Monthly Archives: November 2016

What Do You Call this Creature?

This is a topic I have visited before and for those who have experienced the earlier ranting you can skip this post.

Alien and images are copyrights of 20th Century Fox

Alien and images are copyrights of 20th Century Fox

I saw the film Alien on its initial theatrical release. It is a movie of stunning power and with a tremendous legacy. To this day people are still copying the plot and making rip-off version more than 30 years later, Consider this, since Alien, the crew of trained and experienced explorers has been abandoned as a trope for SF films.

Of course central to the movie was the monster itself, a terrifying parasite that gestated inside its victims and possessed seemingly unstoppable agency. The story, images, and themes resonated so well that sequels and prequels continue to this very day.

But what do you call the monster at the heat of this experience?

For years the term of I heard most was simply The Alien, you could practically hear the capital letters in a person voice when the subject was discussed. Slowly though that fell out of favor for the generic sounding Xenomorph.

I have issues with that name. First, it sounds generic, and it is generic. The word itself simply means ‘other-shaped.’ The character Lt. Gorman uses the term when briefing the squad saying, “…A xenomorph may be involved.” He can’t be referring to this particular type of creature as at this point in the story no one, except Burke, believes Ripley. He’s using the word to say in a fancy way that an alien of some type is involved. However fans have latched onto this word as a proper name for the monster.

For decades I have been a gamer and gamers steal from books, TV, and movies for  monsters to throw at their players, including the terrifying creature from Alien. I have been no exception and I needed a name, between the films Alien and Aliens, I landed on what works for me.

In Alien when they crew awakens early they discover that instead of being home, at Earth, that they are in fact just short of Zeta Two Reticuli. one half of a binary pair about 39 light years from Earth. Now I saw the film in theaters, before VHS and DVDs and Blu-Rays and misheard the name. For years I called it Beta Reticuli, but eventually I learned the local stellar neighborhood and the proper name for the star. My name for the creature is the Zeta Reticulian Parasite. Yes it is long but I think it has a ring to it and it sounds like a real bit of nomenclature.

I know I will change no one’s mind on this. I am the lost voice in the wilderness screaming at the horrid tag ‘xenomorph,’ and everyone will ignore me, but hey, your mileage may vary.

For me it is The Zeta Reticulian Parasite.

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An Analysis of ‘Alien’ Using the Five Act Structure

I am the sort of writer who plots his projects out ahead of time and when I do that plotting I like to have a structure for the story. Most of the time I use a three-Act system of Establishment, Conflict, Resolution, but lately I have been experimenting with five acts. One way to digest and understand an act structure, particularly if you intend to use it for your own work, is to look at something already in existence and see how the structure fits on that. This is not to say that the screenplay writers for Alien used a 5 act system, they most likely used a 3 act method, but nearly any story can be broken down by either method.

ACT I Establishment

In the first act of a 5 act story not only are characters and conflicts established in the first act, but themes and the nature of the world is laid out for the audience/reader. In Alien I would suggest that the first act goes from the film start, naturally, and concludes with the decision to land on the planet/moon about Zeta-2 Reticuli. Quite a bit is covered in this passage. We learn our heroes are working class people, not space explorers as in other films of the genre, we learn that they don’t get along, and that they are deeply concerned with money. The ‘Company’ unnamed in the original, is a source of threat and power that exists in almost omnipotent state off screen.

ACT II Complications

Here things go wrong and the characters are tested with a series of setbacks. The setbacks are dangerous and threatening to the order of the world, but not yet irreversible.

The Landing goes badly, damaging the ship. The trip to the source of the signal that they have been forced to investigate – at this point the nature of ‘force’ appears to be solely the threat of money being withheld, is difficult and the first translation hint that the signal is not a distress call but a warning. Cain is ridden by the creature and interpersonal tensions flare. While attempts to remove the creature from Cain fail, the ship is repaired and the crew leaves the planet for home.

ACT III Crisis

In Act three, classically called the Climax though today we tend to use that for resolution, there is a fundamental change that is irreversible, MacBeth has Banquo murder for example. There is a clear turning point in the plot that takes place in Act 3 from which the character become trapped in their choices and must face the consequences that their fates hold.

Cain appears to recovery from the alien parasite but shortly dies in a horrific manner. Now the crew find themselves trapped on a ship with a deadly creature and increasingly dangerous attempts to deal with it result in further loss of life.

ACT IV Resolution

With a 3 act structure it is usual to think of resolution as the ending, how everything turned out in the end, but with a five act structure this also includes the final reveals and plot twists that lead to the Hero’s victory or failure in their plot. Act 4 for Alien is Ripley’s act, it is where she is revealed to be the actual hero of the story and takes charge to deal with the creature. Act 4 also reveals Ash to be the turncoat and company man working against their interests. With all the important elements in place and revealed the hero, Ripley, drive to the solution, here destroying the ship with the creature aboard.

ACT V Denouement

In my opinion Act V for Alien is everything on the shuttle after Ripley launches from the ship. It is the final confrontation between the hero and villain, this case a monster, but nothing new is added. All the elements, including the plan to ‘blow it out the airlock’ have already been established and are in place. The final obstacle is faced and the hero either overcomes and grows from the experience or fails due to their tragic flaw, Of course in Alien Ripley overcomes and earns her ‘happy ending.’

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Loscon 43 Day 3

Sunday was the final day of the convention. in spite of being up past midnight engrossed in good conversations I arose shortly after 8 am and took in a buffet breakfast in the hotel restaurant, A friend, Mark Fogg, joined me for breakfast and the good conversation from the previous night continued.

My bad luck with first of the day panels also continued as the retrospective on Military Sf was canceled. Instead I spend my first block period watching space-related cartoon from Warner Brothers and MGM.

Just a few topics and panels consumed the rest of the convention for me. A nice overview of the science gained from our most recent Martian rover, a lively discussion of tropes and cliché’s in fiction, and I ended it on science with a look at the result of the New Horizons mission to Pluto.

At about 4 pm my wife and I left the convention for home. The drive home passed uneventfully. We stopped for a meal with friends also heading to San Diego, and did a little grocery shopping near home before finally reaching our condo.

I stayed up a littler later than my sweetie-wife watched most of The Martian, but then exhausted I turned in for sleep.

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Loscon 43 Day 2

Day 2, Saturday, was my very busy day at the convention. Now to be honest the day did not start off well. The first panel I attended, the subject being why are manuscripts dead on arrival, was one that presented very little information that I did not already know and my alternate panel had been canceled, but those are the risk of a convention.

The next block featured a panel in which I was a participant, the subject being Redshirts, body counts and drama stakes in story telling. The panelists were all lively and informed, our discussion ranged far and I think went to very interesting places.

After that I took in a panel on stealing from history, Shakespeare, and other sources. Any panel featuring both Harry Turtledove and Tim Powers is neatly always worth attending.

The rest of the afternoon was taken up with science presentations on the Dawn Mission, a read and critique workshop that I facilitated, and a bit to eat rather late in the evening.

My final event was panel that I had suggested to the programming chair, discussing Roddenberry’s failed pilots of the 1970s.. I had envisioned this taking place during normal con hours with a panel of 4 or 5. Instead it was scheduled for 9pm, and while the programmers had slotted two panelists, I was the only one that turned up.

An audience however did attend and so the show had to go on. Luckily the audience was willing to roll with just me up there and in the end I think we had a lot of fun talking about the pilots, the filmmaking of the era, and Roddenberry’s career before Star Trek.

With the last panel completed I spent the remaining hours, until well after midnight, in a lively hallways discussion with friends old and new.

A truly good end to a good day.

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Loscon 43 Day 1

Things went fairly well for me on Friday. Now my day-job requires that I work ‘Black Friday’ as this is also the time of the year when Medicare complete applications arrive in a flood. However I was able to shift my work schedule so I started early and completed by shift at 3:00, then my sweetie-wife and I drove quickly from San Diego to Los Angeles and I arrived just twenty minute before my first scheduled panel.

The panel discussed Science, Fiction, and Politics. Despite the explosive potential the room remained civil and instead on rancor we had plenty of reasoned statements. I sat next to Harry Turtledove and managed to not make a fool of myself.

The evening was hanging out with friends, Ice Scream social, dinner with my sweetie-wife, and open room parties. I even managed to squeeze in about 40 minutes of editing on a new short story. All in all the day was good and ended well.

Now I head into day two and this time I have thee panels or workshops that I will be participating in.

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LosCon 43 this weekend

Thanksgiving weekend if when I head to Los Angeles for LosCon, an L.A. area Science-Fiction Convention. I have been attending for nearly twenty years and though my job now makes me miss most of Friday it is still one of my favorite conventions.

This year I will be on a few panels and here is where you can find me if you are going to the conventions.

FRIDAY

5:30 Science, Fiction, and Politics – St louis Room

SATURDAY

11:30am Redshirts and Body Counts – Atlanta Room

5:30 pm Rogue Read and Critque – St. Lous Room

9:00 pm Roddenbery’s Forgotten Dreams – St Louis Room

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Movie Review: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 2016

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone in the USA who celebrates this holiday and happy Thursday to everyone else. This morning my sweetie-wife and I went to an early morning screening of the latest film set in the Harry Potter universe, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. I am thankful that I did not hold high expectations for this film for it would not have met them.

1-fantastic_beasts_and_where_to_find_them_posterThis is not a bad movie, but nor it is a good one, it is at best middling and a mildly entertaining bit of spectacle. The problems with the film rest primarily with J.K. Rowling who is credited with the script and is a producer as well. The story has a fairly inconsistent tone veering from whimsical fun with silly magical beasts to dark conflicts endangering countless people. it takes a very deft hand to combine such disparate tones and Rowling fails in that task. As I said to my sweetie-wife on the drive home from the theater, ‘Whimsy and the threat of genocide do not belong together.’

This movie also takes quite a bit of time to get going. Oh, events happen right from the start, it doesn’t engage in the mistake of heavy exposition for a beginning, but the actual start of the plot is quite delayed and as such I found myself wondering just why I was watching. The twine plots, whimsical and serious, eventually meld but that unification takes place far too late and without much in the way of emotional stakes for the characters.

And that is the film greatest failing, the lack of deep emotional stakes in the climax. This is a move with lots of plot but very little story. There are hints and set-ups for possible future stories, but I really wanted more than what was delivered on the screen. All the fast paced action and dazzling special effects are hollow without a powerful emotional connection.

For me the film failed though not as badly as other major productions, but still it failed.

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Interstellar vs The Martian

In recent years we’ve had the good luck to see a number of high quality hard SF films released across the country; today I want to talk about two of them and why I like one over the other.

1-interstellarInterstellar is from Christopher Nolan the brilliant filmmaker behind movies such as Memento, The Batman Trilogy, and Inception. Billed as a hard SF story Interstellar depicts a dying Earth where blights are devastating crops around the world and humanity is struggling to grow enough food. The official stance of the U.S. government is that the moon landings were forged to force the USSR to bankrupt itself in a useless space race. Now with the world on the brink of collapse a last ditch effort to find a new home is underway thanks to a wormhole opened by friendly, off screen, aliens. Our characters are part of an expedition through the wormhole and encounter the bizarre and counter-intuitive effects of highly warped space/time. There are betrayals by people who have lost all hope but in the end, and with an expression of the twins paradox displayed for the audience, humanity is saved.

1-martian-9The Martian is from Ridley Scott and is a much more restricted in scope, dealing one man stranded on mars, alone and without the supplies required to stay alive until rescue can arrive. The story follows our hero as his brilliantly solves one problem after another and with his crew mates and people on Earth who devote tremendous resources, skill, and personal risk to save him. It is a man vs nature tale that focuses on a single man but also shows humanity as a whole fighting against an uncaring universe to save a single life.

Now both films have flaws in the science. The Martian storm that strands our astronaut simply can’t exist and that was a known fact my the novelist who penned the original book and the people who adapted it. In Interstellar the smaller craft used to go between their main ship and the surface of the various planets they explore flies by PFM, pure flippin’ magic. In neither case do I really fault the films for the scientific failures, you always have to give something and grading movies on a curve these examples are tiny error.

I do favor The Martian over Interstellar because the story is so free of unrequired cynicism. I do not object to a cynical take or tone in a story. I love noir and that genre requires a cynical worldview, but not all stories benefit from a heavy dose of the cynical. I look at Interstellar, particularly with its ‘love conquers all; subtext and find that the cynicism is at odds with the rest of the film. It is tonally uneven and discordant, where The Martian never breaks from the tone it aims for. It is always a story about fighting for survival and the common humanity in such struggles.

SF can be cynical, 1984 and the movie Blade Runner are both examples of fine SF stories that have and require a cynical heartbeat, Interstellar did not need it and its inclusion damaged the movie execution.

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Roddenberry’s Forgotten Dreams

If someone knows the name Gene Roddenberry it is almost certainly due to the 60’s television series Star Trek and it’s sequel series Star Trek: The Next Generation. During the 1970s Roddenberry attempted to launch a few other series before Paramount green-lit a Star Trek film and the whole cascade that followed in the wake of the titanic success of Star Wars. At my suggestion Loscon43 this year has a panel discussion, which I will be participating in, on these failed pilots.

In order the prep for the convention panel I have tried to hunt down the pilots and re-watch all of them. I succeeded in all of them except The Questor Tapes. If you are in Los Angeles do consider coming to the convention this weekend, but if you can’t make it here are some of my brief thoughts about these pilots.

Genesis II: NASA scientist Dylan Hunt is undergoing an experimental suspended animation technique when an unexpected rock-fall collapses the cavern where the experiment takes place and Dylan isn’t revived until well into the 22 century. The Earth is fragmented with some locales in post-apocalyptic barbarism while other areas have retained advanced technologies. Dylan ends up recruited by a group called Pax who are dedicated to rebuilding humanity but this time without its warlike nature. The pilot is dreadfully dull with most of the scenes tiresome exposition as everyone explains things to the poor Dylan and the audience. The most action packed parts of the pilot, Dylan rigging a nuclear device to foil evil-minded mutants, takes place off screen.

Planet Earth: Same set up as Genesis II, again our main hero is Dylan Hunt, a scientist from the 20th century who due to a suspended animation accident is transport to a post-apocalyptic Earth and works with a group called Pax rebuilding society. This pilot skips the origin story and drops us into an adventure as Dylan and a science team are forced to infiltrate a society where women enslave men in hope of finding a missing doctor needed to save the life of a leader of Pax. This pilot worked better, a lot less exposition but the dialog is stilted and the moralizing is heavy-handed.

The Questor Tapes: An eccentric scientist that few have ever met tricks the government into building an android. When the officials try to decipher the robot’s programming they damage the files. The android, Questor, awakens and escapes. The damaged programming has left him without emotions or knowing his purpose. With the help of a human friend, he tracks down his mysterious creator and learns that humanity has been guided through the centuries by androids keeping mankind for destroying itself. His creator is an android but is damaged and was unable to create his replacement, Questor. Questor is supposed to be the last in the line and if humanity survives Questor’s lifespan it will have matured.

I have memories of this pilot but I have not seen in it decades. Of course the moment Data was introduced in 1988 during the pilot for Star Trek: The Next Generation I felt very strongly he was Questor 2.0.

Spectre: The only non-SF pilot Roddenberry produced after Star Trek. Will Sebastian and his physician friend Dr ‘Ham’ Hailton are the occult’s answer to Holmes and Watson. Sebastian and Ham travel to London investigating an English Lord who is either a hedonist or a Satanist. Of Roddenberry’s post Star Trek pilots I liked this one the best, but when the credits flashed I noticed that on the screenplay he shared credit with Samuel A Peeples so it is clear he worked better with a partner than writing alone.

It should be fun discussing these project on the panel at the convention.

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Movie Review: Arrival 2016

Friday night after me sweetie-wife and friends finished our evening of board and card game I took the opportunity to visit a movie theater in y area and catch the new SF film Arrival before this weekend science-fiction convention, LosCon.

The theater is one I have been to a few time but generally is on the ‘do not go’ list because it had older and uncomfortable seating, but I had been told that the auditorium were now renovated with big recliners.

I arrived and true enough the seats were large, well stuffed, and quite comfortable. However the A/C had been set too high and I was quite cold foe the first third of the movie. I hope that is not indicative of their usual settings as this chain has the best prices and could well win my patronage.

1-arrival_ver11Arrival, based on Ted Chiang’s novella Story of Your Life, is a first contact tale with the emphasis on contact. A dozen alien vessels appear at locations around the world. No one can make out any pattern to the ‘landing’ sites and the aliens unannounced arrival is a mystery. The protagonist of the story Dr Louise Banks, played quite well by Amy Adams, a linguist the United States bring into the project with hope of forging a common means of communication with aliens.

The film is a steady, measured story about that trouble, learning to communicate with something that doesn’t think or perceive in the same manner as you. There is not ‘we learned your language from your broadcasts’ short cuts and the film covers a period of months as we struggle to understand. Jeremy Renner plays Ian Donnelly a physicist and co-equal to Dr Banks in the communications project which for the United States is being commanded by Col. Weber player by the always spot on Forrest Whitaker.

There are the usual tensions between civilian and military mindsets, but the script avoid clichés for the most part. The film is not an action movie in SF drag. This is a film about ideas and the deeper implications of contact. It is difficult to fully discuss this movie without venturing seriously into spoiler space. It is at heart a mystery and how much you like the film will depend on how well that mystery’s resolution work for you.

It worked for me and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, but your mileage may vary.

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