Crazy Wish Fulfillment (At Least in My Dreams) May 12, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, ideas, music, sense of wonder, writing.1 comment so far
All a writer has is time. How it is used (or wasted on endless hours of spider solitaire) is what counts. You can hammer at the keys endlessly or sit and stare out the window–both are perfectly useful writing components. If you can’t daydream, how can you write? (I saw an article about a treadmill hooked to a desk for the real Type A personality–one comment was how useful this was since, unlike a chair where you can lean back, it kept the worker from daydreaming. I don’t even want to know what company has HR people with such views.)
I have a score of ideas I want to do, novels mostly but also short stories. But one idea that has haunted me for a lot of years is a novel (actually it would have to be a trilogy) based on King Crimson’s Court of the Crimson King. Fabulous imagery, visions that crop up when I least expect it (whathell is a pattern juggler, anyway?) And a true challenge to weld all those images into a coherent story.
When I saw Kevin Anderson’s blog about doing Clockwork Angels
based on a new Rush concept album, I felt an emotion I don’t often experience: envy. Good on you, Kevin! What a great opportunity to showcase both music and word.
That made me wonder. I am taken with Court of the Crimson King and will never have the chance to turn it into written words. But what other songs press your button? If you had the time and permission, what songs would you turn into a novel? Rocket Man? Wooden Ships? Hijack (the Starship)? Doesn’t have to be f or sf. I Fought the Law (and the Law Won)? Folsom Prison Blues? Cherry Hill Park? Timothy? What?
I hope y’all checked out yesterday’s guest blog from Scott Gamboe (and if not, do so now).
I leave you with, what else? (Illos by Wayne Barlowe.)
LZ-129 The Flames Are Shooting 500 Feet Into the Air May 6, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in death, history, sense of wonder, zeppelin.add a comment
Victories seem more difficult to celebrate in the USA than disasters. Today in 1937 the Hindenburg caught fire and burned, with the loss of 36 lives, including one ground crewman. One reason this is so spectacular goes to how difficult it was to film news events then. Having the necessary equipment on hand required some time to set up the camera and an experienced camera operator. It wasn’t until 1978 that videocameras became common enough that another actual air disaster (this one killing 144) was captured on film/tape.
Now, of course, try to find someone who doesn’t have a smartphone with video capabilities to record air atrocities.
As you know, I am a fan of dirigibles and have been aloft in both a blimp and a zeppelin. On occasion I check out stories of flying. A marvelous fictional account is Max Allan Collins’ The Hindenburg Murders, complete with schematics.
In the movies there is always the Michael York/Elke Sommer thriller Zeppelin and Hindenburg, starring one of my favorite actors, Geogre C. Scott.
I never saw the made for TV movie with the hyperbolic title Hindenburg:Titanic of the Skies and might count myself lucky for having missed it.
Want more about the Hindenburg? Here’s a nice place to read up.
I leave you with some of the most stirring unscripted news commentary of the past century.
Not Just Another Dead Teenager Movie April 17, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in death, fantasy, movies, movies & TV, sci-fi, science fiction, sense of wonder.1 comment so far
Cabin in the Woods is certainly more than that. I saw the trailer and thought it had some small, itty-bitty twist. Wrongo. I’m not going to spoil anything here, so read on, stalwart souls.
Joss Whedon has taken a lot of ideas from his other series and mixed them together here. There’s some Dollhouse and definitely some Buffy tossed in with Cube and any number of dead teenager movies. By that I mean the predictable cast of characters being knocked off one by one. “We’re safer if we stay together, so let’s split up so the machete-wielding maniac in the hockey mask can kill us one by one.” That plot has been used repeatedly. Only Whedon tells us why in this movie, and it makes sense.
Other than the nifty ending which is not the one you’d expect anywhere along the way (and the scene where a guy is impaled by a unicorn–or maybe the flesh eating merman who has a blood blowhole in the middle of his back), Whedon makes use of every trope imaginable. But he explains them so they are reasonable and makes fun of them and has some nifty characters.
What impressed me was the technique in the movie. Every time you are sure the characters are out of danger or know what’s going on, Whedon ups the ante. More death, more blood, unexpected twists. But I sorta wish, along with a character in the movie, there’d been more of the flesh eating merman. That’s a critter not seen before. Whedon is a master of pacing and playing on the “shock factor” (which means you jump, even if you know the scare scene is coming up–for me, that was the way I went through Jaws. Predictable scare scenes and they were still enough to make me yelp.). What makes Cabin different is the mixing of genres. It’s a dead teenager movie with the blonde slut, jock, geek, stoner and virgin, but they fight back. They are meant to be pawns and rise above the chessboard. But it is also an sf movie. And a horror movie. And the final scene is something else entirely.
The movie was caught up in the MGM bankruptcy so spent two years on the shelf. Glad it escaped.
I am still leery about The Avengers. Too many heroes spoil the broth. After seeing this one, though, Whedon might surprise me pleasantly there, too.
The Unseen World Around Us April 12, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in dinosaurs, geocaching, history, ideas, New Mexico, outlaws, science, science fiction, sense of wonder, space, UFOs, writing.1 comment so far
As you probably know by now, I am fascinated with the idea we go through life and see only a tiny fraction of it. This drew me to geocaching where most people go right by a cache and never know. This is a simple thing. The world–nature–is vastly more intriguing with its diversity and how new things pop up all the time, things we simply have not been attentive enough to see before.
In NM there are cemeteries all over the place, but who is buried int hem? Some terrible outlaw who never achieved the status of Billy the Kid or Blackjack Ketchum? Or just plain folks, putting in their time, working sunrise to sunset and then…dying. Unnoticed, or perhaps noticed only for a very short while by a very few people?
New discoveries in NM caverns possibly give us more powerful antibiotics. Who woulda thunk it? Back in 1986 the Lechuguilla Cave was discovered. It’s the 7th longest cave in the world and the deepest in the continental US. And antibiotic resistant bacteria have been found in it.
Which brings up the point, what antibiotics? Turns out these may be brand new ones. What else may be found here? It is near Roswell. Could those crafty UFOnauts be hiding down there, knowing it is the deepest point they could reach without digging? Are those antibiotics potentially from Out There, brought to Earth by the 1947 saucer crash? Or perhaps your ideas run more to thriller. If there is a bacterium, can it be used as a terror weapon? Only the antibiotic from the cave can save us?
More than 1200 new species of plants and animals have been found in the Amazon since 2000. What might James Cameron find diving into the Marianas Trench? That’s a long way down and hitherto unexplored.
Panspermia might be a way of repopulating lost species on earth. Comets and asteroid impacts can blast away huge chunks of earth (imagine finding those dinosaurs from ’40s and ’50s pulp stories on other planets!) And then return it.
So much of nature out there, unseen.
Barsoom! March 7, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, e-books, fantasy, movies, movies & TV, nostalgia, science fiction, sense of wonder, space, Texas, Wild West.2 comments
Saw the 3D version of John Carter last night and enjoyed it a lot. There are few movies that need 3D, but ones with huge vistas and gaggles of cgi attacking armies nudge into that category. I’m not sure it’s exactly necessary, though, and if you saw only the 2D version you wouldn’t be disappointed. (I won’t even mention the truly deplorable Princess of Mars since John Carter is light years better)
The tharks are incredible. Wonderful thought behind how a 4-armed goober would act and move. They seemed skinnier than I pictured them but Barsoom, after all, has a lighter gravity and that’s why John Carter can leap tall buildings, etc. But, perish the thought, Dejah Thoris was well endowed and not the least bit undernourished looking. (The actress, Lynn Collins, had a weird accent, but IMDB said she was born in Texas, classically trained in NYC and lives in London). My one complaint about her role was that, unlike ERB’s description in the books, she didn’t go around nearly nekkid enough.
The voice talent for the tharks was a known quantity in Thomas Hayden Church and Willem Defoe while the onscreen live action actors were, to me at least since I don’t watch Friday Night Lights, unknown. Oddly, Taylor Kitsch (what an unfortunate name) who played John Carter is a Canadian who plays a Marfa high school football player on tv?
The dog critter Woola was fun and the airships definitely unusual, though Roy Krenkel sorta formed my images of them in the Ace editions back in the ’60s. The white apes are nothing like I envisioned them, but in a way this was a throwaway scene.
The plot is pure pulp but one great improvement over the books was how the Therns were pictured. The writers worked them into the story, indeed made them the driving evil force, and gave us something better than astral projection for John Carter to get to Barsoom. Very clever, very well done, especially for the payoff at the end.
A lot of interest in Barsoom-esque stuff out there now. Stephen D Sullivan has his Elf Princess of Mars and a book I did a cover blurb for is Nathan Long’s Jane Carver of Waar, a most enjoyable book..
If only we could read our pulp stories under the light from Barsoom’s twin moons…
Blast Off For High Adventure… February 19, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in business, New Mexico, science, science fiction, sense of wonder, space, Texas.add a comment
But probably not from New Mexico’s Spaceport America. The legislature mostly failed to do anything this year in its 30 day session, but what else is new? A lot of egregious oversights but getting bought off by lobbyists and not passing limited liability for the spaceport is going to cost us dearly.
There are six in the works, with Colorado getting into the foray.
I suspect the Texas spaceport might be financed by Jeff Bezos (go buy more of my stuff on Amazon so he can afford to build his own rocket–and I can afford to launch!) Check out the link to see what Texas did to provide launcher protection–which is what NM failed to do.
With Virgin Galactic only on the hook for a few offices rented in Las Cruces and not paying a dime so far to the state, chances look mighty good to me they will shift their attention to either Texas or Colorado. Rutan is building the White Knight out in California but going to the Mojave Desert for a launch lacks…class. It’s hot out there and miles from civilization. Space tourists (it said in the paper this morning that Victoria Principal is on the roster for the first Spaceport America launch–hope she can get a ticket elsewhere) are in it for a little adventure and a lot of bragging rights. Roughing it in real desert is nowhere near as brag-worthy as staying in a posh hotel and then launching. Sort of like comparing Magellan’s Trinidad to the Queen Mary (the trial lawyers would likely make the comparison to the Titanic…) Exploration, no, elegance and adventure, yes. The difference between naming the Magellanic Clouds and “merely” seeing them from space.
With the death of all space missions and NASA still sucking up the same amount of money for a lot fewer programs, private space is our salvation. Mine, at least, for seeing space travel. (The sf I read as a kid still burns brightly in my imagination).
If Nature Abhors a Vacuum Why is It So Hard to Send Manned Ships Into Space? February 12, 2012
Posted by bobv451 in death, gummint, New Mexico, science, sense of wonder, space.4 comments
It was with real sorrow I saw that NASA is forsaking the Mars exploration. In the words of this article, Mars lost.
No, we lost. If the race is to the stars, that is. If it is to become a third-world, second-rate country then we are certainly crossing the finish line.
The conjecture is that NASA figures Virgin Galactic, SpaceX and other private companies will do it. Fine, I’d say, but there is an incredible impediment skyward for that, at least in New Mexico. The trial lawyers have spent a reported $200k lobbying to kill a bill limiting liability at Spaceport America. IOW, they want to sue the place into oblivion at the first accident.
If you are smart enough to accumulate $200,000 for the ride and smart enough to go through the release form where it states in *three* places “you may die if…” and the form must be signed at least 24 hours prior to launch to give time to think it over, then I’d say you are well on your way to understanding the danger. Everyone dies. I’d love to go up in the Virgin Galactic launch vehicle to space, and if I had to die, there’s no way I’d prefer more. But that’s just me. If I had $200k, I’d pay for the privilege of maybe dying on my way to space. Color me DD Harriman. And if I didn’t augur in, then I’d have one hell of a story to tell for the rest of my life.
Word is that Virgin Galactic is pulling back a bit because of the lawyers. VG has sunk more money into offices and the like in Las Cruces but they haven’t yet ponied up a dime to the state for use of the spaceport. It might well be they pull out and go to the Mojave site or Wisconsin or wherever. The loss to them would be negligible at this point. To space tourism in NM, it would be a crushing blow if not a fatal one.
This isn’t to say Spaceport America would close. 90% of the facility schedule would still be A-OK to go as unmanned launches are lined up and waiting to blast off. But space tourism is, excuse the expression, the boost NM needs. Thanks for trying to kill it, ambulance chasers. And thanks, NASA, for killing our entire space program.
Tis the Season to Meow Loudly December 25, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in sense of wonder.add a comment
Meow!
Alms November 19, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, Chain story, e-books, movies & TV, nostalgia, science fiction, sense of wonder, serial fiction, VIPub, westerns, Wild West, writing.3 comments
Every now and then I put in this plea. I make my living as a writer, selling my work. To you, dear friends, and others who don’t know me at all. This past week has been hectic since I have been unable to work regularly because of jury duty (and I thought the plots on CSI were far-fetched!). This will run another couple weeks, taking me away from my most productive time at lithe keyboard.
So, humor me. Keep the cats from considering me as food since I couldn’t afford to feed them. Buy something from my store, from Kindle
or Nook or from the other fine venues peddling my stuff. It won’t cost you much and you will get lots of enjoyment in return. More than paying an exorbitant ticket price for a 3D movie.
If you can’t part with a buck or two right now, there is someone you can do to help out. It’ll take just a moment. Go to Amazon or B&N and leave a review. Goodreads is a fine place to mention my work, too. Others see reviews and rely on them. A Career Guide To Your Job in Hell has some fine reviews on it. Toss in a few more if you like the collection. Even put reviews up on my website. I might be inclined to run a contest offering a few dollars off coupons for the top reviews. Doesn’t have to be hyperbolic or even good, but give me a review. But if it is bad, I might turn lachrymose or even suicidal. And then the cats would starve after they finished picking the flesh from my bones.
Your call.
Hot Rail to Hell
Prelude to.. November 1, 2011
Posted by bobv451 in business, conventions, gummint, movies, science fiction, sense of wonder, VIPub, writing.2 comments
…research and business.
I just returned from an incredible trip to the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego. I’ll get into the business aspects of that in a day or two, especially dealing with e-publishing, VIPub and new projects that really excite me (yes, I am an excitable boy…)
I left Albq for LA to visit my son, who has become a true Angeleno maneuvering the freeways with aplomb. We hit a lot of sights, including Griffith Planetarium at night but the science fictional ones were 1) revelatory and 2) disappointing. #2 was supposed to be lunch at Clifton Cafeteria where LASFS met.
The cafeteria was closed for this week for some reason. And the Museum of Jurassic Technology was closed. But the one spot I wanted to see especially was open, probably because the LAPD Internal Affairs division is headquartered here.
The Bradbury Building has been features as a backdrop for a lot of movies, especially my favorite sf movie, Blade Runner. One factoid I had not know: the building was inspired by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward. The interior has a bronze of Charlie Chaplin sitting on a bench, open grille elevators (two, each with an elevator starter–not that’s retro!) While going above the first landing is frowned upon–and considering the occupants of the upper floors, understandable–some nice shots were taken of the place. One is below.
A shock came with a touch of movie magic. Directly across the street is the movie theater shown in Blade Runner. But it does not face an alley. It faces the front door of the Bradbury. Alley composited in most realistically.
Great inspiration to be found here (and in the Goodyear blimp overhead, as well as the funicular and the plane circling over the courthouse with a banner letting the world know that Michael Jackson’s doctor should have been tried on murder charges)
To WFC tomorrow.
Bradbury Bldg interior lobby
