Permutation City Blog

The promotional material sold this to me as a science fiction film or, at least, a film with science fiction in it. It told of a bluring between the real world and the fictional work of a writer. Much was made of a futuristic train run by robots on its way to a mysterious destination. A film didn't live up to its promise. There is a bit of science fiction but only in passing. However mostly it's a very confusing story about a writer living in Singapore and Hong Kong in the 60s.

A look down the evolutionary ladder to see where we've come from. The book compares us and our embryos with the animal kingdom. Evolution continually re-purposes pieces of anatomy for new jobs. Many of our body's failings are due to particular adaptations that our ancestors made.

A compendium of three stories, two of which are Hugo Award winners. It feels surprisingly old fashioned for something written at the beginning of the 1990s. Sort-of shlocky space fiction. It's full of lucky coincidence and fast talking. The first story, the non-award winning on, was a bit of a chore. The middle story is a planet-side detective story which felt more sensitive and interesting. The last story was similar to the first but I think with a better polish.

With a high IMDb rating I was hoping to enjoy this but was disappointed. There are some funny moments, for example the song and dance routine in the middle. The plot seemed forced, dragged in the wake of the book rather than finding its own path. Go and watch Blazing Saddles instead which has the same director, some of the same cast members, and was even released in the same year.

Fun combination of animation, music, and the bizarre. It's basically a series of animated set pieces based on The Beatles songs strung together into a story. What's most amazing is that they do manage to string it all together. There is much silliness especially in the Sea of Monsters and Pepperland itself.

An alternate history book where early Europeans are wiped out by the plague. Reincarnation features and the story follows the same people through many lives. It was interesting to see different possible cultures coming out of the middle east, the orient, and the americas. While each piece was interesting all together they were too slow. It would have been better slimmed down by a couple of hundred pages.

I was expecting a Hollywood blockbuster and it is definitely that. Special effects, including explosions, are all over the place. In the last movie I thought a lot of the mutant powers were created for specific scenes; a bit like James Bond always managing to use each of his gadgets. There were yet more mutant powers but, most of the time, they seemed more reasonable. It made some choices that, for a Hollywood film, surprised me which was nice. Not sure what to make of the end of the film. Did it spoil the rest of the film?

The eighth of The Sandman Library is a collection of stories told by travellers sheltering from a storm.

This had some fairly interesting ideas. A society in which you can say anything you like as long as it's provably true. Human mutants that had been created as a result of a war, one of whom could accurately predict the future. He experiences his life one year before it happens, the present day is already an old memory for him. In a side story mutants are being deliberately created to colonise Venus. Then there are the alien "drifters". However the exploration of these ideas is patchy and I left the book thinking something was missing.

An odd blend of the everyday with with an element of the fantastic. A cat disappears and Kumiko suddenly becomes much more complicated. Coincidences become common place. While I enjoyed reading this I'm not sure it was satisfying in the end. Things should happen for some reason.