Like a sledgehammer, y’know?

The backstory of BSG has always been a bit vague. Humans invented robots to make their lives easier. These robots — called “Cylons” — developed sentience, and turned against their masters in a bloody conflict. The Battlestar Galactica was one of twelve battleship/aircraft carriers built in the early days of the war. The war continued until an armistace was agreed upon, at which point the Cylons vanished to a world of their own, and the Colonials built up their military in fear of a hostile return by the Cylons. As the series begins, the Galactica is decomissioned, and the big mighty military of the Colonials is cut to shreds in hours, their planets are nuked into near oblivion, and only 50,000 people — on the run — are left of the human race (with only an aging, decrepid, falling-apart Battlestar to defend them!)

Well, that backstory is going to get fleshed out:

“Caprica” will be set more than 50 years prior to the events of “Battlestar Galactica” and focus on the lives of two families — the Adamas (ancestors of future Galactica commander William) and the Graystones. Humankind’s Twelve Colonies are at peace and on the verge of a technological breakthrough: the first Cylon.

As “Battlestar Galactica” is about a lot more than space battles, “Caprica” will be as much family drama as sci-fi tale. Remi Aubuchon (”The Lyon’s Den,” “24″) is writing the pilot script; “Galactica” veterans Ronald D. Moore and David Eick will executive produce it.

I won’t lie — I’m both very anticipatory and very nervous.

As a series, we’re looking at a sci-fi version of, say, “30-Something” with scientists. From what we’ve seen of life on Caprica immediately before and after the nuclear holocaust, the Colonials enjoy an existance very similar to 21st century America — people smoke cigars, go to bars, shop at strip-malls, and Starbuck drives an AMC Humvee. With the exception of interstellar travel, life on Caprica really isn’t all that different from life in, say, Baltimore (or, uh, Montreal).

On the Colonies, humanity has not reached some Star Trek-epiphany, where people work to better themselves. There are no transporters, or machines which produce food out of thin air. “We still kill each over petty grievances,” Bill Adama says in a speech during the miniseries. I think these elements will make the prequel an exciting show to watch — a family-drama sci-fi with no fancy gadgets (er, except Cylons), where every episode is overshadowed by the audiences’ knowledge that in fifty years, all will be vaporized …

My predictions:

* There will, at some point, be a reference to a “state of the art” ship called Galactica. We might even go aboard Galactica, in which case the dirtied sets of the spun-off series will be cleaned up, painted, and redressed (slightly) to look both older and newer than what we’re used to.

* James Edward Olmos and Jaimie Bamber will guest-star as one or more of Bill & Lee Adama’s ancestors.

* Hopefully, there will be no “cutsey” references to ancestors of BSG characters whose last name is not “Adama”. (I.E., Roslin’s great-granddad gets it on with Bill’s great-grandmom).

(Diecast Cylon here).

Target in Cockeysville, bless their hearts, had apparently just re-stocked the Titanium section. Titanium is a series of Hasbro toys, originally geared for Star Wars, which feature die-cast recreations of various ships from the Star Wars movie series. Recently, the line was expanded to include Transformers and Battlestar Galactica.

Long story short …

I had a bloody nose in my car enroute to my delivery. Nothing too serious, it wasn’t dripping out of the nostril or anything, I could see in my rear-view mirror that the interior of my right nostril was no longer green and hairy, but rather, red and hairy. Odd to have a non-bleeding nosebleed, but whatever.

When I got out of my car, a tendril of blood dripped down onto my lip. I smeared it away with the back of my hand, and inspected my face in the elevator mirror on the way up to the 6th floor. No trace, except for the blood smear on my hand. I wiped it against my black shirt until my hand looked new.

I walked into the office, put the bag on the counter, and the woman handed me the money in a white envelope. I thanked her, left, and took the elevator back to the lobby. As I walked outside towards my car, I felt a sneeze rapidly approaching explosion.

When I sneezed, I brought the envelope up towards my face to absorb the snot.

This is what I saw*:

After I sneezed, and looked at the envelope, I noticed that my nostril was not red, nor green, and considerably less hairy.

Nostril cleaning by nose-bleed-sneezing. I like it.

*Of course, it hadn’t dried yet so it was still wet, juicy, and running.

I’m re-reading Snow Crash.

I’d forgotten how awesome it is.

The hero’s name? Hiro Protagonist. Gotta love that humor.

Excerpt, ‘cuz I’m cool like that (plus I want to get sued by publishers):

The Deliverator belongs to an elite order, a hallowed subcategory. He’s got esprit up to here. Right now, he is preparing to carry out his third mission of the night. His uniform is black as activated charcoal, filtering the very light out of the air. A bullet will bounce off its arachnofiber weave like a wren hitting a patio door, but excess perspiration wafts through it like a breeze through a freshly napalmed forest. Where his body has bony extremities, the suit has sintered armorgel: feels like gritty jello, protects like a stack of telephone books.

When they gave him the job, they gave him a gun. The Deliverator never deals in cash, but someone might come after him anyway — might want his car, or his cargo. The gun is tiny, aero-styled, lightweight, the kind of a gun a fashion designer would carry; it fires teensy darts that fly at five times the velocity of an SR-71 spy plane, and when you get done using it, you have to plug it into the cigarette lighter, because it runs on electricity.

The Deliverator never pulled that gun in anger, or in fear. He pulled it once in Gila Highlands. Some punks in Gila Highlands, a fancy Burbclave, wanted themselves a delivery, and they didn’t want to pay for it. Thought they would impress the Deliverator with a baseball bat. The Deliverator took out his gun, centered its laser doo-hickey on that poised Louisville Slugger, fired it. The recoil was immense, as though the weapon had blown up in his hand. The middle third of the baseball bat turned into a column of burning sawdust accelerating in all directions like a bursting star. Punk ended up holding this bat handle with milky smoke pouring out the end. Stupid look on his face. Didn’t get nothing but trouble from the Deliverator.

Since then the Deliverator has kept the gun in the glove compartment and relied, instead, on a matched set of samurai swords, which have always been his weapon of choice anyhow. The punks in Gila Highlands weren’t afraid of the gun, so the Deliverator was forced to use it. But swords need no demonstrations.

The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt. Unlike a bimbo box or a Burb beater, the Deliverator’s car unloads that power through gaping, gleaming, polished sphincters. When the Deliverator puts the hammer down, shit happens. You want to talk contact patches? Your car’s tires have tiny contact patches, talk to the asphalt in four places the size of your tongue. The Deliverator’s car has big sticky tires with contact patches the size of a fat lady’s thighs. The Deliverator is in touch with the road, starts like a bad day, stops on a peseta.

Why is the Deliverator so equipped? Because people rely on him. He is a roll model. This is America. People do whatever the fuck they feel like doing, you got a problem with that? Because they have a right to. And because they have guns and no one can fucking stop them. As a result, this country has one of the worst economies in the world. When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we’ve brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they’re making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y’know what? There’s only four things we do better than anyone else

music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery

The Deliverator used to make software. Still does, sometimes. But if life were a mellow elementary school run by well-meaning education Ph.D.s, the Deliverator’s report card would say: “Hiro is so bright and creative but needs to work harder on his cooperation skills.”

So now he has this other job. No brightness or creativity involved — but no cooperation either. Just a single principle: The Deliverator stands tall, your pie in thirty minutes or you can have it free, shoot the driver, take his car, file a class-action suit. The Deliverator has been working this job for six months, a rich and lengthy tenure by his standards, and has never delivered a pizza in more than twenty-one minutes.

Oh, they used to argue over times, many corporate driver-years lost to it: homeowners, red-faced and sweaty with their own lies, stinking of Old Spice and job-related stress, standing in their glowing yellow doorways brandishing their Seikos and waving at the clock over the kitchen sink, I swear, can’t you guys tell time?

If you’ve never read Neal Stephenson, you should read Snow Crash, and also Zodiac. And Cryptonomicron.