Mind Exchange is Fantasy Not SF

The final indignity for the original series of Star Trek was the episode Turnabout Intruder where a bitter woman, Janice Lester, used trickery and an alien device to swap bodies with Captain James T. Kirk generating some of the series most over the top performances from William Shatner.

The body swap, a fantastical process where one person’s mind is placed into the body of another is tired trope and one that should always be understood as fantasy not science-fiction.

The core erroneous concept for this idea is that there is a separation between body and mind, that our ‘selves’ exist independent of our bodies and thus could be transplanted into a new form like a sapling being moved to a larger pot.

Our minds are emergent properties of our bodies. The subtle and complex interactions of physical experience, hormonal balances, and genetics give rise to the varied and unique personalities of the human race. There is not independent mind to move from one body to another. It is the body that generates the mind and with a different body, or a significantly altered one, the mind is different. Numerous brain injury and disease cases bear witness to this fact of life.

All of that said, I think I have found at least one, far out but barely plausible method of telling a body swap story. Now to see if I can make it work.

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The Joys of Revisiting a Manuscript

For reasons too extensive to go into here I am revisiting a novel length manuscript I last opened in November of 2014. This novel, at the suggestion of an agency, went through a major change in 2015 and that revised version has been the version sent to various people. Now I am taking the opportunity to go back to my original vision and use it for a different submission.

Originally, I went in for the prosaic task of turning all the underlined text into the house’s preferred format italics which required carefully reading every page of the novel to make sure I didn’t miss an instance. This led to the discovery that this earlier, longer version of the story is also before I changed the name of one of the major military ships that appear in the story, Okay, so now I am not only fixing underlines with italics but I’m watching for the old name so I can replace it with the new one.

Of course, my writing a changed over the last five and a half years, hopefully for the better, and I am finding the odd sentence where I need to massage it a little to get it to where I am today in terms of style and voice.

Then I discover an error that somehow slipped past all my earlier edits, my beta readers, and everyone else who has taken a gander at the manuscript. Reggie leave Geneva under the light of a full moon; the same night Seth in Spain is getting ready for what he hopes will be a romantic evening under a new moon. Glad I caught that one!

Still, my most common reaction to re-reading and working on this manuscript has been joy. This is the sort of book I love to read and while there are minor edits taking place, I am very happy with the prose and love revisiting my original vision.

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Quick Post

So, I missed posting on Monday and Tuesday because over the weekend I came down with some sort of sinus bug. No, it’s not Covid-19, but some rather short duration but fairly intense clogging of my sinuses that left me dizzy, congested, headachy, and generally non-functional.

Saturday I was fine, running my Space Opera RPG game but as the evening ended and I departed for home my head started to hurt. By the time I reached home, just 5 miles away, it was a fairly serious migraine, and Sunday I canceled on going to the zoo with my sweetie-wife leading to a convalesce that lasted through Monday and Tuesday.

So, my weekend and the first part of my week has not been very productive. I did manage to get some more editing completed on a manuscript I am about to send to my editor at Flame Tree and I watched a few films, re-watching 1993’s Searching for Bobby Fischer which I enjoy quite a bit.

 

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This Feels Wrong

This will be a quick post.

So, I am revising my military SF about an American serving in the European Union’s Star Forces set in a future in which America took a wrong turn in the early 21st century and became a second-rate power. Honest, I was cooking this idea back in the early 90s.

This is the manuscript that originally clocked in at 115 thousand words and on advice from an agency was trimmed to around 98 thousand.

As I review the original longer work, a version I had preferred, I find that I am really enjoying this book. It has been a few years since I have read it carefully, line by line, word by word, as once I send a project off to editors for consideration, I protect my sanity by moving on to the next project. So, this return to the origi9nal manuscript is a, pardon the pun, novel experience.

It feels wrong just how much I am enjoying this read. But this speaks to the truism I hold to in writing, write the book you want to read. There is your vision, there is voice, there is what makes it yours.

 

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Treacherous Seas

In less than a month my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge will be released upon an unsuspecting world. My editor at Flame Tree has expressed the hopes in the future that we shall be working together on many novels. I have found everyone at Flame Tree to be wonderful, supportive, and utterly professional and welcoming so the idea of working with them on more books is very enticing.

Some years ago, I completed a military SF novel that landed me with a literary agency. While the association with the agency didn’t work out and we went our separate ways, that novel has sparked at least some interest with a couple of publishing houses.

The trouble is timing.

Two other editors are looking at the book, one because we met a conference and they read a few sample pages and the other because I had submitted the manuscript through the imprint’s slush pile. (Slush pile is the name for the great stack of manuscript that are sent to a publisher un-agented.) Both publishers have had the book for over a year now. In that interim I sold, edited, and next both will have published Vulcan’s Forge with Flame tree.

I have decided that I am going to go ahead and send my military SF book over to Flame Tree. I will let the other editors know what the score is but I can’t even be sure that my emails are being read. These are turbulent seas to navigate and the sort where having an agent would be extremely helpful but I have no agent and must sail these waters myself.

I am taking some time to revise the manuscript before sending it over the Flame Tree. When I submitted to that agency I was signed with it was 115,000 words long, not overly long for an SF novel, but the reader and co—owner of the agency had required that I cut it down before he recommended it to his agents and so I brought it down to 98,000 words. I did this by trimming the opening battle but I was never truly happy with that. The massive battle that opens the book is meant to have the scale, weight, and importance of something along the lines of WWII’s battle of Midway and the lighter version I felt didn’t quite get that across. So, I am going back to the 115,000 words manuscript, making minor adjustments and that will by the new version.

Wish me luck.

 

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The Fertile Ground for Sanders

No, this is not an argument that the landscape of the general election favors Senator Sanders. If Sanders heads the ticket, I think this election will end up turning on a handful of votes in just a few states, much as the 2016 contest did ad that means it either candidate’s presidency is in the cards. What I want to expound on is why is the ground favorable for Sanders to win the nomination, what has made his candidacy viable at all.

The GOP unintendedly tilled and cultivated the ground for Trump for years before the 2016 election and I think that this was also a factor in the rise of Sanders.

Throughout the two terms of the Obama presidency one clear and consistent theme was that the GOP would do anything and everything to block, hinder, and undermine the Democrats in everything they did and everything they passed. The general thinking at the time, and it still holds true today, is that there is no electoral downside to playing an obstructionist role. That the electorate would only punish a party holding the presidency for failing to achieve things rather than notice the dedicated obstructionism. Electorally this has been proven to be fairly accurate. However, I think there are second order effects at play that many have failed to consider.

One of Joe Biden principal arguments for his election is that he can ‘work with Republicans,’ a plea to return to a sense of bipartisanship where the parties may differ but can set aside their differences to work for the common good. The problem is that there is zero evidence that the GOP is interested in that sort of arraignment and plenty of evidence, see the Obama years, arguing that the GOP be totally obstructionist to any Democratic administration.

Faced with this history and this likely future a common refrain from Democrats is that it is a fool’s errand to give any ground to the GOP on anything. Like Charlie Brown and Lucy, the roles are set and nothing, they believe, is going to change that. Given that starting position it makes logical sense to go with a candidate unwilling to compromise. Sanders of a rational reaction to the GOP obstruction. The thinking goes, they won’t work with us, they won’t respect any compromise, then we should just go for all out and not even bother with half measures.

Should Sanders will the White House, not as unlikely as some believe, the GOP will have played a major factor in

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Streaming Review: The Babysitter

Saturday evening after the customary board and card games a friend and I settled in and watched The Babysitter on Netflix. I had seen the preview but my friends went in cold know only that it was a horror/comedy. Horror/Comedy is a tough gig to get correct, but I think The Babysitter landed pretty much on target.

The Babysitter stars Samara Weaving, (Ready or Night, Picnic at Hanging Rockthe Series) as the titular character babysitter Bee but the protagonist of the piece is 12-year-old Cole. A young geeky boy fearful of nearly everything and foundering in the turbulent seas of adolescence. Bee and Cole have a terrific relationship with Bee giving Cole many important life lessons. However, on a weekend when his parent have left for him for a few days in Bee’s care and encouraged by a friend, Cole stays up past his bedtimes to discover just what it is that Bee does when he is asleep. The answer turns out to be leading a Satanic Cult complete with human sacrifices. Cole is thrust in a life and death conflict with the cult while coming to terms with his own fears and his shattered relationship with Bee.

The Babysitter is absurdist comedy with director McG taking liberal advantage of the screen format to play with expectations. Despite the over the top nature of the premise and the comedy McG and the screenwriters Brian Duffield take the time to ensure that every payoff is well established before its on screen arrival, delivering an enjoyable romp about growing up and learning to face and conquer your fears.

While there is a fair amount of fake blood used in this production the violence is more cartoonish than slasher and this is a movie well worth streaming.

 

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So The Russians Are Supporting Your Candidate

The news has reported that in addition to interfering in the US presidential election in favor of Trump the Russian effort is also working to elevated the chances of Sanders winning the Democratic contest for the nomination.

Trump responded to the reports that the Russians are assisting his re-election by dismissing his Director if National Intelligence and replacing him with an ‘acting’ Director reports out a line that is pleasing to his boss’s ears.

From the Sanders’ camp the reaction has varied from accusation that he information was leaked to damage him ahead of the Nevada contest, and if that was the objective it would seem to have failed, to familiar cries of ‘misinformation!’

It bears remembering that the Russians interfered on Trump behalf during the 2016 Primaries and also did the same for Sanders. Setting aside the question if the Russian government finds Trump easier to manipulate the choice of the candidates that the Russians support if quite consistent with this sort of operation.

The goal is chaos. The goal is conflict, using fractures that already exist in our society and culture to set us at each other’s throat. You cannot achieve that with middle of the road candidates but rather with people from the extremes, ideally with polar opposites set against each other. Which is exactly what Trump vs Sanders creates.

So what do you as a supporter of one of these two men do?

The absolute best thing you can do is be calm, be civil, and treat those on the opposing side with respect and courtesy. This is far from easy. I do not count myself as a Sanders supporter and I consider Trump to be a threat to our system of government. He is corrupt, he undermines and violates the rule of law, he exists only for his own enrichment and aggrandizement but that does mean I have to be nasty, cruel, or insulting to those who do not agree with me. I know conservatives who are willing to risk everything I listed above for their personal political objectives, be that gun, god, or gays. They are wrong in assessing the threat that Trump represents and while I will fight to defeat him in November but his supporters I will not disparage and I will not be a Russian asset in their attack on my country. I implore everyone to b the same. Be for Sanders but treat Trump supporters, Biden Supporters, and everyone else honorably and you will be doing your part in defending our country from Putin’s power play without compromising your principals.

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Concerning Subtitles and Dubbing

With Parasite’s Oscar wins including Best Picture there has been increased focus on the debate between subtitling and dubbing. (Parasite was subtitled.)

Subtitling preserves the original dialog track and vocal performances of the cast by presenting the dialog, often not in a verbatim form, as text usually along the bottom of the screen. Night Watch, a 2004 Russian urban fantasy film presented its subtitles in sometimes floating and dissolving text to convey the seductive nature of a character’s voice.

Dubbing removes the original dialog track from the audio and replaces it with a spoken language track for the intended audience, in the United States that is usually English. Often the original actors are not employed in this replacement but rather specialized voice actors provide the new dialog. In rare cases dubbing may be used to replace an actor’s dialog where the film is not being translated into a new language. In Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes the director replaced all of Andie MacDowell’s dialog with Glenn Close because he was unhappy with the quality of her voice while in Flash Gordon, due to conflicts with the producer Dino De Laurentiis, Sam J. Jones’s voice, who played Flash, was replaced entirely in post-production. These examples are the exception and not the rule as dubbing is most prominently used for translation.

Some cinephiles consider subtitling a purer form of the film experience, preferring to hear the original performance while many people, usually more casual film viewers, like the ease of dubbing.

I prefer subtitling myself but I would caution people to refrain from snobbery towards those who enjoy their films dubbed. There are a variety of reason why dubbing may work better for some people. A key aspect of enjoyable film watching is the suspension of disbelief, when the reality of the story unfolding on the screen if fully accepted the movie becomes like a waking dream for the viewer. There are people for whom the act of breaking their reverie with the image to read the text shatters that delicate illusion keeping the story and the characters at an emotional distance. There are people who are competent readers but not quick ones and the pace of subtitled dialog can be stressful again shattering the suspension of disbelief.

Dubbing also has troubling issues. Often the voice of the dubbed actor doesn’t match with the body of the on-screen talent. In the 1976 movie MidwayJapanese star Toshiro Mifune’s voice was replaced by Paul Frees, a good actor with lots of good performances to his credit but his amazing baritones voice was an ill fit for Mifune. A second issue with dubbing the trouble synchronizing the dialog to the actor’s lips. When the languages are closely related, such as German and English in Das Boot, where most of the onscreen actors performed their own English language dub the mismatch can be minimized but for languages widely separated across the globe, such as Japanese and English, the lack of synchronization can produce an unintended comical effect.

There is no perfect or ‘right’ answer and I say watch films in the manner that makes the experience most pleasurable to you and don’t worry or judge others for their differences.

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I’m an Anti-Social Online Gamer

Years ago, as a reward to myself for complete a draft of a novel, I got my first Xbox which I eventually upgraded to an Xbox 360 and now I have an Xbox One because Microsoft doesn’t understand how numbers work.

I don’t do a ton of video game play. I rarely complete a full storyline for a game I play. I’d rather get my narrative fiction from novels, movies, and televisions and so the video games become short bursts of play on-line where the creativity of actual living opponents provides a much more interesting challenge that AI controlled bots.

However, the first thing I do when I log into a session of Call of Duty or some similar game is mute all of the other players. I have zero interest in trash talking and the vile personal insults that are casually hurled as part of ‘play.’ So, if you see me online, you’ll need to send a message if you want to interact and if that message is mere insults you will be blocked.

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