Movies and more movies …

I spent the weekend watching an eclectic selection of movies – both old and so brand spanking new that I don’t think they’ve even hit the theaters yet :p I started the movie marathon off with a really old movie – a Steven Segal movie called “Hard to Kill”. Personally, I though it looked dated and that most of the acting was terrible and the action was only passable but it was watchable enough to be not a total waste of time :p I then went out on a DVD buying spree with my brother since I had a couple of DVD’s which weren’t working properly and so I actually needed to go return them and in the process I ended up with a few more DVD’s though fortunately it wasn’t as bad as the last time when I came home with 25 DVD’s <vbg>

Anyway, one of the DVD’s I wanted to exchange was “The Gangs of New York” since the disc wasn’t being recognized by my player. The new copy worked and that’s the first thing I watched. It was an OK film again but the characters just failed to capture my imagination or make me really interested in them. I could sort of empathize with Leo De Caprio’s character and see what Daniel Day Lewis’ “butcher” was about through all his racial bigotry but overall, the story just failed to hold me. While Martin Scorsese does succeed in showing these characters as not being black or white but in all their grimy shades of grey <g>, I just could not identify with any of the characters to feel much for the movie – probably it’s just me …

I then watched “DareDevil” – yes, the same “DareDevil” starring Matt Damon and Jennifer Garner which probably has not hit the theaters yet :p It was a really bad camera-copy but I wanted to see if it was worth watching since the trailers had looked promising. I usually make it a point not to see live-action movies starring any of my favorite comic-book characters since it almost inevitably spoils the magic for me – I have not seen any of the Superman movies and only one Batman movie (and even that was because they were playing it on the plane and there was nothing to watch :p) and certainly not any of the recent Marvel movies. But somehow, “DareDevil” was different. I have not read too many of the “DareDevil” comics since I never could lay my hands on them as a child – so I knew of DD only as a guest-star in the comics of other characters like Captain America. So, for whatever reason, I thought I’d watch the movie and while I don’t like some of the changes they’ve made in the movie (I’m a purist – give me the comic-book version, however implausible it may be – no biological webshooters for me thank you <vbg>), the jury is out on the final verdict still :p Again, there wasn’t enough meat to most of the characters for you to invest emotionally in them. I do like Jennier Garner though from her excellent TV series “Alias” and so loved her appearance as Elektra but even there, there were elements to the storyline that I just didn’t like. Just can’t comment on the action or the special effects since this was a camera copy and so I guess I’ll have to see the movie again in the finished form before I decide one way or another …

I can talk about the other movies that I watched “Shanghai Knights” with Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson, the sequel to “Shanghai Noon” – pretty funny and watchable; or the much talked about musical “Chicago” with Renee Zelweger – good music and watchable but I still haven’t seen the full movie; and go into long discussions about each, but instead, I’d like to take the time to briefly mention some movies worth watching which are coming up – mostly so that I’d remember to see them when they are released :p First, there is Ang Lee’s Marvel movie “The Hulk” – not sure I want to see this … and the CGI looks pretty bad on the trailers BTW … but it’s Ang Lee after all and so I probably will end up watching it. Was that Kris Kristofferson playing Bruce Banner’s dad? If so, he might end up in the unusual position of playing father figure to two of Marvel’s heroes – the Hulk and Blade :p Then there is “Basic” starring Samuel L. Jackson and Travolta – I’d just pay to see the movie just for the two actors but it looks to be an interesting thriller. Another movie with powerhouse talents is “The Hunted” with Tommy Lee Jones and Benecio Del Toro – I’m not missing that … or “The Recruit” with Al Pacino and Colin Farrel or for that matter, Farrel’s “Phone Booth”. Then there is Bruce Willis’ (why is Willis doing so many military movies recently – or for that matter, why do we have so many military movies generally recently – sign of the times?) “Tears of the Sun”. I usually stay away from military movies (unless it’s military courtroom drama or something) since I am just so tired of seeing people kill each other and people killing each other on a mass-scale is worse … but this again looks to be an interesting movie … plus I like Bruce Willis 🙂

Of course, there are the usual bunch of sequels that don’t even need to be mentioned – the two “Matrix” movies (I wouldn’t even dream of missing those two and will probably get the DVD as soon as it is out :p), “Legally Blonde 2”, “Bad Boys 2”, “2 Fast 2 Furious” and “The Return of the King” and I’m probably forgetting some others. I probably could go on and on and on with all the movies that look interesting and so I will stop for now … Oh, except for one last movie “Cradle 2 the Grave” with Jet Li and DMX :p I’ve loved Jet Li movies since “Romeo Must Die” but have yet to find a movie equal to that in where I liked the storyline. All of Jet Li’s later movies have failed to capture me as far as the characters and the storyline goes. I’m hoping that “Cradle 2 the Grave” will actually prove to be the exception and that it will turn out to be a great movie. I haven’t checked on this yet but it looks to me as if it could be another movie by “Romeo Must Die” director Andrezj Bartkowiak – I hope it is and I hope that it has as good a script …

The magic of movies …

It’s been a while since I made an entry here but once again, not due to a lack of material to write about but mostly due to a lack of time to do so. Since I try to write about my development work every day in the morning before I set out for work, I find that I’ve usually run out of time by the time I get done with that and need to rush to work. I usually vow to write once I’m at work and have a spare moment but that spare moment never seems to come by since I get pulled into one thing or another and am on the go constantly till I leave work in the evening. But enough of that and on to what I wanted to talk about …

I’ve been watching quite a few movies over the weekends and while I’ve been catching up on some of the movies from last summer that I missed, last weekend I decided to go on a trip down memory lane and watch some of the older movies in my collection that I had not seen due to some reason or other. So it came to be that quite by accident (or maybe not) that I went through a blood-and-gore fest to rival any butcher’s shop on the corner – but I forget that they don’t have those anymore :p I watched "Fair Game" with William Baldwin and Cindy Crawford, "Get Carter" with Sylsvester Stallone and Michael Caine, "L.A. Confidential" with Kevin Spacey, Russel Crowe and Guy Pierce and to top off the trip down memory lane, re-watched "The Big Hit" with Mark Wahlberg and Lou Diamond Phillips … and all this over just two days mind you, though my usual quota is more like four or five movies a day :p

Of what I watched, "Fair Game" was basic fluff – fun, exciting but nothing substantial to it. "Get Carter" was more solid and I really liked Sly’s acting in it but it was a bit predictable – maybe because I knew Michael Caine had played Sly’s role originally and so the story had to turn the way it did at the end … I will say no more in case there are people out there who still have not seen it and want to <g> "L.A. Confidential" was great in that the characters were all *real* in the sense that they weren’t *heroes* who took the moral high ground but rather ordinary people acting as people normally do – lots of shades of grey. It did take me aback quite a few times to see a character do something totally against what I’d want him to do but I could understand it as being human rather than heroic. However, the plot twists were a bit predictable again but I was struck by the fact that all the main leads were mostly unknown (at least to me) at the time the movie originally came out. I think I first noticed Guy Pierce when "Memento" came out and Russel Crowe when "Gladiator" was released .. I’ve no idea when I first noticed Spacey – maybe "The Negotiator" but I certainly did not remember him from "The Usual Suspects" but that was because I wasn’t watching the names of actors then :p

I’d already seen "The Big Hit" – on the big screen at that – but I wanted to watch that again since it seemed to fit right in with the other movies that I’d been watching. When I first watched it, it had been a Friday evening and I’d been stressed from work and I found the movie to be darkly humorous and laughed a lot but I didn’t find it to be that funny this time – I still smiled at a few things, had a chuckle or two and still enjoyed the action sequences but what struck me most was how pathetic Mark Wahlberg’s characters was – how he was being used by everybody that he thought of as friends or lovers (but then again his job and the fact that he has a fiancee and a girl friend on the side is out of character with his whole I-don’t-want-anybody-to-hate-me attitude) and kept on telling him "you idiot! wake up and smell the roses!" :p I guess if you can get that immersed in a movie, it’s still a good movie :p Anyway, I was again struck by the fact that "The Big Hit" had a major Indian/Hong Kong feel to it but that probably isn’t surprising since I believe the director Che-Kirk Wong comes from Hong Kong and this was his first Hollywood movie 🙂

Of humanity and such …

I’m still reading Gordon R. Dickson’s "Childe" cycle. The fifth book in the series "The Final Encyclopedia" has been the biggest yet. At a whopping 700 pages and a font size tinier than normal, it probably equals all the other four books that went before it since all of them were around 200+ pages :p However, this books does take the time to explore the character and to talk about humanity and its future at length perhaps because it was written at a different time – a time at which novels weren’t bound by page limitations which set them at around 200-300 pages .. Or maybe it was just because Gordon R. Dickson was a known writer by then. Whatever the case maybe, while some might find this book to be extremely long winded at times, I found it to be thought provoking.

The book postulates that humanity is a giant multi-celled organism made up of all the individual people that make up humanity. That humanity as an organism has a consciousness of its own and that this mega-creatures actions are defined by the combination of actions of all individuals. I am not sure that I do subscribe to this idea or to some of the others Dickson has in the book about the evolution of the race. But then again, I probably am not the kind of person who sees things philosophically – at least, not at that high a level of philosophies. I’d rather deal with things at a personal level or at least at a tangible level.

Something did come out of the book that made me think of something though – evolve my own philosophy if you want to call it that :p However, it was not the book itself but an analysis written about the book and it’s characters which made me come up with my idea. The analysis pointed out that the main character – Hal Mayne, who incidentally is male – acquires traits like compassion, intuition and empathy which are traditionally the domain of females and that Hal’s companions, who happen to be female, take up traditionally male roles … or something to that effect. This made me think about Dickson’s idea of "splinter cultures" differently. In Dickson’s story, the "splinter cultures" are basically people who embody one specific facet of full-spectrum man from Earth – the philosopher, the man of faith or the warrior. These people have left Earth to travel to different worlds where they built a life for themselves with like minded others.

To me it seems as if we have splinter cultures here on Earth itself – that of men and women. I’ve always maintained that men and women are just two halves that make up a whole but if you look at it another way, they are each missing a half to make them complete. This half as far as men goes is the ability to empathize, to be able to see something from another’s point of view, to have compassion. I can only speak for men since that’s the point of view I’m familiar with, I can’t say this is what women lack since I’d be going based on hearsay, stereotypes and other input which might not be objective – plus, any ladies reading this might get totally ticked off at me :p But I digress …

To me it seems that humanity can be improved upon if the two halves of humanity were able to acquire some of the positive traits of each other. This would lead to a more compassionate, more caring race that could perhaps at last leave behind all the bickering, all the schisms, all the other ills of humanity and work towards a world united as one race. That is my dream …

To be mayor for a day … or a week … or …

Have you played "SimCity"? I have been playing that game since it’s first incarnation as a DOS game. I barely remember the original version. I think I tried to play it on my notebook computer (a 386SX – does anybody even remember those nifty numbering schemes such as SX and what it meant? :p – with an astounding 5MB of RAM and an 80MB – not GB, MB :p – of hard disk space). I think the game refused to load because my video card would not support VESA drivers. Now the only thing I’m hazy about is whether this was the original SimCity or the later SimCity 2000. I think it was SimCity 2000 because I remember being really frustrated with the video problem and I wouldn’t have been that disappointed if I hadn’t already been addicted to SimCity :p

I do remember playing SimCity Classic under Windows 3.1 and I even remember some of the graphics (and the improvement in overall graphics standards) for SimCity 2000. I remember that there was a Win9x version of SimCity 2000 (not just a DOS one and so it must have been SimCity 2K which gave me VESA driver problems) and I remember playing that one too but by that time I was more interested in other "Sim" games like SimTower and SimIsland but my love of the SimCity franchise remained. In fact, I think I have played almost all of the Sim games developed by Maxis (now they are just an extension of Electronic Arts but they used to be a different company) – who remembers such classics as SimAnt and SimEarth?
Anyway, my interest in SimCity peaked again when I heard about SimCity 3000. I was told that you could actually walk through your city and get the opinions of your citizens as to how you were doing with the city. That it would be the first, personal city simulator. I waited for SimCity 3K and bought it when it came out but alas, the personal interaction was not there. The graphics were better than ever and the gameplay was more of the same stuff that I remembered but this really wasn’t the evolutionary next step in the game that I’d expected. Now I hear that SimCity 4 (not SimCity 4000 but SimCity 4 – guess somebody at EA decided on a name change :p) is out 🙂

It still does not have the personal interaction with your citizens – at least not much. You can take people from The Sims and plop them in your city but I’m told that they don’t always convert over well and that they don’t retain the same characteristics as they had in The Sims. But it’s a small start. In addition, instead of city building, the new game is supposed to concentrate on region building so that you can build several cities or a city and a town or an agrarian community (whatever takes your fancy basically) and build up interactions between the two. This leads to a lot more planning and building stuff that is probably going to keep you occupied for hours. Plus, I’ve seen the graphics and it looks gorgeous – and the game is now supposed to have a day and night cycle with pretty realistic effects. So I’m looking forward to the next iteration of SimCity – I’ll probably write more after I’ve actually played the game :p

The future she is a rolling road …

I’ve been continuing to read Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe cycle – or the Dorsai books as they are probably more commonly known. I kind of got stuck on "Soldier, Ask Not" since that was about a character that I didn’t really like – he had great power, the power to affect the affairs and actions of other people around him, but chose to use that power for selfish and harmful ends. This kind of behaviour is antithetical to my way of thinking since I believe in responsible action when you are entrusted/gifted with great power (yes, I know, that probably is a pipe dream because most of us do tend to think of ourselves first … but one can hope ..) Anyway, as I said, I didn’t like the protagonist in "Soldier, Ask Not" – Tam Olyn – much. But in the end he turned out to be one of my favorites and a person about whom I wanted to learn more because he realized the error of his ways and begins working for the good of humanity. It is not cliched as I make it sound here incidentally :p The way it unfolds in the story is interesting and believable.

I finished "Soldier, Ask Not" on Friday evening and began reading "Tactics of Mistake" – the next book in the series – the same day. I read till late and then continued to read through yesterday and finished the book last night :p This was again about the evolution of mankind – about a future where humanity has spread to the stars and has started to splinter – to break up into units made up of like minded people – the warriors, the philosophers, the men of faith and the technocrats. Each of these splinters has one facet of the human persona over-developed .. like a person who has lost a limb having their other limb growing stronger to compensate – only thing is, they haven’t lost any of their other facets of humanity … just that one facet has grown stronger. Normal man, back on Earth, continues to be multi-faceted … the rootstock.

There are many things that Dickson mentions in the books that makes me wonder if he really believed in what he was talking about or had had an inkling of what was to come. I believe in some of what he said about the evolution of humanity – though not in the splinter cultures. I don’t think we should fragment – fragmentation only brings about conflict as it already has on this world of ours. It is actually time for humanity to merge together and to realize that we are one race – not individual nationalities, races or groups. However, I do believe that we are in a constant process of evolution – not just as a race but also as individuals. Each one of us evolves – emotionally, mentally but perhaps not so much physically … but then again, even the physical evolution is there – just not regarded as evolution by most. When we move to a colder climate and "adjust" to the cold, isn’t that evolution? When we adapt to some disability – such as losing a limb – isn’t that evolution? I think it is – at an individual level rather than at a racial level.

There are so many things that the Childe cycle makes me aware of and makes me think about. When I first read the books, I hadn’t considered most of the things that the book talks about – now I’m acutely aware of these things since some of them have become part of my own philosophy about life. I have to wonder – did I evolve this philosophy myself or did my first reading affect my way of thinking subconsciously and instigate this evolution within me? That itself is an interesting thought – at least for me :p

Somebody’s comedy is someone else’s tragedy …

I actually was going to write about something else today but then I got this strange tag saying that HostAurora was gone. Not that I see any point in commenting about that since I have no idea who left the tag (they didn’t leave a name) but I guess there must have been some point to that little exercise :p Anyway, on to what I really wanted to talk about today … (actually, I’ve wanted to write about quite a few things but just haven’t had the time to write lately … but that’s another story altogether :p)
I watched "The Sweetest Thing" last night – actually, I’d started watching it last week but finished watching it yesterday. Can’t say that I was too impressed. It had funny bits but for a romantic comedy it was strangely unsatisfying. Don’t get me wrong – it was definitely breaking new ground as a movie since this seemed to really portray things from a woman’s perspective and to tread in many areas most movies wouldn’t even dare to tread :p But overall, it left me unsatisfied. It was realistic but I think realism is hugely overrated. I watched "Serendipity" last week and was entranced – now that is my kind of romantic comedy. If you contrast "Serendipity" and "The Sweetest Thing" you see that "Serendipity" is totally unrealistic as to it’s situations whereas "The Sweetest Thing" actually portrays possible situations and interactions between people in a normal manner but it just left me so, so … unfulfilled :p I guess I just want the dreamy, romantic, unrealistic stuff to escape from the boring, monotony of a humdrum existence :p

To me, there was no romance, no real feeling, behind the relationship between Cameron Diaz’s character and the guy she falls in love with – Pete. The whole love story seemed to be just an incident in a movie filled with incidents – there just seemed to be no meat to it … no passion .. no drama … or maybe it’s just me :p A friend of mine (a girl <g>) called "The Sweetest Thing" a chick-flick :p Now I love chick-flicks but this to me wasn’t even a "real" chick-flick. Yes, it probably is a chick-flick for the girl of today – of the nineties and the … what the heck do you call this decade? the naughties? :p But it isn’t the kind of chick-flick that I like .. so there :p

Enter the twilight zone …

I know I haven’t written much lately but it’s not because I had nothing to write (in fact, I had tons of stuff going through my mind which would have made good fodder for this blog :p) but because I was too busy to write. SM actually takes a bit more out of me in the way of writing since it is about ideas and thoughts and dreams and philosophies – unlike DC (The Developer’s Corner) where I just talk about development stuff. Here I have to try and be coherent instead of meandering all over the place as I have a habit of doing :p Anyway, enough of the apologies and on to the stuff I wanted to talk about … well, at least some of it :p

I finished reading Gordon R. Dickson’s "Necromancer" a couple of days ago and all I could say was "wow!!" because that book really spoke to me! I could totally identify with the protagonist and the way he thought and looked at the world and I really didn’t think that there were other people who thought that way (and here I am talking about the author – he must at least have seen the world partially like his protagonist to have written that way … at least that’s what I thought). I thought I coined the term "empath" because I believe that while a true telepath would be an impossibility (well, at least a sane one – all the vicious thoughts and secrets that they’d be bombarded with daily would make them go insane is what I think), I think that "empaths" are real and do exist. An empath (in case you are wondering <g>) according to my definition is basically somebody who can feel the emotions of another without actually knowing their thoughts and secrets. But I discovered that Dickson had used the term to describe his protagonist years ago! Plus, his protagonist says that nothing surprises him much because he can see it coming and the same is true of me – the latest example was that I saw the twist in the story coming in "Necromancer" way before it actually arrived – only thing was, that I was never sure that the plot would resolve the way I thought it would and yet, it did in the end!

Now I find myself wondering if I am simply remembering some of this because I’d read the other books in the series (the Dorsai series in case somebody is interested ..) or if I am just hitting the outskirts of the Twilight Zone :p So I decided to go back and re-read the whole series from the beginning since I’d read half the series ages ago (over ten to fifteen years ago if memory serves right) and have not even read the final half of the series yet. I started with the first book – "Dorsai!" – and was again hit with that weird feeling of … I don’t know .. can’t say deja vu since I have read the book before and so deja vu would be appropriate but then again, it’s not since I don’t remember most of this since I wasn’t thinking along those lines when I first read the book. This time the story is about an intuit – a person who intuitively knows the all possible future outcomes and so can take action so that a certain outcome will be possible. While I had never even thought of the concept of an intuit, I do agree again with some of the protagonist’s views. For instance, at the beginning he is described thus: "What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, torturous and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing through a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said "enemy" and "friend"; they said "strong" and "weak" – "them" and "us". They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people – and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one, and always remembered them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient." That is exactly how I feel about people!

I could probably go on and on with this and make this entry really long and boring but I’ll probably stop here for the moment. But I want to take this up again with another subject that has been on my mind related to people – but this time, to the real world and the situation in the world today … maybe tomorrow 🙂

Of this and that …

It was quite a shock (well, OK maybe not a shock but a surprise but not a pleasant one ..) to learn today that one of the blogs on my regular-visit list is no more. I have no idea when that happened since I haven’t visited this particular blog in about a week or two but then again I’ve realized that I haven’t visited any of my regular blogs in a while now – been too caught up in my own stuff – which really is not a good thing. If we don’t have time for others, I feel that we get caught up in our own things and bend more and more inwards till we finally have no time for anybody at all but ourselves – and our troubles begin to seem more and more important and those of others not so significant. Not good – not good at all … I should make an effort to interact with others more but that seems to be not such an easy task for the next few weeks – or maybe even more for reasons that will be revealed eventually …

I watched a Hindi movie (an Indian movie in one of their languages which happens to be called Hindi) on Sunday and at first we thought it was a remake of "The Usual Suspects" but it turned out to be something else altogether. Unusual for a Hindi movie, the whole story was set in the US and in an American setting – there have been other Hindi movies which are set in the US but the settings were still Indian. This was different. It’s about a group of Indians who get together to rob an American bank. The story and the movie itself aren’t what interested me here however – it was the attitudes that the movie implied about the US and about Americans in general. In the movie, the characters say over and over again that if a crime is committed, it’s the Indians who get pinpointed. One character says that the Italians have their mafia, the Colombians their cartels, the Chinese their triads but the Indians only have police records because they are not organized.

Two things struck me here. One was that the America that I knew wasn’t *that* racist and the other was that we always talk in terms of race – even when we are supposed to be one country or one race. Heck, we *are* one race – the human race! But we always forget that and insist on branding, separating, classifying. I’m afraid that I’m guilty of that too since I will talk of Americans and Indians and Sri Lankans but in a sense, I can’t help but do it because people of specific regions or countries do seem to have their own attitudes. While this can be classified as part and parcel of human nature, you still need some way to identify the group and that brings us again back to classifications and categorizations and segregation. There is more I can say on this subject – actually there is more that I *want to* say on this subject but not now since I’d probably be meandering too much :p So let’s save that for another day …

These are some of my favourite things …

I’m still recovering from my bout of illness but then again, as those who know me are aware, this happens to me about once a year – it’s a cyclical thing :p It happens pretty regularly and has a known time frame for me to get well – I’m on my way to recovery except perhaps for a relapse – and that’s been known to happen too. There’s no joy in life when there are no surprises :p That actually brings up something that a protagonist in the latest book I’m reading – "Necromancer" by Gordon R. Dickson – says, or rather, is said about him. In describing his character, it is said that he can analyze isolates in anything and so he is rarely ever surprised because he knows that something is a logical result of the preceding moment or moments. I sometimes feel like that ….

But to get back on track, since I haven’t been feeling too well and was all alone at home for part of the weekend (my parents again went to the Kurunegala house but came back early because they were worried about me – which was sweet of them but I sometimes think that they worry way too much about me :p), I spent my time doing the stuff that I love to do. I’ve been reading – both "Necromancer" and a trade paperback collection of X-Men stories called "The Asgardian Wars". I finished watching the DVD collection of "Kindred: the Embraced" and also have been doing some PC gaming after a long time. Now the gaming is all Edward’s fault since he’s the one who got me hooked :p

Edward told me about "Dungeon Siege" and that it was a great game. I went and looked at the website and it looked pretty interesting and so I decided to give it a try. I got the game and installed it at work on Friday (it was a holiday and nobody was there) to see if it was interesting and I think I played for close to an hour – I brought the save game home with me and then installed on my machine at home and I started playing it Saturday evening and just couldn’t stop :p I played part of Saturday evening (had to stop when the mosquitos came out in force :p) and then started again on Sunday morning and kept on playing till about lunch time. I think I’ve put in close to six hours by now and while it *is* getting a bit repetitive (I mean the battles and the dungeon crawling) it still is very interesting. The strange thing however is that I don’t mind the repetitive battles and the incessant dungeon crawling on console games but don’t so much like it on PC – maybe it has to do with the fact that it is a bigger screen and a different controller? I don’t know … but I’ll probably play "Dungeon Siege" for a good while yet …

For I am a jealous people …

I finished Lester Del Rey’s collection of short novels a couple of days ago but I didn’t get a chance to write about his story that I was talking about in my previous entry yesterday because I got caught up in too many other things :p So I thought I might as well talk about it today since I still feel strongly about that story. As I surmised, the story indeed was about God siding with the aliens but it God takes a more active role than I had envisioned at the beginning of the story – God appears to the alien priests as he did to Moses and tells them directly that they have been chosen to inherit the universe and that they must wipe humankind off the face of the Earth. Setting aside the whole argument as to whether the story is blasphemous or not (since I have the feeling that some might consider it to be so), what interested me was the question as to what I would do if I was put in the place of Del Rey’s protagonist, the priest.

The story ends with the priest holding a mass where he tells everybody "God has decided to side against us, I can only say that he’s chosen a worth adversary" or words to that effect. The point of the whole story is that Man is the only creature that would fight against his own maker. I keep on thinking what I would do if I was in that position. Granted, in the story the aliens are made out to be totally inhuman beings who torture animals and people for fun and then eat them for food and even eat their own kind. So the humans seem noble to rise up against them but that just means Del Rey stacked the decks a bit.

I believe in a merciful God – a God who can understand the failings of humanity. While I’d be the first to understand if God were to decide to wipe out humanity because of our greed, stupidity, prejudice and the worst qualities in humanity that we seem to show more and more these days, I don’t accept it that God would choose a race that is essentially even worse than humanity to be our successors. So if God were to decide that humanity was just not worth salvation, I’d probably understand looking at the world of today but then again, I also believe that humanity has the potential to be so much more than we are because sometimes we show such courage, honesty, compassion, feeling and humanity that it makes me realize all over again what we as humans are capable of ….