old Mars and beneath ceaseless skies

Good time yesterday at the Villanueva State Park, sitting by the Pecos River while I finished reading the anthology "Old Mars". Strangely enough, nobody wrote in the mode of the Angry Red Planet tales of the first explorers to Mars, but a few folks went for the Bradbury mode, and my favorite was Melinda M. Snodgrass​'s "Written in Dust". After that I read a few issues of webzine Beneath Ceaseless Skies​. A few mosquito bites, but that was it. I did have to keep our parasol from pretending it was Mary Poppins' umbrella a couple of times, but, again, a good time was had.

six comments about the Four

First... "Fantastic Four" is better than "Man of Steel", and is not a complete insult to characters who've been around for a long time, and does not ignore the reasons why those characters have been around for so long. Except for Ben Grimm, who really got screwed up.
Second... It's not a disaster, but it's frustrating when someone who's not a storyteller can look at a tale and say "If you had changed that bit of writing, it'd have easily fixed that other thing".
Third...The movies from 2005 and 2007, for all their cheesiness and flawed writing, embrace their origin as a comic-book.
Fourth... It's better than "Man of Steel".
Fifth... I didn't come out of it angry.
Sixth... I'm not easy to please, when it comes to comic-book movies. Ask my wife.