The best way to get your work adapted into a science fiction or fantasy movie is to:

Surrogates falls into the former category. As for the latter, I also believe (call it a corollary) [...]]]> The imminent release of the movie Surrogates provides the latest corroboration of Victor’s Law of SF-Film Adaptation:

The best way to get your work adapted into a science fiction or fantasy movie is to:

1. Do a graphic novel.
2. Be Philip K. Dick.

Surrogates falls into the former category. As for the latter, I also believe (call it a corollary) that somewhere there exists Federal regulation that mandates that at least fifty percent of all SF movies made must be adaptations from the works of Philip K. Dick. I mean, Jesus von Humperdinck, they’re remaking Total Recall!

(Don’t actually bother clicking that link; it only runs you head-first into imdb‘s attempt to monetize their site by making all their cool news available only on a paid-subscription basis.)

Clearly my work’s cut out for me: it’s either find and ingratiate myself to a mad-talented comic artist (other than the one I already had onboard, who’s sadly dropped off the planet), or reincarnation.

I’m planning to try them in that order. Which you may or may not find felicitous news.

Final, gratuitous thought: when people tell you, “Don’t be a Dick,” it may not be good career advice!

Indeed, it occurred to me, for SEO reasons, to rename this post “Who Says Don’t Be a Dick?” In a rare outbreak of good judgement, or perhaps good taste, I decided to refrain.

Who, indeed?

Now with the movie coming out – to mixed reviews – the one consensus seems to be the unassailable perfection of the original. So let me be the heretic rebel here [...]]]> Everyone on Earth seems to agree the Watchmen comic book series is the greatest thing since sex. I’m not so sure.

Who, indeed?

Now with the movie coming out – to mixed reviews – the one consensus seems to be the unassailable perfection of the original. So let me be the heretic rebel here and question the Holy Doctrine of received wisdom – while admitting the possibility I might be mistaken.

To clarify: it’s not the series’ status in the comic book world I’m talking about; I don’t know that much about the field as a whole. It’s the overall greatness thing I dare to question.

I’m sure that’s going to get me buried in hate mail. So it goes. (Take deep breath: jump.)

I read it a while ago, and admit my memory may not be perfect; I’ve tried to get the single-volume collection from the library to reread in advance of the movie release, but the waiting list seems liable to outlive the solar system. And I don’t deny the series had a lot of depth or a lot of merit.

My problem concerns the ending – and yes, there be *spoilers*, in case you’re unfamiliar with the story, so pass the jump at your own risk.

So: one of our costumed crimefighters, who happens to be a genius billionaire, stages a phony alien invasion, complete with much collateral damage – which is to say, wide scale murder of innocents – in order to force world unification and world peace. After initially getting huffy about it all, once it all appears the other erstwhile members of his crimefighting club all decide to go along after all. And when the only member of the group who seems to have any integrity, even if it is a murderously crazy kind of integrity, says he’s going to blow the whistle, his pals murder him.

Pretty much The End.

Okay, bluntly: how is that not completely fascist?

I mean, let’s leave aside matters like practicality (the US/Soviet alliance against a common threat sure lasted a long time) and questions of whether ends justify means (they don’t.) Isn’t author Alan Moore trying to sell us on the notion of a self-proclaimed superman ruling the world as his Reich as a good thing? Haven’t we seen this before? And not liked it too much?

We’ve also heard about this scam before. There’s some dispute as to whether war criminal and party animal Henry Kissinger actually asserted that Americans would gladly surrender their liberties to “an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated” (emphasis mine.) There’s not much dispute, though, that Ronald Reagan said something very similar about an “alien threat” in a speech to the UN.

Pretty strange bedfellows for a self-proclaimed leftist anarchist, yes?

So is Moore really telling us that making an annoying rich asshole  Führer of the World would be swell (and so’s betraying your friends)? That’s the message I took away. Left a poor taste in my mouth.

Or am I missing the point by 180°, and Moore is really telling us, in line with the whole “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?“ theme, that if we put our faith in heroes, or the powerful in general, that this is the very kind of horrendous shit they’re liable to pull?

I dunno. I’d like to believe the latter. It didn’t seem like it at the time. Which is why I wanted to reread the series.

Help me out, here, please. Really.

Full Disclosure: back in 1988, I, along with the rest of the Wild Cards Consortium, was nominated for a Hugo Award in the “Other Forms” category, in opposition to – guess what? Yes, brilliant: you’re right, it was Watchmen. And guess who won? Right again! One might therefore be forgiven for suspecting me of sour grapes.

Well, I’ll tell you, I’d really like to’ve won the award. Given that the “Other Forms” award was insituted in order to give Watchmen a Hugo, and that it was widely called the “Watchmen Award” in fandom, I figured it was kind of an honor to be nominated to run against it in the first place. And we came in second – a close second, or so I heard. So I don’t think we did so badly.

As for the outcome: I’d've voted for us, yeah. I would again. I don’t think anyone rigged the voting, though. I don’t think the outcome was unjust.

One fairly dark deconstruction of the superhero concept beat out another. That’s it. I don’t think that’s grounds for invidious bitching, and plead not guilty. As always, YMMV.

Now, let the flames begin!

Wait! They make noise? What else about the movie's true?

No. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Click the link and find out for yourself.

(It won’t automatically capture all your personal financial information and email it to a guy in his underwear in Abkhazia. Really.)

The queens actually order the [...]]]> They do. It is.

Wait! They make noise? What else about the movie's true?

No. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Click the link and find out for yourself.

(It won’t automatically capture all your personal financial information and email it to a guy in his underwear in Abkhazia. Really.)

The queens actually order the workers around. Malignant caterpillars – yes, I know; I always thought it was an oxymoron too – can learn to speak the language of queens and talk worker ants into spoiling them as if they were royals.

What I got the biggest kick out of was, once researchers figured out how to bug the bugs, it “astonished” them to find out the little bastards had something to say. You’re listening to them. What did you expect? Reggae? (“Do you remember the days of pesticide?“)

Of course, I’m astonished too. Indeed do many things come to pass.

Frankly, I find it more than a little bit creepy as well. Imagine this Spring when you’re sitting out in your backyard, all these untold thousands and thousands of tiny little ants out crawling around your ankles. All talking about you.

Next thing we’ll find out they’re taking upskirt shots with tiny ant cell phones.

Ever see the classic movie Them!, which starts in New Mexico and concerns our state’s Number One export (horrific atomic mutation)? Remember that weird sound the giant ants make?

What they’re saying is, Next time we write the script. And guess who wins?

Hat tip to LewRockwell.com.

And remember, kids: to help support this site (and me) please consider clicking the image or here to buy the classic flick Them!. Thanks!

Postscript – And now that’s weird and annoying. For some reason, just as I polished this post off, WordPress decided to out of the blue italicize everything. I know I overuse that, but c’mon.

And down came the flakes.

I’d be tempted to call it typical [...]]]> This afternoon I went out the door around 3:30 to go meet Joe at Café Napoli to find snow falling from a sky that was almost exactly half clear. The sun was shining. Basically the whole northern part of the sky was clear.

And down came the flakes.

I’d be tempted to call it typical NM weather, but it really wasn’t. For one thing, I don’t remember ever seeing anything quite like it before. I’m used to sun-showers, and if the wind blows hard enough we can get the somewhat startling phenomenon of a dust storm in the middle of a rainstorm with the sun shining. But not snow coming out of a largely blue sky.

Wasn’t snowing hard, nor in big flakes. But definitely snow.

So, anyway – last night I rewatched Serenity for the first time. Great movie. It surprised me to see it came out in 2005, and yet I hadn’t seen it since catching it in the theater. I fear I let myself kind of get talked out of it by quibblers, both in person and online.

There are certainly some questions that can be raised, at least from an SF-nerd viewpoint. For instance, I had to wonder if Joss Whedon really understands, any better than most of Hollywood does, just how big space is. Did the Serenity really have to fly through a whole cloud of Reaver craft, all seemingly within a long spit of one another, to get from planet to planet?

Then again I might have missed something, and could certainly rationalize it myself. One might also question whether I should have to. On the other hand, I was willing enough to do it. Because the movie earned a certain suspension of disbelief.

Because, it’s really a wonderful movie; and in its own terms almost perfect. I was really impressed. The characters were alive and engaging; the dialogue sparkled. The setting was intriguing. The story was basically all about the characters having to make difficult moral choices. Plus there were lots of guns and SBU. Always a bonus.

And of course it had a truly all-time great movie villain in Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s Operative. I can’t quite bring myself to call him Hans Gruber great, but he comes close. And like the Die Hard villain the Operative works so wonderfully because the part is so damned well written, well acted, and well-directed. It really takes all three.

I suppose this’ll come as small surprise to Firefly fans. Confession: I’ve never watched the show. In spite of the fact that my friend Larry was kind enough to give me the full-season DVD, I’ve not yet gotten to it.

I don’t like series-TV shows. I usually find them weak in content and smug in tone. Then again just about everybody I like and respect enjoyed the series. And hey, I can watch it without commercial breaks, and in the proper episode order. And the movie definitely put me in a frame of mind to watch it.

Serenity is always associated in my mind with V for Vendetta. They came out a year apart, they’re anarchist classics, I loved both of them when I saw them in the theater without having watched or read the originals. And I allowed other people’s opinions to make me doubt my own assessment of them post facto. Which I admit is goofy. (I saw V for Vendetta again for the first time just a few months ago. And was blown away all over again.)

The other, and potentially most fascinating, similarity between them – and the real reason I connect them so strongly – is that a pivotal character in each is a Monstrous Saint. V and the Operative alike believe above all they’re doing the right thing – all the while knowing perfectly well that they are monsters.

Much as I loved Agent Smith‘s bravura Guy Fawkes-masked performance, I think I have to give the edge here to Serenity. Both characters are tragic heroes. Unusually, both know it – but the Operative doesn’t understand his real flaw, which is his belief that the end justifies the means. He has that additional depth: he’s a terrifying villain who, by most assessments is an extraordinarily good man. It’s just that he does awful things.

And he doesn’t hide from it. So you get that incredible exchange when Mal says, “I don’t kill women and children,” and the Operative says, with evident pain, “I do.” Which leads into his frank admission that he is a monster, and moreover that one necessary precondition of the Better World he’s fighting to create is that he himself die. Powerful stuff.

And of course in the end Mal brings him low not by physically defeating him (although he has to physically subdue him) but by moral suasion. He defeats the Operative by attacking his truly unshakable integrity. The Operative chooses defeat because he realizes he has been wrong. Which, well, is awesome.

It’s also interesting to me that in one movie it was the hero who was the Monstrous Saint, and the other the villain. Yet both worked for me (and, well, lots of other people, apparently; like a lot of good movies Serenity tanked in theaters and rocked in DVD.) I guess I’d say in one case the Monstrous Saint fought against oppressors, in the other for them. Makes a difference to me.

(And please don’t take that to mean I believe ends justify means; short form, I don’t believe V did that much that was wrong. The closest I’d call to that was his treatment of Evey – and on watching it again I realized he had a colorable reason to believe she’d consented in advance.)

For that matter please don’t let my enthusiasm for a great screen bad guy imply distaste for the good guys, especially Captain Mal and his own spiky brand of integrity. Nor for the extremely personable Nathan Fillion, whom I first really saw perform in the underappreciated horror/comedy classic Slither, wherein he plays a similar character. And gets to utter one of the great lines of modern cinema: “My easy-going nature is getting sorely fuckin’ tested.”

Anyway, I really enjoyed it. I look forward to watching the series.

And apologies for going on so long. It’s a big reason U don’t post more frequently … this tendency to run off at the keyboard.

Advance notice on the net is unkind. Of course, fanboys can be beyond hypercritical. You knew that, I’m guessing?

On the other tentacle … it wasn’t as [...]]]> I hope – how I hope – I truly hope the new Indiana Jones movie doesn’t stink as badly as the “first” – i.e. the new – Star Wars trilogy.

Advance notice on the net is unkind. Of course, fanboys can be beyond hypercritical. You knew that, I’m guessing?

On the other tentacle … it wasn’t as if the subsequent Indy movies lived up to the first. The second lacked a plot; it couldn’t live up to its own opening sequence, which smoked, and ran rapidly downhill once the Gratuitous Kid Sidekick was introduced. The third was … deeply okay. Perhaps they didn’t bite as much cheese as Die Hard II, or any Lethal Weapon flick with a numeral. But the second wasn’t good, and the third, not great.

Still, I dare hope. Meanwhile, there’s always Iron Man.

The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, [...]]]> So I had the German Bomber Channel on for electronic wallpaper a little while ago, and they were showing their Engineering an Empire show on Rome. And I was struck by a wonderful vision. (Thud.)

The scene: a couple years in the future. I’m enrolled in a course at Syracuse University. And the tall, lean, distinguished-looking professor points to some projection or exhibit and in his characteristic deep, slightly nasal, slightly metallic voice asks, “Can anyone tell me what this is?”

And I’ll pipe up in my best Professor Hikita accent, “It’s your hand, Buckaroo!”

Enough whimsy. Okay; like that’s gonna happen.

Yesterday was a good day. Got a lot written. Annja’s current exploit’s really picking up steam, and The Dinosaur Lords are going great guns. Plus I did a lot of necessary world-building on DinoLords, which helped the writing a great deal.

The key there was that I actually wrote story, not just typed notes and drew maps, both of which I also did. I know way too well what kind of a trap that note-making thing can be: a whole novel, The War for America, wandered off into the swamps and bogged down because, in large part, I devoted so much time to writing reams of notes. That and not having an actual synopsis, but rather an idea in my head where I wanted to go. Not so good an idea. It turns out that, while I have a great gift of improvisation, I need a certain amount of structure both to activate it and to direct it usefully. Who’da thunk it? Anyway that’s why I’ve got upwards of 700 pages of novel and am not half done – and have, I judge, upwards of a million words of notes. Seriously.

(Someday I’ll go back and finish that. If events don’t overtake it first. Which is a major possibility.)

Anyway, the key is, I need the notes (and maps) to do the writing; I just can’t let them overwhelm me. And I know why that really happens: note-writing is safe. I went through a real crisis of confidence in my writing ability starting in the early 1990s – to the extent I’ve ever had confidence in it. Only in the last few years have I painstakingly been able to break down those doubts. Of course, I always have to stay vigilant lest I find myself hiding in the safe dark crevices of scribbling descriptions and backstories of characters and cultures that may never see the light of print…

On other fronts … got the north side of the yard scraped clean with my trusty scuffle hoe. Big whoop – it’s roughly 315 square feet. But it needed done, and it’s a start.

Last night it rained, pretty vigorously. That’s cool, of course – quite literally – and also a great boon to my honeysuckle, which seems (two whole days after planting) to thrive, thank you very much. Of course I also noticed some weeds front and back showing suspicious patches of green, despite my having hit them with Round-Up. I had to remind myself that’s fine, if not a Hundred Flowers, I can let a hundred new weeds poke their little heads up, for the same purpose Mao Zedong had in mind: to cut ‘em all off. AFter zapping ‘em thoroughly first to kill the roots, of course.

The rain also made it easier to pull weeds, especially big tumbleweeds, whose thick, woody roots can be a real pain to cut even with the scuffle hoe honed to near-razor sharpness. They also give it up real sweet when the ground isn’t cement. So I did some of that during breaks from writing.

I’ve gotten some good writing done today: feels good. I see from the email I’ve had a new book come into the nearby library branch – Castle, by David Macaulay. Reckon I’ll do a tad more Annja, then harness up Emma and take her for a long-delayed walk – her foot seems to’ve healed up nicely. Somewhere in there I’ll drop off some books I’m finished with and grab the new one. Then come back and write some more!

Tomorrow I suspect I need to head east to pick up some supplies. I’ll probably pack the notebook PC along and have breakfast and write some in my customary VI. I may also check out an afternoon matinee, something I ought to do a whole lot more of (there’s a lengthy list.) I want to catch Forbidden Kingdom on the big screen, although I’m dying to see Iron Man. Still, we’re talking Jet Li and Jackie Chan; and I suspect the formr’s closer the end of its string than the latter…

And, mirabile dictu, it doesn’t even involve guns!

First, mea maxima culpa for going dark here for so long. (Nothing like tossing in gratuitous Latin phrases to make you look smarter than you are. And if anybody’s smarter than I am, it sure isn’t me!) Things got on top of [...]]]> (First in an undoubtedly unending series.)

And, mirabile dictu, it doesn’t even involve guns!

First, mea maxima culpa for going dark here for so long. (Nothing like tossing in gratuitous Latin phrases to make you look smarter than you are. And if anybody’s smarter than I am, it sure isn’t me!) Things got on top of me. I’ll try not to let it happen again.

Anyway, one thing that bugs me in movies is when the elevator cable breaks, and the cage falls like an anvil toward Certain Doom. Oh, if only anyone had ever thought to invent an automatic safety brake!

Someone did. Elisha Otis. In 1853.

It’s a fairly simple system, which causes the rollers to lock up if the thing goes too fast. Because it’s mechanically simple it’s highly reliable. It’s not perfect, but what is?

Of course some people, even certain good friends of mine (who, granted, probably never read this blog) will rush in and say, Well, it’s for dramatic effect! Duh! Sorry, enablers; it’s sloppy writing. You can always bother to do it right. If by nothing more than a three-second scene of the rollers catching – and then failing. Even mysteriously. Oh my! Suspense! And without imbecility!

Perhaps oddly, one flick I know that got it right was Speed. Now, I like Speed. (Okay, I know that’s a risky statement to make in our happy police state. To belabor what’s obvious to all but informers and ambitious prosecutors, I mean the movie. As far as stimulants go, caffeine is just all right with me. And then some.)

In general I like Ted, I mean Keanu, as an action star: cope. Die Hard on a Bus was one of your better takes on our definitive modern action flick: not quite as good as Die Hard on a Boat (Under Siege), nor even Die Hard on a Train (Under Siege 2: Dark Territory.) But still pretty good – better than any other Die Hard until the most recent – in spite of that Amazing Flying Bus Sequence. Which as utter goofiness goes was at least highly entertaining. And despite the fact that they enjoyed ending the movie so much they went and did it a second time, to the tune of twenty minutes’ worth.

Anyway, the elevator bit: some good guys (LAPD SWAT buddies Keanu and Jeff Daniels, if I recall correctly – and whoa, only in speaking of fantasy am I ever likely to use the phrases “good guys” and “LAPD SWAT” in the same sentence) were in an elevator. Mad Bomber Dennis Hopper blows the cables with a charge he’s foresightfully placed. The cage falls – about four feet. Then the safety brakes lock up.

And what do you know? Our Evial Villain, who’s actually read a book, rigged them too. Crack-crack! (Again: not a drug reference.) And now our elevator can, in good conscience, plummet toward destruction.

That’s more like it. A minor touch – but it adds not only that element of realism (not to mention “the writer actually gave a fuck”-ism) but adds to the character and menace of the bad guy. He’s meticulous. And he does his research. How do you beat a guy like that?

(It’s been a while since I’ve seen this, as you can probably tell. But I’m pretty sure it involved a fistfight. Heavy sigh. Ah, well: nothing’s perfect. Anyway, if Speed was, I’d be pumping it as the Definitive Modern Action flick, wouldn’t I?)