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.

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...