Author Archives: Bob Evans

Movie Review: Interstellar

I was sold on seeing this film in the theter the moment I heard that writer/director Christopher Nolan was doing a space based SF film. I have been a fan of Mr. Nolan’s work dating back to ‘Memento.’ I have found that from that film onward and without except his movies are intelligence challenging pieces that I have thoroughly enjoyed.

Interstellar is the story of retired engineer/astronaut Cooper. Earth is racked by environmental collapse and each year more crops catastrophically fail into extinction. Nolan’s supplements this grounding of this opening hour of the film with actual survivors tales for the 1930’s Great Dustbowl.

Led by mysterious unexplained events, Coop discovers that a plan is afoot to save humanity from the dying earth and he is recruited for an interstellar survey mission. Emotionally torn by the requirement to abandon his family, the cruel physics of relativity requires that to his family the mission may take decades, Coop joins a small band of scientists on the mission.

The film explores the limits if human costs and bravery in exploration, and comes down solidly on the side of the explorers. (It even takes a moment to ridicule those who believe that the Moon landings were nothing more than a hoax.)

I was evident to me as I watched the film that Christopher Nolan is a huge fan of the classic SF film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. This film is very much a 2001 for a new generation, though with less stringent engineering and science, but not by much.

At nearly three hours I think this film is either too long or not long enough, but either way I enjoyed watching it on the big screen.

Share

The Red Election

I can’t take credit for the comparison between this week’s U.S. Mid-Term elections and the disastrous wedding for the Starks in ‘Game of Thrones’ I spotted it on twitter, but the analogy is quite apt.

The Democratic Party, with a coalition that is better suited to presidential elections, found itself thoroughly routed electorally from the contest as the Republican Party, its ranks filled with people willing to crawl across broken glass to cast a vote against Obama and his allies, swept the national legislature.

I would have written about this yesterday but I have taken ill and on Wednesday I was unable to craft sentences beyond ‘tree good fire bad.’

Now that the House and the Senate at firmly under Republican control, but short of veto proof levels, it shall be interesting to see which track the Conservative trains depart along.

When the Democrats held the senate the Speak of the House had no pressure keep back any of the more extreme conservative measures. Passing repeals of the ACA was easy when you knew it would die leaving the House, but with a friendly Senate things get more complicated,

The truth of the matter is killing the ACA would involve throwing millions of their insurance, and forcing the issue through a government shutdown. No simple repeal bill will be signed by the president. Any bill defunding it will not be signed by the president. You can only get those signature by attached it to ‘must pass’ legislation and then refusing to back down as the government shutters in crisis.

A smarter course would be to seek modifications to the ACA and then declare victory, but after selling the evils of the ACA to their base for six years it will be hard convincing said base that now it is acceptable policy no matter how much tinkering at the edges (medical device taxes etc) you have performed.

Of course the Republican now own the budget process. No longer can they pass the Ryan budget confident it will go nowhere and have the actual pain its cuts would cause remain theoretical. It’s true that the Democrats, in a fine display to invertebrate physiology, failed to pass a budget for 4 years, but last year when they did pass one, the Republicans refuse to conference on the matter. Now it is all theirs.

I do not know what is going to happen, but I do suspect it will be interesting.

Share

I have gone insane

My life is going to be insanely busy the next few months —

My day job has kicked into its seasonal overdrive and my days have turned into 10 hour days. (Hectic but good I like the money)

I’ve committed myself to trying to write a one act SF play by Dec 15th

I’m working on a new short story in a branch of spec fic I have not done before. (The idea exploded in my head today and already I have 500 words of notes and concepts for this short)

And I am in the final edit pass of my novel ..

 

I am way too busy

 

 

Share

A trope I am tired of seeing …

Saturday night a friend and I sat down and watch the 2013 re-make of Carrie, based on King’s novel. The film was a very good adaptation, though it has been a long time since I read the book, I thought that the writers and filmmakers had captured the characters, tone, and heart of the piece.

Of course you can’t delve into Carrie without getting into one of king’s favorite tropes: the crazy christian character (C3.) He uses the C3 over and over again, plus he is not alone. The C3 is an overused stereotype through hollywood and television. Now, I am myself not a Christian. I am of the opinion that all regions look wacky from the outside and I seem to be outside all of them. HoweverI am a writer and I really get tired of seeing lazy, ignorant work.

The C3 is a lazy, stupid, stereotype, These ‘characters’ can very nearly be picked up and dropped in replacing other C3s in a plot and not one thing would really change. They are rarely handled with any sense on an individual with agency and background. as with Nazis, they are go-to bad guys that are used for plot connivence.

As I said before I am not a christian, this is not me taking personal offense at a stereotype. it is the artist in my really sick of the hack work. When we pay money for a piece of commercial art, we deserve the very best the artist could do at that moment, and the C3 is not the very best for many of these artist.

It is important for a writer to treat all the characters as fully realized human beings, with faults and talent, with hopes and dreams, with pain and joy.

 

Share

A Counter-Factual Life

There was an odd event during my family reunion that keeps circling about in my mind. to understand it you’ll need a little personal history of your host.

As a child I did not read fiction. I was much more obsessed with learning new thing than reading made-up stuff. this came to a crashing halt when as a school assignment I was struggling with a book report – the book was about Mars and I could not work out its plot or conflict – and my sister assigned me Robert A. Heinlein’s ‘The Star Beast.’ to read and report upon. This started a love affair with SF and reading fiction and the eventual drive to craft some of it myself.

Same sister made a comment during the reunion asking if she had done the right thing by starting me down that path. I think she might have been envisioning an alternate history where I continued with a tight focus on academic issues, gone on to college instead of the Navy, and ending up with a far different life.

It’s possible that might have happened, but I doubt it. Certainly by high school some teacher would have forced fiction upon me and there’s no reason to believe that my reaction would have been substantially different, but there a stronger case in my opinion that an academic path was not in my cards.

I did not have the discipline to succeed at college. Hell, I didn’t have the discipline to succeed in the USN where they have the legal power to jail you for screwing up. I do not doubt that I would have crashed and burned at college. I think that my life has worked out, on balance, for the better. Only time will tell what is left to come…

 

Share

Considering a different sort of contest

So, for quite a few years I have been entering the Writers of the Future contest. It a contest for SF and Fantasy writers, those who have not met the criteria for being a ‘pro,’ and I haven’t done terrible but neither have I won it. (three honorable mentions and three semi-finalist.) Now in addition to that I am considering something new.

Writing a play.

I have seen plays, I have read plays, I have studied — lightly– play structure, and I have even been in a play that people paid to see.  (And I am not talking about a school play where the parent show up out of sense of obligation vs people coming for entertainment.) However I have never attempting the writing of a play.

A friend of mine — thanks Marc Biagi —  shared a link on facebook to contest for original SF plays. It happened just as I was revising an older story of mine that as luck would have it, takes place in a single setting and pretty much in a single scene. (It’s a very short story a mere 1500 words.) My brain has been firing all day in an adaptation process for turning it into a single act play.

The deadline is far enough off that I think I could pull this off, even with the loads of OT I will be doing at my day job.

Dare I do it?

 

Share

It’s been busy

Hello everyone;

Life has been quite busy these last two weeks or so. I flew across the continent with my sweetie-wife to attended a family reunion that my sister had organized. That required flying San Diego to Orlando (and discovering my new favorite airline — Alaska Air), staying overnight in Orlando, then driving to the Tampa area to visit with my sweetie-wife’s relations, from there we drove across the state to the Vero beach/Fort Pierce for my relations and reunion. (during this time I discovered I really like the rental car a 2015 Chevy Sonic – it was a very decent car.) Then driving back to Orlando for the flight home, all with a five day time frame. The last day had plenty of stress, slow service at lunch, poorly selected routes, schedules missed, rough air all the way across the country, but in the end it was a good trip and good to see family again.

(Though Florida cooperated with high humidity to remind me why I live in San Diego.)

This past weekend was Conjecture 2014, a local SF convention. I participated as a panelist on four panels and had a real blast. Saw old friends, had good conversations, learned new researching skills. All in all a good, but slightly tiring weekend.

Now at work the busy season has started up and I’m expecting lots of overtime hours between now and sometime around March 2015.

 

 

Share

My wittle mind is blown

Of all the possible works by SF Grand Master Robert A. Heinlein to adapt into a film this would have been near the bottom of my list. Not due to the quality of the story, it is a classic in time travel and it’s inherent paradoxes, but the mind-blowing inside-out nature of the plot is not something that lends itself to a film…

 

youtube placeholder image

Share