[Ed-rex-update] Reviewed! Torchwood episode 5, and Crysis: Legion, by Peter Watts

[Edifice Rex Update]

Edifice, Rex Online



      /Rex Update - August 10, 2011/


        Review: /Crysis: Legion/, by Peter Watts
        <http://ed-rex.com/reviews/books/crysis_legion>

/**/

*August 10, 2011, OTTAWA --- *As you might know, I've been serially 
reviewing <http://ed-rex.com/reviews/television/torchwood/miracle_day> 
the latest /Torchwood/ series, a work that (I presume) is as much the 
product of Russell T Davies' personal vision as is possible with an 
inherently collaborative medium.

So it is rather difficult to ignore the irony, that there is more 
credible social commentary, more humour and more excitement in Peter 
Watts' 300 page adaptation of a first-person-shooter /video game/, which 
(again, I presume) was written strictly for the money, than there has 
been in the first five hours of Davies' brain-child.

Watts' story, about a an accidental cybernetic soldier's brief campaign 
on a ruined island of Manhattan a scant 12 years in our future is also 
fairly rigorous science fiction, as one might expect from the "reformed 
marine biologist", but probably not from a novel about a super-soldier 
and his mysterious battle-armour.

If /Crysis: Legion/ 
<http://www.amazon.ca/Crysis-Legion-Peter-Watts/dp/0345526783> is not 
quite the follow-up to his 2006 hard-SF masterpiece, /Blindsight/ one 
might have wished for, it's a better book than one has any reason to 
expect of a media tie-in.

Click here for "Strange bed-fellows". Some spoilers may occur. 
<http://ed-rex.com/reviews/books/crysis_legion>

_______


        Review: /Torchwood: The Categories/ /of life/
        <http://ed-rex.com/reviews/television/torchwood/miracle_day/categories_of_life>

*

*

*August 7, 2011, OTTAWA --- * /Why am I writing this? Why am I even 
still watching?/

At the half-way mark of /Torchwood/'s miraculously boring 2011 series, 
there are two answers to both questions.

The first is that I said I would and that I am trying to develop a 
reputation for reliability. The second is that there is some morbid 
fascination in watching to see just how bad this thing can get.

Contrary to a prediction made in an early draft of my my review of last 
week's /Escape to L.A./ 
<http://ed-rex.com/reviews/television/torchwood/miracle_day/escape_to_la>, 
the return of Jane Espenson <http://www.janeespenson.com/>, whose 
keyboard was behind the best episode in the series so far 
<http://ed-rex.com/reviews/television/torchwood/miracle_day/dead_of_night>, 
didn't make for any improvement after all.

/The Categories of Life/ is so slow moving and so driven by idiot plot 
devices that it's tempting to imagine Russell T Davies is playing some 
sort of Zen game of Patience with his audience, but on reflection, the 
evidence doesn't support that hypothesis.

A far more plausible explanation for the ineptness on display is that 
Davies was so excited about the huge sums of American money at his 
disposal, that he was so distracted by fantasies of crane shots and 
exploding helicopters, that he forgot to write a /story/ in which to 
blow his toys up until mere days before shooting was scheduled to start.

Click here to read about the Miracle of the Legislatures and the 
Parliaments. Yes, there are lots of spoilers behind the link, but click 
away! I've watched it so you don't have to. 
<http://ed-rex.com/reviews/television/torchwood/miracle_day/categories_of_life>

-- 

***************************************************************
Geoffrey Dow
Bringing your words and ideas to life
Www.ed-rex.com/BumblePuppy			
***************************************************************

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