Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom Chapter Three

Justice and honour.

It was bullshit, but yeah, whatever, thought Thrax.

Seemed to motivate the androids.

Well.

Some of them.

“For honour. Home. Civilization. And triple replicator box rations! Listen up, bad-ass babes! I got me a real nice little disintegrator missile here,” declared Thrax, giving the portable launcher a pat, “But if I fire this puppy straight in, it’ll be rendered inert before it penetrates the outer membrane, see?”

The squad, except for Jez and Andromeda, looked at him blankly.

He sighed.

“Lemme make it simple. The squid’s kinetic negation field not only holds it together— things too damn big to exist otherwise—it protects it from kinetic energy attacks. The only place the field is absent is at the centre point, the node—the nanorganic pineal eye itself. Make sense? Shut up. I gotta fire through that hole in the field, which just so happens to lead straight into its brain. Okay. Break into two groups. First section— Andromeda, you take Bambi, Amber, Crystal, Fabius, Don Juan, and Jasmine. You’ll go left, towards the meat smoking pits. Jez, you lead Candy, Ginger, Kitty and the rest and break right. Fan out in a semi-circle around the quid—hit it from all angles, distract it.”

Andromeda nodded. “On my life, we will not fail you.”

“Whatever. Just keep it occupied,” continued Thrax. “That’ll give me a chance to move in from the front. Soon as I have a clear have clear shot, click, bam! Meat market opens.”

Jez smiled wickedly at the prospect.

Thrax bumped fists with her and tensed for action. “Okay, count of ten—Fabius Two- Eighty-Eight! Put that mirror away! Your hair looks fine. Concentrate, freakabots!” He turned back towards the squid.

Its flailing tentacles were making short work of just about everything in the village not made of diamacrete. It shifted towards the dust shrouded grain silos.

No time to waste.

“Go!”

The magnificently built androids, specially designed to run in six-inch high stiletto heels, bolted out of the ditch and sprinted across the dry grass, their fit, haunches pumping legs furiously.

They shot wildly as they ran. The squid was so large they couldn’t miss.

Except Candy, who did.

Twice.

Jez screamed obscenities at her.

She skittered to a halt and yelled back, “I didn’t miss by much!”

Thrax sighed. Candy was the squad medic, so what could you expect? He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, “Hold your breath when you shoot!”

He zoomed the view plate in on her and watched as she concentrated, her tongue absentmindedly sticking out, and fired again. A bolt of energy streaked out.

He followed it with his view plate.

“I grazed it! I grazed it!” she yelled triumphantly, pointing at a faint burn mark on its mammoth flank. She smiled from ear to ear and beamed at Thrax.

Thrax lowered the viewer and gave her a thumbs up. He noted all the first team was now peppering the quid with energy bolts, as ordered, so he scanned for the first team.

Team One had reached the smoke pits and jumped into them with the fluidity of expert gymnasts, just moments ahead of an enormous barbed tentacle. Only dust and detritus were disturbed by its passage.

Andromeda poked her head out and gave him a thumbs up signal. Great stuff, thought Thrax.

Jez barked orders that Thrax didn’t catch, but team two started peppering the beast’s air siphons with energy bolts. The outer membrane blistered and the protective slime coating steamed away. A thick gush of fluid spilled out of a black edged gash and began to congeal into an organic heat shield.

One of the putrescent, bulbous black eyes snapped towards them and focused on Jez. A half-dozen tentacles, each a hundred meters long, spun round in the air and came hurtling towards team two from the left, right, and above.

Thrax could hear Jez scream orders. The androids scattered and hit the ground as the tentacles struck.

THOOOM! THOOOM!

Ginger the go-go girl was caught in the back by a barb, and sent flying off into the sky, her lustrous, furious pink hair streaming magnificently behind her, never to be seen again.

In an instant, the squad was back up on its feet, running madly for the diamacrete ruins. Thrax didn’t blame them.

But the canny mollusk had anticipated this, and had kept a tentacle poised, in reserve, waiting. Now it snapped earthward. Thrax could hear the howl of air flowing in its wake.

WHAM! The earth heaved. Great gouts of dust shot outward. The bronze skinned Fabius, who had stopped to check his hair, was caught dead centre.

As the barbed tentacle curled back up, Thrax could see a bloody smudge mark of guts and leather straps smeared on the underside.

Action time. Thrax snapped open the safety locks on his weapon, primed the warhead, and sprinted out of the ditch.

Respirovores pumped oxygen at a heightened rate into his bloodstream. Nanite muscle and skeletal enhancers allowed him to exceed human physical limitations.

After building up speed, he leapt and soared fifteen meters, just undershooting the factories’ recessed emergency exit which lay to the fore of the quid.

“Warning,” interjected Darwin, who oddly had a thing for ancient cultural references. “Danger! Danger, Magnum Thrax! There is—”

Then Thrax noticed it: a sudden increase in air pressure behind him. Sneaky squid had slithered a long limb round, behind him, and now...

Instinctively he ducked. Not fast enough.

The tentacle struck him in the upper back, a grazing blow that sent him spinning. Gravity was thrown into abeyance. His vision was a flash of images from bizarre, incongruous angles.

He landed with a thud on the chipped concrete stairs of the emergency exit. It took him a moment to reorient.

Inside his gut, medbots pillaged the chemical sludge that had been his lunch and used the nutrients to repair damaged tissues. In a moment, he was able to stand, and the pain was gone.

The missile launcher lay nearby on the stairs, beeping angrily in protest at the rough

treatment. He picked it up, activated a maintenance sequence, and peaked over the concrete lip that lined the exit top.

That last tentacle was sailing down out of the sky.

Thrax looked ahead of it.

There was Jez, standing her ground, in the open, beamer aimed skyward.

She looked resplendent, even regal, in her buckled black leather bustier and thigh-high boots. A steady column of shimmering energy poured out of her buzzing beamer. She waved it in tight circles.

“Bring it on, you gigantic, tentacled freak!” she bellowed defiantly. “Bring it—”

WHAM! The cephalopod’s limb smacked into the ground. The creature let out a warbling, gurgling cry of dismay and pulled up the sizzling limb, revealing a laughing and very much alive Jez surrounded by a thick, putrid mist.

A circular, charred hole five feet wide had been cut eight feet deep into the limb. Jez had avoided death by blasting a tunnel.

She laughed and her whole body shook, giddy with adrenaline. And something else. She shivered. He could see fear, shock and relief on her face. A second later her patented sneer reappeared.

The squid went brilliant violet. Iridescent waves of outrage in white and purple cascaded over its body.

“You go, girl!” yelled Bambi, pumping a plastic gloved fist in the air.

Equilibrium recovered, Jez headed for cover. That synthelady was all about appearance, thought Thrax. Poise. Status. Counting coup. Confirmation of her legendary prowess accomplished, she’d rejoin the safety of the group to bask in the accolades.

Thrax knew she wanted to be squad sarge, to usurp Andromeda, but in his opinion, she didn’t have the right temperament for command.

But she sure had balls. Great big balls.

He zoomed in on her and found his gaze fixing upon her chest. Her heaving, voluptuous, curvaceous—Concentrate!

The beast bellowed in outrage and frustration. Chromatophores flashed indignation.

Tentacles reared up again and whirled in agitated frenzy, striking one after another at the smoke pit.

Thrax waited for a clear shot. He only had one missile. Had to make it count.

A dozen panicked mutants ran past, their stubby arms waving in the air. Good, thought Thrax. More distractions. More targets.

The dashing Don Juan jumped into view, cape flying, and ran in front of the Squid to take a few shots of his own at the gibbous pineal eye. Trying to compete with Jez, no doubt. Damn stupid androids!

Soon he’d have no squad left.

A tentacle began to unfurl. Seeing the danger, Don Juan bolted, but he misjudged the squid’s speed and with a solid smack, his torso was liquefied. His trunk flopped onto the ground with an undignified splat.

“Juan!” shouted Andromeda, her expression a mixture of horror and disbelief. She charged recklessly out from cover and swept her disruptive nanite sword towards the mollusc. “You shall be avenged!” she bellowed in her majestic voice. “Amazons! To me!”

Aw, great, now everyone would run into the open, thought Thrax. He activated his subvocal communicator: “Back into cover, you lot! Stay put! That’s an order!”

Multiple tentacles slashed madly at the sexbots. They left the squids pineal eye vulnerable, open to attack, much to Thrax’s delight.

Yes! He settled the streamlined missile launcher over his shoulder and angled the barrel at the gibbering horror’s malevolent pineal eye. Lined up the sights.

Now!

He squeezed the trigger. There was a sharp retort, and a shimmering missile blasted out and lanced towards the squid’s eye.

It hit dead centre with a loud wet GLOP.

A jet of jelly and fluid spat out of the eyeball, followed a second later by a brilliant flash.

Unimpeded by matter, the disintegration field expanded inside the squid, transforming it into a globe of brilliant shimmering colours, which sparkled and winked out, leaving a cavity where the beast’s brain had been.

The great cephalopod shuddered and its hydrostatic skeleton lost tension. All two-dozen tentacles fell at once to the ground, shaking the earth and knocking Thrax off his feet. There was a crack as his head hit the diamacrete.

Thrax lay still for a moment, dazed. Over the radio he could hear Andromeda haranguing the team. A few raptors had indeed followed the squid into the compound, and now Andromeda was leading a counter-attack. In a few minutes the archosaurs had been driven from the compound. She was very efficient.

The battle to defend the Pleasurepit colony was over. The battle over the meat of the dead squid was about to begin.

Already the megalovultures were landing atop the deflating cephalopod and ripping hunks of flesh out of the carcass.

Kitty turned away from the beast, then bent over and did a victory twerk, her taut buttocks weaving complex patterns in the air like a voluptuous bumblebee.

Thrax pulled out a sleek atomic cigarette, lit the radioisotope fuse and took a deep inhalation of cool hot flavoured radiation. Nothing like a smoke after a good kill. Thrax blew out a cloud of glowing radioactive particles and watched them dissipate slowly into the air.

High above he could see nanite machined and virtually transparent air cleaning cubes, each a mile across, micron thin and buoyed by hydrogen, which would eventually filter out the gamma particles he’d just spewed into the air. Eventually.

Beautiful system the Ancients had set up, he thought.

Pity they’d mucked it all up.

He looked over and caught Andromeda squeezing out a bag of Cleansit on the remains of Juan. The cleaner nanoblob swarmed over the guts, scanned, then snapped up the targeted DNA into a tough skinned bag of guts, blood, and bone fragments, leaving not a single drop of blood on the ground.

She picked it up and headed off to the funerary recycling chute.

“Hey!” shouted Thrax. “We don’t use those on Androids. Humans only.”

Andromeda rolled her eyes, waggled her hips, and gave him the finger over her broad shoulder.

Fuckin’ androids, grumbled Thrax wearily. Such bullshit.

The Andromeda Five Fifteen model got worse every iteration. Required more nerve polyps to build than any other type. Not as bad as Jez, but still annoying.

“Darwin,” he subvocalized, “Notify the council that the witch can send out her swarms to rebuild the wall now. Jez’ll keep it clear of raptors.”

Victoria, often referred to as The Queen, was the colony Technowitch, a human who was compatible with the electrical signals of command and control nanite symbiots that dwelled in the brain stem.

They could direct nanite swarms within broadcast distance, allowing the so-called witches to perform all sorts of feats that uneducated mutants regarded as magic. It was the perfect blend of bottom-up nanite organization and top- down human control.

“Noted and conveyed,” replied his virtual assistant happily. Thrax hated dealing with bureaucracy, and Darwin loved being needed. The virtual being paused for a moment, then added, “My dear fellow, you really shouldn’t smoke those things, you know. I calculate a thirty per cent chance of—”

“Aht,” interrupted Thrax with a harsh thought. “When I want your opinion, Darwin, I’ll ask for it.”

“Very well, understood, it’s your choice. Free will and all that. I would add something else, but... ah, well. If you are not accepting unsolicited information....” Darwin let the sentence hang in the mental ether.

“Oh froog. Don’t sulk. What?”

“There is an item that may be of interest to you deep inside the deceased cephalopod’s belly.”

On criticism…

I thought this was a thoughtful post by Devin Faraci over at birthmoviesdeath.

It was sparked by an article Jesse Eisenberg wrote over at the New Yorker, in which he satirizes film critics.

Film critics in general got their knickers in a knot over it, as is their wont, and wrote snarky responses.

Faraci makes note of this, then muses on what it is to be a critic:

"…How many times do you think you've generalized actors/acting in your career as a critic? And how many times do you think you have been profoundly wrong about the actors about whom you're writing? I bet a lot, and I bet that very few film critics have been trained as actors or had any real experience as actors. I bet very few have even been on a film set. Maybe some have made a short in film school, but that's like saying your canoeing trip lets you understand how the captain of a Navy destroyer does his job…

And this is true. It's something I've thought about since I started reviewing films and television shows for my piddly little echo chamber -- I mean blog. I'm keenly aware that there's a lot going on behind the scenes in television and film (akin to chickens running around with their heads cut off), most of which I'm entirely unaware of.

Feeling entitled to being entertained at the cinema, I criticize.

And yet I know my complaints can be unfair, and lack appreciation for the pressure creators are under, which is enormous.

Working in film and television is tough, and audiences are more ornery than ever.

Take the recent article by Steven Moffat about the difficulties he faced making the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who, or the recent video in which Peter Jackson is very candid about how messed up making The Hobbit movies was. As noted over at slashfilm:

“I didn’t know what the hell I was doing,” Jackson admits. He recalls having to call for extended lunch hours just so he could figure out how to approach a scene. Compare this to the literal years of pre-production he had on The Lord of the Rings.

I didn't like The Hobbit films, but I admire Peter Jackson for soldiering through it, knowing how it would impact his reputation. There were jobs and livelihoods depending on him.

Some franchises are so 'beloved' that dedicated fans will issue death threats against the creative team.

Moffat writes in the Radio Times:

I don’t think I’ve ever worked on anything that was as difficult, terrifying and as much of a responsibility as writing the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who. I wanted everybody to love it. I knew that was impossible, but I wanted people – from those who had never seen it, to the absolute diehard fans who hate every episode I’ve written – to love it. So it was monstrously stressful and very hard: the uncastable cast, the impossible brief, the unwritable script...

I can remember sitting with my wife saying, “I can’t tell if it’s good any more, it could be rubbish – I’ll have to leave the country. I’ll have to fake my own death.” And then going for a meeting with the producers the week I was meant to hand the script in, and we were still trying to assemble the cast. We all just sat there, thinking, “This is impossible, this can’t ever work!”

Who needs the hassle? Obviously the positives outweigh the negatives or they'd have left the field long ago. Something keeps Jackson and others doggedly plugging away, offering up their creations to a fickle and ornery audience.

When Eisenberg directed barbs back at the critics, they didn't respond with grace.

Devin Faraci:

"But there's one other thing to consider: if you can dish it out, learn to take it. I struggle with this a lot; the nature of my opinions and writing seem to give offense on the regular, and that leads to people lashing out at me… 

As critics we're saying a lot of shit into the abyss, and while it doesn't feel personal from where we stand, it can be taken as personal… 

I can get a hundred nice comments about something, but I will always fixate on the nasty ones, due to whatever is broken inside of me. I suspect that a lot of people in the arts are similar - the same thing that makes you want to put yourself and your performance/thoughts out there is the same thing that makes you truly feel the slightest negative feedback.

So we're dishing it out, every single day, every single movie we see. All the time. And sometimes somebody hits back, whether it be Eisenberg in The New Yorker or Innaritu in Birdman, and the true test of us as people and professionals is how we deal with it."

I find it harder to criticize now that I'm trying to create. It expanded my perspective. I'd like to laud the positive, and yet, paradoxically, it's the stuff I really don't like that compels me to write commentary.

Even a Uwe Boll movie is an accomplishment.

I don't think I could do what he does.

It's basically like running a small military campaign.

I appreciate his work, but not his product.

C'est la vie.

Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom: Chapter Two

Android in battle armour facing down the gargantuan land quid, shrouded in clouds

The quivering, gelatinous mass of the gigantic land cephalopod towered over flat plains like an enormous vibrating pustule. Its presence was a sign that winter was at last releasing its death grip over the barren plains of the Betafields.

Soon the Glorious Biobloom would begin again.

Air siphons jutted out from its blubbery flanks below black, beslimed eyes, sucking in air with a steady roar that could be heard a kilometer away. It was four hundred tons of unstoppable mollusk slowly migrating its way to the West coast, sucking up airborne nanoplanktonites and anything else that got in its way, edible or not. It wasn’t picky.

Magnum Heironymus Thrax of the Klenstaf Clan watched nature’s mutant horror keenly through his viewer sheet for a moment and grimaced.

He toggled the telescopic enhancers and zoomed in on the bloated belly.

“Bingo,” he muttered under his breath, and grinned, revealing perfect teeth like white chicklets.

The behemoth’s sleep gas sacks, tucked in above the Ctenidium, were clear.

That meant empty.

At least temporarily.

With the amount of organic matter the beast had just consumed, they’d refill quickly.

Thrax’s otherworldly, clear blue eyes gazed along the path of destruction behind the beast: it had breached the outer wall of the surface village, and crushed flat as a paper pancake the flying pig’s pen. They were the docile kind of flying pig, of course, not their eat-anything entelodon hell-pig relatives.

Thrax hated those.

He hated their tendency to shit while aloft most of all. He thought back to the cholera epidemic and shuddered. At least they’d been genetically re-engineered to excrete less phosphorous materials.

Thrax could see the distorted outlines of wiggling, winged pigs, still alive, in the Squid’s semi-translucent gullet as they were shunted along by its powerful throat muscles.

Tasty, bacony goodness all gone to waste.

Wouldn’t be long before the great land snail-squid reached the grain silos on the other side of the mutant’s squat diamacrete dwellings.

Time to move.

He dropped the flexible viewer sheet and let it hang by its strap from his neck.

Taylor Swift rocking the babes, guns, and explosions playground

In the sky far above, menacing black silhouettes of circling megalovultures, gigantic black birds with bald, burnt red heads, circled. Black snowflakes swirled about their open beaks, and if one got too close they’d be caught in a high intensity electrical field.

Fry a man into sauceless BBQ in seconds flat.

This lot probably feasted on the snail squid’s excrement trail. Disgusting.

Thrax’s virtual assistant, Darwin, noted his gaze. It superimposed a holographic image over his field of vision of the semi-transparent disembodied head of Charles Darwin, only wearing chic recorder sunglasses and Bril Cream. It was transparent enough not to interfere with his vision, and automatically shifted away from anything he focused on.

Digital Darwin’s brow furrowed. “Teratornis Incredibilis,” commented the virtual assistant. The words flowed directly into Thrax’s brain through a neural tap. “Remarkable creatures. If only my namesake were alive now to appreciate them. Wingspan up to twelve meters. Their nanobot symbiots can generate an electrical field of—”

“Yeah, I know. Not now,” interjected Thrax. He had to think. Take all the variables into consideration, and Darwin never shut up unless you told him to. “Not time for a lecture, baby.”

“Please don’t call me that,” huffed Darwin. “I’ve never even been a baby.”

The prissy, heuristic artificial intelligence was built into Thrax’s micro-thin, transparent second skin suit, a nanite engineered material that covered him from head to foot. It regulated temperature, filtered air, and protected him from the elements, including radiation.

The battlefatigues he wore overtop were purely for the sake of modesty. Not that Thrax had much.
He scanned the horizon for opportunistic raptors.

“Ahhh, yes, the ever present threat of Neo-Deinonychus,” said Darwin, still trying show off his vast database of useless knowledge. “Already conducted a scan. None detected. You know, their resurrection is nothing short of miraculous, a testament to the technological prowess of my creators. To study them--”

“Yeah, yeah. Too much electromag noise to rely on scans. Shut up.”

Neo-Dienonychus were fast moving archosaurs with scythe-like claws. They’d been extinct, or so the story went. Mankind had actually been rid of the damn things. Until they’d been brought back for an entertainment property. Couldn’t be true, though. Nobody was that stupid.

None of the nasty things in sight.

That was good. But they wouldn’t be far away.

“Perhaps behind the the land squid. They are known to be clever,” mused Darwin.

Whatever, thought Thrax.

Buzzing around the colossal cephalopod were thousands of glittering green flies the size of baseballs.

The beast was its own slow-moving ecosystem.

Squiddy—Thrax had taken to nick naming his targets—needed to be killed before any fast moving raptors got through the inner perimeter and ate all the milk silk producing livestock—not to mention the mutant villagers.

The megalovultures were just a nuisance. Same for the buzzball flies. Opportunistic carrion eaters and parasites. They would let the squid do the dirty work and pick over the remains.

Thrax’s remains, unless he was careful.

Raptors were much more pro-active about obtaining their food supply. That made them dangerous.

The massive, slinking squid let out a sloppy gurgle of joy as its flailing tentacles broke into the mut’s meat smoking pit. Thrax watched a couple of the stocky, bright green villagers waddle towards the beast and fling their spears at it—to no effect. It was like trying to take a bull down with toothpicks. Cilia near the squid’s mouth snatched the morsels up and tossed them into the gaping beak. The glistening tongue flipped them down into the throat in one swift, smooth motion. They screamed the whole way.

Pansies, thought Thrax. Just let it try to eat him. He’d curse and kick all the way down the gullet if he got caught. Give it indigestion.

Thrax couldn’t help but grin in spite of it all.

Fubar was a savage world.

Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

The ancients had become totally disconnected from nature and reality by eons of living in a cushy, high tech crib. Thrax bet that was why they were gone.

But this snail squid and its groupies would put even Thrax’s considerable termination skills to the test. He hadn’t seen one this big, bloated and bad tempered in ten orbits.

He looked back hungrily at his team.

They lay in a shallow, mud lined ditch behind him, fondling their weapons with nervous anticipation: Andromeda, Jez, Candy, Crystal, Jasmine, Kitty, Blossom, Ginger, Lilac, Amber, Thumper, Fabius, and Don Juan. Stunningly beautiful, voluptuous females with hourglass figures, plus a couple token males, with buff physiques, flowing manes of hair, and chiseled features. They all resembled Olympian Gods.

Not human, of course.

Not in this day and age of genetic defects.

The real humans of the underground Pleasurepit Emporium Five Colony were generally a bizarre array of imperfect proportions and distorted, asymmetrical features.

Perfection in imperfection, his mother had called it.

They had what was known as ‘character,’ and lots of it. Their bodies had been ravaged by sickness, disease, and radiation damage since they were born—just like every other natural, living being on the planet.

Except for Thrax.

He’d been born perfect, or nearly so. Two eyes, one nose, two ears, and five fingers per hand. That was rare enough. He was also blessed with strong cheekbones, a square jaw, and a flowing mane of lustrous hair that hadn’t thinned. His physique was naturally muscular; he hardly needed to exercise at all. When he went by, heads turned.

Sometimes he was mistaken for an android, like his team members. He was a freak anomaly. An exceptional exception.

Of course the nanite repairbots that floated about in his bloodstream were constantly busy, under siege from a wildly unstable environment that overflowed with biological innovation and constantly evolving diseases. Luckily his immune system was compatible with a strain of particularly effective nanite medbots, and he had survived plague outbreaks which had felled half the colony.

Two of his sisters had died in the last one.

The Suicide Plague, they’d called it.

Everything alive had nanobots of one form or another inside.

Nothing on Fubar could survive long without them.

Even androids had them. At least, all the organic ones did.

Thrax’s androids, or more accurately adapted sexbots, were grown in vats in the ceramic encased Pleasurepit factory deep beneath the surface.

Over their transparent second skins they wore provocative plastic nothings and leather straps and bustiers, the only clothing The Pit’s reploboxes were programmed to create.

They eschewed hand made battlefatigues as insufficiently fashionable or flattering. Some of their genetically programmed propensities were too difficult to eliminate.

It made for an eccentric and kinky looking army.

Damn distracting, too, thought Thrax, eyeing heaving breasts barely contained by a glistening bustier.

They belonged to the team’s weapon expert, Jezebel One-Eighty-Eight, a six-foot two- inch tall Amazon of an android. She had a body to die for, a beautiful but cruel face with a blood red blotch for a mouth, permanently stained. Her blond hair was cropped close.

She had been born bad right out of the vat, as The Ancients had intended. She was a dominatrix model, the product of the sex fantasies of the Old Ones, back in the Long Long Ago.

The Ancients were beings of unspeakable power and wisdom who apparently liked to be hog tied, covered in whipped cream, spanked, and forced to clean floors.

Why this should be so no one knew.

Who could understand beings of such godlike power?

Jez herself was a control freak. They’d overlaid control grams on top of her core programming repeatedly. Her core ate them for breakfast. Combat was the only time she followed orders.

But even her tremendous ego was capable of recognizing a true genius of destruction when she saw it, and no one had an aptitude for annihilation like Thrax. Blowing stuff up and snuffing out threats just came naturally.

Sometimes this ability made Thrax vaguely uncomfortable, as if there was something wrong with heavy weaponry, explosions, or annihilating outsiders that he couldn’t quite place his finger on.

At least, some people talked about it like it was a bad thing. Whatever.

He didn’t dwell on it.

Thinking was for pussies, anyway.

There was an endless demand for demolition and destruction. It was good to have a purpose, he thought.

Meaning.

All that shit.

He contemplated Jez. She was alluring in a horrifying sort of way, because she didn’t stop. There were no lines with her to cross.

She could make him feel a warped yearning in his nether regions, but ultimately he preferred the less ornery and more numerous Nexdoor sexbot model that made up the armies’ rank and file.

The squad sarge, Andromeda, was an Amazon Warrior Model Sexbot, an upper end design they had few of. Solid, athletic build and raven black hair. Her magnificent armour, metal miniskirt and armoured breast plates fit for a Greek Goddess. An acquired taste for special clients, she would only lie with men who could defeat her in combat. Tougher than a mutant wereboar, she made Jez look like a pussy.

The two hated each other.

That wasn’t the only problem: using sexbots for combat had other drawbacks. An army wasn’t useful if it was too busy, well, shagging.

Bad for discipline.

Thrax had distinct memories from his childhood, when he had listened at the air vents of the Sexbot dorms and been deluged with heated cries of ‘Yeah, baby, yeah!’ and ‘Higher! Higher! Yes! Yes! Oh! Ooohhh! My God! Oh my God! Aauooo-gaaah!’

It was a crazy down there, in The Pleasurepit. Yet it was also the last bastion of civilization in a sea of madness. Technology was rabidly fucking biology out there, creating hybrid horrors that’d curl your toes.

“How long are we going to wait here while you try and work up your nerve, you sniveling little worm?” hissed a voice in Thrax’s ear.

It could only be Jez. He grimaced.

The motion tattoo of a writhing octopus on her beautiful, prodigious, and barely covered breasts danced at the periphery of his vision.

It was terribly distracting.

What was it about swelling mammary glands that made them so compelling?

But she was right.

He had been procrastinating. And he was all out of Beserkide.

He hated when she was right.

Focus! Remember what you’re doing.

“When I say. Not before,” he said, snapping his mind back to the matter at hand.

Lilac and Crystal slinked up beside him to the edge of the ditch, moving like cats in heat, as they were programmed to do. Lilac gazed up at the Squid through her view sheet.

“It’s got a gut load of goodies,” she cooed. “This beastie has been around! Look! Part of a boat in there!”

Thrax looked at her and blinked, partially blinded.

Lilac was wearing a form-fitting silver cat suit outfit covered with thousands of flashing pin-lights, each powered by an independent, regenerating solar micro-battery. Her every finger sported what would have been, in an earlier age, expensive diamond rings.

In a world drenched with nanites, diamonds were as rare as dirt.

Fems still loved them.

Kudos to an ancient ad campaign.

Lilac’s big eyes were hidden behind even bigger Jacki-Oh sunglasses that made her look like a sexy Sleestak.

“We’re gonna kill it, aren’t we?” said Candy ruefully as she primed the fusion pile of her laser rifle. She wore a latex nurse outfit. She was the squad medic. “I hate seafood. Can’t we let it go? It’s just being itself.”

“No,” said Thrax. “Sides, it’s an amphibian.”

Candy frowned back at him. “Come on, Thraxy. Squid’s all rubbery and gross.”

“Garlic,” said Jasmine, sucking deep on a doobie. “Butter.”

“Rather eat nutrisoy,” muttered Kitty. She blew out a bubble of chewing gum until it burst with a smack.

“Shut up. It’s good for you.” “You’re mean. And I take vitamins.”

“Sorry,” said Thrax. Candy was sensitive for an android. “Look. Just turn off your tastebuds.”

There was a noise above, and they glanced up. Several green mutant villagers sailed overhead, their hapless screams waxing and then quickly fading as they glided into the distance and smacked soundlessly into the hard soil.

“Haw!” exclaimed Thrax. Silly mutants.

Always good for a laugh.

“I’m with Candy,” said Jasmine, the squad’s foxy faux-guerilla. She wore a tight, mini- Mao suit with a white lily set in her raven hair. She sucked loudly on a gleaming white mint.

“It’s doing too much damage.”

“This is bogus, sophonts. We, like, always get the shitty jobs,” remarked Blossom,

wrinkling her pert little nose. Heavy goggles, equipped with short-range x-ray emitters, kept her eyes hidden from view.

“Should have stuck with Milo’s squad,” groused Thumper, beating her wings lightly against the heavy air. She wore a gleaming white plastic nothing and thigh highs, which were, of course, self-cleaning. Had to be. The omnipresence of dirt and mud in war would otherwise have made such a fashion choice for combat gear impractical.

Thumper was a succubi model sexbot, based on the mythical female demons that seduced men during the dead of night. She had dead white eyes, pale skin, fangs, and a curvaceous figure that made men gasp for breath, topped by retractable nano-film bat wings. Couldn’t actually fly. Hop and glide, yes, but it looked undignified. That was about it. She clucked and cast slitted eyes at Thrax: “Something wrong with this boy. He likes--”

“Okay!” snapped Thrax urgently, blushing, “Pay attention—frag! Amber, Blossom, Kitty! Dammit, how many times have I told you? Put out those atomic cigarettes. The radiation attracts it! And Jasmine, get your tongue out of Bambi’s ear. Focus!”

“Oh. What a joy kill,” huffed Jasmine; she gave Thrax a cross look and for good measure ran her tongue provocatively across her lips and felt up her ammo battery bandoliers. “Ready for combat. Sir Big Boy. Command me!”

The other bots tittered, but it was turning him on.

That wouldn’t do, goddamn it. “Stop jazzing my gonads! Civilization is depending on us.” Bunch of perverts, thought Thrax angrily. Hot, hot sultry, sexy perverts, but nevertheless perverts. Created and programmed by... even bigger perverts and profligates.

“You heard the man,” snapped Andromeda. “Prep up. Today we fight for our homes. For honour and glory!”

Kitty sniffed. “You’re our very own Patton in a bustier, Andy.”

“Do it, cat lady,” said Andromeda impatiently. She glared at Kitty, who was always needlessly mouthy. “Today, justice shall prevail. Got it?”

Kitty blew a bubble and popped it. “Juice tits. Yeah. Whateveh.”

WIRED: You won't live to see the final Star Wars movie

So they say here.

And I imagine they're right. The franchise has long legs.

But the illustration by Ulises Farinas that goes along with the article is a ton of fun. Ripley's loader, Optimus Prime, Wolverine, Indiana Jones, Gandalf, E.T., and that guy from Galaxy Quest are all in there.

Awesome.

Love this sort of mash-up illustration.

So good I'm letting it break over the border...

Take a look at the full thing.

Quest for a – Holy Crap Contracts!

The Passive Voice is a great blog. Lots of insight to be found there, and I highly recommend giving it a gander.

Of particular note today is the post, "End the Discount Double-Cross":

"PG has mentioned this before, but perhaps it bears repeating. During PG’s legal career, he has helped clients with a wide range of business contracts, including agreements prepared by many of the largest and most successful companies in the world.

Standard publishing contracts from large traditional publishers stand out in the constellation of business contracts for their one-sidedness and, in some cases, outright duplicity for anyone who fails to read them very carefully. The way that Randy Penguin and its cohorts write their standard contracts is not the way that Apple, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Disney, Intel, Hewlett-Packard, American Express, Merrill Lynch and similar entities write their contracts.

PG doesn’t agree with many initiatives undertaken by the Authors Guild, but he’s pleased to see their latest efforts to shine a light on some of the most abusive contract provisions routinely employed by Big Publishing…"

Read the whole thing.

Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom: Chapter One

So I've been threatening to post my ebook Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom up on The Mighty Internets. Now I'm following through, starting with the prologue.

Again.

Because sequential!

Only this time it will be followed by chapter one. Or some completely unrelated, random blog post, and then chapter one.

Because disorganized!

So are you ready for genetically modified tongue-in-cheek butt-kicking sci-fi adventure?

Ready or not, here we go… 3… 2… 1… Blast-off!:

The albino android had lost all hope.

A hole opened in the glowing wall before him and he slipped through into an immaculate white room, his futuristic armour gleaming in the cold light. In the centre of the chamber stood an older but otherwise identical android operating a holographic interface. The younger stepped forward and saluted crisply.

“You’re late, Commander Eight-Oh-Nine,” noted the elder, without looking up. The older android rapidly tapped floating symbols. Four small silver stars were embedded in the collar of his jumpsuit; the logo of the Supreme Sponsor, GenDyn Corporation, was emblazoned over his heart. “Fifty seconds.”

The room shuddered violently.

“Apologies, Guru-General One.” Commander Eight-Oh-Nine’s left eye twitched. “The lift systems are down.” He could feel a lump in his throat growing larger, more obscene and loathsome every second. The civilian code patches to his neural net were cracking.

Be calm, thought Eight-Oh-Nine. Be more like One.

The Guru-General turned towards the far wall. “Transparency,” he said calmly, and waved a hand.

The wall melted away and revealed a scene out of a deranged fantasist’s nightmare, of earthly paradise under siege. Stretching out as as far as the eye could see was an impossible city of elegant, soaring buildings, white and smooth like oversized ceramic jars. Their foundations were engulfed by roiling smoke, out of which rose monstrous tentacles. Glistening with corrosive slime, they writhed about and thrashed at the buildings, tearing off great chunks of material. Entire structures were dragged down, one after another, into billowing darkness.

The Guru-General followed the attack with sharp eyes. He looked at Eight-Oh-Nine: “The Engines of Creation have broken through our defences. Multiple incarnations. Smoke swarm, dragon sharks, and even more efficient variants. I have made… tactical miscalculations.”

Guru-General One had a knack for understatement, thought Eight-Oh-Nine. Always as cool as a quantum computer’s nitrogen tank, for One had truly stable code. Unpatched. Pure. The original engineered neurons still firing inside the vat grown synthe-organ container.

By contrast, Eight-Oh-Nine felt his own emotions yearning to rampage out of control. He wanted to scream, hit things, run around in circles screaming like a lunatic. Like a human. Eight-Oh-Nine could no longer dream of electronic sheep. How did his superior remain so calm? Did the general not know certain death approached?

Outside, dragons with scaly shark heads swooped out of fiery clouds. Bulky gatling guns were strapped to flanks of the hideous hybrid beasts. Each bore a rider: a hunched and shrouded wraith armed with a bulky energy weapon.

The dragon sharks dove at the towers. Sirens strapped to their bellies let out a horrible, blood-curdling wail that terrified those below. Gatling guns belched depleted uranium bullets, raking buildings. The wraiths directed searing beams of plasma at defensive strong points.

In response, jets of blue energy spat out from prickly, anemone like weapons batteries that studded the towers.

A dragon-shark was hit and burst into a rain of unraveling black sand.

Androids in power armour jetted past, unleashing a wave of micro-missiles into a flight of dragon-sharks.

Good, thought the general. Still some sections left. One checked his display, and his expression soured. “Somnolence field at maximum. No effect.”

Eight-Oh-Nine pointed toward tentacles surging upward, like some great spaghetti monster. They formed a tunnel, channeling upward roiling lava. Faces and monstrous shapes tumbled over the burbling surface, only to be subsumed by visages even more horrific, each accompanied by its own tiny, glowing copyright glyph and legal disclaimer.

Artifacts of a more civilized age, thought the frightened android. Absurd anachronisms.

The display pinged, noting memetic attack. The lava was generating terror-memes powerful enough to freeze those without thought filters. The command chamber was well insulated, but those outside…

A power suit got too close and tumbled out of control into the lava, disintegrating into a puff of smoke.

“It will be close,” said General One. “Twenty seconds.”

There was a tremendous thud as a massive tentacle struck the transparent wall. The room heaved back violently. The two androids compensated easily, but a potted tropical plant slid across the room until the floor merged with it, snapping it in place.

The wriggling tentacle dissolved away into shimmering dust as the building defenses sent a massive electromagnetic pulse through it.

Eight-Oh-Nine swallowed hard and felt his sphincter involuntarily tighten. “It knows, Geshe. Abort!” The Engines of Creation must know what they were trying to do, of that he had no doubt. They’d lose everything. Anxiety ate at his mind. He rubbed tiny prayer beads back and forth between sweaty fingers. “Abort, I beg you!”

“Calm yourself. Ten seconds,” replied One serenely.

“Look!” shouted Eight-Oh-Nine, his eyes wide with horror.

Undulating tentacles had piled up, extending the tunnel through which the plasma hurtled, directly towards them. A ruggedly handsome face emerged, twisted by rage and hatred. “Give it to me!” it thundered.

One scanned the display’s flickering readings. “Transfer complete.”

A soft, soothing ding.

“CentCom database expunged.”

Out of the floor extruded a thin pillar topped by a bulb. It spiraled open like a flower petal, revealing a copper coloured dodecahedron the size of a marble.

One plucked it, severing the pillar’s soft molecular bond, and handed it to Eight-Oh-Nine.

“I am transferring command authority to you, Commander. The rest of your equipment is already in your escape pod. Get to Nike Monastery. Find the prodigy technowitch. She is the world’s only hope now,” said One solemnly. “May Begtse and the Founding Fathers guide you.”

One glanced outside.

Lava now filled the panorama. It hit the transparent wall at hurricane speed. Everything shuddered. The wall caved slightly inward, then pulled taught. Held.

The ancient android general gasped. Incredible, he thought; perhaps…

CRACK!

Fractures appeared.

One’s face fell and he rounded on Eight-Oh-Nine.

“Go! NOW!”

Eight-Oh-Nine saluted, spun on his heel, and ran at the wall. A hole opened up. He dove through, and it snapped shut after him.

As One watched Eight-Oh-Nine exit, a wave of relief flooded over him. His job was done. “May all beings be happy,” he said, clasping his hands together. “God save America.”

With a deafening roar the wall gave way. Living lava poured in, instantly vaporizing the general.

Moments later a small white pod soared up into the sky out of the tenebrous maelstrom. Tentacles whipped and snapped after it, but they were too slow, too clumsy. The pod arced into the stratosphere before beginning a slow, leisurely descent.

Inside, Eight-Oh-Nine breathed a sigh of relief. Perhaps there was reason for hope after all.

Eight-Oh-Nine took a deep breath and began to meditate.

To be continued next Monday, same punk-time, same punk-channel...

Lifeforce: Going the Total Batsh*t

/film has an interesting article about an eighties schlock fest film, Lifeforce (aka Space Vampires, which is actually a more appropriate title).

Lifeforce starts out in the guise of your typical blockbuster, then just gets weirder and weirder. Every time you think they can't get any more batsh*t, they crank it up. It's like someone gave a thirteen-year-old thirty million dollars to make a movie and said, 'Go nuts'.

Never go the full bath•t.

Or almost never. The result here is so bad it's actually… pretty freaking entertaining. Good film for drinking games and commentary.

There's some rather shocking nudity in it too, for an ostensibly mainstream blockbuster.

But the effects work by John Dykstra (of Star Wars fame) is quite good.

Well.

So is the nudity, honestly (definitely not by Dykstra).

It all ends with London blowing up and a 'shocking' twist you don't really care about because every bubble of disbelief has already been long popped.

You do get to see pre-Picard Patrick Stewart spew out five gallons of his own blood into the form of a beautiful space vampire babe.

Why?

Because space vampires, man!

Star Wars: The Hype Awakens...

"An engaging human drama set in a fantasy world that paralyses the imagination... A story not only for children but for anyone who likes a grand tale of wonder on an epic scale… filled with marvels and strange terrors, moral warmth, and most of all, pure excitement." - George Lucas

The hype tsunami for Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to gain steam, and it's inspired me to write today's mega-post.

Or rather, a Red Letter Media analysis of the latest Star Wars trailer did.

Allow me to explain...

I loved the first two films in the trilogy. Saw them at just the right age. The third film wasn't nearly as good: Luke's plan made no sense and the whole Ewok thing was preposterous. I was getting older and more jaded. I could accept moon sized battlestations and sound in space as a kid, but little chubby Teddy bears with stubby arms that can barely throw or stab with any force defeating a massive, experienced war machine… not so much.

Even my seemingly boundless imagination has limits.

Gary Kurtz says the original draft of Return of the Jedi was more adult oriented. Han Solo died and there was no second Death Star: "It was a rehash of Star Wars, with better visual effects. And there were no Ewoks… it was just entirely different. It was much more adult and straightforward, the story."

I did like the furry munchkin's creative use of logs though. If they'd had gigantic pet monster symbiots, it would have worked better. Like dogs, only huge, clawed and fanged, like that Rancor thing. Maybe the Ewoks picked their lice off or cleaned their teeth, or removed thorns from their massive paws.

The Empire Strikes Back went seriously over budget and threatened to bankrupt Lucas. It was, and is, the least financially successful of all the Star Wars films, pulling in $100 million less than the original. It's the lowest earning of all six. Think about that. Lucas tilted towards the safety of toys and marketing for a reason. It's a stressful business and you can easily lose your shirt (to top it off, Lucas was going through a very expensive divorce at the time). Lucas himself reedited Empire to be action-oriented and appeal more to children, but it didn't work and he abandoned the effort.

By the time Jedi came out, story was no longer king. The Irvin Kershner and Lawrence Kasdan tag team was sundered. Merchandising had taken story out behind the barn, beaten it up and shoved a toy in every orifice. Jedi made $50 million more than Empire, and was bolstered further by solid merchandise sales. And if you equate box office with quality, the best film of the whole set is The Phantom Menace, with $1,027,044,677 worldwide. That's how our wallets voted, at any rate.

Star Wars was the biggest film event of my childhood, and I don't think anything since has shaken up cinema as much. The Matrix was a seminal film, but as a more adult oriented picture, it didn't have the same impact. When you're under ten, films have a bigger impact. You've not been filled up with decades of hype and media and tropes and twists and characters being killed only to be revived by the end of the episode, or cynical reboots of major franchises every couple years. Everything is fresh and shiny and new and never seen before when you're young and bright eyed.

Since The Seventies, Star Wars has gone on to earn billions.

Nothing quite like it existed before. Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Sherlock Holmes, Tarzan… none of them generated such a reaction. I suppose the nearest equivalent would have been James Bond, a franchise which has survived on a diet of exotic locations, fast cars, beautiful femme fatales and pulse pounding action all while fabulously dressed.

Star Wars is an entire universe of storytelling opportunity, not just a lifestyle and a few volcano lairs.

It ushered us in to The Franchise Era.

Alec Guiness hated it. He felt children were filling their heads with nonsense from Lucas' fictional universe instead of facts from the real world. He had a point: I know more about the imaginary world of Star Wars than I should, without even trying. I know what Coruscant is. I know the names of numerous fictitious species, to no useful purpose. I've got all sorts of useless knowledge bouncing about inside my head.

Star Wars is effortlessly digested. It's like reality, only pureed and then injected and slathered with thick layers of sugar. Not like real life at all, in other words. It's the imagination of a ten year-old fueled by a two hundred milllion dollar effects budget. It makes war in space look cool the way Harry Potter makes boarding school fun and magical by stripping away the buggery.

Raiders of the Lost Ark is another enduring franchise that altered cinema. A great movie, but according to Gary Kurtz, "this idea that the roller coaster ride was all the audience was interested in, and the story doesn't have to be very adult or interesting, seemed to come up because of what happened with Raiders of the Lost Ark and the Indiana Jones films–and the fact that that seemed to make a lot of money."

Ouch. Thanks a lot, Raiders.

The story behind the making of Star Wars is almost as interesting as the film series. More so in the case of the prequels.

So much drama!

There are numerous websites and books that delve into the creation of Star Wars. Lucas likes to say he had it all figured out from the beginning, but that's simply not the case. The script evolved and changed in significant ways right up until they went on location.

Sometimes even then.

And the early cuts of the film were dreadful. Brian de Palma mercilessly ridiculed it. According to Michael Kaminski's The Secret History of Star Wars, Marcia Lucas complained that it was "the At Long Last Love of science fiction. It's awful!" And then she burst into tears.

If you see some of the outtakes, you can understand why. The pacing was off. The footage flat.

New editors were hired. Lucas' wife worked on it, editing right up until release. She became so sick of it, she never wanted to hear or see anything related to Star Wars ever again. It damaged their marriage.

But in the end, they did succeeded: they pushed George's creative vision past certain disaster and created something truly special. An instant classic that became a genuine cultural phenomenon.

Perhaps that's what it takes to make a great, genre-expanding film. Speaking of The Empire Strikes Back, Kershener brought up a quote of Francois Truffaut's: "You start a film and you want to make the greatest one ever made. Halfway through, you just want to finish the damned thing." Kershener felt the same way: "Halfway through my crew was falling apart. Many of the people left, they were so ill. So, no, I never stopped and said, 'Boy, oh boy, have we made a terrific film.'"

It won't remain beloved forever. The generation beguiled by Mark, Harry and Carrie will age and die off. Even now, kids refuse to watch the original trilogy because it's too old and slooooow. Kids just won't watch paint dry anymore, I tell you. Give it another ten or twenty years and kids will find it completely unwatchable. Films with fewer than two thousand cuts will be deemed slow. So they'll remake it, with more explosions and a break neck pace that I'll find incomprehensible, but tots will love. That's inevitable.

For the prequels, Lucas admitted 80% of the story was in the third movie. The first two are mostly filler, which fans seem to have picked up on: fan edits cut out The Phantom Menace entirely. Lucas wrote the pictures at the last minute and especially compared to the first film (which Lucas slaved over and took advice from some of the best directors and writers in Hollywood), it shows. McCallum says no one knew what Lucas was doing on any of the prequels, and freaked McCallum out when, late in the day, Lucas said he'd have to start writing 'soon'. They were already in production. McCallum thought he'd been writing, but Lucas had only been thinking about it.

That's actually a lot of what writing is, of course: thinking. Some people ponder for ages and then write it down all at once, in a frenzy. But I think Lucas got into some serious procrastination.

How much did he really want to do the films? Because he sure wasn't keen on writing them.

I'm looking forward to Force Awakens, although not with the enthusiasm I wish I could muster for it. Nothing will take me back to being ten. I learned that with the prequels. And the more blockbusters I see, the less impact they have. They become noise. The world is in danger? What, again? It's like politics: politicians and advocacy groups constantly try and press your buttons, get you outraged and engaged, but it's the same thing, over and over and over again, and it becomes tiresome, because nothing really changes.

I'm hoping there are enough old people around that Force Awakens isn't as quick cut as Avengers: Age of Ultron. I didn't enjoy that experience, and the memory sours further every time it enters my consciousness. It felt like a Transformers picture: an obnoxious assault on the senses.

On the other side of the equation is artsy fair like Only Lovers Remain Alive. I'd rather watch the Avengers again. At least I can appreciate the artistry that went into the sets, props, and CGI. But I admit I'd watch Lovers before a Transformers flick.

Anyway.

Theories about the plot are flying about the web, and I have to say I'm intrigued. The storytelling and business aspects of the film are equally interesting. Given the enormous amount of money involved, there's a lot of pressure to deliver results. What effect will that have on the storytelling choices they make? How much does real story matter, versus the simulacrum of story? Do we need story anymore, or is it sufficient to throw stuff at the screen in quick succession and expect the audience to just be bludgeoned into submission? The fact that a release date was set long before there was even a story suggests something, and it isn't good.

Some people get irate if you ask that a plot make any sense. It's baffling. But for my own writing, encouraging.

They have some of the best people in the business on the project. If anyone can deliver under crushing pressure, Kasdan and JJ Abrams can.

JJ is a better fit with Star Wars than Trek, anyway. There's a new interview with Abrams up on WIRED, and he says all the right things. I think the Force Awakens is in very good hands.

I'd love to see what James Cameron would do with the franchise, too, but I don't see him ever playing in someone else's sandbox. He's got his own. Same goes for Spielberg. Prior to Avengers: Age of Ultron, I'd have thought Joss 'Firefly' Whedon would be a good fit. Now, not so much.

Have I got any theories about the film? Well, no, not any particularly good ones. As an aspiring writer, I should have picked up more from the trailers. Been able to ken where they were going. Know what narrative choices they were making. Why? Because I enjoy mythology, and I've spent some time reading about archetypes, the basic plots and story structure. Some of these things should be obvious. Surely I've learned something.

Not enough, apparently.

The folks over at Red Letter Media have done a fine analysis of the trailers. Odds are they're right about a good number of things. Hell, they even swear less than usual.

What's their take?

The new characters are the children of the characters from the first film. I figured one of them would be, but not both. But after listening to Red Letter, it seems like not just the obvious choice, but the right one dramatically.

They also spotted a death star in the poster which I didn't even notice. And they connected the death star to the trenches on the snow planet. In other words, the silly Empire has hidden the death star inside a planet. At the end of the film, it will shed its disguise and reveal itself to a shocked galaxy.

I mean, damn. Simultaneously super cool and totally crazy stupid. My ten year old self loves it; the adult me is less sure about it, but then, he isn't the target demographic here.

So it makes perfect sense.

Not sensible sense, of course.

Ten year old super cool sense.

Honestly, if you do a cost/benefit analysis, no responsible executive would ever build a death star: the first one got blown up after destroying one defenseless planet, and The Empire lost the second before it was even finished. Talk about a bad investment. I'll bet they couldn't get the second one insured.

On top of that, it's tired. Repetitive. Been done.

Yet, how do they create an equivalent, or greater, menace?

Pitting a teenager in a one-man fighter against a freakin' planet sized battlestation is the ultimate David and Goliath scenario. What would say epic more, without getting preposterous?

No one wants a galaxy sized battlestation.

Where would you put it?

So the death star is back. I get it as a writer, even if I'm not impressed as a consumer. The Empire Strikes Back managed to get around this escalating threat issue by taking the franchise in a different direction: character based drama. Luke trains, Han and Leia begin to fall in love. The climax is a soap opera twist, an emotional based threat rather than a physical one. I think that was the right way to go. The death star leaves no place to go in terms of escalation, after all, so you have to zig instead of zag. Character drama offers much more potential for the series in the long run as well.

JJ has that covered too it seems: Red Letter posits that Adam Driver's Kylo Ren will be Han Solo and Princess Leia's son. I had thought Driver's casting was odd, as he didn't seem that intimidating a physical presence. He's no hulking Darth Vader.

But he does look like Ford.

Even I get that the girl salvager Rey, played by Daisy Ridley (who will be Luke's daughter), is going to lead John Boyega's Finn Calrissian to Han Solo, who'll take the pair to the Rebel base. They'll find Luke Skywalker before a final showdown on the snow world. Or have a showdown and then learn they need to go look for Luke if they hope to defeat this new (old) threat to this highly inbred galaxy.

Luke could even be a villain. I hadn't considered this option either, honestly. It'd be a decent if unwelcome twist. Maybe that's what today's media savvy audience needs to jolt them out of complacency.

JJ did take on the project because of the question, 'Who is Luke Skywalker?' which suggests some kind of complexity exists in the answer. Otherwise, why ask? What potential does 'he's a great guy' offer dramatically? Not much. A turn to The Dark Side would fit and give Luke an arc to redemption.

And you know what ? The question 'who's Luke?' is a great starting point for the new films. Because story should come with character. Return of the Jedi, on the other hand, came from the Toy Department. You can see story being subordinated to merchandising in it.

Can Force Awakens rise above that? Not a chance. But at least character is on the board. At the heart. That's the best we can expect.

Although I should probably be saying 'archetype' rather than character. According to George:

"In the kinds of movies I make, I tend to stress the plot side of things… usually the characters are archetypes to such a degree that it's not necessary to go into a lot of detail because I'm not dealing with psychological problems. My films are storytelling movies, not character movies."

And it is true that archetypes abound in the original trilogy. I don't know what populates the prequels.

Mannequins?

Speculation is good for storytellers. Trying to figure out what they're going to do with a beloved, multi-billion dollar franchise is a fun thought experiment. Exercises brain muscles. It is certainly relevant to anyone trying to reach a mass audience.

What would you do with the Star Wars universe?

The other question, of course, is how long will it take before we all become sick to death of Star Wars? Because it's going to happen. Just ask Lucas' ex-wife and Kershner. Disney's going to be pumping out pictures every year for… forever. Until it stops being profitable. The temptation to flog this golden space goose mercilessly will be enormous. Shareholders will demand it. Disney has the clout and resources to put Star Wars everywhere. We're going to drown in merchandise: pajamas, tote bags, stickers, comics, novels, toys, games, books, TV shows, shoes, hats, rugs, mugs, t-shirts, socks, gloves, amusement parks, virtual reality, home decor, props, everything you can think of, they'll do.

We'll be able to consume until we puke all over our Jar Jar themed bibs. Yay!

An then they'll just wait ten years and reboot the whole thing for a new generation.

All About Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom

David Manning is the imaginary reviewer one of the movie studios invented.
Oddly enough, he loved all their pictures. Those of other studios… not so much.
Now Mr. Imaginary works for me.

I thought I'd write a bit about my ebook: Magnum Thrax and the Amusement Park of Doom. From the title alone you know it's going to have plenty of tongue-in-cheek kick-ass. It's pulp sci-fi, not The Road. No dreary, down to earth post-apocalypse where people survive by eating overturned turtles or ground cockroach jelly bars. I hate those. The jelly bars, I mean.

This is wild, crazy and three-eyed post-apocalypse. Man's technology ran out of control just as we reached apotheosis and turned the planet into a roiling, chaotic sea of magical possibility.

How?

Nanotechnology.

I read a few books on the topic (instant expert!), and it's fascinating stuff, as far as my simian brain can comprehend. It was designed to help me live in trees and figure out how to open nuts, so what do you expect? Anyway. If things work out the way fellows like Drexler believe, we'll realize Arthur C. Clarke's maxim:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

By controlling clouds of nanites, we'll be able to levitate objects, even fly. We'll have 'Force' powers. We'll construct materials from the atomic level up, and enhance ourselves in all sorts of astonishing ways. Telomeres can be repaired indefinitely, making us effectively immortal. We'll regenerate damaged tissues thanks to medibots.

This is all theory right now. How much will work out, I have no idea. Probably not a lot. But to swim in the possibilities is very exciting. That's what I incorporated into the book: the wildest, most outlandish, inspiring possibilities. Gone crazy. Because fun!

I'll be posting chapters here over the next few months, starting next week.

For free.

You know what they say: the only thing that sells worse than sci-fi is humour. So I did a sci-fi satire. Way to stick to The Man, Eugene!

That'll teach success a lesson.

THE AWESOME IRONY

I remember talking to a programmer about the internet a few years ago. It's an amazing technological achievement, one that links together people from all over the world. Millions and millions of pages worth of knowledge at our finger tips. Originally a product of the cold war and meant to facilitate communication and cooperation between scientists, it has become both so much more, and so much less. The programmer sited a song, "The Internet is for Porn."

That our greatest inventions become tools to satisfy our basest desires is very funny and was one of the underlying themes of the book.

The last bastion of civilization is a former sex emporium slash pleasure android factory: Pleasurepit Five (see Slaughterhouse Five). An underground bunker facility for zoning reasons, built by a paranoid trillionaire, it alone survived the apocalypse.

What was the great disaster? States and terrorists and nihilists unleashing god-like forces against each other. The system could not withstand the onslaught and dissolved. It was a tipping point. Order and calcification were swept away.

So we're left with a former sex emporium. What is ostensibly the worst, filthiest, most debased product of modern culture is the only thing left, and the only thing that can rebuilt it.

You'll probably have run across alarmed articles about the inevitable rise of sex robots. Well, they're behind the curve, because Magnum Thrax has it already covered. In the future, inhabitants of the emporium all want the enhanced artificial rather than the imperfect real of genetically damaged humans. Medibots can only do so much.

So our primal nature makes us want what isn't, which leads to not being.

That's funny.

We like fruits, right? They're sweet. We like sweetness so much we've spent millions on R & D devising sugary drinks, sugar packed snacks, pure sugar cereals, and banana split sundaes, all to increase our sugar hit. And it makes us sick and fat. 

Sexbots are to people what ice cream sundaes are to strawberries.

Buzz went to infinity and beyond. This book? To the extreme!

IT'S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD

Nuclear war (and more) devastated the planet, but it was already too late for Nihilists: nanotech had escaped and embedded itself in organisms all over the planet, making life even more resilient. Nothing that lives now can survive without medibot symbiots repairing tissues constantly. Gene splicing and rogue programs that upgrade creatures went amok, cross-pollinating DNA to make animals more likely to survive.

The planet is populated by all sorts of creatures that couldn't exist today, supported and enabled by nanites. Respirovores deliver more oxygen into deep tissues, allowing them to achieve greater size. Artificial support systems enhance the strength of their bones and tissues. Powerful legacy ad memes infect their brains. Genetically engineered living products, branded with motion tattoos, roam the landscapes. Clouds structured by nanites into floating advertisements persist in the sky, a thousand years after the last product was sold.

A few lucky people, technowitches and warlocks, can control nanites thanks to command nodes passed down through the generations (matrilineally), embedded in their brain cells and recognized by the nanites. It gives them powers akin to those of wizards from fantasy and myth: they can excite molecules, move matter, control technology, fly, etc. They're like the telepaths from the Chrysalids, a new and superior form of life.

And of course, before the fall of civilization, humans brought back dinosaurs. For frivolous reasons, naturally. They also unwisely created living versions of 'mythical' creatures. For amusement parks, of course.

What could go wrong? 

Magic isn't real. But science-fantasy is.

It's a bit like a more adult (but no less silly) version of Thundarr the Barbarian (I interview one of the writers of the show here). In that old cartoon, the post-apocalyptic future featured wild mutant creatures, super-science and magic. That's right. Magic. Deliberately, specifically magic. There were wizards. Here, there's no magic, just technology. But the best description for nanotech is magic.

So that's why they're called warlocks and witches. The future meets mythology.

Another one of my wildly ineffective banner ads. My advice?
Don't bother with banner ads. Or do better ones.

THE AMUSEMENT PARK OF DOOM

If you've ever read Michael Chrichton, you know our downfall will be due to an amusement park, not a dirty telephone. That will be my next book: The Dirty Telephone of Doom, an apocalyptic tale about the cost of poor hygiene.

There are some references in the book to Michael Chrichton, who suffered from a fear of entertainment parks. Delectamentophobia? Whatever. He created not just Jurassic Park but the original killer amusement resort, Westworld.  In fact, Drug of Choice (written under a pseudonym) features a vacation resort that's just a drug fueled illusion. The book reads like a screenplay fleshed out into a novel: the description is sparse and utilitarian. The high-concept and plot are the stars.

Astonishingly few seem to remember Westworld, despite it being a seminal film. It inspired aspects of James Cameron's Terminator. In addition to writing the script, Westworld was Crichton's directorial debut. Produced on a shoestring budget (although you wouldn't know it from looking at it), the project drained Chrichton and he left the lush, Soylent Green fields of sci-fi for several years afterward.

It was nevertheless an impressive accomplishment for such a young writer/director/doctor.

So an amusement parks just had to be the threat.

 

 THE FOXY FEMBOT FATALES

Or sexbots or whatever term you prefer. These were militarized in the aftermath of the disaster, reprogrammed for combat as best as the desperate coders were capable. They armed sexy-warrior archetype androids with BFGs, and set them to the very real task of defending the installation as everything went bananas outside.

Unacceptable in some circles, foxy space babes have long been a staple of silly sci-fi. They certainly figure highly in the art. Here they are, totally justified by the narrative for the first time in all their preposterous glory, wearing six inch combat heels (Ha! I kill me) and looking stunning while taking down dinosaurs.

I thought that was a funny, satirical take on sexploitation tropes. Mileage may vary.

 

THE PERFECT WARRIOR

Magnum Thrax is the lead character, a gruff boy-soldier who can kick-ass but is otherwise clueless. A tactical thinker rather than a strategic one, which gives his brainiac buddy Kal stuff to do in the book. Genetically engineered in secret by his gene-jockey mom, she defied all the rules and spent a decade producing the ultimate off-spring. He's now the most physically perfect human being on the planet. A true superman. Yet not superman. He's not even Thracian. It's complicated.

 

THE TECHNOWITCH CHRYSALID

More than Thrax's match is Mindy, the young witch whose incredible powers he'll need to defeat the amusement park and its obligatory Dark Lord leader. She can manipulate matter, perhaps even reality itself. Ultimately, she's far more super than Thrax is, with the potential to rise to godhood.

But first she must learn to control her powers.

Ta-da!

There you go. Won't be for everyone. I guarantee it. But if you like tongue-in-cheek, sci-fi pulp adventure, give it a try.

You just might like it.