It wasn’t familiarity with my birthplace that make it hard to suspend disbelief, even though Gina Carano‘s teaky depiction of rogue agent Mallory appeared to run around Dublin with nothing but contempt for natural laws of geography.  In one chase sequence she appeared to have crossed the Liffey three times without using a bridge, which can only mean that Aperture Science has joined Amazon, Facebook and Twitter in basing their European offices there.

It wasn’t even the fact that a room at the Shelbourne Hotel was trashed and no-one bothered to complain until the following morning.  “Calm down,” I muttered, “it’s still more realistic than Leap Year.”

No, what made me realise that this was pure fantasy was the fact that Grafton Street still had shops open and people spending money.  There’s suspension of disbelief and then there’s the pure naivety of believing Ireland still has an economy.

What about the rest of the movie?  Remember the sort of show that would be on Saturday evenings on ITV in the eighties?  That’s exactly it – Haywire felt like a pilot for one of those bloodless, gung-ho, let’s-shoot-a-lot-of-weapons-and-have-a-bit-of-fighting-before-bathtime and nothing more nuanced than a two-part episode of the A-Team.

I’m not saying the parts of the story wedged between the She-ra-esque set pieces were dull but, at one point, an actual tumbleweed rolled past in the mid-distance as Michael Douglas tried to exposit his way out of a paper-thin plot.  Still, at ninety minutes, it’s not going to be too much of your life wasted.

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Once a year, usually around my birthday, my parents come over to visit and make sure Ang hasn’t killed me yet.  Now, there’s one trait all Irish people of a certain generation have when it comes to food: they’re not adventurous. A bit of meat, a few potatoes, and the odd carrot or growth of cabbage and they’re happy and there’s no-one more set in his ways than my father. To keep the peace, occasionally he’ll let us go for a meal in a Chinese restaurant (only because he was in one once in 2001 and it didn’t kill him).  This has become one of the highlights of my poor mother’s year, so when a new restaurant opened in Cambridge she couldn’t wait to drag him there.

Picture the scene as we waited for the menu. Me, Ang and mam drooling in anticipation after starving ourselves all day, putting on the elasticated pants and getting ready to take in a year’s worth of Weightwatchers points in one sitting. And my father, pulling at the leash like a dog who doesn’t want his walkies to end.

Then it arrived. The menu.

Oh dear God the menu.

Nothing was made from a part of the animal we’d use as by-product, let alone eat.  Not the husband and wife starter (ox and cow tongue intertwined – one for Valentine’s Day).  Not the roast maw. Not the medley of duck tongue, cow intestines, pigs trotters or any other item on a menu that started off exotic and gradually turned in to the effects department props from the Saw franchise. I’m pretty sure they’d just started making up internal organs by page six.

That’s the funny thing about Chinese food, none of it’s really authentic.  Take General Tso’s Chicken.  Apart from the name, there’s nothing Chinese about it, but it’s good and since I haven’t had it in a decade it had taken on godlike properties in my mind.  After hearing me talk about it non-stop every time we got a take away, Ang made me find a recipe and get it out of my system.  Mission accomplished – we need the elasticated pants.

Oh, and Dad’s excuse for leaving Seven Days before the seat cushions had warmed under us and fleeing to the steakhouse next door?  No beer on draught.

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They may not be properly projected, the sound might be off, and the seating only slightly less cramped than the 7.15 train to King’s Cross, but at least they’re one step closer to having a performance that is properly ushed.

Incidentally, Crazy, Stupid, Love is a charming piece of work that’s setting Steve Carell firmly on the same career trajectory as Robin Williams – I’m hoping we’ll get to see him play a serial killer way before he remakes Patch Adams.

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There’s a long tradition among Western writers of lionising ancient ways of life, as if there’s something better about giving up all the trappings of modernity and wallowing about in the pain and dirt. The myth of the noble savage is responsible for such idiotic beliefs as the power of alternative medicine and the idea that anything that refutes the scientific process is necessarily true. Worst of all, it gave us Avatar – a movie that makes Smurfs 3D look like Citizen Kane.

Reign of the Nightmare Prince is just like Avatar – noble savages in tune with nature are attacked by evil technologists who want to take their resources – but differs in one respect; you care what happens. The story’s told from the point of view of one of the alien natives who’s returning from their version of Walkabout to find out monsters are killing off the rest of his people, and follows his attempts to muster a defence in the face of impossible odds.

Although it’s an entertaining and fun read, it’s not explained why the aboriginal population of an alien planet feels so human and a lot of the non-native attackers are almost as one-dimensional as Jake “I see you” Sully. Also, the end was so abrupt it felt like a sixth grader who’s suddenly reached the word limit on an English essay but don’t let that put you off.

If you’ve got some downtime while you’re committing genocide on an alien planet you could do worse than Mike Phillips’ début.

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Pet Noir is a collection of short stories by Pati Nagle, all based around the adventures of a genetically modified tabby cat working as a detective on a space station, and it sounded like it could be different. Unfortunately not. Sure, the trappings of science fiction are there – animal uplift, a space station, cloning – but if you scratch the surface all that’s left is a set of fairly standard cop stories.

The cat in question feels no more than a human pretending to be a cat and the other animals turn out to be mere ciphers, the universe is barely sketched out and the much more interesting story of how human (and animal) society has coped with the massive changes brought about by space travel, new sentient species, and future technologies has been completely ignored.

This time, the future’s so bright, it feels like 1980.

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Unfortunately, for Samsung, their new business style phone seems to suffer from Cargo Cult Blackberry disease. On the outside, it looks like a RIM device – it’s got a tiny screen, a keyboard, and can fit in the palm – and gives off the appearance of that holy talisman of the pin-striped priesthood. On the inside, however, it runs the Android smartphone operating system leaving a hybrid that has none of the good points of either.

What sets Blackberry apart, in spite of their aging devices, is their efficiency; Blackberry server and devices are perfect at email they use very little data and are designed only for this purpose. Android can handle email either through the build in Google Mail application or over SMTP, but it’s not as quick and easy. As with the New Guinean cargo cults, Samsung have built a Blackberry body, added a keyboard, and even stuck in a few software tweaks to make Android a little more businesslike, but I don’t think the planes will come.

Which is a shame, since their actual smart phones are pretty good.

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Cover of James Joyce

In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom asks if it “would be to cross Dublin without passing a pub”.  Exactly one hundred and-seven years later, thanks to open source maps, computers, and the Internet (and helped along by the worst recession a generation has seen) it’s been proved possible.

The city’s drinkers will have to find something else to argue about.

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Reeves and Worcester share the same universe as the rest of the Shadow Conspiracy collections, but abandon any of the more ominous aspects in favour of a lighter style that is more like Wodehouse fan fiction than scifi. The original short (for which the book is named) deals with our heroes’ meeting and adventures while trying to figure out what’s amiss with his cousin’s new fiancée.

The meat of the book, Something Rummy this way Comes, is a romp through the balls, debutantes, and vaguries of late-Victorian British Society.  Reggie’s aunts (who are more viscious than veloceraptors) have had enough of his caddish ways and demand he tours the ball circuit to find a wife.  Unfortunately all the available debutantes are disappearing and it’s up to Reggie (aided by the super steam brain of Reeves) to find out where to. On the way he meets spirited Emeline who, like her namesake, will chain herself to a railing in a heartbeat and tries to find the ape or eunuch he is sure is to blame.

This is such a fun book that it’s impossible to find anything wrong with it.  Yes, it is a little rough around the edges, but the voicing is pitched perfectly – to the point where I can only imagine Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry as the main characters (take note movie adaptors – start saving now).  Some nice comic touches reflect the differences between this and the world of Jeeves and Wooster (Queen Victoria’s been saved by replacing her legs with steam-driven ones) and the whole tale hangs together nicely.

Even better, it costs less than £2.  Perfect for reading at your gentlemans’ club.

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