Cultural Processes and the Pulp Revolution

Recently, the Russian Orthodox Church's Patriarch Kirill spoke out in support of the Pulp Revolution, the Superversive Movement, and the various stripes of Puppies.  Not in so many words, but his heart is with us. 

Naturally, in their interview, Russia Today didn't explicitly ask the Patriarch what he thought of Appendix N and the recent push to reinvigorate a dying sf/f culture by a return to stories featuring healthy relationships, clear lines of good and evil, and heroes that take active measures to suppress the latter.  Instead, they asked him about recent legislation pushing the normalization of same-sex relationships, and in an off-hand moment he used literature as a common touchstone for understanding the difference between good and evil:

"I’m deeply wary of it. What’s happening in the Western countries is that, for the first time in human history, legislation is at odds with the moral nature of human beings. What’s good and evil? Sin and righteousness? These could be defined in both religious terms and non-religious terms. If you take a good character from English, American, or Russian fiction, you will see that all of them possess the same qualities. Why? We have different cultures and different political systems, but for all of us good is good, and evil is evil, and everyone understands who the good guys are, and who the bad guys are. So how do we distinguish? With our heart, with our moral nature. This moral nature, created by God, served as a foundation for the legislation which is designed. Laws defined moral values in legal terms, telling us what’s good and what’s bad. We know that stealing is bad and helping people is good, and laws define what stealing is and what the suitable punishment for it is.

Now, for the first time in human history, the law allows something that doesn’t correspond to our moral nature. The law contradicts it."

As Breitbart said, politics is downstream from culture.

The enemies of truth and beauty have long understood this, and they've long understood that subverting the culture was a necessary first step towards subverting the law.  By pushing fiction away from universal truths about good and evil and towards antiseptic intellectualism unmoored from a moral center, they've managed to shift the culture towards one that accepts and encourages their stilted world view.  There's a feedback system built into their plan whereby they infect the culture with their grim worldview which then demands more reinforcement that hopelessness is the natural order.

The new-wave writers and editors explicitly told readers to stop worrying about all that good and evil stuff.  They told readers to evolve beyond simple superstition and accept that the world is painted in various shades of gray - that the wisdom cultivated over generations and handed down to us should be overturned if you're really smart and you just kinda figured some stuff out.  Which left the barn door open for, "I just kinda figured it out when I was in college," writers like Iain Banks and China Mieville to escape from the hog pen and into the kitchen to slurp up all the jelly.

Patriarch Kirill.  Hero.  Revolutionary.  Puppy.

And yet, as the Patriarch points out, we distinguish good and evil with our heart and our moral nature.  I'd argue that our brains play a role, but the greater point is that even after you give your brain over to writers like Banks and Meiville, the good man's heart and soul reject what they have to offer.  It takes an act of will to silence or ignore the feeling of disgust or dismay that those two (and others like them) inspire in readers.  The bleak and hopeless worldview of the new wave authors is a heavy and draining one, and all the brainpower in the world cannot solve that problem.  Give up, these authors say.  You are surrounded by evil and nothing you do can really make much difference in the grand scheme of things.  Just abandon hope, live for today, and let your betters care for you and yours.

Contrast that with the feeling of hope and inspiration that John C. Wright's works inspire.  Even when things look their worst, hope remains.  It feeds the soul what it needs to forge ahead in this fallen world.  It pushes a worldview that inspires active resistance to darkness and evil.  Wright, and writers like him, bring the message that you are surrounded by evil, but everything you do to fight it makes a difference.  Fight today that you might live tomorrow, and care for you and yours.

That's the message you get from the 'regress harder' crowd, and it appeals to the sensibilities of all men of good faith.  That message is a direct threat to the new-wave writers and those who subscribe to the larger cultural narrative.  That message resonates with the hearts and souls of those looking for hope, and active measures are taken to silence that message because it is so much stronger and appealing.  That message has to be contained because every time the message of life grows, it does so at the expense of the death eaters.

At the societal level, a culture welcoming messages of truth and beauty also rejects the grim nihilism and empty intellectualism of the 'no real bad guys' crowd.  The former teaches an understanding that good and evil are real things in the world.  The former provides an ability to distinguish between good and evil.  The former encourages everyone to fight evil - even if it's just the dragons appearing on the ballot or in the office or in one's own heart.

Producers of nihilistic tales of raw intellectualism unfettered by the presence of a moral heart and soul know that literature exalting the ability to recognize and fight evil are a dagger pointed straight at their blackened, shriveled hearts.  They are all battle cries that serve to inspire men of good will to reject the seductive message of evil peddled by men of ill will.  The forces of darkness hate and fear the Pulp Revolution, the Superversive Movement, and the various stripes of Puppies, because we represent a direct threat to their existence.  They cannot but alternately mock and ignore us because deep down in their hearts they know their empty promises will yield but bitter fruit.  They know their days are numbered.  They that we are coming for them. 

Writing Circle Jerks

Most people in most writing circles are jerks.  Allow me to demonstrate:

 

This crossed my Twitter transom, and it took a Herculean effort and some serious teeth gritting to let it slide on down out of the bottom of my feed without a direct response.  So much of it makes no sense to me, and yet I said nothing.  The limitations of communicating through the twit box saved me from shooting off my mouth at the time.  The many and varied problems inherent in this graph won't fit into a few 140 character telegrams.  Twitter just wasn't the right place.

 

Blogger, now...that is the right place!

 

One look at that chart tells you everything you need to know about the sad state of literature today.  Three quarters of that pie consists of raw emoting about writing.  Maybe a quarter of the pie actually relates to writing.

 

Here's my own pie chart:

 

Granted, my life as it relates to writing includes a massive chunk of time spent doing things for other people in exchange for pictures of dead presidents.  That's life, and it's fine.  It won't last forever.  The point is that writing is an enjoyable experience for me, and when the chance comes along to do it, I grab it.  Contrast that to a 'writer' who actively looks for reasons NOT to write.  Do you really think the material they produce will be worthwhile?  If they couldn't be motivated to write it, why would I be motivated to read it?

 

Notice that the other half of my chart consists of time spent actually doing something.  If I'm not writing, I'm reading about it, or writing about it.  That last one is a bit ironic, so let me explain.

 

There's writing and then there's writing.  Typing these words into Blogger is writing, technically.  It's writing in the same sense that writing a letter or email or a technical report at the office is writing, but it isn't writing in the sense of producing a work for sale on the open market.  That doesn't mean that it isn't writing of value.  Quite the contrary.  This post serves as a warm up for me - as soon as I'm done with this post, I'll go back to walking my mendicant priest through the clues that lead him to the final confrontation with a hell-spawned dragon.  Everything I write - from the quickest email to the longest internet rant - has value and makes me a better writer.  It's all time well spent.  It goes in the 'win' column even if it isn't generating words for sale on Amazon.

 

Before we move on to why most writing circles are full of jerks, let's get a little bit meta.  That last paragraph I wrote?  That's a reminder to everyone that you're getting better all the time.  That's a reminder that writing is a skill that you practice even when you aren't pushing characters through a plot.  That's a reminder that so much of what you do with your 'not writing' time is making you a better writer.  These are all subtle words of encouragement to writers that everything is going to be okay.  That they shouldn't stress out so much.  That they can do this.  It's positive reinforcement for them to continue doing what they are doing.

 

Notice the active verbs there that have more to do with action than emoting?  That's on purpose.

 

Compare my advice to that of the jerks shuffling the first pie around the internet:

 

Notice the small size of that yellow slice?  Writers love to laugh about how much they suck or about how much they hate writing.   You can never fully escape it.  As much as I actively avoid most writer's haunts on the internet, that damn thing still pushed into my feed.  It's small size is my way of telling the reader to stop listening to that kind of loser talk.  That's my way of telling the reader to stop worrying about what other writers feel and get back to what you should be DOING.

 

Notice there isn't a red slice?  I don't spend time worrying about it.  More to the point, I don't spend time telling people that I worry about it.  At best it isn't true - it's just a po' faced attempt to fish a compliment out of the reader.  At worst, it's an attempt to invoke feelings of inadequacy among other writers.  Either way, it's a pretty lousy thing to say to a writer.

 

Of course, a writer should be concerned about the quality of his work.  If you're honest, and if you want to get any better.  The day a writer thinks he is a good enough writer is the day he stops trying to get better is the day he starts the long, slow slide towards writing like John Scalzi.  But that's besides the point - the real point is that time spent emoting about the quality of your writing is not time spent doing something about the quality of your writing.

 

You see what I keep coming back to?  It's the contrast we've seen before between feeling and doing. 

 

Those in writing circles whose advice focuses on feeling rather than writing are doing their audience a grave dis-service.  They are jerks.

 

Don't be a feeler.  Be a doer.

 

Don't feel.  Write.

Quick Hits: Woke Kids

This is going to sound like one of those fake "my woke eight year old asked me," things that has littered the twit box of late.  It's really not.  I take full credit for raising my daughter right.  My twelve year old daughter has my genes and she has my memes.

This weekend the older kids asked to watch the latest Star Trek horse whipping.  The twelve-year old is wise beyond my years, because she learned her lesson after the last two movies.  We asked her why she didn't want to see the latest movie, and my hand to god, she said, "It's just going to be about a hundred year old guy with a bomb trying to blow up the Federation, and then there'll be a fistfight over the bomb at the end."

A single tear of pride is rolling down my cheek as I type this.

Now look, my kids know to watch for the signs.  They know all about The Narrative, and we all point and laugh every time a movie makes a point to pause and linger in a long steady shot expressly designed to show everybody how current year the movie really is.  They ask questions about the antagonist's motivations.  They will be effective soldiers for the next generation's fight in the war on noticing things.



Take that, flyover country!

They pointed out to me that two out of the three vengeance thirsting Big Bad Guys seeking in this franchise are soldiers.  They had no answers for why that would be the case, so Dad filled them in, Jeffro like, on what their brain noticed, even if they did not.  As with most messaging designed around empty promises, stating out loud the sales pitch in plain bold terms makes the pitch sound ridiculous:

• If you wear Axe body spray dozens of supermodels will follow in your wake.
• Your cats will love you more if you feed them food from a can.
• Soldiers are very bad, dangerous things who do very bad things, and you can't have peace while they are around.

They notice these things, even if they don't have the words to explain them.  Better yet, they have the confidence to identify when something doesn't pass the smell test, and ask questions about it.  Why is that so hollow?  Why don't I care about the people on the space station?  Why does this fight feel so fake?  Why is the central node for the entire ventilation system a glass box in 'the sky'?  Why do the spaceships fly under rivers to dock in the middle of the space globe?

In some cases the answer is as simple as, "Because it makes it more dramatic.  Because it looks better.  Because we have three teams of people to keep track of, and this lets the director show us where they all are in relation to each other."  These are the easy ones.  The relationship questions that are the hard ones to answer.  You have to really break down all the ways that films like this fail on the relationship front, and then figure out better ways to present what the film-makers were trying to show.  Teaching kids how adult relationships work is hard enough as it is, doing it while trying to shore up the foundations of a film like Beyond is playing the "Dad Game" on  B Mode.

You know what I'm talking about.

I should have listened to the 12 year old.

Lessons Learned From King Conan

This isn't something that I set out to do. 

One of the sellers at a recent Toy Fair had cheap copies of old Conan comics available, so I took a flyer and picked up a series of five of them.  I've been on a Howard kick lately, and have discovered that a great many of the older things I've been told are terrible are actually pretty darn good.  At ten bucks and an hour or so to read them all, it was worth a shot.

Good call, Jon.

The writing doesn't rise to the level of Howard's work and the art isn't up to the level of the black and white Conan comics that introduced me to the character, but those are both really high bars.  The stories are classic sword and sorcery tales.  They may be a bit workmanlike, but for some reason I'm a lot more forgiving when comics use Conan for stories than I am when writers use him that way.  There's something about the transition to a new form of media that puts my mind at ease.  It may be that Howard's writing is just so dang good it feels cheap when anyone else writes about Conan, but the change in media wipes the slate clean and doesn't automatically lead me to compare the tale with one of Howards.

The first issue features Conan's standard nemeses in a trio of sorcerers, one each from Khitai, Ophirea, and Shem.  They plot and gamble to determine who shall slay Conan and claim the power behind the throne of Aquilonia.  They lure him to their lair - three towers on a magic isle and hijinks ensue.

It has also been instructional for me as a D&D guy*.  One thing I've always struggled with was high-level adventuring.  Once the characters hit domain level and bought castles and cathedrals and such, figuring out ways to get them back into the dungeon can be a bit tricky.  With armies at their disposal, the normal grind of leveling breaks down into, "Send in the marines. His Majesty has no intention of missing Taco Tuesday at the castle."

We usually just broke kayfabe and ignored the kingdom while the party headed out on a little jaunt.  In these stories, Conan might be the King, but he's still the only one who can solve the problem.  Either he is the only one who knows about it, or it is a threat that targets him directly.  These solutions might be old hand for many, but seeing so many examples back to back to back really helps get the juices going and expands this DM's repertoire.



The art is standard early-80's comic book fare and features the standard early-80's style.  That is to say, while it features a strong sense of fantasy, the fashions and hairstyles are firmly founded in 1980 standards of beauty.  While they tend to run towards the workmanlike end of the spectrum, this is an end of the spectrum that I cut my comic-milk teeth on, so it feels right to me.

 

Best of all, my three year old loves them.  She asked me to read them to her, and it has been a real pleasure to introduce her to the magic and heroism of King Conan.  Reading Howard's prose to a three year old never would have occurred to me, but the inclusion here of the bright colors, and the tactile feeling of pointing to the word balloons to help her follow the action keeps her engaged.

As a casual comics fan, this has been a fun little jaunt for me.  I'll have to keep an eye out for more cheap thrills like this at the next convention/toy fair.



*This is incidental, but worth a mention.  For the record, I'm a big D&D guy, but try to post most of my gaming material over on a blog written by a pseudonym.  Seagull Rising is more political, and I try not to mix politics and gaming if I can help it.

It's Not Just You

Pictured above: Not me and my brother.

This past week I sent an email out to my closest friends and family announcing my entry into the world of self-publishing.  This represents my 'coming out of the pulp closet' to people in meat-space.  This doesn't include the meat-sticks that sleep under the roof I pay for, naturally.  They have to put up with 'quiet time' while Dad hammers at the keyboard to the sweet guitar licks of Dick Dale.

Almost immediately, one of the legions of men who are my literal brothers shot back a message asking if I would be interested in reading some of his written work.  That prompted a long phone call during which he confirmed a few suspicions I've seen voiced around the Pulp-O-Sphere.

Before we get to those points, let's get a couple things straight.  It's important to remember that this is my brother we're talking about.  We've got the same genes.  We grew up in the same environment.  We spent countless hours separated by a DM screen.  During our formative years, we watched the same movies and read the same books.  So it isn't too surprising that we share tastes.  That said, we've been on our own in this wonderful world for two and a half decades, and in that time we've gone our separate ways.  The critical difference here is that this is a guy who hasn't spent the last couple of years tilting at the Hugo windmill, who doesn't spend a lot of time on social media, and who hasn't fallen in with a bad crowd of revolutionaries.  This guy represents the average fan of sf/f literature who just wants to read the damn things.  For that reason, he serves as an interesting point of reference.

What came out of our conversation was a telling glimpse into the mind of a casual fan of adventure fiction with an emphasis on the sf/f.  He noticed the decline in quality of the typical sf/f book published today.  He wanted something very different from what the big publishers had to offer.  He was desperate enough for stories that fit his notion of adventure and heroism that he sat down at the computer and wrote up a few stories of his own.  Including one about a guy fighting a dragon.  And all of this over just the last three to four years.

Which is the exact same time frame that I'm seeing in reports around the pulp-o-sphere.

People are tired of genre fiction that doesn't fill a need for inspirational heroism.  They are done waiting for the coastal cocktail party crowd to fill that need.  They are hungry for fiction that reminds them of the value of truth, honor, and beauty.  They can't quite put their finger on the problem, but most of them aren't so much interested in solving the problem as they are interested in handing over their money to those who can solve it for them.

The only hurdles they face today are a limited supply and an inability to find that limited supply.

Fortunately for them, we have top men working on those problems.

Top.  Men.

Cirsova, The Cover Art

Four covers by Jabari Weather

As warned previously, the covers of Cirsova magazine are worth a look. 

We're going to punt on the special edition cover featuring a pair of GamerGate heroes in a classic Frazetta pose.  That was a nice nod to the troops on the front lines of the Great Meme War of 2016, but it's worth it's own discussion.  Also, it doesn't really fit my thesis, so like any good climate scientist worth his grant money, I'm going to just ignore that pesky little data point.

What you're looking at to the right there are the first four covers of Cirsova Magazine.  Initially, I was little disappointed to learn that the same artist would be preparing the cover for the fourth installation of the magazine.  Then I saw the cover he did and realized I didn't know what I was talking about and maybe I should keep my damn fool mouth shut.

That never stopped me before and it's not going to stop me now. 

Purely from a branding perspective, this is a clever move.  Cirsova magazine has a distinct look to it.  The bold colors and the stark impressionistic style all serve to distance this magazine from its more staid competitors.  You've got conflict occurring in each one as well.  Only in the case of the magic thief sneaking through a wall do you have a cool character looking cool, and even he is in the process of doing something.

Now take a look at the more recent covers of the sort of magazines you're likely to find in the box chains:

At least they warned you what to expect inside.

Let's just take a moment to enjoy the fact that F&SF over on the left features a lonely person surrounded by multiple cats.  Give them credit, they know what their audience likes and they are going to give those spinster cat ladies what they want good and hard.

Those three covers are all dull and muted.  Only the woman fleeing through the woods features any action of any kind.  The middle one is nothing but three pensive faces looking pensively off into the distance.  This is the sorry state of the mainstream fantasy and science-fiction world today.  Cirsova is right to do everything different that it can.

Of course, this being November, maybe the October issues of each magazine are just naturally muted and dark.  October is the spooky month of Halloween after all, so let's look at a survey of Asimov's covers, to get a better overview of what to expect from them.  Here is the top row of results from a Googel Image Search for "Asimov's Magazine Previous Issues":

There are nine people shown. Five of them are sitting down.  Of the fours people standing, only one is actually moving, and that figure is tucked way off into the back.  One of the covers is nothing but a landscape. Thrilling tales of adventure more certainly do not await.  This is a sedate magazine filled with people doing the same things they do in our world, only against a backdrop of stars and castles.  There's no last minute changes to the hyper-drive coils.  There's no fight against a scaly natural disaster in lizard form that breathes fire.  There's just a whole lot of people sitting around talking about life and love and stuff, you know?

You can't even give them credit for using a variety of artists.  Cirsova, with one artist shows just as much variety as Asimov's does with (presumably) eight of them.  All eight covers of Asimov's could be done by the same artist.  They have the same technical quality and evoke the same listless acceptance of the same old stories set in the same old new worlds. 

I'd argue Cirsova has more variety given that its four issues feature three different figure perspectives.  Two feature full body characters painted from overhead, one a three quarter figure from below, and the most recent features a head and shoulder shot of a woman.  This is a great way of subtly reminding readers that Cirsova includes stories written from different perspectives.

The only thing I see that is consistent across the first four covers of Cirsova is that all four are fantasy.  They have yet to feature a sci-fi cover.  That seems like a glaring omission for a magazine that features plenty of adventure off-planet.

So mark me down as a suitably chastened fan of Jabari Weathers.  The Cirsova covers have continued to grow on me over time, and I'm eager to see what the fifth issue of Cirsova brings to my mailbox.

[Edit to add:  After writing this post, my thesis was independently confirmed by the Barbarian Book Club.]

People Are Talking

The first independent review of my writing was recently published at the Castalia House blog, and glowing isn't too hyperbolic of a word for it.

It’s got likable characters that read as if they are actual human beings. It’s got protagonists that could maybe stand to see things a little differently and antagonists that maybe have a point. It’s got unvarnished heroism, believable emotional beats, and the exact epic showdown that is promised on the cover.

Most importantly, it is a story that can be enjoyed by fathers and their daughters. And as I write that line, I have to say I am both shocked and angered by how little there is to fill that niche. Nobody, at any rate, consulted with us for what we might have wanted that way in the most recent Star Wars film. I think all of that’s changing now, though. And not a moment too soon.

These would be kind words coming from anyone, but to read this from Jeffro Johnson lends them additional weight.  From a strictly professional standpoint, Jeffro has a keen eye for prose, and he pulls no punches when work doesn't live up to his high standards.  If he enjoyed this novella, then I'm not wasting my time here.  From a personal standpoint, Jeffro has been instrumental in lifting the scales from my eyes when it comes to modern literature.  He has been a tireless advocate for the Pulp Revolution and making sci-fi great again, and a huge inspiration to me.  His approval of my work doesn't just validate my decision to throw my hat in the ring, it motivates me to elevate my game.

Feels good, man.

New Schedule

Source

Between writing my own little novellas, keeping up with posting on three blogs (that I'll admit to), and now working on recording a pair of new books for Castalia House, the cup that holds my free time workload truly doth runneth over.

Something's gotta give, and it's going to be this blog, but not by much.  We live in a new golden age of literature, and those of us trying to midwife a new culture of bright, energetic, and fun works have no shortage of materials to draw on for inspiration.  Rather than fill up this blog with a bunch of filler posts pointing to those other blogs, we're just going to pull back here for a bit. 

Until I can get caught up on my writing - I'm pushing to get two more novellas out by the end of the year - we're just going to pull back from posting a bit.  You can expect posts every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday until further notice.

Cirsova, Issue Three

It's long past time we talked about Cirsova.  The third issue dropped, and I backed at a high enough level to receive a hard copy.  I could talk about the high quality of the physical copy, but I won't. Because I'm not autistic.  That particular train may be fine, but it's only one means by which Cirsova is sounding the death bell for traditional publishing.

We'll do a more in-depth look at a few of the stories from this issue later, but for now, let's just look at the issue from a bird's eye view.  After all, this magazine is almost assured of a spot on the short list for a Hugo. 

As usual, this is some of the best bang for your buck that fans of short fantasy and science-fiction can find these days.  As a big fan of this style of reading, I've long been an advocate for increased production and sale by authors of their short form fiction on Amazon.  (I'm following that model myself with the steady release of novellas such as Wyrm's Bane.)  As things stand, the production rate of stand-alone short fiction is low, and no one has developed a central review and recommendation list that one could use to select "the good stuff" (hint, hint).

That leaves us at the tender mercies of a man like P. Alexander, the editor of Cirsova, and to date those mercies have been tender indeed.  In each of the previous issues of Cirsova, I have yet to be disappointed by a story.  As expected, they range in quality.  They haven't all blown my socks off, but I have yet to get half-way through a story and think, "Why am I wasting time on this garbage?"  Even the worst story in Crisova is worth reading through to the end.  That streak continues in the third issue.

This go 'round we get nine stories largely centered around the theme of pirates.  One glaring omission that jumps out is the third installment of the epic poetic retelling of the John Carter tale by James Hutchings.  That has been promised for the next issue, and it frees up space for stories from new authors, so it's a small loss.  The mix of stories tends toward the fantasy end of the spectrum, but there's enough science-fiction to satisfy.  The fantasy itself is a solid mix as well with a pair of stories set in historical fantasy worlds rather than the de rigeuer Tolkein pastiches that are all too common.  This issue even includes a modern world where fantasy slips past the normies on the regular, and while it wasn't one that appealed to my tastes, it was nice to see that setting included as well.

One thing you can say for Cirsova is that its mix of new and old, and of safe and daring, hits all the sweet spots for variety that you'd want.  Even if you don't like everything in this issue, it's a safe bet you'll like something.  And if you don't like something in this issue, maybe fantasy and science-fiction just aren't your thing.

As with the first two issues, the cover art here is provided by Jabari Weather.  My initial thought on seeing that he is the cover artist for the fourth issue was that they needed some fresh blood in the cover art department.  After thinking about it for ten seconds, and looking at the covers all lined up side-by-side, I realized how clever this choice really is.  But that's a post for another day...

More Buck Rogers

Based on my site traffic this week, you peeps don't much care for the politics.  Well, the election is over, and we got that out of our system, so let's get back to the good stuff, shall we?

Last week I discussed the hare-brained idea of making a gender-flipped Buck Rogers TV show.  Buck Rogers is a near contemporary of John Carter, and John Carter is in the public domain.  So I checked to see what the status of the Buck Rogers IP was, and it turns out the answer is…murky. 

To start with, the book that started the whole thing, Armageddon 2419 A.D., was released in August 1928.  (In Amazing Stories magazine.)  But most of the IP that makes Buck Rogers what he is, including the name "Buck" itself, was introduced in later Sunday morning comic strip form.  So you could argue that the whole shooting match enters the public domain once the clock hits zero as measured from that original 1928 publishing date. 

Even ignoring that issue, it gets better for lawyers and worse for  the rest of us non-lizard people.
 

Don Murphy is a Hollywood hotshot partially responsible for the train wrecks Natural Born Killers, Transformers, and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.  He wants to make a Buck Rogers, but doesn’t want to pay royalties to the IP holder because he claims it entered the public domain in 1950 or 2010, depending on how you read the statutes.  Long story short: The courts have decided that you can’t sort the legal status of the IP until after the potentially copyright infringing work has been made. 

The good news here is that this keeps Murphy’s filthy hands off of Buck Rogers for a few more years.  There’s no way a studio is going to risk $100 million on a property with such vague copyright status.

The bad news here is that this keeps pretty much everybody’s hands off of Buck Rogers for a few more years. 

The other good news is that this also gives me another chance to post pictures of Erin Gray.  This time with a ray gun.

Worth being frozen in time for 400 years for.

As to the structure of Buck Rogers, it really is the perfect set-up for a story.  You've got the man-out-of-time thing going on, so the protagonist is learning about the world of 2419 B.C. right along with the viewer.  It's far enough in the future that you can posit any sort of  new tech or transh-uman dystopia or alien incursion into the solar system that you want. 

You've got a whole universe to explore, so you can use Buck as a framing device in much the same way that Lost and Doctor Who or even Quantum Leap used the premise as an excuse to throw the protagonist into any sort of story you want.  You can have Buck stranded on a desert island one week, fighting gangsters in a mega-city the next week, and exploring strange planets at the end of worm holes the next.  You can make his base a sci-fi Casablanca and throw countless alien spies and space princesses at him.  It's open ended and flexible in a way that few shows are these days.

Princess Ardala, dressed conservatively.

Even better, Buck Rogers is part of the zeitgeist as the most famous pulp space-rocket and ray-gun property.  The average person doesn't know about the American orgs fighting back against the ruling Red Mongols who conquered America.  You could use the Tiger Men of Mars, the Asterites, or the Mekkanos, or not, as you saw fit.  You pretty much have carte blanche to write your own 25th Century, once more giving producers the option to use an  established IP that is the same, but different.

It's obvious why producers should be salivating over the prospects of reviving Buck Rogers once it hits the public domain.  Last time I said that the legal trouble saves us the pain of watching a bad Buck Rogers movie crash at the box office, but if the IP is in the public domain, there's at least a chance that multiple versions of Buck hit the media, and for the most appealing one to stick around for a good long while.

One can hope.

Deep Breath Before the Plunge

Tomorrow is day zero.  The fork in the road.  The tipping point.  The euphemism of your choice.

In times such as we face, we do well to heed the advice of our forebears.  J.R.R. Tolkien was not just some writer, he was a man who well understood the need for hope.  With apologies to the master:

You may not want to be in a battle and find waiting on the edge of one that can't be escaped even worse.  As with Frodo and Sam, America doesn't have much hope.  Just a fool's hope.  Her enemies are ready.  His full strength gathered.  Not only feminists but ensqualmated men as well.  Legions of non-citizens from the south, mercenaries from the cities.  All will answer Mordor on the Potomac's call.

 

 

Whatever the results of tomorrow, it won't end this way.  The journey doesn't end here.  This is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of these dark times roll back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.  White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.

 

Laugh or cry, tomorrow's decision represents one victory or loss in the greater fight for civilization against the rampaging horde of orcs.  That far green country under a swift sunrise may be one step closer tomorrow.  It may be pushed back another generation or two, but it's there. 

 

At the end of the day.  At the end of the fight.  It's there.

 

And we will get there one day.

 

Even if we have to suffer a few more sling and arrows along the way.

 

So go out, do your part to push back the darkness tomorrow, and take heart.

 

At the end of the fight, there's a far green country waiting for you.

 

And that isn't so bad.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Meme Magic is Real: Why Podesta's Taste In Art Matters

Incredibly, this is not a photoshop.

This weekend the waters of political discussion have been roiled by charges that John Podesta engages in activities that look a lot like ceremonies by which he shows his devotion to demonic powers.  His defenders, and they are legion excuse his behavior as a perfectly innocuous  taste performance art.  Which narrative is the true story of what lurks in John Podesta's heart is as unknowable as it is irrelevant.  Either one should damn him and his entire circle of friends in the court of public opinion.

To understand why Podesta's taste in art carries such weight, we need to understand who he is and what his behavior tells us about the man, his friends, and his aims for America.

John Podesta is not a bit player in the great game played in Rome on the Potomac.  As a key member of the Clinton inner circle he served as Bill Clinton's Chief of Staff and is currently serving as Hillary Clinton's campaign manager.  Despite being a prominent member of Team Clinton, and despite the public face of conflict between that camp and Team Obama, he managed to secure a position as a counselor to Obama and even co-chaired the Obama-Biden Transition Team.  Clearly this is a man with clout in the hallowed halls of Washington.  As such, it's important that we understand why the bizarre tastes of this powerful man bode poorly for America and her people.

The dank corners of the internet have embraced Zig Zigler's concept that, "Repetition is the mother of learning."  Of course, as the modern, irreverent that they are, they re-phrase it, "Meme magic is real."  They understand the suggestive power of persistent and consistent messaging.  The more you repeat a message, the more likely even those who disagree with that message will be to internalize it, and once infected by the idea they will be even more likely to implement that message.  You can see this at work in every advertisement and every club slogan and every chanting crowd.

The club slogan and chanting crowds are an interesting aspect of the power of suggestive repetition that often gets short shrift.  The constant refrain of a war cry or tenet of belief also serves as a signal to the rest of your community that you belong.  They are a way to separate those who believe from the unbelievers.  You wouldn't expect Trump supporters to feel comfortable in a crowd chanting, "Black Lives Matter," any more than you would expect Hillary supporters to be comfortable in a crowd chanting, "Build That Wall!"  When used in this manner, memes can be as much a badge of membership as a means of persuasion. 

This obscure joke is a photoshop done
for illustrative purposes.

When you combine those two factors, memes as persuasion and as identifiers, you begin to understand how alien John Podesta really is - and by extension how alien the rest of his inner circle are.  Of course, this isn't to say that they are from Rigel 4 or that they believe Mars needs women, just that their way of viewing the world is utterly alien to that of the rest of the nation.

Consider the man's fascination with the consumption of human flesh (and by extension that of his entire circle, which it's worth remembering includes Obama and Clinton.)  Contrast that with most the revulsion most Americans experience when exposed to the very notion of cannibalism.  This is both a reminder for Podesta that people are fit for consumption and a signal to his circle that they are members of a select group.  Podesta's defenders reinforce that very notion when they point out that anyone who feels the natural disgust as the practice of cannibalism is just different.

Well, yes.  They are different.  Very different.  They aren't like Americans.  As such, they have no business claiming to speak for Americans, let alone claiming authority to lead the government of the people, by the people, and for the people.

These people are bizzare.  They are alien.  And they need to take their culture back into the shadows where they are most comfortable.

It's Like There's A Checkbox or Something

More, please!

Late the other night, I got sucked into a click-bait listicle about sci-fi shows that need a reboot.  Never a good idea.  You just know going in that it'll be the same list you've seen a dozen times - Blake's 7, Space:1999, Lost in Space - fine shows all, but this is the sort of empty word dump that generates what used to be called 'column inches'.  It's cheap fare with less real thought and content in the entire article than you'll get out of a single paragraph of Nathan Housely or Rawle Nyanzi.

Even that's forgivable.  I read it in an idle late night moment when I should have been sleeping and had no spare synapses for anything smarter than a simple, "Hey, remember that show?  That was great," kind of article.  It was brain candy meant to fill up a few spare moments, and it was fine...until the checkboxes.

As a fan of the pulp version of Buck Rogers, it was great to see his name on the list.  The article does acknowledge the IP's deeper roots, but it's clear that they included Buck as a sop to younger Boomers and older Gex-X types who can't think of Buck Rogers without thinking of Gil Gerard.  Back in the day, the plots of the 1970s version of Buck Rogers was too sophisticated for this Gen-Xer's young palette, but the adventure, the space fights, and the sci-fi trappings, and the pew-pew-pew! sure weren't.  To say nothing of Erin Gray.

Which is all to say that a new Buck Rogers could be great.  There's room in the market for a throwback style sci-fi, and a return to a wide-eyed, superversive and heroic action style of science-fiction in the new pulp style would be a great 'same but different' hook that media executives love because they think it gives them a safe and marketable property.  The writers admit as much.  So chalk one up for the un-named author(s) and authoress(es) of the article, their heart is in the right place.

So why can't they leave well enough alone?  They are on the right trail, they're so close to understanding, and they just yank the wheel off into a ditch:

The ultimate fish out of water, space pilot Buck Rogers was frozen in time and woke up in the 25th century. There he fought interplanetary menaces, romanced beautiful women, and lived like disco was never going out of fashion.

The 1970s Buck Rogers was already a remake of an earlier version, but it was a remake that deserves to be remade again. A ripping adventure series, it’s the perfect vehicle for a more light-hearted sort of action and adventure than Battlestar Galactica or Space: Above and Beyond. There’s plenty of fun to be had out of the confusion created by a man centuries out of time – or maybe even a woman. After all, the 1970s show gave us the kickass Wilma Deering, who’s to say we couldn’t have a female version in a Buck Rogers remake?

 Bang!  Car, meet bridge abutment.

Did you see that?  They acknowledge that Wilma Deering kicked ass - and this was made 40 years ago - but that's still not enough.  The main character has to be female, too!

They honestly believe, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the one thing that would need to be changed in a Buck Rogers remake is to gender flip the lead.  Let me tell you why that wouldn't satisfy the very people who are most likely to demand such a pointless change.

You never forget your first crush.

If you turn Buck Rogers into Becky Rogers, then in order to keep the romantic frisson between Buck and Wilma intact, you have to turn Wilma into Wilbur.  That means flipping the roles of the two characters as well.  Now Becky is the fish out of water, lost and confused in the strange modern times of the twenty-fifth century.  That turns Wilbur into the knowledgeable guiding figure.  And that means Wilbur is either a father figure (patriarchy!) or a man leading Becky through her confusion about the wider culture (patriarchy again!). 

The only way out of that quandary is to make Doe so hyper-competent that she doesn't need Wilbur around at all.  Which sucks all the drama out of the premise.  It completely negates the whole point of the exercise.

Now, I know what you're thinking.  Buck was a hero partially because he was able to bring surprising 20th century ideas into the 25th century and show the future folk better ways of doing things.  And you know what those better ways were, don't you?  The very 20th century middle-American cultural touchstones that the very people who would want a Becky Rogers loathe.  They can't have that, so they'd have to present the future as a feminist dystopia where Becky teaches the horrible patriarchy a thing or two about how feminism cures everything.

So what's the problem with that, you ask?  There's a slew of them.

For one thing, the patriarchy is on the "wrong side of history".  Showing the patriarchy victorious ranks as a serious no-no amongst the Not-OK crowd.  It also means that Becky Rogers would be the only female character with any real agency, what with women being condemned to the hideous fate of raising children, building a home and a future, and other nightmares such as avoiding decades of drudge work in a cubicle farm.  You can't have a show where women are oppressed, and at the same time the female characters are all fierce and strong and independent.  Not if you want a show that makes a lick of sense, you can't.

More to the point, the examples of what you get when you mix gender swapped IPs with feminist screeds are legion.  They've tried to make ripping adventures featuring light-hearted action and adventure married to political polemics about the patriarchy and girl power many times before, and every time they do that...you know what happens:

Bombs away!

Honestly, it would be a lot faster and cheaper and more entertaining to just film an actual train-wreck every week and air that instead of a gender flipped Buck Rogers.

Coming Soon: Wyrm's Bane

The second novella in the Five Dragon's series should be hitting Amazon with the next few days.  This one features an unlikely dragon slayer - Corbie, a mere slip of a girl who survived a childhood on the streets of a city ruled by vicious and conniving sorcerers.  Her speed and her wits guided her through countless troubles, but they are taxed to their utmost when she is caught between the most powerful army her world has ever seen and the dragon summoned to destroy it.

Corbie sees a narrow path through the two threats that might carry her to her dream of a home far away and a family of her own, but she'll need help from some odd quarters exact her revenge.

This 25,000 word novella is a light, fun read for less than a buck.  Give it a shot, because if you like it, there's plenty more coming down the line before the year's end.

Edit to add:  Kindle moved faster than expected.  This thing is available for purchase right now:

Pulp Romance

My last post touched on the deft touch Manly Wade Wellman used when writing romance in Who Fears the Devil.  Today, I'd like to talk about it in a little more depth.

First, let's introduce the contenders.

In the pink slime corner, the massively popular Magic Girl genre which features a bad-ass magic girl in a modern setting beset by monsters.  She doesn't need no stinking man.  She may be conventionally or unconventionally attractive, but romance is hard for her.  She is shy or awkward or hasn't got time for a man what with all the monster fighting she has to do.  Also, most guys just don't understand or can't handle a badass chick like her. 

In the blue corner, the wonderfully regressive writing of Manly Wade Wellman in which women actually look forward to finding a man to settle down with.  The would-be lovers in these tales are generally young, and generally awkward, and generally that's because they are kind and decent people who just need a little subtle nudging from their elders to seal the deal they both want to make.

Here's a great example of how Wellman describes a young couple in the making early in the story:

He jumped up and went out like as if he expected to see angles.  I followed him out, and I reckon it was an angel he figured he saw.

She was a slim girl, but not right small.  In her straight blue dress and canvas shoes, with her yellow curls waterfalled down her back, she was pretty to see.  In one hand she toted a two-gallon bucket.  She smiled, and that smile made Zeb's knees buck.

Simple, home-spun, and fun.  That's how it's done, folks.  Here's another great example of a feuding couple that reconciles:

Back he turned, and bent down, and she rose up on her toetips so their faces came together.

The rain stopped, the way you'd think that stopped it.  But they never seemed to know it, and I picked up my guitar and went out toward the lip of the cliff.

Tasteful.  Evocative.  Heart warming.  This is how people who aren't broken on the inside write about love and romance.  This is how people who understand that love is a coming together and not a constant battle for the upper hand write about love and romance.  This is how people who accept the difference between men and women write about love and romance. 

We don't get a lot of this in our sf/f literature these days, because most sf/f writers are broken people writing about broken people.  They either don't understand love in the charitable or romantic or chivalrous sense, or they deny the very existence of those three possibilities.  And that shines through in their work - to the detriment of their stories, the genre, literature, and the world.

Let's try to do better.  Let's learn a lesson from writers like Manly Wade Wellman.  After all, when you're lost or at a dead-end, you have to take a step back to where you were before you can forge a new path ahead.