Having said all that, I'm a died-in-the-wool Star Wars fan, and I can't pass up the opportunity to see that universe back on the big screen.  So I got tickets online for my local theater.  And that's where my distaste for modern theaters is proven correct again.  They service-charged me for getting my tickets early.  Except that I didn't really get them early.  I had to print the email, bring it with me to the theater, along with the credit card I used to buy the tickets.  How is that worth the service charge?  And they didn't tell me that I had to do all that until after I "purchased" the tickets.

We arrived at the theater, got our commemorative glasses, and got our seats.  It turns out I shouldn't have bothered to get my tickets early, because there were only about 10 of us in the theater, and we were the first ones there anyway.  The trailers eventually started, and I expected to get blown away by the 3D on those movies that were designed with it in mind, but I really wasn't.  It could have been our theater, but there was a slight background "echo" of the image that was distracting.  We saw trailers for The Lorax, Paranorman, and the new Spider-Man, and while there were a couple moments that gave me the "wow" feeling that I wanted, they were few and far between.  In reality, the things I liked most about those trailers would have worked perfectly well in 2D, such as using Spider-Man's point of view while working his way across the city, including flipping the view upside-down when he was walking on a ceiling.

Then the feature started. My feelings about the movie itself are unchanged.  It's still a confused mess.  The 3D worked okay for things like the space battles, the pod race, and the final battle between the Jedis and Darth Maul.  In fact, the shot of Obi-Wan hanging in the tube made for a wonderful perspective shot.  They also did some interesting things in order to accentuate the perspective from the flat, 2D film, such as adding window frames to the foreground to add depth to long-shots.  Unfortunately, though, one of the ways they did this in medium and close-up shots was to blur the background, which gave the background a "rear-projection" feel, so that it seemed as if the background wasn't really there (which it wasn't in most of the shots, since they were doing green-screen, but the green-screen work in the original still felt present, rather than added later).

At any rate, the conversion was at least partly successful, but I'm still not impressed with the 3D technology.  I suspect that it was a combination of my theater and the hype and recommendations I've gotten that got my expectations too high.  I will probably see the other five movies in 3D, because how can I not?  But I have to console myself with the fact that I'm not seeing them for the 3D, I'm seeing them because I love Star Wars, and I prefer it on the big screen.

Case in point, I was ecstatic to find that they were finally releasing Asimov's Elijah Baley books. I preordered them so that they would show up on my Nook as soon as they were available. I remembered reading and loving these books as a teenager, and I was actively watching for their release.

Having reread them, I'm not sure why I was so taken with them.

Basically, they are science-fiction mystery books. The main character, Elijah Baley, is a detective on Earth. Assigned to solve various mysteries, he is accompanied by his unwelcome (at least, at first) partner, R. Daneel Olivaw. The R stands for robot. But Daneel is a special robot, even by robot standards, as he is almost unmistakably human-like.

The first book, The Caves of Steel, introduces the characters and their world, where Earth has been left behind by those who have settled fifty other worlds. Those settlers, referred to as Spacers, consider themselves vastly superior to their forebears on Earth, who have consolidated themselves in massive city complexes where thing like weather and even sunlight are all but forgotten. Baley, with Olivaw's help, must solve the murder of a Spacer with Earth's position in the galaxy in the balance.

The second book, The Naked Sun, takes Baley off Earth to the planet Solaria to solve the murder of another Spacer, reuniting him with Olivaw and introducing the dead Spacer's wife, Gladia. Once again, Earth's position in the galaxy rides on Baley's ability to solve what is essentially a locked room mystery.

Lastly, the third book, which I've been reading this week, is The Robots of Dawn, which takes Baley off-world again to solve another "murder", this time of a human-like robot in the service of a relocated Gladia. Not to sound like a broken record (shouldn't that phrase really be a scratched record?), but Earth's position in the galaxy depends on Baley's ability to solve the murder, as does his own position within Earth's police force.

In the first two books, quite a bit of time is spent with Baley making bad guesses about what was going on. For example, in the first book, he spends an entire chapter detailing Baley's supposition that Olivaw wasn't really a robot, when simply having Baley, a supposedly good detective, ask Olivaw, who must obey orders from humans, to prove his robotic nature would have shortened the book considerably.

The second book also spends quite a bit of time dealing with Baley's newly-discovered agoraphobia. Having been raised in the all-encompassing City on Earth, Baley hasn't spent any time out in the open. Asimov constructs many contrived situations that force Baley into the open, only to spend needless pages on the consequences. Baley supposedly can't solve the case without traveling to interview the witnesses instead of using a three-dimensional video phone, yet there's nothing in what he discovers that proves him right in that respect.

The worst, by far, is the third book. Firstly, Asimov uses this book as an opportunity to tie together all his previous robot books and short stories, by referring to Susan Calvin, and his Foundation novels thanks to continual references to psychohistory. In addition, there is a secret, mostly unimportant to the story, but leading up to the reveal, Asimov can't resist making little off-hand references to it, which on rereading come off as smug, almost as if Asimov needed to point out how much smarter he was than the reader. Lastly, he also breaks one of my cardinal rules of writing by making many references to a hard-to-find short story starring the pair. If you intend to spend pages referring to a short story, you might be better served just including the story.

These books are fine for what they are, but now I'd be hard-pressed to give them more than a passing grade. The first two are better than the third, but not by much.

Last weekend found me making my way to Portland, Oregon, for the Stumptown 2011 comic convention. The main reason was due to the fact the Larry Marder, creator of Tales of the Beanworld, was going to be there signing books and giving a talk about the origins of the Beanworld and where he's going to be taking the series in the next couple of years.

Recently, the series has been reprinted in smaller hardcovers, and a whole new story was also released in the same format. The next book in the series had been previously announced, but at the talk he revealed plans to publish a thinner volume collecting missing stories including the story from Asylum, his online-only story, and his holiday special.

While I was there I also had him sign my copies of the hardcovers (I had him sign my issues and trade paperbacks a couple years ago at a previous Stumptown) and also bought a couple pieces of art, including a Mr. Spook that I requested since he didn't already have one for sale. You can see those above, along with the piece I bought at the earlier Stumptown.

I also bought a couple books from some other creators, including one by Phil Foglio. I always enjoyed his work at DC and it was great getting to meet him.

Daredevil: The Devil's Hand TPB: It seems like forever since the last trade came out.  This one tells the tale of Daredevil's taking over the Hand (a group of assassins who have plagued his life for years) and his first couple of "missions" leading them. This was the first storyline written and drawn by the new team of Andy Diggle and Roberto De La Torre, respectively, and I certainly enjoyed it.  I would have preferred there to have been a bit more movement in the story, as there was quite a bit of political machinations by the Kingpin, and some obvious contrivances with repect to Matt Murdock's support team of Foggy Nelson and Dakota North.  However, the story itself was interesting and the art ranged from good to excellent.

Ms. Marvel: Best You Can Be TPB: In this book, Ms. Marvel tracks down Mystique because she believes that Mystique is impersonating Captain Marvel and attacking Kree-religion churches, but discovers she has a much larger plot.  While the first issue in this book has extremely uneven art, the rest of the art in the book was stunning, and the writing was great.  However, the editor should be replaced.  In one issue, Ms. Marvel supposedly takes someone 500 miles in 5 minutes, but in the next she claims that she can fly 700 miles in 2 hours if she's going flat out.  In showing that flight from San Francisco to Seattle, they show her flying north with Mount Rainier behind her.  For those Pacific-Northwest-impaired, that would mean she's in Eastern Washington, and couldn't be a straight-line flight as she said it was.  Otherwise, it was a great book in a great series.

The New Avengers: Luke Cage TPB: This book covers three stories.  In the first, Luke Cage goes to Philadelphia to help an old friend stop an incoming drug shipment.  This story was okay, but the art by Eric Canete was awful, and I'm not a big fan of stories where a superhero faces off against normal thugs.  It seems like a waste of a super-hero story.  After all, how big a hero can they be when they really have no possibility of losing?  The other two were fun, meaningless, one-off stories.  It also includes a reprint of the first issue of Luke Cage's original series, Hero for Hire.

 Captain America Reborn TPB: This is another that I was looking forward to, much like Wolverine: Old Man Logan.  Thankfully, this one was much better.  It tells the story of the return of Steve Rogers, who was killed at the end of the sort-of-recent Civil War series.  I did feel that too much of Ed Brubaker's story was spent telling snippets of Steve Rogers's past, but the art by Bryan Hitch and Butch Guice was good and, overall, the story was entertaining and held my interest throughout.

That's it for today.  I should be back later this week with more books I've read.  I still have a couple of Marvel TPBs to go, as well as three (soon to be four) weeks of regular issues.

Adventure Comics #518: Unfortunately, my copy had a binding/printing issue that affected both the Legion story and the Atom backup.

Batgirl #14: A great story that attempts to re-establish a link between Batgirl and Supergirl.  The worst thing about this issue for me was that it reminds me what we lost thanks to Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Batman #703: Finally, they allow Dick Grayson to do something and use the fact that he's Batman, rather than writing Batman in such a way that it doesn't matter who's wearing the costume.  However, once again they can't decide how long Bruce Wayne has been Batman, saying that he fought Getaway Genius ten years ago.  Up till recently, hasn't Bruce Wayne only been Batman for five years or so?  I guess Damian proves that wrong, but still they need to get their story straight.

Batman and Robin #14: Admittedly, I'm not a fan of Grant Morrison's current writing style.  Moreover, I really hate the way he writes Batman, particularly with respect to Batman's villains.  Morrison's point of view is, apparently, that Batman only fights villains who are insane and who speak in non sequiturs.  Unfortunately, that makes his stories totally incomprehensible for me anymore.

Batman: Odyssey #3: I can't believe this series is scheduled to go to 13 issues.  Neal Adams's art is great, but his writing is mediocre at best.  I don't remember Talia even acting the way he writes her in this issue, and since when does "water" rhyme with "order" (a sub-plot in the story depends on this rhyme)?

Booster Gold #36: Keith Giffen writes an okay story, but it's obvious that he's at his best when his writing is tempered by J. M. DeMatteis.  And really, Estrogina? It's official, all the hero names have been taken if this is the best he could come up with.

Doc Savage #6: The Doc Savage story plods along, and I have an idea they don't know where they are going with it.  The Avenger story begins a new arc, and was intruiging.  Generally I've enjoyed the backup stories more than the main stories, and I'm a fan of the Doc Savage pulps.

Doctor Solar #2: While this issue was certainly better than the first, and much better than the first issue of Magnus, Robot Fighter, it appears that Jim Shooter has forgotten that kids occasionally read comics.  I wouldn't want my kid reading this one.

 More to come later this week, I promise.

Take Action Comics #544.  A true anniversary issue, it celebrated Action Comics' 45th year by introducing changes to both Lex Luthor and Brainiac in the form of a power suit for Lex and a whole new body for Brainiac.  Admittedly, this issue did have multiple stories (two, as opposed to the recent milestone books having three), but they weren't serving as prologues for new series, nor were they introducing new creative teams: three of the four creators were the regular writers and artist of either Action Comics or Superman.  What was special about these stories was the changes they introduced.  Lex had been relatively unchanged since the '40s, and Brainiac was unchanged since near his introduction in the early '60s.

How about Brave and the Bold #200? This milestone issue teamed up Batman with, well, Batman, umm, sort of.  The first part of the story, with art meant to invoke a Golden Age style, chronicled a showdown between the Golden Age Batman (of Earth-2) and one of his villains.  When that villain is defeated, he takes over the body of his Earth-1 counterpart in our present, facing off against the modern-day Batman.  By this time, the Golden Age Batman was long-dead, so stories starring him were rare, and Brave and the Bold was almost the only place outside of Justice League of America where we could get stories of Earth-2.  Admittedly, this was the final issue of the series, and it had a "pull-out preview" (a bit of a joke, since the book was perfect-bound, meaning that pulling out the preview was nearly impossible) for the series it was effectively becoming, Batman and the Outsiders, but the star of the issue is truly the "team-up" story.

The early and mid-'80s also saw the return of the annual at DC Comics.  And those early annuals were special.  Take All-Star Squadron Annual #1.  In it, Roy Thomas linked together the origins of three golden-age heroes with boxing in their pasts, retelling their origins along the way.  Such a large story demanded the space given in an annual in order to tell its story.  And Legion of Super-Heroes Annual #2 featured a marriage between two long-time characters.  Justice League of America Annual #2, for better or for worse, featured a new direction for the team, bringing them back down to Earth and moving the team to Detroit. 

One thing to notice about all of these annuals is that they featured the creative team of the regular book.  There was also little "padding" in these books.  There were few, if any, pinups or backup stories or diagrams of headquarters.  They just had a great, important story that seemed like a special issue of the regular series.

I miss these events being treated as they used to.  I believe the recent special issues could have been so much better if they had focussed a bit more on one special story, rather than the three each that we were given.  It would also have been nice if the books celebrated the milestone rather than the fact that the books can't keep a steady team of creators.  Hopefully, DC and Marvel will one again treat these issues as the grand occasions that they should be, but until then, seek out earlier special issues.

Building on so many plot threads of the season, the Pandorica was first mentioned in the Weeping Angels two-parter by River Song.  Supposedly it contains the worst creature in the universe, a creature that frightens even the worst races of the galaxy, such as the Daleks, the Cybermen, and the Sontarans. As a side note, I don't know how the Sontarans are considered among the worst.  It's not like they can hit anything with their weapons.  Of course, the same can be said of the Daleks and the Cybermen, so maybe worst means worst shots.

At any rate, when River mentioned the Pandorica, the Doctor blew it off as a myth, but this episode shows that it is no children's story.  The episode ends on quite the cliffhanger, with the revelation of what's in the Pandorica, and River trapped away from both the Doctor and Amy, and with Amy's fate revealed, we are going screaming into the series finale.

Now, my quibble.  I knew something had been bothering me when I watched the episode, but it took a comment by someone else who'd seen the episode to make me realize what it was.  River, in searching Amy's house, found a picture of Amy standing with Rory who was dressed up for Halloween or a fancy dress party or something like that.  Given what's happened to Rory, how could that picture be there?  In addition, how could she remember Rory's last name later in the episode?  I trust Moffatt, so I'm sure there's a reason.  Moffatt seems to be inclined to make the Doctor more fallable, so I suspect it will turn out that the Doctor is wrong as to what happened to Rory and that will explain my problem with the episode.

Problem aside, this was a great episode and does nothing so much as make me anxious for the finale.

I should have known that the show was going in the right direction when they chose Stephan Moffatt, the man who has written all of my favorite episodes of the newer series, to guide the show when Russell Davies stepped down.  His best, in my opinion, was Blink, a story that used time-travel very well, and showed that Moffatt could take something ubiquitous like stone garden angels and make them creepy and down-right frightening.

At any rate, since I like Moffatt so much, I should have trusted his choice of Smith.  And to a point I did, but Smith has far exceeded my expectations.  The first episode, Eleventh Hour, showed that he could be funny and warm, but still have a touch of menace.  The episode showed the kind of Doctor that Smith was going to be: Protective of children, curious about everything, and not one to take weapons or threats lightly.  Moffatt, who wrote the episode, also has a sequence that effectively passes on the role to Smith, with a montage of previous Doctors through which Smith walks at the appropriate time.  It was nice for them to acknowledge the previous Doctors, especially the eighth who seems to be ignored or forgotten most of the time.

The next episode, The Beast Below, was a bit of "more of the same."  They again show that the Doctor can't stand children being threatened, as the Doctor and his new companion Amy arrive in a future where the whole of humanity has taken their cities and lifted them off the Earth in search of a new planet to call home.  Children have started to go missing from the flying Britain, and a mass of clockwork creatures is suspected.  It turned out to be nothing of the kind, and Amy saves the day, which to me made the Doctor seem a bit, well, weak for not figuring it out himself.

The return of the Daleks is next up, with the Doctor trying to help out Winston Churchill with a Dalek problem he didn't even know he had.  The episode results in the evolution of the Daleks into what we are lead to believe will be much more viscious enemies for the Doctor.

Stephen Moffatt brings back his Stone Angels in a two-parter, The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone.  These episodes also saw the return of another of Moffatt's creations, Professor River Song, who is a future companion of the Doctor.  Like Blink, this episode used time-travel really well, with River leaving a message in a place that she knows the Doctor will visit in the future, telling him when to return to get her out of a sticky situation.  From there, the Doctor faces a ship full of Stone Angels and a crack in time that causes people caught in it to be completely removed from time.  The crack is a running plot point this season, appearing in nearly all episodes.

Nowadays, all shows must have a vampire episode, and apparently Doctor Who is no exception.  Vampires of Venice tells the story of a shapechanging race who need human blood to survive.  I had more than a few problems with this episode, not the least of which was the ending where one of the shape changers removes clothing that we have been shown is part of her metamorphing.

In Amy Choice, the Doctor and Amy, along with Amy's fiance Rory, are trapped in a dream by the Dream Lord.  Or is it a dream?  From one point of view, Amy and Rory have been married for five years and are expecting their first child.  From another, the three of them are trapped on the TARDIS heading for a cold star.  If they die in the dream, they return to reality.  But which is the dream?  I found this one to be entertaining, but I knew what the final solution was fairly early in the episode.

Another two-parter, The Hungry Earth and Cold Blood, brought back an enemy of the third Doctor, the Silurians.  Once again, the Silurians are angry at the surface humans for "invading" their world by drilling.  The basic plot is practically a direct retelling of third Doctor episodes, and for me there were no surprises, as all of the characters were fairly one-dimensional.  Only the heart-breaking ending mattered much, but I'm pretty sure it's only a plot point that will be reversed or at least resolved in the series finale.

In order to cheer up Amy, the Doctor takes her to an exhibit of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings in Vincent and the Doctor.  The Doctor notices a monster in one of the paintings, and he and Amy go to help Van Gogh defeat the creature.  My problem with this episode was that they spent far too much time having Van Gogh gaze mournfully at Amy and almost no time on the creature.  The actor who played Van Gogh did look just like the painter's self-portrait, though, so that was at least interesting.

The episode that aired last weekend, The Lodger, has the Doctor stranded on Earth while Amy in the TARDIS is unable to land due to something happening in the upstairs flat of the room the Doctor takes.  We discover that (no surprise) the Doctor is good at everything, from football (soccer) to sales calls.  An amusing episode, but one that suffered from not enough Amy.  Originally I thought that it was that there wasn't enough interaction between Amy and the Doctor, but I realized that in most episodes Amy and the Doctor split up anyway, so that the writer can use them both as POV characters.

If this sounds like I'm down on the series, I'm not.  I love Matt Smith as the Doctor, and I adore Karen Gillen as Amy (C'mon, cute and a redhead? I'm so there.).  I suspect that I know the cause of the crack that's become the super-story of the series, and I think I might also know how it's going to be resolved.  Having said that, Moffatt always surprises me, so no matter how I think it might end, I'm probably wrong and that's what will make the journey fun.

It was a good novel, though I wouldn't consider it among his best work.  It seemed like there were too many plots that had nothing to do with the main story.  In addition to the main threads about the blind girl, Caitlin, and about the emerging intelligence, there are sub-plots about a disease outbreak in China, China's disconnecting itself electronically from the rest of the internet temporarily, the plight of a blogger in China and his running from the law, and a painting monkey.

The disease outbreak is what lead to China's cutting itself off from the rest of the world in order that the citizenry not hear anything negative when the rest of the world discovers that China carpet-bombed the infected area, intentionally killing villagers.  China's cutting itself off is later referenced by the characters as the reason the intelligence finally gained enough "steam" to become self-aware.

China's cutting itself off is also what lead the blogger to try to circumvent the firewalls, and what lead to the blogger getting himself chased by Chinese law-enforcement, but so far that story hasn't lead anywhere, nor has the plot thread of a monkey hybrid who demonstrates the ability to paint objects from memory, implying that it has the ability to create abstractions of reality.  I suspect that these threads will get picked up in the next volumes, but so far they seem fairly pointless.

My biggest problem with the book has to do with Caitlin's father.  Throughout the book, a big deal is made over how he isn't particularly demonstrative, that he never gives her any reaction, never hugs her, never gives any of the reactions that she expects and even desires.  The reason for that is revealed about two-thirds of the way through the book, and I had a hard time accepting either it, or the reactions of the other people around him.

Other than that, as usual, Sawyer presents many different, interesting ideas and fuses them into an intriguing narrative.  His dialog never seems forced or artificial, and his characters are all fully formed and realistic (well, other than her father).  Bottom line: even a moderately good Sawyer book is better than nearly any other book you could be reading, and I'm looking forward to the next one.