The Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

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Mach a-Go-Go-Go
As a Mother's Day present I took Kathleen to see Speed Racer. I was prepared for true Awfulness; my expectations were for something on the level of the Star Wars Holiday Special, or, if I was lucky, Highlander II.

To my surprise, what I got was a pretty much family-friendly film with humor (most of which I was able to watch without wincing too much, which is not commonly the case), tons of (properly) anime imagery and in-jokes, and properly OTT villains and action. The plot is pretty straightforward -- you can predict most events with ease -- but then, the source material isn't exactly Byzantine in structure either. The acting is surprisingly good; without it, the movie wouldn't work at all, given its hackneyed nature.

It DOES have some wince-worthy moments (I really wish they could have eliminated the Annoying Younger Brother and the Monkey, but alas, those are key elements of the original), and as one poster on r.a.a.m said, "there are colors here which are NOT found in the rainbow (patented ILM). There were times one wanted very dark glasses.

The racing is very much over-the-top too, but that's deliberate, and I think well-done. They do in my opinion an EXCELLENT job of weaving backstory into current events. I never saw more than an episode or two of the original, and almost nothing of "Whacky Races" which is also incorporated in a number of references. The world of Speed Racer, here, is an odd alternative history where car racing became THE big thing of the future, eclipsing all other sports. It works, within its narrow confines. The pacing is excellent from my POV and it ends well. The kids will love it, I think.

So overall, good job! And now I won't have something to hold over Kathleen's head for the next ten years.

Anniversary!
Last night was our 12th anniversary. It's always a time for me to not only be grateful, but rather astonished. Not only did this incredibly beautiful and talented woman decide to marry me, but we've got three wonderful kids and I actually am glad I have them. I wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me this was my future, oh, five years before I got married.

This was the first anniversary we've had that there were no kids along (technically our first anniversary we had no actual children, but as Chris had about one month to go he was definitely a factor). We were originally planning to do a sort of Bizarre Foods Dim Sum for dinner -- going to the Ocean Palace and trying all the stuff on their large menu... except it appears that they've gone quietly out of business. So we discussed a lot of other places, but atmosphere rather than odd food won out and we went to the Butcher's Block, which is a nice and comfortable restaurant. It turned out that in the end that WAS the kind of food both of us wanted, somewhat to our surprise.

We then went to see Iron Man, which was excellent. Robert Downey does a letter-perfect Tony Stark. I suppose for the sequel they'll have to do the "Tony Falls Off the Wagon" bit, which I don't look forward to seeing, but it's probably inevitable. One advantage of Iron Man in terms of making the first movie is that his "origin story" is, in itself, a decently exciting sequence of events. He's not getting wierd powers from being bitten or irradiated or anything of that nature, he's a super-tech genius placed in an impossible position and getting himself out of it. This means that Iron Man is much less exposition and "find out what I can do", and much more "follow the story, which is more complicated than it looked at first".

EDIT: Reminder to anyone who doesn't do this habitually these days: STAY TO THE VERY END OF THE CREDITS (well, unless you hated the movie and want to escape, but I doubt that if you were the sort to go to it at all). You DO NOT want to miss the tag end.

Recovery...
... is taking some time. I've been sick for roughly two weeks now. I'm starting to feel more myself, but I'm far from fully recovered; this thing is hanging tough and not letting go easily.

I forced myself to make the IPSTWD deadline, but that was a heroic effort comparable to scaling Everest for me that day.

Hopefully, however, things will continue to improve and no backsliding.

It did not help, of course, that little Vicky broke her arm at the Y this past week.

PSTPWD: Jason Wood in "Trial Run", part II
And here is the finish of the Wretched Work!

( Read more... )

I hope you all enjoyed this. "Trial Run" was almost unique as a story -- I got the idea when I was driving home one day, and it hit so hard that I ended up writing the first 2,000 words or so immediately as I got home, partly at the dinner table even.

PSTPWD: Jason Wood in "Trial Run"
Herewith I perform my Wretched Work! "Trial Run" is the sequel to my prior contribution for the first Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch day. So... Let us see Jason Wood's next adventure!

( Cut to minimize space... )

Continued in next post...

Pain. Pain Pain Pain Pain!
I've had pressure in my head causing migraines last week, and overall eeeh, not feelingg well the whole week. But this weekened it went critical. Saturday I felt dragged out and in pain; Sunday it was worse, to the point that while I forced myself to finish certain commitments (dinner, etc.) I'd arranged for, I was totally out of it by evening. By that point the pain in my body -- back, chest, arms, etc. -- had gotten so bad that in the end (despite both ibuprofen and hydrocodone) I didn't really get any sleep; I'd try to drift off but the pain wouldn't really permit it.

It's been that bad all day. The doctor said it's a virus she's seen around recently and that it lasts several days. God, I hope that counts Saturday and Sunday at least, because I can't either put up with or afford two or three more days like this. I have deadlines looming up.

Current Mood: pissed off

"Steve Austin... a man barely alive..."
Recently I acquired the first two seasons of the classic '70s TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. I had an ulterior motive for doing so -- my wife Kathleen decided she was going to run a FTF RPG based on the show Torchwood and in a burst of inspiration I asked whether it would work to have Steve Austin drop in on Torchwood through the Rift. (it works very well, actually)

This gave me the excuse to actually buy a couple seasons of the show. We've been watching them since they came in when we get the chance.

It's astonishingly good overall. The show started when I was 12, and ran until I was 16, so -- seeing as it (and its spinoff The Bionic Woman) were just about the only SF game in town on TV -- it wasn't surprising that I'd have fond memories of it. But having seen other shows I remembered fondly not do so well (the biggest other exception being Airwolf, biggest disappointment being MacGyver, which while I couldn't point to any one specific problem just failed to grab me again), I was braced to discover unwatchability.

Instead, despite undeniably cheesy and dated moments, these are overall usually tightly plotted, well-paced episodes which often evade the stereotypes one might expect. The first major appearance by Russian characters ... features not a single one of them as a villain, but all of them are instead sympathetic characters, even noble, who are simply unfortunately opposed to our heroes under some conditions (and not, really, in the situation presented to the main characters). There's some continuity -- our characters remember, and refer to, events that happened in prior episodes.

Steve's bionics remain as advanced now as they were in 1974, however -- a technology we'd love to have, and still can't make today; some parts are basically physically impossible, something I couldn't have realized as a kid (e.g., the 20:1 zoom bionic eye; the physics of optics would require Steve to extend a three-foot lens assembly from his head to do that). And they still have their odd "but that shouldn't work that way" moments (although for the purposes of the Torchwood game there was an easy explanation: Rudy Wells had reverse-engineered alien tech, and it incorporates some interesting things like a reinforcing stabilization field that keeps the user stable when using the bionics). Yet the focus of the show remains the characters we encounter, even if the plot invariably forces Steve to use his bionic capabilities to solve the problems.

Watching shows of this era does make you realize how very dependent on situation many plots were. Quite a few of these could have been solved trivially today, by making a cell phone call. One has to remember when watching Steve desperately running through a city to reach somewhere in time to prevent an assassination that in 1974 there probably WASN'T any good way for him to reach Oscar Goldman in transit, unless he was carrying a specially made portable radio and had it switched on.

There are little details I didn't remember; for example, the iconic and unforgettable "bionic" sound effects didn't make their appearance immediately, and aren't in regular use even at the beginning of the second season (the bionic eye sound effect has become reliably present, but not the main bionic effect (that was, in fact, first used not for bionics, but for one of the robots Steve fought). I also thought the first Bigfoot episode was earlier in Steve's run, and that the really wierd stuff didn't show up until later (in point of fact, by the third episode we're dealing with someone who has reliable ESP).

We're having a lot of fun watching these!

Live-Action Dragonball movie... updates...
Well, apparently main shooting on the film is done. The info I've heard leaked over the last few months, alas, is mostly very unencouraging.

Unlike many fans, I don't have an issue with Goku not being cast as an asian; he was a bloody ALIEN, for crissake, and was originally based on the non-human Monkey King, so getting all snippy over the human racial descent of the actor is ... silly.

James Marsters might be a decent choice for Piccolo; he seems to at least have some knowledge of the character, which is better than casting someone with no knowledge (or worse, distaste for the show).

Chow Yun-Fat as Kame-Senin, now there's an inspired bit of casting. One of the very few bright points.

Alas, the dark points...

Released photos are extremely unencouraging. Yes, they're just sets, no post-production material, but... I'm not very hopeful. I suppose it depends partly on budget for the effects and re-construction. Set photos for some of the other more heavy-CGI films aren't very impressive either.

Leaked plot is the worst, though. Okay, I can understand merging Goku and Gohan to an extent (Gohan of the Great Saiyaman era, in high school). But apparently he's BULLIED? I'm sorry, that's so DIRECTLY counter to Son Goku that I can't even grasp it. Goku's always been a fighting prodigy, and moreover his personality is utterly wrong for anyone who gets bullied; he doesn't even UNDERSTAND bullies, wouldn't put up with them, and if -- by some chance -- the bully was actually badass enough to get away with it once or twice, the bully would just be pushing Goku to find his next level. And he wouldn't be bullied by being knocked down and taking his lunch money; if you were going to bully him, you'd have to literally beat him unconscious.

Originally I thought they were going to just do a sort of fast-forward of the plot from early DB, get Goku and all the main characters introduced, and then move straight into the Piccolo saga -- probably the Ma Junior Budoukai. I suspect part of that is, in fact, what they're doing, but it sounds very much like they've totally screwed the pooch on this one.

It's also possible that this is deliberate -- i.e., that this is the modern version of the Roger Corman Fantastic Four; they're making the movie to fulfill last-minute obligations, have no intention of releasing it, and were forced into it due only to the ending of the option time.

In which case may all concerned burn in HFIL.

Back on the Meme Streets...
Baaa, baaa, baaa, here we go.

( what do YOU call... )

I know these have alternate answers, so I'll be interested in seeing how common the different ones are.

Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretchery...
... is ON. I will be commemorating PSTPW day even if few others, or even if no others, do.

I of course hope that many other authors will join me in doing so.

April 23rd; hey, it's after Tax Day, so that's one good point right there!

:)
I believe that I'll be posting another Jason Wood story; last year I posted the entirety of "Shadow of Fear", so this year it would be "Trial Run".

Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day?
If memory serves me correctly, we're coming up on the one-year anniversary of Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day. Last year, on April 23rd, many of us celebrated our Wretched status by posting -- entirely free -- some of our creative work, risking the utter destruction of the publishing industry and our livelihoods and/or important hobbies.

Shall we repeat our Wretched Work?

papersky? Should this become an annual tradition across all the Web?

RIP: Sir Arthur C. Clarke
I SAID STOP WITH THE DYING ALREADY!!!

Arthur C. Clarke, probably best known to the world for the novelization of "2001: A Space Odyssey" (which unlike most novelizations was written in parallel with the script, and which was based on the idea suggested by Clarke's short story "The Sentinel"), has died.

Clarke was the last surviving member of the classic Big Three of what were considered the first modern Science Fiction authors: Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. He was best known for writing harder-edged (though not always, strictly speaking, hard) SF stories with big ideas. While he wrote a fair number of novels, including Rendezvous With Rama, Childhood's End, The City and the Stars (possibly my favorite of his novels), and several sequels to 2001, in my opinion his very best work was in his short stories, which included the classic "The Nine Billion Names of God", "A Walk in the Dark" (one of the creepiest stories ever written), "The Star", "Summertime on Icarus", and "Sunjammer", a story of a solar-sailing race.

Clarke is credited with the concept of the geosynchronous satellite, among others, and was the first or one of the first to write stories about SF staples such as space elevators and solar sails. Like many of his era, a lot of his stories were "idea stories", in which the central point was to get across a neat idea rather than create characters; what made him one of the greats was the variety of ideas, and the clarity with which he could portray them.

An era has ended; the last of the Great Names from my childhood is now gone. There are other great SF writers out there -- no doubt of it -- but the last of the names that towered over the entirety of the SF field, the final member of the Golden Age Trinity, has passed away.

He often expressed in his writings doubts of the validity of any religion; I hope, in this case, that he's wrong and that there's a good afterlife waiting for men and women who have shaped the world as he and others have done. But at the least he will live on in his books, and in the influence he had on others. Specifically for me, Boundary was a conscious and clear attempt on my part to write a Clarkeian novel of scientific exploration, inspired to a considerable extent by Rendezvous With Rama. And I know that I am far from the only SF writer who thinks of that and other classic Clarke works when we set out to write that kind of story.

Godspeed, Sir Arthur.

Second Belated Plug: The Dreamland Chronicles
Late last year I encountered a reference to The Dreamland Chronicles, and upon going there I got immediately hooked.

It's a very unusual style of webcomic, made in a 3-d modeling animation style. This does have its odd or jarring moments, but I rather like it once I got used to it. The central concept is that in the Dreamland Chronicles, the "Dreamland" is a real place -- a shared alternate reality that children enter when they sleep. Author/Artist Scott Christian Sava (I hope I got that right) uses a lot of imagery that rings chords with various cartoons, children's books, and so on, and then adds in a very adult (not in the X-rated sense, but in the story sense) plotline. I thought I was going to HATE the protagonist, and he starts out quite annoying, but he gets better, and you start to see WHY he was that way, too.

The Dreamland Chronicles are ALSO available in dead-tree format (from www.amazon.com and on the comic site) so if you also like them, do what I did: buy the books! Always support your friendly authors!

Belated Plug: SHLOCK MERCENARY
I've done this before, but I didn't properly do it this time. So to all of you who have yet to take my advice, NOW is the time to go out and support Howard Tayler and Schlock Mercenary, one of the greatest comic strips EVAR (and I include in that such old-time luminaries as the original Buck Rogers, which I have the coffee-table book collection of, and more modern ones such as Calvin and Hobbes, and webcomics like Sluggy Freelance. The new collection "The Tub of Happiness" will start you out right, as it collects ALL the early strips, from Howard's "Okay, I'm just starting to figure out how to draw, but I already KNOW how to do comedy and BLAM!" up to "It's an actual art style. It's quirky and it fits my characters. And I STILL know how to do comedy and BLAM! And cool SF Technobabble too! And BLAM!".

Go out and buy it. Buy two. Give some to your friends. OBEY! OBEY!!!

RIP: Gary Gygax
Didn't I say STOP THIS DYING CRAP?

A farewell to one of the two originators of my favorite hobby and best writing tool.

I will salute him in today's game.

Unreal World RIP: Gabrielle Van Helsing and Urielle Schwarzchild
Last night, in our Alternate Prussia RPG which is based in a universe derived from a number of horror/SF/F sources including Underworld, Van Helsing, The Mummy, Buffy, and others, my two characters Gabrielle Van Helsing (the Slayer) and Urielle Schwarzchild (the Dark Slayer) died, of wounds sustained during the final climactic combat against the witch Constance and the army of demons she had summoned. Also dying of wounds sustained in that battle was a young girl named Faith, created by a coven of witches to be the ultimate weapon against the demons.

They died having achieved their goals, however; Faith freed Kathleen's character Aden from Constance's control, allowing him to seal the gateway through which the demons could be summoned and then, finally, take the head of the witch who'd made him INTO the key to that gateway and brainwashed him into being her servant. The Slayer and the Dark Slayer -- who had originally been a weapon sent to destroy Gabrielle, who instead became her friend and ally -- slaughtered virtually all the demons who had come through, and Gabrielle deprived Constance of the head of the Headless Horseman, removing her control of the indestructible spirit of vengeance and eventually freeing the damned soul.

Urielle -- created of dark magic, born from the depths of accursed Kurchewald -- for a time fought alone against the witch and her bodyguard of 5 powerful demons, and took down most of them herself. In the end, she died fighting to protect things she loved, and for that was admitted to the afterlife as a heroine, having purified darkness with her own will.

It was a hell of a good campaign; it started in May 2005, and covered about 1.5 years of game time. It's not actually over, but will continue after I've figured out who I'm going to play next; we will probably advance the timeframe from ~1806 to 1880 or so. The other PCs are all Immortals (from Highlander), so changing the timeframe doesn't force a change in characters.

Real World RIP: Janet Kagan
According to James Nicoll and other sources, Janet Kagan has died from COPD. While she wrote quite a number of short stories and two original novels, Hellspark and Mirabile, she may be best known worldwide for a Star Trek book she authored called Uhura's Song. This book ranks very highly amongst the hundreds of Trek books written, one of only a handful that is mentioned regularly as a worthy book regardless of its spinoff nature; one of the other oft-mentioned books in that category is The Final Reflection by John M. Ford (also, alas, no longer with us).

A moment of silence for yet another author who will write no more.

Torchwood: UNjumping the shark!
I *detested* the first season of Torchwood. It was mostly a juvenile exercise in sex-focused idiot plots, and the few episodes I enjoyed seemed to be the least-liked by the fans. It seemed that Torchwood itself caused a lot of the problems rather than solving them, and the characters for the most part were simply not believable as members of this super-secret organization.

The NEW Torchwood has been much more fun. The characters are less juvenile, the organization... well, HAS organization. The characters show competence most of the time and the problems mostly stem from things that AREN'T Torchwood's fault.

It's nice to see a show which, for once, gets BETTER instead of worse as time goes by.

Live-Action Dragonball Movie...
(This post was also up on Usenet, so the few of you who visit Usenet regularly probably already saw this)...

Obviously the chances are exceedingly high that this will suck so badly that the entire area near the studio that puts together the final cut will be sucked into the miniature black hole created thereby. There are a few bright points that make one think it MIGHT actually be pulled off, however.

Perhaps the brightest of these points is the casting of Chow Yun-Fat as Kame-Senin. This is a man who's done some of the most badass characters in cinema, AND who's shown a strong sense of comedic timing as well. If anyone can carry off the simultaneously powerful and impressive, yet comedically ecchi Turtle Master, it's him.

While James Marsters is far from the first choice I'd have made to play Piccolo Daimao (my first choice, actually, was Wesley Snipes), the fact that Marsters is apparently a DBZ fanboy indicates that he at least does understand what the role is that he'll have to play, and might just not let anyone screw it up for him.

On the negative side, perhaps the worst indication is that -- at least so far -- they're still claiming an attempted 2008 release date. This indicates a SCREAMINGLY fast production effort, one that is in fact so deadly tight that I would have to assume it means that the rights to produce the movie expire at that point. This is a recipe for total disaster even with a much more straightforward production than DB/DBZ. Dragonball is a quirky property, one whose charm is NOT just based on the "Quien es mas MACHO?", but on the bizarre world that it exists in, and depicting all that -- with a terribly compressed production, special effects, and prep schedule -- is going to be one hell of a stretch.

Chatwin I just don't know enough about to be sure, but the fact that they're not even ATTEMPTING the trademark Saiyajin hair is not a good sign to me. Yes, it's possible the hair would be one of those things that just CAN'T be done well (though I doubt it, I know how I'd do it), but before committing one way or the other *I* would do a few screen tests both ways and show them to your MAIN target audience: fans.

Let's face it, a Dragonball movie is NOT likely to be a crossover-to-mainstream hit. You need to satisfy the main DBZ demographic, and that really means two things as an absolute, rock-bottom base requirement:

1) Make the combat Dragonball level -- which means something beyond anything yet shown on screen, something smooth, powerful, impressive, IMPOSSIBLE.
2) GET THE CHARACTERS RIGHT. Because what MAKES anyone care about the battles is the characters -- their appearances, their interactions, their relationships. Goku's physical appearance is part of who he is. It's a dangerous, dangerous move to think about changing that in a significant way.

It's clear that they're trying to find a way to make the movie as overall accessible as possible; this is a laudable goal, but possibly a self-defeating one. Some decisions I think are good (merging the role of Pilaf-sama with Piccolo, so that Piccolo is the sole bad guy, with Mai as his sidekick; without a chance to build up the basic whackiness of the world beforehand, Pilaf would be totally out of place), others... probably not so good. Particularly making Goku apparently a cross between Goku and his future son, Gohan, in that it *looks* to me like Goku is basically being placed in a role very similar to that of Gohan in the Great Saiyaman sequence. Goku's basic character is that of the innocent wildboy; putting him in high school is like bringing Mowgli to Beverly Hills 90210.

But we shall see.

Musings on worldviews, worldbuilding, and writing...
I was in a discussion a week or so ago, on Usenet, with a person who has recently made a habit of posting news about the anime industry and how it's DOOOMED, DOOOOMED I TELL YOU!

This person has consistently ignored counterarguments, or dismissed them with an insistence that the counterarguments weren't relevant, and it finally penetrated to me that all of his protests really proceeded from the logic that it simply was OBVIOUS that people would NEVER pay for stuff they could get for free, unless you held a gun to their heads. The idea that any significant number of people WOULD do so -- as they do with much of the Baen Free Library -- simply could not penetrate. He couldn't see what the reason would be, absent some kind of force being implied or directly applied.

It became clear that he was at least a complete cynic and possibly a latent sociopath. He truly believes that people are inherently nasty, evil creatures who are only kept in line by threat of force, by fear and intimidation.

I come from the opposite camp; I believe most people are basically decent, nice people. I think the very EXISTENCE of a high technology society is a complete and irrefutable PROOF of this, because the amount of voluntary cooperation -- any of which could be destroyed by "defectors", in the Prisoner's Dilemma sense -- necessary for the development of such a civilization is immense. I don't think you could get much above the tribal level in a species that had a basically sociopathic outlook. You have to have some capability, intellectual or emotional or both, for empathy and interest in the well-being of others beyond yourself.

This, of course, affects the worlds I want to read about, the worlds I want to write about, and the stories I want to tell. As those on my beta-reading list know, there is a story that could be told within the Grand Central Arena universe which would be a huge, challenging, fascinating novel in itself, but it's far too grim overall for me to want to write it, despite a dark fascination involved with it.

I like telling stories about heroes, about good people confronting evil and winning. Sure, you put them through hell first -- it's not very exciting if there's no major challenge, no real cost in effort, thought, pain, and other things to actually arrive at the final triumph -- but I don't write about futility, either. Some people think that's unrealistic, and point to the news (which I try to avoid watching, actually), but I think actually the news proves more my point than theirs.

News focuses on the unusual, on the things that happen that will be of interest because they're not normal to the listening audience. "Boy does homework, listens to parents, and tries his best" isn't news, because actually most kids DO, overall, try to do what they're supposed to do. "Postal worker delivers mail, jokes with co-workers, goes home reasonably cheerful" isn't news, because mostly they do. "No war breaks out between Country A and Country B" isn't news in most cases, because, well, most countries aren't at war most of the time.

In short, most people don't do rotten things all the time, even though there's infinite opportunity for all of us to be slimy nasty bastards in many ways.

And I like to recognize and promote this, not focus on a darker view of us as things that have a mask of shiny paint over blackness. (I have to wonder how people with the "people are rotten" worldview can explain us coming UP with concepts of honor, love, trust, etc.; a sociopath can't, and won't, come up with those on his or her own, and if they were living with a bunch of similar nutcases even if they DID come up with the idea, how would they get the others to play along?)

Of course, by this worldview I know I of necessity limit my readership to some extent. But I think the people who like MY kind of story are, hopefully, more numerous than the other group...