hang out more with her and news editor Charlie Jane Anders. It was awesome to find that the io9 overlords are just as witty in-person as they are online.  Plus the Mongolian stir-fry BBQ that they suggested rocked.

Clarion 07 classmate Derek Zumsteg one-upping Tor editor David Hartwell during the Clarion panel: following Hartwell’s comment about Seattle being a “swamp filled with half-formed egos”, Zumsteg shot back without missing a beat about New York City and all its “fully formed egos.”  Incidentally, Zumsteg has a story in Asimov’s this month, so check it out.

Hanging out with Gail Carriger:  Never heard of her?  You will.  Two years ago she and I were prowling the LA WorldCon as members of the wannabee novelist crew.  And now we’ve both made the Big Leap:  Gail just signed a two book deal with Orbit; her first novel, SOULLESS, will be out next year, and looks cool as hell.  So does Gail, for that matter.  This is a writer with some serious style.  I predict great things.

Mary Robinette Kowal’s Campbell win:  Her stories rock, and (taking nothing away from the other contenders) it’s nice to see that the Campbell doesn’t automatically go to the person with the biggest novel deal.  Plus, I’ve never seen anyone more radiant than Kowal subsequent to the award.  John Scalzi posted earlier today about the moment when the Hugo winners came past the Hyatt bar; it was pretty surreal to watch from the sidelines.

Elizabeth Bear’s Hugo win:   Bear officially makes the transition from rising star to full-on star, and it’s about time.  #$ awesome.  As is winning story Tidelines.

Drinks with superagent Jenny Rappaport:  who I met at the WorldCon two years ago, and is the reason why MIRRORED HEAVENS is published.  But that’s nothing compared to hearing about her own writings, in particular being treated to a synopsis of her very first short story, written when she was in the fourth grade:  The Tragic Demise of the Quack-Quacks.  She promised me she’d post it on her blog some day; I hope that day is soon.

Getting back home to D.C.:  it’s been a while.  ‘Nuff said for now.

Thanks to both the awesome Jeff Carlson and the Slush God, I found myself part of a group of SF writers touring NORAD today. NORAD, of course, is North American Aerospace Defense Command, and boy was it a trip. Some of the day’s recollections:

The front-door: That holy shit moment when (having passed through checkpoints and gotten on a military bus) we saw THE tunnel . . . the one I’ve seen so many times in movies and never once for real, leading into the depths of Cheyenne Mountain. . .

The blast-doors: At the bottom of the tunnel are the blast-doors. There are two, turned perpendicular so as to allow a blast to sideswipe them; behind them are caves within which are  . . .

Rooms on springs:  If your bunker doesn’t have springs, then you don’t have a bunker.  The most secure area of NORAD is a series of rooms/shells mounted on springs in order to ride out shock-waves.

Without power, they’re just caves:  The bulk of NORAD is infrastructure built to ensure that the complex continues to run even if everything’s anarchy outside and zombies are combing the countryside looking for meat.  And yet, given the base’s current resources, it would apparently need resupply within a month.  A fellow member of the tour suggested that this was disinformation; I would be inclined to think that it’s the honest truth, particularly given that . . . .

Without the Soviets, it’s all just window-dressing:    Because as impressive as the place is, it belongs to a different era.  The main hemisphere-scanning functions are now carried out by nearby Peterson Air Base, and NORAD has been relegated to redundancy and standby.  Officially the Pentagon has done this because the U.S. is no longer threatened by massive nuclear attack; unofficially one might also note that the precision targeting of the latest nuclear weapons would turn the mountain into a smoking crater.  Our tour’s directors were pretty frank with us about NORAD’s current standby situation, but were legitimately proud of the base’s history.  The image that will remain with me for a long time were the sealed-up doorways that were far smaller than a blast-door but far larger than a normal door.  Decades ago, mainframe computers were hauled through those openings and commissioned as the core of yesteryear’s NORAD.  Now those machines have vanished, along with the enemy they once stood watch for.

A duck that will never quack:  Yeah, you read that right.  Look, here’s the thing:  in the depths of NORAD is a reservoir, contained behind a small dam and leading into underwater caves.  But floating on the water is what looks for all the world like a duck.  Or rather, a fake duck/hunter’s decoy:  one that NORAD maintenance divers placed on the surface to allow them to tell which way is up and thereby escape disorientation.  They may have succeeded, but any newcomer to the world beneath the mountain won’t.

It seems kinda fitting that today is also the first day of Worldcon. I’m in Denver right now, after a few days in the British Columbia wilderness. More to come later.

My Riddick post of earlier this week led to a flurry of comments, all of them weighing in about how much they loved the movie and how sad it is that we’re unlikely to see any more of them since Chronicles tanked at the box office. Strangely enough, not one person went on about how much they thought the movie sucked, and that’s a shame, because I was really hoping for some hate mail.

But I can’t stop thinking about Riddick and the vital question of Where It All Went Wrong. One commenter shared my unease with the whole Furyan legend, and I have to think this is getting to the root of the problem. There was (and correct me if I’m wrong) not even a hint of this whole mythos in Pitch Black, and one wonders how sequels would have fared had they just stuck to the Riddick-as-bad-ass without invoking the supernatural, the Underverse, and all that other potentially way-too-heavy baggage.

That said, I still think one of the biggest strengths of Chronicles is that it didn’t try to just do a Pitch Black 2. And now that I’ve done some more digging, I can’t say that I’m surprised to find out that Pitch Black 2 is precisely the direction that Hollywood was originally looking to take the movie.  Apparently Twohy initially handed the writing job to David Hayter, who proceeded to produce yet another Riddick vs. the Monsters flick.  Maybe it was great, maybe it was lame:  the only guy who’s read it and shared his thoughts online thought it was pretty much an Aliens 2 ripoff, and there’s no question that there would have been a high bar to clear to avoid that resemblance.  There’s also mention of another Riddick/Monsters script that may or may not have been a rewrite; it’s tough to judge a movie based on one lame excerpt, but the excerpt cited in this article certainly sounds it was part of a really awful script.

Unless United Airlines screws me, I’ll be reading at University Bookstore in Seattle at 7 p.m. tomorrow night. And just in the nick of time, the Seattle Times has weighed in with a really cool review. It’s been too long since I was Northwest—can’t wait.

After the success of Pitch Black, director David Twohy was planning an epic Riddick trilogy, of which this movie would be the first. But when Chronicles tanked at the box office, the next two movies were scrapped, and Universal Studios contented itself with spinning off video games to recoup their losses: an effort that was assisted by the Chronicles DVD, which apparently sold pretty well. But the grander dreams were over. All that was left of a franchise that Twohy had hoped would dominate the SF landscape were fragments scattered here and there: two very different movies, those video games, and a couple of animated shorts.

And that’s a goddamn shame. Because I saw Chronicles again last night, and christ does it kick ass. The sweeping planetscapes (c’mon, any list of top ten SF planets would have to include Crematoria), the demented neo-gothic spaceships, the over-the-top costuming, and the nonstop action: Twohy and his team got a lot of stuff right. And Vin Diesel is a fucking star throughout:  he’s got undeniable charisma, and some really great lines too.  (“Shoulda taken the money, Toomes.”)

But I’m curious to hear what YOU guys think.  There are obviously a lot of folks out there who hated this movie, and this is your big opportunity to weigh in and tell me what you thought sucked.  Me, I think the movie’s central failing was the thing I like the most about it:  Twohy could have just made Pitch Black 2, but he elected to take things in a totally different direction, and take some chances while he was doing it.  Or maybe they should have stuck with the original Riddick origin legend—instead of him being a Furian, perhaps the original explanation of how he got his eyes fixed by a rogue surgeon on a prison planet was more in keeping with the gritty universe that Pitch Black was hinting at.  Or maybe 2004 just wasn’t ready for a big-budget, no-holds-barred, unapologetic space opera.

It’s too bad, though, because I for one would be up for a couple more.

Greetings from San Francisco, where the sun has appeared in brief intervals these last couple of days, but other than that is maintaining a resolute absence. Which is fine by me, coming from the East Coast where the heat’s like walking into a wall. Yesterday’s book signing at Borderlands went well, though the real star of the show at that place is Ripley the Demonic Cat. And the non-feline staff were great as well: owner Alan Beatts (who turned me on to Sean McMullen’s Souls in the Great Machine, which looks awesome), Jude Feldman, and Cary Heater. I wish there were stores like that in D.C., but D.C. ain’t exactly an SF town. (Go into a video store, and SF is usually under action/adventure, and there ain’t much of it anyway.  I could speculate on why D.C. is so inclined, but maybe that’s best saved for another post.)

Anyway, I have a confession to make:  I never made it to Comic Con on Saturday.  My friend and I drove to the beach and chilled there.  Sorry folks.  Two days of it were awesome, but I needed some fresh air after that.  But the cool folks at Bantam have posted a video of me signing books while I simultaneously make witty banter with the ComicCon masses.  You can check it out here.