Just a reminder that I’m soliciting questions and queries for Ask Me Anything! August 2012. Drop ’em in comments to this post!
Film Quote Friday
With new trailers for the new James Bond movie Skyfall hitting the Interweb this week, I turn my thoughts back a few years to Daniel Craig’s first outing as Bond, Casino Royale.
CR was extremely well made, and with all extremely well-made movies, it started with a very intelligent script that made its world seem downright real. Two examples of the movie’s smart dialogue:
Early in the film, after James Bond (who, in CR, is a newly-minted Double-O agent) has had a mission go slightly awry (to the tune of an international incident), M (Dame Judy Dench) storms out of a meeting with Parliament or the Prime Minister or some such and unleashes this rant:
Who the hell do they think they are? I report to the Prime Minister and even he’s smart enough not to ask me what we do. Have you ever seen such a bunch of self-righteous, ass-covering prigs? They don’t care what we do; they care what we get photographed doing. And how the hell could Bond be so stupid? I give him double-O status and he celebrates by shooting up an embassy. Is the man deranged? And where the hell is he? In the old days if an agent did something that embarrassing he’d have a good sense to defect. Christ, I miss the Cold War.
That bit about missing the Cold War is pretty funny; from a spy’s perspective, it probably is preferable to have a single, unflinching enemy. I’m reminded of an installment of the “Wayne’s World” skit on Saturday Night Live years ago, when Wayne and Garth ticked down some reasons why it sucks that the Cold War ended. One of the items is “Spy stuff is less interesting”, or as Garth puts it, “Yeah! Like who’s James Bond gonna spy on, the Guatemalans?!”
Back to Casino Royale. Later in the film, after M decides to put Bond into a high-stakes poker game against a guy who is financing terrorists, in hopes of finding out who he is bankrolling. Bond’s poker playing is funded by the British government, whose representative is the stunning Vesper Lynd (Eva Green). Bond and Vesper meet on the Orient Express, over dinner.
Vesper Lynd: [after discussing poker skills on the train] What else can you surmise, Mr. Bond?
James Bond: About you, Miss Lynd? Well, your beauty’s a problem. You worry you won’t be taken seriously.
Vesper Lynd: Which one can say of any attractive woman with half a brain.
James Bond: True. But this one overcompensates by wearing slightly masculine clothing. Being more aggressive than her female colleagues. Which gives her a somewhat *prickly* demeanor, and ironically enough, makes it less likely for her to be accepted and promoted by her male superiors, who mistake her insecurities for arrogance. Now, I’d have normally gone with “only child,” but by the way you ignored the quip about your parents… I’m going to have to go with “orphan.”
Vesper Lynd: All right… by the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally you think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with such disdain, my guess is you didn’t come from money, and your school friends never let you forget it. Which means that you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity: hence that chip on your shoulder. And since you’re first thought about me ran to “orphan,” that’s what I’d say you are.
[he smiles but says nothing]
Vesper Lynd: Oh, you are? I like this poker thing. And that makes perfect sense! Since MI6 looks for maladjusted young men, who give little thought to sacrificing others in order to protect queen and country. You know… former SAS types with easy smiles and expensive watches.
[Glances at his wrist]
Vesper Lynd: Rolex?
James Bond: Omega.
Vesper Lynd: Beautiful. Now, having just met you, I wouldn’t go as far as calling you a cold-hearted bastard…
James Bond: No, of course not.
Vesper Lynd: But it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine. You think of women as disposable pleasures, rather than meaningful pursuits. So as charming as you are, Mr. Bond, I will be keeping my eye on our government’s money – and off your perfectly-formed arse.
James Bond: You noticed?
Vesper Lynd: Even accountants have imagination. How was your lamb?
James Bond: Skewered! One sympathizes.
Vesper Lynd: Good evening, Mr. Bond.
James Bond: Good evening, Ms. Lynd.
I hope that Skyfall is as smart.
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The New Hoodickey
I’ve been resisting the whole e-reader thing for quite some time, but I have now weakened.
My resistance started faltering last summer when The Daughter used some collected birthday money to buy her very own Nook, which she loves. I thought it seemed pretty cool, and I knew that the trend toward e-books was gathering steam.
Then, for Christmas, I bought The Wife a Kindle Fire, which she still uses every single day. It’s a great gadget, and I knew that the writing was on the wall. I decided finally that I wanted some kind of similar gizmo; the only questions were when I’d be able to afford one and which one I’d get.
I had no desire for an iPad, for both reasons of price and because I just don’t want to become an Apple cultist. I also did not want a ten-inch tablet, because I find seven inches to be the preferable size for my hand. I was impressed with the Kindle Fire, but I didn’t really want to be locked into the Amazon way of doing things, and I didn’t really like how that device has no provisions for adding storage via a Micro-SD card. For similar reasons I didn’t want a Nook Tablet. So, in doing my homework, I settled on the Samsung Galaxy 2 Tab. After saving up my money for a bit, I finally had enough to buy the thing…and it’s been mine for about a month now.
And it is fantastic. I love it.
My main reason for buying it was to have my first e-reader, and for that, it’s a terrific device. It came preloaded with a Kindle app, so I can use the Kindle store for e-books without actually owning an Amazon device. I also added another e-reader app for other formats; this I use for things like Project Gutenberg downloads (such as my unabridged The Count of Monte Cristo, through which I am now making slow progress).
The tab is also great for things like Facebook and Twitter, except that I cannot seem to share items on Facebook — the ‘share’ button isn’t even there. That’s weird. And I haven’t yet figured out things like cutting-and-pasting text and URLs, so I still have that to do. I also added a comics-reading app, because reading comics on the tablet is something I wanted to try. How do comics render? Well, I had to try a couple of different comics viewers before I got to the one I like the best currently (which is called ‘Perfect Viewer’). Yes, reading comics on a screen this size is a bit tough, but I liken it to reading digest-sized comics when I was a kid.
I also love the tab as an audio device. I’ve put a lot of music on it (I added a 32GB card as soon as I bought it), and I can also stream on it from radio stations on the Web, so it’s great for listening to music and stuff when I’m working on something else, like editing a manuscript.
I have little notion of using this device for writing. The onscreen keyboard works well, but I find that I have a habit of hitting the ‘M’ key instead of the space bar, and going back to fix errors isn’t the easiest thing in the world. The thing that bugs me the most about this device? There’s a touchscreen icon at the bottom for taking a screenshot. The way I tend to hold the device, I find it hard to always avoid hitting that icon and taking a screengrab.
It’s kind of frustrating right now in the tech world for people like me. I’m innately inclined to buy a gadget and then use it until it dies, and the longer that is, the better. This is increasingly unrealistic, as newer and better gizmos hit the market all the time. I know people who buy the new thing and ditch it less than a year later when the new thing comes out; I know folks who upgrade their phones every few months. I have no idea how long I’ll be using this tablet. I hope it’s a while, though.
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Something for Thursday
I suppose I’m one of a fairly small number of people in that my favorite Ridley Scott movie, by a wide margin, is Kingdom of Heaven, which I consider to be one of the finest epics I’ve seen. (But in its Director’s Cut. This is one of the rare cases that truly justifies the Director’s Cut; the theatrical cut is a travesty when you see what Scott really intended.) I love this movie and plan to re-watch it at some point this winter.
Here is the opening bit of the score by Harry Gregson-Williams. Gregson-Williams is a composer who, for me, is hit-or-miss, but when he hits, well…he hits.
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Is the ‘A’ for ‘Asshole’?
I haven’t been following the whole Chick-Fil-A thing much, because as far as I know, there’s no Chick-Fil-A location anywhere near Casa Jaquandor.
(Actually, I’m not even sure about that. Hold on while I look…nope, nearest one is in Erie, PA, 90 miles away.)
So, apparently the founder of Chick-Fil-A is really really ruh-HEEL-ly against gay marriage. Fine. Lots of people are. But not everyone is the head of a fast food chain, so saying something strongly on one side or the other of a major issue of the day is to invite a boycott.
Of course, supporters who think that gay marriage is icky are all “Chick-Fil-A, boo-yeah!” and encouraging people to eat there. Again, fine and dandy. But then I see this on Facebook:
Ummm…what the hell does a boycott of Chick-Fil-A have to do with the 1st Amendment? The Amendment means that the government won’t censor you. It does not give you a blanket right to say whatever you want with zero consequences. If I say things that anger people, they stop liking me. If I say things that anger The Wife, I sleep on the living room floor (we don’t even own a couch). Imagine the following conversation:
HUSBAND: Why yes, that dress makes you look fat. And the color makes you look jaundiced. And your hair looks like a colony of fire ants did battle on your head with a hive of bees.
WIFE: That’s it, you’re on the couch tonight.
HUSBAND: But…you HAVE to let me say those things! It’s my 1st Amendment right!
Any husband who would say that is being an ass on many, many grounds. So get over it, Chick-Fil-A supporters. No one is trampling on whats-his-name’s 1st Amendment rights. You open your mouth, you take your chances.
(I would, however, consider eating at Chick-Fil-A’s location in Nashua, NH.)
(Besides, if I want waffle fries, I can get a bag from the freezer section at The Store. I don’t need some homophobic fast-food joint to get a waffle-fry fix.)
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter (Ask Me Anything!)
Huh! It’s August, which means that it’s once again time for the twice-yearly tradition here, in which I open up the floor to anyone with a question. Challenging questions, deep questions, silly questions, questions about life or the universe or anything…all questions are welcome.
So here it is: Ask Me Anything! August 2012!!!
(This will be the ‘official’ post for posing questions, so go ahead and drop ’em in comments. I always try to keep Ask Me Anything! queries in one place, so as to avoid having any drop through the cracks. I’ll post a few reminders, as always, over the first two weeks of the month. Answers will start appearing sometime on the back half of the month, as per usual. And for those who do not wish to use the comments here, feel free to e-mail, Facebook message, tweet…whatever.)
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“Across the Universe” by Beth Revis
One theme I see a lot in various science fiction commentary sites and blogs I read is that the genre itself is lagging in readership behind fantasy and horror to a pretty significant degree, and that one of the reasons for this is a comparative lack of ‘gateway books’ to the genre. Generally the idea of a ‘gateway book’ is a book that’s solidly in the genre, but not so solidly as to be inaccessible to people who have been reading it for a while. And yes, this is a definite problem; I found it myself, back when I really started reading SF on a regular basis in the late 1990s. Sometimes the standard tropes of SF can be a bit hard to penetrate, and the genre tends toward terminology that can often be used from one book to the next, so that if you know what it means or indicates, you’re fine, but the first time or two…it can be a bit hard to get into it.
Another problem is that there just don’t seem to be terribly many SF books for young readers these days, be it schoolkids or young adults. Why is this? I honestly don’t know. But when I look through the shelves at bookstores for books for The Daughter, I can find tons of fantasy, dark fantasy, and outright horror. SF is harder to come by, and it usually tends to be future dystopia stuff or steampunk. That’s not a complaint, just a summation of the state of things. But what I’ve always considered to be the heart of SF, the space adventure (whether it’s outright space opera or not), just isn’t around all the much anymore. The usual complaint is that no one is writing today’s equivalent of Robert A. Heinlein’s novels for juvenile readers, and for the most part, this seems to be true.
Which brings me to Beth Revis’s novel Across the Universe, which is the first book in a trilogy (the second, A Million Suns, is already out, while the last, Shades of Earth, is forthcoming). Across the Universe tells a good, old-school science fiction story, with two young adults at its heart. I loved it.
We open on Earth as a girl named Amy is being placed into suspended animation alongside her parents for a several-hundred-year journey aboard a starship called the Godspeed for the settlement of what is hoped will be a new Earth. Then we meet a boy named Elder, who is so named because he is being groomed to eventually be the leader of the ship. The Godspeed is well underway, and Elder is receiving his lessons from the ship’s current leader, Eldest, who is something of a stern taskmaster. (Or so he seems at first, before things start getting a lot darker.) But down in the hold, Amy awakens from her cryogenic sleep. She’s been thawed out, after an attempt on her life. Halfway through the ship’s journey. When she is told this, she realizes that when they arrive and her parents are revived, she will be in her 60s or 70s.
So, Amy is awake on the ship when she shouldn’t be, there is a murderer on the loose, and it turns out that life aboard the Godspeed isn’t quite what it should be, because the Godspeed herself may not be what she should be. Amy is alone on this ship which is run by a tyrannical leader. As the book progresses, several mysteries are resolved, but even more are unmasked, in this first volume of a trilogy.
The idea of a story set entirely on board a generation ship is not new, of course. But in Revis’s hands, it’s an interesting and effective use of a classic SF trope. None of this works without sharply drawn characters, and Revis does an excellent job of putting us into both Amy’s and Elder’s heads, as one tries to adjust to a terrifying situation that is unfair and nothing she ever deserved or envisioned, and the other finds himself rebelling against his longtime father figure as he starts to realize that things in his world are not what he has always thought them to be.
So if you’re looking to introduce a certain young adult reader to SF, this is a good place to start.
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Stitching the damned words together: a writing update
I’m thinking that posting here may be slightly more sparse than usual during August, since I’m really trying to make some writerly goals here. Specifically, I want to get all the way through my red-pen markups of the Princesses in SPACE!!! (not the actual title) manuscript by Labor Day. Then, I want to have my personal edits applied by October 1, so I can get the book into the hands of beta readers. Depending on how long it takes beta readers to do their thing, and how much editing I have to do after I get that feedback, I’d love to be able to hit 2013 with sending this book out into the Void, where I hope a publisher will snatch it up. (Or maybe I’ll query agents first…not sure what the best route is, actually, which is more homework I need to do.)
The red-pen markups proceed apace, though, so I’m optimistic. I know of a few dates when I’ll not be able to get through my daily goal, so I’m going to have to make up for those elsewhen. I’m also hoping that the markups on the latter half of the book will go easier than the first half is thus far, as by that time I had a lot stronger idea of where the book was going. I’m finding a lot of meandering passages in the early going, that’s the literary equivalent of throwing stuff on the wall to make sure it sticks.
As for The Adventures of Lighthouse Boy (not the actual title), work is going along nicely there, too, although I did have to do a backtrack last week that wiped out ten thousand words (although I was able to reuse some of it). I’m aiming here for something of a rollicking adventure tale in the Alexandre Dumas tradition, with secret identities and alliances, royalty in hiding, hidden treasures, double crosses, and quite a lot of derring-do. Making a story rollick is not the easiest of tasks, and every so often I have to remind myself to put something in that rollicks.
I also had two characters show up out of the blue and quickly become essential to the story. I’m not kidding. I had my main character walking alone on a road, on his way to someplace, and I wanted to delay his arrival a bit, so I figured he’d meet someone. And along came these two folks who are now very important indeed. I like it when the story writes itself. I have a feeling that this book will need to be longer than Princesses (which I vowed to bring in under 180,000 words). I’m not sure yet, but I’m letting the story dictate the terms here. We’re talking lots of planned twists-and-turns here, and I’m sure there will be a bunch that I don’t even see coming.
Anyway, that’s where things stand with the writing. Onward ho!
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Sentential Links
Links, and some such.
:: The gun nuts do have a point.
We do indeed accept a certain number of vehicular deaths each year, including those caused by drunk drivers and crazy people, as the price we pay for mobility. And nobody is willing to give up cars are they? And nobody is suggesting that they do.
It is a valid comparison.
But here’s the thing, even though we do accept a certain number of vehicular deaths each year, we constantly seek to reduce those fatalities through mandated improvement in the state of the automotive art and road engineering, through laws and regulations and increasingly uncompromising enforcement and stricter punishments, through vigilance and observation and monitoring, though mandatory training and testing and licensing, though tracking those who habitually break the law. We don’t let crazy people drive. We make drivers buy insurance.
(Here’s the thing: I don’t even grant that car deaths and gun deaths are a valid comparison, and it’s why I’m always pretty unimpressed with arguments along the lines of “People die doing X, so why not outlaw X!” It’s because, while people die using cars, causing death isn’t what cars are for. Cars and guns are both examples of tools, but the purpose of a car is to get you someplace. The purpose of a gun is to kill. There just isn’t any getting around it. You can kill with lots of stuff: hammers, knives, and as George Carlin once speculated, you could probably bludgeon someone to death with the Sunday New York Times. What can you do with a gun other than kill? Shoot at inanimate objects so as to improve your skill for when you need to use it to kill?
And no, I’m not presenting an argument in favor of outlawing guns. I’m jsaying why I think a particular argument in favor of guns is really unconvincing, to the point of being deeply silly.
While I’m on the subject, I heard another stupefyingly dumb thing said about guns this past week: “We should never allow the government to be better armed than its citizens are!” Mr. Wright utters the same thoughts I have on that ludicrous notion:
Just so I’m clear here, you’ve bought yourself the biggest, most powerful, most heavily armed, most technologically advanced military in the entire history of mankind, complete with nuclear weapons, stealth bombers, tanks, and many other advanced capabilities too numerous to count. You’ve given them a full decade of intense combat experience in multiple theaters under a vast variety of conditions from mountain terrain, to forest and jungle to desert, right on down to door to door urban warfare. They have more than ten years direct experience in counter-insurgency tactics against multiple heavily armed, experienced, and utterly ruthless civilian militias engaged in guerrilla tactics. But you figure that an invader that can take that mighty force down can be beaten by you and your drunken rednecked beer buddies and a couple of Chinese knockoff AK-47 replicas, do you?
OK, enough of the gun stuff…but I found Mr. Wright’s two postings on this topic very commendable. And lest one think he’s some liberal looking to get rid of guns entirely, well, he provides a long list of his firearm-related bona fides, as well. No overall-clad hippie living in the Northeast who wants nothing to do with ever handling a firearm much less shooting one, he.
:: “Blade Runner” is a great example of several things. It shows us how even a fantastic visual experience can’t hold our attention for two hours if we are not made to care about the characters or the story. It is proof that the latter two aspects are of even more importance for a feature to work. “Runner” may very well be the best of the worst pictures ever made, or perhaps the worst of the best, but this places it in a spot of mediocrity that no work of such phenomenal qualities should ever approach. I feel grateful for its existence and I’m aware there are plenty of readers who believe that its visual virtues automatically make it deserving of cult-classic status, but I also can’t help but ultimately see this (one of the most influential films of the 80s) as a one-of-a-kind wasted opportunity for greatness. (I like Blade Runner more than this fellow does, but I’m of similar mind. It’s a movie that, aside from a few moments, I invariably find emotionally cold and distant, every time I sit down to watch it. I have a habit of watching it every five or ten years (that it’s been out long enough for me to have a ‘habit’ regarding viewing it that involves such timescales frankly scares me), and each time my reaction is pretty much the same.)
:: Many people believe geekdom is defined by a love of a thing, but I think — and my experience of geekdom bears on this thinking — that the true sign of a geek is a delight in sharing a thing. It’s the major difference between a geek and a hipster, you know: When a hipster sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “Oh, crap, now the wrong people like the thing I love.” When a geek sees someone else grooving on the thing they love, their reaction is to say “ZOMG YOU LOVE WHAT I LOVE COME WITH ME AND LET US LOVE IT TOGETHER.” (I tend toward the ultra-inclusion approach to Geekdom. My reaction to learning that someone actually likes the Star Wars Prequels is not unlike Jar Jar’s reaction to being saved by Qui Gon Jinn: “Muy muy, I love you!!” I love it when people love the things that I love!)
But they’ve got no one to blame but themselves. When the tide is coming in, you can’t make it stop by ignoring it. (I disagreed with SDB last week, so this week, I agree with him entirely. That’s how I roll!)
:: Since we started writing this site, we’ve become aware of a strong flashlight sub culture; a group of people obsessed with lumens, watts, and focused beams. These apparent dwellers of the dark seem to go hand in hand with knife enthusiasts, because, when you think about it…if you need a flashlight…there’s a good chance you could also use a knife. (Hmmm…never really thought about it, but I do like knives, although I don’t really have much of a collection. Flashlights, though? Oh baby.)
:: How cool must it be to be David Beckham? Except for having to be married to that Skeletor of a wife of his, he’s got it pretty damn good. Speedboat! He got to race around in a speedboat and get’s to eat free at Hell’s Kitchen. (I have no idea about Beckham’s wife, but the other stuff is all pretty cool.)
No pie-throwing, amazingly. An oversight the Farrelly Brothers regret, I’m sure. (No pie-throwing in a Three Stooges movie? WTF?! Of course, even with pie-throwing, I was never a fan of the Stooges. Abbott and Costello were more my speed.)
More next week!
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Sunday Burst of Weird and Awesome
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: Note to self: Don’t try to write about English tea drinking. It’s just too hazardous to attempt.
:: Writers name their top ten favorite books. I always find these kinds of lists fascinating.
That’s…about it, I’m sorry to say. I’m keeping busy with writing, which keeps me less busy wandering around Teh Interweb. More next week, though. I hope!