Foxy Feline in Batman Sequel

Julie Newmar...


Lee Meriwether...


Eartha Kitt...


Michelle Pfeiffer...


...Megan Fox??? Say it ain't so!

Speechless Tuesday 2

Trailer for the new film from Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, The Prestige):

Speechless Tuesday

From the UK Times Online

Proud to be Scottish

Imagine a nation that takes compassion on dying prisoners, by virtue of law, even. How horrendous and venal such a place must be, nothing less, to borrow a phrase, than a wretched hive of scum and villainy. To hear recent talk of Mother Scotland, you'd think it was such a pit of ill-fame.

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill's decision to free Lockerbie bomber Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi has been met with a resounding, international "Oh no, you didn't", not least among naysayers the United States. Aye, you heard right: the US is calling foul on this transgress of international law. Robert Mueller, head of the FBI, goes so far as to say that MacAskill "makes a mockery of the rule of law" and "gives comfort to terrorists around the world." He doesn't go so far as to say that this would never happen if al-Megrahi had been at Guantanamo Bay, but the implication is clear.

Ahem.

Mr Mueller methinks protesteth too much. Which law is being mocked, precisely -unless he means to suggest that going contrary to US wishes is to impugn justice globe-wide. Even British PM Gordon Brown can see through this shimmy vapor of an argument. "This was a decision taken by the Scottish justice secretary in accordance with the laws of Scotland," he says through a spokesman. "I don't see that anyone can argue that this gives succour." Not that this takes Brown entirely off the hook. As detailed at Caledonian Comment, the PM has been talking about Scotland's decision with Libyan leader Muamar Gadaffi for over a month. Even so, the dodginess of Mr Brown isn't exactly news to anybody, is it?

Getting back to home turf here in the US, I don't buy into the outrage against compassionate dispensation of the rule of law, especially when it is shouted out from places that vigorously pursue the death penalty, champion indefinite detention, and carry out extraordinary rendition from black sites around the world. It's a bit disingenuous to take Scotland to task for showing compassion upon a man who is expected not to survive past Christmas. How does this give comfort to agents of terror?
Was the decision linked to trade deals with Tripoli, or Britain's interests in Libya's enormous oil and gas reserves? MacAskill rejects this, quoted as saying: "It was not based on political, diplomatic or economic considerations."

He adds that, "In Scotland we are a people who pride ourselves on our humanity...The perpetration of an outrage ... cannot and should not be the basis for losing sight of who we are."

The real loser in this is Libya. Giving al-Megrahi a hero's welcome was hardly cricket. It makes mockery of the very real grief suffered by families of those killed on Pan Am Flight 103. Worse, it undermines Scotland's credibility. How sad is that? A nation takes compassion and is made to look the fool.

Nevertheless, MacAskill was right in his decision. The perpetration of outrage should never be the basis of the rule of law.

Obamacare

We don't have a competitive healthcare system in the US. What we've got are insurance companies who can drop members with impunity, or deny applicants because they are or have been sick. The only competition is which company can deny coverage the fastest. Why change that?

What I don't get is these itchy, yelping folks at "town hell meetings" who want things to stay just the way they are, and are willing to believe no less than an ocean of hogwash to bolster their hysteria. Obviously these are the ones who represent our country's best interests, those who believe what they're told without reflection and have the loudest voices of dissent when our elected leaders attempt to engage the public.

Why worry about socialism, when we have mob rule?

President Barack Obama made some recent statements that go some way toward shaping the discussion. Good. He is still hedging his bets in laying out a clearly defined "road map" (to borrow a metaphor) for reform. I'm glad he is finally taking a stand against the ridiculous fabrications going around the talk show circuit, but it might be too little, too late.

Elemental

Zombies don't deal in gray areas; when it comes to gray matter, there is a question of appetite (the idea of zombies eating brains was popularized with the satire, Return of the Living Dead), but ambiguity just isn't their specialty.

Maybe this is why we love them, because of an innate desire for life with no moral ambiguity. When your existence has the absolute value of consumption, things tend to get pretty simple.

The elemental nature of zombie attacks is simple, too: survivors fight back or get converted to just another face in the crowd, a death sentence in a world where death has no meaning.

Serious people are talking about our chances of repelling a zombie apocalypse, and they aren't good. This begs the question: if we desire moral absolutes, why not surrender to the horde and achieve the impossible dream?

Speechless Tuesday

Zombie Apocalypse

This fascination has a root cause, yet in true roustabout fashion I hesitate delving too much, in recognition that perceiving a thing changes it. Since this fascination fuels a great deal of creativity, I don't want to rationalize it out of existence. Forgive me, even so, for dabbling in the irrational.

I think back to my upbringing in the church, where the idea of being in the world but not of it was introduced at an impressionable age and iterated time and again as a basic tenet of belief. I listened to a lot of "Jesus rock" and one of my favorite albums as a pre-teen was Petra's Not of This World. From the first buds of consciousness, I was inundated with the idea of being separate from a world of unbelievers, who in my perception as a young boy of faith were the walking dead doomed to everlasting perdition.

Ah, the sweetness of youth!

I was not yet to my tenth year seeing Night of the Living Dead. What an impression that made. From the riveting image of a zombie stumbling through the cemetary, I was simultaneously terrified and fascinated. It was right out of the church handbook: this was an unbeliever, shambling along hungry for faith but settling for cannibalism.

I'm reminded of that early vision when peering from my office window. The view of docks on the Duwamish river is a playground for my mind, ships arriving from exotic ports with their freight of the undead, overrun as lumbering hordes unload and overwhelm hapless stevedores. Inexorably the mass grows, spreading out from the docks like a bloodstain and moving onto the nearby beaches and hills, inevitably reaching the bridge and starting a slow march toward our side. Despite the vastness of our office building there is no escape, as we find the exits blocked by grasping, unfettered corpses from some distant continent, in their long passage over endless oceans grown ravenous to the very pit of their rotted souls. The doors burst inward and they are upon the living, a maw of undeniable appetite that pursues every last one of us through the countless corridors of a workplace once thought impregnable from all harm.

Ah, the wonder of maturity!

Bringing the Law

Taking a breather now that draft six is done and diving into some good old, bare-knuckled research for my next writing project. I don't know for sure that it will be another novel, though to be honest I'd be surprised if it wasn't; the experience of working through the first has been grueling but so satisfying that I'm hooked. My subject for my next project will be the lawbringer himself, old man Moses.
In college I was profoundly influenced by my Russian professor. He cultivated love of literature and free thought, and inspired by example: his life and pursuits engaged with the world, exploring how to do things slightly askew from tradition. At one session he divulged to us that he had translated the book of Revelation. In crafting the text into contemporary form, he chose to color it as science fiction. This, he informed us gleefully, would excite the reader and show them the old story in a new light. How wonderfully strange, I thought as we read blurry photostats of his translation, and to this day I fondly recall his brazen approach to doing things in a non-traditional way.

Does this mean I'll paint a picture of Moses in TRON regalia? It's too soon to say, but I do find a basic appeal in updating the story of the lawbringer. What the world needs is not another hagiography of the man who came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments in his hands, nor is there a void of exodus adventures that wants filling. In these days of extraordinary rendition and daily sanctioned slaughter of innocents, we could use a reminder of what really matters. Science fiction has ever been a suitable vehicle for far-reaching and let's face it idealistic notions, and who reached further or more idealistically than Moses?

I'm also interested in Miriam. Growing up, there was rarely a mention of her, and though I knew a woman watched over her baby brother in the bulrush basket, it seemed to me it was a servant rather than a sibling. Might be this was a deficiency in my bible lessons, but as someone with a sister, this is a disservice that must be put right!

Speechless Tuesday

Every weblog has one, a day of the week devoted to... not logging. Here's mine, with special thanks to Mystery Men:

Clouds and the False Act of Watching

We want to feel as if we watch and scrutinize others, without risk of being caught and called voyeur. The honey allure of the web draws many this way. It isn't overstating the obvious to describe this as the primary appeal social networks; the ability to peek at peers anonymously through an electronic window is an irresistible component of the interwebs -or, as it will soon be called, interCLOUDS.

We are currently in the time of webs, strands and conduits woven over several decades and culminating in the last as a paradigmatic shift in human society. Recently we saw the launch of Web 2.0, an evolutionary leap forward for engines of connection. The organic blur between business and play typifies this new stage, but it doesn't represent an endpoint: we've got a long way to go before massing into what scifi author Vernor Vinge calls a "singularity"; often misattributed to Ray Kurzweil, who ratified and popularized the concept, a singularity is what we can look forward to when accelerating machine intelligence peaks.

There's another fancy phrase we should also remember: "user error". As many a programmer and techie remind us, machines are only as smart as the inputted data from users -in other words, us. Even in these heady days of social advancement vis a vis socnets and game consoles, with their increasingly sophisticated avatars, already the underlying shape of what's next can be discerned. It hinges on users.

Google calls it "cloud computing". Like a cloud precipitating wind and wet to grow, the intelligence of users gathers online. Look to soundcloud.com and you can see a digital enclave of musicians and producers, engineers and promoters that is open to the public; it takes strength the more subscribers it can claim. This is nothing new, except inasmuch that user content is more central. In some ways, early mistakes by Myspace anticipated this shift toward users.

In the early days of socnets, Myspace distinguished itself with editable content on its profile pages. Subscribers could modify the HTML and personalize how they presented their online profile. This wasn't the original intent, and at a time when Friendster was the hub with the hits, it came over like gangbusters; a glacial shift took place attributable to users having greater interactivity with the flash appeal of their profiles. It may not have seemed so at the time, but Myspace planted the seeds of a revolutionary new approach. How revolutionary? When I look at Facebook and feel limited by the rigid structure of the newsfeed, it's as if the popular site has yet to achieve a milestone at the level of Myspace.

Editable content and deep avatar manipulation are harbingers. In short, Web 3.0 = WorldWideCloud. And what better place to be a watcher than from a cloud? You have the comforts of being in a social cluster that invites your input, even demands it, and fellow users are closer to hand and more accessible. It isn't a real act of watching when we log on, and it will not be any more real in the next phase, but it will provide the sensation that few can resist.

Target Audience

Increasingly the book feels intended for juvenile readers. Naive though it may seem, I always wanted the manuscript to find itself. There's one more draft to go, and by then it could very well be better suited for children; older readers may not be open enough, seeing that the fabulist genre is all but dead. Kids would give it a chance, or mothers and wives, who seem to have motivation for that old-fashioned masquerade called reading. They might not give much consideration to how realistic the protagonist Sally Parker comes across. So long as they can identify, that will win me an audience -right? Even if they identify with the situation, that's something; it doesn't necessarily have to be the protagonist that gives reader access.

So Long, John Hughes

"The sportos, the motorheads, geeks, sluts, bloods, waistoids, dweebies, dickheads - they all adore him. They think he's a righteous dude."

TRON I/O Forums

For the latest news on TRON:LEGACY, take a look at the TRON I/O Forums. I was told by the administrator that this is "where we get into the nitty gritty of what's going on with the film, far more than can be accomplished on the limited Facebook forums." Check it out!

External Monolog

I had a conversation with a friend in the early days of cellular phones, and she expounded a theory that these portable devices are enablers of external monolog. This was before the advent of weblogging, but I think the idea fits: given a venue to express what otherwise might be bounced around in the psychodrome of one's head, folks will unload and unleash the voices once referred to as the internal monolog. That which in former centuries languished beneath the surface now finds full expression in the fin de siecle World Wide Web.

For a couple weeks I temped at a startup company whose entire purpose was to transcribe voicemails into text. Sitting in a room that would be called "airless" in the most generous terms, myself and a small cohort punched away at keyboards while legions of voice streamed into our ears. We typed out messages no more than one minute in length, ranging from lawyers' notes to affectionate asides, and converted them to emails which were forwarded to subscribers' phones. The one-to-one ratio was a limited social activity, but the basic model held true: folks offered thoughts, ruminations, arguments and reminders that would have remained unexpressed lacking the technological empowerment.

Which brings us to Facebook. More in context, we could refer to it as "Mebook".

I'm thinking specifically of an aspect in Facebook called Living Social. Replete with quizzes, questionnaires, and queries after your opinion of movies new and old, I'm at a loss what specifically is "social" about Living Social. If taken to mean that talking about personal qualities and flaunting your quirks is interactive with people around you, then this kind of "living" is indeed social. Having participated in (more than) my fair share of these, it isn't gratifying to absorb the silence that follows. Certainly there are comments that sometimes follow the publishing of results, but even when they are fun remarks from friends, the feeling I'm left with is attenuation.

Spend time around enough people and very likely you'll find that flaunting quirks does indeed amount to social behavior. What of the senses? When experiencing unique and interesting features of individuals online the transaction is conducted under a veil of silence. Visual perception alone is required. What of inflection and nuance, anunciation or even a funny accent? These are sadly absent!

Lately I've complained that people who work around me are deficient: they don't talk to themselves like I do. Why can't they engage in external monolog as fecklessly? It makes me feel lonely, as if the world were too quiet a place for true happiness.

Pleasantly Pottered

Never having seen Harry Potter on the big screen, and not even making it to the end of Alfonso Cuaron's entry, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, it was with great trepidation that I entered the theatre for his latest. My motive was superficial, to be in a cool space for two and a half hours while a heatwave raged without.

Some months ago I went to see Doubt at a local multiplex on similar grounds, battling boredom rather than heat, going in with apprehension that yet another populist entertainment was going to test my endurance. Idleness swept me in, with expectations at dirt level. A moviegoer of long standing, my patience for popular films wears thin quickly, and too often I think the worst of movies on the infrequent occasion that I make it out, falling back on a deep-seated desire for works of substance along the lines of Children of Men or The Thin Red Line. What a snob!

I was blown away by Doubt, a rousing drama and actors showcase. So much for my snobbery, which was forgotten nearly from the first frame. Can I tell you the same thing happened with Harry?

The opening didn't do much for me, so I wasn't grabbed from the first, but once done with that I was drawn in and enthralled. What starts the movie is a great contrast from the rest, conducted almost entirely with dark and pensive quiet. For long sections there is no music at all: for a film scored by John Williams, how remarkable is that? We are allowed to engage the images and characters on our own terms. In and of itself, this is a noteworthy quality to a blockbuster entertainment.

Characters populate Harry's world, not least among them the effervescent Luna Lovegood. She steals all of her scenes and embodies the strangeness of being a teenager, with its requisite mental and physical confusions. The irreplaceable Jim Broadbent does the quacky professor role great justice, and Rupert Grint has a winning charm that makes Daniel Radcliffe look stiff; to give the lead his due, we do see him loosen up later in the film, to great effect.

What really won me over was the cinematography and production design. Again, since we are not beset by a bombastic musical score, the eye drinks in tremendous beauty in every scene. Hogwart's attic in particular evokes feelings of childhood wandering through odd places where you might find any manner of wonderful object.

There is a scene that centers on eulogizing a spider. Without spoiling it, allow me to praise the whole affair, wholly macabre and touching and carried off with a fine balance of humor and pathos that represents in fine what works overall. What I expected to be ridiculous, even silly, captured my fascination and enjoyment.

Though I can honestly say this hasn't converted me to Harry's side as another in his legion of fans, it is a surprisingly good movie and greatly entertaining. I'm glad to hear that the director, Peter Yates, is on board for the next one -or I should say, "ones", since they are splitting the last chapter into two parts.

First Kiss 1954

As our lips touched, I had a feeling that her mouth lacked resilience, as if she had no muscle tension in her mouth, a result being that my own lips touched her teeth rather than lips, and this gave me an unhappy feeling of a sort of memento mori, and so the kissing stopped.... I had a feeling of kissing a skeleton, and in that sense it was a shocking experience.

This from Erik Langkjaer, a college textbook salesman describing the first and perhaps last kiss Flannery O'Connor received from a man.

I can remember the first time my lips touched a girl's, and blessfully, for me at least, it was nothing remotely of the order of shocking. It was quite pleasant and made sufficient impression that I wanted another. Must be why my writing is nowhere near the caliber of O'Connor's.

Deep Focus

This is what I've been struggling to achieve since January, with lamentable results. Not zen meditation, not alpha wave bliss; deep focus has been my object and remains a distant condition, nearly mythical, whilst I flounder in distractions and tangents.

My life is not that complicated. One would think I can work my forty hour week and sleep sufficiently, with ample time to gear into a state of deep focus. It hasn't happened. The central premise is to become a better writer, to utilize the surfeit granted me in the life of a bachelor and create devastating concentration on a task that truly consumes me. It hasn't happened.

A close friend is working on his first novel. In addition to this, he holds down a management position and has a lovely wife and two children. He shows progress on his task, even with these other monumental tasks. He writes like a wonder. He shows great progress.

Another friend not only plugs away at novels (and publishes them), he has a home life and holds down 40+ hours a week and does other writing besides. What have these men got that I don't? Better that they answer for themselves; indeed, none of us can speak for the others. Yet in my heart of hearts I know what quality of character they possess: deep focus.

Who is Joseph Kosinski?

Beyond being named the director of TRON: Legacy, there isn't much known about Joseph Kosinski. I did a little digging and was delighted to learn that he created one of the best videogame commercials in recent memory, for Gears of War. Contrasting the violence of the shooter against Tears for Fears' Mad World grabbed my attention the first time I saw it:



Though this tells us something of the restraint we might expect from Kosinski, it tells us altogether nothing of what kind of director he will make. Like my friend Andy, however, this does not concern me too much: there is a great tradition of quality directors coming over from the realm of commercials, David Fincher, Ridley Scott, and Tarsem among them.

I have to admit feeling a little giddy. When googling "Joseph Kosinski", the first page of search results includes his LinkedIn account! Being an optimist at heart, I hope we are getting in at the ground floor of a great director getting his start.

Here's some other tidbits about the film, taken from an encounter with Kosinski last October:

1) Steven Lisberger (writer/director of TRON) is involved as a consultant. Kosinski couldn't be happier about this. He mentioned that Lisberger (and, presumably, Syd Mead) initially wanted the light cycles to have external riders, but they couldn't convincingly pull it off with the technology of the early eighties. So the light cycles you see in the San Diego Comic Con footage reflects Lisberger's original design.

2) The Comic Con teaser was shot in stereoscopic 3D, and the film will be, too. Kosinski is particularly excited about the look of the game grid in this format.

3) Shooting TRON: Legacy will be a "twenty-four month" process, but Kosinski's already been at it for a while now. He didn't give me an exact date, but he seems confident that the movie will be ready for late 2010.

4) WATCHMEN's Michael Wilkinson is designing the costumes.

That last bit doesn't exactly thrill me, and from the footage we've seen so far it looks like characters are in pseudo-leather jumpsuits, a long way from the skinotards and bike helmets of the first film. So long as they don't look too much like X-Men refugees, my complaints will be minor.

Also noteworthy is the sequel's writers, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. This writing team has made a good mark on the television series, Lost, having authored some of my favorite episodes. What I've enjoyed most about their teleplays has been the strong dialogue and character development, and I'm hoping these will be prominent features of the film.

TRON: LEGACY

The preview, taken from the first fifteen filmed minutes of the sequel, is awesome

TRON: LEGACY

The sequel to TRON has a title: News of San Diego antics can be read here, involving no less than a recreation of Flynn's arcade and a life-size light cycle!

Green Lantern Skylarking Part One

Now that we know Ryan Reynolds is playing Green Lantern, my brain has been racing with story ideas. Having the lead cast makes the upcoming movie tangible enough that I can run scenarios with an actor in mind, patching in past performances (of which I've only seen Smokin Aces and Adventureland) to set the tone for how he will play the character. At the foremost is chemistry with his leading lady.

Hal Jordan is a test pilot who fits the stereotype, living recklessly and carousing with any female in reach. When he meets Carol Ferris, daughter of his boss, everything stops. There's no other for Hal. It stands to reason that an actor of sufficient caliber is needed to stop Ryan Reynolds in his tracks; they need chemistry that brings to mind classic pairings as Hepburn and Grant, Hudson and Day, Shepherd and Willis.

Who better, I say, than Amy Adams? She's proven herself an incredible actress, charismatic and sexy, with blue eyes that make any man in the room melt in surrender. Hal Jordan would crumble under her gaze! It works for more than sex appeal. We're not looking for another Mr and Mrs Smith.

They would be dynamite for physical appeal as well as their smarts. Together they've got charisma to spare, and it's not hard to imagine the blast they could have with clever banter. Think Downey Jr and Paltrow in Iron Man. Smart, sexy and fun.

If it were up to me, the decision would already be made!

Coming up: What if I wrote the GL screenplay, how would I handle it?

Book of the Week

I've become a regular at Pegasus Books in West Seattle. Prone to spending inordinate discretionary hours at used booksellers, I've a special weakness for those that stock rare and quirky science fiction paperbacks. The owner is an aficionado of the genre and unerringly points me toward quality stuff. Half Past Human is no exception.

Author T.J. Bass was a pathologist in his "real" life and wrote only a couple novels, both connected on a Hive planet that may or may not be Earth of the future. The predominant race of Nebishes live underground, while the sun-scorched surface is farmed by mecks. Pockets of Buckeyes engage in ancient mystical practices and lure several characters to their mountain keep over the course of the book. Other than this, a discernible plot is lacking. Instead we spend most of the book exploring the different social attitudes and structures of the planet, told with an economic voice that plays with language. Though puns are generally to be avoided in fantastic stories, here they are employed tactfully and to good effect.

So many scenes stand out to mention, but I'll restrict myself to the first that caught my interest. For the first thirty or so pages I was uncertain of continuing, bewildered by the lack of a protagonist. One curious episode followed another, with characters coming and going. Slowly thing began coming together and a structure started forming. Then one of the characters got new teeth. So did his dog.

Moon and Dan, basically a caveman and his mutt, subsist on soft fruits. Neither has any teeth, but their "temporal clocks" have been turned off, which means they will live a long time. Their gums are hard, painful ridges. When they encounter a Nebish named Tinker, he immediately offers to fix their teeth and promptly goes to work. One page and six months later, man and beast are outfitted with golden teeth! Once this happens, the incident is never again referred to, the book moving on to another curious and charming event.

Maybe this sounds strange, and it is. I fell under the spell of the book after acclimating to its odd rhythm and flow -not so surprising since I am increasingly drawn toward sci-fi like this.

TRON lives!

Thanks to my good friend Andy for pointing this out: the viral marketing campaign for TRON 2 kicks off tonight at the San Diego Comic Convention. Already there is website mysterious to all but those steeped in TRON lore, and the interwebs are screaming with hourly updates about the sequel, currently in production in Vancouver, BC. I am in a geeky froth and have not been this excited about a movie since I don't know when. Granted, it could be a very bad sequel; the chances are against it being any damn good at all. Usually I'd take that attitude and wait to see what happens. In this case, with a movie near and dear as TRON, as influential as it has been on me, I'm willing to cast aside my apprehension and be a phreak about this.

More details about the marketing campaign, along with other TRON 2 highlights, can be found here.

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!

Remembering the Fallen: Tiananmen Square June 4, 1989

YESTERDAY



TODAY

Bildungsroman

The five volumes of Doris Lessing's Children of Violence follow a protagonist over the course of her life. At the start we meet Martha Quest in her youth and over the course of the books see her develop well into adulthood, the entire work hung together by the consciousness of the heroine. This is a revolutionary work. Lessing has broken through the boundaries of the traditional Bildungsroman form, extending the central character's journey well beyond what has come before.

What, you may ask, is a bildungsroman? It denotes a work of self-development, a fictional tale along the lines of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations wherein we follow along as the central character grows and develops within the context of a defined social order. It can be described as a quest tale the object of which is to find meaningful existence within society. Typically such a tale is limited to a single novel; what's more, coming into the twentieth century it applied exclusively to male protagonists.

Lessing has done more than change the gender of the hero. She has also made the development of the heroine's self contingent on relation to the greater collective. Whereas the dominant motif of the bildungsroman has been that by the novel's end social values become manifest in the individual, Lessing leaves the question open; an undetermined future remains open to Martha Quest whereby she will continue to pursue education and experience.

Beyond Doris Lessing's invaluable contribution to novel forms, there is more to the "female" bildungsroman yet to explore. Circularity, according to Helen Paloge, is foundational to the evolution of the form, "cyclical" time characterized by non-linear events. What is not remembered from the protagonist's past, and how is memory manipulated to create the sense of a fresh start? Events are revised as they are repeated, thus laminating the self over history. Without incorporating these new features to the form, a bildungsroman is doomed to being chained to the dusty past.

The Manuscript

The manuscript is in a good place. It has come together in the latest draft and my efforts now are focused on polishing up dialogue and chapter transitions. It doesn't help to have a scattered approach, an hour each morning before I start work and evening editing sessions when there are no other obligations -considering the state of my social existence, there is rare competition for evenings. Nevertheless, progress is at an excruciating, glacial pace, which thanks to practical concerns cannot be helped.

What I've noticed happening is a shift in focus. Whereas in prior drafts I worried over plot developments, now that the story requirements are established I am using my ears to find proper rhythms for the story to unfold. If this sounds more like musical than literary composition, perhaps that is the best analogy. An unpublished author can settle for plodding movements on the page. These are less demanding on the reader and service the plot in necessary fashion, allowing it to unfold logically if not musically. I avoided doing this is in earlier drafts, to my detriment. As an insightful reader so aptly put it, I was too "precious" about my words. I've learned to let go of phrases I find clever, because they are obvious to the canny reader and all but obliterate the rhythms that allow someone to settle in and enjoy a story. By letting go, I was able to complete a draft and be totally miserable with it -which is not as easy as it might seem!

Being miserable with a creative effort is part of the process. I've had to put aside preconceptions of existing in some kind of blissed-out, creative zone when writing. Sessions like that produce a usable line or two, at best, and if I expect more (as I all too often have) the natural result of looking at what I've written is a screaming depression. By allowing part of the process to be harsh criticism of your own work, this actually enables forward movement far better than anything else. Mistakes provide richer fuel than success.

UP!

Saw Up this weekend and enjoyed it more than anything else I've seen this year, with the notable exception of Coraline. Heart-warming and -wrenching by equal turns, I laughed, I cried, I laughed again, all the while amazed that Pixar has yet again outdone itself. The Incredibles and Toy Story leap to mind as representing what Pixar does so well, marrying great story with awe-inspiring imagery to create films that stay with you well after you've left the theatre. Up deserves to be ranked with their best.

Homogeneous Science Fiction

The most original retrofit to Star Trek in the new film is a sidekick for Scotty. This igneous-headed, onyx-eyed dwarf serves some purpose, I'm sure, purloining cask malt whisky perhaps. Lacking any clear function beyond being so ugly it's cute, the little guy has become my poster alien for what is wrong with the movie: the creative minds rebooting this classic science fiction series have done everything they can to make Star Trek so much like other action-adventures in space that it is nearly indistinguishable. Misunderstood young hero with a destiny to fulfill? Claustrophobic fisticuffs, zany pratfalls, menacing CGI-beasts and epic explosions in space? All of these and much more can be enjoyed at a theatre near you.

Don't misunderstand: we're talking about a very entertaining couple of hours, made even moreso at an IMAX cinedome. This is a spectacular adventure. When you emerge, it might trouble your thoughts a moment to remember what the movie was -Star What? It not only shares several tropes with Star Wars but piques crowds not necessarily inclined toward scifi with hyper-action that owes more to the Bourne Identity series than any other.
Let's talk about what has made Star Trek work in the past. Do you know anyone that doesn't hold Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan as the peak achievement of the series? This is assuming, of course, that you know people who care that much about Star Trek. What makes it stick? Literate script and a memorable villain are two qualities that leap to mind. Jump ahead and consider the villain of Star Trek (which is not numbered or sub-headed), a Romulan with a huge grudge who meets his fate gaping at a flash of light. Really? Compare this with Khan, who dies creating a new planet and quoting Melville. Then again, don't bother -because there is no comparison.

I don't mean to compare Star Trek with older episodes so much as hold it up to scifi greats in general. The second Star Trek film (I'm weird and prefer the first) holds up to, say, the second Star Wars film, The Empire Strikes Back, which is arguably one of the finest scifi films there is; it isn't laughed off the screen if 2001 or Blade Runner are mentioned, and not merely because it has a great villain. It has substance and leaves us with something more. What Star Trek leaves me with is a homogeneized afterglow indistinguishable from many other action-oriented movies I've seen in the last few years. Don't hate me if I'm looking for something more!

The basis of science fiction is to explore unknown territory rather than repeat what has come before or strive to resemble other presentations of familiar narratives. The best example of this is Dune. It's space opera, yes; it's a recycled messiah myth, yes; it's a philosophic tractate on the nature of reality... well, yes, and isn't that all at once wonderful and strange? It breaches the limits of our expectations and takes us where we never imagined we could ever go. This to me is the essence of what makes great science fiction, which more than any other genre has the potential to show new ways of thinking, feeling, and experiencing what is beautiful about life.

I was entertained by Star Trek, and for a popcorn matinee that is sufficient. For science fiction it is retrograde in more than its recreation of what came before; that it strives mightily to be another blockbuster entertainment and fails to astonish or take any chances at all is what disappoints. We need more than a rock-noggined sidekick to tell this one apart, but sadly that's all we get.

2010: The Meaning of Caprica

58 Years Before the Fall.

These are the first words you see when Caprica begins, and from the opening frame there is a clock ticking. Instantly we are plunged into a raging dancehall, where a myriad of decadent behaviors are openly displayed, from rapine to murder and culminating in human sacrifice. Before long we see that all of it is illusion, unfolding behind the eyes of a young girl, a virtual reality that she can access electronically. And why not? All the Caprica kids are doing it.

Zoe Graystone is the daughter of Caprica's leading industrialist and a devout follower of the One True God. This is tantamount to heresy on Caprica, where the pantheon of Kobol Lords are integrated into all aspects of life; to deviate from belief in them is to invite sanction and societal rejection. How this dovetails with her virtual existence at the V-Club is the jumping off point for a story that grows to impact all levels of civil society on the planet.

Her father, Daniel Graystone, is a tech genius in the class of Wozniak and Jobs. He is developing a CYbernetic LifefOrm Node -an acronym that will be revealed in all its clunkiness as CYLONs. Things are not going well in honing these robots for the military, and to make matters worse, Graystone is competing with a Caprican version of the mafia for a vital processor. His ambition will intersect with his daughter's spirituality in startling ways and lay the groundwork for what could be a fantastic new television series.

This is a small part of what is presented in the pilot for Caprica. Rather than risk saying more, I'll leave you with the preview and say that here is something worthy of the Battlestar Galactica legacy.

What is the fall? Beyond the reference to the Christian fall of humanity, the implications are that it is total and profound. Watchers of Battlestar Galactica will have an idea of what the fall represents, but Caprica is not relying on knowledge of the show to appreciate the questions it raises. Viewers new and old will find something to fascinate them in 2010, when the series is scheduled to air.

Two Hundredth

To mark this, our two hundredth year at zeitheist, with proper panache and pomp, there is going to be a subtle shift in tone. While I'll continue posting about entertainments that catch my eye -I'm excited to see Moon and my next post will be a review of the BSG-spinoff Caprica- there will be a greater focus on work I'm doing to get my novel published. Thus far I've limited references to it, playing the protective papa to a still-burgeoning child. Now that it is further along and ready to be shopped to agents, I want to share the experience and maybe learn something along the way about how to do it better next time -in the eternal words of HoJo, "Things can only get better!"

Speaking of entertainment, I've been honored to have correspondences with the creator of what was one of my favorite comic strips at The Stranger, a Seattle weekly paper. As "Smell of Steve Inc.", Brian Sendelbach amused and inspired me on a regular basis back in the early part of this decade. He has put up his quill and entered the publishing game, doing his damnedest to crack that toughest of nuts: children's book publishing! Since this is the kind of trouble I am seeking to bring into my own life, albeit in non-children's books, I thought it only appropriate to share a column he wrote about his (thus far) frustrated attempts at getting published. Read about it here... and then come back and gaze some more at Bougle Gluce (pictured).

Green Lantern film update

Soundtrack provided by Men at Work. Read about it here.

Will GL exhibit a newfound love of vegemite? It's what all the space cops with power rings are eating these days.

Sleep Dealer

Intriguing science fiction film from Mexico:

2009: The Meaning of Greatness (Part Two)

Cylons were created by humanity. They evolved and developed a plan. What was this plan? Even now with the series finished, this question has not been answered completely. A sexy cylon in Baltar's head seduces him with hints at what the plan entails, implying that humans have strayed from belief in the One True God. Through apocalyptic measures, created wishes to put creator back on the path of righteousness... if any are left by the time they are done.

President Roslin is on a mystic journey when we first meet her, concluding that pragmatism wins over spiritual promise. She retains awe and wonder in the face of an inscrutable cosmos, but without the visionary aspect. Arguably she passes from one pagan philosophy to another. There is a clear connection between her and the cylons, the nature of which is undefined -have the cylons failed? A strong woman of conviction is no less convicted when we last see her. What exactly it is that commands her spirit is left open to interpretation, never definitely rooted in the One True God cylons espouse; in this respect, she is a failed experiment and human, all too human.

Gaius Baltar undergoes a very different transformation. He is convinced of God's perfection and beauty, proclaiming it to all and sundry. Knowing what we do about his character, the depth of his conversion remains unanswered. Without question he comes to his prophetic hysteria having endured experiences devastating to lesser folk, and provides the series' dynamic of how we come to recognize what it is we truly believe.

Is Baltar a cylon success story? He is like Paul of Tarsus, born a persecutor and reborn in fire, blindness and long wandering to become God's man.

All of this to say, Battlestar Galactica undertakes a great storytelling challenge: to tell of spiritual renewal without lapsing into cliche and preordained outcomes. As the series progresses, it is never certain where Roslin or Baltar will end up. When we see them at the end, it is a marvel. How amazing, too, that it unfolds within the trappings of a science fiction television show.

Moon Trailer

Watch this and tell me you aren't jazzed to see Moon:

Because Screaming Lady Says So

Film lovers, there are fresh posts at 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.

2009: The Meaning of Greatness (Part One)

It was a surprise to learn that cylons believe in God. Not the gods humans worship, but the One True God. At the time period during which Battlestar Galactica is set, humans thrive on the planet Caprica and devotedly worship a pantheon, the Lords of Kobol. After the planet is razed by nuclear attack and survivors flee in a rag-tag fleet, everything they believe is thrown into disarray, just as the cylons planned it...

On Caprica Laura Roslin was Secretary of Education. In the aftermath, she is ranking survivor and named President. A woman of deep conviction and faith, she accepts the position hesitantly and soon proves to have the necessary fiber to lead. Her faith is in the Lords of Kobol, which puts her at odds with the cylon mission. Her nemesis? Gaius Baltar.

Baltar is the great traitor of his race. He gave up the planetary defense codes that let cylon bombs fall. In his head is a sexy cylon who preaches the gospel of the One True God. Wittingly or not, this puts him in direct conflict with the President. She works toward a better day for all, while Baltar, flawed savant and slicker than slick, craves one more night with his cylon lover.

As Roslin becomes increasingly obsessed with prophecy that will lead humanity to a new homeworld, she begins to exhibit mystic behavior that is not far removed from madness. It doesn't help that she is battling breast cancer; her meds are warping her mind. Could the Lords of Kobol be false? As the first season progresses, the question persists and the cylon's siren song in Baltar's head starts to sound more alluring...

Next: God's plan is never complete, but sure makes for great science fiction