Lots and Lots of Superversive SF

Weirdly, somehow, Superversive SF has lately been updated mostly by Josh Young and myself, who both just started school. Not sure why, but whatever.

Here are a few links. First, my review of “Many Waters”, by Madeleine L’Engle:

L’Engle keeps up a nice level of tension throughout the book that kept me turning the pages. Here is Dennys and Sandy’s problem: Some of the people they know, from Noah’s family, are quite nice…but are not mentioned in the biblical flood narrative, and are to be left behind. What can be done about this?

This is a smart conflict, and a genuinely puzzling one with no obvious answers…

Unfortunately, though, there were serious problems. Sandy and Dennys came across as good fellows, but not very interesting ones. In fact, nobody was particularly interesting. There were no Mrs W’s here, and that ability that L’Engle showed in “A Wrinkle in Time”, the ability to create characters that jump off the page moments after you read about them, is noticeably absent here.

Here are my compliments of the new Suicide Squad trailer, and why the “darkness” of this movie makes more sense than the darkification (it’s a real word now) of Superman:

The difference between this and the Superman films is that this is clearly designed to be dark. That’s why Marvel’s “Daredevil” is dark and Captain America isn’t: Because Captain America is about that good ol’ American can do attitude getting things done and Daredevil is about a man from a crappy town who grew up with a crappy life trying to fix his town while battling both inner and outer demons (and getting the stuffing beat out of him in the process).

And, of course, my introduction into the big medium time, my first post for Superversive Tuesday on the Castalia House blog! This one is about that children’s sci-fi classic “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator”:

Let me pause and apologize to you for being so detailed. It’s hard not to be; everything that happens is just too crazy. And now it’s about to go off the charts, because aliens invade.

Yep. Aliens.

These aliens are known as the Vermicious Knids. Here we must compliment Dahl for creating some of the most unique aliens I’ve ever seen (or read about). The Vermicious Knids are giant, vicious, amoeba-like aliens capable of shape-shifting (and spelling the word SCRAM). Our heroes escape into the elevator, but the Knids manage to destroy the Hotel’s engines, apparently stranding its inhabitants in space forever.

Oh, and they kill twenty-four people. This is never mentioned again.

More, along with a bit of detail on Roald Dahl’s other sci-fi/short story output, linked above. Go check it out!