Author Archives: Bob Evans

Of Rockets and Scams

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I ended up taking two days off this week, Wednesday and Thursday to watch rocket launches streamed live. Originally it had been just Wednesday as June 5th had been the originally proposed date for the Integrated Flight Test 4, IFT-4, for the Starship/Superheavy launch system but when the date slipped to Thursday, I just added an extra day off in my request and took both. (After yen years of working for my currently employer and thanks to a muscular union I enjoy a decent amount of paid time off every calendar year.)

Wednesday, I watched the Starliner, a crew vehicle from Boeing, launch on its first crewed mission. The launch went well but problem have arisen and Boeing continues to suffer for the evolution of its corporate culture. At the time of the writing the issues look to be something that can be dealt with, but I would not rule out the possibility that the crew will need to return on a different vehicle than the one that launched.

Thursday’s launch was much more interesting to me. The massive, almost inconceivable system that is the Superheavy booster and its mated large vehicle, Starship may represent an impressive leap forward in space access if everything can be made to work at projected. The ‘if’ in that sentence is not meant to disparage but a simple recognition that the engineering achievement is challenging and not all goals can be achieved. That’s why this is test flight 4, bit by bit and flight by flight a lot of being learned about the technical challenges this project represents.

IFT-4 succeeded in its mission objective and then some. The enormous booster returned to Earth for a soft ‘landing’ in the Gulf of Mexico, though the precision of the landing still needs to be studied and verified. The Starship vehicle achieved it orbital velocity and planned trajectory. (This flight was never intended to actually go all the way to orbit.) Reentering above in Indian Ocean fully under control even as the thermal protection system failed in spots, damaging some of the control systems. The fact that Starship is so large that is casts a shadow in the hot plasma of reentry and can transmit live video to the Starlink constellation of communication satellites is in itself a major evolution in what we can see and learn in space travel.

When I first searched for the live stream of the launch, I ended up on the scam site impersonality SpaceX’s official stream. The AI faked Elon Musk was as impressive that the rocket launches themselves. For at least the first round of ‘deposit one crypto coin and I’ll match it without another, doubling your money’ of pitches I just accepted that Musk, a known promoter of crypto, was real even if the deal stunk to high heaven of scam. (No one gives away free money.) I found another stream to watch and enjoyed the launch with all its excitement.

The fake Musk scam sort of invites all sort of sharp definitive opinions about the eccentric billionaire and illuminates for me the Manichean way so many people view the world. Something or someone is either ‘good’ and praiseworthy or they are ‘bad’ and worthy only of contempt. When focused on a particular thing or person these opinions are often not static. Musk when he touted environmentalism and saving the ecology through electric cars and such was praised, rightly so, by the left. When he assumed control of Twitter and unbanned a number of quite distasteful figures he became a subject scorn. The truth of the matter is that he has done both good and bad, he views have been both right and wrong, but it’s very hard for people to hold such complex views. The founding of the United States of American was a fantastic advancement for human liberty and American is awash in the sin of slavery and most of the men who founded this nation with high ideal of freedom were also enslavers. Both things are true. America is neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but so many insist on one or the other viewing the opposing facts as mere footnotes.

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This Writing Thing is Fun

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While I have not yet begun the words in a row prose writing that will create my American Folk horror novel, I have been hip-deep in character design and creation. This has been a blast.

Most of the novels I have written have been science-fiction set in quite distant futures. For each of those I did create characters documents, studies, and histories but there is something very different doing the same for characters that exist in the here and now. (Well, effectively the here and now. There are no supernatural entities and threats in the real world but aside from that the world of this next novel is our own world.)

That means as I create the backstory and history of the characters it’s important to know the world as it was when they were that age. Being in to 20s in the 1960s is very different than the 1970s, 1980s or 1990s.

While the historical context and its effect are fun to research and think about that hasn’t been the most enjoyable aspect of this part of the process. It’s the spontaneous evolution of the characters as I make the notes.

When I started this phase I knew some of the really big things that were going to be in various characters backstories as it compelled their natures and motivations. For me, something changes at the moment of actually making the notes in the various files. Writing the comments ignites new ideas, new aspects of the characters come to mind and insert themselves into the history. This ripples out to characters that they are associated with and changes them. The big boundary lines of what I originally envisioned act like guardrails, keeping the character enough on course that the novel will still work as intended, but now the characters can go faster, further, and higher into the storm I have created for them.

Man, I am having so much fun.

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StokerCon 2024

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StokerCon, is a premier Horror Convention where the Horror Writers Association hands out their award for excellence and achievements.

When I learned last year that 2024’s convention would be held here, San Diego California, I was stoked to attend.

Then in January of this year, after nearly 4 years of dodging the damned virus, COVID-19 caught up with me. Due to my vaccinations and boosters, it was a very mild case. It seemed hardly worth noticing.

And then the cough arrived.

No fever. No fluid in my lungs. No further infections just a deep, hard, and dry cough that refused treatment.

Weeks passed and nothing I or the doctors did stopped the coughing. If I remained silent, I did not cough but even a few sentences provoked attacks. I knew I could not attend a convention in this state. It would be fun for me or fair to the people around me who would have no way to be sure I wasn’t infected with something. I would be a walking source of anxiety, particularly for those with weakened immune systems.

Ironically the last two weeks the newest therapy seems to be working. The coughing was far less than it had been but not yet fully conquered. I elected that it would still be best for me and for others if I didn’t attend.

Instead, I ran my tabletop role playing game and discovered the limited of my recovery. A mere two and half hours into play the cough resurfaced and quite strongly. I ended the session earlier and with rest the cough subsided again but there is no doubt had I attempted to attend the convention it would have been provoked, so it turns out my decision to stay home had in the end been fully justified.

It breaks my heart that this turned out to be the right course of action. I had really wanted to hang out with fellow scribes, many much more talented than myself, but at heart I could not induced such anxiety in others.

From the reports I have read it appears that convention was a success, and I am thrilled for everyone who attended.

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Guilty on Every Count

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Yesterday after just 11 hours of deliberation on 34 felony county a New York City Jury found former president Donald Trump guilty of every charge. Not one count did they find him acquitted nor did they hang on any of the charges. They looked at the evidence presented by document and testimony and found that there was no room for reasonable doubt as to his guilt.

Of course, conservative partisans rushed to prostrate themselves before their Orange God-King protesting the trail, the verdict, the jurors, and every political opponent that could muster to mind. It has been decades since the GOP or the conservative movement possessed any fragment of principle or integrity. Terrified at the potential political fallout they huddle together and mutter their threats and plans of vengeance. Deep in their souls they know that this is a trap entirely of their own making.

The GOP has several opportunities to avoid this fate. They could have refused Trump entry to the party’s debates in 2016. They could have mustered the conventions against him. They could have impeached him when he corruptly used the office against a friendly nation for his person political benefit. They could have impeached him when he attempted to overthrow a fair and free election. They could have stood with due process as the justice system brought him to task for his crimes.

They did none of these things.

From their own selfish wants for lower taxes, more liberty to pollute, the puritanical need to impose their sexual mores on everyone else, and the need to have utterly unrestricted access to any firearm of that their little hearts desire, they have sold their souls, and betrayed the core concept of this great nation: No Person is Above the Law.

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Movie Review: Furiosa

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I took a few extra days off around this holiday weekend and pretty much did nothing except go to a movie and make progress on the next novel. The movie of course was Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga the prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

Warner Brothers Studios

Furiosa is the story of the character Furiosa introduced in Fury Road as she assists the escape of the warlord Immortan Joe’s wives from their sexual slavery from the Citadel. Fury Road drove into blockbuster status scoring on target hits with both audiences and critics.

As recounted in the earlier film the story of Furiosa is of her abduction from ‘The Green Place,’ an oasis of rich fertile lands with within the Wasteland and her eventual life in the Citadel as one of Joe’s Imperators, a trusted driver, warrior, and lieutenant. In Furiosa we discover that between her abduction and gaining the status of Imperator, Furiosa (Anya Taylor-Joy) was the captive of another, but lesser warlord Dr. Dementus (Chris Hemsworth) and the bulk of the film is comprised of her struggles to both survive and wreck vengeance upon Dementus.

Furiosa suffers from some of the trouble typical to a prequel. An audience member familiar with the following story knows that the character can’t die because there is another story to tell, and many elements exist to ‘explain’ why things are the way they are in that earlier released but later in the timeline tale. Why does Furiosa have only a single arm?

While the action in Furiosa is exciting and thrilling, with impressive stunt work performed by skilled professionals, the story is lesser to the one rendered in Fury Road. The major challenge in prequels is the character arc of the protagonist. The character’s nature is what drew in the audience originally and caused them to love the person so in the prequels there is the temptation to make the character as close as possible to the already adored version and that stunts any characters growth. They have nowhere to go because they start out in the final form by which we have already known them.

Furiosa in Fury Road is a woman who is risking everything to save other women, what we needed in the prequel is seeing her as a woman who doesn’t two fucks for anyone else and the transformation as she becomes a person willing to risk it all for others. This should have been the crux of the scene between her and Dementus when he intones she’s like him.

The other issue with this fil is that at the onset we are given her overriding goal, return to The Green Place but that is a goal she cannot achieve in the film because it’s the next story. So, the character and the audience can only be frustrated.

Furiosa was a lot of fun but ultimately it is not a movie that I will add to my collection as Fury Road is a better film on every measure.

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What?? A New Time Bandits?? No One Told Me

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Taika Waititi, the creative and executive behind some of cinema and televisions most entertaining shows, What We do in the Shadows, Reservation Dogs, Our Flag Means Death and movies likes Jojo Rabbit, The Hunt for the Wilder People, Next Goal Wins and more has yet another television series coming in July of this year, 2024.

Time Bandits the series, is an adaptation of Terry Gilliam’s fantasy film that I quote to this very day “Stay! Guard the Map.”

I have no idea if this is a continuation or a fresh approach to the material, but I do know that July 24th I will be there for this show’s 10 episode Season One.

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Endings aren’t Always at the End

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In preparation of submitting it to small press publishers I have been revisiting my Seth Jackson military/adventure SF novel.

There have been no grand changes but rather her and there minor alterations to a few sentences for clarity. The most common change breaking a compound sentence into two.

That said there is a fairly sizable edit that is going to take place, the deletion of an entire chapter and all the references, so far just one, to the events of that chapter.

The book starts with a major battle between the European Stellar Union and its enemy the ASPs. The battle in my mind has the scale and importance to this war that the Battle of Midway had for the United States during the Second World War. It is the turning of the tide. To capture the scale and complexity of the battle I follow several viewpoint characters, not all survive the fight. It’s a big battle and takes up just over a quarter of the novel. Everything that follows which threatens to drum the main character out of the service is a consequence of that engagement.

However, I have discovered that a chapter that takes place effectively after the combat has ended and the enemy is retreating needs to go. The fighting has ended, the ‘good guys’ have won, all that is needed is a small denouement to wrap it up, but I went on for an entire chapter because I had a cool idea that sprang from a little know aspect of living in weightlessness. I justified it myself as an important character moment between two characters but really I just loved this odd little thing about urinating in space and how it can turn dangerous to one’s health.

You see the Battle of Sigma Draconis is its own little story with a beginning, middle, and end, and I flew right past the dramatic and satisfying ending when I should have stopped.

Stories are made of scenes and scene ending are just as vital as story endings.

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Did Not See the Northern Lights

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The recent solar storms with their massive CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) produced auroras that were visible in 49 of the 50 states. San Diego was high enough in latitude that the lights should have been visible here.

Low clouds came in throughout the weekend and anyone on or near the coast lost all access to the night sky. To see the shimmer elusive lights in this area would have required a drive east into the less populated regions of the county, avoiding the light pollution of modern lift, and escaping mother nature’s ill-timed blanket of clouds.

Alas the cough that has deviled me since late January has yet to be broken by modern science and I simply did not want to drive for an hour or more only to be incapacitated by chilly air induced coughing.

So, the lovely northern lights I did not see. Even with that bit of bad luck I am not depressed or saddened. I have a new novel concept that is coming together, I had a nice celebration with my sweetie-wife for my birthday and we are enjoying a rewatch of the fantastic film Dune: Part 2.

Best of all no rejections from agents or publishers arrive on my birthday.

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Film Review: The Fall Guy

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Notionally a big screen adaptation of the television series that ran between 1981 and 1986 The Fall Guy omits the show’s central conceit of a professional stuntman that has a side gig as a bounty hunter.

Universal Pictures

The 2024 film centers on Stuntman Colt Seavers (Ryan Gosling) induced to return to his profession following an on-set accident in order to save the troubled production by his former flame Jody Moreno (Emily Blunt) as her leading man, Tom Ryder (Aaron Taylor-John) has mysteriously vanished. Colt has a very limited time to discover what dark secrets has caused Tom’s disappearance and somehow repair his shattered romance with Jody before the studio shuts down her production, wrecking her career.

The Fall Guy is a fun film meant for lite entertainment that doesn’t present the audience with heavy philosophical or emotional issues. Gosling and Blunt have good on-screen chemistry, Taylor-Johnson continues to be an screen chameleon vanishing into the part of an arrogant and egotistical star. Direct David Leitch best known for action films such as John Wick and Atomic Blonde turns int a fine film that is a very pleasant two hours of stunts, fights, and likeable characters well worth cheering. This movie is not one that will stick with you and leaving a deep and lasting impression, but it is perfect for a summer afternoon’s escapist entertainment.

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