Prometheus and other space oddities

As a belated anniversary date lovely wife, some friends and I went to see Prometheus. We opted for the 3D version and I must admit that's probably the first movie where I can say the 3D was pretty dang cool. It offered an amazing sense of depth to the film. As for the movie itself I really liked the Alien nods. And sure, there were some "boy those scientists sure are dumb" moments, but I thought the film was fine. It's a different creature (HA) from Alien and I'm ok with letting it stand on its own like that. There are indeed lots of questions, but if you've been on the internet at all this past week and have any sci fi web surfing tendencies, you've seen lots of debate and answers and interviews that offer thoughts on that sort of stuff. So yeah, good to see Ridley do some sci fi again.

I finished Paolo Bacigalupi's The Drowned Cities. I'm not quite sure what my opinion on that is. You'll see the 3 star rating over there on the sidebar (if you ever look at that thing) but it's really more of a 2.5. I didn't want to go as low as 2, but 3's a bit of a stretch as well. I rather liked Shipbreaker, and this one was set in the same universe, but it just wasn't as interesting. I did get into it enough that I wanted to finish it, but that's about it. I read a preview of the book where Bacigalupi talked about how this book was born out of the current political strife we're going through here in the states (and the setting is an apocalyptic jungles based DC - Drowned Cities, get it?) and that probably should have been more of a warning to me than I took it for. Not that the book is terribly political (at least at a story event level, it's more of a thematic undercurrent) and that might have been part of the problem too. Oh well.

We played Power Grid over the weekend. An interesting little area control game. A little math heavy and it can be quite cutthroat as well. I'm willing to try this one again, but I suspect it's not one I'll feel the need to pick up.

And this weekend is Father's Day. Happy Father's Day to Dad. I am a slacker and have not gotten anything in the mail to him, but he'll be here in a little over a week, so I don't feel that bad. Alas I have to struggle through the Fathers and Sons campout this weekend before I can get any pampering. Whose idea was that?