Monthly Archives: March 2020

The Color Out of Space

Continuing my theme of things you can rent for streaming while cooped up at home and not spreading the gad damn virus last weekend a couple of friends and me watched Richard Stanley’s The Color Out of Space.

Based upon the short story by H.P. Lovecraft, Stanley, whose last feature directorial credit was Hardware in 1990 and perhaps best known for his involvement with the disastrous production of 1996’s The Island of Dr. Moreauwith this feature has turned in a haunting, luminous, and hallucinogenic horror film.

When a meteor crashing onto the alpaca farm of the Gardner family it brings trouble and other-worldly horrors to a family always dealing with the intense person horror of cancer. Utilizing Lovecraft’s technique of having the story told by a narrator, Stanley as director and screenwriter adds a more personal and emotional through line to the story that was lacking in the source material. Starring Nicholas Cage as Nathan Gardner, a man desperately not wanting to be his father and struggling to keep his family afloat with the farm, The Color Out of Space is a film about dissolution, but emotionally and, though ample body horror segments, physically. While the practical effects are not gory, they are disturbing and well suited for a horror film that derives itself from more conceptual material.

Stanley and his cinematographer Steve Annis make excellent use of fog and misty not to obscure and hide horror but to refract and diffuse light giving the frame a luminous quality enhancing the concept of an unknow color. The film’s  color pallet is excellent, restricting magenta and reds to the unearthly force making that color stand out as alien among the greens and earth tones of the farm.

The Color out of Space a perhaps the best adaptation of any of Lovecraft’s work and well worth watching. Stanley has been signed to make a trilogy of movies inspired from Lovecraft’s stories with the next being The Dunwich Horror.

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The Final Girls

Taking a break from discussing the pandemic and inept responses to it I’m going to talk about a film you can rent streaming right now The Final Girls.

A ‘final girl’ is the remaining character in a slasher film that defeats the slasher during the movies climax and the film The Final Girls is a horror/comedy directly parodying the tropes and clichés of the mass-produced movies of the 80s slasher craze.

Horror and comedy are difficult genres to combine and honestly most of the time this is attempted it fails for me. In my opinion it tends to work best in one of two modes.

  • If you front load the comedy and drop it out nearly entirely once the threats turn lethal then you have a horror film with strong comedic overtones and that can work.
  • Exaggerated comedy throughout the piece but then the threats must remain low or be negated by the final resolution.

The Final Girls is an example of the second approach and the filmmakers manage to pull it off.

Max (Taissa Farmiga) is the daughter of an actress who made a particularly bad slasher film in the mid-80s, Camp Bloodbath, but her mother has passed away and Max has been unable to cope with her loss. Pressured by a friend she and her friend attend a revival screening of her mother’s horror film but during a theater fire they flee through the screen and end up inside Camp Bloodbath. Using their knowledge of slasher clichés and dealing with character limited by their stereotypes Max and her friends must survive to the end when the ‘final girl’ can dispatch the slasher and they can return home all while Max learns to deal with her mother’s death.

Written by M.A. Fortin and Joshua Miller and directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson The Final Girls is a fast, funny comedy with a sentimental heart. The parody aspect speaks filmmakers that have a deep affection for the genre and plays with the clichés and tropes without ever ‘punching down’ at the fans of slasher movies. Using a structure much like The Wizard of Oz, the movies turns on a central character and her journey to a fantastic realm while giving just enough character growth and change to keep the entire movie from feeling pointless. It possesses some of the best modest budget CGI I have seen and it light enough on the violence to keep it campy and over the top rather than graphic and gory.

Overall this is a nice piece of entertainment that is worth watching and may help keep your mind of more realistic horrors

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BOOK SIGNING CANCELED

BOOK SIGNING CANCELED

Due to the continuing Corona Crisis, not even a pandemic will stop my alliterations, the signing event for my first novel is now canceled.

With gatherings of 10 or more people highly discouraged the store, Mysterious Galaxy, has closed to foot and in-person traffic until at least April 1st. There are discussions of possibly rescheduling the event for later in the year but I am sure slots will be limited and I am not the only author impacted so a reschedule would be nice but I am not counting on it.

If you were planning to attend the event, or if independent bookstores are important to you, I suggest that you buy the book from Mysterious Galaxy anyway. They are taking orders and fulfilling them by mail. Bezos and Amazon will weather this storm with literally billions in cash but local businesses will not be so lucky.

Mysterious Galaxy is a critical factor in the existence of my novel Vulcan’s Forge. For ten years I have met there with my writing group and that has certainly leveled me up as a writer and their staff are always helpful, friendly, supportive, and knowledgeable. From Mysterious Galaxy and stores like them you get those personal recommendation that can lead you to a new favorite author, not something simply pushed by an algorithm.

Vulcan’s Forge is my first novel and I certainly hope it is not my last. Having your debut event canceled is tough but COVID-19 is tougher and we can weather this if we do the right things. So, I will be sad to not have that signing but I hope that instead people stay safe, healthy, and order the book online even if they can’t have my illegible scribbling defacing it.

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Debut in the Time of Corona

It is now less than two weeks until the publication of my first novel Vulcan’s Forge and the world is gripped in crisis. A novel corona, Covid-19, that emerged from China towards the end of 2019 is now rapidly spreading around the globe, shuttering entire cities, overwhelming hospitals, and killing people.

Far more important that my debut is fighting Covid-19. We have to keep our distances from each other, we have to disperse any large groups and gatherings, we have to flatten the curve because it is too late to halt the spread of the disease, Chinese and American mismanagement has assured us of that failure, but we can slow the growth enough, maybe, to keep from crashing ours and the world’s healthcare system.

The virus appeared in China in early December but reports were suppressed and people endangered by their government for speaking the truth. Reporting bad news is a bad thing to do in authoritarian systems, China refused concede that there was human to human transmission until later January, wasting vital time for the world to take the precautionary action required to stop the virus.

President Trump dismissed early warnings about the virus, berated staff for bringing it up, and lied to the public about the seriousness of the threat. We do not have an authoritarian system we do have a man-child for whom bad news is a forbidden subject.

Compounding the mismanagement by the presidential administration we have the bad decision making about testing and test kits. Test kits for identifying the virus were available for US agencies to mass produce and use but the decision was made to develop new test kits that would be able to detect a spectrum of corona viruses not only the specific virus causing the pandemic, Those new kits turned out to be faulty, and in limited supply, hamstringing our ability to know the facts on the ground as the disease established its beachhead in the United States.

We’re now facing serious troubles, but we can still do thing that matter. Soap and water is your best defense and the best thing you can do to protect those around you. Limiting social contact is essential.

I’ll admit to being depressed over my debut as a novelist during this crisis and to feeling guilty about being depressed. I’m no good at being noble but it doesn’t take much to see that the problems of one little novel doesn’t’ amount to a hill of beans in the world. Yeah, I use movie quotes all the time in real life. Read my novel and you’ll understand.

 

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Two Weeks until Publication

In two weeks, Mach 26th 2020, my novel Vulcan’s Forge will be available at all booksellers in paperback and hardback editions from Flametree Press. Yesterday my US edition author copies arrived and I got my first look at the hardbacks.

They look great, but I could be biased.

This has been a moment a long time coming. The first time I attempted writing a novel was 1979 in my senior year of high school. Freeholder was a post-apocalyptic story about liberal pacifist survivalist. I did complete it so it counts as my first novel and no it is never going to see the light of day.

There have been other novels in between, though it wasn’t until fairly recently that I returned to the novel as a format. Some of those recent books I plan to re-write and there even one currently under consideration by a couple of publishers including my current home of Flametree.

In just over two weeks, March 28th 2020, I will be holding my author event and signing for Vulcan’s Forge, provided it is not canceled due to Corona Crisis, at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego. I’ll admit to be quite nervous about a public reading and signing but it is part of the gig.

 

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The Three Bs Will Not Save Trump

The Corona Crisis is upon us and it remains to be seen just how bad it will become. Indications are that the pandemic will continue to spread straining and stressing healthcare system around the world and here in the United States where just in time supply chains and significant dependence upon Chinese manufacturing create an additional economic danger to our already fragile systems.

It is possible that this may ‘burn out’ quickly and the effect may be less severe than they currently appear but it would not be wise to bet the farm upon such an outcome. People are modifying their behavior this past weekend I was at a small convention and the men in the restroom were more diligent about washing their hands than I can ever remember men behaving so.

For Trump the Corona Crisis represents a threat that cannot be defeated with the three Bs of his usual arsenal, Bullying, Bullshitting, or Blocking.

The virus is immune to taunts, nicknames, and intimidation so he cannot bully his way out of danger.

Trump’s propensity for bullshit works perfectly fine in the arena of politics where preferred reality is accepted over actual reality with regularity but emergency rooms are not spin rooms and no amount of clever language or outright lies will change a single infection to a healthy person. Viral Pneumonia doesn’t care what you told anyone, it will do what it does including spreading and killing.

The Senate Republicans have been Trump’s political protectors, covering up his crimes, blocking investigations, and transforming his guilt into innocence, but against a pandemic they are powerless. They cannot table the matter or refuse to take it and make it disappear by denying it airtime in the news cycle. People are going to get sick, people are going to die, and radio talk show hosts calling it a common cold will do nothing to change that reality.

If this burns out quickly and if the effects on the economy are brief and mild then Trump may escape through luck, but if the gets worse, if it returns stronger in the fall, then his golden ride may finally be over.

 

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COVID-19 and Thinking About Presidencies

The novel corona Virus causing a SARS-like illness, COVID-19. has reached the United States and appears to have begun sustained community transmission. At this point the only questions is how deep it will spread not if it will spread. Most people who are infected will have a mild illness, but some, particularly the immune compromised and the elderly are at elevated risk for serious and life-threatening respiratory complications including a viral pneumonia that is difficult to treat. Any potential vaccine is likely more than a year away and many important questions about this pandemic remain unanswered.

Will the spread stop during the hotter months as if often but not always the case with corona viruses?

If it recedes during the summer will it return stronger in the fall and winter as again with many viruses or will it simply fade as some do?

Will this become a regular seasonal event now that the virus is global?

For people who have been exposed to the virus how long with their natural immunity persist? Weeks? Months? Years?

It is best not to panic but there are sensible precautions everyone can take.

Wash your damn hands.

Regularly clean touched surfaces, particularly any that are shared publicly.

If you fall into a population that is at greater risk consider canceling travel and avoiding large crowds.

Now, what does the COVID-19 outbreak have to say about voting for president?

Well, it’s clearly too late to change presidents now, we have to deal with this international crisis with the president we have not one we would prefer but this is instructive in what qualities you should value in a chief executive.

Many people look for similar value or morals as their prime motivator in selection a president while other turn to policy and proposed programs as their method of selection. Both are valid but I think miss a major component of what makes the best choice, judgment.

Every president is going to face unexpected events that require decision from them. When we elect a representative, we are not just selecting a person to advance a particular political philosophy but also a person who will need to make judgements often with incomplete information. When thinking about who you want as a president think about if you trust them to make judgements free of their self-interest, free of political dogma, and free of an ego that would prevent them from reversing course if their initial choice turns out to be in error. Those factors, for me anyway, far outweigh any positions taken on a particular subject or policy. A person who fails those qualification will invite disaster.

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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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