Category Archives: SF

Reading TENET

 

Using the application ‘Weekend Read’ developed by scriptwriter John August’s company, I am reading Christopher Nolan’s script for last year’s film Tenet.

Tenet was Nolan’s venture in the globe-trotting super spy genre starring John David Washington as the story’s protagonist battling a world threatening conspiracy implemented by a Russian arms dealer played by Kenneth Branagh.

This wouldn’t be a Christopher Nolan movie if time didn’t play a critical aspect in how the story unfolded, in Memento to simulate Leonard’s inability to make new memories Nolan sequenced events backwards and in in The Prestige extensive use of flashback reordered the tale in Tenet time itself is a critical element of the plot. Deploying hand waving science-fiction about ‘reversing entropy’ objects and people are ‘inverted’ and experience time backwards leading to visually stunning and mind-bending sequences of action throughout the film.

But how does this read?

First off Nolan’s decision to leave the character unnamed is much more ‘in your face’ in the script. In a prose story, particularly one recounted in the first person, it’s fairly easy to hide the fact that the viewpoint character is unnamed, script format doesn’t allow for such subtleties hence often and glaringly Washington’s character is ‘The Protagonist.’ And when he refers to himself as the protagonist of the operation this is only heightens the effect that breaks the spell between document and reader.

Secondly the mixing of forward time and reverse time events in the script are no clearer than when first viewed in the film. Text is dreadfully limiting in recounting simultaneous events and doubly so for such events running in opposite directions through time. Where a piece of prose can slow down and provided critical and essential exposition a script just as a film cannot and must delivery that information vis visuals and character dialog.

Tenet’s script perfectly captures the experience of watching Tenet and in that manner is an exceptionally well written scrip and just as with the film it requires repeated readings to fully see all of the intent.

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Back From my Time Off

 

Friday was my birthday and after a year of pandemic restricted travel and not yet ready to travel again I decided to take both Friday and Monday off to celebrate and simply luxuriate in a long weekend. So here are some quick thoughts and reports to bring everyone back up to speed.

Birthday Haul: My lovely sweetie-wife presented me 3 Blu-rays as gifts, The Fog, John Carpenter 1980 horror classic on a Shout Factory special edition, The Invasion the 2007 remake of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, this time starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, and The Night of the Big Heat which sounds like a film noir title but is a Hammer-ish Sci-Fi film starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee about a far north island on the UK in the dead of winter suffering an extreme heat wave due to an alien invasion.

I had originally planned to have friends over for movies and gaming, but our guest bathroom is currently disassembled due to water damage from the unit above and so the weekend was just me and my sweetie-wife.

However, on Friday I did for the first time in over a year go out to theater. I watched Nobody an action film starring Bob Odenkirk. It was a lot of fun. What could have been tedious was made fun because the film makers understood that humor and a light touch can carry an audience through over-the-top action.

Writing: The Work in Progress novel has been copy-edited and proofed and my SF murder mystery clocks in at 102,000 words, making it longer than my noir Vulcan’s Forge but still trim compared to so many genre novels these days. Now I just need to wait for the feedback from the beta readers to see if it requires any serious surgery.

My mind continues to work on the next book though I am not yet to the outlining stage so writing-wise things are not too bad.

Ta Ta For Now

 

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Star Trek the Noir

 

I recently re-watched the Original Series episode The Conscience of the King in which Kirk must discover if the leader of a traveling actor troop is in reality a mass murderer who has escape justice.

As indicated by the title taken from Hamlet the scrip has numerous references to the Bard and his works but on this viewing I was taken by just how much the episode leaned into the conventions of film noir.

The story’s spine is a mystery with Kirk playing the role of the detective, searching for clues amongst a forest of lies and deception. He is enamored by a mysterious beauty who ultimately proves to be quite lethal a near perfect femme fatale. The obvious answer to the mystery turns out to be only near correct with a final act twist that reveals a darker and more tragic answer to the series of murders.

In addition to the thematic and plot elements that line up so perfectly with noir that series, though still displaying the bright television set selling colors, Finnerman the director of photography still manages to utilize shadow through the episode giving it a darker image befitting the story.

In my opinion there is no doubt that Star Trek’s The Conscience of the King is film noir.

 

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The Itch is Back

 

For me part of the writing process is ‘the itch’ I get as an idea grows from a vague concept to a near obsession returning to my thoughts again and again like guilt. As I wind down the process of my current work in progress and begin the search for publishers and agents, the horror film section of the writing process, I find quite faster than normal this time my mind is already mining the next novel.

The core idea was generated last year when it was one of a few I submitted to my then editor for consideration as a follow to my novel Vulcan’s Forge not a sequel just the next book by me. He wasn’t thrilled with the ending and frankly at the time the idea hadn’t become all-consuming for me either, so I set it aside to work on the manuscript now nearing completion.

In that time the behind-the-scenes processor apparently kept working on the concept, finding the genre it really belonged to, and supplying me with a character to drive that had conflicting wants and needs that cemented the story dark ending.

So, my little vacation from writing looks to be ending sooner than I expected and a new outline is about to be born.

 

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Draft is Done

 

I have completed the first draft of my newest novel and this week I will be sending it out to the brave souls that have volunteered as tributes – ah hem I mean beta readers.

This Sf mystery novel has clocked in at 103,000 words making it about 25% larger than my SF/Noir novel Vulcan’s Forge, but still a little bit on the smallish side for a lot of sf novels. As I have posted about before I tend to write lean.

I’m happy with the draft and I think I did a decent job, but these sort of warm good feelings about a work have been wrong before and the feedback from the beta readers will be a critical step in the book’s progress.

What is unquestioned is that I have earned a little break from the nocturnal writing and can be lazy with my Xbox and numerous streaming services for at least a few weeks.

 

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Reading Dune

 

In fits and starts I have completed a re-read of the classic Science fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert. I had to work in fits and starts because a growing cataract situation in both eyes has limited my reading hours and much of those have been devoted to my current work in progress novel. I have read Dune before and wanted to revisit the material ahead of the release of the latest adaptation coming in October of this year.

Dune, set in a distant far-future, concerns the bitter and lethal rivalry between feuding noble houses, a treacherous emperor plotting against his own kin, a suppressed people on a harsh and unforgiven world, ecological transformation, and cartel powers all centered on a planet where deserts are the entirety of the surface area.

On one level the novel can be read as an adventure story as Paul Atreides having survived the destruction of his noble house plats, plans, and takes revenge on the forces that killed his father and exiled both he and his mother.

Another reading is as a warning about the power of charismatic leaders and religious fanaticism with Paul’s quest illustrating how even ‘just’ causes often lead to horror and injustice. The work can also be interpreted as treatise on the interconnectedness of life and the dependence everything shares with everything else in an ecology.

The theme one comes away with from Dune, adventured story, prophetic warning, or ecological explainer depends entirely on the read and what they brought with them to the process.

Published in the early 60s, Dune reflects much of its period and how prose fiction has changed in the intervening nearly sixty years.

By today’s writing styles Dune is a novel that engaged in a lot of head hopping. In the middle of a scene the point of view will shift from character to character revealing their inner unspoken thoughts. This is frowned upon current fiction where it is expected that each scene is recounted from a single character’s point of view. For modern readers Dune can appear to be frenetic, choppy, and uneven.

More out of step with current culture is Dune’s approach to homosexuality. The principal antagonist of the novel Baron Harkonnen is presented as a corpulent, greedy, vile person without any redeeming qualities and it is clear that his sexuality is meant to be a mark of his evil nature.

The novel also appears to support the concept of eugenics without expressing endorsement for the result. The Emperor’s elite troops and the Fremen of the planet Dune are both, in the eyes of the novel, superior to any other fighting force because of the harsh and unforgiving nature of their home-worlds, which is a simplistic and naïve understanding of what makes a superior fighting person or force. In addition the novel presents us with the Bene Gesserit a faction devoted to a secret plan to breed a superior human with psionic abilities that unifies the masculine and feminine natures of humanity. Even for the early 60s this is a very binary view of human gender with men reduced to ‘takers’ and women to ‘givers’ without acknowledging the subtleties and overlap even within a binary viewpoint.

Dune is very a product of its time and even given its period the basic premises were already considered quite conservative challenges that the filmmaker will have to overcome in craft a cinematic experience that will be acceptable to modern audiences.

Here’s a reminder that my own SF novel, Vulcan’s Forge is available from FlameTree Press and can be purchased wherever to by fine books.

 

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Me and Movies Theaters When I was Young

 

For some inexplicable reason lately, I have been thinking about the movies theaters I frequented when I was a tween and a teenager.

Until about age of 10 I lived in rural North Carolina and my only solid memories of going to the movies were drive-in theaters with big bags of homemade popcorn and gloriously colorful Hammer horror.

After my father passed away, we move to Ft. Pierce Florida and soon started going to the theaters there.

The Sunrise Theater was just over two miles from my home on 32nd St and I walked the distance to see their presentations. The Sunrise was a single screen theater and the place I went to the most for my movie fix. I remember a number of fun Saturdays watching films like Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Race with the Devil, and The Towering Inferno in that darkened air-condition space.

Ft Pierce did have a multi-screen theater I seem the remember the name being the Village Twin, but I could be wrong about the name. It was just over three and half miles from my home and I also walked and sometimes biked to that theater for movies. It was there that I saw Jaws, Superman: The Movie, and Alien. I still have quite vivid memories of speeding home from Superman pumping the peddles hard with Willams’ iconic score playing in my head.

The final place to see movies in Ft. Pierce was our drive-in theater but as we had no family car, my mother did not drive, I only saw one film there. A Movie I was so desperate to see that I went on my bicycle to a drive-in, Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.

Movies have always been and always will be a major element of my life.

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Thinking About Another SF Noir Novel

 

 

As I close in on finishing my current work in progress, a murder mystery set on a ship that has been traveling between the start for over 230 years, I am beginning to consider what to write next.

Last year my debut novel Vulcan’s Forge was published by Flametree press and while being released the week the world shutdown at the start of this damnable pandemic did nothing good for its sales number its blending of off-world science-fiction with classic film noir styling proved to be fun to write and fairly well reviewed. I have the basics of a plot already in mind for my next novel in fact it has been sitting and cooking on the back burner for about six months and recently I had the epiphany that it may work best as a noirish story. It would however make in one way a major break with noir’s genre conventions.

Noir, in my opinion, is strongest and most compelling with the driving force of the plot is some base human emotion, greed or lust being the most common ones used. Noir has a cynical worldview and tends to view people in the worst possible light. Friends and lovers will betray you and you cannot count on even yourself much less anyone else.

But is it possible to craft a noir where the driving motivation is one that is generally considered admirable? That is the idea that has taken root in my brain. A character obsessed with something most people would agree is a good and valuable goal but in order to achieve it step by step walks themselves down a dark, twisted path where events spin beyond their control.

I think this can work. I think it could be an interesting study of how even a good person with good goals can so easily lose their way when they accept the adage that the ends justify the means.

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A Harebrained Film: Night of the Lepus

 

A dozen years after the release of her cinematically legendary showers sequence and eight years before she would appear with her daughter Jamie Lee Curtis in John Carpenter’s

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atmospheric horror film The Fog, Janet Leigh, along with DeForest Kelley three years after Star Trek grounded, starred in a most unusual SF horror movie 1972’s Night of the Lepus.

Adapted from the satirical SF novel The Year of the Angry Rabbit by Russell Braddon, NOTL’s central conceit is the Arizona countryside suffering nocturnal assaults from mutated giant rabbits.

The film attempts and fails to build credibility for its premise by opening with a faux newscaster intoning seriously about rabbits upsetting the delicate ecological balance in Australia after their introduction to that continent. From there the story moves to Arizona where rancher Hillman is dealing with a rabbit infestation of his own. Rather than deploy harsh poisons to deal with the pests his friend Clark (DeForest Kelley) at the university puts him in contact with a husband/wife team of scientists Roy and Gerry Bennett (Gerry Bennett played by Janet Leigh.) The pair decide that using hormones to make ‘boy rabbits act more like girl rabbits’ is the solution to Hillman’s troubles and begin experimentation on rabbits captured from the ranch. The filmmakers use the Bennett’s young daughter both as clumsy exposition, ‘Mommy what is a control group?’ and the method by which a rabbit already mutated by the artificial is released into the wild to infect the ranch’s rouge population. And yes, the film tries to force the idea that hormonally changing one rabbit somehow infects other without the use of a bacteria or virus. Despite the EPA having been established two years earlier the scientific pair also have no hesitation in developing and deploying an unknown effect into the ecology without significant testing as their timeline from concept to eradication was mere weeks.

The greatest hurdle the filmmakers failed to clear isn’t the lack of character arcs or scientific illiteracy but rather no amount of slow-motion photography on miniature sets and even with fake blood smeared on their snouts, rabbits cannot look credibly frightening. Rabbits as a violent lethal threat belongs solely to the domain of British farce and not in the dying giant animal genre.

I found Night of the Lepus streaming for free on a Roku channel, but they interrupted the movie every ten minutes for a block of five commercials. even minus those interruptions except for comedic entertainment I could not recommend this strange unique movie.

 

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Television Thoughts: Resident Alien

 

Confession: We do not have cable television in our home and have not had it for close to eight years. Everything my sweetie-wife and I watch is either streamed or on disc so when a new show premiers on a cable channel we either have to wait for its arrival on a streaming service or if it’s something we have high expectation of enjoying buying an entire season to stream. Which is what we did for SyFy Channel’s original series Resident Alien.

Resident Alien adapted from a comic book series by Peter Hogan and Steve Parkhouse stars Alan Tudyk as an alien who has come to Earth on a deadly mission but due to a mishap and crash has assumed the identity of Doctor Harry Vanderspeigle in the small, isolated community Patience Colorado and finds himself embroiled in murder investigations, family dramas, romantic entanglements, and the mission of a young boy to expose the truth of alien presence. The show is a mixture of comedy and drama with the balance clearly tilted towards the comedic as Patience is populated with an assortment of quirky, broadly sketched, farcical characters that live with one foot in realistic human emotions and the other firmly planted in broad comedy.

Tudyk is one of our best working comedic actors with a career that stretched from A Knights Tales, thru firefly/Serenity up to and past Rouge One: A Star Wars Story. He brings a real charm and sense of timing that carries the comedy off quite well and his choices in his performance particularly when we can compare it against his performance as the human version of the character are unique.

Mixing drama and comedy doesn’t work for everyone but in my opinion, it’s flying high here in Resident Alien.

Resident Alien airs on Syfy on Wednesday nights and is available to purchase from a number of platforms.

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