Classic Movie Spotlight: Tron

written by David Steffen

Okay, so most of you who follow Diabolical Plots have probably seen Tron, or at least are aware of it. But I wanted to do a quick overview in preparation for the Tron sequel movie coming out next month. Yes, after many years of rumors of a Tron sequel, it looks like it’s actually going to happen this time, with the name Tron Legacy. There have been full fledged previews, larger scale movie promos and the like. It really appears to be happening. I believe the release date planned is just before Christmas 2010. I’m excited to see Tron with modern special effects, and original cast members Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner are even in the sequel, which is amazing to get them involved in a sequel to a movie 28 years old.

The original movie was released in July 1982. Honestly, I didn’t have much interest in it at the time. This may have had something to do with the fact that I was 6 months old. My brother, however, took it upon himself to ensure that, when I was old enough to appreciate them, I would be well-versed in 80s SF/fantasy movies, including Tron, The Last Starfighter, Flight of the Navigator, and Labyrinth.

Tron was written and directed by Steven Lisberger and was one of the first major studio movies to make extensive use of computer graphics. The graphics are quite dated by now, of course, but when you watch it just keep in mind that these special effects were amazing in 1982. The previews for Tron Legacy, of course, have updated computer graphics, loads of shiny goodness.

Premise

Flynn (Jeff Bridges) is an ex-employee of software corporation ENCOM. Outside of work hours, he was spending his free time developing innovative video games. His fellow developer Ed Dillinger (David Warner) stole his programs and presented them to ENCOM as his own work. ENCOM released the games which rocketed into popularity, especially Flynn’s pride and joy, “Space Paranoids”, earning Dillinger promotion after promotion, all the way up to the head of the company. And eventually Dillinger fired Flynn.

Now Flynn is on the outside, trying to hack into ENCOM’s network to find evidence of Dillinger’s wrongdoing so that Flynn can prove he’s the real author. But ENCOM’s new super-program, the Master Control Program (MCP) finds the intrusion, and cuts off Flynn’s security clearance. In the process, it also temporarily cuts off clearance to a current employee, Alan Bradley (Bruce Boxleitner), who finds out from Dillinger about the Flynn intrusion. Alan and his girlfriend Lora (Cindy Morgan) go to Flynn and hear his story, and together they decide to sneak into the ENCOM building at night and try to find evidence of the theft.

Once inside, Lora logs into her workstation for Flynn to use, and this is where the main plot really takes off. Her workstation is placed right next to the testing station of her current research project: a new technology that, with a laser and liberal amounts of handwavium, can transport physical objects into a datastream and back out again. While Flynn is doing his thing at the keyboard, the MCP seizes control of the laser and zaps him into ENCOM’s digital universe.

In the digital space, all of the programs wear the faces of the users who wrote them, but they all wear uniforms that cover their hair and look sort of like body armor. The special effects of this are very interesting. The uniforms and even the faces of the programs are all grayscale, no flesh tones, but the uniforms have neon lines tracing over their contours. The environment is a very simple digitial enviro, much of it being wireframes or simple polygon.

Flynn is captured and, along with a group of rebel programs, asked to renounce their belief in the users, who the programs tend to think of as gods. Those who refuse are forced into a gaming arena to fight each other to the death in a variety of games. During a round of the now iconic light cycle game (where the players drive motorcycles that leave solid walls behind them, the objective is to force your opponent to crash into a wall before you do), Flynn escapes the arena along with two other programs. One of those programs is the title character Tron, a security program written by Alan Bradley (and thus also played by Bruce Boxleitner). They team together to try to take down the tyrant that is the MCP.

My Views

This movie deserves credit for being one of a number of successful science fiction movies of the 1980s that helped define science fiction movie fandom. It’s fun, it has Jeff Bridges (who I’ve always liked), and it had a lot of cool ideas. Some of the effects are still pretty cool, like the spinning splendor of the MCP, and much of the work here laid the groundwork for modern special effects. Modern special effects can be a blessing or a curse, as they look very shiny, but are too oftenÂused to replace plot instead of enhance it. But special effects can be a great thing.

That doesn’t meanÂthat Tron isÂwithout its faults. Mostly, the middle of the film just gets a little long, and seems to serve as a showcase for the graphics, but doesn’t provide much in the way of plot. Especially the long, drawn-out chase scene with the MCP’s tanks chasing after our heroes’ light cycles in a long canyon. And in scenes like that, what I really want to know is what part of the computer network that represents. They are supposed to exist inside of the network after all. When one of the tanks falls off a cliff, what does that mean in the structure of a computer: nothing, really. I wish a little more thought had been given to the settings so that they each corresponded to something meaningful in the hardware or software of a computer.

Similarly, even though the characters in the story are supposed to be programs, they’re never particularly convincing as programs. Keep in mind that I may only have this nitpick because I write programs for a living, but programs don’t work that way. These programs look like people, but more than that, they really are little people, only with a different world to live in. This doesn’t really make all that much sense with this world supposedly being a manifestation of a computer network’s interior. In reality, an accounting program can only do accounting, not work together with security programs to infiltrate the MCP. And some of the actions of the programs also don’t really make sense. At one point in the movie Flynn (in the computer) kisses a program written by Lora. His motivations in this are clear, as his love for her is forbidden in the real world because she is with Alan, but what does the exchange mean from her point of view? I could make an obvious joke here about “interfacing”, but I really am curious what a kiss would accomplish/represent/imply to a program’s thinking.

If you’re interested in the development of special effects, see this movie. If you are a hardcore geek, see this movie. It may not be something for everyone, and again, the special effects are very dated, but if you can look past that, you might enjoy this. And I hope that the new movie makes good use of modern special effects without using them as a crutch. I can hope!

“Green Room” Writing

written by Phil Brucato, reprinted from his LiveJournal page

Not everything in a story happens on the page. When an author writes material that occurs “offstage,” that so-called “green room writing” may inform the events that the audience sees. Giving foundations for the characters, their motivations, personalities and activities, green room writing may well feel like wasted effort. Trust me, though , it’s really not.

I coined the term green room writing when describing the many false starts I had with my short story “Ravenous.” An intense urban faerie tale inspired by my experiences in a heavy metal group, “Ravenous” featured the implosion of the narrator’s band in mid-gig. The story’s first few drafts began in the “green room” , the often-cramped backstage space where performers wait before a show. My original versions of the tale started with the bandmates sniping at one another while a warm-up group performs out front. By the time the first show ends, all five members of the narrator’s group are ready to blow†and soon do.

It didn’t work for me, though. The characters seemed realistic, the dialog zinged, the tension radiated in all directions†and yet, it didn’t work. I pounded through two or three drafts of the opening like this, wondering why my inner critic kept pouting at it.

Then it hit me: The action didn’t begin in the green room. It started as the band stepped onstage , tense, pissed off, surging with adrenaline and facing a drunk, voracious crowd.

“Ravenous” doesn’t kick in when the music does , that option seems too abrupt, and doesn’t give the reader time to care about the characters. (I know; I wrote that version, too.) The tale starts just before the lights go up, with five fiercely terrified young people ready to pounce and be pounced on in return. “I’ve got that just-before-the-cages-open feeling in my chest,” says our narrator, Nikita. The bomb’s just about to explode, and in the next few paragraphs, it does.

By the time I wrote the band’s detonation, I knew every character on stage. Each one spoke with a distinctive voice; each had a unique personality. I knew how the bandmates looked, what they wanted, why they blew up in the ways they did. That scene essentially wrote itself. From first draft to final, I changed hardly a word of it.

I was able to write that scene the way I did because of the various passes I’d run through in that green room. Although they didn’t appear in the final story , nor should they have appeared , those literally offstage brainstorming sessions informed all that followed afterward.

Green room writing can feel frustrating. Personally, I get annoyed when my Muse dictates something that probably won’t make it to the final draft. I often feel like I’m wasting my time, and that goes double if I actually like what I’ve written and know at the time that no one but me (and possibly my editorial first-readers) will see it. That said, I realize that green room writing is helpful†even, sometimes, essential to a good story.

Sure, I’ve written many tales that leapt full-force from my imagination, with engaging characters and fascinating action intact. It CAN happen that way†but it doesn’t always. More often than not, especially with long or complicated storylines, I need to “waste” time and words figuring out what happens in the green room. As frustrating as it might be to throw scenes out or re-write that damned first hook yet AGAIN (yes, Holy Creatures To and Fro, I’m looking at you!), those secret stories we tell in the green room can make the ones seen in the spotlights sing.

Author, dancer, hypercreative malcontent and more, “Satyr”Phil Brucato has been a professional writer for 20 years. His work spans from game design with White Wolf Game Studio, West End Games, Laughing Pan Productions, and Silver Satyr Studios; to interviews and articles for BBI Media and Realms of Fantasy Magazine; essays in Disinformation Press; and fiction in various venues. Oh, yeah – and a webcomic called Arpeggio, too. Also, check out his Facebook Author page, and Steampunk Tales.

Not everything in a story happens on the page. When an author writes material that occurs “offstage,” that so-called “green room writing” may inform the events that the audience sees. Giving foundations for the characters, their motivations, personalities and activities, green room writing may well feel like wasted effort. Trust me, though , it’s really not.

I coined the term green room writing when describing the many false starts I had with my short story “Ravenous.” An intense urban faerie tale inspired by my experiences in a heavy metal group, “Ravenous” featured the implosion of the narrator’s band in mid-gig. The story’s first few drafts began in the “green room” , the often-cramped backstage space where performers wait before a show. My original versions of the tale started with the bandmates sniping at one another while a warm-up group performs out front. By the time the first show ends, all five members of the narrator’s group are ready to blow†and soon do.

It didn’t work for me, though. The characters seemed realistic, the dialog zinged, the tension radiated in all directions†and yet, it didn’t work. I pounded through two or three drafts of the opening like this, wondering why my inner critic kept pouting at it.

Then it hit me: The action didn’t begin in the green room. It started as the band stepped onstage , tense, pissed off, surging with adrenaline and facing a drunk, voracious crowd.

“Ravenous” doesn’t kick in when the music does , that option seems too abrupt, and doesn’t give the reader time to care about the characters. (I know; I wrote that version, too.) The tale starts just before the lights go up, with five fiercely terrified young people ready to pounce and be pounced on in return. “I’ve got that just-before-the-cages-open feeling in my chest,” says our narrator, Nikita. The bomb’s just about to explode, and in the next few paragraphs, it does.

By the time I wrote the band’s detonation, I knew every character on stage. Each one spoke with a distinctive voice; each had a unique personality. I knew how the bandmates looked, what they wanted, why they blew up in the ways they did. That scene essentially wrote itself. From first draft to final, I changed hardly a word of it.

I was able to write that scene the way I did because of the various passes I’d run through in that green room. Although they didn’t appear in the final story , nor should they have appeared , those literally offstage brainstorming sessions informed all that followed afterward.

Green room writing can feel frustrating. Personally, I get annoyed when my Muse dictates something that probably won’t make it to the final draft. I often feel like I’m wasting my time, and that goes double if I actually like what I’ve written and know at the time that no one but me (and possibly my editorial first-readers) will see it. That said, I realize that green room writing is helpful†even, sometimes, essential to a good story.

Sure, I’ve written many tales that leapt full-force from my imagination, with engaging characters and fascinating action intact. It CAN happen that way†but it doesn’t always. More often than not, especially with long or complicated storylines, I need to “waste” time and words figuring out what happens in the green room. As frustrating as it might be to throw scenes out or re-write that damned first hook yet AGAIN (yes, Holy Creatures To and Fro, I’m looking at you!), those secret stories we tell in the green room can make the ones seen in the spotlights sing.

The Skill of Critiquing Part One: Guidelines for Etiquette

written by David Steffen

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, the number one way to improve your own writing is to read and critically evaluate other people’s writing. You don’t have an emotional attachment to their work as you do to your own. By learning to examine their work with a cold eye, you can learn what you like and don’t like in a story. Critiquing is a skill which is just as much based on social interaction as it is with prose examination. I’ve read critiquing advice elsewhere, which includes such statements as “don’t critique the critiquer” and “don’t rewrite the story for the author”, but here I have categorized and prioritized critiquing advice into larger categories, and split it between “how to critique” and “how to be critiqued”, as well as a couple of general statements.

I list them as rules here, but of course no one will be enforcing them but yourself. You can think of them as guidelines, if you like, but I do think that your critiquing will be more happy and productive, both for giving and receiving critiques, if you follow these guidelines.

How to critique

6 simple “rules”. Of course, there’s no one enforcing these, so there’s not really rules, but more guidelines of etiquette. I think your critiquing relationships will be much happier and more productive if you keep these in mind.

1. A Critique Should Help the Author

Bottom line, and without exception, the primary purpose of writing a critique should be to help the author. Anything that interferes with this should be avoided. I know, I suggested above that you should critique to improve your own skills, and that’s good too, but you can do that part while reading only, not writing critiques. When you write the critiques themselves, that is where these guidelines come into play. All of the other rules tie into this, the most important of all.

2. Don’t be a Dick

Resist the urge to compose nasty, antagonistic responses to a story, no matter how clever you think you are. If you feel a snark coming on, write a quick blog post to get it out of your system. No matter how little you liked the story, a real person wrote it. If you get your jollies off of trying to crush newbie writers’ fledgling hopes, you are in the wrong place. Writers have enough negativity to deal with, bearing the weight of all the rejections piled on them by editors (I’m not complaining about editors, they reject most submissions because they can’t buy everything, it’s just the way the system has to work), and they need anything but another source of negativity.

This ties into Rule #1, because a nasty, abusive response to a story does not help the author. By all means, tell the author, in detail, what you didn’t like about their story, but take a moment to consider how you want to say it. Keep your comments about the story itself, not about the author.

3. This is Not Your Story

Your objective as a critiquer is not to rewrite the story based on your own vision. Remember that this is not your story. Do NOT tell them to write a different story. Do NOT try to rewrite the story for them–I’ve actually received some critiques which literally rewrote a story from beginning to end for me, which is the farthest thing from helpful. Do NOT try to make their style fit your style. Your job is not to make it the best story you can write, but to make it the best story THAT story can be.

This ties into Rule #1, because if you try to rewrite the story yourself, then it is no longer the author’s story. Trying to do the author’s job for them is not helping the author.

4. Don’t be Afraid to Say What You Think

For a worthwhile critiquing relationship, it is your responsibility as a critiquer to express how you actually feel about the story. If you don’t feel comfortable with this, then you’re not ready for critiquing. The way I figure it, if I want to be certain of positive comments, I’ll share a story with my mom. If I want to get feedback that will help me improve the story, I’ll ask someone for a critique. Now, that doesn’t mean that you’re not allowed to express positive comments, only that all of your positive comments should be sincere. And always keep in mind Rule #2.

This ties into Rule #1, because a critiquer who is afraid to point out what they see as flaws in a story is not of much use. If the author asks for a critique, then they are asking for honest feedback, even if it is not positive.

5. Explain

Positive or negative, whatever you do, be specific, explain what you mean. “This story was great” or “This story was terrible”, neither one is particularly helpful, unless you go into more detail. You could say you liked the strong characters, or that you disliked the ending because it felt too improbable. You could say you thought the opening line was hilarious, or that the 2nd person narration was distracting. Just get specific (always keeping Rule #2 in mind). The worst of all vague comments is along the lines of “the writing could use some work.” If you think that’s the case, explain why. For instance, the sentence structure could not vary enough, the protagonist’s name is used too often, or pronouns are often used in a way which makes the antecedent unclear.

This ties into Rule #1, because vague comments are difficult to translate into actual story changes. Take the effort to convert vagueries into specifics, and your critique will have more effect.

6. Find the Good and the Bad

When you’re reading a story for critique, there may very well be tons of negative things you want to say, and as Rule #3 says, you ought to say them. But critiques don’t have to be all bad news. If there are aspects of the story that you liked, you should say those too. Don’t make up things that you like, just seek them out. Starting the critique off with positives and shifting to negatives seems to work pretty well; it establishes a set of story aspects that you don’t think need to change, giving a foundation for any future suggested changes to be built upon.

This ties into Rule #1, because it’s just as important for the writer to know what people liked as what they disliked. This way they can make more informed decisions about what to change and what to leave unchanged. Also, if a particular person always gives unrelentingly negative critiques, the writer may feel bad and may just stop sharing stories with them. By mixing in positive comments, you help maintain a balance with the writer, and maintain a happy critiquing relationship.

How to be critiqued

Some of these rules will be familiar, but seen from the other perspective

1. A Critique Should Help the Author

Yup, the same Rule #1, except in this case, the author is you. You can’t control what kind of critiques you will receive, but you can control how you react to them.

2. Don’t be a Dick

Not every critiquer who reads your work is going to follow any kind of etiquette. I like to use critique forums, but one drawback of them is that there is no entrance exam. Most people are generally trying to be helpful, but the occasional person is just a troll, plain and simple, trying to piss off as many people as they can manage. They may resort to personal insults, or may gleefully try to rip your story apart in the snarkiest way possible. Hopefully this won’t happen too often, but it will happen, and you need to keep your temper when you react. If something really gets you riled up, sometimes it’s better not to react at all: Don’t feed the trolls. Trolls generally act trollish because they want attention, and by responding with rants and raves, you are encouraging their behavior. If you do react, be polite, even though they don’t deserve it. If you can manage, you might just want to say something extremely short like “Thanks for reading and commenting.” If you think the person stepped way over the line, you might consider saying something very simple like “please direct your comments about the story, not about me,” but in general, it’s probably best to just keep quiet.

This ties into Rule #1 for a couple of reasons. First, it may affect other people’s opinions on the forum. If you fly off the handle and act like a troll in response to a nasty critique, then this may affect how likely people will be to read your stuff. Second, it’s just a waste of your energy and attentions. Trying to launch a writing career is generally a very demoralizing business, trying to stay afloat above the constant stream of form rejections. If you post in response to a troll, then you’ve already spent more energy than the communication is worth. It’s best to just move on.

3. This is Your Story

As you read critiques, remember that this is your story, not theirs. Of course you should fix outright grammar/spelling/continuity errors. But you shouldn’t follow any other advice without carefully considering it first. If a critiquer doesn’t like the ending, that doesn’t mean you have to change it. You’ve still gained something by learning how the ending might not to appeal to some people. This is still valuable information.

This ties into Rule #1 because you are the author, and the story is based on your vision. If they offered comments with good intentions, then they have provided a valuable service, but that does not mean you are obligated to follow their every whim. If you follow every suggestion blindly, it will become a story by committee, with all the appeal diluted to the equilibrium of the common vote. It’s good to get opinions from people with a variety of tastes, but if you feel the need to follow all of them, the result will be a bland mishmash, not the gleaming story you hope for.

4. You Don’t Always Need to Say What You Think

It’s the critiquer’s responsibility to say what they think, but that’s not true of the writer. What do you do if someone says a comment which you think is totally incorrect, maybe pointing out an aspect of the story that they see as a flaw, but you see as a strength? You don’t need to tell them you disagree, or that you’ll be disregarding their suggestion. This ties in closely with #3. You won’t be following every person’s advice, but you don’t need to point this out to them, and you don’t need to tell them where their critique is wrong.

This ties into Rule #1, because if you are constantly telling critiquers that you are not going to take their advice, they may come to the conclusion that their critiques are not being taken seriously, that you do not consider them valuable. And trying to convince a critiquer that their critique is wrong is a futile effort–critiques are opinions, not facts, and so they can’t really be wrong. They can just be wrong for your story.

5. Don’t Explain (Unless…)

Imagine that you’ve written a very complicated story, with a complicated plot, and a complicated setting. A critiquer responds and says that they just plain didn’t understand what was happening at any given time. They may ask you to explain. In general, it makes more sense not to explain.

This ties into Rule #1 because, when a story gets published, the reader generally does not have a direct line to the author to explain the parts they didn’t understand. The text must speak for itself, and if it doesn’t do so sufficiently, then the text itself may need to change. If the text can’t make sense without author’s explanation, then more work may need to be done to improve the story’s clarity.

That being said, there are times when explanation may be worthwhile. Using the example above about the critiquer not understanding what’s happening. If you want to make the plot possible to understand, but you’re not sure how, then it might be worthwhile to explain, to see if the critiquer has any ideas for how to bring your intended ideas out in a way that’s more clear to the reader.

General

And, just a couple things that you can keep in mind that don’t tie in very well with the previous categories.

1. Writing Skill is not Critiquing Skill

Although writing and critiquing are very closely related, skill in one does not imply skill in another. A great writer may not have sufficient practice in critiquing to pick apart how someone else’s story could be improved. And someone who has developed great skill in picking apart aspects of a story for critique may not have figured out how to fix these flaws, only how to spot them. When someone critiques your work, your instinct may be to weight their advice based on their publication history, but this is a bad instinct. Likewise, when critiquing someone else, you may be tempted to ignore flaws in their story if they are famous but, again, this defeats the purpose of critiquing at all. Each critique and each story should be taken on its own merits, regardless of the writing skill or publishing history of the person in question.

2. Turnabout

One way to help yourself follow these rules is to encourage critique exchanges, rather than one-sided critiques. In this way, you can both better learn where the strengths and weaknesses of the other person’s stories tend to lie, and you’ll be much less tempted to be a jerk if you know that the other person will have the opportunity to give you the same treatment.

3. Where to Critique?

Okay, so this isn’t so much a guideline, as a question that you might have asked yourself, that I will answer briefly.
Find a local in-person writer’s group. Most metropolitan areas will probably have one or more. My local speculative fiction writers group, for instance, is MinnSpec.
The easiest way to find people to critique you is to go to a critique forum like Baen’s Bar or Critters.
A bit more involved, and with more unpredictable returns is to arrange your own group, or just exchange critiques with individuals, perhaps via email. Stop by the forum of a writing forum or magazine forum, like the Writers of the Future forum, or Hatrack River.

Reasons for the Decline of the Print Magazine Business

written by Phil Brucato
Adapted from a Facebook post, in response to the question “More interesting to me than the question of who’s to blame for it being so hard to run a profitable professional magazine, is the question of what can be done about it.”

As a former Periodicals Lead at Barnes & Noble, an author and editor …for White Wolf Games and Witches & Pagans Magazine, a micropublisher, webcartoonist, and a now-former Realms of Fantasy columnist, I can give you an answer for that.

Right now, and until the book-selling business catches up with the changes of the last decade, not a damn thing.

The primary reasons for the decline of the magazine business have less to do with the quality of periodicals – less, even, than with the rise of the internet – than with an outmoded, archaic and unspeakably wasteful distribution process.

The method through which periodicals are distributed and sold dates back to the era of cheap paper, expensive televisions, limited media, general print literacy, and the rise of mass advertising.

The first mass-circulation magazines originated through a combination of news-and-fiction publication and advertising. During the Victorian era, companies with something to sell either teamed up with newspapers and dime-store publishers, or simply released their own magazines. Much of the Victorian social atmosphere (including the “you-must-buy-THIS-in-order-to-be-socially-acceptable” message still driving many magazines today) came from magazines published by the companies that were selling the items in question. Etiquette magazines were published by clothing manufacturers; technology magazines were sold by machine manufacturers, and so on. As paper and printing became cheaper throughout the 1800s and early 1900s, literacy rates rose and audiences expanded. To spread out the expense involved in publication, the corporations sold advertising to other companies as well. Thus, the “golden age” of print media was funded largely by advertising.

During the rise and heyday of newsstand distribution (running roughly from the turn of the last century to the 1980s), deals were worked out in which sellers would purchase mass quantities of a wide range of periodicals, and then sell what they could. To sweeten those deals, the publishers offered to buy back the unsold periodicals. At the end of a periodical’s shelf-cycle, the sellers would bundle up the unsold periodicals and give them back to the publishers. The publishers would refund the difference between the original purchase price and the unsold periodicals. Thanks to a combination of advertising rates (and eventually subscriptions), low costs, a vast audience, and very little competition from other media, this system worked. The fact that it was wasteful (unsold periodicals usually wound up in the dump) didn’t really bother folks until the 1970s.

In time, as a distribution system emerged, the publishers would sell their periodicals to distributors; the distributors would take a huge cut of the selling price and then handle the transactions with newstands and bookstores. Advertising still paid the majority of the costs involved with the periodicals themselves – by that time, the publishers received a mere 1/2 to 1/4 of the selling price. To “save on costs,” distributors gradually eliminated the stage wherein unsold periodicals were returned to the publishers; although books were often returned for that refund cost (allowing them to be resold elsewhere), magazines and newspapers were simply trashed.

Thus, a publisher would pay to produce a large quantity of periodicals, sold them a virtual loss, paid for the process with advertising, and then refunded the difference between sold and unsold copies… usually off the back of the next print run. Along the way, the majority of printed periodicals wound up in the garbage.

That’s the system we have today.

And it is fucked.

It was ALWAYS fucked, but now – with rising print costs, POD technology, media competition on all sides, declining interest in print media, alternate venues for distribution and content, taxes added to every step of the process, and taxes placed as well on publisher inventories (which drive publishers to fill their Dumpsters with unsold goods once or twice a year), the unspeakably BROKEN nature of this system is inescapable.

It has nothing to do with the quality of publishers. It has nothing to do with the quality of content. It has nothing to do with vanity presses, or work habits, or the people involved in the process. THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN. From the beginning, it has been a wasteful numbers game, and the numbers have finally caught up with it.

Since the proliferation of the internet and the explosion of net-based content, print media – periodicals especially – has declined. Fewer people read books, let alone magazines, because there are so many other media with which to spend time, money and attention. Fewer copies are sold, yet – thanks to an archaic retail policy called “Wallpapering”(*) – vast quantities of books and periodicals are still being produced. Selling venues will demand 10,000 copies of a magazine, buy them on 60-90-day payment terms, sell 1500 of them, trash the rest, and demand credit or a refund from the publisher for the other 8500 copies… payment due usually before the original payment even arrives. This is why the last decade has seen publishers of all kinds being mowed down like French troops charging German machine-gun nests in World War I. Because THE SYSTEM IS BROKEN, and yet everyone’s still playing the game like it’s 1970, not 2010.

Currently, there is no way to make a truly profitable virtual magazine, short of packing it with advertisements and selling spin-off goods.(**) Steampunk Tales is a quality virtual magazine, and yet the sales have been so low that authors get less than $10.00 a story in royalties, if that much.(***) It’s not that Steampunk Tales lacks quality – it’s great. And it’s not that the publishers don’t work hard – they do. It’s that people still feel a disconnect between virtual media and tangible payment. They may very well donate money out of goodwill, but when faced with the idea of paying a mandatory cost for virtual media, most folks opt not to.

So, the short version of this long post: The next generation of publishing must work by different rules. It cannot be “all content is free” – that’s unsustainable, as creators and publishers need to be compensated for their work. It cannot operate by the old system, either – that system has ALWAYS been unsustainable.

As a micropublisher myself, I believe a large element of that future lies in small-run publications sold more-or-less directly to its audience, with little profit but little waste. Right now, however, the dinosaurs – booksellers, publishers, authors, even audiences and critics – are stumbling around like the old rules still apply. They DON’T. Traditional magazines, I believe, are headed back to their original status as advertising venues and – yes – vanity presses. Regardless of the quality involved, the old market model cannot sustain them.

So what can be done? We change the rules, work our asses off, and pray that we can forge a new system out of the ruins of the old before we all go broke. Because if we can’t manage that, everybody loses.

—————–

* – A policy based around displaying huge stacks of goods to foster “an impression of prosperity.” The venue buys more units than it expects to sell, “wallpapers” the shelves with them for a while, and then returns the unsold units for a refund.

** – This is how webcomics can become profitable; I know, as I publish one myself…not that mine is profitable yet.

*** – Again, I know this from personal experience. I used to write for Steampunk Tales, and from the three stories published there, I’ve made virtually nothing.

Author, dancer, hypercreative malcontent and more, “Satyr”Phil Brucato has been a professional writer for 20 years. His work spans from game design with White Wolf Game Studio, West End Games, Laughing Pan Productions, and Silver Satyr Studios; to interviews and articles for BBI Media and Realms of Fantasy Magazine; essays in Disinformation Press; and fiction in various venues. Oh, yeah – and a webcomic called Arpeggio, too. Also, check out his Facebook Author page, and Steampunk Tales.

Interview: Tony C. Smith

Tony C. Smith is the co-founder, editor, and host of the podcast fiction magazine StarShipSofa. The Sofa offers everything that a print magazine would: poetry, science fiction stories (both classic and recent), science fact articles, interviews of the biggest names in the industry, reviews of comics, movies, and books, and more.

And, as if that wasn’t enough, last month StarShipSofa became the Hugo Award Winning StarShipSofa, the first podcast to be nominated OR to earn that honor. Not only is their award great news for Tony and the Sofa, but for the other fiction podcasts I enjoy, as this will hopefully help make the voters more likely to vote for podcasts again in the future.

And the anthology StarShipSofa Volume 2 has just been made available, with stories by China Mià ©ville, Neil Gaiman, Ted Kosmatka and other science fiction/fantasy superstars. Check it out for some great fiction!

And without further ado, here’s the interview:

David Steffen: Why did you decide to start Starship Sofa?

Tony C. Smith: I started StarShipSofa (notice how it’s written , I’ll let you off this time) back in late 2006 for two reasons: to talk about science fiction and to talk about science fiction with my friend Ciaran O’Carroll. Is that two reasons, or still just one? Anyway†before we started the “original” StarShipSofa shows, every week we’d phone each other up and see what the other was reading, if we liked it and so on†the usual stuff. Then I got myself an iPod for Christmas. It wasn’t long before we were sitting down to record our very first show.

David: In just a few short years , your podcast has gone from startup to Hugo award winning. That’s quite an accomplishment! Where will StarShipSofa be a few years from now?

Tony: I’m not really sure. It’s still hard to get my head around the fact that I’ve won a Hugo Award. StarShipSofa set out to talk about those writers who’d won a Hugo and here we were, only a few yearsÂlater, winning one ourselves. As to where do we go from here: we don’t stand still , that’s for sure. I’m always looking to embrace new ideas. The beauty of StarShipSofa is it’s not just me. The Sofa has a global science fiction community of fans out there who have the most amazing ideas and skills. Each and every day I get emails from people wanting to share their skills with StarShipSofa. So who can tell where StarShipSofa will go? But one thing’s certain: it will be fun getting there.

David: Do you have your Hugo on display? Do you carry pictures of it in your wallet to show to people in the elevator and on the train? (I ask because I know I would)

Tony: It’s hereâ€. just to the right of me as I type this up. I smile and blow kisses to it many times throughout the day.

David: How DO you manage to get all those prestigious authors on the show (both fiction and interviews)?

Tony: Oh, this is a really big secret. I shouldn’t say. Honest†it’s a code we editors keep. Oh right†Well, I’m only going to say this once†so†get ready†here it comesâ€â€â€â€â€â€â€ I ask! Now don’t tell anyone, or they’ll all be doing it.

David: When you’re not working on your podcast, and you’re not reading, what do you like to do?

Tony: I’ve worked it out†that leaves around 3 mins and 37 seconds each and every day. I’ll give you a clue: it involves toilet paper!

David: What mythical creature would you most like to eat?

Tony: I’ll eat anything. Well, anything that doesn’t taste like fennel. I used to pride myself in the fact that there was not one kind ofÂfood I didn’t like. Then I grew fennel last year in my allotment. My god†that stuff is vile. Mind you, I don’t suppose there areÂmany baby winged unicorns out there tasting of fennel but if there was, then this bad boy would walk on by without the hint of remorse at missing his supper.

David: How many roads must a man walk down?

Tony: Never mind walking, just driving down! It’s a ninety-mile round trip to my day job and back. That sucks the life out of you, that’s for sure.

David: You’ve mentioned on the show that you’ve tried your hand at writing in the past. Do you still pen a story from time to time?

Tony: I’m not a brave man. I hate heights, I’m claustrophobic, fairground rides scare the [that toilet paper I mentioned three questions up would come in handy here] out of me, but it takes a brave man to say his writing sucks. My writing sucks , Big Time. So†do I still pen a story from time to time? No.

David: Are there any upcoming features or guests that you’re particularly excited about?

Tony: I’m trying to get my hands all over Moorcock.ÂWhether Moorcock wants this is another matter.

David: What was the last book you read?

Tony: I haven’t got time to read. I’m too busy reading. That answer is actually true. I’m really a short story reader now, though I do dip my toes into the waters of novels once in a while.

David: Your favorite book?

Tony: There’s two, and I can never decide: The Forever War and Flowers For Algernon. But always hot on their heels is A Canticle For Lebowits.

David: Who is your favorite author?

Tony: Oh I don’t know. I’m so fickle. I change after every story†though I am partial to the short stories penned by Will McIntosh.

David: What was the last movie you saw?

Tony: The Ladyboys of Bangkok! Crap copy , lent the original out , never got it back. Oh, bugger. You mean science fiction? Damn and blast! (Blushing profusely) Sorry. Can we cut that bit? That would beÂBruce Willis’s Surrogates. It was okay, nothing grand or anything, but itÂgave me my fix of SF, I guess.

David: What is your favorite movie?

Tony: Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

David: Thanks for taking the time for the interview Tony. Here’s to your continued success!

Tony: Errâ€. Right. Thank you. Is that it? Great. Can I go? Excellent stuff. Oh, do you mind†can I have my copy of Ladyboys of Bangkok back? You’ve hadÂit forÂa month now.

David: What was the last book you read?

Eugie: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker. One part psychology, one part language (two of my favorite subjects) and a big ole dollop of “ooo!”

David: Your favorite book?

Eugie: *Wail!* I can’t pick just one! Um, here’s some of my favorites: Candide, The Lord of the Flies, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Silver Metal Lover, Winnie-the-Pooh, Fahrenheit 451, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, Journey to the West, and The Velveteen Rabbit.

David: Who is your favorite author?

Eugie: See above regarding *wail!*Â Some the ones that have influenced me the most as a writer include Ray Bradbury, Tanith Lee, and Ursula K. Le Guin. ÂThe lush prose and vivid imagery in their stories is so evocative; I can lose myself for days on end in their writing. ÂI also adore Neil Gaiman and A.A. Milne,Winnie-the-Pooh remains one of my all time favorite books,as well as Roald Dahl and George Orwell.

David: What was the last movie you saw?

Eugie: I saw Inception the week it came out and found it disappointing. For being the big SF film of the year, it was terribly predictable with uninteresting characters and lackluster FX. The main conceit which everyone is oohing and aahing over, being able to enter other people’s dreams, is an old SFnal one. It’s not even the first time that Hollywood has explored it. Inception did introduce a few clever premises, but the main one was an obvious plot device and when it became inconvenient, the filmmakers broke their own rules.

David: What is your favorite movie?

The End that Ruins

We’ve all been there. You invest your time and money in a movie or read a book where, for most of the time you’re sitting there, you’re really enjoying it. It may not be the best you’ve ever read or seen, but you’re pretty sure you’d give it a thumb’s up to someone asking your opinion on it later. But when the ending arrives, you’re left with your jaw hanging open at how pointless, annoying, or just plain stupid the ending was, to the extent that it ruins the whole movie for you that the creators really couldn’t come up with something better than that. It really sticks in your mind, but not in a good way, and you’re left wandering the earth seeking out others who have experienced that movie or book so you can commiserate at what an incredibly stinky ending it was.

Well, this is a list of some of the most prominent examples of this from my movie and book experiences. Keep in mind that these are only examples of what I have personally come across, not the worst endings of all time. If you have any endings you’d like to complain about, I encourage you to leave them in the comments.

Obviously, this list will have lots of SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS GALORE , since there’s no way I can write a list complaining about endings which doesn’t tell you what the endings are. So if you’re worried about spoilers, maybe you should stop here, or you could scan the titles and only read the details for those you’ve read or don’t care about.

1. The Dark Tower

by Stephen King

Premise

A cowboy and friends travel a long, long way, facing insurmountable odds and traveling to many places (including Maine)Â just to find a big tall building for no apparent reason.

Overall

Yes, I’m sure it’s a shocker that Stephen King tops out the bad endings list, as he’s notorious for writing himself into corners and then writing whatever dumb resolution comes to mind at the time. Usually his ideas are great, his characters are well developed, and the ending most often invokes a WTF reaction. Which is why he gets the honor of having 4 stories in this top 10 list.

This series has spanned most of Stephen King’s career to date, the first novel “The Gunslinger” was serializeded in F&SF from 1978-1981 and the final novel was finally published in 2004. I generally liked the series, though I think book two “The Drawing of the Three” was my favorite. In the later books, there are major cases of Stephen King pretentiousness leaking into the story. By the time he hit mid-series he was famous enough that he could pretty much do whatever the hell he wanted, regardless of how stupid it was. This includes injecting himself as a character into the series of the book, revered as a god by the gunslinger himself who sees him as the creator. And, in typical King fashion, many of the books suffer from word bloat, expanding to more than double the size they’d really need to be.

The Ending

Long before the end of the series, you know that the final adversary will be the Crimson King. He’s one of King’s favorite villains, having made a major appearance in some of his other books, including an on-screen role in Insomnia. But, as time goes on, you wonder how the heck Roland the gunslinger and his group of other gunslingers will ever be able to defeat him. The Crimson King is extremely powerful, is actually undead, and is locked outside the Dark Tower that has been Roland’s obsession for most of his life. He wants Roland’s guns as a sort of talisman, but we’re told there’s no way to kill the Crimson King, so it seems like Roland’s just walking into his hands.

And then, a couple hundred pages before the end, Roland finds a note from Stephen King referring to a “deus ex machina”. This does not bode well. And sure enough, Roland’s group gets a new member, a mute artist. His sketches are so lifelike that you can hardly believe they’re not real, and if he draws something that he sees in real life, and then erases it, the real thing disappears too. Cue magical unforeseen ability added slapdash at the last minute. You may as well call the guy “Patch” because he exists solely to patch the gaping hole in Stephen King’s plotline. And apparently he realized it himself, hence his note to Roland warning him of it. Yup, sure enough, the artist is the one to kill the Crimson King by drawing a picture of him. Just drawing him in pencil doesn’t work this time though. He has to use blood for the eyes, which doesn’t erase, so the Crimson King is still around, he’s just a bodiless presence.

And as if that lame final conflict weren’t enough, when Roland finally enters the Dark Tower, he finds it in memorabilia of his own life, and then suddenly he finds his life rewound to a battle he fought decades ago when he lost his battle horn which the Tower has told him is a powerful talisman.ÂÂ And so he begins his quest all over again.

In a way this makes sense. The series began with Roland pursuing his quest alone, and so it’s somewhat fitting for his quest to continue alone at the end. But this is little better than the cliched and annoying “it was all a dream” ending. In the end, none of it really happened, so I’ve just wasted my time reading seven friggin books that the author has just unwritten. Roland has lived for his quest for so long that he could never be happy without his quest, but I just figured that would mean he would die at the end, or would find a new completely different quest, not just take up his whole same quest all over again.

I’m much happier with this one if I just pretend that the pages are blank as Roland approaches the Tower.

2. Dreamcatcher(the movie)

directed by Lawrence Kasdan, based on book by Stephen King

Premise

Childhood friends on a hunting trip (in Maine) fight off an invasion of alien shit weasels lead by a bodysnatcher.

Overall

Yup, another Stephen King, but this time, the movie adaptation of his book. The book adaptation was quite nice, and much of the movie was done very well also. There were some really great actors, including Morgan Freeman and Jason Lee in one of my favorite of his roles as Beaver. But the movie made some major changes from the book. The sort of changes that, if you’ve also read the book, make you wonder what the holy hell they must have been thinking to have done it. It’s still worth seeing, because many of the really chilling visuals are well adapted, and even some of the new stuff is cool. But the major changes kept the movie adaptation from being really great.

The Ending

The most important character in the story is Duddits, a friend these four guys made in childhood, a Down’s Syndrome kid who was more than he appeared. A recurring theme common in many of King’s books is that people with conditions that would often be called mental disabilities turn out to be special in some extraordinary way, often exhibiting psychic powers. In both the book and the movie, Duddits’s powers are somewhat contagious, gifting his friends with extra abilities, like psychic powers and the ability to find things lost. In both cases, he is integral to both the premise and the resolution of the movie, being the one who is most able to stand against Mr. Gray the body snatching alien.

In the book, Duddit’s contribution to the climax is a very powerful scene. In the movie, well, Duddits turns out to be shapeshifting alien fighting for the side of good, who comes and has a battle to the death with the evil Mr. Gray. I am not making this up.

3. Mulholland Drive

directed by David Lynch

Premise

Er… um… well, if you figure out what this movie is about, let me know.

Overall

I really liked Twin Peaks TV show, created by David Lynch, so I wanted to watch this one all the way through, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Halfway through the movie, two of the actresses swap roles for no apparent reason, and there’s a gremlin living behind a convenience store. Throughout the whole movie, it always seemed like I was just missing one revelation that would make all the previous nonsense come together in some meaningful way.

The Ending

Like I said, throughout the whole movie, I always felt like I was just on the verge of understanding what the hell was happening. The characters were interesting, despite their unexplained role swap. The gremlin behind the convenience store and all that weird stuff was interesting, but all sort of absurd and random, but not in a way that quite managed to make sense even in an absurdist light.

So I’m watching, watching, hoping that at the very end, some light will be shed upon the random hodgepodge that this movie has built up for itself. And what do I get? Definitely not what I was hoping for. Earlier in the movie, there had been a couple tourists, older, overweight folks in gaudy clothes. Well, these same people reappear as semitransparent specters, maybe 4 inches tall, creeping under someone’s bedroom door, giggling gleefully, and advance on the bed. And then (if I remember correctly) you get one more shot of the gremlin behind the convenience store. If anyone has any idea what was supposed to have happened, please do let me know.

4. Stardust (the novel)

written by Neil Gaiman

Premise

Lovestruck boy saves heavenly body from cannibal witch.

Overall

I really like Neil Gaiman’s writing, and in particular I really like this story, but this is one of a rare case when I think a movie adaptation of a book did better than the book itself. I’m a sucker for a good quest, and Tristran’s quest to find the fallen star to give to the girl he thinks he loves is a great one. I love the interaction between the very human star (named Yvaine) and the young Tristran. I love the comedy, including that provided by Robert Deniro as the cross-dressing Captain Shakespeare. Michelle Pfeiffer did a great job playing the witch.

Much of the book and the movie were similar, but the ending is drastically different, and the movie ending was much improved by the movie adaptation.

The Ending

Stardust is one of the few cases I’ve ever seen where I enjoyed a movie adaptation of a book more than the book itself. The most major villain in both stories is the witch who intends to eat the heart of the human-formed star to regain her youth and magic powers. She is responsible for setting up many of the obstacles in the story, and she is bad ass.

In the movie, they end up having a huge fight with the witch, and she pits her magic against their heroism. Most memorable of this is that she uses a voodoo doll in water to kill one of the major characters, and then uses the doll to reanimate his body. It’s a great effect, with the ghost of the dead man looking on from the side as his sopping wet body performs impossible moves without even looking at what it’s doing, its head dangling limply, obviously more pulled along by his sword hand than in control of it. This is an epic fight scene, and they’re finally only able to defeat the witch when Yvaine shows her unforeseen ability to shine so brightly that the witch burns right up. Okay, that last bit is a bit cheesy, but it worked well enough.

In the book, she gives her heart to Tristran (metaphorically), and when she finally comes face to face with the witch at the end, the witch says something along the lines of “You’ve given your heart to another, so it’s not mine to take.” Lame, what a waste of an awesome villain.

5. The Ring

directed by Gore Verbinski

Premise

VHS haunting ghost murders viewers. (This is the real, little known reason that VHS isn’t popular anymore)

Overall

The movie had an interesting, classic horror style. There are a lot of cool images here, especially in the ghost’s final manifestation. The eventual reveal of what the image of the ring represents is a cool one. Unfortunately, a lot of the details are inconsistent with each other, especially with a chicken-and-egg relationship of the question of whether the girl was killed because she had terrible powers or if she had terrible powers because of the way she was killed. But overall, most of the movie is a decent horror flick.

The Ending

The main character’s friend is a reporter investigating the phenomenon of the disturbing tape–if anyone watches it, they die a gruesome mysterious death 7 days later. The friend has a child who sees the ill-portented video near the beginning of the movie. So she and her reporter friend set out to solve the mystery of the video to find out where it comes from, what the odd images mean, etc… That search for knowledge is the entire point of the main plot of the movie, and they do eventually find it’s origin and seem to make piece with the ghost that it originates with. And then the ghost shows up and kills the reporter, completely unexpectedly. That part is fine, and is in fact one of the strongest images in the entire movie, with the ghost climbing out of the TV set, her hair completely covering her face. So it turns out that their knowledge didn’t do them a damned bit of good.

What really bugged me, though, is the reveal of what will actually save them. The ghost doesn’t give a damn if you know what the video is about. All she wants is for you to copy the tape and give it to someone else. If you do this, then you will not die. Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s the subject of about a million email chain letters “send this on or you will die/have bad luck/lose money”. Why couldn’t they have just left that list bit off and quite while they were ahead?

6. It (the novel)

written by Stephen King

Premise

Childhood friends (from Maine) reunite (in Maine) to kill a shapeshifting clown.

Overall

Yup, a third King entry. I haven’t actually seen the movie version of this, but the book version I quite enjoyed. It is very long, one of his longest, topping over 1000 pages. It was one of the very first King books I ever read, back in junior high, lots of really scary moments, and the action is pretty well interspersed throughout. The story flashes betweenthe past, when a group of 6 friends (5 boys, 1 girl) first came across this shapeshifting boogey monster type creature who’s been causing a series of deaths across the city of Derry, and the present decades later, where they have gathered again to drive the monster back once again. I’d recommend the book if you feel like a long read.

The Ending

The very very ending of the book with the confrontation with It beneath Derry is actually fine, told in parallel with the characters as adults and children. It’s the part that comes a little while earlier that really bugs me. When they are children, as they’re crawling through the tunnels, headed for their destination, they’re all losing heart in the face of the terrors ahead of them, and they’re just about ready to turn around. They stop, and are going to completely give up, but they find a way to get up the guts to go on. How? Well, all 5 of the pre-teen boys have sex with the girl. And after they all boink her, they magically find the will to go on Um…. where the heck did that come from? The scene was gratuitous, awkward, weird, and just plain added nothing to the story. Each of the characters had a role to play in the story, a reason why they were chosen by fate to face up against the evil monster, and with this turn of events it seems that her sole purpose in the group was to be their pre-teen sex object.

7. Under the Dome

written by Stephen King

Premise

A town (in Maine) is trapped inside a giant snow globe.

Overall

I reviewed this one last month, so I won’t go into too many details. Overall, good story, though quite long, interesting situation, good characters.

The Ending

This is reiterating a bit from the review. The people under the Dome are trapped in there for weeks. Most of the time people are dealing with each other, interpersonal problems, and only a couple people bother trying to figure out how to get out from under the Dome. Finally a few weeks later, a few people get the idea to find the source of the impenetrable shield surrounding their town. Finally they find it, a small device up on the highest hill in town. They try to move it, but it won’t budge, but touching it gives them a telepathic connection with strange lifeforms and they come to the conclusion that they aliens are children who have put the device there as a sort of game. The people try to throw a lead shield on it to suppress it’s signal, but the lead melts. And then they give up until the end of the book. What a bunch of losers to give up so easily? Try blasting it with dynamite. Try pouring acid on it. Try hitting it with a sledgehammer. Trying putting a lead dome around it, but at a distance so it is not touching the device.

But no, these people just decide there’s nothing they can do and go back to dealing with the interpersonal problems. A few weeks later, the proverbial poo hits the fan when the town’s meth lab, surrounded by a stockpile of most of the town’s propane, explodes, filling the down with a fiery inferno, Killing all but 30 people and 2 dogs. Fortunately the fire goes out on its own. Unfortunately, this is because there’s so little oxygen left to burn. On the outside the military has set up huge industrial fans, which provide enough force to push a bit of fresh air through the Dome so the survivors are those who can make it to that part of the Dome before they suffocate.

For the next couple chapters, they just sit in that area, gasping for breath, as they die one by one. Finally someone comes up with the idea to go back to the device, connect with the aliens and simply beg for their lives. And it works, solving everyone’s problems. So… I bet they were kicking themselves for not having tried that earlier, they could’ve saved many thousands of lives, instead of just a couple dozens. Seriously, people!

8. Evolution

directed by Ivan Reitman

Premise

Hyper-evolution! Take that, Intelligent Design!

Overall

This was a really cool idea, with a “hive” of aliens that are able to evolve amazingly quickly from onehostile form to another, from microorganisms, to giant flesh burrowing mosquitoes, and on. There’s a lot of good comedy here too, including great lines an ex-researcher science teacher played by David Duchovny, and some good ones from MadTV alumnus Orlando Jones. Sure, the premise of the movie isn’t really plausible, including a pretty shaky understanding of the actual scientific principle of evolution, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief the idea is really fun, and the special effects are generally well done.

The Ending

As the movie goes on, the alien lifeforms just get worse and worse, eventually evolving into ape-like analogs who can use tools, but they go even further, merging into one gigantic amoeba like blob which begins to crawl across the countryside absorbing everything. So our heroes, David Duchovny and his students are in a classroom trying to think of some way to stop the aliens. Together they come up with an absolutely ludicrous idea, which of course turns out to be the key. They bring out a periodic table, and point out that humans are carbon-based (point to the “C”), and that our poison is Arsenic (point to the “As”, down 2 and right 1). The aliens are nitrogen based (point to the “N”), so therefore their poison must be selenium (point to the “Se”). One of the students remembers that Selenium is the active ingredient in Head and Shoulders dandruff shampoo. So they manage to fill an entire fire truck with Head and Shoulders, and blast it up the bunghole of the big blobby thing, finally killing it.

There are so many things wrong with this:
-Humans don’t have just one poison. Arsenic is one that’s historically popular, but lead is poisonous to us, as is mercury. There are lots of elements that will easily kill us if ingested, and that’s not even taking into account compounds made of these elements.
-While the periodic table is a handy visualization, and separates out sections for metals, and nonmetals, and other handy separations, an arbitrary patterned jump is not meaningful.
-I really doubt a fire truck could pump shampoo well(though I think I could forgive this for the sake of humor if they’d given at least a show of making the rest make sense).

9. 9

directed by Shane Acker (not to be confused with Nine, a completely unrelated movie which also came out in the same year)

Premise

Rag dolls vs. war machines.

Overall

I really enjoyed this movie. Lots of good voice acting, including Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, and a rare appearance by the ever-strange Crispin Glover.

This movie has a lot of great things going for it. Early in the movie, they accidentally awaken a sentient war machine by snapping a device to it. These little rag dolls are up against mechanical minions slapped together by the war machine that has apparently killed all of humanity. This was a great one to see in theaters because the sheer scale of the killing machines is terrifying, and even more so if it’s on the big screen so you feel no bigger than the rag dolls. The creature design is especially fantastic: the war machine has limited materials, so it cobbles together its minions from spare parts lying around, each one uber creepy and almost familiar in its mimicry of real animals, yet utterly bizarre.

One of the criticisms oft leveled against the movie is that the characters are one-dimensional. But that’s really a criticism for this particular movie, because the reason for that simplicity of personality is revealed: all 9 rag dolls have minds which are merely fragments of a single human. So each of them is a personality trait more than a personality of itself.

The Ending

As the movie goes on, the war machine catches the dolls one by one and in a flash of light sucks their life away with the small device attached near the beginning, and you see an internal view of them on the war machine’s viewscreen, sort of like a soul. 6 (the eccentric striped doll played by the awesome Crispin Glover) stops them from killing the machine when they have an opportunity, which to me seemed like a major plot point. He says that to destroy the machine would not solve their problems. His protests are enough that the war machine sucks out his soul in the meantime. He says that their friends are still alive inside the machine and destroying it would destroy them too.

So they keep running, and it picks off more and more of them. The way I interpreted this as time went on was that they should surrender and allow the machine to suck all of their souls away so that all 9 of them are all inside the machine. Remember, they are 9 fragments of one human mind, so if you recombine them inside the mind of the machine, maybe the human can take back over.

So how do they resolve it? Well, they grab the device off of the machine and suck the souls back out. This kills the war machine. Somehow they fiddle with the device, and it releases all the captive souls, and it seeds the clouds (or something) and rain begins to fall. Raindrops land on the camera and in the magnification, you can see microorganisms crawling around in them. It’s never explained why the release of a handful of rag doll souls would make it rain, or why it would return life to the planet. Unexplained, nonsensical, and completely against the most obvious conclusion that they all should have joined inside the machine to reunite.

10. The Faculty

directed by Robert Rodriguez

Premise

Misfit students who attack their teachers avoid life in prison by saying that it was self defense against alien bodysnatchers.

Overall

I’m not claiming that this is high quality cinema, nor that it’s even a particularly great example of an alien horror movie. But it’s a decent specimen of an alien horror movie, and you’ll probably enjoy it if you don’t go in with too many expectations. It was an early movie in several stars careers, most notably Josh Hartnett and Ali Larter, and had plenty of other stars like Bebe Neuworth (Lilith on Frasier), Robert Patrick (T-1000 in Terminator 2), and Elijah Wood.

Bodysnatchers take over the teachers in this school, and then take the popular kids one by one. The last ones left as regular humans are the misfits, the drug dealers, the losers, the new kids, and they’re the ones who end up having to fight the aliens and try to save the world. Yeah, the premise is a bit cheesy, and a bit wish fulfillment as well, but really isn’t a bad setup for a movie.

The Ending

During the movie, they discover all these little ear-worm aliens that are taking over everyone’s bodies. They hypothesize, based on movies that they’ve seen, that there must be a queen, and that killing the queen will kill the rest of them. And, of course, this turns out to be oh so conveniently true. But why would this be true? When I think “queen” I generally think of ants or bees, who have the one egg-laying huge insect who creates all the offspring. But killing her doesn’t kill the rest of them. They will raise a new queen from one of the eggs if they need to. And even if the hive didn’t survive, they still wouldn’t die instantly. It just bugs me when characters come to such a ridiculous conclusion based on no information whatsoever, and it turns out to be true for the sake of plot convenience.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World

written by David Steffen

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World may be one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s based on a comic book which I’ve never read (though I now intend to). Whether you like it or not depends almost entirely on whether you like your movies with a heavy dose of weird. For me, I like when a director dares to stray from Hollywood formulas and actually has the guts to try something different, even if the results aren’t spectacular. In this case, the results ARE spectacular, at least to my tastes. It’s a movie that will probably get love or hate reactions depending on if it hits your sense of humor. Some, but nowhere near all, of the humor is targeted toward video game and graphic novel aficionados such as myself. If you’re in that group, you’ll get a few more of the jokes, but if you’re not there is still plenty of humor for you, and video game knowledge is never vital for understanding the movie. I’m not going to hold my breath for it to win an Oscar, as I’ve lost all faith in the Academy’s willingness to consider awesome speculative fiction movies, or any movies that don’t fit its own cookie cutter shape (different than the blockbuster cookie cutter, but still a cookie cutte). But for a fun movie, especially if you’re squarely in the center of the target demographic like I am, it’s a huge hit, and is now on my short list of favorite movies. This will most definitely be on my Christmas list.

Synopsis

As the movie starts, the setting seems to be relatively mundane, and it stays that way for quite a while despite the strange and neurotic characters that populate it. Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old layabout with a garage band called Sex Bobomb (there’s one of those video game in-jokes). He has a 17-year old girlfriend in high school, pretty much as innocent as they come–they’ve been dating for weeks and they haven’t quite worked their way up to hold hands. Oddly, her name is Knives Chau. Despite this rather familiar setting, there are plenty of odd things about it, such as the fact that Scott sleeps in the same bed with his gay roommate (Scott himself is not gay). His roommate is played by Kieran Culkin, in the first acting role as an adult that I have seen him in. Yup, he still looks exactly like Macaulay Culkin but with dark hair, and his slightly creepy boyish looks just add to the comedy of his character. The relationships between the characters are weird and often dysfunctional, and played just the right way to keep the humor rolling as the plot continues.

From the beginning there are some strange visual effects, most of them evoking a comic book feel. Most sound effects are accompanied by a written sound effect somewhere on the screen. The doorbell is associated with a “Ding Dong!” popping up on the wall, and the phone is accompanied by a “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing”. It’s a fun effect and they never overplayed its effect.

Throughout the movie, Scott has a series of weird dreams, most of them revolving around a mystery girl who he has never seen in real life. Until he runs into her at a party in all her pink haired goggled glory, she introduces herself as Ramona Flowers. He becomes immediately infatuated with her, and starts trying to start a relationship with her (without telling Knives). Meanwhile, Sex Bobomb enrolls in a local Battle of the Bands competition and it’s at the first round of that competition that the real premise of the movie really takes off. At the competition, Scott is attacked by one of Ramona’s exes. He is, in fact, part of the League of Evil Exes, an organization of her disgruntled exes dedicating itself to intercepting any of Ramona’s future love interests. To win the right to date her, Scott has to defeat all seven of her exes, each of them stranger than the last.

There are quite a few fairly well known actors in the movie, including Jason Schwartzman (Bored to Death, The Darjeeling Limited, Rushmore), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, Push), Michael Cera in the title role (Arrested Development, Superbad, Youth in Revolt), and one big guest star but the movie doesn’t just try to ride their popularity. In fact, the roles and lines are often so absurd that it’s extra fun because these guys do not take themselves too seriously.

The fight scenes are what makes the movie really unique. Each one is different from the others, and most of them evoke a sort of Anime fight feel. They’re not even slightly realistic, with each of the exes tending to have some kind of improbable superhero-like power, and the effects showing these off are vibrant, even while the banter and stupid lines are hilarious.

My Views

I was pretty certain I would like it from the moment the Universal logo came on the screen in 8-bit color and graphics (picture the original NES circa 1985). And then recognizable Legend of Zelda theme music within the first few minutes.

Long story short: I loved it. If you like special effects, video games or comics, absurd humor, or if you just like movies that take the path less traveled, give this movie a try. Even before the fight scenes the special effects are great, and they just get better and better as the movie goes on. One of the greatest things is that I only saw one preview before the movie came out so I had little idea what to expect–too many times I have to shut my eyes when I keep seeing trailers because they keep giving away important details. Whenever there’s not action, there’s comedy, and there were some scenes that were so funny I had to laugh into my hand to keep from drowning out the movie with my guffaws. Great stuff!

One of the greatest parts is that the writers/director are aware of all the movie/game/comic cliches and they played them off very well for comedy effect. For instance, before they go to the opening competition of the Battle of the Bands, Scott gets an email from the first evil ex, telling him of the upcoming fight to the death. Scott reads it aloud for the audience, and we’re absorbing the information with a grin and wide eyes until Scott groans and deletes the email before finishing it before it’s so fatally boring. We’re expecting this to be the vital info-dump explaining the premise of the movie and it just gets cut off in the middle. So when the ex shows up, he has to re-explain everything from scratch, exasperated that Scott has such poor etiquette to not even read it.

All in all, I’d highly recommend it if you like a good laugh, if you like special effects or supernatural fight scenes, or if you just like a movie that doesn’t come from the Hollywood movie templates. Go see it in theatres while you still can–the special effects make it worth it.

SPOILERS

Not too many spoilers here, there were just one spoilerific thing I wanted to mention that particularly tickled me. Near the end of the movie, after he defeats all of the exes, Scott meets a shadow-version of himself. This is an old, old video game trope, the shadow self adversary. It’s always a grueling battle because your enemy has the exact same weaknesses and strengths as you. So when the shadow Scott shows up, I was mentally rubbing my hands together with glee. Ramona and Knives offer to join in the fight but he tells them this is one for him alone. They leave him alone to fight, cut scene, and the two Scott show up a while later after they’ve stopped at a waffle house (foregoing the fight entirely). “We really have a lot in common,” Scott says. Loved it. 🙂

Review: Under the Dome by Stephen King

by David Steffen

Stephen King is not known for his brevity. Many of his books are above the 500-page mark, with a few surpassing 1000. This can be good or bad. I never minded the longer books until I started writing, but now it’s hard to look at a 1000-page book and wish it had been trimmed down. Not that I only like short books, but I like a story that is exactly as long as it needs to be. Every part has some purpose, whether it moves the plot forward, illuminates character background, or a variety of other purposes.

Some of his books, like Duma Key are just far too long, and start much too slowly. In that book, there’s not much in the way of plot until about 3/4 of the way through at which point everything suddenly happens all at once. His recent novel Cell is not long by King standards, only a few hundred pages, but it seems long because the characters are not his usual well-rounded sort. They’re little more than placeholders, one-dimensional and uninteresting.

But when he finds a story and a cast of characters that merits the length, he can really make that cast come to life. This was the reason I really loved It and The Stand despite their gargantuan length. And now I can add Under the Dome to that list.

Synopsis

The premise is absurdly simple to explain–it’s the cast that makes it interesting. An invisible, impenetrable, and apparently indestructible barrier inexplicably appears along the boundary of a small town in Maine. Yes, in Maine. If I had a nickel for every inexplicable and paranormal event that occurs in Maine in Stephen King’s stories, I’d never have to work again. I do wish that he’d try some other settings once in a while. Write what you know, I suppose, but I think Mr. King could afford some traveling to make his settings more diverse. Anyway, so that’s basically it. No one knows where the dome came from, not even the government. Because the barrier is invisible, most of the boundaries are found first on the highway when cars smash into it. It also extends down into the ground, severing telephone and power lines. This inconvenience is alleviated somewhat because many of the rural Maine folk have generators, but it causes problems here and there, and they’re limited to the amount of propane they have on hand to run the gennies.

Now, populate this little town with a diverse cast from a pack of skateboarding teens to reporters to doctors to government officials, and we throw in our hero who is naturally an outsider. Dale Barbara, known to most as Barbie, is just headed out of town after a recent bar fight with some of the town’s less savory youth. Barbie is ex-military, hitchhiking around the countryside, and had stopped here for a while, but he’s decided it’s time to move on. The barrier pops into existence just before he’s able to leave town. Early on in the story he tries to mind his own business, but Big Jim Rennie, the power-hungry politician who runs the town, has a grudge against Barbie (it was Jim Rennie Jr. who Barbie bested in the bar fight). There are all kinds of conflicts going on in this town, many of them centering around Big Jim, a man you can truly love to hate. Among other things, the accidental death of the police chief leaves the police force in the palm of Big Jim’s hand. Without a chance of outside intervention, Big Jim is a dangerous man. He’s enough of a nasty character to be a threatening enemy without crossing the line into cartoon villain.

My Views

Overall, I very much liked the book, and I’d recommend it if you’re interested for a long haul. There were a few things that bothered me, though.

One thing that bothered me about the book is that no one, in general, seems that interested in figuring out why the barrier is there or how to get past it. There are a few dedicated individuals trying to deal with this, but for the most part people are just living their everyday lives under there altered in the minimum way to deal with their newfound seclusion.

Another thing that really bugged me seems to just be a problem with his technical research. It could’ve been fixed without substantially changing the plot, so it just annoys me that King didn’t realize it. A thirty second Google search could’ve found more accurate information. More on this in the Spoiler section, just in case you want to try to find the technical flub on your own.

There are occasional sections in the book, thankfully VERY occasional, where instead of telling the story in 3rd person close point of view, Stephen King writes a section as himself. I found this very irritating. He seems to think this writer’s voice is charming, but really it was grating. Ideally, I never think of the writer at all when I’m reading a story. I want to sink into the world and not surface again until I’m done reading. And speaking from the author’s voice ruins that. Example from the book, a section starts with “We have toured the sock-shape that is Chester’s Mill and arrived back at Route 119. And, thanks to the magic of narration, not an an instant has passed since …” I can like the occasional omniscient narrator, but mentioning the “magic of narration” is a worthless gimmick that he only gets away with because he’s Stephen King, He Who Shall Not Be Edited.

Though I’d recommend the book overall, there are definitely slow patches. At least 150 pages could be cut from the middle without harming the story. But it starts with a bang, and ends with a bang, so if you can power through that mid-book slump, I think you’ll enjoy it. And, though the ending section has lots going on, the actual manner in which it resolves wasn’t all that satisfying.

SPOILERS

Okay, so there are a couple spoiler-based things I’d like to complain about in this book.

1. The technical flub I referenced earlier. When the barrier pops into place, it’s not just above ground, but slices down below at least 50 feet (as far as they try to dig). This means that it severs any kind of utility lines laid within the ground. Electricity and phone services are cut off, which makes sense, but they still have internet access. Mr. King justifies this simply by calling it WiFi. Now, I realize there are forms of internet access that pass data via satellite, but those are very rare and very expensive. And are not called WiFi. Likewise, you can run a cell phone WiFi hotspot, but neither of these seem to be what King was referring to. Maybe he doesn’t have WiFi at home, but your standard WiFi is only wireless in the sense that your computer is untethered. The computer is sending signals to your wireless router, which then sends signals through your wall through your cable jack or phone line–both of which would’ve been severed. The plot never hinged upon having the internet available, so it would’ve been easy to just remove it.

2. The ending was rather weak. Like I said earlier, almost nobody is really interested in trying to figure out what put the dome in place or how to take it down. A long way into the story someone does find the generator, a little bit of alien technology sitting on the tallest hill in town. Touching it connects you telepathically with alien lifeforms who have apparently put the barrier in place just as a form of entertainment. The device is immovable, and putting a lead shield over it just melts the lead shield. When they realize that neither of these things work, they just give up and don’t try anything else until the very end of the book. Me, I’d be blasting it with dynamite, pouring acid on it, placing a lead shield at a distance without touching it to the device, etc… At the end, everything takes a turn for the worse, fires run rampant, and the fresh air is very limited. Almost everyone dies. (I’m happy to say that one dog actually survives! King seems to have a vendetta against dogs, they never survive in one piece, except for this one). As a desparate last ditch effort, a few of the characters go back to the device and they beg for their lives to the aliens. And the aliens lift the barrier and then the book is pretty much over. Seriously? No one thought of that before? Why wait until almost everyone is dead? It seemed to me that he just got to the end of what he’d planned and said “oh shit, how do I get them out of this now?” and wrote it on the fly.

Updates, or “I’m not dead yet”

by David Steffen

For those who’ve noticed that there haven’t been any new content on Diabolical Plots for a while, don’t worry. I’m not dead, and I’ll be posting some new content very, very soon. First up, I think, will be my review of Stephen King’s Under the Dome. I’ve also got my eye on some video game reviews (classic and otherwise), and a few movie reviews. I’d like to provide more interviews, but it’s been a little hit-and-miss corresponding with the guests lately–there have been several that have agreed to interviews, but not responded to the questions. It’s probably time for a followup email in several cases, but I’m putting it off for a bit longer–I don’t want to be a pest.

Why have I been absent? Well, I’m glad you asked, hypothetical interwebz audience. Every minute of my writing time has been occupied chasing a story to finish for a submissions deadline. Remember Northern Frights Publishing, the ones who were my very first publication (The Utility of Love in the Shadows of the Emerald City anthology) and who I’ve sold to another time (What Makes You Tick in the War of the Worlds: Frontlines anthology). Well they have a new antho coming out titled “Fallen” with a theme of demonic horror. I’ve been fortunate enough to make it into 2 out of 3 of their other anthologies, so I’d really like to make it 3 out of 4. I wanted to come up with something original, not just an Exorcist or Fallen (the movie) ripoff, so I spent a lot of time coming up with the concept and then an even longer time trying to put it in some kind of coherent order. The good news is that I’ve finished a rough draft and sent it off to beta readers. Now I have a bit of breathing room while they read it and comment on it, so I can catch up on some other things. I’ll be sending the completed story off to NFP very, very soon–wish me luck!

In other news, Bull Spec #3 may be out late next month, containing a previously unpublished story (my 4th story to be published) Turning Back the Clock. I’ve been really impressed by the previous two issues put together by one-man staff Samuel Montgomery-Blinn has put together so I’m really looking forward to it. Also in the issue are Katherine Sparrow and Lavie Tidhar, both great authors who I’ve read elsewhere (including quite a few stories on the Escape Artists podcasts, as well as Brain Harvest). Not only that, but my story will be ILLUSTRATED, which is a first for me, and by my good illustrator friend Joey Jordan, the one responsible for the kickass site art at the top of your page and under the Diabolical Art tab.

I’ve also been invited to write some articles for the Elder Signs Press blog. I decided to accept despite the fact that they lost the only submission I’d sent them. They’ve had a big staff turnover so I figure I’ll give them another chance.

Well, thanks for reading and keep your eye out for more content very soon!

Interview: Eugie Foster

Eugie Foster is a Nebula-winning, Hugo Award nominated author of speculative fiction living in metro Atlanta. In fact, if you read this interview right away, the Hugo ballots are still open for a few days until July 31, 2010. Her story “Sinner, Baker, Fablist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” is up for best novelette. It’s an amazing story and I encourage you to vote for it. If you haven’t read it, you can listen to it for free on Escape Pod with an amazing reading by Lawrence Santoro. She has also had many stories run on the other two Escape Artists casts (Pseudopod and Podcastle) so check out her other work there as well.

She also released a short story collection last year titled Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice. Check out her website and LiveJournal page as well, get a full list of her publications on her bibliography page.

David: I’m always interested in hearing origins of a particular story. Where did the idea for “Sinner, Baker, Fablist, Priest…” come from?

Eugie: I had the idea for the story,a society where people change their identities and their societal roles, even their personalities, based upon masks they don,rattling around in my creative subconscious for a while. But it took me a couple years to get around to writing it. I’ve always found masks so evocative. They’re universal icons, found throughout history and spanning nearly every culture. The donning of another face, or the corollary, the relinquishing of one’s own, is a transformative act, an unambiguous exchange of identity.

Fundamentally, “Sinner” is an examination and exploration of themes of identity and self: who we are against a backdrop of societal roles and expectations, the external and internal influences that affect our sense of self, and the choices we make that reflect who we truly are.

David: If you could give just one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?

Eugie: Keep writing and read; read a lot. Oh, wait, that was two pieces, wasn’t it?

Okay, how about: take the time to acquaint yourself with how the publishing biz works. How it’s depicted in Hollywood and pop culture is so wrong: you rattle off a story or novel, it gets picked up by the New Yorker or one of the big publishing houses, you hit the best-seller list in a week and become a millionaire, and la, all your troubles are over. ÂThe reality is long waits, form rejections, interminable lead times, and really crappy pay.

David: When you were getting started writing, were there any times when you were sure you wouldn’t make it? How did you get through those times?

Eugie: I made it? Really? Sweet!

Honestly, I still get all excited and amazed whenever I hear that someone who isn’t a family member or close friend has read my work. As a short story writer, I don’t expect to have much name recognition, or financial success, for that matter. Someone actually asked me whether I was getting rich now that I’d won a Nebula Award. Can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.

David: What is your first memory?

Eugie: It’s something terribly boring and unexciting, eating a cookie when I was three. But here’s an interesting bit of trivia (well I think it’s interesting): our brains aren’t really developed enough to form memories until we’re around three years old. People’s first recollections have been pretty consistently documented coming in at around three years.ÂÂ But then, recent studies in memory indicate that it’s possible that we write anew our memories each time we experience them.

David: What do you like to do when you’re not reading or writing?

Eugie: Hmm, sleeping and eating? Also editing,I’m a legal editor for the Georgia General Assembly for my day job and I’m also the director and editor of the Daily Dragon, the on-site newsletter of Dragon*Con,although editing sorta counts as writing.

I also do website design on the side, pandering to my tech geek proclivities and all. That began as an occasional project to provide a bit of extra income here and there, and I’ve found it actually eats a big chunk out of my writing time. Coding is easier and provides instant gratification, which writing rarely does. Bad writer me, no cookie.

David: If you were the first human to establish first contact with an alien, what would you say?

Eugie: Please excuse the mess; we’re still…actually, why don’t you take a leisurely cruise around the solar system and come back in about a century?

David: Do you have any works in progress you’d like to talk about?

Eugie: As always, I’ve got several short works I’m working on in various states of completion, and I’ve been plugging away at a novel for a while now, although I keep getting sidetracked by various other projects.

David: Any upcoming publications?

Eugie: Lessee, The Dragon and the Stars anthology from DAW came out in May which includes my story, “Mortal Clay, Stone Heart,” and “A Patch of Jewels in the Sky” will be reprinted in the anthology Triangulation: End of the Rainbow, due out any day now. There are also Spanish, Czech, French, and Italian translations of “Sinner” forthcoming in Cuà ¡sar, Pevnost, Tà ©nà ¨bres, and Robot, respectively.

David: What was the last book you read?

Eugie: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker. One part psychology, one part language (two of my favorite subjects) and a big ole dollop of “ooo!”

David: Your favorite book?

Eugie: *Wail!* I can’t pick just one! Um, here’s some of my favorites: Candide, The Lord of the Flies, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Silver Metal Lover, Winnie-the-Pooh, Fahrenheit 451, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, Journey to the West, and The Velveteen Rabbit.

David: Who is your favorite author?

Eugie: See above regarding *wail!*Â Some the ones that have influenced me the most as a writer include Ray Bradbury, Tanith Lee, and Ursula K. Le Guin. ÂThe lush prose and vivid imagery in their stories is so evocative; I can lose myself for days on end in their writing. ÂI also adore Neil Gaiman and A.A. Milne,Winnie-the-Pooh remains one of my all time favorite books,as well as Roald Dahl and George Orwell.

David: What was the last movie you saw?

Eugie: I saw Inception the week it came out and found it disappointing. For being the big SF film of the year, it was terribly predictable with uninteresting characters and lackluster FX. The main conceit which everyone is oohing and aahing over, being able to enter other people’s dreams, is an old SFnal one. It’s not even the first time that Hollywood has explored it. Inception did introduce a few clever premises, but the main one was an obvious plot device and when it became inconvenient, the filmmakers broke their own rules.

David: What is your favorite movie?

Eugie: See above regarding favorite author and favorite book. But a few of my top picks include American Beauty, Forgiving the Franklins, Fight Club, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

David: Eugie, thanks for taking the time for the interview.

Eugie: Thanks for interviewing me!