I was flipping through an old Anne McCaffrey book, and something occurred to me - her series of books set on Pern might be a riff on the utopian genre that science fiction came from. The spacefaring colonists initially set up a technologically, environmentally, and politically idyllic settlement in Dragonsdawn, which is interestingly only marred from within by those who want to leave it. The only other threat is the later-ubiquitous Thread, which is a mindless, weather-like danger whose origin is extra-planetary in any case. Even during the later books where there is little widespread knowledge and less technology, there is little to no interpersonal or territorial conflict - which seems to be in one sense an assumption of the author about the nature of humanity, and in another enforced by the strain of surviving in a periodically hostile environment (the latter of which I never found entirely convincing in terms of it being a roundabout cause of utopian qualities). Another thing I find somewhat questionable is that there is never any mention of a character having any spiritual or even existentialist thoughts. I could lean towards the first part of that, as one of the main points of the original colony was that religion would be a frivolous historical note to the intellectual nature of the settlers, but that's ignoring any of my own bends towards that topic. For the setting being as rich as it is, I would hope that there would at least be an interesting take on the descendants of the colonists wondering at their origin or their existence in a world that is constantly under threat from the skies, but considering some of the assumptions made about gender roles in a stark environ, I'll go with taking what I can get.

Constantine with Keanu Reaves and Rachel Weisz. This was the first movie I've seen in the theatre in a while that spurred me to comment on how good it was immediately after the credits started to roll; in truth, that seemed to be true for Wyatt and several other people in the theatre as well. Weisz was beautiful - both in her appearance and her acting - and Reeves filled out the attitude of his role quite well, and still moves like a martial artist during the fight scenes to boot. The movie's cinematography and sheer style were impeccable, as well. And mind, me doing my best not to promote a story just because it deals with one of my favorite themes. Tangentially, that they got the same woman to play an androgen as was in Orlando is kind of funny, but kind of cool.

      Incidentally, it also made me think of a possible advantage of dark settings such as Constantine's, Shadowrun, In Nomine, and the World of Darkness. When the setting is that bleak, anything heroic that there is is enhanced by the comparison (sorry/poor syntax). Moreover, the hero is naturally bent towards either a seriously flawed or an anti-heroic nature (aka more interesting), which might otherwise come off as over-the-top or contrived in other contexts.

Bob's Tropicals - not quite as neat a name as Kabloom, but they have leis (via Carolyn)

mmm...genetic imperatives and compliance; something sounds kind of sketchy about the whole issue (via Kevin)

Omai - art + history

An Eye On I - art; he did some for White Wolf, but it doesn't seem to be on the site, unfortunately, but there are other nice works