Green Lantern Casting News

The interwebs have been athrum all weekend over the Green Lantern casting news: the versatile and charming Ryan Reynolds has been selected to play the lead part. Though he wasn't my first choice -and you can believe that I gave it some thought- I've enjoyed him as an actor across a wide range of genres and look forward to his "take" on the character. Helmed by competent action director Martin Campbell (Casino Royale, The Legend of Zorro), of real concern is the script.I do not envy the screenwriters their task, to thrill audiences with the adventures of a space-faring, magic ring-wielding test pilot. The premise is simple: Hal Jordan is selected to replace an alien police officer whose weapon is a ring powered by the user's willpower. What the writers do with it is up to the demands of compelling narrative: What personal struggle will Hal face in accepting the ring? How will it impact his life on Earth, as he becomes part of the intergalactic Green Lantern Corps? (Stinkers will call this a spoiler, but doesn't the title give away his choice? Just saying.) How will they handle the tension between Hal and his mentor, Sinestro? All these questions and more are racing through my brain, and I find myself hoping that like prior successful superhero films (Superman: The Movie, Spider Man 2), a multiplicity of scripts will be produced and churned together; this seems to work best for producing quality stories in Hollywood. I'm anticipating the results when they hit screens next Summer.

Politic Posting

During a quiet moment thoughts will invade, and most recently one snuck in concerning the philosophy of posting, the politic, if you will. As defined by shrewdness and cunning, what I publish here qualifies as "politic" in the broadest sense, surfacing like a whale to blow its spout, an indication of something greater under the surface that roils and turns and just as quickly as it appears dives once more for a hidden trench. Why not offer more? It goes back to my feeling about the basic premise of the web: a resource through which we share reflection and experience. I don't seek to pander or politicize, nor to deliver polemics that will sway one way or another. I'm breaching just long enough to throw something out that gives an indication of what I'm enjoying and through naked hubris perhance to believe others might enjoy as well. This, you might argue, strays a bit from the metaphor; the whale, after all, is relieving a burden, unloading airy humors without regard of viewing or being viewed. This, then, is proof that I am not a whale.

In Praise of Cordwainer Smith

I've been enjoying the short stories of Cordwainer Smith, perfect tales to beguile hours on 'planes, trains, and mass transit. He's no longer as well known as his heyday in the fifties, his work is no longer in print, and it was by accident a year ago that I came across him, when I chanced upon Smith's novel, Norstrilia. Greatly satisfied, I read it again recently at the same time I found a couple collections of his shorter works in paperback at a local seller. As circumstances would have it, I needed something for my California jaunt last week and Smith's science fiction tales proved just the thing.

He has a grand cosmic futurescape populated with curious figures and situations, often overlapping and never in a single story entirely explained. Reminiscent of JRR Tolkien, you cannot appreciate the scope of his vision unless visiting his works as a whole. Not a fully fledged explorer, what I've seen so far excites me. What is mentioned in passing in one tale bears out in epic scale elsewhere. His boldness is not expressed in wild imagination, rather it entices with speculation of questions that may or may not be answered. The reader's imagination, above all else, is stimulated and provoked into frenzy. In science fiction, this is a plus.

Take as an example A Planet Named Shayol, a magnificent short story that can be read here. This is the finest so far of what I've read, a bracing tale of human struggle amidst horrors of the mind and body. If it were an unrelenting exercise in the ghastly excesses of humanity, I'd not bother to mention it, but here as in all Cordwainer Smith's tales, there is an overt and powerful current of love; regardless of how far-flung the author's imagination is, it remains rooted in warmth and connection.

Novel Profile

Folks have been asking what just what the heck this book I'm writing is about. Here's the prospectus included with publisher submissions:

NARCHITECT BY JAMES MACADAM

A secret team of military talents goes to Luna on a seemingly routine survey mission, but what they encounter under the moon’s surface nearly destroys them. Friends and family against them, the survivors embark on a journey that takes them from the depths of a woman’s memory into a game arena encompassing every battlefield humanity has known, from the Earth homeland to distant settlements on Jupiter and Saturn.

Yumiko Rumi comes from the stars. Member of a cosmic cult, unless her deadly secret is discovered our world is doomed.

Rob Barclay spends more time in prisons than out, problematic for a priest who preaches everyone’s salvation but his own.

Sally Parker is at odds with a world that has no place for her. Upon her shoulders rests the hope of stopping an alien infection of Earth.

Together they will confront Narchitect, a game unlike any seen before where the stakes are life as we know it.

NARCHITECT
How Do You Fight Something That Shouldn’t Exist?

Taking Umbrage

I'm not one to take umbrage at every little thing, but when I saw this sticker on the back of a van this weekend I just about shouted out loud. It is an insult not only to the creator of Calvin, Bill Watterson, but more importantly to serious followers of Christ, who can hardly take validation from seeing a comic strip character bending before the cross.

Inspiration

Deep into sixth draft something unusual happened: the manuscript inhaled. Not in the Clintonian sense of doing something it shouldn't have, but filled its lungs and gave voice to how I should proceed. Some crucial details were missing in a scene I was working on and the manuscript told me what I should do to rectify the lack. At first hesitant to follow such advice, I overcame my reluctance and tried it out and you know what? it brought the scene together in a fresh way. Sounds weird, I know.

The earliest drafts were tough because they were a collection of disparate scenes without plot threads to connect them. Subsequent versions have brought new hurdles, the latest of which is making the text lift off the page and come to life. Plotting is done and scenes I've got by the truckload, but breathing life into the words and transforming the story into an enjoyable experience has been difficult.

Then this happens.

I had come home from work and as is typical lately, I was looking at some pages before cooking dinner. The pages did not look good. Something was missing. The section I was editing had basic features in place but... I couldn't put my finger on what the problem was. Then it happened: the page seemed to speak and describe what was needed to complete the scene. At once I sat down and started writing some rough descriptions and dialogue. Next thing I knew an hour had passed and I had a passel of notes that brought a significant new dimension to the book.

Soon after I found myself thinking of Philip K Dick.

A science fiction writer who has no equal in the 20th century, PK Dick has long been an inspiration to me. For many years I devoted myself to learning as much about the author as I could, collecting his entire catalog of 43 novels in paperback editions and bundling them away in a suitcase that I kept by my desk. He is fascinating both as artist and man. The suitcase has since then been donated to a Seattle bookseller, but his influence continues.

Phil, as he was known to friends, would routinely churn out novels quickly and efficiently. After typing out a manuscript over a benzedrine-fueled weekend, he would collapse with pneumonia. Some of these books are quite good, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis for Blade Runner) and Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said; others are not quite up to snuff.

The Simulacra suffers from the author making it up as he goes. Though Dick was known to do this, part of what makes his writing crackle is the headlong energy investing it with a sense that what is around the corner is a mystery to both author and reader. There is a weird sense of shared discovery that is totally unique to reading PK Dick. This sometimes gets out of control and ruins an otherwise good story. In The Simulacra there are so many twists and reversals they obviously exist for no reason than to keep things moving, and move they do -in all directions. Too much inspiration!

This came to mind the other day after I'd experienced a bout of inspiration. It is easy to be convinced that a burst of insight is sufficient cause for committing words to the page, but this conviction has risks. Though I wish an editor had seen fit to rein in PK Dick, what failed in some of his books is uncontestably great in others.

This reminds me of the musician PJ Harvey, who says that every successful song she's written has 9 bad ones preceding it. Mistakes are an unavoidable part of the process. When creating, the expedient feels no different from true substance, from the stuff that actually makes words come to life. Discovering which is which is out of creators' hands and must be determined by the audience, a hard truth to come by.

Why Flying Casual is a Bad Idea

Some days I argue with myself. The inner provocateur rails against my decision to finish a science fiction novel, castigating and berating me in a south shore New Jersey accent that contains not even an ounce of compassion. Fighting back sometimes absorbs energies that otherwise might be more productively used, but what am I supposed to do? Rope-a-dope doesn't work so well when the opponent is in your head.

Here's a recent example: What is the best way to present future history that doesn't come off like Star Trek, which is to say, so fantastical as to be irrelevant? (I'm not taking the position that Star Trek lacks relevance, per se, but that the far-flung context renders it palatable only to a narrow audience.) I go back and forth on this, wanting to lay out my grand scheme on the one hand but on the other wanting to maintain focus on characters without diverging into a wide lens view. But this is scifi, rants my nemesis, you have to create a galactic context!

It's so different to be a writer of this stuff, when most of my life has been spent as an avid fan of scifi. Rather than having the luxury of sitting back and throwing darts whenever an author does something I don't agree with, I struggle with ways to keep the audience engaged. The risk is that by going too panoramic, the novel will become an exercise in space opera. We already have Dune, the peak of the genre, and I'm not interested in presenting every historic detail of how we came to the present moment in which the novel is set; though I have created this history, every time I veer into descriptions of these events it completely derails the narrative and makes the book out to be something it is not, namely space opera.

But this is scifi! How else are we to know the story isn't unfolding contemporaneously? (My nemesis likes them big words.)

Another question is how to present the villain of the piece without revealing his badness. I want him to be a part of the story and for intimations of his malevolence to come through in small things, not to be writ large. In posing this particular problem, my inner provocateur is not only unsympathetic but devolves into mocking me with quotes of bad dialogue:

I don't know, fly casual.

This is every bit as helpful as Han Solo's advice in Return of the Jedi: not at all. In that instance, our favorite smuggler is telling his Wookiee pilot to disguise the fact that they are approaching the bad guys in a stolen space shuttle. He tells Chewy to "fly casual", which ostensibly means to blend in with all the other Imperial craft zipping around. Apparently in the Imperial Flyer's Handbook, a pilot's success is rated by how casual they are.

Though this approach is successful for Han Solo and friends, it doesn't work for writers of novels.

What I have to fall back on is my experience as a reader. Looking at effective storytelling in such books as, say, Dune, it is clear from the start who is bad. Though it seems a good idea to be tricky and lure the reader into a false sense that all is well, what truly works is the opposite. This is not just about following what has come before but in understanding that presentation of a clear protagonist assists the reader.

A friend once proposed creating a conflict-free story, in which basically nothing happens. It would be an experiment in style and push the frontier of narrative structure -but would it be storytelling? Ultimately you come up against this problem when crafting a story: it has to adhere to basic rules. By taking away conflict, you remove structure and are left with writing that is experimental, yes, but better relegated to a notebook. My nemesis would like nothing better than to keep me at that level, and in fact for many years has succeeded in doing so.

To "fly casual" is to write what I want and eschew standards of good storytelling, a method I've followed for a long time. Funny how I never used to have these arguments in those days, things were simpler then!