Consider this a literary experiment. The idea to attempt a weekly serial came to me a little more than a week ago, born out of the realization that I've never written anything in which I didn't have an ending firmly established in the dark recesses of my mind prior to putting fingers to keyboard. So the idea of starting a story with no idea as to where it would end up appealed to me as a way to challenge myself and shake up my writing routine.
To make matters interesting (and to hold my feet to the proverbial fire, since I'm notoriously undisciplined, production-wise) I'm doing it in public, for all the world to see. Here are the ground rules: 1) I've got a week to produce each installment, roughly a thousand words in length. That's setting the bar pretty low, I know, but I've seen online comics crash and burn because they bit off more than they could chew, and didn't want to repeat that mistake. Also, this is a side experiment. I've still got my regular writing projects to attend to; 2) No revisions once posted, other than typos, misspellings, etc. In other words, I can't go back and rewrite scene three to put a gun in the desk drawer if I suddenly realize I need one for scene 28. I'm flying live without a net here, folks, and damn well better get it right the first time; 3) No pre-set length. I don't know where this is going, which is the whole point. It may turn out to be a short story (which I seriously doubt--nothing I write is short) or it could be a novel. Most likely somewhere in between. Or it may crash and burn a horrible, misguided death somewhere between here and there. That's why it's an experiment.
So kick back, pop open a cold one and enjoy the floor show.
MEMORY
Monday, January 14, 2008
Friday, January 11, 2008
New Year's Greeting from the Necromancers
Courtesy of Dr. Tesanovic's Gramscian missives from exile, here's your opportunity to experience Azzam the American, aka Adam Gadahn, Al Qaeda's SoCal-raised spokesman (apparently the first American to be indicted for treason since 1952), chanting and lecturing "An Invitation for Reflection and Repentance." Like a public access talk show from a post-9/11 Videodrome reality. The whole rant is 30 minutes, but if you just stay for the introductory song (sorry, no Doc Severinsen) it will likely be sufficient to brand your gray matter for the rest of the year.
Karnak failed to predict that in the future, Gandalf-like mujahideen mind lords would have their own Paul Harvey broadcasts from their secret mountain lairs in Central Asia. Complete, as the keen eyes at Danger Room note, with a coffee cup bearing the logo of As Sabah, the Jihadi answer to The 700 Club. In a world where Blackwater sells its own logoed teddy bears, how long before AQ starts peddling pledge drive tote bags?
Too bad it's not a call-in show, where some crank like me can say, Adam, dude, what about the Black Stone?
(Meanwhile, over at Stratfor, Austin's favorite open source spooks are declaring America has met the victory conditions of this postmodern Avalon Hill game.)
Karnak failed to predict that in the future, Gandalf-like mujahideen mind lords would have their own Paul Harvey broadcasts from their secret mountain lairs in Central Asia. Complete, as the keen eyes at Danger Room note, with a coffee cup bearing the logo of As Sabah, the Jihadi answer to The 700 Club. In a world where Blackwater sells its own logoed teddy bears, how long before AQ starts peddling pledge drive tote bags?
Too bad it's not a call-in show, where some crank like me can say, Adam, dude, what about the Black Stone?
(Meanwhile, over at Stratfor, Austin's favorite open source spooks are declaring America has met the victory conditions of this postmodern Avalon Hill game.)
Thursday, January 10, 2008
A cartload of Cormac
This isn't SFnal, unless you count the post-apocalyptic leanings of The Road, but it's pretty gosh-darn big literary news that I'm actually involved with, so I thought I'd share.
And of course, the film version of McCarthy's novel "No Country for Old Men" is accumulating awards nominations by the bushel. Those of you keen to find out all the details of this acquisition can read the entire release over at the Texas State University website.
The Southwestern Writers Collection (SWWC), a part of The Wittliff Collections at the Alkek Library, Texas State University-San Marcos, has acquired the papers of author Cormac McCarthy.
...
McCarthy’s body of work includes some of the finest novels of our times. Critic Harold Bloom declares Blood Meridian (1985) “the authentic American apocalyptic novel,” stating, “The fulfilled renown of Moby-Dick and of As I Lay Dying is augmented by Blood Meridian, since Cormac McCarthy is the worthy disciple both of Melville and of Faulkner. I venture that no other living American novelist, not even Pynchon, has given us a book as strong and memorable….”
And of course, the film version of McCarthy's novel "No Country for Old Men" is accumulating awards nominations by the bushel. Those of you keen to find out all the details of this acquisition can read the entire release over at the Texas State University website.
Monday, January 7, 2008
I spy, with my little eye...
Okay, this is now getting almost scary. In a cool way. They're actually detecting reflected light off "Hot Jupiters" using polarization that I suspect is a degree or two more sophisticated than can be had on your average pair of Ray Bans.
What's the over/under on actual photographs of extrasolar planets? I say 20 years, and that may be too conservative an estimate...
Zurich -- The ability to explore remote worlds in space has been enhanced
through a polarization technique that allows the first ever detection of
light reflected by extrasolar (exoplanet) planets. The study has been
accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
An international team of astronomers, led by Professor Svetlana Berdyugina
of ETH Zurich's Institute of Astronomy, has for the first time ever been
able to detect and monitor the visible light that is scattered in the
atmosphere of an exoplanet. Employing techniques similar to how Polaroid
sunglasses filter away reflected sunlight to reduce glare, the team of
scientists were able to extract polarized light to enhance the faint
reflected starlight 'glare' from an exoplanet. As a result, the scientists
could infer the size of its swollen atmosphere. They also directly traced
the orbit of the planet, a feat of visualization not possible using indirect
methods.
What's the over/under on actual photographs of extrasolar planets? I say 20 years, and that may be too conservative an estimate...
Saturday, January 5, 2008
Lost Films
USA Today has just published a list of "10 Great Movies that need to be on DVD"... so I've posted my own list here. Some sf or fantasy, some not. More suggestions welcomed.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Twilight Zone: Vol. 1
Through the miracle of Netflix I've begun working my way through the entirety of Rod Serling's classic The Twilight Zone. I started with Vol. 2, since that disc had certain classic episodes I really wanted to revisit, but I'm going to talk about vol. 1 here. There are three episodes on the disc: "The Invaders," "Nothing in the Dark" and "Night of the Meek."
I first saw "The Invaders," a 1962 episode written by the great Richard Matheson, when I was 12 or so. I remembered it being effectively creepy with the miniature alien invaders firing some sort of microwave beams at the old women making her skin blister, and rewatching it did evoke a degree of suspense. But as science fiction it is awful in the first degree. The Wife figured out the "big twist" at the end about a third of the way in once she twigged to the fact that the woman under duress hadn't said a single word, and Monkey Girl, who's exposure to the more surreal side of genre is limited to The Bridge to Terabithia, generally found it terribly funny.
"Nothing in the Dark," a 1962 episode penned by George Clayton Johnson, on the other hand, was more effective overall as a gentle, philosophical examination of death. Mostly a character study of an old woman so afraid of dying she's locked herself away from the things she loves to hide in a crumbling tenement, the piece is enjoyable even though the classic twist is obvious from the get-go. Monkey Girl seemed impressed enough by it, in that she was uncharacteristically silent afterward. The moral: Dying isn't so bad if Death looks a whole lot like a young Robert Redford.
"Night of the Meek" is a Christmas-themed episode from 1960, one written by Rod Serling himself. The great Art Carney plays a skid-row alcoholic who takes the job of playing a department store Santa. There is a liquor-fueled Incident in which he rants about the well-off looking down upon the poor and starving during the holidays as they shop for expensive gifts which gets him fired, naturally enough. It's only a short stumble down a dark alley before he finds a magic sack of garbage that produces presents galore, and before you can sing "Jingle Bells" he's playing Santa for real on skid row. The episode oozes sentiment from every pore, enough to make Frank Capra cringe, but that's balanced by Carney's excellent performance (watch and you'll know where Christopher Lloyd got the inspiration for the Doc Brown character in the Back to the Future films) and the graphic hopelessness and alcoholism in the first half of the piece. It's quite unexpected, really, setting up the viewers' expectations for a bleak resolution, when the exact opposite is in store. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the creators of the Tim Allen "Santa Clause" franchise of films hadn't drawn inspiration from this episode. There are more than a few parallels between the two works, although there isn't a 1:1 correlation. The fact that both Carney's and Allen's characters, who've lost touch with the "holiday spirit" come around when they literally become Santa Claus is fairly striking--particularly Carney's final scene, which echoes almost the entirety of the Allen film. But also the fact that both are locked away by establishment figures who refuse to believe the heroes' newfound status tells me that there's a connection at some level.
They sure don't make 'em like this anymore.
I first saw "The Invaders," a 1962 episode written by the great Richard Matheson, when I was 12 or so. I remembered it being effectively creepy with the miniature alien invaders firing some sort of microwave beams at the old women making her skin blister, and rewatching it did evoke a degree of suspense. But as science fiction it is awful in the first degree. The Wife figured out the "big twist" at the end about a third of the way in once she twigged to the fact that the woman under duress hadn't said a single word, and Monkey Girl, who's exposure to the more surreal side of genre is limited to The Bridge to Terabithia, generally found it terribly funny.
"Nothing in the Dark," a 1962 episode penned by George Clayton Johnson, on the other hand, was more effective overall as a gentle, philosophical examination of death. Mostly a character study of an old woman so afraid of dying she's locked herself away from the things she loves to hide in a crumbling tenement, the piece is enjoyable even though the classic twist is obvious from the get-go. Monkey Girl seemed impressed enough by it, in that she was uncharacteristically silent afterward. The moral: Dying isn't so bad if Death looks a whole lot like a young Robert Redford.
"Night of the Meek" is a Christmas-themed episode from 1960, one written by Rod Serling himself. The great Art Carney plays a skid-row alcoholic who takes the job of playing a department store Santa. There is a liquor-fueled Incident in which he rants about the well-off looking down upon the poor and starving during the holidays as they shop for expensive gifts which gets him fired, naturally enough. It's only a short stumble down a dark alley before he finds a magic sack of garbage that produces presents galore, and before you can sing "Jingle Bells" he's playing Santa for real on skid row. The episode oozes sentiment from every pore, enough to make Frank Capra cringe, but that's balanced by Carney's excellent performance (watch and you'll know where Christopher Lloyd got the inspiration for the Doc Brown character in the Back to the Future films) and the graphic hopelessness and alcoholism in the first half of the piece. It's quite unexpected, really, setting up the viewers' expectations for a bleak resolution, when the exact opposite is in store. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the creators of the Tim Allen "Santa Clause" franchise of films hadn't drawn inspiration from this episode. There are more than a few parallels between the two works, although there isn't a 1:1 correlation. The fact that both Carney's and Allen's characters, who've lost touch with the "holiday spirit" come around when they literally become Santa Claus is fairly striking--particularly Carney's final scene, which echoes almost the entirety of the Allen film. But also the fact that both are locked away by establishment figures who refuse to believe the heroes' newfound status tells me that there's a connection at some level.
They sure don't make 'em like this anymore.
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
If I ran Hollywood
SF Signal has a nifty feature called "Mind Meld," which is something of a group interview on a single topic. For some unfathomable reason they asked me to participate this round, along with such folks as Chris Roberson, Lou Anders and Angela (SciFi Chick). The current topic is If you ran Hollywood, what changes would you make? Fun stuff.
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