The Dedly Blog

The Ghost Brigades is the second book in John Scalzi's Old Man's War Universe.

The title refers to the Special Forces operatives that we first met in the first book in the series. Unlike enlited personnel, these soldiers are born into their fully grown genetically engineered and enhanced bodies and know nothing else. The templates come from enlisted personnel who die before they can have their consciousness transferred from their seventy-year old bodies into their newly revitalized bodies.

Jared Dirac is an unusual case. His body was cloned by a traitor, Charles Boutin, who faked his own death. An autopsy determined the truth and in an effort to track down Boutin, an attempt is made to transfer enough of Boutin's personality into Dirac's body to ascertain where Boutin has fled to, why he has betrayed the Colonial Union and what devious plan he has in store. Because he's the clone of a traitor, he's watched like a hawk by his squad commander, Jane Sagan (who we met in OMW).

It takes some time before Boutin's memories resurface in Dirac's mind. The delay affords him the opportunity to develop his own personality and discover his own sense of self. Without giving anything away, there's eventually a showdown between Boutin and Dirac that concludes the story. The argument that comes to debate is whether or not people who have been grown for a specific purpose can ever break away from their pre-destined fate and exhibit anything resembling free will.

Scalzi, whose style resembled Haldeman and Heinlein in his first novel, develops more of his own voice in The Ghost Brigades. Just like Dirac, he's grown from the template he started with to forge his own style. He continues to craft full-bodied characters, human and alien, that you can't help but care about facing life and death challenges that keep you turning the pages.

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On Wednesday, I took my son to see Walking With Dinosaurs. It was amazing.

When I was a kid, my family did the obligatory trip to Disney World. This was in the 70's when the animatronics were still relatively new. I remember being spellbound because the characters seemed so life like. Well, I could be excused for the ease of my rapture due to my age. Seeing that stuff now, oh man, is it ever dated. Motions were stiff. Sound was canned. Movement, if there was any at all, was confined to a track.

Hollywood upped the ante with their mechanical monsters but you never got close to them so the fake was obscured by movie magic. They were rendered on celluloid and the sound was dubbed. You didn't hear the whirring of gears and servos, not to mention the whooshing expulsion of compressed air and busy hydraulics.

But now animatronics have been taken to a new level.

These beasts thundered across the stage. Although they're mounted onto these little trams, their motions were fluid. Legs moved up and down. Tails swished back and forth. Bodies shuffled. Jaws chewed. Eyes blinked. Throats roared. Yes, the trams can spoil the illusion if you let them. But try not to.

Small dinosaurs like Lilliensternus and Utahraptor were wearable puppets. You could see the actor's legs but there were no strings. They were completely controlled from inside the costume.

The large dinosaurs were rendered full size. Well, the Brachiosaurs were a little on the small side. It's tough to control a three story tall robot. We saw the show at the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport. Picture an AHL size hockey rink and you'll have an idea as to how much space they had to work with. Some of the dinosaurs, when turned perpendicular to the rink, head to tail would span from one side to the other.

The large dinosaurs were operated like remote controlled vehicles. It was all done wirelessly from a control booth, which was situated behind where we were sitting so the illusion held.

How real? Well, when the T-Rex roared at the crowd, the hair on the back of my head stood on end. I knew it was just a robot but it was convincing.

I can't say that I'd recommend this for kids under four. The fight scenes were too loud and T-Rex was full on intimidating. The scenes where the carnivores eat their prey may be too intense. Simulated entrails were part of the act. But having said that, if you've got the money (it's not cheap) and you're a big dinosaur fan, go check it out. You'll be impressed.

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First, Jon Stewart voices the frustration we're feeling here over what seems like Obama's ineffectiveness.

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While I have a hard time believing that free markets can safeguard our environment, what good are regulations if the regulators can't be trusted to do their jobs?

But now we see what the power of the Oval Office does to people. Again, Jon Stewart highlights how Obama has pulled a 180° on other issues. He looks more like George W Bush in these instances.

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Add this to the failed attempts (so far) to reform Wall Street to (hopefully) prevent a repeat of the near collapse of the banking industry and I'm left with singing along to The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again." You know the line: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

Back in November 2008, I couldn't vote for Bob Barr (the Libertarian Party candidate) because the Connecticut chapter of the party couldn't get him on the ballot. I settled on Obama because I thought that he would eliminate some of the more heinous Bush policies and programs. Well, I'm just not seeing it. While I didn't expect Obama to be a miracle worker and fix everything, I hoped for some measure of progress on these issues.

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My review of The Caliphate is now up over at The New Podler Review of Books. If you're into international espionage thrillers, then you'll want to check it out. What sets this one apart from the others is that it's written by a former CIA agent.

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