A Fantastic Image

This week NASA release an image from the Deep Space Climate Observatory. This is a satellite positioned at the L1 point, about a million miles away, between the Earth and the Sun. This point, while dynamically unstable, if a position in space where a satellite can be in one position relative to the Earth and the Sun with a minimal expenditure of fuel. This is an excellent spot to observe the Earth and make measurements about our climate.

Being a million miles out, it is about four times as distant as the moon and so the moon passes between the satellite’s cameras and the Earth producing a sight never before seen my the eyes of humanity. The Earth and the Moon both fully illuminated by the sun and clear for us to marvel at, the farside of the Moon. the side that never faces the Earth.

This image is striking and I adore it.

earth:moon

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A Proposal

Or possibly more like a notion.

I think we are watching the disintegration of the primary system for selecting candidates for President of the United States of America. The primary system itself, as we know it today, is a rather recent development. It truly started with 1968 and the Democratic Party trying to making the process more responsive to popular opinion and the voters. Watergate in the early 70s accelerated the reforms and both parties adopted a system where they hold elections to see who’s going to stand in the election. On the face of it the system looks sound. candidates campaign, as tested int he waters of an actual election, and the people can votes based upon who they agree with the most.

As we can see this cycle, and in previous cycles, that is not reality. Candidates jump in who have no intention of winning the primary but rather developing support bases for further financial gain. Once that pays off it encourage more of the same, candidates vying for base votes play to the most fanatical elements of their own parties, sounding more and more extreme and reaping rewards for such actions.

Before the primary system, the Convention is where the candidate was selected. It was a time of smoke-filled rooms and party bosses calling the shots, but it was mercifully short and tended to produce stable competent candidates.  Convention today are coronations more about spectacle than policy. How could we devise a system that selects the best of both worlds, voter input and party competency?

Here’s an idea, just a spitball off the top of my head concept.

Retain primaries, make them closed, (after all this about selecting the party’s face and that should be restricted to party members.) but remove individual candidates. Instead politicians or just folk run election trying to gather votes for factions. The factions are awarded the delegates and at the convention the factions, using their delegates, vote and select the standard-bearers for the party. Factions could raise money, unlimited money in fact, but at the end of the primary all excess monies go to the party for the general election. Politicians who stumped for the faction would certain have a leg up on getting the nomination but if they stumbled or embarrassed themselves or the party they’d be plenty of time and ability to move to a better candidate. Because the money went to the factions and not an individual person, there would be less emotional blackmail associated with massive donations reducing the corrupting effects. This would also open up a party to greater inclusion as it would be unlikely that a single faction would amass a majority of delegates right off and a nominee could only be picked by consensus.

Remember that the current primary system is not part of our system of government. It is not dictated by the laws of the land, it is the rule by which a party selects its candidate. It’s a recently developed method and I think it’s unstable. (Trump)

 

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The Two Most Influential SF Films of the 1990s.

If you are new to my blog, and I recognize it’s traffic is primarily friends and family, I have had an occasional series on the two most influential SF movie by decade. Of course, this is no objective listing but purely by spitball take on the films that had a lasting impact on movies beyond any box office success.

I covered the silent era, quite unfairly I am sure, in a single post, and then proceeded by decade covering the 1930s, 1940, 1950s, 1960, 1970s, and the 1980s.

Now I will continue into the 1990s.

The MatrixThe Matrix – (1999)Personally this is a film that did not work for me. The tropes concerning what is or is not real are old hat and many of the aspects of the plot make little to no sense. (If there is no sunlight, then people are dead and the 100 or so watts you can get from them are hardly worth harvesting.) My biases aside this film, in addition to spawning a franchise with  sequels heavily influence the look of film for the next decade and beyond. ‘Bullet time,’ the hyper slow-motion with a moving camera, stunned audiences in 1999 and many filmmakers quickly copied the stylistic look of the Wachowski Siblings.

Visual style for SF films ceased being the domain of art-house productions and moved into the mainstream.  Love or loathe it, The Matrix influences films to this day.

 

jpJurassic Park (1993) Arriving earlier in the decade than The Matrix Jurassic Park’s impact on filmmaking is difficult to understate. When production began on the adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel the filmmakers had planned on using traditional stop-motion animation to bring their dinosaurs to life, a technique that goes back the 1933’s classic film King Kong. However during pre-production the computer graphics team at Industrial Light and Magic demonstrated photorealistic CGI dinosaurs and the world changed. Influencing every special effects film follow, Jurassic Park freed the images on the screen from physical photography to anything that could be envisioned. Every summer is now swamped with good, bad, great, and terrible CGI animation. Studios are learning that great CGI can not save a film and that CGI stunts quickly bore the audience. This year’s Mad Max: Fury Road and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in part are rebelling against the CGI revolution started by Steven Spielberg with Jurassic Park.

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Tie-In Fiction

If you go into your local bookstore you’ll find quite a few shelves of tie-in fiction. Books, stories, and novels set in popular franchises such as Star Trek, Halo, and many many others.

There are authors who despise tie-fiction and hold the belief that creating such work-for-hire is somehow selling out and not true authorship. It is a free country and they have the right to hold such opinions, but it is feeling that I do not share. I personally believe that there is no wasted writing. That anytime you are putting words in a row, struggling with ideas, trying to punch up your prose, it is good for you as a writer and makes you better. I have never looked down on those who write fan-fiction, I have written a few pieces myself, and tie-in fiction is fan-fiction that you can get paid for.

Now if you are an unpublished writer getting a tie-in contract is nearly impossible. That is an understandable arrangement. The corporations that hold the right are not looking to develop new and interesting voices; they are looking for journey professionals who can deliver the product on time and within specifications. Because of these restrictions I have never attempted a tie-in novel. It’s far more work than it would interest me for a piece of fan-fiction. (There are those who write full novels of fan-fiction and more power to them, but if I am going to put in that many hours on a project I want at least the possibility of selling professionally.) However, I would not turn up my nose at the thought of writing tie-in fiction. More than that, I really would like to write some. I have a few ideas for popular franchises and who knows maybe one idea I too can do that work-for-hire.

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On Critiques Part 2

In yesterday’s post, I shared some of my thoughts on what makes for good critiquing when you are the one giving the critique. Today I am going to share my thoughts on how to be good at taking a critique.

Receiving a critique is a skill set just as giving a critique is one. In order to get the most out of a critique and have the best chance for improvement as a writer, I think that there are a few simple things to keep in mind. These suggestions are primarily based for session where you need to sit there and listen to one or more people give you their feedback verbally, but many of the concepts apply to written critiques as well.

1) Be Quiet. There are several good reasons to remain as silent as a church mouse. Foremost it is polite to the person who has the floor have their say. If you derail their train of thought you may miss valuable insights that they had to share but instead were diverted to some other topic. Also, the most often impulse to speak comes from a desire to explain a point that the reader misunderstood or defend a critique. In both instances, you should refrain from any comment. No honest critique can be wrong. If someone gets something out of the piece that seems to you 180 degrees out, you should not seek to correct them but instead you should try to understand why they came away with that impression. If more than one person has that impression you really need to dig into the piece and figure why. you can’t do that if you are explaining or debating the point. Once you fall into defending the point or piece you become more resistant to the critique.

2) Understand Biases. Every person in the world has a set of filters that they use to view reality. Some are optimistic, some of pessimistic, some overly dark and others filled with rainbows and unicorns. These filters will impact on how that person views your work. This doesn’t make them wrong. It is what the work is to them. You need to try to work out how much is their bias and how much is your prose. There’s no simple test, no litmus paper you can apply, but with time and practice you can get better as understanding the filters and then even using them to try to achieve literary slight of hands.

3) Don’t rewrite to all critiques. If you are part of a group when you get your feedback it may be all over the place. One person may find the character charming while another thinks the character is an ass. Some may find you set-up credible and others may be unable to suspend their disbelief. If you try to re-write to make everyone happy your piece will become a pile of mush, bland and without a voice.  When you do your revisions keep in mind the points that felt right to you and search out your own solutions to the issues. Points that seemed far afield, ignore. Again, with time and practice you’ll get better of discovering the little inner voice that can point you towards the critiques that are on target. the problem is that little voice is often shouted down by the much louder writer’s ego. That voice you need to ignore during this process.

 

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On Critiques – Part 1

Since 2010, I have been a member of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers’ Support Group. We meet twice a month, read pages aloud to the group and provide instant feedback and critique. We also do longer pieces at home and share the line edits with the authors. If you want to write and you are not a member of a writers’ group I would advise joining and if there isn’t one in your area there are many on-line and you can even found one.

Over the years, I have picked up a few thoughts on critiques and today I will share some in hopes that someone might find them of value. This post will be about giving critiques, perhaps there will a part 1 about receiving them but frankly giving is far more important to your growth as a writer than getting.

These are not hard fast rules, but rather the guidelines I think work best. As with cars, your mileage may vary.

1) Be Honest. No honest critique can be wrong. It is the impression and reaction that the piece generated in the reader. This is not mathematics where there are right and wrong answers. Writing is about what works and what doesn’t work. While there general rules for what works, show don’t tell, active vs passive, these can and are broken to good effect. Now, it is difficult to break them without understanding why they are there, but if the break works or does not work for you, then it didn’t and you should say so.

2) Be Polite.  There are several very good reasons to be polite. It is simply good manners and few people want to associate with the boorish. Also if you are polite the person you are speaking with is more inclined to listen. This benefits them and keeps you from wasting your time. Rude, mean comments are destructive to the person receiving the critique and to the group as a whole. Meetings were such things are tolerated will not reoccur for long.

3) Be Precise. Phrases such as ‘I liked it’ and ‘I didn’t like it’ are generally unhelpful for an author diagnosing a problematic piece. Give examples where the writing didn’t work for you and try to illuminate why it didn’t work.

4) Praise where you can, but be true to rule 1. I like whenever possible to start with what worked for me, and why it worked, then go into what didn’t work for me and why and then sum up with the positive. I find the sandwiching of good and bad helps both come across clear and in a generally receptive manner.

5) Be Wary of re-writing it to your own style and preferences. The work is not your work it is someone else’s. They likely have different ideas about what makes an interesting plot, and engaging characters. The trick here is to focus on the prose and how it serves the story and unless asked for plotting help, avoid changes to the story itself. This will also make it easier to give useful feedback for a genre you don’t read or write.

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A Day of Classic Universal Horror

This past Saturday I had a few friends over ordered pizza, and we enjoyed an afternoon of classic horror films from Universal Studios.

This is actually the second Monster Marathon we’ve done in this fashion. Marathon I we watched Frankenstein, The Mummy, and Creature from the Black Lagoon.

For Monster Marathon II the selection, based upon votes from the participants, were: The Invisible Man, The Wolf-Man, and The Phantom of the Opera (1943).

The Invisible Man is of course based up the novel by H.G. Wells. Wells had been unhappy with another studio’s adaptation of his novel The Island of Dr. Moreau into the film The Island of Lost Souls and Universal tried to stay closer to the source material the make the author happy. In the film, it is the invisibility serum that drives Jack Griffith mad, turning him into a megalomaniac and a murderer. Wells’ original concept revolved around the idea that power corrupts and that an invisible man, freed from the consequences of his action because he cannot be brought to justice, will surrender to his base drives and rages that are only kept in check by the iron rule of society. It is really a rather cynical theme. The 1933 film is well made and wastes no time in getting to the action and the character. James Whale knew to not bore the audience with dready set-up and exposition, something following horror filmmakers too often forget.

The Wolf-Man I have written on in another essay, but it bears repeating the central thing to know about this movie; nearly everything you think you know about werewolves can be traced to this script, this production. It is not as deftly made as The Invisible Man, concepts are repeated needlessly and there is too much set-up before we get into the meat of the plot. because there is too much set-up the plot resolves too quickly leaving the movie feeling rushed and unfinished.

Phantom of the Opera is the only movie of the marathon filme in color, and it was glorious technicolor. taking liberties with the source material, as Hollywood often does, this film also spends an elaborate about of screentime setting up Erique Claudin as the tragic violinist who when dismissed from hos post in the orchestra and murders a man he believes has stolen his composition (May I state that lawyers are a much better course of action in suspected I.P. theft cases than murder.) flees to the Opera house and becomes the phantom. This film is better made than The Wolf-Man, but the comedic aspect between Christine’s two suitors, and the missing mystery resolution as to why Erique is so invested in Christine’s future, damage the over-all movie.

 

All in all it proved to be an enjoybale Saturday afternoon followed by an evening of board and ard games. I hope everyone had a weekend as pleasant.

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Movie Review: Maggie

Yesterday was massive movie day here at my condo. During the afternoon I have a few friends over, ordered a couple of pizzas, and we watched three classic Universal Horror Films. (The Invisible Man, The Wolf-Man, & The Phantom of the Opera [1943]) Afterwards we spend a few hours playing board and card games, making for a rather enjoyable day just on that, but there was an interesting discovery still waiting for me.

The zombie genre has seen all sort of films mining this public’s fascination with the terminally hungry. We have the zombie movie as horror, (Night fo the Living Dead-1990), social commentary (Night of the Living Dead-1968), comedy (Return of the Living Dead), satirical commentary (Dawn of the Dead-1979), Romantic-Comedy (Shawn of the Dead), and many more but last time I watched for the first time a film that was a family drama set in a zombie apocalypse, Maggie.

Maggie stars Abigail Breslin, Joely Richardson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger . The set-up and the setting are stark and simple. A father (Arnold Schwarzenegger) is trying to care for zombie virus-infected his daughter Maggie (Abigail Breslin) while dealing with the strain of a world collapsing around him and the forces tearing at at his blended family.  Nearly all of the film takes place at the family’s isolated farm, but it is not isolated by hordes of the undead, but rather the collapse of the infrastructure is isolating people as the world slowly descends into zombie fueled chaos.

There are no action set pieces, there are no massive scenes of the undead tearing into people, there are no scenes of high-velocity destruction as fight off faceless hordes. Instead this a story about people caught in emotionally impossible situations and the terrible decisions and unavoidable fates that lie before them. While this story uses zombies and turning into a flesh-devouring automaton as their plot devices the themes apply equally well to anyone watching a loved one suffering under a terminal condition.

This is film also surprises in the range of acting talent is displays for Arnold. This is a quiet movie about emotional hell and he plays it well. Who knew he could cry on cue? Much like Boggart and The Caine Mutiny, this is the sort of story he could not have made under a studio system.

Maggie had a limited releases this year and is currently available on DVD. It’s worth the time.

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Another Benefit from the Internet Age

Clearly there are nearly countless benefits from the internet and the vast and myriad  ways we have to spread information these days, but there is one in particular I want to look at briefly in this post.

I have been a cord cutter (someone without cable television service) for several years. All of my video entertainment arrives on disc or by way of a streaming service. For the last couple of weeks I have been watching various film noirs on the HULU plus service. Some were good, some were not, but the general mood and atmosphere I am marinating in will be helpful in crafting my SF/Noir novel.

I think all of the films I have been watching on HULU are ones that fell into the public domain when the original rights holders opted to not extend their copyrights. Just a few years ago that would have cast these unprofitable properties into the trash bin of entertainment history, subject only to the occasional late night broadcast as part of a station’s ‘Movie ’til Dawn.’ (And not even that as the infomercial killed that.)

Now, thanks to streaming and the status of public domain, these films are available to new audiences. (I particularly liked The Red House. Both a noir and a snap shot of rural living in the mid 40s.)

Many more public domain movies are available on Youtube and sites such as Public Domain Movies.com. True more than 9/10s of these are truly terribly movies, but one usually pans through a lot of mud to find a single nugget.

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