Author Archives: Bob Evans

LosCon post day 1

The drive up to Los Angeles was quick and traffic free. I’m supposing more people were out shopping thank celebrating Evacuation Day as they should have been.
We checked into hotel, registered, and had a spot of lunch at Carl’s Jr. (A fast food chain on the west coast, if you are on the East coast think Hardee’s.)
Programming I attended yesterday:

    Discovering New Worlds

. This was supposed to be about what was going on in manned and unmanned space, but it turned into 60 minutes about the Mars Science Lab which launched this morning. Verdict: Interesting but could have been better.

    Plastic Spaceships and Rubber Monsters:

This was a panel of three Fx, Make-up, and film actors talking about the biz of special effect particularly in low budge film making. Verdict: Pretty good, we saw a number of props and heard interesting behind the scenes stories.

    Dawn at Vesta: Up Close and Personal with a Main Belt Asteroid

NASA’s DAWN mission arrived at the asteroid Vesta earlier this year, after a long cruise using an ion drive. (Only the second spacecraft to use an ion drive.) This presentation was from one of my favorite peoples from JPL and very informative. Verdict: Thumbs up

    The Wonderful Future That Never Was

: This was a presentation by scientist and author Gregory Benford bbased on his book of the same title. It’s a look back as the future as predicted by Popular Mechanics. What they got right (the Microwave) what they got wrong (Nuclear piles in the home.)and what we might have made. An interesting talk from one of my favorite authors. Verdict: Thumbs up

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Sunday Night Movie: The Invasion

So a few weeks ago for my Sunday Night Movie I watched Invasion Of The Body Snatchers. In my comments I mentioned that there had been three remakes of the classic SF film, one in 1979, one in the 90s and the most recent in 2007, this film The Invasion with Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig. I remember when this film was released in the theaters and having heard it was yet another remake I skipped seeing it. (While I liked the 1979 version,  1993s The Body Snatchers was so awful I had no desire to see this material abused once again.)

However, having watched the original I became curious about this remake and with Netflix to aid me, I had a blu-ray sent to my home. Now, I am sorry I missed this fin film in the theaters.

This is most certainly a remake, no doubt about that. It is not a whole cloth reinvention, nor it is not a cookie-cutter slap-dash copy of the original, and because of that it succeeds. Part of the nature of these alien invaders has been changed, no longer are there large seed-pods from which perfect copies emerge, but what has replaced that is a much more credible premise, infection. Alien spores that invade your body, and activated by R.E.M. sleep, transform you into the classical pod person. (Now you just let them have the whole alien life form infecting a species from an entirely different evolutionary path, but once you do the rest follows logically and credibly. There is a fungus I think that infects acts and changes their behavior into something beneficial for the fungus and fatal for the ants.)

The original film took place in a small California town, something easily containable, the 1979 remake was set in San Francisco, and this one the infection breaks out across a swath stretching from Dallas to Washington D.C. a vast infected area. This film also go further along and gives us a peek as what happens one the pod-people no longer need to maintain their masquerade. At this juncture it felt almost like a zombie film, but for me much more frightening.

The actors all turn in wonderful performance, including one child actor who goes far beyond creepy.

The only downside to this movie, was a critical mis-step in my opinion by the filmmakers in the opening. The film starts with a shuttle breaking up while reentering the atmosphere. That alone in 2007 would be enough to make some people uncomfortable, just 4 years after the Columbia tragedy. Including actual footage of Columbia breaking up for entertainment purposes is simply wrong, cheap, and tawdry.

That aside I really enjoyed the film and look forward to one day adding it to my collection.

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Quick note

I will make a Sunday Night Movie entry tomorrow. We had a meeting of the Mysterious Galaxy Writers Group tonight and that took up my evening. I really want to do my Sunday Night Movie because it was a film I had not seen and it surprised me that I liked it.

 

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Too stubborn and too stupid

So in the face of the rain of rejections I received last week I am starting the outline for my new novel Command & Control. Yep, that’s me too stupid and too stubborn to give up.

C&C is another Seth Jackson novel, and last night as I lay in bed waiting for Mr. Sandman to send me a dream my mind gnawed at the plot and how the first third of the book is going to work. (The last third is what I know best right now.) Suddenly the particle of inspiration smashed through the creative centers of my noodle and I had a great idea.

Of course it was late, I was already in bed and nearly asleep. Other nights I might have leapt out of bed and rushed to my computer to note the idea, but not last night, not after the cold I have been fighting. I worked the solution over in my minds, saw how it created a very nicely character arc that the story had been lacking, and then went to sleep.

Because I spent so much time thinking about it before I went to sleep. I did not forget it Yup, it still looked good today. The outlining has begun.

Now your moment of musical horror…

 

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Not the best couple of days

Not only have I been sick, but  both agents that requested partials has passed on representing Love & Loyalty. There’s still more than a score of agents to hear from but it’s hard not to let my spirits sink.

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No Sunday NIght Movie this week

Yesterday afternoon I had a friend over and we watched a film he had never seen, Lawrence Of Arabia. That was quite enjoyable, but as the afternoon went on I started to get a stronger and stronger sensation of pain in my throat. I went to be early and did not watch a film in the night time.

This morning my throat was so bad that again I could not work. ( speak constantly at work something that does not mix well with a sore throat.) I stayed home and did pretty much nothing the entire day.

I feel so lazt.

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