Vol: 1. No: 2. Winter 2014 About the Front Cover When I asked Brian, who I’ve been friends with since High School, if he’d like to do a cover for the first issue of Breaking It All Down - The ‘Zine, he didn’t provide one cover, he provided two. After we decided which one to use for the first cover, I asked if I could use the second for the ‘zine’s second issue, and he said sure.

About the Artist

Brian A. Caslis is an artist living in Oregon. You can find more of his work at http://greencoat7.tumblr.com/ Breaking It All Down – The ‘Zine has reached its second issue! Hurray! In the time between issues, I’ve been swamped with schoolwork (boo), but I have been able to go to OryCon and say hello to Ben Yalow, Susanne Thompkins, and Jerry Kaufmann (yay). However, alas, due to all the excellent panels I went to, I didn’t get to spend as much time with them as I would like (boo). Though, I was able to meet some new people as well (yay). I also had a continuation of my Introduction to series in Chris Garcia’s The Drink Tank (issue 361), which can be read at eFanzines.com. While the first part covered series from after 2001, that article covered some older series. This issue has the conclusion of the introductory sequence, with an article covering SF and fantasy . I do want to take a moment to give an open call for people who are interested in doing cover art for the fanzine. As this is a fanzine, I can’t pay you, but I can link to your site or DeviantArt page (or Etsy page, if you have one of those). Please send me an E-Mail at [email protected] if you’re interested. - Alexander Case Contents The Mailbag 5 Book Review – 12 Anime 103 – Manga 13 OryCon 2013 Con Report 20 Movie Thoughts – Thor: The Dark World & The Day of The Doctor 21 Video Game Review – Dead Space 23 The Mailbag I got a bunch of wonderful letters of comment for my first issue of my fanzine. I realize that I haven’t been able to send as many of my own out as I’d like (in part due to this last school term being busy as hell). Still, I do want to thank all the people who sent me LoCs, and to respond to them. The text of the letters will be displayed in Elementary SF. Chris Garcia writes: Howdy! Great to see ya up on eFanzines. While I don’t have nearly enough time to do a justifiable LoC on your first issue, I’m heading to England and have to do little things like packing and making sure the Kid stays alive while I’m gone, I had to say a few things on your first issue.

First, great cover. I’m not much of an Anime guy (in fact, I wish we’d all go back to calling it Japanimation!) but I do love me some giant robots. Yeah, I loved Pacific Rim...

There are a lot of folks talking about FIghting the Aging of Fandom. I get why, younger folks don’t seem to have the reverence for those older generations that I grew up in fandom with, but I know we need to refresh some. I’ve always loved having the Old Timers around to hang with, to suck the knowledge out of their heads. I would like to see more of a focus on film in fandom (and if you haven’t, give my zine Klaus at Gunpoint a read - http://klausatgunpoint.weebly.com) but I understand the desire to dedicate fandom to literature. Then again, there are few cons I’ve been to that don’t have serious media tracks.

Spirited Away didn’t win the Hugo for Best Dram Pres Long Form, though it was probably the best thing on the ballot that year (and how do I dislike the final Lord of the Rings movie and all its false finishes!) though there are several other Japanimations (see, I’m taking it back!) that I would have liked to have seen on the ballot over the years, notably , Akira, and for my taste, but also, it’s hard for ANYTHING that’s not US or UK produced to make the ballot, ESPECIALLY in Dram Pres. Note the absense of ANY French films from the ballot ever, The Fifth Element is the closest we’ve ever come. Pan’s Labyrinth won, that was a plus, but Iron Sky didn’t even make the ballot! It’s hard out there, especially when Hugo Acceptance Speeches can make the ballot and something like City of Lost Children can’t.

Cross-promotion can certainly work, though here in the Bay Area, we have a large that purposely set itself against the long-standing local Literary con, BayCon, in an attempt to squash it. Bad mojo!

I have to admit, Tiger & Bunny was OK, but Full Metal Alchemist pissed me off at how much I hated it. Just terrible as I couldn’t follow it at all and it felt like the tone which just switch every few minutes for no good reason. BAH! Then again, almost all my favorite cartoons from Japan are all from the 60s and 70s and 80s. Robotech, Space Battleship Yamoto, and Tiger Mask (and what I wouldn’t give to get my hands on a full set of those cartoons today!).

I loved Pacific Rim so very much. A throwaway line about how the first Kaiju made landfall and it made it thirty miles and destroyed three cities sent me off on an investigation of what possible path it could have taken to have ONLY destroyed 3 cities in 30 miles! We’re a dense area up here by SF!

I’ve never made it to the RetroGaming Expo, which is odd as my day job is as a Curator at the Computer History Museum and my emphasis is on Games, Computer Music, Graphics & Art. I’ve been to California Extreme a bunch, but honestly, I end up playing pinball all day!

Bester is a write I’ve enjoyed, but has never become a fave of mine. This may be because I so often confuse him with any number of other SF writers from the 1950s and 60s!

Sweet RUSH shirt! I freakin’ love RUSH!

Thanks for puttin’ it out there. Gotta give your podcast a listen! I’m on Nerdvana (nerdvanapodcast.com) and Fanboy Planet (fanboyplanet.com) and I do one myself called Leaf and Let Die (leafandletdie.weebly.com) I really enjoy the Podcast form, though I usually pretend like I’m doing a really low-power radio show!

Thanks Chris So, this E-Mail lead to me contributing an article for The Drink Tank! Thanks, Chris, for giving me this wonderful opportunity. I did double check after reading your LoC, and indeed, Spirited Away did not win the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form that year. For some reason, the Wikipedia entry at the time said that it had run, and I took that for granted, as the film won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. I’ve been meaning to come down to California at some point to go to California Extreme. I’ve heard great things about it from my friends who live down in California, as well as from the hosts of one of the video game podcasts I listen to, The Giant Bombcast. Interesting story about the Rush shirt – Rush was the first concert I ever went to. It’s been my good fortune to have never gone to a concert that was a bust: Rush, Video Games Live, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and Iron Maiden. Warren Buff writes: I wanted to take the time to welcome you into this weird little corner of the SF world. Like you, I’m young (30, which is definitely young for the field), and write for (and occasionally publish) fanzines. You’ve come across the hobby just a little too late -- there was a Corflu (the fanzine convention) in Portland this year. Next year’s (in Richmond) is the first one in my awareness of them east of the Mississippi (other than the one in the UK, which isn’t any easier to get to), and the first on the East Coast in over a decade. If the current pattern holds, you’ll have one close by soon enough. You’re not the only new addition to the fanzine fold, either – Pablo Vazquez has recently put out a first issue of Lake Geneva, and while I haven’t asked his age, he’s pretty clearly in our cohort. And we’re not alone, of course -- John Coxon is younger than any of us, and Chris Garcia and James Bacon are a little older, but still young by fanzine standards, as is Espana Sheriff (I don’t know her co-editors, but reckon they might be in our cohort, or just ahead of it, too). So, I should actually demonstrate a bit that I paid attention to what you wrote. I’m not convinced that directly drawing in anime fans is a productive pursuit for traditional SF cons. I’ve seen it tried, even at relatively young conventions, and the typical anime fan finds that there’s just not enough anime (even with a few voice actors, anime panels, and an anime room) for them. What’s more likely to work is to pursue the cosplayers, gamers, etc., who tend to be interested in more than just one form. I’ve got some experience bringing these folks in-- I’m in my third year of running programming for my local SF con, illogiCon, and we trend pretty young for an SF con (in spite of doing most things very much like the older cons). I really think it’s a matter of folks going where their friends are, and that there was something of a disruption in the generation of folks who are currently around 35-50. They’re a smaller generation to start with, and some of them were alienated by established fans, others went off to the pop-culture cons and decided that old-line SF cons weren’t for them, and others just never found us. Our generation is only just now getting to the point where we’re taking on bigger roles, and I think we may see some old-line cons looking quite a bit younger in the near future (Balticon, for instance, looks pretty young to me). At least for the present, I suspect that minor tweaks and a generally friendly disposition can correct the age gap. If it doesn’t get better in 5-10 years, though, we might have a real problem on our hands. Finally, I noticed that you read and enjoyed Bester’s The Demolished Man. I enjoyed it, too (though not without noticing some problems endemic of its era). But more than that, his other great novel, Stars My Destination, stands out to me. It had the misfortune of being published in a year for which only magazines were awarded Hugos – I suspect it would have been a winner, otherwise. Check it out, if you get the chance. I’ve had the pleasure of reading both issues of Lake Geneva, and enjoyed it immensely. I just haven’t gotten around to writing a LoC due to my course-load last term (14 credits combined with a late start due financial aid screw-ups – ahh!), and an inability to figure out quite what to say. I’ve got a few ideas now, and I’ll get a letter of comment for Pablo and the gang out Real Soon Now. I agree that not all anime fans will be interested in coming to SF conventions, but I’d consider it an idea that’s worth a shot, particularly if you have a community where you have some cross pollination between con staffers, like we do here in Portland. Also, is definitely a great way to get some crosspollination going as well. You aren’t the only one to recommend Stars My Destination for a future Alfred Bester read, and it indeed is on my massive To Read list on Goodreads (currently at 1,835 books and counting). Lloyd Penny writes: Dear Alexander:

Many thanks for the first issue of Breaking It Down: The Zine. As many who will get this e-zine from eFanzines.com will tell you, we’re very much used to paper publications and e-zines, and not necessarily podcasts. If there was a site like eFanzines.com that listed all SFnal and fannish podcasts, half of the work, finding the podcasts, would be done for me, and I might be inclined to listen in and make some comments. For the moment, though, thank you for this e-zine version.

I think I am going to find that while you seem to have a wide selection of interests that can come under the fanac label, my own interests are much narrower. I have never developed interests in…comics, gaming, modelling, Doctor Who, anime/manga, and a few others. I got into what I could get my hands on, and that wasn’t much, but it’s kept me going for close to 35 years. In sequence…Trek, apas and fanzines, costumes, convention running, . Good for you re Prisoners of Gravity…I was actually a guest on an episode in Season 1, which seems to be the season they did lots of weird on-screen effects, and put coloured goop in Rick Green’s hair. I still have the PoG t-shirt.

When we were neofen, there were older fen who grumbled at our presence, dismissed us outright because we were new, and thought we’d ruin what they’d fought to create. Now, we are the older fen, and few of us remember our neofan days. I do, and while I see what I know of fandom changing and maybe crumbling away, I am not going to grumble, for today’s neofen are doing just what I did. Friends are passing away, as are some of my favourite authors (Frederik Pohl is the latest), but I must remember that fandom has been around since the late 20s/early 30s, and while I stand just about still, fandom will continue on as it always has, and go on past me.

In the decades that I was on local con committees, it was those on the committee who were interested in anime, still fairly new to all of us then, who wanted more time and space for their own interest, something a convention usually couldn’t do, given a three-day weekend and a small hotel with limited function space. Our own local anime convention, Anime North, arose from this frustration, and I helped get our local anime fans moving with it by having long discussions with the first chairman. Anime North, our local con, is different from some anime conventions in that while many anime cons (I am told) are mostly dealers room and lots of screening rooms, Anime North has lots of panels people can participate in and offer ideas and opinions. In short, AN is interactive where other cons are not. I hope this interactivity will get other fans back to our local litcons, but this might not happen until some of the anime fans get a little older, and might start looking for something else.

I am afraid I’ve jumped fair far ahead in your zine, not having interest in books on manga or a gaming convention, but as soon as you get to Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man, you’re right up my alley. Glad you enjoyed it, and I have a couple of editions of it on my bookshelves. Harlan Ellison’s mentor and friend in writing SF was Alfred Bester, and when Ellison was the creative consultant for Babylon 5 (one of my favorite television shows, and we are currently enjoying the episodes again on DVD), he named the PsyCop Bester after the SF writer. A friend of mine years ago was a big B5 fan in the show’s initial run, and didn’t believe me when I told her that Alfred bester was a popular SF writer from the 50s. She didn’t believe me, and I pulled down my Bester books from the bookshelf…she just gaped at them for a few minutes.

There we go, Alexander, I think I am done with my letter, and I hope this is the kind of feedback on the issue that you were looking for. Off it goes to your Gmail account, and I hope to see the second issue soon. Let us know if you’re enjoying this format of fannish communication. I am sure Ben Yalow, Jerry Kaulman and Suzle would like to know your feelings on this, too.

Yours, Lloyd Penney.

There used to be a bunch of podcast index sites out there (a lot like the old webrings), which kept track of SF podcasts. Unfortunately a lot of those have started being updated less often, particularly since iTunes has started doing podcast listings. That said, a good podcast I’d recommend is the Sword & Laser Podcast. It’s a book club style podcast done by Veronica Belmont and Tom Merritt. The show’s site is http://swordandlaser.com/, and the page for the GoodReads group (where you can find discussions of current and upcoming books for the book club), is athttps://www.goodreads.com/group/ show/4170.The_Sword_and_Laser What episode of Prisoners of Gravity were you on? A few episodes of PoG have made it up on YouTube, so I might be able to hunt that episode down and give it a rewatch? As far as my thoughts on enjoying doing Fanzines go, well, I get into that in my response to Jerry’s LoC, which I’ll get to a little later. Thank you very much for writing in. Nathan Madison Writes: Hey there!

I just finished reading the first issue of Breaking It All Down; I thought it was a great read, and wanted to be among the first to send in an LOC. I am an historian and author based in Richmond, and I have written a few books and journal articles concerning , comic book, pulp and anime history. Similar to you, I am relatively young in relation to the general SF fan audience (just turned 30), and my interests traverse everything from comics to anime to literature – all intertwined with that central kernel, the love of SF. About a year or so back, I wrote a magazine article concerning the aging of fandom; particularly, I was referencing the advancing age of pulp magazine fandom, noticeable at pulp-centric events such as Ohio’s Pulpfest. My views, however, can really be applied to the larger SF fandom, of which pulps are an important and historical part. I have argued that such events could perhaps place more emphasis on the origins of science fiction in the pulps; not to discredit or blanket over the importance of other genres, or the pulps themselves, but rather to create some sort of rudimentary tether to the more popular films and television that more “mainstream” fans already display an interest in. My own interest in the pulps began in a somewhat similar way – when I was younger, I read voraciously concerning the history of comic books and came across, what most of my material referred to as, their precursors, the pulps – I knew of them, but it was only years later, as I began to read Lovecraft, Ashton-Smith, Howard, and more authors of the Weird Tales stable, that I began to search out and read the pulps themselves. It was from an interest in SF that I was led to an appreciation of the entire pulp genre, as well as to the modern SF found in pulp descendants such as Analog, Asimov’s and other publications. Your example of the anime and manga series Lensman, and its base-material’s origins in a 1934 pulp, Amazing Stories, is a perfect example of such a tether between classic SF and more recent interpretations. On another note, I have to say I am glad to see a fanzine, in the old format (no mimeographed copies withstanding) by someone of my generation – in the past, I have been lightly castigated for my view (some may say curmudgeonly view) that the fanzine ethos that existed in decades prior is largely non-existent today. In all sincerity, I can say that it is rather rare for me to meet anyone within my relative age-group that has read a good amount, if any, literary SF, or is remotely aware of what SF is, outside of ‘sci-fi;” on that note, I do have to say I have felt welcomed by the relatively-older group of SF fandom I have encountered, but the lack of any members in my general age group I do find somewhat disconcerting. Now, I know there is some manner of contention around the idea of “real geek vs. fake geek,” and other such nonsense, which I think to be just that – nonsense. However, I do not think there is anything wrong with noticing a demarcation between a fan of literary SF, and related ephemera, and a follower of more- mainstream variants of the genre. It is not an error, nor is it an insult, to understand that there will be some difficulty in there being an engaging conversation between someone who has just finished reading the complete works of Olaf Stapledon, and someone whose fan “credentials” (as goofy of a term as that is) are determined by the size of their Star Wars action figure collection. That being said, however, I see no reason to not try and expose the more mainstream fans, in the hopes that they will gain an interest in literary SF – the basic interest in the genre is already there, so why not try to expand it further? To that effect, I’ve spoken at a few local gatherings, concerning the history of SF, trying to at least foster that interest. I am naturally a cynical person, but I will continue to work towards that goal. Wrapping up, I just wanted to say again, that I am glad to see your, and a few other recent, fanzines starting up – as well as the ones that have been running for quite some time, as I am not discounting them, in the least. Perhaps there is hope for our generation’s fandom yet.

- Nathan Vernon Madison Richmond, Virginia

Thanks for the letter! So, reading your letter gave me another thought for a way to hook new fans in to SF. A lot of major SF writers (new and old) have occasionally stepped into the realm of licensed fiction, particularly related to recentTV series and video games – and Stephen Baxter have written Doctor Who novels recently, Diane Duane has written a highly regarded series of Star Trek licensed novels, and Greg Bear has written a trilogy of novels laying out some of the backstory of the universe of the Halo games. For readers who don’t read that much literary SF, but who are fans of those franchise, that’s a great way to draw people in. Also, your mention of the Lensman anime reminds me that there was a Starship Troopers anime from 1988 that sadly has never received a legit stateside release (though fan-subtitled versions have made it out through various channel), that I wish received a legally licensed release. Jerry Kaufmann writes: It was good to see you at Orycon, though we didn’t get too much time to talk. I’m going to take another stab at a letter of comment. But I’ll still be brief. You’re starting fanzine publishing at 27. I started a few years earlier in life, but I took some time to learn about fandom, do some letters of comment, articles, even poetry, before I worked up the nerve to pub my ish. Even then the first zine was for an amateur press association, the Cinema Amateur PRess Association (CAPRA for short). After two issues, I turned it into a genzine (and added Suzle to the editorial staff), starting a new zine just for the APA. I’m actually not much of an anime fan, though I’ve seen some wonderful Miyazaki films like Spirited Away and Kiki’s Delivery Service. Your ideas for getting younger fans interested in literary SF through their interest in anime sounds good, but I wonder if we older fans share enough interest in anime to communicate without sounding all “now you’re getting interested in The Real Thing” and put off the newcomers. But if I decide I need to explore anime in my copious spare time (if I retire in a few years, I might actually have that time), I would certainly use your suggestions as good starting points. Ghost in the Shell and Fullmetal Alchemist sound the most interesting. Bodacious Space Pirates might be fun, too, but I disagree that the title makes it sound juvenile. It makes the show sound sophomoric. “Bodacious” carries connotations of “sexy, spirited, naughty and large breasted.” Usually it would be spoken by a guy with “If the van’s rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’” bumper-stickered on his vehicle. We saw Pacific Rim this summer and enjoyed the visuals, like you did. I didn’t like it as much as earlier del Toro films because I couldn’t see that it had anything deeper going on. Even Hellboy had something to say about overcoming the past, oddballs sticking together, the power of love, etc. Pacific Rim had each bigger and weirder than the one before. Old arcade games? It’s not a subject that would attract me to a convention, but outside of pinball and computer solitaire, I’m not much of a gamer. Both Myst and Sim City bored me pretty quickly, and those games must be twenty years old but now. (Of course, they’re not arcade games.) If you liked The Demolished Man, you ought to love The Stars My Destination (Bester’s other novel from the same period) and any of his short stories from back then. Stars is based loosely on The Count of Monte Cristo. (I feel the need to re-read it, to see if it’s as good as I remember. That’s often not the case.) I’m very interested to see what you do next. Yours, Jerry Kaufman Thanks for the LoC. It’s a bummer that we didn’t get to talk as much at OryCon as I would have liked. I started reading Fanzines for a few months before I started getting some ideas together for the first issue. In the case of that issue, what spurred it on was a situation where I realized that I had so many things that I wanted to say, and in particular that I wanted to reach out to some fans who, well, weren’t necessarily reading my blog or watching my show. While you can reach massive audiences through blogging, or through doing videos on YouTube, you’re competing with so many other voices that it’s hard to tell if you’re being heard, and even harder to have a conversation with people. With Fanzines, while the overall community is smaller, it’s easier to have a conversation. To use a real clunky analogy, having a conversation on YouTube is like trying to talk with your friends at Buffalo Wild Wings on Super Bowl Sunday. Having a conversation with fanzine readers is like having a conversation in a coffee shop or local pub. As far as the connotations of “Bodacious”, while both of us read it as a negative, I guess our differences in how we read it are somewhat generational. I’m part of the generation that grew up with the late ‘80s-early ‘90s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, so Bodacious always carries with it the connotations of Raph being cool but cruel and Michaelangelo being a “party dude.” As it is, I’m not sure how much of an improvement a translation closer to the original Japanese title, like “Miniskirt Space Pirates” would be. I think Pacific Rim had something to say, but I’m not sure I have the right words to say it, and the message was somewhat subtle. It was a disaster-action film where America didn’t lead the way (like in Independence Day), where instead the team was almost completely international, where the team was led by a Brit (and succeeded by an Australian). It’s a broader version of the “oddballs sticking together” theme from Hellboy, with the idea that (at least for the moment) this is the only world we’ve got, and we all have to work together to protect it. It’s a simple message, but simple isn’t necessarily bad. Though simple can occasionally be overshadowed by the spectacle of a giant monster getting the stuffing beat out of it by a giant robot wielding a freighter. As I mentioned above, The Stars My Destination is on my to-read list, and it is moving upwards. Though, this did remind me of one anime series I forgot to recommend in my Drink Tank column. Studio Gonzo did a great series called Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Christo, which adapted Dumas’ story, set on a colonized moon, with the story focused a little more on Albert. Director , who had worked with Gonzo before on the series Blue Submarine No. 6, and on The Second Renaissance portion of The Animatrix, builds an amazingly visually deep world here. In particular, the use of patterns in the clothing of The Count is particularly of note, as the patterns seem to float instead of moving with the clothing, building a sense of otherworldly unease about the character that is kind of creepy and kind of enticing, sort of like what most productions of The Nutcracker shoot for with Drosselmeyer. The show is currently available for streaming on Hulu. Anyhoo, hopefully at the 2014 OryCon we’ll have more time to talk.

Edmond Dantes from Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Christo. (Still from the series) Book Review – The Final Programme In my attempt to read as many works as possible by classic SF writers (while also reading recent stuff, plus all the non-fiction books I want to read), I’ve been meaning to get around to more of Michael Moorcock’s back catalog. I’d read the Elric series around mid-2010, and I’d reviewed the Hawkmoon books in the web-series that this zine is an outgrowth of. Through all of this I’d had some passing knowledge of the existence of the character of , and that he played a role in the larger Eternal Champion mythos. I’d first encountered the character not through one of Moorcock’s own works, but through another work created when Moorcock was letting other writers play with the character. When reading a copy of Heavy Metal magazine I borrowed from a friend, I came across the story The Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius by Jean “Mobius” Gerard. A little research revealed that the character of Cornelius was originally created by Moorcock as a shared universe character (in the same way that Larry Niven’s Known Space was originally a shared universe for all to play in), and Moorcock later withdrew permission to use the character (leading to Mobius later retitling the work as simply The Airtight Garage). That caught my interest. Later on, when reading the Hawkmoon series, I discovered that the anthropomorphic incarnation of , the symbol of the cosmic balance, was named (in a corrupted form), Jeramiah Cornelius, I knew that I had to check this series out. Consequently, when checking out a used bookstore in Corvallis (Browser’s Bookstore – which I highly recommend if you’re in the area), I came across a copy of The Cornelius Chronicles, which contained the basically 5 books in the Cornelius series (not including books that had Cornelius in them at some point but which later had him removed, like the novelization of the Sex Pistols mockumentary The Great Rock ‘n Roll Swindle. I picked up the book, and went read the first of the five parts voraciously. At some point, during reading it, I noticed that some elements of the plot seemed oddly familiar. Later on, wild idly flipping to the back of the book, I noticed that Moorcock had put a side-by-side comparison of a passage fromThe Dreaming City, one of the Elric stories, with a passage from The Final Programme. They were almost identical, with the exception of the removal of all elements of magic and sorcery from the scene, and some names changed. To Moorcock’s credit, my response was not to roll my eyes at the re-use of the scene, as much as to mentally applaud and respond with a “Well played, Mr. Moorcock, well played.” Anyway, I enjoyed the story immensely. Moorcock does an interesting job of building a setting which paints the real world (albeit 30 seconds in the future) as a sort of modern-day Melniboné, a decadent society just about to fall over the brink into collapse. Additionally, the character of Miss Brunner was particularly interestingly written. The character reminded me a lot of the character of Gendo Ikari from the later anime TV series Neon Genesis Evangelion*. Like with Gendo, Miss Brunner is a sinister figure, and it’s not clear whether her ends are for the ultimate damnation or salvation of humanity. I should probably mention here that when I read fiction, I tend to contextualize it in the context of everything that I’ve read previously. I blame all those years of having to write “compare and contrast” essays in middle school and high school. In any case, I enjoyed the book a great deal. I’m planning to eventually get to the other four books in the series, hopefully sooner rather than later. * Evangelion is similarly apocalyptic, and which also draws inspiration from the New Wave movement of SF, which Moorcock was a part of, but also draws from Cordwainer Smith. I could get into more detail on this but, that’s something for a later article, and also it would get into spoilers. Anime 103 – Manga In my first issue of the fanzine, I discussed at length some recommendations for recent anime series, which SF fans who used to watch anime, or who are new to anime, might like to check out. In response to this, as was mentioned in the Letter of Comment Column, I got invited by Chris Garcia to contribute an article to The Drink Tank on a similar topic. So, in issue #361 of The Drink Tank, I contributed an article covering some older titles that recently been licensed. This left me with the question of how to round out this little sequence in this issue. Then I realized that there is one part of the anime equation that I hadn’t covered yet: manga. So, first a little bit of background is required. Manga is the Japanese term for comic books.While most comic books in the US focus on action and adventure stories aimed for male audiences, manga is a much broader medium in Japan. This is, in part, due to how the medium, in its present form, caught on: through weekly or monthly magazines with a relatively low paper quality (particularly compared to books) in post-war Japan. Manga became one of the predominant forms of entertainment, particularly since the Japanese film industry was restructuring after the war, and television was not necessarily widespread in Japan. Additionally, the staying power manga has had as a medium can also be attributed to the breadth of genres and audiences that manga caters to. As an example, in US comic, after a long variety of romance comics back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, the romance genre has effectively died, with some rare exceptions, like the juggernaut of Archie Magazine and its related spinoffs. On the other hand, in Japan, there are romance manga series for pretty much every age demographic. This is in part due to how manga is published in Japan. Manga series were never published in the individual chapter format used by US comic publishers like Marvel, DC, Dark Horse or Image. Instead, manga is published in massive magazines, focused on particular demographics and at different frequencies. For example, Weekly Shonen Jump is published weekly (as you can tell from the title), and marketed at young boys, generally between the ages of 13-18. Each issue would have chapters from various ongoing stories, from different authors. This way, readers would have several different options of manga stories to read, depending on what they’re interested in, including fans of science fiction and fantasy. With that in mind, here are five series that might catch your interest, covering a wide range of topics. As with the last two series, I’m focusing on series that are currently in print in the United States. However, as with my article in The Drink Tank, not all of these are recent. Mobile Suit : The Origin by Yoshikazu Yasuhiko is an anime series that is probably one of the most significant series in the and manga. It’s a show that is partially responsible for spurring the rise of the “real robot” branch of the genre of SF anime. It’s also a show that has a massive amount of cultural penetration in Japan, to the point that Toyota did a car ad referencing Gundam. In short, it is to Japanese pop culture, what Star Trek is to American pop culture. Mobile Suit Gundam is also a series which completely, utterly failed to get any sort of traction in the United States. To be fair, it’s a show that’s a contemporary of Star Trek, about the same length as Star Trek, that’s of an style that’s very unique to the ‘70s, and which we didn’t get in its entirety until the early 2000s. Further, we’d gotten some later Gundam shows before this. In particular, the action series Gundam Wing, and the tournament fighting series Mobile Fighter G Gundam had been aired on Cartoon Network’s block, and both of which, being made later, had a generally stronger animation quality than the original Gundam series did. The original Mobile Suit Gundam, from a strictly technical standpoint had action that was not fluidly animated, mechanical design that was somewhat clunky, and scenes that didn’t necessarily handle light and shadow very well. To put that in perspective, the first impression the original Gundam series had in the US would be comparable to the impression the original run of Doctor Who might have had if it was introduced after US audiences had seen David Tennant’s second season as The Doctor. Those great stories are still there, but audiences which had associated the higher quality production values of the later series with Doctor Who, would have to get past the walls that shake, and alien monsters that look like people covered in green painted bubble wrap. Fortunately, Japanese audiences, and even the people who worked on the original show, recognized this. Thus, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko, one of the designers and artists from the original series, decided to re-tell the story of the show, with creator Yoshiyuki Tomino’s blessing, as a manga – Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin. The series is set in the fairly far future – the series doesn’t give a specific date, instead giving using a new dating system created for the universe, setting the story in the 75th year of the “Universal Century” dating system. In this setting, humanity has built a series of space colonies (using the O’Neill Cylinder configuration) throughout the solar system at various LaGrange points, under the control of a unified Earth government, called the Earth Federation. One group of these colonies secedes from the Earth Federation and declares themselves the Independent Duchy of Zeon, under the control of a military dictatorship lead by the Zabi family. This leads to a civil war, with each side fielding mecha called “Mobile Suits”. Throughout this war, Earth is at something of a disadvantage, as being at the bottom of the gravity well, they’re vulnerable to attack by various kinetic weapons, with the most dramatic involving Zeon forces dropping under construction space colonies on Earth. One such colony drop destroyed Sydney, Australia, and caused catastrophic damage to Earth’s biosphere. However, as they’re also in orbit, Zeon is vulnerable to supply limitations, leading to Zeon forces invading Earth. The manga and anime follow Amuro Ray, the son of the designer of the Earth Federation’s next generation mobile suit, the Gundam, and an inhabitant of the space colony of Side 7, where the suit is developed. When Zeon forces attack the colony, hoping to capture or destroy the prototype suit, and the new ship that’s supposed to be its carrier, Amuro, along with some of his friends from the colony, end up forced into a war that he’d really prefer to stay out of. Frankly, this manga is the best way to experience the story of the original series for the first time. Yasuhiko’s art has more detail than the show could ever express, due to the budgetary limitations that animation ran into at the time. The story has some narrative tweaks to keep long-time fans interested, while also in the process fixing some of the issues that the original series had. In particular, the original animated series was paced as a 52 episode show, which was unfortunately cut short before it was able to reach its planned conclusion. This means that the show is front-loaded with padding, and then crammed full of rushed narrative and action sequences towards the end, as they realize that they’re going to be able to tell the story they want to. Yasuhiko, on the other hand is able to trim the padding away from the original series, and let the narrative and the characters breathe, while also giving the action sequences time to flow. Indeed, the action sequences in this manga are considerably more intense than the sequences from the original show. When Tomino created the original series, he wanted to create a gritty and intense war drama, something different than more unrealistic mecha series like Tetsujin 28 (Gigantor) and Mazinger Z (Tranzor Z). However, because of how mecha series were produced at the time, Tomino was roped by the producers into including some super-robot elements into the work (such as the Gundam Hammer, a massive flail that was used by the titular robot, and which was particularly not feasible as a weapon in microgravity). In the manga, those elements can be excised, allowing the series to maintain a regular tone throughout the work. Additionally, the English editions of the series put out by are some of the best editions of any manga I’ve ever seen in my life. The books are hardbound with very high quality, glossy paper. The color pages that start off Japanese tankobon (the manga equivalent of the comic book trade paperback), are also reproduced in full color here. The books aren’t flipped, so readers who have difficulty adapting to reading right to left might run into some problems here. I definitely recommend checking this series out. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by In my past two columns, I’ve refrained from mentioning the works of Hayao Miyazaki. This isn’t because I don’t think they’re good. I do think they’re good. Frankly, I’d consider Miyazaki to be one of the greatest directors in the history of animation. I was refraining from bringing up his works because he has mainstream recognition. If you go to an audience full of people who do not consider themselves anime fans, odds are high that everyone in the audience will have heard of Miyazaki, even if they haven’t seen a single one of his films. Where Miyazaki hasn’t had much mainstream penetration in the US, is in his manga. This is a shame as Miyazaki wouldn’t have had his success without manga. When Miyazaki was forming Studio Ghibli, after leaving Tokyo Movie Shinsha, he had an idea for an animated film that would eventually become Nausicaä. To promote the work so he could get funding to make the film, he initially created the series as a manga, which was serialized through Animage, the primary animation entertainment magazine in Japan. Even after the film was completed and released, he continued working on the manga until it was completed in 1994, a decade after the film came out. The manga is set in a post-apocalyptic future, where mankind was nearly wiped out through a global war which involved massive entities called “Giant God Warriors”. After the war, the Earth became covered by a massive toxic fungal jungle, with small outposts of humanity staving off the toxic spread. In this world lives Nausicaä, the daughter of the ruler of the Valley of the Wind – a fertile valley which has managed to stay fungus free due to sea breezes which blow toxic spores inland. Nausicaä is more than just a princess – she’s curious enough to want to probe the toxic jungle’s secrets and learn as much as she can about it, she’s kind and merciful to friends and foe alike, but a tough opponent if pushed. However, when the military ambitions of two of the valley’s neighboring countries catch it in the crossfire, Nausicaä and the people of the Valley of the Wind will have to use all their skill and cunning to get out intact. Miyazaki’s art for the manga reminds me a lot of the work of Jean “Mobius” Gerard. Miyazaki uses heavy gradients and pen strokes to give all the materials a sense of texture. It’s a style that I’ve only seen used by Miyazaki and Mobius. The writing is also excellent, with the chapters after the first two volumes (which were adapted into the movie), expanding on the environmental and pacifist themes of the work. I could probably also make a case for Viz Media’s release of the manga in the US making audiences aware of the dramatic changes that were made when the film was released in the US under the title of “Warriors of the Wind” – changes that lead to Miyazaki refusing to have Studio Ghibli’s works released in the US until John Lassiter of Pixar promised him that no cuts or alterations would be made without his explicit consent, which in turn lead to Ghibli’s current agreement with Disney. As it is, the current release of the manga is probably one of the best manga releases available in the US at this time, with the books having been released in a hardcover collection with a gorgeous slipcover. With Miyazaki having stated that he plans to return to writing manga in his retirement, now is as good of a time as any to return to Miyazaki’s first manga, and give it a read. Akira by Kasuhiro Otomo Akira is another classic work of science fiction anime which I refrained from including in my earlier two articles. This is because while the film itself is many people’s gateway anime, and it is beautifully animated, the film has some narrative problems. This is in part, due to the film adapting a fairly long work of manga (six volumes of about 352 pages each) into a 2 and a half hour film. To provide an example of all the narrative deficiencies such a work can encounter, I need only point to the David Lynch version of Dune. While some of these problems were mitigated by the fact that Otomo wrote and directed the film, the problem remains that the movie was entering production at a time when the manga was still going, and that even with Otomo’s intimate involvement, important characters and sub-plots were trimmed heavily. Characters who were vital to some of the manga’s themes were almost cut from the film entirely, or worse, had their characters changed to the opposite from their role in the manga. The film is set in the city of -Tokyo, after a catastrophe destroyed the city and triggered a third world war. In the new city, two orphans, Tetsuo & Kaneda are juvenile delinquents in a high school motorcycle gang. When a fight between their gang and another is interrupted by the appearance of a child with psychic powers, the two will get caught up in conspiracies involving a secret government project, a group of revolutionaries, a spiritual leader, and an ambitious member of the Cabinet. Through all of this Tetsuo and Kaneda will also have to contend with Tetsuo’s own developing psychic powers, and cause of the catastrophe, which is related to a young boy named Akira. Thus, while the film has a proud place in my anime collection, and I enjoy it immensely, I cannot recommend it to new viewers of anime. I can, however, recommend the manga. In addition to the manga not hitting the same narrative stumbling blocks of the film (though I’m not saying the manga’s story if flawless), and restoring lost characterization, the manga itself is also absolutely gorgeous. All of the attention to detail that was present in the film’s animation is also present in the manga. Otomo’s eye for design, not only of characters and machines, but also environments, is incredible. The world of Akira feels like a world that has been lived in, destroyed, rebuilt, and then lived in some more. Since the film’s critical and commercial success in the US, the manga has always been available, in some form or another, in the US. Whether in the colored Epic Illustrated editions put out by Marvel, or the more recent trade paperback releases from Dark Horse Comics and now Kodansha USA, the manga has been available to those who want to read it. Also, for readers who have problems reading from right to left will be pleased to know that all the US releases of the manga have been flipped, with Otomo’s supervision, so they instead read in the Western fashion. Oh My Goddess! By Kōsuke Fujishima I talked a bit earlier about romance in manga and romance in comics. To make a long discussion short, when is the last romantic comedy fantasy or science fiction novel you saw? Specifically, I’m focusing on stories where the romance is the main plot, as opposed to a sub-plot. Certainly, the paranormal dramatic romance is becoming the driving force of the urban fantasy genre, but romantic comedies aren’t as common. Not in prose fiction, not in graphic novels, not on TV and not in film. This isn’t to say that this hasn’t happened before, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie are two which have come before, but their permutations are fairly infrequent. In anime and manga, the romantic comedy SF/Fantasy series is a staple of the medium. Of those (particularly those which are available as manga), probably one of the better examples for beginners is a manga that would best fall into the urban fantasy genre (if I was going to fit it into an existing genre),Oh My Goddess! The manga follows Keiichi Morisato, a young college student, who is a good natured and kind hearted person with absolutely horrible luck. After realizing the karmic bookkeeping error that this is causing, the Powers That Be send the goddess Belldandy down to Keiichi to grant him one wish. In the course of trying to decide what his wish will be, Keiichi accidentally says “I wish you could be with me forever.” With a flash of lightning, it is done. However, the two fairly quickly fall in love, and as with all good romantic comedies, hilarity ensues – from other students jealous of Keiichi & Belldandy, to the members of the school Motor Club (which Keiichi and Belldandy are now part), roping them into gearhead hijinks, to Belldandy’s two sisters, Urd and Skuld moving in. Things go further beyond that later on, but I don’t want to spoil things. Oh My Goddess is one of the longest running manga released in the US, and I will say that the manga doesn’t necessarily work as a “drop-in-anywhere” manga. Fortunately, the early volumes are still in print. That said, the manga started in the ‘80s, and early volumes feature very 80s character designs, complete with coats with massive shoulder pads. I still think the manga is very enjoyable, and it avoids some of the problems more recent romantic comedy anime and manga have. In particular, the manga doesn’t have a focus on slapstick comedy (which works better in anime than in manga), nor constant bickering between the two leads, nor an awkwardly large love dodecahedron. Currently, the manga is available from Dark Horse Comics in physical and digital editions. There is also a two season anime TV series based on the show, currently available on DVD and for streaming on Hulu. by Kentaro Miura Berserk is a manga that I don’t recommend lightly, and it’s definitely one that isn’t for everyone. If I was to give the manga an elevator pitch, I would describe it as a fantasy series about a world in transition from the world of Game of Thrones to the world with some of the more horrific elements of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories. The story follows Guts, an orphan who was raised by the abusive (in multiple senses) leader of a mercenary company. After Guts killed his adoptive father in self- defense, he ended up a wandering lone mercenary until he meets Griffith, the charismatic leader of a mercenary company called The Band of The Hawk. Griffith impresses Guts (in a couple ways), and Guts ends up becoming Griffith’s right hand man, alongside Griffith’s other trusted lieutenant, the swordswoman Casca. However, political schemes at the court of the king of Midland, who they are working for, as well as a dark destiny in Griffith’s future will lead them all down the path of destruction. The manga is fits into two types of stories – intense action in the field, through medieval siege warfare and field combat (and fighting horrific monsters), and political maneuvering at court. All of this is depicted with tremendous attention to detail. It’s clear that Miura did his research, in terms of how war was fought, the armor worn by knights in the field, and the weapons used in battle. There are some liberties taken with the scales and capabilities of the weapon’s used (at one point Griffith blocks Guts’ massive sword – a zweihänder on steroids - with his saber.) While Berserk is very well written, with excellent art, this manga has a standing trigger warning. Sexual abuse of men and women does occur on multiple points in this work. It is not glamorized or sexualized, but it is explicitly shown, and depicted as an ugly and horrific act. Guts in particular is a victim of sexual assault in his past, and while he is shown as a powerful and dangerous person, he is also depicted as having lingering emotional and mental scars from the trauma. I have not had any experience working with men who are victims of sexual assault, so I cannot say if Guts response is realistic. I can say however, that the depiction of the act is not meant to fetishize or trivialize it. Additionally, while the manga is a long runner, currently with 36 volumes in print, over the last few years the pace of release of the volumes has slowed. Miura has started to develop a problem with missing deadlines, whether this is due to distraction by other things, for instance his recent discovery of the Idolmaster series of video games, or just a loss of interest, or a violent allergy to deadlines is unclear. As it is, the manga is currently available in English from Dark Horse Comics. A TV series based on the show is also available, along with three films, all adapting the same arc - the manga’s Golden Age arc, which is when the show is at its most Game of Thrones. The films handle the action sequence better, to the point of the animation studio, Production 3 Celsius hiring a Western Martial Arts consultant to work on designing the fight scenes. On the other hand, the films have to cut down on the political machination side of the plot, which is adapted better in the anime TV series. As the arc ends on a cliffhanger, with the more horrific Conan-esque monsters being introduced to the world, I would recommend reading the manga first, and then either watching the show or the films to see the story in motion. Reference Works In the last article I did on this topic, I included a few recommendations for reference works on anime and manga. I have a couple similar recommendations this time as well.

The Complete Guide to Manga – Jason Thompson As with all “Complete” guides to evolving fields, this book is out of date. However, it is a guide to books, which compensates for the problem. Books don’t require a particular format of player, like VHS tapes or DVD players do. So, even if a manga goes out of print, if you find a copy (in a language you can read), you can still read it.Thus, this book’s utility is preserved. As it is, Thompson and his contributors provide a lot of good descriptions, and brief reviews, of various manga series, which would might give you a good idea of where to go from here. That said, as far as the “Complete” moniker goes, when the book was written, Thompson and his contributors set out to read every manga that had been published in the US as of the book’s deadline. If that doesn’t merit the “Complete” line in the title, I don’t know what else does.

500 Manga Heroes and Villains – Helen McCarthy Helen McCarthy is one of the most knowledgeable writers on anime and manga that I know of. So, when I saw this book on sale at Powell’s, I decided to give it a shot, and I was impressed by what I read. With manga, particularly long running series, a series lives or dies based how much you as a reader want to continue to spend time with these characters, heroes and villains. Thus, a guide book to the protagonists and antagonists of all these various manga really serves as a good gateway book.

Anime Classics Zettai! By Brian Camp and Julie Davis Much like the Rough Guide to Anime, this book has a collection of 100 different anime series that are worth checking out, and several creators worth looking out for. The book isn’t perfect as a resource as some of the anime that are recommended are currently out of print, and others have yet to receive a US release as of this writing, though they have been licensed. Still, I think this book is another good resource for new and returning anime viewers looking for more shows to check out. With that, I’m pretty much done with this series of articles on Anime. I’ll certainly discuss SF and Fantasy anime and manga in the future, but between these three articles, I believe I’ve put together a good primer. OryCon 2013 Con Report So, this con report isn’t going to be quite as in-depth as the con report for Portland Retro Gaming Expo, primarily because the torrent of schoolwork that came after the con lead to me not being able to write up my notes for the Con Report until sometime later. Consequently, my notes aren’t as in-depth as I’d like. On the first day I arrived at the con in the afternoon, and the first panel I went to was on the future of computer interfaces. As someone who is majoring in Health Informatics (medical IT), this panel was particularly relevant to my major. The panel was very interesting, with several of the panelists being actively involved in developing new computer interfaces, particularly hands free ones. There was also a very good panel on women role models in SF, with Mike Shepard, Stoney Compton, and Renee West on the panel. I got some pretty good book recommendations out of the panel. Saturday we got the first of two of the panels at anime at the convention, theAnime Beyond the Mainstream panel. The panel got a great turnout, with both old and young fans, with long time anime fans looking for new recommendations alongside people new to anime. The panel covered some of the shows that I covered in my article from last issue, as well as some shows that I covered in my article for issue 361 of the Drink Tank. However, there are even more shows that I hadn’t seen that came up over the course of the panel, so I’d say that in terms of quality of the panel combined with the quality of the audience, it was a success. In between these panels I went upstairs and hung out at the Fanzine lounge… and completely forgot to write down the names of any of the people I talked to. I remember I saw some people I saw the year prior, and that I didn’t get to talk to Jerry and Suzanne as much as I would have liked. I do remember that for various reasons I wasn’t able to make it to the beer tasting that evening (in part because, since I live locally, I didn’t bother getting a room at the con). There was also a panel discussing World Horror Con, which will be held in Portland in 2014. While I enjoy horror literature, I suspect that this is a con I won’t be going to, as going from the discussion, the con is geared for professionals, as opposed to fans of horror literature. There was also a very interesting panel on comics for teens, which ventured into the territory of manga as well, as the panelists came to something of a consensus that a lack of attempts by the Big Two to engage younger audiences, combined with an increase in interest in manga (and increased availability of manga), have lead younger readers of sequential art to go with manga or webcomics like Girl Genius or Homestuck over western comics. This segues nicely into the next panel I went to on the Anime Track, This panel, Anime vs. Comics, also had a great turnout, though due to a communications issue, one of the panelists didn’t make it until halfway through. That said, the panel was great, comparing and contrasting anime and comics, how they’re different and how they’re similar, in terms of the types of stories told in each medium, and how they’re told. If a SF convention wants to do some cross promotion with a local anime convention in their programming, in particular by including a little anime related programming they could learn a lot from how OryCon handled this. I’m hoping that there will be a couple LitSF related panels at Kumoricon in September of 2014. On the last day of the con I went to the Coffee Chat with the convention’s Artist Guest of Honor – Larry Elmore. As a long time player of Tabletop RPGs, particularly Dungeons & Dragons, Elmore’s art was an important part of my childhood. At the coffee chat, Elmore talked about his recent Kickstarter, and in particular some of the difficulties he’d had with shipping. As someone who had recently helped a friend with shipping for their own Kickstarter (specifically Fire Mountain Games’ Playing Card Kickstarter), I’d experienced a lot of the things he’d described (especially the cost of shipping to Australia – holy crap shipping to Australia is expensive). There was also a good podcasting panel on Sunday, and an interesting panel on Reprints that Jay Lake, the writer guest of honor, was on. The final panel I went to, on writing licensed fiction, was interesting, though I got the impression from the panel that while back in the old days being a fan (in addition to being a good writer) could help you get work writing licensed fiction (i.e. Paul Cornell doing Doctor Who Fanzines and fan guides before being hired on to work on the Doctor Who New Adventures novels), nowadays being a fan might be a detriment. All in all, much like last year, I had an absolute blast, and I’m looking forward to going again next year. Movie Thoughts – Thor: The Dark World & The Day of The Doctor I saw Thor: The Dark World and The Day of The Doctor within a day of each other, and I had the good sense to write down my thoughts on both works after seeing them. As of this issue, I haven’t seen the Christmas Special yet. I’ll probably give my thoughts on that episode next issue.

Thor: The Dark World This movie was really fun. I like how while the first film implied that Asgardian magic was simply Sufficiently Advanced Technology, this film makes that text. On the acting side of things, Tom Hiddleston was, as always, excellent as Loki. Christopher Eccleston also did a great job as Malakieth, though he doesn’t get as much screen time as I’d like. The Dark Elves in general are interesting villains, but their appearance is reduced in the film in favor of more time with loki, which I can’t object to, and more time with Jane Foster’s friends on Earth, which I can object to. In particular, all the scenes with Foster’s friends on earth are played for comic relief, and are almost always edited in immediately after something really dramatic and serious. This leads to a lot of moments of tonal whiplash. It’s not that the film doesn’t need comic relief, or that comic relief is inherently bad. It’s that those beets, at those points in the film hurt the film. That said, I enjoyed the film immensely. The plot did a great job of highlighting how Thor grew as a character through his first film and the events of The Avengers. While the movie’s threat has some problems with sequel power-escalation, the writing kept it from feeling too big. I’m really looking forward to seeing how the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues from here, with Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Also, as this movie is still running in second-run theaters, if you haven’t seen this film yet in theaters, and get a chance to see it in the theater, stick around through all of the credits. The Day of the Doctor The 50th Anniversary Special was, for lack of a better word, fantastic. It was brilliantly executed, with Tennant, Smith, and Hurt having excellent chemistry. Hurt as the War Doctor in particular was excellent, as he does a great job of really feeling like an incarnation of The Doctor, though a more serious one. I do hope that Big Finish manages to get permission to do a few audios with The War Doctor. The primary plot thread of The Doctor preparing to use The Moment to burn Galifrey and the Daleks is very well done, though the B-Plot of the Zygon invasion of earth through Time Lord art doesn’t work as well. I do also like the loads of great call-backs to the shows 50-year history, from using a modified form of the original series opening credits and starting with a shot of the Coal Hill School, to a whole bunch of other wonderful little bits that I really don’t want to spoil. Video Game Review – Dead Space As science fiction stories are no stranger to video games, I’ve decided to discuss some science fiction video games as well. In particular, I think video game fandom, particularly for game franchises that have strong single-player components are good vectors for outreach for younger SF fans. However, in order to be effective with this, it helps to be somewhat knowledgeable over what’s going on in SF video games. This brings me to my review of Dead Space. Dead Space is a video game published in 2008 by EA. The game follows Isaac Clarke (named by the game’s writers as a nod to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clark), a ship systems engineer sent out to the ISC Ishimura, a mining vessel of a kind known as a “planet cracker”, designed to be able to basically break open planets to more easily access minerals held deeper in the planet’s crust or mantle. Contact has been lost with the Ishimura following the transmission of a distress signal, and Clarke’s team has been sent to investigate. This mission is particularly important to Clarke, as his girlfriend, Nicole, was assigned to the Ishimura as a medical officer. On arriving on the ship, they are attacked formed out of the flesh of dead members of the crew, which Clark and his team discover from crew logs are called “Necromorphs”. It’s up to Clarke, and the two surviving members of the team, Commander Zach Hammond and computer tech Kendra Daniels to find out what happened, and how it relates to a “marker” (a more malign version of the Big Dumb Object) that was found on the surface of the planet, and in addition to Isaac trying to find Nicole and determine if she’s okay. The game tells a lot of its story through environmental storytelling – messages scrawled on walls and signage, and various log messages that Isaac finds while venturing through the bowels of the ship.All of this, particularly the environmental storytelling, gives the game a really tense sense of atmosphere, as you, as the player, are going through places where something really terrible has happened, and as a player you realize that whatever did this terrible thing, just might still be here, somewhere. Part of how the game does this, and builds the threat of the enemies is through the game’s weapons. Conventional weapons like rifles aren’t particularly effective against the necromorphs. Instead, repurposed industrial equipment, like mining lasers have to be used carefully to take the monsters out. Also, depending on the game’s difficulty, resources for these weapons can become more and more at a premium, making the risk of exploration even higher. However, the game is not without its faults. There are several sequences of the game that are unreasonably difficult in ways that have little to do with the actual difficulty setting. Of particular note is a turret sequence that occurs after the Ishimura’s drive has been restored, and the vessel is passing through an asteroid belt. The player must man a defense turret and manually shoot incoming asteroids until the automated targeting systems can build up. The problem is that the asteroid break into smaller pieces, similar to Asteroids, and due to the angles at which they’re coming in, from the camera perspective, there is no way to prevent the Ishimura from being hit – leaving the player hoping that they can barely avoid a failure state, which would force them to play the sequence again. There is another puzzle related to a series of moving bars around an object held in a stasis field that needs to be turned off that is an obnoxious mess to play through. All of that said, the game plays just fine otherwise, it’s just that those two sequences drag down the game, and are unskippable. This is something of a bummer, as I enjoyed experiencing the game’s story, and I wanted to continue investigating the Ishimura, even though I know that there were some considerable horrors ahead. That said, there are ways to experience the story without having to play the game. On YouTube, fans of various video games do videos called “Let’s Plays” (or LPs for short), where they play through various video games and do commentary and critical analysis of the games as they go through them, while also showcasing the game’s story. For Dead Space 1, I’d recommend YouTube User Mistiannyi’s LP of the game, as she does a good job of showcasing the game and making the act of watching a person play the game entertaining as well. The LP can be found at http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL859C2C3023B50111