the tulgey maze

The Upright Gorilla - Zombie Kong

2012-02-12T21:12:00.000-06:00

Book of the Dead Press' Zombie Kong Anthology is now available, features my short story "The Upright Gorilla" amongst many other great tales. Very excited about this, check it out.

The ebook for Arcadian Gates is delayed slightly by some of the details of getting the art and layout correct, but it should be ready to launch soon. Otherwise, work on the new novel is going just great, and will shipping "The Reaches" and "Body Time" out to the usual markets very soon.

Look for film essays on The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Apollo 19, and others too.

Noel Coward

2012-01-24T21:11:00.002-06:00

The god of synchronicity is telling me to discover Noel Coward. Who is this man, and why does he haunt my days?

Success

2012-01-22T20:58:00.001-06:00

With the publishing worldin total tumult and eBook sales challenging print sales, with self-pubbedauthors beating out “established” authors for big paychecks, and with agents ordistributors publishing books themselves it is no wonder that many are reconsideringwhat it means to be a successful author. I’ve certainly spent a few whiskyhours thinking about what I want to do and when I will know I’ve gotten there.

I suppose I am lucky thatI know a few authors who have found success in the traditional world ofpublishing. On the one hand, it makes that seem all the more possible andaccessible. On the other, it affords me a nut and bolts view of something thatwould otherwise be buried in the mists of rumor and firewall. Their successinspires me, but for a time, the success of my peers who I didn’t know orsupport would always inflict a kind of wound. If they were as good as me, thanI wondered why it wasn’t me. If they weren’t as good a writer as I (in myobjective opinion), I had to wonder how it happened to them at all, and whatthat said about the industry in total. Every writer I know has picked up a bookand wondered how it ever got past the slush pile. This all can lead to a bitternessthat does not help inspire the openness needed to be creative. I can’t say I aminnocent of this; I’ve felt it all was pointlessness.

My day job allows me tosee behind-the-scenes of many industries. I’ve had an access to the world ofrock and roll that I would never have if left to my own social devices. I’veseen big name bands, interviewed local bands and seen the rise and fall ofboth. I’ve met people I idolized in my youth, long after platinum status leftthem. For the most part, I was struck by how content they were, maybe peaceful.They’ve the seen the top of the rock and roll lifestyle and have lived to seebeyond it. I suppose, at some time in my life, I would have thought this wassettling for less.

At the same time, I can’tsee much appeal in being a writer with superstar status like Stephen King orJ.K. Rowling. Sure, there’s the money, but it seems the money comes withsubstantial limitations. The machine has to feed itself, and I don’t know if Ihave the inner consistency to keep it running. I wonder, I dabble, and Iexperiment. I have a hard time seeing myself in relation to other writersaround me, not sure if it is narcissism, but I just don’t think about theoutside world too much when I am writing. That’s the best part, as far as I cantell; the ability to create without the necessityof appeasing others.

I was out on a road trip,my day job makes me travel quite a bit and thankfully the state is small enoughthat it is not too long before there is some touch of wilderness within sight.The road is much less tedious when it isn’t fast food developments and parkinglots passing by the window. One of the mainstream writers that has made asuccessful foray into genre inspired work, probably GlenDuncan, was being interviewed by a host, most likely KerriMiller, that clearly had little respect for the genre. I listened withgritted teeth, probably out of some kind of masochism, and just got madder andmadder at the state of literature. I have a hard time understanding how asuccessful book like The LastWerewolf will help my own goals and work.

As it happened, I was distractedby a forest outside of the window. It’s possible that Rush was on the radiowhen I switched stations, possibly it was “The Trees”, but that could just bemy overactive imagination coloring memory. Anyway, I got to wondering how myexperience squared with the natural order of a forest. Did I want to be thetallest tree? Did I want to be among the tallest trees? Did I want to all theother trees to wither and die so that I could stand-alone? The pressure ofmodern life felt like it was pushing me to want the other trees to fail so thatI could grow, but that just doesn’t work in a forest. A forest needs thecollective strength of the ecosystem to work, to thrive and to grow. A singletree is a lonely thing, perhaps a symbol of strength, but most likely adesperate and vulnerable way to live. You just can’t live if you remove all theother trees around you.

So, it is with writing.The market is what it is, but as a writer concerned with craft, there is noreason to wish for others to do poorly or fail. There is no relevance, becauseif I am taking the task seriously, I have enough on my hands to tell my storiesthe way I have to tell them. No one else can do that or take that. Gettingupset by the success of my peers has no good end, it won’t make my writingbetter and it won’t bring me any closer to whatever golden ring I imagine maybe out there.

I have experienced manychanges over the last two years, mostly fuelled by my own health challenges.I’ve met the challenges well, but they have forced a hard and sober look at mylife and my art. The fact is that I am most likely much closer to the gravethan I should be, and I need to look seriously at what I can do with my time asa writer. I can’t honestly say I want to spend the time I have worrying andfretting about other writers, about the market, or about which critics mayenjoy my point-of-view. I need to spend the time writing the best stories I cancraft with the tools I have. No one else can help or harm that.

There is the success, I think.I have to understand that I am, at best, a tree among many others. Some aretaller, some are shorter, but I must grow as I can. I must reach toward theopen air, keep my branches clear of inhabited space, and be proud to standamongst such a great and ancient forest.

Critique

2012-01-21T01:41:00.000-06:00

I participate in a fair amount of writing workshops, it's good for my own writing to focus my critical thoughts and the critiques I get help me understand what is getting through and what is getting lost on the reader. I wrote the following critique for one of these groups, and I think much of it applies to writing in general, but more specifically problems that those of us who try to create distorted realities face in the creation of our fictions.

I've removed any indicators of who the story was written by or what the story is about in particular. I'm posting this because, in retrospect, I may have been discussing some of my own writing.

----------------------------

One of the more notable things of this piece is theimagination it contains. You manage to manifest worlds large and small withinwhat is essentially one location. I think you also have a firm grasp on whoyour character is, what he feels and what he wants. Within the turns of text,there is a great deal of poetry and perhaps, a paranoiac-critical method.During the story, I was reaching to imagine it as illustrated by Moebius or Brom.

However, I am not sure if this is a story. I expect there issomething experimental at work here, fantasy by way of Joyce, so I am not sureto which extent traditional critical methods will apply to what you seek toaccomplish. More notes on this point would have been appreciated.

I should point out that there is no plot to speak of, and ifthere is, I couldn’t see it through the linguistic acrobatics. Essentially, thestory concerns who decides torevolt and escape, perhaps through self-destruction. He’s see the worldreflected in the strange things which occupy his room.Perhaps he is merely an extremely delusional fellow in a high-rise apartment,the style does not remove this possibility.

So, this is an extended inner monologue by a very unreliablenarrator. Much of the language work is consistent with a being whose point ofview isn’t entirely consistent, but even so, there are a few leapswhich go far beyond what I’d think this character would think. Wordchoices, extended connections; some of these feel to me like the authorintruding too far into the world of the narrator, which seems completely atodds with what you are trying to do here. You want the reader to surrender tothe streams of this being’s consciousness, and not question it.

The temptation is to render the world around him as indistinctand vague as his perception, but the risk you run in this is confusing thereader beyond their willingness to play along. I continued reading for thepurpose of this crit and because I value this sort ofexperimentation, but may not have completed it in another context.

To solve this, perhaps you could pull back the camera alittle bit. Somehow let us see his world without him, let us see the room as wemight see it if we walked inside. I think I have a handle on the immediateconfines, but I have no idea what the world outside looks like. There aresuggestions, but these are so drenched in poetry that I cannot be confident ofthe objective truth.

More fundamentally, why should I care what happens to him?He strikes me as unlikeable, so why would I stay engaged with him. There needsto be something compelling to make me care about what happens to .What does a stranger to this world have to gain from engaging with it?

Obviously, you will take what you will from my comments. AsI said, I was in the dark as to your intentions somuch of this may be of little use to you. Remember that if I were to read thisin a magazine I would also be without your intent or goals for the writing.

Body

2012-01-07T12:39:00.001-06:00

The thing about bodies; you can't live with them, can't live without them.

To Michele Bachmann, with Regrets

2012-01-04T22:44:00.001-06:00

Dear Michele,

There’s no point in beinganything less than blunt. You’re a strong, iron, lady. You say so yourself.Anyway, the reason I am writing to you is let you know just how disappointed weall are in you. Because we are sodisappointed, we feel like we should just let you in on a few things and thenmove on with our lives.

Less than a year ago, wecame to you with money and a plan. Of course, you didn’t know that we weredoing that, you just thought God or someone like that told you to run for Presidentand all of this money just showed up. That was fine,really, whatever kept you going was just peachy as we saw it. The important thing was that you got inthe race.

We gave you everything wecould. We got you the right people, got you into the right places and even gotyou on Jay Leno. Has anyone else from Central Minnesota been on Jay Leno inrecent memory? Do you think Jay Leno knows where the hell Waite Park is? We’dbe a little peeved you didn’t thank us for that, but we understand that youdidn’t even know who we are.

All we needed you to do waskeep your shit together. That was it. Talk about God, talk about socialism,talk about those evil abortioneers, but for Christ’ssake, don’t do it like some frothy-mouthed cultistfrom Nebraska. I guess the problem was that we couldn’t script every moment foryou, try as we might. We thought you were ready, but we had no idea how much ofa nutball you really are.

Don’t get us wrong, we stillwant you to be President, it’s just that no one else does. We can do a lot, butwe can’t overcome that. Maybe God will intervene, but we’re not going to holdour breath. Maybe you could? Although, I don’t think God would really want toget involved with your train wreck of a campaign. That last minute comparisonto Margaret Thatcher was just sad. WE DID NOT TELL YOU TO DO THAT.

Anyway, I am sure you areconfused by now and convinced this is some sort of joke or crazy stalkerletter. I won’t waste anymore ofyour time or ours, we’ve got Pawlenty (couldn’t yoube just a little more like him?) to tend to and we’re still trying to figureout what we are going to do with Ventura. So, here it is in plain black andwhite.

For years you’ve been embarrassingthe entire state in front of the national media at every chance you get. Peoplefrom Arkansas are laughing at how stupid we must be to elect someone like you.You are making the cheese heads look rational and composed compared to us.People say we’ve been in the cold too long and our brains are frozen. You getthe idea, right?

So, what would show them?What would get them off our backs and get you out of our state? It’s not likeyou were ever going to get voted out by the halfwits that voted you intoCongress. Maybe we were batshit crazy, but we somehow thought that if you gotelected to President you would no longer just be Minnesota’s lunatic butAmerica’s lunatic.

We were wrong. Could you do us a favor and keep talkingabout Iowa? We’d really appreciate it and after everything we’ve done for you,it’d be a nice gesture.

Sincerely,

John Nelson

The Committee to GetMichele Bachmann the Hell Out of Minnesota (By Any Means Necessary)

Young Adult

2011-12-26T14:43:00.001-06:00

Going to "Young Adult" with the expectation of comedy is like going to "Drive" thinking you're going to see a car smash-up film. I'd like to see more of this kind of subversion.

Genre, Literature, and Peep Show

2011-12-13T00:51:00.000-06:00

According to some of the people that pontificate and predict, dystopia is hot right now. Which is more or less good news for the release of Arcadian Gates next month. This is like zombies, though, and there has to be much more to a story than the genre style. The weakest dystopic stories are the ones that rely to heavily on the environment around the narrative rather the nuances of story. Anyway, as they often do, Io9 has a decent list of American dystopias which are both famous and not so famous.

I'm tempted to say I am getting bored with the "genre vs. mainstream" debate which sprawls across genre communities and to the New York Times, NPR and beyond. That'd be a lie, though. I eat the stuff up, mostly because my own work lies somewhere in between and because it is also a little silly. Author Daniel Abraham has a sly piece up at SF Signal called "A Private Letter from Genre to Literature". The piece smartly creates a metaphorical relationship which is an illicit affair rather than the typical enmity that is often brought into the debate.

Somewhat related, I recognized from the start the classical and political overtones of the Game of Thrones adaptation on HBO. David Chandler has written a short piece which offers a quick analysis of what sets this kind of fantasy apart from other kinds of sword and sorcery storytelling. You can read "A Game of Sub-Genres" here. It's worlds away from The Hero's Journey, for sure.

I finished "Endangered Species", a collection of short stories written by Gene Wolfe. Of course, the writing is substantial, even if some of the stories are a little thin and demonstrate a kind of cleverness that may be best left in the history of science-fiction writing. The depth of real ideas is engrossing and the bulk of the stories demonstrate how story can serve both entertainment and concept. Perhaps what is most remarkable is his ability to create characters who serve their own needs rather than arbitrary needs of plot.

My viewing habits have circled mostly around a pair of British comedies. "Black Books" and "Peep Show". Peep Show is a ridiculous dive into the absurdities of slacker life in England, and though it is nearly ten years old (and still running) the humor feels current and fresh. "Black Books" had a shorter run, only making it from 2000-2004, but the misadventures of Bernard Black, its misanthropic bookshop owner, feels particularly poignant in the current publishing climate. Wouldn't it be wonderful if we still had bookshops owned by cranky individuals and not corporate committees?

I've gotten a good amount of cinema in too, but mostly those will either wind up in Shot/Countershot or in the tweets available on my Twitter feed.

Link test

2011-12-03T11:05:00.001-06:00

H97YRQ3892CU

Shot/Countershot: Drive & Margin Call

2011-11-19T23:41:00.001-06:00

Possible Worlds

There’s an understanding in the film business thathard economic times produce great escapist movies. Whether these films arelarge-scale musicals, fantasy horror films (Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.), oroverblown comedy, the film-going public looks for respite in the cinema that theycan’t find in real life. In 2011, as America grinds its way out of therecession, like a car stuck in snow drift, just one item of evidence for thispattern continuing is pop culture’s persistent interest in zombies.

There is another concurrent pattern in filmmaking.While the mainstream culture immerses itself in escape, the more independent-mindedfilmmakers dive into darkness and mine it for meaning or understanding. Thepost-war era gave us film noir and nouvelle vogue, the tough times of theseventies gave us the hard-nosed filmmaking of Scorsese, Coppola and Peckinpah,and the uncertainty of the late eighties gave birth to the sincere independent filmthat changed the industry for the next decade.

So, with the recession possibly coming to an end, with America’s longest wars possibly ceasing, and an electoral fieldfilled with blatant charlatans, neo-fascists and vapid opportunists, it comesas no surprise that several films released in the last year can trace theirorigins to all of these distinctive periods of motion picture history.

The getaway

Drive (2011) suggests an obvious comparison to Taxi Driver (1976). Driver (Ryan Gosling), a taciturn driver who prowls dark urban streets while making someextra cash as a very good “wheel man”, has a raging undercurrent of violencewhich isn’t well hidden.

Things get complicated.

"I don't carry a gun, I drive."

However, this is as far as the connections to TravisBickle (Robert De Niro) can go. The fundamental questions of character betweenthe men are very different. Bickle is a man in search of a purpose; Driver is aman who is trapped in the role he has fallen into.

Shannon pitches the business idea.

The narrative focus is very different as well. Taxi Driver is unambiguously TravisBickle’s story, and while the world of Driveorbits around Driver, there are many stories happening at once, stories whichhappen to collide like many of the classic neo-noir films of the nineties. Thesedivergent and convergent plots play a game with the viewer, presenting themwith scene after scene that suggest the film might not be the movie you thoughtit was a few scenes before. Not so much plottwists as genre twists. When BernieRose (Albert Brooks) steps into the film as Shannon’s (Bryan Cranston) silentpartner, the film acquires a Goodfellasvibe. Shannon’s scheme to enter Driver in the world of professional auto racinghas echoes in noir stories about boxers who become entangled in nefariousaffairs. Pulp Fiction (1994) sharesthe same pedigree.

"It's bad luck."

For all the narrative teases contained in the film,the only rule you really need to know is that Driver is in a bad spot. “It’sbad luck,” Bernie Rose says to Shannon as he confronts him about Driver’swhereabouts. Everything in this story is conspiring against Driver. The onlytime he is in control is when he is behind the wheel. He applies this “swim ordie” attitude to his problems, meeting each threat in a simple, direct manner.Driver doesn’t really solve problems, he smashes through them like a movie setbarricade.

You can't have an eighties action movie without strippers.

Shortly after Drivewas released in theaters, Margin Call(2011) opened in wide release. The film arrived with rave reviews and anall-star ensemble cast, both of which it needed to get crowds interested in afeature film about the financial meltdown. MarginCall is notable for how intensely it presents the human results ofabstractions like statistics and risk, this subtext of tragedy poundsunderneath every scene like a road-shaking bass rhythm. This is an apocalypticfilm without zombies, nukes or plagues, and it is terrifying.

Sam (Kevin Spacey) and Jared (Simon Baker) consider the next move.

Peter Sullivan (Zachary Quinto) is a young turk ina high-power investment firm. He’s smart, hard working, and pretty much aclean-cut guy. He’s even a little geeky, so when a wave of layoffs sweepsthrough his office and compels Peter’s unexpectedly former boss Eric Dale(Stanley Tucci) to hand-off a “very important” flash drive to him, he’s alittle breathless. Once he actually figures out the ominous data on the drive,he becomes the center of full-scale corporate red alert.

Meeting at midnight.

Peter is much like Driver in that he is also caughtup in a cluster of events that he had no knowing role in creating. UnlikeDriver, there is very little he can do to resolve the situation. Peter mustserve the many powers tugging at him, and also salvage his job and career. Thisfourteen-hour trip through a blue and grey-suited Scylla and Charybdisultimately, if temporarily, improves his career, but leaves him in a moremorally clouded position than Driver.

Casualty.

Driver’s wave of violence is redemptive;in the end he saves two innocent lives and also extricates himself from thecriminal forces that surround him. Conversely, Peter’s survival means he ismore deeply entrenched with the dubious financial demi-gods around him.

The wonderkids.

Both films bring the viewer into a dreadfulvacancy, detachment or desolation where there is no guiding light, no place torest, and no sense of a greater world outside the spiritual slums thecharacters occupy. Driver’s world is the work-a-day dusty orange streets andlong sodium vapor shadows of nighttime Los Angeles, and Peter’s world is scoresof floors above street level. Rather than some lofty palace, Peter’s office ismore like a fish bowl perched on a thin column; Peter swims in a world of coldblues, LCD glow, and too-crisp whites.

The fishbowl.

Both Driveand Margin Call share a deliberatepace of editing and photography. For the most part, both films are content tostay back in a wider shot and let the scene unfold within that frame. In Drive, the characters are often pushedso far to the edge of the frame that it is takes some time to take in theentirety of the image. The few times the camera moves any closer than a closemedium-shot, it is to indicate a precise detail (slit wrists or financial data), extreme action, or a moment of inner decision (Driver’s contemplation before the onslaught andPeter’s understanding of Eric Bell’s work).

Driver sees one way out.

There is a similar restraint in theediting, as each cut lingers almost to the point of discomfort (an effect thatRefn’s film Valhalla Rising exemplifies)and changes only when absolutely necessary. Both films effectively dwell in themoments after moments, the naked liminal time that traditional editing wouldcut away.

Sarah Roberts (Demi Moore) plans the rest of her life.

The emotional range of the films is limited too; despite all of the turmoil, violence, and fear in both films thereis never an eruption of pure emotion, as if this kind of feeling has beencompartmentalized outside of the crisis the film deals with. Even Irene’s(Carey Mulligan) breakdown at Driver after he reveals his connection toStandard’s (Oscar Isaac) murder is muted by his distance and stoicism. Thishardness permeates both films, for despite Peter’s rookie status, he’s learningfast about the rules of his particular game. He’s always running calculations(not unlike the Spock he played in Star Trek (2009), instead of feeling, and this objectivity gives him the edge inthe collapse.

The numbers don't lie.

Sonically, the films have their differences. Driveis saturated with visual references to eighties movies such as To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), and thisaesthetic permeates the soundtrack as well. The majority of the film movesalong to an often asynchronous synthesizer and drum pop sound that could belifted from Miami Vice or Beverly Hills Cop (1984). College's song "Real Hero" is used a motif to reinforce Driver’s inner journey(Quite effectively, too, as the ironic implications of “real human being” inthe beginning of the film evolve to sincerity by the end). Margin Call, incontrast, is sonically sparse. There’s music in the first act to get thingsmoving, but with the exception of a few orchestral bursts, it is closer to TrentReznor’s work for The Social Network(2010). Once the second act starts, all music is left behind, this adds power tothe empty pauses of conversation and drone of office white noise. Music returnsfor the denouement, a signal the immediate crisis is over.

Behind the camera, both films share similarhistories as well. Zachary Quinto produced MarginCall and got the ball rolling, Ryan Gosling didn’t produce but he did haveapproval over director once he was attached to the project (After Hugh Jackmanwasn’t). Both films share relatively low-budget status, though Margin Call’s budget was about a fourthof Drive’s $13 million dollar cost.Neither of these are the $30 Million “independent films” which have changed,for the worse, the entire genre.

Who's expendable?

Drive and MarginCall are certainly not twins or siblings of any sort, but they are intandem. The grime of Drive is the resultof the acumen on display in Margin Call.Here’s where the trickle-down theory really works its magic; the shadowy ethicsof wall street sharks settle as a razor blade opening a vein in a dirty garagein Los Angeles.

Zach and Will prepare for the fire sale.

Blanche (Christina Hendricks) and Driver watch the heist go south.

Yet, the personal trajectories of the individuals are just theopposite. The ensemble of Margin Call,with the exception of a few, is doing everything they can to surviveindividually and perhaps protect the company along the way. They surrendercommon good to save their own skins; comfortable that anyone would do the samein their situation. Meanwhile, down in the gutter, Driver is sacrificing hislife for something larger than pragmatism.

Nino asks Shannon how his legs are healing.
For all the exploration of lost hope, failed ethicsand questionable choices, the films also share a willingness to suspend totaljudgment of its players. Each person in Drivehas their own personal code, and within the world of Margin Call, their own well-formed philosophies justify theiractions.

"When did you start getting so soft?" asks John Tuld (Jeremy Irons).

Drive’s antagonists are slightly less cerebral, although Bernie offersan explanation for how he fell from sleazy producer to affiliate of localmobster Nino (Ron Perlman). So, while Driveclearly draws a visual and story connection to the duplicity of film noir andneo-noir, Margin Call has much incommon with the existential uncertainty of that kind of filmmaking. In it’s own way, Margin Call asks the same question as a noir; what is “good” in such a fallen and corrupted world?

Empires.

The kiss.

Of course, these films are gems in a yearof disappointing films, a year where even the would-be blockbuster escapist filmsfell far short of the high standards of the past. However, these two filmsbravely “own” the emotions of the second decade of the 21^st century.Like Peter and Driver, audiences are caught in a whirlwind mostly caused byforces beyond their control. The best response, or maybe the only response, isa determination to see the end of the ordeal. Between the two films we can finda way of seeing the collapse around us, and while neither film tells us how itall ends, they point the way to a sense of the possible endings, the possiblefutures, which are so terribly far from view.

Something is dying.

- T.A. Wardrope, 11.20.11

2011-10-30T18:43:00.001-05:00

Please vote for my short film. Voting ends Midnight, October 31st!

On Location

2011-09-12T09:45:00.002-05:00

Currently in pre-production mode for the short film. Be back in a couple of weeks!

Weird Tales, Warren Ellis and Military Science-Fiction

2011-08-30T22:26:00.002-05:00

So, I suppose the big news is the changes in the masthead of Weird Tales. I don't have a particular opinion myself, but there's no shortage of other opinions out there. Warren Ellis is apprehensive. Jason Sanford is less reserved in expressing his concerns. Personally, Cthulu is pretty hot right now, so I can't fault someone for wanting to follow that trend, but I can doubt if it is a good idea or at least a laudable pursuit.

Chuck Wendig does it again. This time about social media.

I enjoyed what T.C. McCarthy has to say about "Military SF". I have many military themes in my own SF work, and I have to shout out an amen to his emphasis on experience versus technical details.

Another round in the great ebook debate. Timothy Geigner thinks it will hurt authors in the long run.

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So, these little posts aren't meant in anyway to be some breaking news service. I read all the up-to-the-minute posts that other sites do much better. My goal is to distill the ones that have a bearing on my own work or the aesthetics which I pursue. Partly this serves as an exercise for my own writing, but it also serves as a guide to discovering the obscure niches of my reader.

In other news, expect Arcadian Park as a serialized ebook in the very near future!

Vandermeer, Poe, George R.R. Martin & Fairy Tales

2011-08-21T21:20:00.000-05:00

Jeff Vandermeer explains why reading Poe has infectious effects.

Raz Greenberg unearths George R.R. Martin's early TV work. Danial Polanksy wonders where all the poor people are in high fantasy.

U of MN Professor Jack Zipes has some observations about the current state of fairy tales.

John H. Stevens picks apart what "suspension of disbelief" actually means.

Now on Twitter

2011-08-18T14:36:00.001-05:00

I've got a Twitter feed, just for people who don't like to read!

George R.R. Martin, Cronenberg and The Dukes of Hazzard

2011-08-14T11:59:00.000-05:00

SFGateway is collecting an archive of classic pulp stories.

Dave McGinn has a little bit of an asinine review of Another Earth. He claims it's not science fiction because it has some substance. Nick Mamatas has some much more smart things to say about Heinlein. J.G. Ballard's relics are on display in England, Chris Hall gets a close-up look.

John H. Stevens sounds off on the history of "genre" and what it all means, if anything. At the New York Times, David Orr takes a long look at Game of Thrones in print and screen. I doubt I'll ever read the books, but I have gotten sucked into the show. It's like Battlestar Galactica with horses.

Chuck Wendig has another entry in his writing advice. "25 Ways to Make Exposition Your Bitch" has a few things I had never thought of. I hope he teaches writing somewhere, his "voice" could be a welcome antidote to MFA-itis. Sarah Avery is a writing teacher, and explains why she assigns the worst story "ever written" to her students.

Epic cool or epic fail is yet to be seen, but it looks real good on paper. Cronenberg is shooting a Jonathan Lethem book.

Fascinating and wonderful, in an unexpected way. Joe Nickell explains how his research for Skeptical Inquirer led him to see a pattern of mythology building at work. I still believe in Bigfoot and LGMs.

How to really, really not look like a spy.

Dukes of Hazzard was a Star Wars ripoff.

Shot/Countershot: Insidious and Pigeons from Hell

2011-08-11T23:21:00.000-05:00

SPOILER ALERT

Shot/Countershot: Insidious and Pigeons from Hell

Haunted house movies have a long and uneven history. Ever since Cecil B Demille's The Ghost Breaker (1914) filmmakers have tried to capture the fear this real-world phenomon inspires. Unlike vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night, the haunted house film, at its best, plays upon a collective belief in the possibility of haunted houses. Unlucky few have seen a serial killer, been traumatized by backwoods cannibals, but everyone remembers the creepy house on the corner.

Even so, there's something elusive about catching the atmosphere that a haunting creates. Most haunted house films fall far short, relying on cheap closet-jumpers that mimic a carnival fun house rather than building the all-pervasive mood of a haunting. Maybe it is because film is a visual medium, and ghost stories often rely on what cannot be seen or known. Maybe, as in the case of Poltergeist(1982), it is best if some spirits lend their energies to the cast and crew.

Filmmaker James Wan did the right thing by stepping away from the shock horror of the Saw machine he created and into a more complex kind of film like Insidious (2010). Saw was effective gag-based filmmaking, but it didn't do much to sustain a mood or create sensations beyond the fear of physical trauma. Furthermore, the morality tales and artifice of Jigsaw's exploits never really reached any kind of convincing plausibility. Real horror films need to convince you they could be real, true stories. Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity, and notably The Last Exorcism use the device of documentary to sell the scares. Films like Ghost Story, Poltergeist, and The Changeling use the mundane facts of contemporary life to show just how real their stories are.

In the first hour of Insidious, James Wan demonstrates he's watched all of these films and learned a few lessons. The Lamberts have moved into a new house, they've got a new baby and Josh Lambert (Patrick Wilson) has got some things going for him at the office. If audience members can't all relate to this, they certainly know people like this. The Lambert's new home isn't a stock Hollywood suburban mansion, either, it looks like a real house that a family like this might actually own. Looks a lot like the Paranormal Activity house, for that matter.

Perhaps the best part of this first act is the way the film balances the scares that arrive as expected and the ones that are genuine surprises. Ghostly figures running through the house? Yes, we get those. Doors opening and closing by themselves? Yep, get that one down. Then, just when you think you've seen all of this before, the ghosts crank it up and actually reach out and touch Renai (Rose Byrne) in an unambiguous way. Then, it gets worse, until the Lamberts are driven out of the house. Moving out is a pretty simple solution to the haunted house problem, one that many real world victims opt for.

Personally, I've wondered about what happens when the ghost decides to haunt you and not your house. Seems like this could be a pretty easy thing for a malevolent supernatural entity to do. As the Lamberts settle into the new house, it is not long before Renai has more encounters with whatever it is that torments them. She's at wits end, and implores Josh to reach out for help. Under the influence of Josh's mother Lorraine (Barbara Hershey), he relents and invites Elise (Lin Shaye), a psychic with a team of ghost hunters, to help unearth the spirits. Unfortunately, as she tries to bust the ghosts, her long-winded explanations of The Further (a laudable but lackluster attempt at an original afterlife) drive off the tension and terror the film had developed for the previous hour. I can't see how this could be a film by committee, as it was written with Wan's longtime collaborator Leigh Whannell, but the second half feels as if it was another film's second half tacked on to this first half.

Robert E. Howard's short story "Pigeons from Hell", dating back to a 1938 issue of Weird Tales, is a more traditional kind of haunted house story. There are a few graphic novel versions, but the only filmed interpretation was one of the final episodes of the Thriller TV series. In the episode, as in the story, the two Branner brothers stumble upon a deserted plantation mansion after their car breaks down. There are a lot of pigeons around. They decide to spend the night. Johnny Branner is mysteriously murdered as he explores the upper part of the house. The other brother flees, makes his way to Sherrif Buckner (Crahan Denton) and has to convince him of his innocence and of the truth of his crazy sounding story. The pigeons have disappeared.

The old house is a typical Hollywood haunted house. It's dark and gothic, there are plenty of cobwebs and a creepy grand staircase. Much like Insidious, we don't know what is happening in the house, just that it's uncanny. As the sheriff leads Timothy Branner (Brandon De Wilde) around the house, enough unusual things happen that he starts to believe Timothy's ghost story. Sherrif Buckner reveals what he knows about the abandoned mansion's sordid, if not supernatural, history.

As Sherrif Buckner tells it, the Blassenville plantation was owned by a trio of sisters who became increasingly brutal to their servants the further they fell from past Southern glory. At the nadir, the women fled the area and left the mansion to rot in the swamp. Jacob Blount, a former servant, is the only surviving person who remembers the house's downfall. Naturally, the Sherrif and Timothy seek him out.

Much like Elise in Insidious, Jacob knows a lot more about the supernatural than either Timothy or Sherrif Buckner. He's not entirely coherent, but he makes it clear that someone in the Blassenville house was participating in voodoo rites. Jacob is pretty sure the ghostly pigeons at the house are the hell-bent victims of Blassenville cruelty. He mentions "zuvembies", a female zombie, before he admits he fears a curse that would befall him if he ever spoke of the zuvembie. As he tends the fire, a snake reaches out of the fire and fatally bites him.

In the final minutes of the episode, they return to the house to confront the mystery. They uncover the zuvembie, and the corpses of the three sisters locked away in the attic.

Fortunately for Timothy and Sherrif Buckner, a simple lead bullet is all it takes to down a zuvembie. No magic incantations, no astral warfare or no religious intervention are needed.

Unlike Pigeons from Hell, Insidious spent nearly half of its running time with the protagonists doing battle with the creatures from the Further. With Elise as their confident guide, the mystery of the paranormal surrenders to a simple otherworldly adventure. An otherworld that looks a great deal like a Saw set.

Both films perhaps spend too much time explaining their supernatural elements, but Insidious dispels this mystery far too soon. Even in Poltergeist, a film which Insidious resembles the most, the uncertainty is sustained to the final moments of the film. As a result, the Freelings survive their encounter with the other side, but they are shaken and slightly less than victorious. The heroes of Ghost Story and The Changeling fare about the same.

Like most contemporary horror films, Insidious ends on a "surprise" down note of another possession in the family. This is supposed to be a final shock, but after all the shenanigans of the forty minutes before it, it only seems like a laughable trick.

On a technical level, the fifty years between the projects is clear to see. Pigeons from Hell is burdended by serious overacting and Timothy could very well be a lost member of the Cleaver family. Insidious offers good performances all around, the talents sell the first hour well, but again, they can't do much with the overload of the second half. Josh Lambert's easy acceptence of the other side, once he's there, does more to destroy the film's credibility than much else. Doesn't he know he is in the land of the dead? Even demi-god Greek heroes were afraid of Hades.

The soundtracks of both films use music in the usual supporting role, although Jerry Goldsmith's score for Pigeons from Hell is often as overwrought as the performances. There are a few moments where the soundtrack of Insidious threatens to break the fragile spell of suspense by being too present, but once the film crosses over the hour mark, it really doesn't matter.

Shot by David M. Brewer, Insidious gets alot of mileage out of a wide-angle lens. Exteriors are expansive, offering a bit of Kubrick's The Shining, and as the camera moves in on Renai, it creates a distortion which highlights her fragile state. Precise composition is a requirement of an effective horror movie, and Insidious deftly places the camera in the best place to mislead or shock the viewer. (In the first hour, anyway).

Pigeons from Hell was shot by Lionel Lindon, (The Munsters, Alfred Hitchcock Hour and Night Gallery), who made the most out of his television 4:3 frame and limited lighting resources. While the haunted interiors are well designed and lit by the customary expressionism-and-noir high key lighting, the exteriors of the house and the swamp around are a real highlight of atmosphere and black and white television cinematography. There are very few visual tricks at play, as the filmmakers let the simple presentation of a creepy story do most of the work for them.

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing for art of any kind. Looking backwards is great for research but not usually for inspiration or modeling. However, in between these two stories, you get the sense of "not making them like they used to" and perhaps the modern Insidious filmmakers had too many toys, too many tricks and made things too complicated. They knew how to start a ghost story, but lacked the insight to finish one.

Maybe it is just as well that good haunted house movies are so rare and sprinkled slightly through the history of cinema. Haunted houses themselves aren't all that common, but the odd house on that one street by your house, you remember where it is. Anyone brave enough to enter such a house will surely carry the experience with them long after they've run out the front door.

So it is with the films. The real ones will haunt you as surely as any ghost might. They will stay with you. You may shudder everytime you walk by its dusty video case, and perhaps you'll turn the face away. Like the ghosts themselves, these rare films call out, try to reach us and show the huanted world that lies around, and most importantly, ahead of all of us.

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Shot/Countershot is a monthly film commentary series.

Link Update 7.31.2011

2011-08-02T23:11:00.000-05:00

More info flying around the blogosphere about the hot topic of self and e-publishing. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has another good blog on the subject. She talks about things indies should watch out for in the publishing world, not re-inventing the wheel, etc. Similarly, Jamie Rubin opines about a few things self-publishers should do in order to stand a chance in the market. Chuck Wendig has some smart things to say about writing life. First off, he suggests we need more writer rock stars. (Though we need fewer rock stars who fashion themselves writers.) I couldn't agree more. He's also got a few writing tips, presented in his own inimitable way, about how you can improve your writing.

Here's another smart article about "The Jewel Hinged Jaw". John Stevens breaks it down for the uninitiated.

There are few things about mainstream novels that bug me more than the constant parade of stock phrases and cliches which pass as writing. The NYTimes has got an article about a computer that has analyzed just that.

News of the government's attempts to ban coverage of the train crash in China reminds me of this article. It's hard to imagine China becoming more Orwellian, but Chan Koonchung thinks it can.

You know you've wondered about it. I know I have. Cracked.com has a list of a few technologies noticably absent in famous science fiction films.

The Atlantic wonders where all the trippy space colonies have gone.

Catch-22, by way of Thomas Ligotti.

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I picked up the collection of Edgar Allan Poe's Haunt of Horror this weekend. The comic adapts and updates the classic stories, printed alongside of the originals. To my tastes, they run about 50/50, some are certainly more inspired than others. The art by Richard Corben is classic and varies in style, but the writing is uneven. I'm not keen on adding vampires to a Poe story, that's a big step backwards. Call me old-fashioned.

I also grabbed Motel of the Mysteries, written by David Macauly. You know, that guy that did those awesome books like Castle and Pyramid. This is a satire by way of cautionary tale, more at home in "Heavy Metal" than the children's section of the library. The book runs a little long, runs out of steam before the final page, but there's plenty of chuckles and sly jabs at both culture and cultural studies.

What you don't know...

2011-07-28T11:36:00.001-05:00

"Evidence" got bounced -- I forgot I had even sent that story out!

Link Update 7.24.2011

2011-07-26T19:00:00.000-05:00

Here's an interesting project that pairs newer authors with more established names. Organized by Mike Resnick and Phoenix House, it seems like a pretty cool idea.

Janice Hardy runs down a few ideas about things which may kill the "believability" of a story. Of course, this is all relative. I had someone recently critique a story that he didn't understand how a certain robot's AI could actually work. If I knew that, I would be building robots!

I enjoy the aesthetic of steampunk and I hope it sticks around awhile longer before it goes the way of zombies. Here's a smart breakdown of some the tropes and aesthetics.

Here's a panel about The Jewel-Hinged Jaw at ReaderCon. When I read this book, for the first time, about five years ago, it really stoked my interest and confidence in science fiction as a literary form.

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"The Reaches" got bounced twice. Finally got a new ending to "Mongrel" which gives that story some hope.

Link Update 7.17.11

2011-07-19T00:05:00.000-05:00

Not much on my radar the last week or so, and the stuff that did catch my eye was pretty random.

Matthew Cheney compares some old timey and Dylan recordings to Brian Francis Slattery's novel Liberation: Being the Adventures of the Slick Six After the Collapse of the United States of America.

Horror Fiction Review has a review of local author Roy C. Booth's latest offering Diaphonus.

I've not listened to it yet, but here's a podcast recording of a HWA panel on the "State of Horror". The panelists are Don D'Auria, Ellen Datlow, Rocky Wood, and Norman Prentiss.

Shimmer magazine has a blog written by Eric De Carlo that pretty well clarifies the difference between a good idea and a good story.

In another example of mainstream running into the fringe tributaries, or at least drawing more water from them, The Last Werewolf is getting some good press by book snobs of all stripes. Not sure if this is a good thing.

A hometown author takes a look at Bela Lugosi through a creative non-fiction lens.

Pretty cool news; Lansdale and IDW are teaming up to bring some horror classics to graphic novels.

Link Update 7.12.11

2011-07-11T10:42:00.000-05:00

J.G. Ballard was a pioneer in particularly current kind science fiction. He passed on a few years ago, but here's a review of his last novel. Both science fiction and horror formed as literature genres as the 18th Century passed. This is a very early story about a cyborg arm that goes on a killing spree. Andrew Barger has compiled The Best Horror Short Stories 1800-1849, stories he feels are the best horror stories from this period, too.

In publishing news, Lore magazine is once again being published. John Skipp is taking the helm at a new imprint called Raveneous Shadows. John Skipp is a legend, but I have to wonder if the breezy stories they are seeking will offer much beyond cheap thrills. Warren Ellis has lent his talents to SKV, a comic which is enhanced by reading the secret ink on the pages. This is genius! Not quite publishing, but Aurora Theater Company, a Berkely theater company is presenting an exciting version of Kafka's Metamorphosis.

Fans love lists, and the interwebs are just brimming with them these last few weeks. Most of them offer writing tips. Over at SFWA, Terry Bisson, overs no less than sixty tips for writing short fiction. Most of these are pretty solid, a few get close to dogma, but he offers a final tip that makes it all work. Sarah Einstein has compiled Heinlein, Gaiman and her own rules for revising short ficiton. She's also the judge of this year's "Identity Crisis" anthology, so, pay attention. Esther Inglis-Arkell, at io9, offers "Ten Ways to Keep a Long-Term Character Interesting". I disagree about the evil twin schtick, but most of the suggestions apply to character work in general, I think. Robert Gray, at Hellnotes, offers some grammatical tips for better writing. At Slate, Jason Zinoman is listing his ideas for "How to Fix Horror". Again, I don't agree with all of them, but his heart is in the right place. Personally, I don't think we need to "fix" anything, that implies a return to a working state and what we really need to develop and evolve.

Part of writing is rejection, and figuring out ways to deal with that is almost as important as developing your craft. i09 has also listed "10 Classic SF and Fantasy Books That Were Considered Failures". Sandra Wickham, at Inkpunks, offers some reminders of "Famously Rejected"novels.

Those Transformers movies. Wow. Great eye candy but pretty much abyssmal films in every other regard. Maybe it's always been that way, though. I think it is a pretty interesting study in how mythologies are/n't constructed. There's a wiki that collects the whole mess. Read closely, in a few hundred years people might be fighting (real) wars over this stuff.

Jackson Pollack has an intuitive understanding of physics and math. Cool that scientists are looking into this, but it's also a good example of, oh, a certain arrogance, that sometimes leads researchers to rediscover the obvious.

Another kind of virtual reality -- towns recreated thousands of miles from where they "really" are. Reminds me of a China Mieville story.

The National Library has an intense gallery of, well, Dream Anatomy.

Finally, it's been awhile since I've seen any reptoid news. Here we go!
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Shot/Countershot is still coming. The first article will be about Enter the Void and I Saw the Devil, so it's no small project. I also really want to add an addendum to Quantaum Narratives about all the failures of Sucker Punch.

The Upright Ape - I Will Shoot You In the Face!

2011-07-07T02:36:00.000-05:00

A quick update: I was wrong about "The Upright Ape". That story has, in fact, been accepted in The Zombie Kong anthology. This is awesome and I'll update as the book gets closer to publication!

I also added a ten-page download of the screenplay for "I Will Shoot You in the Face!", the ultra-violent western I wrote with Scott Williamson and Matt Clementson, to my website at toddwardrope.com. It's free, it's copyright, and if you want to see the whole thing, let us know!

On a roll: 7.4.2011

2011-07-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

Holy crap, it's been almost a month since the last post here. I've had a combination of computer woes, vacations and day job shenanigans slow things down a bit. The last two weeks have had a low yield of postables, too. Here's what I got.

There's more news of literary types getting into science fiction. Salman Rushdie has got a new TV series in the works. Zadie Smith claims she will be turning toward science fiction and fantasy in her future work.

In weird-world news, here is a look at what Disney's Haunted Mansion could've been. Kinda reminds me of the Jodorowsky Dune project. DeviantArt has a mash-up of Star Wars and Middle-Earth that is surprisingly cool. Sometime when I wasn't paying attention, the Del Toro At The Mountains of Madness got canned. Here's a pretty decent visualization of the short story. Speaking of Lovecraftian, Innsmouth Free Press has an interview with Steven Gilberts on their site. Steven is a good example of a great artist paired with good books for the small press.

Author Daryl Gregory has some things to say about anti-horror, and says some pretty cool things about regular old horror along the way.

Something to consider and inspire; the oldest religious structure (?), a tour of World War 1 memorials.

Finally, I should say that I come to Cthulu by way of Kaiju. Gojira is nothing if not an old one, in my opinion. Anyway, there's a new comic book series which is amping up fans and believers once again. Godzilla: Kingdom of Monsters. They've got a tsunami benefit book which collects all the variant covers.

As far as personal stats: "Elect" has been bounced twice, "The Reaches" has bounced once, and Mongrel is being retooled. I've got a short script in the works and Shogun Partners have taken out spec script to the market. I'm also developing a book trailer for Arcadian Park.

On a roll: 6.6.2011

2011-06-06T11:40:00.000-05:00

Summer's finally creeping into the northern wastes, and I'm chasing a few deadlines, so this week's edition is a little short, but not of content. I'm also starting a new series of regular film posts called "Shot/Countershot" which should go up sometime this week. My film posts are the most popular thing here, so I'm excited to get this one up and running.

Clive Barker is many things, but most fans might not realize he has a body of non-fiction work too. Here's a review of, The Painter, the Creature and the Father of Lies', a new collection of these illuminations. There's another text which probes into the mind of a great fantasist, Philip K. Dick, The Penultimate Truth, this is a film viewable all over the web and is highly recommended.

Lev Grossman has entered the genre/mainstream fray with a short recap of an earlier essay. Tor's got a blog which chronicles genre writing in the mainstream. The most recent post considers Kurt Vonnegut.
John Banville has been awarded the 2011 Franz Kafka Prize. He's get a series of detective novels that poke at the absurd.

Have you seen Midnight in Paris? Discuss.

On a roll: 5.29.2011

2011-05-29T16:01:00.000-05:00

2000 Ancient Tombs, a gothy-ethereal-ambient band, has a collection of music inspired by their favorite horror stories. There are some real moments of musical distinction which get the collection beyond cookie-cutter ambient drone. I get the impression their production is a little DIY, and something like this could stand a little more production value.

The turf battle between genre and literary writers has been pretty active over the last week. Rose Fox, at Publisher's Weekly, reacts to the Washington Post SFWA article. Jeff Vandermeer comments on the Iain Banks article I posted last week. New York Times has a positive review of Albert Brooks' dystopian satire 2030.

I think the essay "Lies SF Fans Tell Themselves" by Guy Lasson offers an important if not stated point in this debate. As a writer, I wear a genre label with pride, but I also aim to be slipstream. I see genre writing as writing which deals with the tropes and expectations of the form, but does not seek to comment on or attack things which are beyond the traditional concerns. Novels become "slipstream" or "literary"when they acknowledge they are trying to express something more than the fetishes of genre. Is all genre writing superficial? No, of course not. There is a fannish limitation on the genre, as much as we'd like to think otherwise. I've spent almost a decade trying to get SF con-goers to see foreign fantasy films with only limited success, I know all about this.

Ann Vandermeer offers her explanation of what a good "weird" story is. She edits the flagship publication for weird stories, so it's worth paying attention to.

A couple of tidbits in aeriel surviellance news. Here's how Area 51 used models to fool Soviet spy satellites. An eye in the sky found an entire buried city in Egypt.

Finally, here's a Star Wars related story. I think the first comment sums my feelings up nicely, but it is also interesting that Lucasfilm might make a significant investment in series production. I think the unstated concern in the article isn't about the "how" of television production, but more of the "where" and "why". What will TV look like in a year or two? Will it even exist or matter?

Word Don't Fail

2011-05-24T23:50:00.000-05:00

There's a common expression which is used to explain how verbal expression can fail to express extreme or subtle experiences. Usually it's a trite way of really saying that you just lack the skill or vocabulary to organize your words to deliver that emotion. Sometimes, though, it is quite true that an experience is so sublime that only the best poetry on the perfect day can simulate the experience.

There's an equally common expression that denies words their power. A single poignant image can convey the very meaning that it would take thousands of these words to achieve. This is ridiculous, because a few lines of haiku can be more potent than a whole picture book produced under the eye of the uninspired. However, in out culture the image has a dominance which is difficult to escape. As a filmmaker and videographer by trade, I feel naturally in tune with this (supposedly) visual culture. I know very well the power images can and should wield.

This morning I was confronted with an unexpected scene of destruction which surpassed anything else I've seen with my own eyes in person. Now, I've seen everything there is to see through mediated imagery. These images are finite, contained within a frame and easily turned away from, but being surrounded on all sides by this destruction is another thing. You are absorbed in it, consumed by it, and left scrambling for frames to put it all into. This is futile. You cannot really fathom the entirety no matter how hard you try to compartmentalize. This is something that is truly terrible.

I will say that I dug in and got the job at hand done. I got my images, and I got some that I am very proud of. Images that present both the tragedy and the heroism of the scene. They are all inadequate. These images will never capture the scent of hundreds of severed tree limbs with their fresh wood open to the air. The effect of passing through drifting clouds of diesel engine smoke and chainsaw fumes cannot be created by the best of filmmakers. A picture or film can illustrate the disorder, but it cannot infect you with the lingering sense of defeat or recreate the suspicion of mocking breezes.

A film could recreate the moment when a beleaguered resident asks you "When will the power be on?", but it would be another thing to simultaneously present the viewer with a thundering awareness of all the other questions being asked in that one sentence. Or that the first answer that comes to mind, unspoken, is "never".

If a picture fails here, if moving images assembled in a clever way fail, than what could I possibly use to express this experience? I reach for words. Broken, flawed and clumsy words which can barely bear the air that carries them. They are slight, but they are all that remains to house the experience.

Words are damaged, but not failed.

On a roll: 5.23.2011

2011-05-23T12:15:00.000-05:00

Screenwriting is a complicated discipline -- you often serve two conflicting masters, and what is good on the page isn't always good on the screen, and vice-versa. The NYT has an article about Paddy Chayefsky's process for writing Network. This is interesting for prose and screen writers alike. Similarly, George R. R. Martin has a blog up about how his screenwriting experience serves the final steps in editing his upcoming novel.

There's been a lot of activity and discussion about the pros and cons of self-publishing and ebooks. Neal Pollack makes his case for self-publishing. Luc Sante has a review of Geoff Dyer's work and career, notable because he illuminates the problem of branding for eclectic writers. Paul Dugid has a review which chronicles several books that seek to foresee the future of books. The digital age has widened democracy and it has also blurred the lines between markets and producers. Victoria Strauss shows how some legitimate agencies are cutting out publishers and taking their books to market directly.

The future keeps catching up to Arcadian Park. I swear this book is going to be obsolete before it ever makes it to the public. DNA may replace chips as the engine of computers. The Economist has an article which describes how the military is using mathematical formulas to predict enemy activity based on previous actions. On the one hand, the sounds like Academy foolishness, on the other hand, it's a lot like what goes on in my own Security Administration. Look here, we've got stealth drones, stealth insertion choppers, but also stealth support copters. In more spook news, here's a profile of Blackbird, a private company which handles much of the war on terror's tracking needs. I mention it here because their smart tracker's ability to discover their own wireless access points is very similar to some of the AI I have in my book.

Another high-tech innovation. Space beer.

Finally, this is more relevant to my film work, but I cannot say how happy I am that a science fiction blog has connected the dots between dance, surrealism and fantastic filmmaking. Bravo, Genevieve Valentine!

On a roll: 5.15.2011

2011-05-15T14:26:00.000-05:00

I stumbled across a few items which could have come directly from the world of Arcadian Park this week. Read about the "Phantom Time" hypothesis, in which it is revealed that several centuries of accepted history are complete fabrications. I am particular keen on the fabrication of artifacts mentioned in this paper, as it is the exact thing some of my characters are accused of. While it's not quite a video game, the Navy is crowd sourcing their tactical work to the world. Not too different from the L-sessions used by Security Administration in the novel. Curious? I'll be posting the first chapter to my own site very soon.

There some interesting essays out there this week. Iain Banks offers his perspective on science fiction writing which comes from outside of the community. He treads a fine line, and mentions this in his article. While someone who is not as schooled in the traditions of the genre will often make some foolish assumptions, it is just as dangerous that people who are too schooled may not see new ideas for what they are. I personally think that the "first obvious idea" rule solves a good chunk of outsider arrogance and can allow for non-genre writers to write superior science fiction, sometimes. There is also a trove of material on the Guardian site which may be of interest.

The new LA Review of Books has a review of some JG Ballard work. He's a great example of someone who was trained in the canon of genre, outgrew it, and was not entirely supported by that same community when he went in his own direction. An old story, but certainly bears repeating.

Nothing I've written about, but the cyberpunk nightmare of a private corporate army getting too powerful is as real as the internet. Where's GI Joe when you need them?

A defense against the fabrication of history.

Someone bought up John Wayne Gacy's paintings and has organized them into an exhibit that has attracted all the predictable controversy. You don't have to buy them, or go to Las Vegas, to see the art of course. Just thinking about this creates a certain icky feeling, but it is interesting. Not all artists are beautiful people, after all, so should the fact that he was a (prototypical) serial killer affect the value of the art?

io9 had a few good surrealist links. They posted a link to the awesome Salvador Dali animated short "Destino". Also a short look at a documentary about the Jodorowsky version of Dune. Wonder if Terry Gilliam will contribute an interview?

Here's a map of North American bookstores.

On a roll: 5.8.2011

2011-05-09T11:28:00.000-05:00

Try as it might, or pretend as it might, science fiction is always deeply connected to the present and the current. Consideration of the future is usually a projection of the current possibilities. This exhibit at the British Library might illustrate this.

China Mieville has some things to say about world-building. I can't say I agree completely, but they are all good things to consider. The BBC has a cool archive of old television interviews with some big literary names, genre or otherwise. Through the aid of modern technology, Tintin has been inserted into some famous movies.

Some other things of interest; Albert Brooks has written a dystopic novel, here is a cool essay about Shostakovich's complicated relationship with the Soviets. I mention it because it offers a nice glimpse into how art can interact with authoritarian systems and subvert them simultaneously. A review of the Spider-Man musical "Turn Off the Dark" has some good things to say about story structure, whether it for stage or print. Paranormal activity in Iran? This article about sorcery in Iran has gotten a lot of press in the last few days, but it's still interesting to me. Another popular item has been the stealth helicopter that the SEALs used in the Osama mission. This article, or thread of articles, posits that the same modified MH-60 helicopter may have used the new "cloaking" technology that has been mentioned in many "mainstream" outlets. (Although, I am reminded of how the speculative concept art for the first stealth fighter looked almost nothing like the actual plane.)

Here's a rendition of "All Along the Watchtower" that BSG fans may enjoy.

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In my own news, I think I've given "Elect" a final and comprehensive face-lift. The best thing about writing is that if something is bugging you or just isn't working, it is very easy to just re-do it and try another approach. I took a hard look at the story and just got rid of the things I knew weren't working. I am pretty happy with where it is at now. I sent it out the door for consideration, we'll see where it finds a home.

Beginning work on the new novel, considering follow-up shorts to Arcadian Park.

On a roll: 5.1.2011

2011-05-01T11:41:00.000-05:00

Well, it's May Day and in addition to the usual worker's consciousness, this is also a day of certain pagan overtones. The author of the book which inspired The Wicker Man, has a new short interview online. Apparently, it's also the day "science fiction" was created as a marketing term.

There's been a lot of activity in the realm of ebooks, publishing and other business matters. NYTimes has an essay about the extremes writers have gone to in the past to get their names out there. Penguin has a new writer's site, Book Country, supposedly dedicated to e-publishing and collective critique, but I have to wonder if it's just a lame attempt to co-opt the boon in self-publishing. Scott Nicholson has a some good things to say about self-publishing and how it serves the writer better than traditional publishing. Kristine Kathryn Rusch explains some of her struggles with e-publishing, giving examples from her increasingly common position of having books both self and traditionally published.

Will people be able to read Naked Lunch anymore? Typewriters are dead tech.

Watch out for Lorissa Innsmouth! Hail to Yog-Sothoth, the might vagina! Lovecraft comes to sex ed. Also, sad baby Cthulu.

It's funny because it's true. Existential Star Wars.

There's this essay about military science fiction at The Guardian. He makes some good points, but like many of the commentators, I think he has Battlestar Galactica all wrong. Plus, he ignores the paramilitary structure of the Federation in Star Trek.

Russian genre fiction is HOT. Check out these collections.

Like many, I have keen interest in the outre theories about Shakespeare, this book sounds like it takes a solid run at some of them.

(If you have a problem accessing the NYT articles, find the cookies on your browser and delete them, it should let you view after that.)

On a roll: 4.24.2011

2011-04-24T10:32:00.000-05:00

Missed a week because of too many day job commitments. It was a slow week, anyway, though.

Starting things off with a bit of "soylent" culinary news, brothers in Pakistan make habit of human curry. I wonder if curry is interesting to the hordes of faux cannibals on the interwebs, or if they need their meat to look like meat.

The LA Times has a little blurb about cryptozoology books. They also mentioned Jeff Vandermeer's monsters book, which sounds pretty cool. I don't plan to read the debunking books, those are pretty predictable, and if I want to know why something can't happen there are more than enough opportunities for that. Cool picture of a chupacabra, though.

The folks that brought you the police radio meditation podcast have brought us something better, "Deep Thought", spiritual and philosophical readings over a bed of ambience...nothing ground-breaking in the idea, but the random nature makes it appealing.

These days, it's easy to forget that there are also lunatic fundamentalists on the Christian side of things. Just in time for Easter, here's a reminder.

Once again, the folks at Pulitzer have chosen to honer a book with fantastic themes.

Here's an interesting, if roughly written, article about the joys of the original Fog. I love this movie, and it is especially attractive in this season of zombie like interest in zombies. In other film matters, Coen Brothers are rumored to have a full-on horror film in their future.

I cannot count how many times The Phantom Tollboth was read to me, or by me. That book is right up there with "Famous Monsters" as a regular staple of my youth. Anyway, Michael Chabon thinks it's pretty cool, too. In other news about children's literature, the LA Times has a cool bit about Beverly Cleary. Is there anyone that didn't have a crush on Ramona?

Weird but not surprising...automata that brought the devil to life for some church people. I wish had that info on hand when my born-again public school teacher took me to task for drawing devils in class.

Fangoria claims they aren't hiring writers. Maybe they should reconsider.

Yeah, it's true. The Starbucks guy wrote a book. The basic premise is flawed though -- I don't think it ever will have it's soul back. What a ridiculous waste of paper. Couldn't they just have it as a download at their locations, right next to the music compilations?

And finally....

At its best, this approach can be delicately moving; at its worst, it can be precious and sentimental: the indie rock of the indiest art.

Endless War -- Update

2011-04-20T13:23:00.000-05:00

Restrepo director Tim Hetherington killed in Misrata.

On a roll: 4.10.2011

2011-04-10T16:53:00.000-05:00

If you've been paying attention, you know that anthologies built around a theme usually do better than ones that are less organized. Living After Midnight collects a few stories, all of them based on the names of heavy metal bands. This seems like a clever combination of two tastes very closely linked -- horror and metal.

I had the pleasure of working with Douglas Clegg at Horror Writer's Bootcamp. He's a great guy, and here's an interview which he talks about some of his own writing process.

On the science-fiction side of things, Granta has an issue devoted to aliens. In this online essay, Jeremy Sheldon does a bit of critical work on the presentation of aliens in various book covers. While the writing choses to focus a little much on the obvious vaginal imagery in much of this, there is some interesting discussion of uniforms and general design that I haven't seen before. Locus, the print magazine, has an interview with Shaun Tan, excerpts are posted on their website. I like what he has to say about the approach he takes toward illustration, the same detachment can serve any artist well, the ability to see the subject as it is, not as you assume it to be.

I had no idea that there was an award for tie-in fiction writing. Here is the list for this year's nominees -- interested to see the author of Warhammer books, Nathan Long, in with various television screenwriters. I didn't realize TV writers were considered to be part of the tie-in world. Atlanta Nights, a manuscript intentionally written badly as a way to expose vanity publishers, might become a movie. China Mieville has a clever treatment for a "scrap" Iron Man project. I love it, doubt it'll see publication.

Here's a vintage ad for an aeronaut which features some local locale I've not heard of. Here's some famous sci-fi film scenes rendered in peeps. Here's some furniture made out of airplane parts.

A few book which are working their way to my "to-read" pile. Eldritch Revolutions looks promising. Kaiki looks to be pretty cool, might make it to the top of the pile. I love Japanese ghost stories, both on film and on the page. Esoterra has a compilation out.

In this local zine, Andrew Vachss sounds off about bullies.

Children of Cthulu

2011-04-08T11:18:00.000-05:00

Children of Cthulu
Edited by John Pelan and Benjamin Adams

The stated aim of this collection was to compile Lovecraft-inspired works which had ambitions beyond homage. The introduction explains that while H.P. Lovecraft was very much a writer of his time, he was also very far ahead of time in his anticipation of the massive existential threats which surround human consciousness. Stories in this collection were chosen because they advanced the Lovecraft style into new forms and concepts. This desire to avoid a retro celebration of the mythos in favor of adapting and advancing it is an exciting one. Much of the Cthulu mythos have become cliche and common, something has to be done to restore the awesome terror they were meant to inspire.

None of the stories in the collection are completely disappointing, but many do not stray very far from the shadow of Lovecraft's canon. Despite the intentions of the editors, there are a few stories which read more as fan fiction than a serious reconsideration of cosmic horror. I expect these stories were included because they placed the Old Ones in a new contexts, even if the characters and stories were essentially the same. These stories, a handful, were the least successful and felt artificial compared to the dread and surprise offered by a few others.

The majority of the stories offer a mix of known elements with a fresh aesthetic approach or consideration of what a Lovecraft story is about. "Details", written by China Mieville, concerns an eccentric woman who will not leave her flat and the knowledge she shares with her young helper. This story contains both an well-done horror story as well as a keen observation of the underlying anxieties of the mythos and those who read them. "The Stuff of the Stars, Leaking", written by Tim Lebbon, is a fairly quiet story about a man who casually examines a beached leviathan, but also confronts the grief of his wife's drowning in the same ocean. "The Serenade of Starlight", written by W.H. Pugmire, Esq., follows a tranny who explores her own mysterious connection to Dagon. "The Firebrand Symphony", written by Brian Hodge, also concerns an artist who is drawn deeper into his mysterious family tree. The inclusion of "Are You Loathsome Tonight?", written by Poppy Z. Brite, (Haven't thought of her in awhile -- wonder what she thinks of the whole True Blood thing?) is an interesting choice. The obsession with Elvis' intestines, seen as Eldritch tentacles, is a broad and poetic stretch. Not sure how successful it is, especially when read in this context.

For all the pulp and nostalgia that accompanies the mythos, there are also those who see that world as "an acceptable metaphor" for the darker stirrings and terrors of human life. Lovecraft's fiction can be seen as an existential phantasm, a more mainstream telling of Les Chants de Maldoror, or a more entertaining consideration of the themes of Being and Nothingness. Of course, Thomas Ligotti is the patron of this school. So, it should be no surprise that the capstone for this collection is a story written by Matt Cardin, a leader in the Ligotti online fan community.

"Teeth" concerns Jason, a graduate philosophy student who is pulled into the madness and obsessions of his disappeared roommate. Marcos, the vanished student, claims to have seen the barren truth at the core of reality. Before he vanished, he left his research notebook with Jason, imploring him to read and it understand. Jason reads the notebook and discovers something more immediate and threatening than the abstractions of philosophical study.

While at time the story is a little too "telling", it has a sincerity and earnest concern that echoes Ligotti's work. The story arrived in my hands as I was considering the very real teeth around my own life, and much in the story seemed drawn from my own thoughts. This connection is a rare thing in art, and perhaps an even rarer thing in genre fiction. In the end, the effect achieved the same goal as any good horror story. I was left alone in the dark, imagining the endless gulfs of void just beyond the frail comfort of my own mind.

On a Roll: 4.3.2011

2011-04-03T20:55:00.000-05:00

From NYTimes:

Shepard has already written a novel about F. W. Murnau, the director of “Nosferatu,” the 1922 German film adaptation of “Dracula,” and a short story narrated by the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The longest story in this collection, “Gojira, King of the Monsters,” explores the career and private life of Eiji Tsuburaya, the special-effects creator of “Godzilla.”

The filmmakers that made that awesome Call of Cthulu movie are back with another Lovecraft adaptation. The Whisperer in the Darkness is emerging.

Hellnotes has a nice commentary about the pitfalls and challenges of self-publishing. The advertising budget is my own concern with self-publishing, but the need of a good solid editor or second set of eyes is another one. I know a few folks that are open to being hired as an editor. Here is the Brian Keene blog this essay mentions, and it is worth checking out. This is what happens when a traditional publisher self-destructs and tries to pretend nothing happened.

Clive Barker is actually writing the new Hellraiser prequel comic series. There's a free download. I'm pretty Hellraiser-ed out, but if anyone can give the project a nice "reboot", I'd expect it would be Mr. Barker himself.

Some pretty cool art by Aeron Alfrey. Io9 calls it Ligottian, (a piece is named after a story of his) but I think that the art might be a bit too illustrative to really live up to that description. It's plenty cool and plenty dark, though.

The occult background of Black Swan. This is kind of a no-brainer but it's interesting to read someone actually breakdown the motifs, regardless of how much you chose to read into it.

Yes, some credit card companies are actually out to kill you.

Somewhere out there in the interwebs I have a piece similar to this one. Gone with the Wind is an excellent apocalyptic film.

Local author Aaron Wilson has a piece in the local Cifiscape anthology. It's gotten some good reviews going ahead of the publication.

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Finally got another rejection letter from an agent. I trust this one actually read the manuscript.

Endless War

2011-03-31T10:18:00.000-05:00

There are many moments in Restrepo (2010) that make it easy to forget that this is an actual documentary, and not some hybrid of authentic documentary and staged re-enactments. There are as many moments that make it easier to think of the events as theater, not real moments caught by real cameras. When the cameraman's Humvee is caught in an unexpected IED explosion, the need to see it as a special effect is a hard one to resist. Likewise, when the camera is shooting over the shoulder of a grunt, facing incoming fire, it is far easier to imagine that the whole thing is a staged take, and that at some point a director is going to call "cut".

Because of the narrative skill, the technical accomplishments, the pure nerve of the filmmakers behind Restrepo, it is very easy to engage with the film as if it were a dramatic war film. The storytelling is seamless, and the arc of the story parallels what we've come to know as the movement of a war movie. Perhaps this is why the film didn't win the Oscar, perhaps some feel that the film is too artificial in its presentation of the raw matter of organized violence. In a documentary of a smaller scale, I would echo this complaint, but Sebastian Junger was not collaborating with the Taliban, insurgents or the movements of the Army. There was no script, even a guarded one, telling where to point the camera and who the bullets were going to hit.

I believe this tension is what makes Restrepo so effective. By laying the facts of the year on the ground with 2nd Battle Company over and against the conventions of war movies, the aching realities are made all the more raw. By not giving the audience a single protagonist to root for, the final outcomes at the end of the tour are impossible to predict. For much the same reason, there is little political reach or overstatement in the film; it is clear that this film is about this company, in this valley, in this war. There are few big political questions in the film, the details of living and dying in a war zone trump them. This lack of messaging also keeps the film honest; I got the sense the filmmakers were more interested in making it out alive than making an ideological piece. So, for all of the artificial crafting that may have occurred in the editing room, the fixation on the experience of each moment keeps the film from drifting too far from the dirt and blood toward the abstract and irrelevant.

Restrepo demonstrates that while we all know that war is horrible, bloody and dirty, it is always uniquely somebody's horror, blood and dirt for those who experience it. The film has the courage to engage the particulars of a few men, rather than provide glossy generalizations which are easier to watch and consume.

There are war movies which are war movies, and there are movies which occur in war but are not entirely war movies. War is such a massive human horror that any attempt to capture it, in truth, will fail in absurdity or pretense. However, it is the task of filmmaking to bring an audience into a simulation of the experience it presents. At it's best, a film can give you the ability to best imagine what it may be like to be in that extreme; it can offer you a guide to follow into your understanding of conflict. You cannot call Apocalypse Now a war movie, because it is a mythic film which occurs within a war. The sweep of that film goes far astray from the raw details Restrepo dwells upon. Perhaps the mayhem of Saving Private Ryan brings it closer to being a war movie than Catch-22, but even for all of its chaos and futility, there is a structured story that moves under it all. There is a narrative order which provides themes other than the kill or be killed order of warfare. (Band of Brothers and The Pacific move further from this, partly because of the factual basis and because of the disorder the longer arc allows for.)

9th Company, a Belarussian film about the Soviet war in Afghanistan, contradicts itself in many ways. On one hand, it comments on the current international conflict on that same soil. At the same time, it is distinctly Soviet, sympathies are clearly with the Soviet troops as they face the CIA-supplied Mujahdeen. We are supposed to see the story through the eyes of the men of 9th Company, but as a whole, there is little to endear them. They start out rough, at best, and the trials of war only make them worse. I suppose this is a kind of honesty, certainly there are any number of assholes in any military, and far too often war movies assume all men fall from innocence when they enter the war zone. However, it is also hard to care about their fates, and in some ways war seems like a fair penance for them. There is an inkling to cheer their doom.

Aside from this, there is little to distinguish 9th Company from other genre war films. The trials of war are much the same as they always are on film, and many of the soldiers die in just the way you'd expect them too. There is little to surprise, and the film borrows heavily from Blackhawk Down, Apocalypse Now, and other landmark films. The violence, when it occurs, is clearly choreographed and closer to the mythic than the faux newsreel style of Saving Private Ryan, so in this way, it is almost a step back to old war films from the pre-Vietnam era. It's like an R-rated The Longest Day.

James Cameron said that Aliens wasn't so much a science fiction movie as it was a war movie. Battle: Los Angeles takes this one step further. Directed by Jonathan Liebesman, whose most recent claim to fame was Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, the film seems to aim for somewhere between Independence Day, Blackhawk Down, and the Transformers movies. While the narrative focus is essentially Sgt. Michael Nantz's (Aaron Eckhart) journey into redemption for wartime errors, this feels like an afterthought compared to the string of firefights that follows the squad as they move through war-torn Los Angeles. Not a big surprise though, this is really just a summer action film that didn't make it to the big leagues. For all of the viral marketing attempts to cultivate a Cloverfield kind of cool, it doesn't provide much more than b-movie action thrills.

So, it's a war movie. Earth is in a war with alien invaders, and those aliens want to take our water. (Maybe this is a reaction to the critics of Signs -- maybe it's revenge for their defeat at the hands of rain water.) These aliens, they fire energy-projectile weapons. They work in small squads. They have heavy weapons, tanks and drones. Their military is pretty much a mirror image of Terran forces, although with some fancier looking technology. This alone isn't a problem, at least the filmmakers put their cards on the table and just made the aliens more or less equal to human troops. More often than not the movie aliens are supposed to be super advanced but strangely weak in one regard (Water, germs, etc). This equality could've been a cool theme, but in this movie, it's really just a way to have some cool action sequences without having to worry about offending a human population. Daleks have more personality than these aliens.

Mostly this is a war movie without the war, though. Rife with cliches and characters cut from the most cardboard of combat films, there is little it has in common with its cinematic inspirations besides military hardware and onscreen mayhem. There's a video game for this film, which to me seems redundant.

I suppose I am including in this piece as a counter-point to Restrepo. This is a big high-tech war which is the sort of thing America thinks it wants, but has yet to get. The aliens don't disappear into the population. The aliens don't use any real intelligent tactics, their battle plan seems straight out of the 19th Century. The aliens don't adapt, and the aliens don't seem to understand intelligence or the importance of knowing your enemy. Maybe, in this regard, they are a closer mirror to some parts of our military than the filmmakers intended. Battle: Los Angeles is our dream of 21st Century warfare.

I would suggest Monsters as a nice palette cleanser.

On a roll - 3.27.2011

2011-03-27T13:18:00.000-05:00

Local author, friend, and collaborator David Oppegaard has some cool things to say about writing short stories and writing in general. Not unrelatedly, the Guardian UK has an interesting article on the relation between short stories, short story collections and novels. I've always loved reading and writing short fiction, and have only recently come to appreciate the joy of writing novels. This list gives me a headache, but Tangent has gone through the trouble of collecting and rating the most notable short SF stories of 2010. Elsewhere, Tobias Buckell has created an annotated anthology of his abandoned and unpublished short fiction.

Local horror author/screenwriter R. Scott McCoy has a story in the Fell Beasts anthology.

There's an interview with local author Lyda Morehouse about her latest book and some of the ideas behind her world building.

On the other side of the world, Vladimir Sorokin is getting a good amount of press. I've not read his work but I am very excited by his blend of dystopia and satire. I read much of the available Soviet dystopic work to prep for Arcadian Park, so I am curious to see where our worlds may overlap. However, I only visited the Soviet Union, and never lived there!

Writer Beware! has a couple of interesting examples of head scratching foolishness from the world of publishing. I like this bit about How Not To Market Your Book. In a related story, most people in Twin Cities have heard about a local self-publishing phenom who has gotten a major deal with St. Martin's Press. Here's an example of someone happy to head in the other direction. My own feelings about this are on the fence at the moment.

The Economist offers an interesting angle on the decline of Borders Books.

Rick Norwood at SFSite has a list of forward looking film reviews based on the suspected quality of the screenplay. This is a fun idea, and charming for its focus on the writer, but the fundamental assumption that the writer has any power in the filmmaking process is famously flawed.

Necon E-books is republishing some classic horror novels in downloadable formats. The 1980's were a golden age of horror fiction, so this is an interesting development. Unfortunately, they haven't managed to recreate the cool covers of the originals. Seriously, go to DeviantArt, find some cool art and get yourself an awesome cover.

Old time radio: A Gun For Dinosaur.

A connection between Lovecraft and Houdini?

Expression

2011-03-26T11:03:00.001-05:00

Writing is a puzzle of expression.

Poe's Children

2011-03-20T17:29:00.000-05:00

Poe's Children

Over the last few weeks I've been working my way though this 2009 collection of short dark fiction. Edited by Peter Straub, the book contains some classics as well as some new classics by writers in various stages of their careers. As a whole, the collection works and holds up as a collection under a theme. Each story does demonstrate a kinship to both the style and subjects of Edgar Allen Poe. Many of the stories delight in verbiage the way Poe did, many dance at the edges of purple prose, as Poe did, and all of them contain murder, decay and madness in varying proportions.

There aren't any complete disappointments -- even the weaker pieces deliver on the promise of a "singular effect". There were plenty of pleasant surprises; "The Voice of the Beach", "In Praise of Folly", and "The Sadness of Detail" among them. Horror fans may be put off by some of the stories, as they have more in common with literary works than straight-out genre exercises. Collected as this, even the more domestic stories offer a doorway into the darker rooms that Poe could call his own. Without the context of the collection, the passive reader might easily get bored before reaching the really juicy bits. All of the stories take their time getting to where they are going but with the exception of the longest stories, the result is worth the time.

Unfortunately "Cleopatra Brimstone" and "Insect Dreams" both left me unimpressed. The thematic connection between these two stories is strongest, as both deal with the collection of insects, and they both fail for the same reasons. Too much effort is spent on elaborate verbal gymnastics, and it comes at the expense of plot and pacing. While the feverish conclusion of "Insect Dreams" rewards the lyrical prose, the reward is not potent enough for the many pages spent getting there. "Cleopatra Brimstone" doesn't really do anything that couldn't be done in a story with half the word count.

On the other hand, there are a few stories which could've taken more time to develop to their conclusions. "Plot Twist" is clever, and while the ending is good enough, I was left feeling that it didn't have the narrative heft that it was aiming for. "The Two Sams" had plenty of creepy moments, but the story ended almost exactly as the first few paragraphs suggested it might. An expected ending can be effective, if used as a tool, but here it feels like a cop-out or tacked-on ending.

So, the collection achieves its goal of highlighting literate horror and dark fiction which dances along the edges of multiple genres. Because of context, some stories are elevated and perhaps others are limited, but the collection offers lingering hints of madness, of decay, and the final judgements of fate.

3.20.11

2011-03-20T16:57:00.000-05:00

Hellnotes has a review of Stephen Mark Rainey's collection The Gaki & Other Hungry Spirits. I've not read this collection, but I've been a fan of his writing for as long as I've been aware of the small press. This is a super deluxe special edition, unfortunately, it is marred by some cover art which is all too typical in these kinds of efforts.

Margaret Atwood has some smart things to say about e-books and the future of publishing.

The Stoker nominations are out.

Genevieve Valentine has a smart, short essay which finds connections between Winter's Bone and archtypical fairy tales. Someone said to me that the film reminded him of a Coen Brothers movie, and I have to wonder if it is because of the same loyalty to classic storytelling.

Here's an interview with T.C. Boyle about writing in general and his new novel in particular. Someday they are going to be adapting his stories to film like they are doing with P.K. Dick now.

A blogger who operates the Cthuluchick blog has assembled the most common words used in Lovecraft's fiction. She's also got a link for the complete works as an e-book for download.

Post Script

2011-03-14T23:47:00.001-05:00

An interesting follow-up to the S&Man review.

On a roll - 03.12.11

2011-03-13T15:50:00.000-05:00

I'm going to try and offer at least a weekly blog roll of sorts. I spend my weekend mornings trolling through the web trying to find interesting tidbits that are related to my writing and aesthetic pursuits, so I may as well condense them here.

So, Uninvited Books creator Robert Dunbar has a brief interview about his imprint and his ideas about the future of the small press. I wonder about writers becoming publishers, one doesn't equal the other, of course, but I like his approach to literature as he expresses it here.

Midnight Echo is a young dark fiction mag that is getting some notice out there. It's a byproduct of the Australian Horror Writer's Association, a sizable group, but like other genre associations, I wonder what the goal is. A good story should transcend regionalism, right?

I found this bit of art at Horrormall. Interesting bit of Cthulianism.

Although, I have to say I am weary of the Egyptian overtones in some supernatural horror. At it's worst in invokes a retro pulp view of the world that is xenophobic and archaic in all the wrong ways. It's like your racist grandma that you love but often have to ignore.

Also at Horrormall, I found this title. Too Extreme for Cemetary Dance it's a chapbook that claims to include just what it says, but I wonder how tongue in cheek the title is. If it is "too extreme" for Cemetery Dance, it probably could find a home somewhere else. I can't see what made it "too extreme". Sex? Gore? Radical bike stunts? It's an interesting marketing idea, though.

There's this Bizarro thing happening. It's a clique of writers who seem to occupy a small corner of the weird fiction neighborhood. Check out the site, Carlton Mellick has some certain ideas about what Bizarro is or isn't. As a pseudo-movement, on some level, it suffers from the very thing that Mr. Mellick admonishes against -- it places its meaning (dogma) ahead of the stories.

And for something completely different: Anton Lavey pez dispensers.

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I got around to watching Devil a little over a month ago. I think it is a shame that what turned out to be a nice "supernatural Lifeboat" was marred by a heavy-handed first and third act. I could guess that Shyamalan had the idea for the elevator part of the story and someone wrapped a silly Christian morality story around it. As an agnostic, I can see the usefulness for this approach -- it is much easier to create a supernatural story if the evil is something the audience already believes in, but it is also much easier to lose them if they don't share that exact belief.

The film had it's moments, all of them in the confusion of the elevator, but the final reveal was not too surprising and dulled by the moralizing to follow.

The Last Exorcism had the opposite effect for me. The film starts at the same religious point as Devil, but instead of remaining there, the story moves forward into unexpected and more rewarding directions. There are multitudes of evil in play, and instead of finding a simple folkish remedy, the characters find themselves more lost with each encounter. Perhaps the final scene disappoints, because it does reach the point that was suggested once the final plot movement began, but its brevity creates shock and finality that serves the film overall.

This is one of the better entries in the faux documentary genre, as it draws the viewer into the world of the documentarians rather than excluding them from it. The viewer has to decide who they can trust, who they can believe and what their real motivations are. The crew are functional characters, much more than the 2-dimensional "ghost hunters" seen elsewhere.

I should mention that I also watched S&Man not too long ago. This neo-doc is more clever than effective. The idea of the film is very laudable; the filmmakers weave real interviews with real experts, real interviews with underground filmmakers together with a wrap-around story about a filmmaker who has a different approach to making his low-budget flicks. This is a big, smart subject which could have been mind-blowing, but the production just doesn't get there. There are some nice creepy moments, and plenty of food for thought, but too many topics are mentioned and not dealt with in a satisfying way.

One of the film's key points is that real murder is much less spectacular than the splatterfests make it appear to be, true enough, but the special effects in this film are underwhelming if anything. Something is just missing in the "snuff" footage, something that makes the film feel more like a student project than a complete work. Perhaps I was more acutely disappointed by it than others; I've watched the beheading videos, the sniper videos, the car accident videos and they have left a profound scar on my spirit. I would hope a film like this could explore this, but perhaps that is a subject for someone more mature to approach.

A million word processors.

2011-03-02T11:52:00.000-06:00

A guest blog for "Deep Thoughts with Blogagaard"

An Acceptable Metaphor

2011-03-01T22:37:00.000-06:00

"I was fleeing the knowledge, deep and undeniable, that what I had perceived, blotting out the sky, was nothing but an acceptable metaphor. Appalling as the presence was, it was only my mind's version of what was there. A way of letting me glimpse it without going mad at once."

-"The Voice of the Beach", Ramsey Campbell

Warhammer 40k

2011-02-19T12:06:00.000-06:00

Never played, but I really like the aesthetic.

hash mark

2011-02-18T23:23:00.001-06:00

"Mongrel" got bounced, 18 day rejection, but I am not too surprised -- that one was a long shot that barely fit in their editorial guidelines.

hash

2011-02-16T10:08:00.001-06:00

I sent out "The Upright Ape" over to the Zombie Kong folks. I'm pretty happy with it, but if it gets bounced I may just post it on my website, as I can't see it having any other home.

hash

2011-02-12T13:45:00.000-06:00

I got a rejection letter for "Evidence" from somewhere I had forgotten I had submitted it to. That's like the reverse of a forgotten present. I also got a 24 hour rejection letter, actually, more like a five-hour rejection letter from an agent. Which makes me wonder if they have no slushpile, a really efficient staff, or aren't even reading their cold queries.

Another annoying policy is the "If you don't here from us in two weeks, we aren't interested" approach. I've gotten one-sentence rejection letters, and they are preferable to assuming the group I've submitted to is perfectly efficient and will always get to every query in two weeks. It's easier for me and easier for them to just send out the stupid rejection letter, I'd think.

In passing

2011-02-06T22:41:00.000-06:00

It's been quite awhile since I've written an honest-to-god poem. Just haven't felt the need or the urgency to write that way, not for almost a year, I think. Anyway, yesterday I was wandering the winter woods for work and stumbled onto a poem. I'm pretty happy with it, not with the main line of my work lately, for sure.

----

In passing

shameful there are hundreds of them
sliver shallow
four, five toed paws and three spoked claws
a slow stampede or late anarchy on parade
that breezes over snow
as if aloft
here I am
sinking, trudging
just thundering craters
here in the
thickest snow.

I have no idea.

2011-02-01T01:49:00.000-06:00

Anyway, "Mongrel" has grown legs and shambled out the door to throw itself at the mercy of the short fiction fates. I trimmed 1000 or so words from it and gave it another edit, so it's pretty well ready to go. I'm fond of it, expect great things from it, sooner or later.

I've gathered my list for the next batch of agents. This biggest disadvantage, for both of us probably, is that I have no idea who these people are. I read their credits, their preferences and the biography, but it doesn't tell me anything about their personality.

Made good progress with a writing team on a new screenplay. We got some good character work in, and opened a few plot doors in the process. Perfect. Also starting work on my anthology screenplay, something which I may produce myself.

I've also taken another look at "Elect". Going to make a few changes to that and send it out for another round of submissions. I've gotten some great feedback, and I am narrowing down what it can be and what it can't be.

Yes, I am expecting to throw in a submission to Zombie Kong. Mostly because I am sick to death of hearing about fucking zombies. I figure I might as well dance on the genre's grave in the hopes that it might stay dead.

#3

2011-01-22T00:17:00.003-06:00

A new record! Two-day rejection turnaround! Basically, a formal rejection note.

Round One

2011-01-20T20:37:00.000-06:00

Alright, the first wave of query letters are out. Going to start the search for the second round soon. Other big projects starting to percolate; a new (horror) novel and an original script that I am pretty excited about.

Peacock

2011-01-18T20:30:00.001-06:00

Yeah, it may be hubris or something, but damn, I just wrote a damn cool werewolf story. It starts with the letter "M", too. That's progress.

I finished it on the cusp of a full moon.

Return of Radio Horror

2011-01-11T10:49:00.001-06:00

Beyond the Pale

Looks promising!

Still Homesick

2011-01-09T14:15:00.000-06:00

The Grim Blogger offers a natural follow-up to Homesick, I think.

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

"He does not allow readers to forget why supernatural fiction and media exists in the first place: it is a reflection and an outgrowth of the sad state our race is condemned to by existing as conscious creatures, things which are practically supernatural by nature's standards."

Homesick: The Starry Wisdom

2010-12-27T22:05:00.000-06:00

Homesick

I was going through the usuallast-minute Christmas shopping frenzy last week at a local chainbookstore which was nestled in Roseville, one of the first ringsuburbs of Minneapolis. Whenever I am in these bookstores, I tend tomake a direct path to the science fiction and fiction sections, evenif I ultimately will buy something else. Usually, my goal is to makea fairly clinical survey of what is being published and what is beingsold. I prefer to do my actual shopping in any one of the fine localshops around the Twin Cities. I hold plenty of well-earned prejudicesabout chain bookstores.

Which is why I was shocked to see alone copy of TheStarry Wisdom sittingaskew on the anthology shelf. It looked out of place, rare, perhapsmysterious. With a constellation of occult and horror luminariesspread across the cover, I had to give it a look. Within a fewmoments of picking it up, I was at a table with the first pageswaiting for me. I had forgotten about the shopping I was supposed tobe doing.

I am not all that interested in writinga review of this anthology here and now. The book did pull me in, andI finished over half of the book before I remembered what I was therefor. So, the stories and the presentation are something to beadmired. What was most exciting for me was the sense of discovery,no, of encounter, which I can't say I've had with many books lately.Moving through these pages was a journey, a journey which wasunhindered by my own genre assumptions.

While reading these stories I realizedthat I missed having this kind of communion with a book.Reading provides all sorts of rewards, but this uncanny and strangeaspect is seldom present. As a superstitious person, I tend to thinkthis is a result of the authors themselves believing what they arewriting, perhaps not in the banal daylight, but certainly while theylabored under the writing and editing of the fictions. Perhaps it wasa result, in this particular case, of editor D.M. Mitchell'swillingness and desire to seek the truth that propelled H.P.Lovecraft's elaborate and obsessive stories.

I am not defending the notion that H.P.Lovecraft fell victim to his own imagination. There's been somesuggestion that in his later years, Lovecraft became more and moreconvinced that his creations were real and communicating through him.This is possible, the same case has been made against another genrevisionary, Phillip K. Dick. I don't believe that Lovecraft sincerelybelieved Cthulu waited under the ocean to return one day, but I canbelieve that he became overwhelmed by the forces he was trying toexpress in his fiction. Good horror takes itself and it's subjectseriously, so like that adage about chasing monsters, it isn't toosurprising that some might fall victim to the same abyss they seek toilluminate.

In the wake of reading TheStarry Wisdom, I felt a longing and homesickness as I recalledhow long it had been since I had felt this kind of power in a book. Ineed stories to reach as deep as they can go and clutch at my bones.I need reading to be an experience in itself, not merely ansimulacrum of experience. I expect that this hunger is what drivesmuch of my writing, this quest to transcribe the ineffable or theunnameable into a manageable format. This attraction toward the darkheart of these stories is not some new feeling, rather it is awelcome, if bittersweet, reminder of all that has driven me to write.The magic of this communication is the same as the first time I readEdgar Allen Poe, Thomas Ligotti or Clive Barker. Not a strange,unknown chill, but the paradoxical comfort of returning to the murkyhome of imagination's original darkness.

#2

2010-12-15T15:08:00.001-06:00

Rejection note rolled in a few days ago. Brief, friendly, but unfortunately from someone who I thought was one of my best bets. Sending a few more out this week, and then I am going to lay low till January.

Lethem on Carpenter!

2010-12-05T10:06:00.000-06:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/05/books/review/Kehr-t.html

#1

2010-11-26T19:45:00.001-06:00

I got a nice, personal rejection letter from an agent at one of the larger agencies. More of a "not for me" than "not in a million years" type note.

"Frozen": The Biting Cold

2010-11-24T09:44:00.000-06:00

A wise horror mentor of mine once pointed out that horror, more often than not, was not about murder or killing but about survival. Most effective horror movies eventually come down to a scene or sequence when someone must make extreme choices in order to survive. As flawed as many of the Saw movies are, they edge out much of their torture brethren because they present characters with these same awful dilemmas. These films grab the audience by the collar and ask them, point-blank, what would you do?

Frozen is propelled from open to close by these sorts of decisions. A trio of skiers, out for a bit of night-skiing, find themselves alone and trapped by the cold winter around them. This is something I've imagined as I've ridden the last chair lift for the night up into the cold dark. How does the part-time staff know everyone is down from the mountain? The film scenario takes this worry further and has the trio stranded mid-ride in a chair suspended a good two stories over the snow below, after the mountain closes.

Of course, pulling a Lifeboat-esque feature out of just that problem is no small task. However, things get complicated very fast for the trio, and every attempt they make to save themselves only brings them closer to a bad end for all of them. Nature is very unforgiving after all, and as the night gets darker and colder, the trio, or what is left of them, comes face to face with a primal terror that reduces the survival debates to the laws of predator and prey.

I don't know how this movie plays in warmer climes, but as the characters start to rattle their teeth and shudder from the cold, I felt it. I suppose watching it as the first snow fell outside added a little more reality to the screen action, but as much as this is a horror movie, it felt quite real to me. The odds start slim, get slimmer, and Frozen offers no easy way out for the friends or the audience. While on the surface it may look like another cheesy college-kid horror movie, this is a brutal, dark and unforgiving film. Like Jaws, a film it clearly pays homage too, the horror here isn't that it confronts you with an unknown terror, but rather is consumed by terrors which are as real and present for the characters as they could be for the audience.

As tense as the film becomes, it takes awhile to get there. The first twenty minutes are spent on some weak character development which could've taken half the time to cover. This is not a good thing for a film whose very premise sounded shaky to begin with. I almost stopped watching before they even got on the chair lift. You rent the movie knowing the chair is going to get stuck, there's no suspense there, so spending the first half-hour getting them there didn't seem like more than filler. Perhaps the pace was meant to make if feel more real, but it only made me seriously question the filmmaker's abilities. Maybe it was a distraction, a way to lull me into lowering my guard so when things got mean I wasn't really prepared for it. I doubt anyone would gamble several million dollars on a commercial film that's first minutes are designed to alienate the viewer.

The performances are pretty solid, without which the film would be laughable and painful. If you are going to only have three (and fewer) actors, they need to be able to carry a lot of screen time. Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore and Kevin Zegers sell the pain and terror in a real enough way. The script, with the exception of the first act, was well-written and the dialogue felt authentic enough. Directed by Adam Green, the film knows when to look, when to look away, and when to look down. A less imaginative filmmaker would have made the time in the chair lift interminable, but almost every scene in the chair feels like an advance from the previous one.

The weakest point is the opening soundtrack. It's pretty much a lackluster collection of rock riffs which are either supposed to make the boring first act seem really exciting or put us in the mindset of the two dudes that drive the film. Either way, it was grating and made me work even harder to stay interested in the film.

As much as I enjoy supernatural horror, or at least movies with some sort of creepy crawly, I was surprised how engrossed and excited I was once the film dug its teeth into the meat of the story. The film is really a reminder that a simple story of human struggle against the forces of nature, when well told, can terrify as much, if not more, than any hulking monstrosity of human origin. The great god Pan is a merciless and hungry god, something which modern people perhaps forget too easily. A film like Frozen serves as a welcome reminder that nature, for all of its beauty, will kill you if given half a chance.

Oh, btw, they really filmed it in a suspended chair lift.

Monty

2010-10-15T01:48:00.001-05:00

It is totally true; Josh Hartnett was drinking his coffee behind me while "The Right Profile" played in the cafe.

Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare

2010-10-12T23:38:00.000-05:00

Alright, got the list of my first round of queries lined up. It's a mix of industry vets and some "new" agents with plenty of experience. I expect to get them out the door tomorrow. I know this is a harsh climate to be a new writer in, but I think it can be done if I find the right person with the right vision. I've got a list of small presses I want to hit up too, but that will come later.

Tail Eating

2010-10-04T23:44:00.000-05:00

The thing they never say about surviving a near death experience is that you inevitably face the other side of the question. Perhaps life is the mistake, and you were meant to die. Perhaps living on is the error and the accident of the universe. Maybe you are nothing but a mutant ghost, not quite dead, not totally alive.

Mnemonic: The Crazies

2010-09-23T20:06:00.000-05:00

Defenders of remakes inevitably mention that creating a new film doesn't erase or remove the previous film from existence. The newer film can be an update, an interpretation or an expansion of the mythology. Of course, it also means a chance to repeat the box office of the previous film. Or, it can also be a chance to do it right, or somehow adapt it to the contemporary. This is fair, playwrights do it all the time, no reason filmmakers can't have the same artistic opportunity. Unfortunately, unlike plays, a film can be watched anytime and even the most obscure out-of-print films can somehow linger on. You can always refresh your memory of the original by simply watching it again.

Let's imagine for a moment that we don't have these artifacts, the easy reminders of what a film was. We only have access to a few items; the original screenplay, a poster or two, a cast list. Look at these items and use them to jar your memory of what the film was like, how it played out, what it looked and sounded like. Now, imagine you have to recreate the film with just your impressions of the film and these few facts. Remember, memory is notoriously subjective and impressionistic.

Then, you make a movie like The Crazies (2010), which is, unknown by many, a remake of George Romero's The Crazies (1973). The third film he directed after Night of the Living Dead was a not completely successful return to the same territory of murderous horde. The original spends too much time trying to be science fiction, like Andromeda Strain(1971), and not enough time with the murderous horde. The film gets trapped in the mistake that many similar films in the 1950's made; assuming we want to listen to fake scientists prattle on about something that is supposed to frighten us, when all it really does is kill all momentum. But it saves money, too, as its easier to stand there and talk about how crazy the water is making everybody then it is to show it.

The remake wisely avoids this angle. The film is solidly loyal to the people of the town and a point of view which keeps the military and science as far away as possible. By following the unlikely band of David (Timothy Olyphant) and Judy Dutten (Radha Mitchell), and Russel Clank (Joe Anderson), the film multiplies the tension and suspense. They have no one they can trust, and are

seemingly surrounded by enemies on all sides. They have no idea what is really happening around them,
and neither do we.

As far as remakes go, the new Crazies is far superior. The story is more immediate, more effective and the production certainly benefits from a larger budget. There is a visual style to this film, and while it borrows a bit too much from other recent zombie films (The Dawn of the Dead remake, for one), it does create a mood, one the original lacked, for this oppressive story. You could say the first film teetered too heavily on the brainy side, and now this version teetered too far over into the brainless side. This isn't a smart film, or even a very good one, but it gets more things right than the first pass. However, as interesting as it is to focus on the regular folks in crisis, it also does so in a way that is overdone and predictable. Which is unfortunate, because as we all know, the worst part of a memory is when you realize you had it all wrong.

NEXT: Mnemonic: Clash of the Titans

With Strange Aeons: Alan Moore's Necromicon

2010-09-17T10:28:00.000-05:00

Horror comics generally disappoint me. I suppose the problem is that there is such a high standard, and I am not generous enough to overlook weaknesses to get some sort of half buzz from a mediocre comic book. Horror, thriller, fright -- all these forms require a keen understanding of what to show, what not to show and how much atmosphere is just right to carry the story's moods. So, it's a matter of getting the art and the writing just right. Unfortunately, the comic world seems to think that horror fans will accept sub-par work because it's just horror.

I read about Alan Moore's take on H.P. Lovecraft, Necromicon, via the Tentaclii blog, and got pretty excited about it. I realize I am a little late to the party, having missed "The Courtyard" completely, but I can blame that on bad marketing -- why did they fail to reach me? Anyway, if anyone is going to do a decent adaptation of Lovecraft, the lord of smart and weird himself may as well do it. So, I scurried over to Big Brain comics and grabbed issue #1. The awesome wrap cover with Cthulu, not the dumb one with the cops.

I have to admit I needed to warm up to Jacen Burrows' artwork a bit. The line work is well-done, but for my taste it is too clean, especially for a horror book. But the panels move nicely and the composition within the panels is effective and interesting. The story managed to pull me in, mostly due to the character work that built the FBI agents. Very nice, cinematic, dialogue follows them as they enter the asylum where are they are going to pull a "Clarice" with a former colleague gone nightmare. The fact is, I've never been a fan of the investigation aspect which has gotten attached to Lovecraft mythos, seems like that misses the point of the fiction. So, I cringed when I saw our heroes were two FBI agents, but their banter at least convinced me to stay interested.

The interrogation of Aldo Sax is interesting and gets a lot of backstory done in a little time. As Lovecraft-style madmen go, he's not too bad, especially considering the meticulous effort involved in his crime. Aldo gives them a lead that gets the agents to a suspicious club and an extended chase sequence that carries through the rest of the issue. The creepy rock club -- are we still doing that? I am a bit distressed that this trope has survived the nineties, but it makes sense in this day and age, I suppose. Not like they are going to have a creepy little cottage pub to hang out in, and all the abandoned churches are now Unitarian, community centers or other non-profits.

Thankfully, the entire issue ends with a solid dose of otherworldly weirdness which reminds us, and the agents, what we are dealing with. Just in the nick of time, too, because the cops and robbers raid stuff was getting old. I love police drama plenty, but don't want it mixed with my horror willy-nilly. I am excited for the future of the series, but I am also worried if Alan Moore will cover as much ground as he needs to in just four total issues. He's got my attention for the next one, at any rate.

This really is Lovecraft-inspired stuff, using elements from the mythos, but going in directions that it is hard to imagine H.P. Lovecraft would undertake. Which is fine, I am not a fundamentalist by any means, but I wonder if work like this might not be improved if it was taken out of explicit reference to the mythos and left to stand on its own. Lovecraft is a market term too, these days, I know. Does it improve the story that we know it is Cthulu behind it all? What to show, what not to show, what is known and what is unknown; this is always the shadowland that effective horror must find its home in.

Returns

2010-09-13T00:58:00.000-05:00

"Elect" got bounced already, turned it right back around and sent it out the door. Also got "I Will Shoot You in the Face", a collaborative script, out the door. Looking forward to getting the word out about the book next month, but also planning on finishing the lycanthropy short and that new vampire piece I've been dabbling with.

SASE

2010-08-29T23:27:00.000-05:00

Got a rejection for "Evidence", revised and turned that puppy around. Get back to work!

----

"Elect" has been sharpened up, trimmed down, and sent out the door for it's first foray into the dark woods of rejection. We'll see how it does.

---

Next up, a story that begins with the letter "F".

A blog in time

2010-08-22T19:33:00.000-05:00

2500 words over the limit for the first draft of "Elect". That's a third longer than it can be. I need to add before I can cut, too. Going to be some darlings dropped, I am afraid.

----

Is it better for a character to know he is doomed, or for the reader to only see this?

Suck it up, big guy.

2010-08-14T12:08:00.000-05:00

Modern Vampire

Some of this is a little too obvious from a critical standpoint, but it's a good argument for why Twilight still sucks, but True Blood might be pretty cool, after all.

Did I mention I am working on a Vampire anthology?

the trend

2010-08-01T11:20:00.001-05:00

Little did we suspect that the zombies would win, not by surrounding the living, but by destroying their brains from the inside-out.

Quantum Narratives and Other Disintegrations

2010-07-30T15:21:00.000-05:00

Quantum Narratives and Other Disintegrations

As the world becomes more and fractured, in good ways and bad, the movies which come up through the cultural swamp are either going to reflect and acknowledge this, or become increasingly formal and conservative. Formal movies aren't going to track very well on my radar, but I am on high-alert when it comes to disjointed, slippery and uncertain narratives. I am not talking about non-linear plots, such as Pulp Fiction or Memento. I am inclined towards films whose sense of reality is profoundly and fundamentally insecure.

Mother, the latest film by Joon-ho Bong (The Host), looks on the DVD box like it has absolutely nothing to do with giant monsters in the river. I can tell you without spoiling anything that there are no giant monsters in this film. The beginning of the film has more in common with comedy, farce or some sort of neo-realist teen drama. Kids get into trouble. Mom is over-protective of one son, distrusts another, and dislikes most of their friends. In fact, besides some cinematic touches (and some brilliant nuanced performances by Hye-ja Kim (Mother)), there is nothing that really makes this seem like anything more than a nice, safe, coming-of-age story. So much so that I was doubting if I could actually finish this one.

Then, something happens. There's a murder. After this murder, the film begins a slow, spiraling descent away from the moorings it had spent nearly an hour developing. Then, things get worse, and weirder and in not much time at all you cannot really be sure what is real, who is innocent and who this Mother woman really is. You can almost feel narrative vertigo as the plot takes labyrinthine turns. In the end, while the narrative events are hard to dispute, you may feel like you cannot trust your own conclusions or sympathies. Or you may find yourself troubled by how little you distrusted them to begin with.

The film's style is very subtle. It's uneasy and bleak from the beginning, but nothing obvious to clearly mark it as a thriller or anything that is setting out to mess with your head. This is it's strength and most potent illusion, because this normalcy has to be believed to get the full effect of the disaster ahead. The script, or at least the translation, never feels hammy, hackneyed or forced. Again, it is all so terribly natural, and then, so terribly unnatural; either way, nothing visually changes, just the plot events around Mother. There are moments of smart, unsettling horror. Nothing lurid, images that are just off, just a little, and it's enough to keep things unsettled and hint at darker undertones.

None of this would matter much if it was left in the hands of clumsy actors. All of the performances in this film are pitch perfect for the world and environment, and so much is revealed in voice, nuanced expression and gesture that the lingering screen time the camera gives to the performers is essential.

You will see references to Hitchcock in other reviews of this film, and it is not inappropriate. Much of the sense of dread that pervades his serious work can be felt here, and certainly Mother would find herself at home in several of Hitchcock's films. She is a woman who you will make you wonder "What will she do?", "Will she be able to do it?" and ultimately "What has she done?".

No giant monsters here, but there is plenty of danger beneath the surface.

-----------------
Terribly Happy

A few thousand miles to the Northwest, there's a little Danish village that has some other problems. Problems, that like the world of Mother, are hard to spot from the beginning. Robert Hansen (Jakob Cedergren) arrives in this town for reasons that are murky. It's not clear if he really had a nervous breakdown, if he did something worse, or if it actually is a desired change of scenery from life in Copenhagen. He's not there too long before folks start talking about "their way of doing things" or that "things are different here" without giving specifics. The warning is meant to be vague for Robert and for the viewer. A warning which is, of course, unheeded.

So, when the film moves into some noir-ish territory there is an even more sinister vibe hanging over everything. There's this bog that everything disappears into, and there is not a small chance this includes problem people, a category that Robert moves closer to all the time. There's the femme fatale who may be completely off her rocker or the scapegoat for the entire town. There's a creepy little girl that rides her bicycle through town in the middle of the night. Yet, the town is put together, and trying so hard to be a nice village that viewers can never really be sure where wickedness lies, or where it doesn't. Like Mother, Robert gets himself entangled in events he never expected too, and slips into a whirlwind of anxiety, doubt and violence. One body goes into the bog, and another one surfaces, Robert thinks he's doing the right thing, but viewers will be uncertain and apprehensive about this. Robert is a flawed hero in a seriously flawed world, and in this movie, neither are in a hurry to get that out into the open.

Terrible Happy is moody-looking, shot in a similar drab palette as Mother, very tightly composed with angles that are all a little off-kilter. This creates an unease that pushed the tone through moments which may otherwise seem innocent. The performances in here are a different sort than Mother, in this film Robert seems like he's the straight man and everyone else in the town is in on the joke. He's sincere, and they are all talking in half-truths or coded meanings. The performances are meant to be half-believed and they succeed at that.

All in all, Terribly Happy is a strangely welcome addition to the neo-noir universe. Somehow, though, this film does it better than most of the films from the nineties neo-noir revival. Perhaps it is because, the filmmakers, like the villagers, tried so hard to keep the darkness behind doors, in the bog or under a blood-soaked carpet.

__________________________________________________________________

Inception

Speaking of Memento, it's really been awhile since Christopher Nolan took a step back into those turbulent waters. Certainly, his style was a welcome addition to the Batman(Dark Knight) franchise, but it has been too long since he's really been able to cut loose and mess with your head. In some ways, Inception may be the result of all those years of behaving. Sort of.

Dream work has been around for awhile, I suppose perhaps even longer than Nightmare on Elm Street. There was that Dreamscape movie, Altered States, Even Cabinet of Dr. Caligari chronicles the real-world result of meddling in other people's heads. So, it's not brilliantly original, or ground-breaking, but it is probably the movie with the biggest budget and most special effects to take this approach. Obviously, there's plenty of hand-waving about the "Extraction" technology itself, but once you get past that, the plot and characters hold up pretty well. In it's own way, Inception has a similar strategy to both Mother and Terribly Happy. It is clear that the audience is not supposed to be confused, and the exposition goes at great lengths to let you know exactly what is going on. Viewers need to know what is happening, or at least think they do, before they can really be shoved off into delirious seas. On first pass, fans of weirdo movies might be disappointed with just how cut and dried it all is. Like Mother, you need to be patient and let the movie set-in for the full effect to kick-in.

In the post-Avatar world it strikes me as blase to rave about a film's special effects. The joy in this film is how the special effects replicate and warp reality, so they are at their best when they are invisible. After not too long, you know the whole situation is fluid, and the filmmaker's wisely decided that they didn't need to weird you out with every sequence. Furthermore, the production itself is buttoned down. There's not too much in the way of really fancy cinematography because in the dreams, and the film, it is essential that you do not realize you are dreaming. Every frame is masterfully controlled by the filmmakers, and as a matter of control, they only let you see what they want you to see and when you need to see it. There are a few predictable visual nods to previous films, most notably Blade Runner, and even those serve as a bit of misdirection. If you "get it", you're really no better off than a viewer that didn't. Probably more confused.

If there's a weak point in all of this, it is the performances and portions of the screenplay. Unlike the nuances of the villagers in Terribly Happy, the characters in this film don't seem too hip to their own multi-dimensional nature. Maybe it's a zen thing, be here now, but I didn't see any difference in performances from one state to the next. How masterful would it have been if we could have seen this? You'd think playing with madness like this would have a subtle toll on the operator. Leonardo DiCaprio just doesn't carry the heft of someone who has already lived an entire life and been into his own purgatory. Other actors are guilty of this, perhaps Ken Watanabe and Marion Cotillard deliver the best depth and dimensionality.

Inception isn't entirely successful. The tendency is to blame the Hollywood purse-holders, probably it is true, but the film spent a little too much time being a traditional action movie. These kind of sequences provided an unwelcome unreality, and smacked of a labored connection to The Matrix. The film is doing well enough at the box office, which is nothing to ignore these days, so these scenes are working for some crowd. Unfortunately, they are extraneous and will not age well, especially after better effects and better weirdo films roll down the chute.

Ultimately, I believe we will be seeing more and more of these uncertain realities. In some weird, pretzel way, these quantum and insecure worlds are closer to life outside of the theater than a realistic linear film. Perhaps the world has forced an evolution in consciousness, so that audiences are more willing to handle films which reveal little, distort much and offer no answers. Technology approaches the speed of thought. Effects approach absolute visual verisimilitude. The entire culture drifts, in wobbling, unpredictable turns, away from external order and nearer to the life of the mind.

There's no chart for that territory.

roots

2010-07-20T11:25:00.000-05:00

I suppose, that the assumption I am making is a working-class one. I believe that everything comes down to blood, iron, fire and dirt. There are views that do not feel this way, I understand.

In other news, sent the revamped "Evidence" out for rejection opportunities.

Wow.

2010-07-16T16:23:00.000-05:00

Not for the squeamish.

Casanova

2010-07-12T09:39:00.001-05:00

Writing is making love to the darkest recesses of your private mind.

Ghosts

2010-07-12T09:36:00.001-05:00

The problem is when ghosts stop being ghosts and start being.

Evil Little Things

2010-07-09T20:19:00.000-05:00

Evil Little Things

In my capacity as a critical viewer of genre cinema I've come to the understanding that appreciating the fine points of any given film is more matter of what the filmmakers do despite the well-worn tropes. You cannot get a film made these days, or at least distributed on a national level, that doesn't in some way refer to earlier films. Of course, that is where the term "genre" comes from, so these kinds of tropes are inevitable, regardless of business truths.

Got it? Okay, let's talk about Grace. Now, there are plenty of films and stories about children that are dead, near-dead or otherwise replaced that come back with something not quite right. This kept me from renting this flick for sometime. Another Bad Seed? Omen? No, thanks. But, I was tasked with finding some films that might scare some ladies, so this seemed like a smart choice. They chickened-out before even watching it, but I have to say that I was very impressed with this flick when I watched in on my lonesome.

Like I said, its not so much about concept, its about what is done with the concept. On these terms, Grace is smart, evocative and filled with a sincere horror vibe. Written and directed by Paul Solet, the film makes it clear that it is serious from the beginning, as it fires away at multiple "taboo buttons" at once. The script is smart and delivered well by the leads. What keeps the film working is the multiple threats it develops over the course of the second act -- there are more questions in play than what is wrong with Baby Grace. These threats really drive the film, because anyone who paid attention in the first half of the has some idea what is wrong with Baby Grace.

Furthermore, we never really know what is wrong with Grace. The child is like a disease that we can see the symptoms of but never name. Zombie baby? No. Vampire kid? No. Does it matter? Not really. In this way, it's closer to the classics of horror short fiction and anthology films. We don't need to know what is wrong with the kid. To explain would only distract and soften the unknown threat.

Visually atmospheric and produced with a smart eye toward creating the spaces and ambience of claustrophobia, the camera adeptly follows Madeline Matheson (an allusion, perhaps?) as she descends into the world of Grace and survives the wicked machinations of her mother-in-law. Madeline does what she needs to do to feed Grace, and Hellraiser is a subtle influence or expectation for these sequences.

Grace is disturbing. Grace is filled with a kind of horror that feeds on dread and deep instincts. It's smart. This isn't a party film, but is worth watching if you want to see a worn trope done right (and fresh) and treated with the sincerity that marks the classics of the genre.

-------------

No time to go into them here or now, but I need to give a serious thumbs-up to both Babysitter Wanted and House of the Devil. Both films deal with evil children, walk in the path of trope, and both offer some nice additions and twists on what we all expect to happen. House of the Devil offers some excellent retro production, as well.

Holy Skunk Works, Batman!

2010-07-08T10:45:00.000-05:00

DARPA researches time travel and "quantum radar".

Red State?

2010-07-06T08:34:00.000-05:00

Not quite Famous Monsters

Shallow Ground

2010-07-05T20:10:00.000-05:00

Shallow Ground

When I read "gory" on the box art for a movie it begins a chain reaction of judgements. Is the gore worth mentioning because there is no other selling point? Was gore, like some flashback to the eighties, assumed to be the ultimate gift the film brings to the viewer? Then, I wonder what kind of gore this may be, so I look over the stills, the plot and other evidence to see if it is ridiculous over-the-top gore or if it is gore meant to shock and revolt toward some plot-driven end. This is all worth mentioning, because technically, Shallow Ground is a very gory film. There are buckets of blood. In fact, the whole film is about blood.

Strangely, as omnipresent as blood is in this film, the blood here is more for set dressing, plot device and visual effect. As blood constantly pours from every orifice of "Boy", the mystery visitor, it eventually ceases to be a matter of visual shock for the viewer, and assumes a more dangerous role in the world of this film.

Despite the reliance on the visual staples of "lost-in-the-woods" horror; the stalker, the tree-bound victim, the serrated blade, the film really demands that you follow along and think about where the nightmare is heading. This takes a step into "thriller" territory and out of the realm of horror. The film's awkward dance around what all this blood is about pushes it into science-fiction as well. Scenes in which Darby puts samples of the blood under a microscope, while an important plot point, only confuse the origin and cause of Boy's exsanguination.

The last act of the film does offer a few mild surprises, but nothing that hadn't been blatantly hinted at early in the film. As usual with concept horror films like this, the strongest point is also the weakest. The true nature of the blood is confusing, and not resolved enough to really hammer home the chills. Sure, the unknown is scary, but I got the distinct feeling the filmmakers weren't certain they knew what was going on with the blood. Remember, you can make your own rules, but then you have to follow them.

Most likely, if you've made it far enough into the film to be upset about this, you've gotten something out of it and you are a fan of this kind of ambitious filmmaking. Unfortunately, because of the cheapie stalker-film vibe the film creates in the opening, many viewers will never get to the real surprises the film offers. With the exception of the constantly bleeding Boy, there is little in the first twenty minutes of film to make it stand-out or rise above the hundreds of conventional films that find horror in the woods.

Green Zone

2010-07-01T12:50:00.000-05:00

On the one hand, Green Zone is a preposterous and Hollywood-simple rendering of the faulty reasoning for Iraq War II. On the other hand it's a smartly-critical action film which weaves politics with morality, the result of which is that I often found myself guilty because I didn't know who I should really be rooting for. The screenplay was written by Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential), and his hand is delightfully easy to spot.

The visual scope of this film is quite impressive, with much of the landscape of post-invasion Baghdad effectively similar to the one delivered to civilians by war reporters. References to war time events are accurate enough to make everything as plausible as it could be. Unfortunately, a scene in which Matt Damon outruns and outmanuevers the special forces (branch?) commander undercuts much of the meticulous work of the rest of the movie.

Details to watch for; the outgoing AA tracers reflected in the car windows during the "shock and awe" attack, the ad-hoc "US" taped to Freddie's roof to identify him as friendly, the visual confusion of who the contractors are and who the soldiers are.

At times, Matt Damon's performance wavers from the blank idealism of a midwestern solider (Pvt. Ryan?) to that of a moral leader; so much so that it is hard to tell what Miller's real motives are. In fact, most of the cast are so busy moving the plot along that there is little sense of actual depth to the people themselves. It's all decision and action, which is fine, but don't expect great performances.

Taxidermia

2010-06-30T15:02:00.001-05:00

An amazing entry into the genre of phantasmagoria filmmaking, this will last for quite awhile; no doubt will make it to cult status once the word gets out. Taxidermia deserves a place alongside the best work of Jodorowsky, Miike or Jeunet.

Unlike weaker films which will throw absurd, shocking or deviant images at the viewer for no apparent sense, this film uses the images to propel the film along, and to engage both the conscious and subconscious of the viewer. The absurd extremes of these stories make perfect sense, in their own sense.

Gory, obscene, crude, and filty as it is beautiful, don't expect this to be taken in by all viewers. However, the opening scene should easily drive those who won't watch this out quickly.

The Idea Thief

2010-06-29T16:38:00.000-05:00

I always think it's funny when a random acquaintance tells me they are worried about someone taking their ideas, present company included. This makes me laugh because I have plenty of ideas. I have several pages of ideas that I doubt I will ever have time to get to. Ideas are like children to me, I have enough of my own, thank you and I don't need yours, too. I've got enough mouths to feed.

Quote from the Administrated Republic

2010-06-29T12:07:00.001-05:00

"People from the suburbs just don't know what is happening. They have no clue at all."
- an elected MN State Representative

AP Log Line

2010-06-22T18:54:00.001-05:00

The Wire meets A Scanner Darkly.

Moving out.

2010-05-13T17:12:00.000-05:00

www.guidetoliteraryagents.com/blog

They've got a first ten pages contest/opportunity up. I'm sending Arcadian Park over to this, seeing as how it is free, and I am now officially "on the market".

Short: Evidence

2010-04-30T16:31:00.000-05:00

Polished off the first short I've written since completing the 650 page thesis draft of Arcadian Park. This story is only 5000 words, and hopefully it will be coming to an anthology near you soon. It's weird, veering toward horror, but not as visceral as most horror. Ligotti and Twilight Zone, I suppose.

Chilly

2010-04-27T21:46:00.000-05:00

Sometimes the last line of a story arrives in a wave of goosebumps even as I imagine it. That's writing.

More reality hacks.

2010-04-12T18:00:00.000-05:00

More hallucinogenic research...

Heights

2010-04-09T17:46:00.000-05:00

She sent the song as a love letter to him, but the music wrung the warmth from his heart instead of soaking it up like fuel. He misheard the song years before when he had accidently listened to a breakup mix CD meant for his true love's other lover.

The burden of foresight.

2010-03-26T17:17:00.001-05:00

Oppegaard on the torment of world-building.

National Geographic Puts LSD Under The Microscope

2010-03-22T19:32:00.000-05:00

National Geographic Puts LSD Under The Microscope

enb

2010-03-13T00:30:00.000-06:00

I feel like I've finally set it down. What started as a story became a book. What was a book became a world, a universe and a mind-boggling set of forking paths. I've thought about reworking the entire book so it is a trilogy rather than one single tome. But today, for the first time, I can really, really say it is done. The story is over and complete.

I feel lighter. Perhaps joy, but certainly satisfaction and completion. I've gone through every sentence, every word for over 430 pages of this book. All the threads are connected and everything I want resolved has been resolved. Mystery must remain, but that which is mysterious has been heightened for clarity, and not confusion.

Tonight, I can't imagine going back to this world again. This book will have revision and changes, but it will be what it is going forward. In some ways, my work as a creator is done, and now it is a matter of editorial work and refinement.

Ten years ago I would have sworn that I would never write a book or want to write a book. Now, I feel there is no way I couldn't have written this book .

Better than the real thing.

2010-03-09T14:25:00.000-06:00

For a long, long time, I've thought of myself as a fantasist or fabulist, moreso than a student of a particular genre and more clearly, not a realist of any stripe. Lately though, I wonder if this is true. I write about other worlds, other senses of reality, and "otherness" because that is what I feel comfortable with. The alien and the other is my home, in many ways. (Besides the whole straight-white-male thing.) So, in some sense, when I am writing the unreal I am actually creating a sort of "realism" -- I am capturing that which is part of my everyday thinking.

Conversly, I know a few people who are so eccentric that it is a wonder they can make it through a single day of mundane life. They are proudly in their "own worlds" and I doubt they would want to live any other way. They also happen to enjoy realism and neo-realism much more than I do. So, to them, I wonder if "realism" isn't more radical for them. The only way they can process the mundane is by seeing it represented in a way where sense is artifically created out of something they find senseless.

When It's Love

2010-03-05T11:13:00.001-06:00

Dear Sammy Hagar:

I found myself listening to "When It's Love" this morning, and I have to let you know that it was singularly unhelpful. Nothing in the song tells me how I will know if it's love, and your own lyrics admit "I don't know but I know it when I feel it". What am I supposed to do with this? Ask you every time I think I may be in love? How do you know if it's "that way"? Forever is a mighty long time, and I'd hate to have to wait that long to see if "it" lasts.

You offer no guidance at all. Your evidence is just circular logic -- you know it is love because it's love. I get it, Sammy, you feel it if it's love, but that still doesn't tell me how you KNOW it is love. I find myself looking to your contemporaries. Whitney Houston told me how she knew it was love (great job on that one), Tina Turner told me exactly what love has got to do with it, hell, Sammy, even Whitesnake told me that love is the key to open any door.

Now, I know this is a sore point, but let me point you to "your" band's earlier work "Ain't Talking About Love". Mr. Roth keenly pointed out that he wasn't talking about love. Perhaps you should follow his lead and do the same. Maybe I've got it all wrong. I know you are a student of Zen, so perhaps this whole song is merely a collection of koans intended to create a state of mind conducive to meditating on nothingness and the sublime. Is zen mind the "final love lesson" you cryptically allude to in the third stanza?

In the past, you've made no bones about telling me that "I could still rock in America" and that you couldn't "drive 55" (how's that prius doin', brah?). So, I know you can do it. You know, I doubt you listen to them, but They Might Be Giants recently updated an old classic to accommodate new science about our very own sun.

I think you should do this. How about recording a new song, sorry, track, called "This Is Really How I Know It's Love" or maybe, on a different tack, you could call it "I Have No Idea When It's Love, Does Anyone?".

Haggard,
Todd

Hell Fodder

2010-02-24T10:10:00.000-06:00

I don't usually find direct inspiration in dreams or nightmares. I just woke from a nightmare which featured a villain which was so creepy, so, um, nightmarish, that he is just begging to be pulled into the real world. He was so insanely creepy that as soon as he intruded in my otherwise "normal" dream, I lucidly thought, "oh, now this is a nightmare."

Strangely, at some point my dream brain decided that he was no longer a threat and we could be friends. Take that as you will, Dr.

Ghost stories

2010-02-21T19:45:00.001-06:00

Everybody dies.
Every story is a ghost story, sooner or later.

UK UFOs

2010-02-18T07:29:00.000-06:00

Many of the reports in the latest file describe UFOs as big, black and triangular, whereas reports from the 1940s and '50s tended to be about saucers or disc-shaped objects, they said.

Of course, Aurora is officially denied, too.

The Evil That Men Do

2010-02-15T13:37:00.001-06:00

creating evil characters is easy. Creating believable and interesting ones is hard.

Flint

2010-02-10T23:37:00.000-06:00

Flint

He wants to soak up
your drunken passions
and wring them into
a lamp
to ignite
the oily nights.