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.

Ten years of TV

I've tried to keep this blog focused on sci-fi.

Blogs are supposed to be focused, or so I'm told by other, much more successful blogs. Go deep, go in-depth, specialize. Except I'm not writing sci-fi research papers and never will, so maybe it doesn't matter and it's time to write whatever the freakin' heck I feel like.

I was thinking about all the TV series I've watched over the last 10 years, what I liked, and what I didn't. Not what was objectively good (as much as anything subjective can be objective), but just what I responded to favorably.

After all, a show might have good writing, acting, pacing, cinematography, and direction, and still not be my cup of tea.

So I decided to do up a list. It has nothing to do with objective merits, however. It's not an argument. It's entirely, indulgently subjective, showing my bad taste in all its consumerist glory.

Went through Wikipedia lists of TV programs year by year. Some I'd forgotten about completely. Funny, that. And I stopped watching a lot after 1 or 2 seasons. Even ones I liked. Time issues? Just not really compelling? Dunno.

So how much processed entertainment have I consumed? Loads. Then again, it is over a ten year period.

I'll bet you're just dying of curiosity, aren't you?

No?

Oh.

Well, too late. I already wrote it up:


LOVING IT!
Game of Thrones
Breaking Bad
Mr. Robot
Battlestar Galactica (Season 1)
Suits (Season 1)
Damages (Season 1 & 2)
Orphan Black (Season 1)
Rick and Morty
Misfits (Seasons 1 & 2)
The IT Crowd
That Mitchell and Webb Look
Penny Dreadful
The 100
Fringe (Seasons 1 to 3)
The Wire
Rome
Firefly
Southpark
Band of Brothers
The Pacific


KEEP IT COMING:
Suits (Season 2)
True Detective (Season 1)
Homeland (Season 1-3)
Black Mirror
House of Cards (Season 1 & 2)
Boardwalk Empire (Seasons 1-3)
Battlestar Galactica (Season 2 and start of season 3) 
American Horror Story (Seasons 1)
Community (Seasons 1 & 2)
Deadwood
Madmen (Season 1 & 2)
Six Feet Under
Justified
Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The Americans
Jericho (Season 1)
Doctor Who (Infrequently)


PASSABLE TIME-WASTERS: 
Orphan Black (Season 2)
The Walking Dead (Season 1, 3, skipped 2)
Fear the Walking Dead
Doctor Who (Sometimes)
House (Sampled)
Sherlock
American Horror Story (Seasons 2)
24 (First few seasons at least, not sure when I stopped watching)
Law & Order (Here and there)
Stargate Universe
Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles (Season 2, skipped 1)
The Tudors (Season 1)
Spartacus (Season 1)
Agent Carter
Lost (Season 1, first couple of episodes)
Angel
Jericho (Season 2)
The Killing (Season 1, first half or so)


NOT SO PASSABLE TIME-WASTERS:
Sopranos (Here and there)
Girls (Season 1)
House of Cards (Season 3)
Sons of Anarchy (Seasons 1 & part of 2)
Fringe (Seasons 4+)
Arrested Development (Season 1)
Caprica
Borgias (Season 1)
Marvel Agents of SHIELD (Season 1)
Star Trek: Enterprise
In Treatment (Season 1)


LIKE A CAR WRECK:
V
The Strain (Season 1)
Misfits (Season 3)
Battlestar Galactica (End of season 3)
Spartacus (Final season)
Vikings
Surface
Doctor Who (Currently)


DEAR GOD, TURN IT OFF!
Battlestar Galactica (Season 4)
Helix

Sci-fi Overdose: The Martian, Doctor Who, 12 Monkeys, Fear the Walking Dead, and Rick and Morty, etcetera...

I like sci-fi.

Really, I do.

At least, that's what I tell myself.

But you can have too much of a good thing.

Since starting this blog, I've written more about science fiction than, well, ever. Not only have I watched and read sci-fi, I've thought and written about it. I've stuck with some shows longer than I would have with the intent writing reviews.

Now I've got sci-fi overload. Time for a break.

Why? Things are bugging me that arguably shouldn't.

The Martian, for example. Thought it a super smart snore, even though the ad hoc science was awesome. People can do such wondrous things. Should have liked it. Didn't.

Jurassic World? All the spectacular visuals and none of the smarts of the original.

First several episodes of the new Doctor Who season? Didn't like them, either. Viewership for the show is falling (it may not come back next year for a full run as a result, just a few specials) and what are they doing? Fan service and convoluted plots that alienate casual viewers. The whole franchise is spiralling down into a black hole of self-reference.

The Before the Flood two parter had a much more appealing pace, and even gave the guest actors room to breathe and develop. There were some nice, creepy moments, too, but overall, it felt flat.

The episode depends on a gullible Pull-My-Finger villain, again, one ready to believe anything the doctor says, and so conveniently doom himself.

Someone should make a show: The Universe's Stupidest Space Invaders. 'Monsters' might be more appropriate, but 'Invaders' is catchier. Every week they'd show a bunch of alien morons who try and invade earth, only to be killed by dirty telephones, get eaten by a small dog, defeated by love, or vanquished by their fatal water allergy.

For over 50 years, Doctor Who has eschewed supernatural explanations, preferring (pseudo) scientific ones. 'Demons' would invariably prove to be aliens. Supernatural powers would turn out to be super science. Yet in the last two-parter, the show had ghosts. Not disembodied 'consciousnesses', or rogue information waves, but actual for realsies ghosts. Souls. Weaponized souls, in fact, turned into homicidal puppets by three written symbols.

That has major ramifications for Doc Who: if souls are real, where do they go? Are Heaven and Hell real now as well? Moffat seems keen on this question, and had a faux-Heaven (or was it Purgatory? Whatever...) last season, presided over by Missy. But that was the usual and expected high tech fake out. I don't remember any caveats this time around and it seemed out of character for the program.

Feeling ambivalent about Fear the Walking Dead. It's arguably sci-fi, set in a future affected by a fantastical virus. It's also pretty nihilistic. Standard for zombie fare, I suppose. The government is incompetent, the army malevolent and oppressive and untrustworthy to the point of cliche. Perhaps that is necessary to accelerate The Apocalypse.

Fear gives us a range of characters, from pacifist Travis on one end to ex-torturer war criminal guy on the other. Now, pacifism invites violence and is an extremist position that generally can only survive while protected within the body of The Leviathan, but contrasting it so simplistically against a torturer just feels cheap.

And remember, kids: 'Torture never works!' That's why Hollywood shows it working, over and over and over again. Make up your minds, people.

It's essentially Joseph Mengele vs. Ghandi, and in this universe Mengele is right every time. Because ya gots to do what ya gots ta do, it's a tough world, people are worse than flesh eating zombies, and squishy Liberal qualms will get you killed.

To nail the point home, Travis Gandhi McPacifist frees a young army soldier who was tortured by Salazar McMengele and whom the torturer is going to kill, to keep him quiet. The young man then comes back, and to underline how wrong mercy is, shoots not McMengele, but McMengele's hapless daughter, whereupon Gandhi abandons his ideals entirely and nearly beats the soldier to death.

It's a bit much.

Story beats like these, handled deftly, could be fascinating and thought provoking, illustrating how our moral choices are curtailed by difficult circumstances. But here it was delivered with the subtlety of a two by four to the head.

Too didactic.

When I look at all the anti-hero trend on TV, it's putting me off: serial killers, brutal mobsters, sophisticated cannibals, charming psychopaths, and worse are the new protagonists.

It's become anti-hero-palooza!

Even The Doctor is more of a dick these days ('She cares so I don't have to'). And it's a kids show.

Refreshing at first, an antidote to preternatural Brady Bunch optimism, but the pendulum just keeps swinging out.

Non-fiction teaches us about the world. Fiction shows us how to live in it. Moral lessons are invariably imparted by the best stories. Consequences are revealed for evaluation, but it's better done with subtlety than a bludgeon, or stacking the deck so heavily it makes the audience groan. Studies have shown that reading stories can expand people's ability to empathize. Stephen Pinker credits storytelling with changing attitudes in Angels of Our Better Nature. But you need a deft touch. The Martian, for example, delivers a message about perseverance and hope and ingenuity and self-reliance, but it's not punching you in the face with it.


On the positive side, Fear has a tremendously creepy ambiance, and great action sequences.  like the actors and their acting choices. I especially like the actress playing Madison. She has a quiet intensity.

But there are character inconsistencies, too.

For example, a doctor in the finale calls for extraction of herself, her staff, and her patients to an airbase. The med station starts to be overrun by zombies before the choppers can set down, so they abandon the rescue operation. Shortly thereafter the doctor says there is nowhere to go, and commits suicide (off-screen, but heavily implied). Hello? Where was she going to be extracted to, just minutes earlier, if there was nowhere to go? The med station was overrun, but there was no word of the helicopter destination being compromised. That didn't change, so why doesn't her character try and go via ground vehicle? More dramatic to kill herself. Yet it doesn't make the slightest sense and should have been caught by a story editor. It's a minor thing that didn't have to stick out.

Too piddly a concern? Too minor a nitpick? Yeah, maybe.

I am looking forward to next season though. Because they're going to sea, which means pirates!

Fear the Walking Dead is Shakespeare compared to The Strain. Fun idea making vampires a sort of sentient virus / hookworm infection, but ugh. Stay away. It's gotten so bad it may one day be good for drinking games, but right now… not so much.

It's on the same level as Helix. I cut out of that after one season, despite the peppy soundtrack.

12 Monkeys surprised me. Thought they'd just drag out the original movie into an interminable multi-season slog that gets cancelled before the finale is ever reached. But it was an entertaining ride. Except, of course, for a weird character change midway through the season that didn't work. They say they set it up. I don't think they did.

I liked Orphan Black but lost interest when crazy psycho-killer Helena changed into quirky Auntie Helena.

That was just weird.

Not every show can be Mr. Robot: the characters here are so strong I'm on board no matter how bat shit insane the twists are. And they are cray-zee. This program has some seriously powerful writing, bro, and the acting is beyond top notch. Don't even recognize the actors, other than Christian Slater, but I expect to see plenty of them in future. The cinematography and wild, off centre framing, the score, the twisted characters… all superlative. The pacing is perfect, not needlessly frenetic. I'm learning a lot just watching the show. It's not for everyone, but give it a whirl. You may just like it. But it isn't SF.

The real and for true sci-fi program I'm enjoying at the moment is Rick and Morty. It's acerbic and cutting and endlessly cynical, but has the saving grace of being devastatingly funny.

Naturally the characters aren't terribly likeable.

Penny Dreadful, The 100, and Game of Thrones are all darkly brilliant, but they're on hiatus, and only one is really SF.

There's a big divide between being a consumer of fiction and a creator of it. As a consumer, I feel free to criticize and analyze, but as a creator, much less so. I know how hard it can be to create something, never mind something great.

On the one hand, TV shows have editors and writer rooms of talented people and resources to boot, so you expect a lot. On the other, they are working within tight timelines with restricted budgets, limited control, and under intense pressure from multiple directions.

As a wannabe writer, who the heck am I to judge?

So I'm taking a break from my amateur movie and TV reviews before I become more dyspeptic.

Books are another matter...

The Martian vs. Interstellar vs. Gravity vs. Prometheus

The Martian, based on Andy Weir's book, is about a paper thin character and his struggle to survive after being abandoned on Mars. He does so by eating potatoes grown in his own shit and using copious amounts of duct tape.

Basically, it's MacGyver in Spaaaaace.

I'm being facetious, of course.

Weir heavily researched his book, and everything in it is plausible. That Andy Weir researched all this in the first place is, and worked it into a novel, is impressive. That scientists figured out everything for Weir to research is even more amazing.

Human beings can do such miraculous feats, like going to other planetary bodies (we've already reached the moon). It just makes me think I must be part of a different species. The characters in the film are fictionalized versions of all the very smart people down at NASA.

The film spends a great deal of time on Matt Damon 'sciencing the shit out of' his predicament. Which, initially, is pretty cool. He grows the aforementioned potatoes, for example. He co-opts an older probe. He uses radiation for heat. And so on.

The only thing they don't spend much time on is the human element, and without interest in him as a person, interest in his situation wanes as the film drags on and piles on disaster on top of another.

He has no love interest, for example. No close friends. His parents are mentioned, once, but he seems in no hurry to speak to them. They are not invited to NASA to view his return, or to write to him, or, well, anything.

They cover his relationships with his coworkers a little, but it never goes more than puddle deep.

It could so easily have been different.

The human element here is mostly, if not entirely, afterthought.

Gravity takes something of the same approach. We start with the disaster, so there's little time to flesh out Sandra Bullock's character. But that's less of a problem here: she has George Clooney to play off of, and the film is really an IMAX roller coaster ride in space. No need for rumination. Because lookout, space debris! Gravity isn't a deep film, and doesn't pretend to be. That's not the genre.

The Martian, on the other hand, had potential to be far more affecting emotionally than it was.

Castaway got to me. The Martian never did.

Interstellar had dodgy science. Three habitable planets around a black hole? Where was the light coming from? One hour on the surface is a year aboard the ship? Say what? What would that mean for satellite TV reception?

My monkey-brained understanding is that, even with a 'perfect' star like ours, Venus is too close, and Mars too far away, to support life. We're in just the right spot. It can vary a bit, but not much. The idea of finding three planets with stable orbits around a black hole seems… unlikely. But hey, I'm no scientist.

It scarcely matters: if you put the science of Interstellar aside (and I only bring it up because I was told so often how accurate and real it was), the film is much more enjoyable. They establish an emotional connection, and background, between the protagonist and his daughter. Love is at the centre of the film. Powerful, primal emotion the viewer can connect with. It has a heart, however overwrought.  

The Martian's heart barely beats. It's more like an episode of Nova or something.

Gravity felt like a realistic portrayal of a disaster in space, as far as Hollywood goes. The rapport between Bullock and Clooney sold it for me emotionally. Especially Clooney's seeming sacrifice, and unexpected return. They managed to make me care enough that the action sequences, and Bullock's fate, mattered.

By contrast, the lack of emotional depth in The Martian made the film a long, slow slog. There's a great bit with the Council of Elrond, and some clever and funny lines, but it needed more than cleverness. There's no looking into the empty void. No real anguish at being abandoned. He doesn't plumb the depths, he's too practical, so when he rises at the end it doesn't carry much emotional heft.

You just don't give a shit.

Some critics are saying The Martian is Ridley Scott 'returning to form' after the disaster that was Prometheus. I saw that film: it was gorgeous, creepy, and well cast, but didn't make a lick of sense. But you know what? I'd sooner watch Prometheus again than The Martian. I was never bored watching the former, while the latter made me shift in my seat and look at my watch.

Yes, I still have a watch.

Prometheus has characters who are interesting basket cases. The engineers are cool and mysterious. The android is ambiguous in intent. There's a lot going on to look at and absorb. It's a mess, honestly, but it's an interesting mess.

The Martian, on the other hand, is a slighter offering, despite the science. Despite the realism, or perhaps because of it, the picture was boring.

That's a cardinal sin for a piece of entertainment.

It should be mentioned that the climax is pulse pounding and I got caught up in it, but getting there was far more painful than it had to be.

Ultimately, The Martian just raised my opinion of Interstellar, Prometheus, and Gravity (although I already had a high opinion of Gravity).

Is it time to let go of plausibility and embrace the universe altering power of love?

Just remember to bring duct tape.

In Defense of Zombies

Zombies tend to be silent types at the best of times, so when their reputation is maligned by elites, they just aren’t able to defend themselves. This is particularly true of criticism appearing on the internet.

Zombie don't type.

And so it falls upon others to defend their reputation from the wanton calumnies that percolate online.

For you see, lately, smug internet pundits have been bleating on about how the real danger in The Walking Dead franchise is other humans, not zombies. You know, because man is his own worst enemy, blah blah solemn wisdom blah. I take the point, especially on a thematic level, but come on: in the end, this is an overly simplistic cliché that’s been pushed to the point of absurdity.

The time has come to stand up for our humble, bumbling zombie friends. They may be unassuming, slow, uncoordinated, even brain-dead, but they still have it where it counts when it comes to collapsing civilization into a smoking ruin.

The zombie doesn’t brag. They're above that. They're brain-dead. But then, they don’t have to brag: their work speaks for itself.

First, without zombies, there wouldn’t even be an apocalypse in the first place.

Seriously.

How many people tried to eat your face off on your way to work this morning? Are 99% of your friends and family zombie chow? No? Isn’t that odd. After all, in the real world there are a lot more of those dangerous human things than in The Walking Dead. It’s populated mostly by zombies.

I wonder how that happened.

Me? I'd rather sit in a cafe populated by humans, rather than undead flesh eaters, but that's just me.

Typically, a war kills a very tiny proportion of the overall population, and most die due to disease or famine that are side effects of the fighting, rather than in actual combat.

Yet the lowly zombie, in short order, kills off 99% of the entire population of the planet. And they do it by biting. Up close and personal every time. No atomic bombs, no guns, no knives, no carpet bombing. No nerve gas, no gas chambers.

Just teeth.

The death toll of the Second World War is between 50 and 80 million, spread over five years. And that’s using every weapon humanity had at its disposal, from machine guns to a-bombs.

Pathetic.

Zombies? They kill SEVEN FREAKING BILLION in a quarter that time.

With their teeth.

I can't emphasize that enough.

That's like making a suit of power armour in a cave using spare parts and an old blow torch.

Many humans would die from disease and starvation, as transportation and supply networks collapse, but the show never covers this. And the disruption is caused by our modest zombie masses, anyway.

So I ask you: which is more dangerous? Human or zombie?

Yeah. That's right.

Suck it up.

So let’s all show our putrifying undead friends some well deserved respect.

Sure, the living could unleash nuclear Armageddon at any time. Send 70,000 nuclear warhead tipped missiles criss-crossing the globe to blossom and burst. But we haven’t. And it isn’t even looking likely.

Human possibility isn’t the same as zombie certainty. Zombies don't hold back.

Maybe if the characters in The Walking Dead decided the real enemy was, oh, I don’t know, the freaking zombies, they wouldn’t be on the brink of extinction.

Just a humble suggestion.

Quest for an audience: Final nail in the social media coffin?

Interesting article over at Publisher's Weekly by Jennifer McCartney about best-selling author Victorine E. Lieske.

Some take-aways:

Lieske says a key ingredient to success is to simply write a story that people want to buy. “You’d be surprised at how many writers don’t understand why their part science fiction, part women’s fiction, part space opera, part paranormal romance, part dog mystery based loosely on their life story isn’t a bestseller,” she says.

And…

She examined her marketing and publicity efforts but remained confused. Sales were steady and didn’t jump when she posted a blog or bought an ad. So what was influencing people to buy her book? Lieske says she got an email from a woman that helped solved the mystery. “She said, ‘Amazon recommended your book to me, and I really enjoyed it.’” At that point, Lieske realized that it was not her tireless marketing efforts that had resulted in more sales. “I was doing all this work, blogging, and posting on forums, and making book trailers, and all these things that weren’t reaching people,” she says. “But Amazon could reach hundreds of people each day.” She decided that the key to a book’s success must happen before the book is published—a combination of writing, story line, cover design, blurb, and price.

In other words, all the time and effort sunk into blogging, twittering, etc. is exactly that: sunk.

Funny, I was just thinking of making a book trailer.

Maybe not.

What about blogging? It's kinda fun trying to write reviews. It's a very different kind of writing, compared to a novel, say, but it really doesn't help much of anything. You'd have to blog for years and years, on a very specific topic, to get any traction. I've tried to focus on Sci-fi and Post-Apocalyptic, but that's an area saturated with online material.

I may still write a review of Victor Gischler's Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse though. He's into the whole gritty, absurdist post-apocalyptic thang, complete with civilization saving strip clubs.

Damn, I thought I was original with my satire.

Google Communities are pretty touchy, so that's not a very viable way to connect with people. I'm contemplating starting one myself, but then, I imagine that'd just be another time sink, and there's probably good Wild West reasons for Communities to be so quick to delete and ban.

No easy answers, other than starting 5 years ago instead of now.

And I'll bet others be saying that in five years...

Doctor Who: The Witch's Familiar

Wanted to like it. I really did. The episode riffs off of one of the best episodes of the original series, and promised to be a strong chaser.

There’s a lot of sound and fury, and then it just doesn’t bother to deliver.

Sorry.

First, the good stuff:

I liked the explanation of the teleportation fake-out that Missy pulled, and the flashback to an earlier, untold Doctor story. That was fun.

The episode looks great. Really freakin’ amazing (with a few exceptions. See below). The Dalek control room is fabulously realized, and looks like a cross between the 1960s Andy Warholesque pop art Dalek feature film sets and those of Ken Adams.

The CGI exteriors of Dalek City rock, and are embellished with tiny little flying Daleks zipping about willy nilly, making for a nice FX cherry top. The show has come a long way from the closet of styrofoam and cardboard. Well. A lot is still probably made with those materials, they just hide it better.

Speaking of which, the required hallways are appropriately repetitive looking. Really evoke an earlier era, especially the retro Dalek doors. Who knows? They may catch on.

Missy (Michelle Gomez) is crazy wonderful. She dominates every scene she’s in the way Kramer kicks ass in karate class; I can’t take my filthy eyes off her. She makes the Doctor, Clara, and even our dear desultory Davros fade into the scenery. She’s got the best material to work with, the most outrageous lines, the loosest rules, the most idiosyncratic costume, and she pushes it all to the limit of what’s acceptable in a former children’s tea time show.

Gomez’s acting choices here are freakin' flawless.

The way she determined the depth of the pit… brilliant.

Her final effort to get Clara erased was the pinnacle of her performance, and it at least gave Clara something to do, even if ineffectually and while imprisoned in a can.

The concept for the episode, having the Doctor trying to rescue a child only to discover it is his greatest enemy, is a wonderful one, and has a direct link back to Genesis of the Dalek and a quote by the Doctor himself. What a cracker idea to base a story on! So many places it could go. Such potential!

But it isn’t realized. And that’s a shame.

There’s some sharp witty dialogue, mostly had by Missy.

Capaldi’s eyebrows are in fine form.

The final bit where he saves kid Davros was kinda sweet. And the hand mines were cool.

Now the negative:

I still feel Capaldi’s stiff. That’s a minority opinion, if not outright heretical: the man’s won an Oscar, after all. Granted it may not be entirely fair an evaluation: I went back and looked at some clips from Genesis of the Daleks and those episodes are much more like a stage play than I had recalled (with the sort of sets and props you’d expect from live theatre). The actors over enunciate and there’s a formal, Actor Acting aspect to it at times. Still, I find Baker better inhabits the role than Capaldi. He’s more believable, or was in his early years at any rate. Perhaps Capaldi just needs a drink before going on camera, or material better suited to his own temperament. Let the real Capaldi shine through, drop the artifice, go more Gomez.

Poor melancholy Davros Loman is a real downer. He could do with some pharmaceutical pick me ups, if you know what I mean. Maybe Prozac and some therapy. The evil creator of the Daleks is dying, his fire has gone out of the universe, and he’s gotten deadly dull. No megalomaniacal screeds here, just the pathetic bleatings of a green half-man with a blue eye stuck in his forehead.

When Davros tries to convince the Doctor that he’s offering him the chance to kill all the Daleks on Skaro, he just has to touch the cables, no really, just touch the cables, why won’t you touch them, go ahead, you know you want to… it just comes across like my five year old nephew trying to trick me into doing something. Seriously, just touch the cables. Go on. Then all the Daleks will die. Honest. For real and for true. PULL MY FINGER, DOCTOR!

So when the Doctor turns the tables and it is revealed he didn’t buy into Davros’ little deception (and I use the term ‘little’ here deliberately), it comes as no surprise whatever. The big surprise is that Davros has so little emotional intelligence that he thought his scheme would work in the first place. It’s entirely out of character for Davros, who was once a canny operator. He seems to have gone senile as well as soft.

The scenes of emotional, death bed connection between the Doctor and Davros rang like a cell phone on mute. Seemed false and forced and what was I watching? Who did they replace Davros with, anyway? I knew Davros. Davros was a favorite villain of mine, and you, sir, are no Davros.

Of course he’s faking. It’s preposterous.

Sadly Clara fades so far into the background during the episode she might run into Captain Kirk in that episode where he’s always fading away into another reality. They really short changed her character this time around.

The Dalek zombie sewer slime came across as both odd and jarring (Is it a reference to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? He once referred to the Gulag as a sewer system). It’s such a goofy, nonsensical idea you know immediately it’s there to solve something later in the episode, and lo and behold, it does. How convenient. And to be honest, clever in a what are they smoking at the Beeb these days kind of way. And yet the effects used for the slime attacks are retro and highly evocative of the original series. The foam used for Seeds of Death was more convincing, and that’s saying something, and it’s not good. They must have blown the budget on the city sets.

The Daleks are boring. God, they’re dull. I’m sorry, but they are. Boring and dull and incapable of surprises. At all. They just wobble about shouting ‘exterminate’ and wave their plungers ineffectually. They couldn't be duller if they were Dalek Accountants. In fact, those would be more interesting, as they'd have things to say about numbers and taxes. The Daleks just have no menace anymore. They can't properly kill people without them teleporting away, or deal with their own bloody sewage. I mean, honestly, the sewage gets the better of them.

Sewage.

True, they’ve tried over and over again to deal with the Dullness of the Daleks issue, in stories like Evolution of the Daleks, where they tried to hybridize their way out of the dead-end plunger yank-fest. But it always goes back to the same interminable status quo.

The Daleks are less interesting now than when they first met William Hartnell. There was still a smidgeon of nuance around them in those early days. Now, they’re just one note pepper pots. Dalek dialogue feels so limited you could take bits from other episodes and cobble together all the responses you’d need for a slew of new episodes.

That’s how limited these tin cans are. No range at all.

They're almost background elements, like fire hydrants or trees.

Brilliant idea and concept, of course, but they need room to grow. That or they should be retired until someone can think of something, anything, interesting to do with these perpetually peeved hate machines.

Or does the Terry Nation estate prevent any meaningful alterations to their nature?

Or perhaps they really are setting up a new threat, one that will replace the Daleks: Doctor Who and the Unstoppable Undead Sewage. 

I confess I don't see the toy potential.

The Doctor says he went to see Davros because ‘you asked’. But he runs away and hides in the Thirteenth Century, throws a three week farewell party, hides from Mr. Snake and expects to die and has no hope. So… all you have to do is ask? Does guilt over not saving kid Davros’ rot his soul that much? The Doctor’s done a lot worse over the years to a lot better people. I just found this death wish because 'Davros asked him to’ made no emotional sense. Of course, the Doctor lies. It still doesn’t make sense.

That’s all I have to say about our good Doctor.

I should love this way-out-there, whacky program, what with its brilliant premise and history and admirable British eccentricity. But I’m not. The show is just not connecting with my inner eleven year old. 

C'est la vie.

I’d rather go watch Sicario again.

Good movie. Go see it.