Yesterday was the first time in a week anybody in our house felt like human beings — we've all had this "7-day" virus that's been going around —so it was great to get out of the house with Jack to see Tron Legacy.

Top-line review: wicked awesome. What struck me most was the way the film did not "talk down" on the technical stuff, either IRL or on the Grid. You probably know the plot: genius game designer Kevin Flynn vanishes into the cyberspace of his creation; years later, his son Sam follows him in, action ensues. There's a sequence where Sam is attempting to hack into his dad's system, and instead of the typical Hollywood "computer screens" you see in movies, you get a fairly reasonable series of unix command lines and output. There's a brilliant beat where Sam contemplates a critical dialog box, and his facial expression as he makes a selection is spot-on. It's a small moment, but it is deeply authentic.

And the intertextual references inside the Grid are delightful and complex. In addition to the War Games throwaway line, there are visual homages to The Matrix, Bladerunner, and The Fifth Element. Oh, and Shakespeare. Maybe it's just because I'm a total Tempest fanboy, but I found it hard not to read Kevin Flynn as Prospero and Quorra as comprising Miranda and Ariel. You can also read the film in interesting ways against Metropolis, which was, after all, the first significant movie featuring artificial life (leaving aside, for a moment, the 1920 Golem.) Without spoilers, anyone watching both films will find thematic similarities in the characters and the resolution.

It's energizing to see good sf on the screen. On the home front, I recently put the finishing touches on "Umbrella Men," a 9,000-word sf story which will go out for submission shortly, and I've spent the last couple of days working on a companion web site. This is the first project where I've seen the opportunity to create an "artifactual fiction" component, and it's been a lot of fun. I'll post links as soon as I sell this puppy.

And whilst on the topic of science fiction, I got my schedule for Arisia, which is the awesome sf convention in Boston coming up in January. It's the only con that I try to do every year, and it's a really great mix of print, media, gaming, anime, and general weird fun. They put me on every panel that I asked for, so I've got 8 slots over three days, including a discussion of the 50th anniversary of Stranger in a Strange Land, a James Cameron retrospective, and one on the future of school.(There just might be a few folks in Boston passionate about education... :)

I'll post the full schedule after the holidays.