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Ashes to Ashes: Part 1 by Roger Zelazny Croyd wakes up. A normal-looking guy this time, he goes about his morning routine, interspersed with trying to levitate or shoot lightning from his hands to see if it happens. quote:Croyd halted on his way to the closet to withdraw a heavy steel rod from a crate beneath his writing table. Almost casually, he bent the rod in half and then twisted it. The strength had carried over yet again, he reflected So that can happen, I guess, though I'm not sure why he doesn't conclude that strength's his power this time instead of just a leftover bonus. He goes out and runs into Jube, who talks about hiring him for a job. Croyd's introductory story didn't tell us much about him as a person, possibly because it had a lot of ground to cover and a bunch of info to set up. This one takes a second here and there to establish some character: quote:"You want something done, is that it? If it involves stealing something, I'm good at that. I learned from an expert. If someone's being blackmailed I'll be glad to get the evidence back and scare the living poo poo out of the person doing it. If you want something removed, destroyed, transported, I'm your man. On the other hand, if you want somebody killed I don't like to do that. But I could give you the names of a couple of people it wouldn't bother." So your fairly standard anti-hero setup where he's not a nice guy, but he's got limits. Jube tells him that the job is to steal a joker's body from the morgue, saying he's acting as a go-between for somebody else who won't say why they want it but are willing to pay fifty thousand dollars. Croyd agrees. He goes to pay for the massive breakfast he always has when he wakes up, but the waiter says he already did. He didn't but he thought about it. Turns out that this time his power is a kind of psychic suggestion. Handy! Jube tells him about a potential complication: Kid Dinosaur (he is a kid who can transform into kid-sized dinosaurs) came and talked to him. The kid likes aces a lot, so he tends to follow them around and check out whatever they're doing. He said that somebody named Devil John Darlingfoot was in the area. Apparently he and Croyd were in a fight a while ago, and I can't decide whether his name is the worst or the best. Croyd goes and buys some trash bags, then heads to the morgue. The door's broken and there's a bunch of cops around. A guy not in a uniform immediately turns and stares at Croyd. quote:He reached out immediately with his new power, heading directly toward the man, forcing a smile as he moved. The whole exchange is weird because there's those interjections that seem to be directly from the other guy's train of thought, though the story's always from Croyd's point of view otherwise. It doesn't seem to be Croyd picking up his thoughts psychically or anything. It's just thrown in without explanation, and with the name "Judas" though the guy says his name is Matthias, so it took me a while and a couple rereads of the surrounding paragraphs to figure out what was going on. My guess is that Zelazny noted 'make this make sense later' and then never got around to it. Some of the things he thinks are cleared up a bit later on, but it's a heck of a disorienting way to present them. Anyway Croyd finds out that the body was here, there weren't any possessions with it, and it was stolen by Devil John Darlingfoot, who I am going to refer to exclusively by full name. Croyd also finds out that Matthias/Judas/whatever is a plainclothes cop and an ace whose power is sensing other aces, which must be the Rattata of ace powers because we run into it a bunch. Croyd uses his power to make him forget he was ever there and leaves to track down Devil John Darlingfoot and Dead Space Cricket. quote:It seemed unlikely that Devil John would be using public transportation while carrying a corpse. I've seen people on buses. You never know. quote:Still, knowing the man's chutzpah, it did not seem out of the question for him to be hoofing it with the body. You are not being payed for awkward slang, Croyd. Croyd gets in a cab and sees Kid Dinosaur flying around, and he tends to be where aces are, so he's a good lead. Unfortunately, he doesn't say "Follow that pterodactyl!" though you'd think you'd take full advantage of any opportunity to. In a distressing lack of education, the cabbie refers to it as "that leather bird." He takes it pretty well in stride, though. Devil John Darlingfoot is pretty conspicuous. He's a guy with one leg that's normal and one that's a hairy goatfoot thing. He's using it to take giant 20-foot hops down the street as he carries a "shrouded parcel." quote:He wore Levi's - the right leg torn off high on the thigh - and a pink sweatshirt suggesting he had visited Disney World. Croyd hops out of the cab to yell at him. Devil John Darlingfoot wants to fight cause it'll be fun, but Croyd wants to talk about why he's stealing a dead fuzzy grasshopper body. That's Croyd's job. He says somebody's paying him five thousand dollars. quote:"Who are they?" No pointing out how dumb the metaplot is, Croyd. Devil John Darlingfoot sets down the body while they chat and Croyd offers him more money to give the body to him instead. Then the dead alien is grabbed by dogs. Next time: A Thorax and Four Limbs in a Garbage Bag
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Oct 8, 2012 13:07
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Thinky Whale posted:
Probably because he's been changing powers for almost 40 years at this point and knows how it works. Strength is the third most common wild card ability after telepathy and telekinesis, he probably gets it a lot. His thoughts suggest he has strength more often than not, so the test is actually to find out if he doesn't have it this time. (It was also highlighted in one of Zelazny's last stories that Croyd has history with powers carrying over; courtesy of an experiment in the 1950s, he always has the ability to cause any object capable of tonal vibration to play "As Time Goes By".) quote:Devil John Darlingfoot is pretty conspicuous. He's a guy with one leg that's normal and one that's a hairy goatfoot thing. He's using it to take giant 20-foot hops down the street as he carries a "shrouded parcel." It's a shame that more wasn't done with Devil John, because he's hilarious and also a good example of how deuces and minor aces learn to make the most of their abilities. Devil John's sole ability is strength, but only in his goat leg; the rest of his body is normally strong for his size and muscles. He can't lift huge weights or rip cars to pieces, so instead he's perfected the use of his leg to run very quickly - and of course he's pretty good at kicking things. Unfortunately John's particular place in the universe was taken over by Bludgeon, on account of his being too nice and likeable.
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Oct 8, 2012 13:31
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Thinky Whale posted:So that can happen, I guess, though I'm not sure why he doesn't conclude that strength's his power this time instead of just a leftover bonus. The first Croyd story establishes that super-strength is his one consistent ace power; he manifests it every time he incarnates as an ace or joker-ace. That's why Zelazny just makes a throwaway reference to it here. quote:The whole exchange is weird because there's those interjections that seem to be directly from the other guy's train of thought, though the story's always from Croyd's point of view otherwise. It doesn't seem to be Croyd picking up his thoughts psychically or anything. It's just thrown in without explanation, and with the name "Judas" though the guy says his name is Matthias, so it took me a while and a couple rereads of the surrounding paragraphs to figure out what was going on. My guess is that Zelazny noted 'make this make sense later' and then never got around to it. Some of the things he thinks are cleared up a bit later on, but it's a heck of a disorienting way to present them. Judas is a character from the ongoing evil Mason metaplot. I guess that's why the editors justified crossing over with his point of view for a paragraph there; it's possible Zelazny didn't even write that paragraph and they stuck it in later. I don't really have a lot of snark to add about this story. Zelazny was easily the best writer ever involved with Wild Cards and his Croyd stories are always fun. I think Kid Dinosaur's a really lame character though. His characterization never evolves beyond being an eager to please rookie and his power set is too similar to Beast Boy's to be interesting. I hope Zelazny wasn't the one who came up with him.
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Oct 8, 2012 18:22
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Unfit For Space posted:I think Kid Dinosaur's a really lame character though. His characterization never evolves beyond being an eager to please rookie and his power set is too similar to Beast Boy's to be interesting. I hope Zelazny wasn't the one who came up with him. No, it was Lewis Shiner. Yes, the guy who created Fortunato.
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Oct 8, 2012 18:57
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Kid Dinosaur and another character were only created for one reason. To die at the hands of the Astrologer. Citation is the afterword of book 2
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Oct 9, 2012 15:03
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I kind of like Kid Dinosaur just because Croyd gets to have a pretty good character moment with him. I'm also a sucker for the notion of a 12-year-old-sized triceratops clomping around New York. Devil John Darlingfoot is pretty cool too, cause he's more or less a normal guy making the best of this goatleg. Victorkm posted:Kid Dinosaur and another character were only created for one reason. Apparently some people were mad about Kid Dinosaur, too.
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Oct 10, 2012 04:49
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Ashes to Ashes: Part 2 While Croyd and Devil John Darlingfoot are negotiating over the body, the issue is made moot by some dogs tearing it up and running away bearing limbs of grasshopper-alien. One of the dogs gets pinned by a pterodactyl. Croyd thanks Kid Dinosaur for lending a hand. He turns back into human form, which is around thirteen and naked.  They collect some more spacebug bits and toss them into the trashbag Croyd got before. quote:"How come you're not in school?" Croyd asked. It's a glimpse of the normal life and childhood Croyd never got to have, and he uses his hypnosis to send Kid Dinosaur home to study. Devil John Darlingfoot sees him use his power and mentions that he could use it to make him give up the body without paying, but Croyd says he doesn't feel like cheating "a fellow working stiff." They've got kind of an interesting rapport, being in a similar line of work of using superpowers to do illegal stuff for people, both not really knowing why and just trying to make a living. It's too bad they don't end up having a lasting friendship. They'd make decent foils. Anyway they're still hashing out a deal, and go to a restaurant to work out the details. As they talk, the garbage bag is getting bigger. Decomposition gas or something. Whatever, they got beers to drink. The bag gets punctured and leaks and makes the whole place stink like rotting rear end from beyond the stars. Croyd uses his hypnosis to make everybody ignore them as he says he'll give Devil John Darlingfood $6,500 if he helps him scoop this dead guy into some doggie bags and a pickle jar, and hell, you're not gonna find a better deal than that. quote:"Open the jar again, though, will you? I can wring out the rest of him from the napkins." Can't fault their work ethic. As they wash dead alien goop off their hands, Devil John Darlingfoot mentions that he doesn't want the weirdoes who hired him to give him any trouble for welshing on the job. He mentions a bright red guy, who was mentioned as being at the Mason temple in Fortunato's story, and a guy named Matthias, the one Croyd met earlier who can sense aces. He gets Croyd to come with him at the meeting place in the park to hang back nearby and use his power to make sure they believe a story about the body being torn apart and stolen by dogs and that's why he doesn't have it, oops. They leave the restaurant a good tip and head out to the park. Croyd stays back while Devil John Darlingfoot talks to red guy and Matthias. He hears yelling about how the old dog ate my alien excuse ain't gonna cut it young man, so he comes and starts using his power to make them believe it. You know, I have to say, this is really a good example of what you could do with the setting. It's not world-shattering or anything, but it's readable and cheerfully gross, the action keeps at a good clip but Croyd also gets to have some relatable emotions, and Zelazny's having some fun with it. It makes you believe that a whole chapter could pass by without anything aggressively stupid. quote:A young, plain-looking oriental woman was approaching, hands in the pockets of her coat, collar raised against the wind. The wind... Wild Caaaaaaaaaaards  Kim Toy tells Croyd to open the bag and he does. At least the method of fighting the (sigh) sex pheromone is creative: opening the bag means the horrible smell comes out and blocks the pheromones, so Croyd snaps out of it, mind-zaps the bad guy as planned, waves the bag at Devil John Darlingfoot so he snaps out of it too, and they both run away. Now let's try to forget that ever happened. They part ways and Croyd is out looking for a taxi, but it's snowing and he can't find one. He ducks into an alley to try to get out of it for a while. He runs into a crazy old lady who, judging from her babble, is the one from a couple stories back who stole the MacGuffin from the dead alien. There's an interesting moment: quote:Croyd remembered his mother's breakdown following his father's death, and a touch of sadness at this obvious case of senile dementia stirred within his breast. But--He wondered. Could his new power, the ability to influence the thought patterns of others, have some therapeutic effect on a person such as this? He had a little time to pass here. Perhaps... Then she opens a bag and a black hole thing opens up, and the she's alone muttering to herself peacefully again. Croyd wakes up with a headache in a different alley a few hours later. The bag full of corpse is opened and things are strewn around, but still there. The top of the pickle jar full of fluid is gone, so he finds some bottles scattered around and pours it into them. He repackages everything and notices some old wrapping paper in a dumpster, so it becomes festive bundles. A couple bottles and a doggie bag are snatched by some guys looking for a snack, but what are you gonna do. Finally he brings everything to Jube and the job's all done. Next time: Good Old-Fashioned Robots and Space Aliens. No, Not Those, Different Ones.
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Oct 11, 2012 11:44
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That was a great chapter...except for Kim Toy. What in the hell is up with that name?
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Oct 11, 2012 11:59
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Victorkm posted:Kid Dinosaur and another character were only created for one reason. Ah, thanks. I haven't read the re-release of Aces High, so I never saw that. Who's the other character? Did they change their plans for Water Lily?
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Oct 11, 2012 15:40
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Unfit For Space posted:Ah, thanks. I haven't read the re-release of Aces High, so I never saw that. Who's the other character? Did they change their plans for Water Lily? Howler.
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Oct 11, 2012 16:05
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Jedit posted:Howler. Ah yes, another memorable character. So memorable I forgot he ever existed.
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Oct 11, 2012 18:31
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Unfit For Space posted:Ah yes, another memorable character. So memorable I forgot he ever existed. How could you forget the guy who's killed by vagina poison?
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Oct 11, 2012 22:54
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whowhatwhere posted:That was a great chapter...except for Kim Toy. What in the hell is up with that name? It's a real Chinese name. Do a Google search for it; the Wild Cards character isn't even the top hit, and most of the people you do find definitely aren't just naming a profile after the character.
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Oct 12, 2012 00:03
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Jedit posted:It's a real Chinese name. Do a Google search for it; the Wild Cards character isn't even the top hit, and most of the people you do find definitely aren't just naming a profile after the character. Most people named Kim Toy aren't sex pheromone-exuding women created by an English-language writer for a superhero series (where bad wordplay is not unexpected).
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Oct 12, 2012 00:39
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The Wild Cards character - a minor character from a fairly obscure series - is on the first page of Google results, so it can't be a very common name.
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Oct 12, 2012 01:03
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Are all the Zelazny stories this metaplot heavy or is it possible to get the books and just read his chapters?
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Oct 12, 2012 02:40
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There is plenty of good non-GRRM stuff. If your eyes roll too far, just skip ahead to the next story. They'll generally reference what happened, and major events are covered in multiple stories, so unless you read ONLY GRRM you'll catch it. There are plenty of interesting characters not birthed by GRRM like snotman/reflector who I think shows up in the next book, and pulse who I've always had a soft spot for even though he's completely throwaway and gets jumped later. Edit; I discovered the wikipedia list of characters and it's goddamned tragic who gets a paragraph and who gets a single sentence. Especially Jube, though there are a bunch of characters in there who have multiple stories following them and deserve more. I suppose it's actually because no one bothered to write a paragraph rather than any particular selection. Bhodi fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Oct 12, 2012 |
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Oct 12, 2012 04:13
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At least in the first couple of books Zelazny's stand alone pretty well. In this one, for example, the rest of the story tells you who the dead alien was and why all these people want his body, but Croyd doesn't know that and you don't really need to. There's a lot of books he's not in at all, like the 3rd and 4th, but he's a big part of the plot in the 5th.
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Oct 12, 2012 11:09
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Thinky Whale posted:The Wild Cards character - a minor character from a fairly obscure series - is on the first page of Google results, so it can't be a very common name. I expect that you'd get a lot more results if you translated it to Chinese characters. In Korean, Kim means "gold". Just a bit of trivia.
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Oct 13, 2012 17:35
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Unto The Sixth Generation Walter Jon Williams This took an extra long time because I had it half typed up when the system ate the whole thing, so if I'm even tetchier than usual, that's why. A Czech guy named Travnicek is in a loft building a robot and thinking about all the people who have been dicks to him. He's been living on schnapps and cigarettes in a fever state of construction for who knows how long, and now he's got a naked guy to show for it. quote:Strapped to a table at the far end of the table [don't look at me, that's exactly what's written] was a tall naked man. He was hairless and the roof of his skull was transparent, but otherwise he looked like something out of one of Leonardo's better wet dreams.  Nobody's judging you, Leonardo. This is Modular Man. Though he's described as looking almost perfectly human here, the cover of the book has him looking a lot more robotic, but he's punching a multi-headed dragon monster so who cares about the little stuff. There's a couple nice touches in the sequence of him being woken up, like how Travnicek wears a jacket and tie under his jumpsuit. You dress for the job you want, not the mad scientist job you have. When he flips the switch and sets all the sciency stuff whirring and groaning, the lady who lives in the apartment below bangs on the ceiling with a broom. The android wakes up. quote:Travnicek stepped up to the table. "How are you?" he asked. Modular Man introduces himself as being a sixth-generation machine intelligence (get it? get it?) made for combat, as the prototype of a line Travnicek hopes to sell to the Pentagon and mass produce. Travnicek's the character with potential here. I love the idea of a down-on-his-luck, rough-around-the-edges immigrant trying to make it big through mad science. Unfortunately, though he has the instantly sympathetic background of having his family killed by Nazis, the story makes the weird choice of making him pretty one-dimensionally dickish, and focuses on Mod Man instead, though his personality characteristics consist of being a robot and being dull. Whatever, Travnicek's police scanner goes off, and it's time to test him out with a good old-fashioned monkey versus robot fight. See, on a fairly regular basis, the giant ape kept in Central Park Zoo breaks loose, grabs a blonde, and climbs the Empire State Building. Usually the Turtle telekinetically gets the girl out, but he's MIA this time, so a bunch of aces are milling around not sure what to do. If they open fire, they might end up scraping girl-goop out of a giant monkey hand. Nobody wants that. Modular Man can go insubstantial, like an ace we'll meet in the next volume, except his doesn't include making him be in a bikini all the time because he's an android and not a lady so his powers are less dumb. He phases into the monkey's fist, goes substantial again, pries its hand open, and grabs the girl. They fly clear and everybody's free to go to town with lasers and stuff. quote:The android began looking at the streets below for video cameras. He began to descend. Women, always holding onto their purses through giant monkey kidnappings  quote:Fast recovery, the android thought. He began to orbit above the camera. He could see his reflection in their distant lenses. Oh lord. Travnicek's pretty happy with Mod Man's performance, but there's some things he didn't expect, like that the robot would be shy about his weird clear done-head thing and want a hat. Mod Man has some emotions, see, because Travnicek tried to make him a personality and so programmed in a whole bunch of random stuff that even he doesn't know the full extent of. There's some potential here to go off in some interestingly weird directions, like how a person would act if they had some scattered examples of how humans act but no real baseline, but it's just an excuse to give Mod Man some touches of Bland Normal Man. Like dating. There's a reward of a dinner for two at Aces High for whoever bags the monkey, and Mod Man wants to take Actress Girl. Travnicek says sure, it'll be a good robot advertisement. It. was a nice night. THEN ALIENS CAME. The Swarm Mother is basically a big organic asteroid monster that takes over planets and eats all their stuff. It prefers planets without intelligent life because they're easier to eat, so I'm not sure why it doesn't just pick one other than Earth, but instead it figures out what it's headed toward and gets ready. While en route, it keeps itself with the alien blob equivalent of doing coloring books in the backseat of the car: growing a bunch of dropships and shock troops. quote:The first generation was not intelligent, but could respond in a general way to the Swarm Mother's telepathic commands. Formidable idiots, they were programmed simply to kill and destroy. tactics were planted within their genetic memory. They were placed in their pods, the solid-fuel thrusters flamed, and they were launched, like a flickering firefly invasion, for Earth. Meanwhile, Modular Man's is getting drinks. quote:Cyndi was wearing an azure something that exposed most of her sternum and even more of her spine. I admit I love the typical Wild Cards cheesecake as delivered by a robot. Oh baby, show those clavicles. They're chatting when Mod Man sees a falling star outside the window and picks up some radio transmissions that indicate poo poo be going down. quote:"I'm going to have to make my apologies. Can I call you later?" the android said. "There's an emergency in New Jersey. It seems earth has been invaded by aliens from outer space." Fortunately the book predates the Jersey Shore, so we're spared any jokes about spray tans or what's really hiding under those hair bumps. Cyndi does, however, get in a line about how Mod Man is a nice guy but with "a screw loose somewhere." We flash to a brief scene of a guy having nightmares about "a dead woman, an inverted pentagram, a lithe naked man with the head of a jackal." He wakes up and sends a telepathic message that  TIAMAT is here to someone with the very subtle name of Hubbard. Audience participation! The next part tells us that this guy is the Astronomer, who leads the evil Masons and has a bunch of psychic powers and stuff, including astral projection. He can appear to his followers looking like anything he wants. If there's anybody reading this thread who hasn't read the books: what form do you think he'll choose? Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 12:41 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Oct 17, 2012 09:46
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And for the love of God, don't say "Mr Stay Puft".
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Oct 17, 2012 10:39
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A handsome bearded dude wearing a hood! That's what cult leaders look like, right? I have read most of Wild Cards at this point but the Astronomer sections were years ago so I forget what he actually does. Knowing Wild Cards, it's probably beardy hooded dude with his dick hanging out.
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Oct 17, 2012 19:47
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A well-endowed blond woman, clothing optional. Not what I'd guess in the case of any other series, but....
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Oct 18, 2012 04:14
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A tentacle monster?
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Oct 18, 2012 04:25
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Close, Tagichatn! Unto the Sixth Generation: Part 2 Princeton is covered in alien blobs. Modular Man flies over and shoots microwave lasers at a giant slug-thing that's headbutting a house, then kills a lot more monster things, and generally goes around being a bro and helping people out. People with guns are trying to protect themselves, but there's billions of the little bastards. quote:Sirens were beginning to wail from below. People stumbled from broken homes. Emergency vehicles raced beneath flickering lights. A few automobiles zigzagged crazily down rubble-strewn streets. Here and there fires were breaking out, but dampness and occasional drizzle were keeping them confined. Modular Man saw a dozen more serpents, a hundred smaller predators that moved like panthers on their half-dozen legs, scores of a strange creature that looked like a leaping spider, its four-foot-wide body bounding over trees on stiltlike legs. A twenty-foot bipedal carnivore brandished teeth like a tyrannosaur. Other things, difficult to see on infrared, moved like carpets close to the ground. Something unseen fired a cloud of three-foot needles at him, but he saw it coming on radar and dodged. The cloud over Princeton was still orbiting. The android decided to investigate. There's all sorts of different monsters. I kind of like the "dark featherless flapping creatures like flying throw rugs" that land on things and smother them. It's all oddly detached. This could be intentional as a way to show that human suffering wouldn't make much impression on an AI, but a lot of Mod Man's characterization is about how there's human feelings coded into him. We see a lot more of those kick in when he's flirting with a girl than here. It may be a relic of the tabletop RPG roots; the aliens and the shitton of people getting eaten by them are only there to be stuff to kill and a reason to kill stuff. While Modular Man meets up with the military and helps them kill stuff, other military guys have grabbed Tachyon, since the last time a huge outbreak of weird poo poo happened it was his species' fault. He protests the racial profiling and is mad they broke his door. quote:"You might have telephoned. I would have come. Your goons didn't even knock. There are still constitutionals protections in this country, even in Jokertown." This has been your legally mandated reminder that Tachyon is a horndog. The cops say they think it's another wild card virus outbreak, and as soon as he heard that Tachyon jumps in to help. So a two-minute phone call could in fact have replaced this scene, but they felt like being jerks. With some more info, Tachyon tells them it's this thing called the Swarm that wiped out a couple of his species' colonies a while back. quote:Senator Hartmann [oh hey, it's mind control rape guy] seemed skeptical. "Not wild card? You're telling me that New Jersey has been attacked by killer bees from space?" Well, good. Space bees would just be silly. Modular Man goes and reports back to Travnicek, telling him the military might want to buy some of them there fancy fightin' robots. Travnicek thinks that's awesome, cause he's got a monopoly and he can gouge the hell out of them. quote:"Before you go, clean this mess up. Put my notes in piles over there." He pointed at a reasonably clean part of one of his tables. Did I mention Travnicek's weird dickishness? He takes the news of alien invasion impressively in stride, too. Hey, here's our friends the cultists! The aforetelepath'd-at Hubbard is leading a bunch of them. He's got a bunch of burn scars, hinting he was one of the guys in the building that Fortunato exploded with the power from a blow job back in the first story. They're all there to talk to The Astronomer: quote:Above [Hubbard] blazed the figure of an astral being, a giant man with the head of a ram and a colossal erect phallus, holding in his hands the ankh and the crooked rod, symbols of life and power - the god Amun, creator of the universe, blazing amid a multicolored aura of light. He says that  TIAMAT is here, and they need to help her by "assembling and calibrating" the Shakti device. All are too in awe of the splendor of his dong to suggest basing their malevolent plans on things with less dumb names. Meanwhile, aces and the military are fighting the Swarm. Mod Man's firing bullets and lasers, the Turtle's tossing them around with psychic power, Mistral is tossing them around with wind power. She's a seventeen-year-old girl who we don't see much of, and she spends the time between battles curled up and crying before going out again, but her description isn't creepy or sexualized, so that's nice. We meet a couple new ones: Pulse, who can turn into lasers, and the Howler, who has a freaky mutant throat that lets him yell at stuff and make it explode. Even old Golden Boy shows up, out of retirement. Finally they all manage to stop the Swarm outside Philadelphia, then counterattack and beat them back. Things went pretty bad for the rest of the world. The Swarm landed all over the place, including Siberia, where the Soviets said gently caress it and dropped a nuke. Then we go to Hubbard walking around New York. While everybody else is worrying about radioactive alien slag, he's mad because he didn't manage to psychically get the cops to let a rapist go. quote:He had failed. One of the more promising members of the Order, the boy Fabian, had been arrested on some stupid assault charge - the boy couldn't keep his hands off women, whether they were willing or not - and Hubbard had been sent to interview the police captain in charge. It wouldn't have required much , some lost paperwork perhaps, or a suggestion, implanted in the captain’s head, the the evidence was insufficient...But the man's mind was slippery, and Hubbard hadn't been able to get ahold of it. Finally Captain McPherson, snarling, had thrown him out. All Hubbard had done was to identify himself with Fabian's case, and perhaps cause the investigation to go further. He's scared that Giant Glowing Phallus Guy is gonna be mad. Then a redheaded woman bumps into him and doesn't apologize. Boy does he hate rude people. But it gives him an idea for something to do today. quote:Gently he took command of her mind and steered her up to the street. Rarely did he find someone so pliable. A great bubble of joy welled up in him. The gently caress is wrong with you, Wild Cards? Next Time: The greatest line Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 13:14 on Oct 18, 2012 |
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Oct 18, 2012 11:43
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Thinky Whale posted:It's all oddly detached. This could be intentional as a way to show that human suffering wouldn't make much impression on an AI, but a lot of Mod Man's characterization is about how there's human feelings coded into him. We see a lot more of those kick in when he's flirting with a girl than here. It may be a relic of the tabletop RPG roots; the aliens and the shitton of people getting eaten by them are only there to be stuff to kill and a reason to kill stuff. So you don't think it's maybe a legacy of having his emotions programmed by a man you acknowledge to be a sociopathic dick? By the way - "a giant man with the head of a man"? Do you not mean the head of a jackal?
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Oct 18, 2012 12:53
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Jedit posted:So you don't think it's maybe a legacy of having his emotions programmed by a man you acknowledge to be a sociopathic dick? Whoops, thanks for catching that. It's supposed to be a ram. Now to go fix it and pretend my typo didn't create least impressive Egyptian god ever. I really don't know if the detachment is intentional or not. Everything else suggests that Travnicek sort of accidentally programmed in a conscience, so I'm inclined to attribute it to the narrative and not narrator.
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Oct 18, 2012 13:23
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Unto The Sixth Generation: The Greatest Line The Swarm in the US is declared kaput, and in a couple days the US military and aces are gonna go help the rest of the world get its alienfighting poo poo together. Modular Man is talking on a payphone (the Eighties!) with the girl he rescued from the giant monkey when a swarm blobmonster bursts out of the sewers, so he goes to laser it up. It looked like "a thirty-foot-wide bowl of gelatin that had been in the refrigerator far too long" with "black currants that were its victims, which it was slowly digesting." It squashes into an alleyway and Mod Man flies after it. He sees an old homeless lady muttering to herself, so he picks her up and flies her to a rooftop for safety. That pisses her off, so she opens her shopping bag with the black hole inside. He wakes up in a dumpster an hour later with a bunch of his stuff all twisted up. Hubbard gets a message from Ram Head and Enormous Phallus Guy, who's pissed off that TIAMAT was defeated and the Shakti Whatever wasn't ready, but it's just a setback, the devouring space yeast will make another pass. They "have not lived in secret all these centuries only to be defeated now." Sadly, he fails to astrally project a mustache and twirl it. Mod Man goes home and tells Travnicek what happened. He's interested in what the crazy homeless lady did. He hooks Mod Man up to a TV so he can play the video recording of his memory. When the homeless lady comes up, he takes some Polaroids (the Eighties again!) of her and tells Mod Man to show them around and try to find her. Mod Man says he's supposed to go with the military to fight aliens, Travnicek says screw em. Turns out he didn't really think the whole mass produce and sell to the Pentagon plan through: they want guarantees and references and stuff, and he's not sure if he'll be able to make more Mod Men at all. Then he keeps looking through the robot's memory, and things become amazing. quote:“Piss in a chalice!” exclaimed Travnicek, in German. The android felt another wince coming on. Travnicek gaped at the television in surprise. “Not because I wanted to think about robot penises. Really.” quote:“And I just gave you the emotions so you could understand the enemies of society. I didn’t think you’d do anything.” He tossed his cigarette butt to the floor. A leer crossed his face. “Was it fun?” he asked. Another to go down in the annals of weird product placement. quote:He looked up as a thought occurred to him. “Do we have any popcorn?” Here we go. Here it is. quote:“Go stand in the corner, microwave-oven-that-fucks!” he bellowed. “Turn your goddamn head away, video-unit-that-fucks!” It's...it's so beautiful. I can't handle it. I can't go on.    Wild Cards, baby.
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Oct 19, 2012 11:46
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Thinky Whale posted:“Not because I wanted to think about robot penises. Really.” Still, porn companies probably pay better than the Pentagon, and you don't have all that pesky red tape to worry about....  And yes, that is a truly amazing line.
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Oct 19, 2012 12:00
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Ok wait what. That Xbox robot killed Generic Girl Deuteragonist in CAD? What?!
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Oct 19, 2012 15:11
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Wasn't Travnicek an ace whose only power was to build Modular Man? That would be why he isn't sure he could build more Re: Xbox robot killing the girlfriend, no. What's his face came back in time and kidnapped himself to a future where Zeke had gone skynet.
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Oct 19, 2012 15:54
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Victorkm posted:Wasn't Travnicek an ace whose only power was to build Modular Man? That would be why he isn't sure he could build more In a nutshell: yes.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:27
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Runcible Cat posted:"Not because I wanted to build a functioning robot penis. Really!" He already had a celebrity sex tape, too bad there was no internet for him to leak it on.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:51
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Thinky Whale posted:I like the little world-building hint that there's a cottage industry of customizing things for people with flippers.
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Oct 19, 2012 22:27
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whowhatwhere posted:Ok wait what. That Xbox robot killed Generic Girl Deuteragonist in CAD? What?! CAD is trying to be dramatic again. It's about as graceful as the miscarriage, and has spawned so many, many edits. coyo7e posted:Sadly I think you're mistaken, because they already make them for disabled people. That's kind of what I mean; I like the practicality of the notion that disabled facilities are tweaked and expanded to function for people who have tentacles or grew their own wheels.
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Oct 20, 2012 01:02
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Thinky Whale posted:CAD is trying to be dramatic again. It's about as graceful as the miscarriage, and has spawned so many, many edits. So losing half the readership in one arc wasn't enough for wossname? Now he's gotta go all the way?
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Oct 20, 2012 01:18
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Jedit posted:In a nutshell: yes. Wrong. His Wild Card power was that occasionally he'd go into fugue states and make various mad scientist gadgets. This sort of thing is not unique, there's a reference to devices elsewhere in the series that, when disassembled, should not possibly work and in once case just contains a circuit diagram.
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Oct 20, 2012 05:17
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sky shark posted:Wrong. His Wild Card power was that occasionally he'd go into fugue states and make various mad scientist gadgets. This sort of thing is not unique, there's a reference to devices elsewhere in the series that, when disassembled, should not possibly work and in once case just contains a circuit diagram. Please buy a dictionary and look up the word "summary".
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Oct 20, 2012 10:03
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Okay. I've taken a deep breath and had a long think about my life, and it's time to go on. Unto the Sixth Generation: Part Three Now, where were we- quote:"But no screwing tonight. Go find me the bag lady." Oh. That's where.  This reminds me - in the afterword, GRRM that Walter Jon Williams actually wrote a novella called Bag Lady about his RPG character Modular Man fighting the Swarm and had it done back before they'd even really put the Wild Cards project together. By then a bunch of the universe mechanics had been changed, so they reworked the whole thing into this book. So if it feels like a totally different book has been jammed in here, that's because it has. I was confused at first that the Bag Lady novella was by WJW, because I was thinking of Bagabond, who's written by somebody else. But no, it's a different bag lady. Wild Cards likes them. In order to create the single Wild Cardsiest thing, all we need is a bag lady mafia that rapes people. After the  , and god bless you SA for having the perfect emoticon for that, we go to a cop with the magnificent name of John F. X. Black, and it is an absolute crime that he isn't known by the nickname 'Special.' He's out by a bar when another cop comes up to him acting funny. He says he was thrown into the garbage by a homeless lady with a black hole in a bag. Black takes him to go look for her. She's in an alley by a dumpster fire. In a neat image, she opens her bag and all the fire is sucked inside. The cops use a Burger King meal to lure her into the car and Black says he knows a place to take her. So far I'm liking him, he's a decent, solid guy just trying to do his best on rough streets and aw hell he's a member of the rape cult. The place he takes her is to Hubbard, a.k.a. Some Cult Guy. quote:Black wondered what Carroll [the other cop] would say if he could see the decor in the special locked apartment next door, the dark soundproofed room with its candles, its altar, the pentagram painted on the floor, the inlaid alloy gutters, the bright chains fixed to staples... "That's a mighty fine black magic rape altar you've got there, Lou." Black leaves the bag lady with L. Ron and murders the other cop. Hubbard said he psychic message'd Glowing Phallus about having the bag lady but actually didn't, because there's some politics in the rape cult and when Fortunato exploded the headquarters a while back Giant God Guy helped his people but left Hubbard to get burned, so he's holding a grudge about that, and the cult has factions and divisions and stuff, but everybody involved is a dick of cartoonish proportions so it's impossible to care. The point is that all is not harmonious in deathcult town. Matthias/Judas is there too. Hubbard keeps trying to mess with the bag lady's head, but her head's already thoroughly messed, so it's making him sick and headachey. Apparently the bag-thing has a kind of mind too. Judas gets fed up and tries to just grab the bag and it swallows him up. He takes a cab back, and Hubbard tells him to take Black and steal a tranquilizer gun from the fire department. Having three of these guys makes them hard to tell apart, since they all have the same bad-guy-shaped hole for a personality. Hubbard wants to tranq the bag lady and steal the MacGuffin so he can rape people better. quote:He could take all the time he needed, playing with the bag lady's mind, and she would have enough in her brain left to know what was happening to her. Oh, yes. In the meantime, Modular Man's flying around looking for the bag lady with no luck. There's a bit of pathos for all the homeless people and refugees from the Swarm who are stuck living in cardboard and sometimes freezing to death. Black and Hubbard are hanging around swapping small talk. So, Black, how'd you get into this alien death cult? quote:"Dreams, man. Incredible dreams. Jesus. Monsters like you wouldn't believe - lion bodies, human faces, eagle wings, every drat thing you could think of - and they were all hungry, and they all wanted to eat me. And then there was this giant thing behind them, just a shadow, like, and then...Jesus." He gave a nervous grin and wiped his forehead. "I still break out into a sweat thinking about it. And then I realized that all the monsters were connected somehow, that they were all a part of this thing. That's when I'd wake up screaming. It happened over and over again." Matthias had somehow known about this and found him to recruit him, telling him that his mind had touched  TIAMAT. Hubbard knows that Matthias knew that because they'd had somebody psychically put the dreams there so they could freak him out and the cult could have a guy who was higher up in the police department. But Balsam - remember him? Previous cult leader guy - didn't like Catholics, so he was screwed. I kind of like the idea that even alien worshipers are still people and sabotage themselves with dumb infighting, but the narrative is so fixated on making them all over the top monsters that any sort of humanity can't stick. So the cult had a conspiracy among Lord Massive Wang, the red guy, his sex pheromone wife, and some other people. When Fortunato blew the temple up they escaped with their own and let Balsam and his guys die. Hubbard only got out because pheromone lady insisted on going back for him. quote:Amun hadn't trusted him fully, not then. Hubbard had just joined the Order, and Amun hadn't had the chance to play with him yet, to enter into his brain and make him cringe, to play the endless mind games and twist him into knots with a long series of humiliations...Yes, he thought, that's what Amun is like. I know, because I'm that way too. What a coincidence.  Matthias comes back with a tranq gun. They go to tranq the bag lady and steal her stuff, but the crazy people they left behind with a portable warping black hole is, somehow, gone. Cults need to start focusing their recruitment less on torture fetishes and more on smart. Next Time: "Amazing, doing it with a machine. You know, I would have thought it would be at least a little kinky. But it's not." Thinky Whale fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Oct 27, 2012 |
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Oct 27, 2012 03:00
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I'm still amazed that Modular Man stories have more romance than any other character's. I also like how the Astronomer gives people crazy TIAMAT nightmares to recruit them, apparently just to be a dick. You'd think appearing as some sort of divine Jesus figure would be more effective. Have they revealed the purpose of the cult yet? Because that makes the nightmares even weirder. Also, I'm almost done with the whole series. It's a bit weird to read mentions of WoW, the blogosphere and reality TV shows since I'm so used to the books being set in the past. I do like how they basically start over with a new generation of aces but all they are are aces. There's barely any mention of jokers and none of Jokertown. The whole dynamic of jokers/aces/deuces and black queen deaths is a large part of what makes Wild Cards compelling and it seems lost with these recent books. I might as well read X-Men or any superhero ensemble book.
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Oct 27, 2012 23:44
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