#There is a David Brin short story about this that I | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariana-oconnor · 11 months

Text

The Crooked Man pt 2

So far we have had no crooked men, miles, sixpences or stiles. I feel a little bereft.

We do however have a corpse, and like so many things, that's a lot more fun in fiction than it would be in real life.

We also have questions: Who else was in the room? Where is the key? Is David a character or a biblical reference? Was this all a swingers evening gone wrong? Why was the door locked? Why did Nancy ask for tea when she usually doesn't?

The paper was covered with the tracings of the foot-marks of some small animal. It had five well-marked foot-pads, an indication of long nails, and the whole print might be nearly as large as a dessert-spoon. “It's a dog,” said I.

Ah nuts, is Watson going to kill this one, too?

“Did you ever hear of a dog running up a curtain? I found distinct traces that this creature had done so.” “A monkey, then?” “But it is not the print of a monkey.”

Yeah, monkeys have tiny little hands. A cat? They sometimes climb curtains. I'm sure a dog could climb a curtain in the right circumstances.

“Neither dog nor cat nor monkey nor any creature that we are familiar with."

Ferret. I'm going with ferret, although I will accept an alternative mustelidae relative. Probably not a honey badger. Probably...

"You have an indication, you see, of a long body with very short legs attached to it."

Ferret!

Watson, please don't shoot the ferret. I will be very sad if you shoot the ferret.

"On the whole, it was probably some creature of the weasel and stoat tribe—and yet it is larger than any of these that I have seen.”

The honey badger can have a canary, as a treat.

(If it isn't a honey badger now, I'm gonna be so sad. It's a honey badger in my heart.)

"We know, also, that he ran across the lawn, entered the room, accompanied by a strange animal, and that he either struck the Colonel or, as is equally possible, that the Colonel fell down from sheer fright at the sight of him"

"Now, it was equally certain that, immediately on her return, she had gone to the room in which she was least likely to see her husband, had flown to tea as an agitated woman will..."

So the tea is because she was agitated? Okay, I guess I can allow that. It is the British way: crisis = tea. Fair.

"I saw a man coming towards us with is back very bent, and something like a box slung over one of his shoulders. He appeared to be deformed, for he carried his head low and walked with his knees bent."

One (1) 'Crooked' man, check.

Miss Morrison is a good friend, very supportive of her. She is being very rude about this man - Henry - though. 'dreadful looking creature'. He's just a man. Possibly a murderer, true, but there's no need to be quite so rude. Another to join the Watson Society of Judgemental Descriptions.

“‘“I thought you had been dead this thirty years, Henry,” said she, in a shaking voice.'"

So it is a past husband? Right? Right?

Also, I'd like to take a moment to appreciate the amount of nested inverted commas here. This is reported speech within reported speech within reported speech. Double in single in double. I don't think I've ever actually noticed someone doing that before. I know this has nothing really to do with the story, but it's kind of impressive, no?

"'He had a very dark, fearsome face, and a gleam in his eyes that comes back to me in my dreams. His hair and whiskers were shot with gray, and his face was all crinkled and puckered like a withered apple.'"

Clearly we are meant to think of this man as a villain, but I don't want to. Guy's got wrinkles and some sort of disability, so far all he's done is recognise a lady. We've had far creepier people in these stories who everyone's gushed about. I'm on team Henry - for now. Maybe for always.

"The man is by trade a conjurer and performer, going round the canteens after nightfall, and giving a little entertainment at each."

Oh yeah, team Henry absolutely. He's a travelling conjurer of cheap magic tricks?

Although... he does keep a honey badger locked up in a box and brings it out to perform for money. Gosh darn it! This is why we can't have nice things.

Fine, Henry is guilty of animal cruelty and I hope the honey badger eats him. Are you happy ACD? ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?

"She showed it to me, Watson, and it was an Indian rupee."

I thought Indian when they said monkey earlier, because in part one they mentioned the Colonel being involved in the Mutiny - which I assume was one of the Indian Mutinies - but then we went onto mustelidae. And I'm pretty sure the honey badger is native to Africa... oh no, oh no, oh no, I am wrong. It is native to India. HONEY BADGER CONSPIRACY IS BACK IN BUSINESS.

Unless the guy is a were-honey badger. (I mean obviously not really, but that's going in the supernatural Holmes universe in my head as well).

Also it could be a type of marten, but while team Henry has been abandoned, team Honey Badger is going strong.

The man sat all twisted and huddled in his chair in a way which gave an indescribably impression of deformity; but the face which he turned towards us, though worn and swarthy, must at some time have been remarkable for its beauty.

So Watson thinks he's hot? Or he was hot? Coolcool. Not the description I was expecting here.

"There were two men that loved her, and one that she loved, and you'll smile when you look at this poor thing huddled before the fire, and hear me say that it was for my good looks that she loved me."

Well, Watson apparently won't. But it's definitely looking like it's an accidental bigamy situation. I hate it when that happens. Also... liking him for his looks is not the basis for a strong relationship. I hope she liked you for other things, too.

"But the real blow was to my heart and not to my head, for as I came to and listened to as much as I could understand of their talk, I heard enough to tell me that my comrade, the very man who had arranged the way that I was to take, had betrayed me by means of a native servant into the hands of the enemy."

Alas, Colonel Barclay, you were a dick. Congratulations on a truly terrible case of being a poor loser. She didn't want you, just fucking deal with it, my dude. Don't betray your own fucking men. Terrible plan. 0/10. Your death was utterly deserved.

So Henry was tortured and enslaved and permanently disabled, yeah. And also left with so much internalised ableism that he can't bear to go home and be seen like that. Henry, if you weren't super guilty of animal cruelty, I would be fully on your side. I mean I am on your side... just... why do you keep a honey badger in a box?

"But he was dead before he fell. I read death on his face as plain as I can read that text over the fire. The bare sight of me was like a bullet through his guilty heart.”

Good riddance.

I am amused by how things like this happen in victorian fiction, though. Just one look at the guy and he keels over dead.

“It's a mongoose,” I cried.

...

Fine... Honey badger conspiracy is out. But mongeese are pretty cool, too. I've always thought of them as being pretty small, though, but the internet tells me they can be anywhere from 9 inches to 23 inches long. So they are both small and larger, I guess. They're also not mustelids, so there's that.

Also, I should have guessed this, because it's one of my favourite Terry Pratchett quotations and this part is out on the Glorious 25th of May:

'...the trouble with small furry animals in a corner is that, just occasionally, one of them's a mongoose.'

Well it definitely was this time. GNU Terry Pratchett, I should always listen to you.

Honey badger was probably too big to climb up a curtain...

Still shouldn't keep a mongoose in a box and force it to perform, though.

“But if not, there is no object in raking up this scandal against a dead man, foully as he has acted."

I mean, on the one hand, sure, but on the other hand Drag his Ass.

“Yes; David strayed a little occasionally, you know, and on one occasion in the same direction as Sergeant James Barclay. You remember the small affair of Uriah and Bathsheba?"

I may have been wrong about the honey badger, but I was right about the biblical reference. Little wins, amirite?

Turns out Colonel Barclay was as big a dick as the 'violence and vindictiveness' indicated. Alas.

BUT, Watson didn't shoot any animals. Yay.

Although poor Teddy is still shut up in a box and Henry also has a cobra in there that he tortures for the amusement of people in bars.

The next one is another 4-parter, so plenty of time for me to make up harebrained theories about mustelidae.

#Letters from Watson #Sherlock Holmes #The Crooked Man #Free Teddy #Justice for mongeese #long post

26 notes · View notes

ahagisborn · 4 months

Text

Losing my mind.

Okay, I read a short story about a group of scientists/researchers/explorers out on the ocean who are looking for a particular spot where they can either time travel or get to another dimension (?). They go through whatever the portal is and release a dolphin that they have on board that's supposed to like conduct research somehow (?). The dolphin is attacked and killed by these creatures that LOOK like dolphins but are actually fish/reptiles (?). I think then the scientists end up on land where they find remains of a creature or a living creature that LOOKS human but isn't (????). I have to stop googling this I'm going crazy.

What fucking story did I read?

Fucking stories I did not read:

any of the Uplift series by David Brin

Dolphin's Way by Gordon R. Dickson

Sister Planet by Poul Anderson

#permission to blaze if anyone has the funds lmfao #maybe i'll do it myself. the alternative is posting this to reddit and i'd prefer not to #science fiction #sci fi short stories #dolphin #scientist #time travel #alternate universe #alternate dimension

12 notes · View notes

avelera · 2 years

Text

One time my writing workshop that I recommend to everyone (they have online courses and a free podcast!) had sci-fi author David Brin as a guest lecturer and he gave some advice to new writers that has been living in my head rent-free ever since.

He said, first time writers should consider having their first novel be a murder mystery.

The reason being as follows:

Mysteries require a great deal of structure to work properly.

They also teach one a great deal about how to build a plot, especially around characters who want something (like: to solve the mystery or to not get caught)

How to have conflict and tension that grows out of each scene,

How we're introduced to characters, and finally,

How everything must build to a satisfying conclusion in which attentive readers are just a little bit ahead and casual readers discover the solution and see all the clues laid out in a satisfying manner in retrospect.

And it's a great genre for bringing in a friend to see whether or not you achieved the goal of laying out the clues properly, because it is in fact impossible to do on your own (this is true of most things in writing, but it's a bit more subtle when trying to tell if other stuff like romance has landed properly).

Putting a cut here to go over some popular examples and how writers can learn from them to improve their stories.

And the more I thought about this advice, the more I realized just how many of the most popular genre works of recent years had a mystery (whether or not it's a murder they're solving) as the way to drag the audience into the story, at least at the beginning, even if the plot then evolves into something else midway, because mystery is also an excellent way to dump exposition because it's all about finding out the truth.

The Winter Soldier film, in addition to being a Bourne-style action thriller set in the Marvel universe, has a strong plot through-line of "Who "killed" Nick Fury? Who is the Winter Soldier?" which gets us through a good chunk of the film that would otherwise be a slog of exposition and it works so well.

The first three Harry Potter books are actually very well structured mysteries. I've argued for ages that Book 4 onward is where Rowling lost the mystery plot structure to the series' detriment, the plots ballooned, and the whole thing got quite sloppy (this in addition to her reprehensible views, to be clear, I've been a critic of her structure in stories for quite some time short version: she's very bad at it when not grafting onto a school year).

The first Game of Thrones book and S1 revolved around Ned Stark as our primary protagonist seeking out the answer to the mystery of Who Killed The Hand of the King and Why - revealing the deeper mystery of Joffrey's lineage and setting up the events that eventually led to his execution. AND, by the way, that's PART of why Ned's execution was so shocking and effective: GRRM borrowed from the murder mystery genre to build a portion of his plot around, and then disrupted it by killing the investigator which as the POV character generally speaking very rarely happens in mysteries, which made it an even bigger and more effective shock for readers when Ned, who seemed to have plot armor on many levels, dies thus reinforcing the theme of "You win or you die" and the brutal chaos of the GoT world.

What I think makes all 3 of these very popular examples so effective is the blend of genre. Murder mysteries are tantalizing but they do sometimes fail to answer the "So what?" of one person dying in a small town. But combine the murder mystery structure, which demands so much of its writer and is so effective at dragging the reader along through the hardest part of introducing them to your world, with a genre that is better at answering the "So what?" like epic fantasy or action thriller, and now you've got a very effective combination for entertaining an audience.

#maggie rambles #writing #mentions of #game of thrones #winter soldier #not gonna mention the JKR book series I'm not going anywhere NEAR that fandom tyvm #JKR HP critical

98 notes · View notes

epacer · 1 year

Text

Story You May Have Missed

Greg Bear, Class of 1968

Greg Bear, prize-winning sci-fi author and Comic-Con co-founder, dies at 71

His books included “Blood Music” and “Darwin’s Radio,” which helped establish him as a “hard” sci-writer who created plausible tales with the help of scientists

Greg Bear, the affable San Diego native who wrote such highly acclaimed and plausible science fiction novels as “Blood Music,” “Darwin’s Radio” and “Eon” and who helped create San Diego Comic-Con, died Saturday in Seattle. He was 71.

Bear passed away “following a stroke after complications during heart surgery,” according to the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Association, or SFWA. He served as the group’s president from 1988 to 1990.

The news spread quickly on social media, leading to an outpouring of tributes from colleagues in the sci-fi community, including Encinitas author David Brin who, like Bear, won many of the field’s highest writing honors.

“Greg had the gift of being able to ask really good questions,” Brin told the Union-Tribune. “Like ‘What if nanotechnology was combined with the fantastic computational power that resides in each human cell’ and ‘What if urban populations found ways to make neighborhoods into many versions of paradise?’

“He was one of those writers who learned by questioning scientists over beer and never letting go,” he said. “They would draft their first chapters, circulate them to the experts, and iterate them to create a plausible world.”

Robert Sawyer, another top sci-fi author, said in an SFWA tribute “What I loved about his work was that it freely embraced the entire scope science fiction has to offer: from the far future (Anvil of Stars), through the present day (Quantico), to cavorting with creatures we know only from the distant past (Dinosaur Summer), he took us on a grand tour of his boundless imagination.”

Bear was so highly regarded that the estate of the late Issac Asimov authorized him to write a book that would extend Asimov’s famous Foundation series of stories, which involve the fall and rebirth of an enormous interstellar universe. The book, “Foundation and Chaos,” received positive reviews when it was published in 1998.

He had a deep sense of himself and the role of sci-fi writers, saying in one widely noted remark, “We’re not prophets. We’re not here to inform the rich people of the world on how to make more money, or to inform governments on how to direct themselves.

“We are here to allow you to dream your dreams and make them happen, and have your nightmares a little in advance so you can prevent them from happening.”

Bear — known to many for his deep, hearty laugh — was born in San Diego on Aug. 20, 1951, the son of Dale F. and Wilma M. Bear. His father was in the Navy, which meant the family moved a lot. Greg Bear lived, for varying periods of time, in Japan, the Philippines, Alaska, and other parts of the U.S. by age 12. In 1964, the family permanently settled in San Diego, where Bear attended Crawford High School. He later earned a bachelor of arts degree at San Diego State University.

Bear says in his biography that he started writing at age 7 or 8, finished his first story when he was 10, began sending stories to magazines in his early teens and published his first short story when he was 15.

His early interest in sci-fi was in high gear by the time he got to high school, where Bear and others thought about creating a film version of author Ray Bradbury’s short story, “A Sound of Thunder.”

Bear co-wrote a screenplay and was so passionate about it that he handed it to Bradbury after the legendary writer spoke at San Diego Auditorium in 1967.

The film did not get made, but it led to a long friendship.

“Bradbury taught us do not give up on what you love,” Bear told interviewer Jonathan Valdez during San Diego Comic Fest in late 2012.

“Love is what you must follow,” he continued. “Ignore everyone who tells you otherwise.”

That helped him tap into a passion that came, in part, from his father.

“My dad liked scary movies, and he took me to see things like ‘King Kong,’” Bear told the Union-Tribune in 2017.

“In the Philippines, I got to see ’20 Million Miles to Earth,’ which was a Ray Harryhausen movie. It had a monster from Venus that doubled in size every day. That thing came out of my bedroom wall that night and threatened to eat me. That confirmed my love of all things science fiction. That was pretty much it for me.”

Bear developed a reputation as a “hard” sci-fi writer, someone whose musings were based on known or emerging facts, rather than entirely on imagination or whimsy. He’d run ideas by scientists.

“The best example was the ‘Darwin’s Radio’ (series of) books, where I was looking at my own crackpot theories of biology and saying to myself, ‘You know, this stuff might be correct,’” he told the Union-Tribune.

“We were coming up on a time when we were going to be finding out more stuff about the genome,” he added, “and I thought it was time to write a rabble-rousing book that knows what it’s talking about and points scientists into areas they may not have been reading much about.”

The book series is about a rapid, unexpected and scary change in human evolution. It was published in 1999, less than a year before scientists released the first draft of the human genome.

Over the years, Bear won many Hugo and Nebula awards, establishing him as one of sci-fi’s best and busiest authors. The highlights include winning the Hugo for the novellette “Blood Music” and the short story “Tangents” and the Nebula for “Tangents,” the novel “Darwin’s Radio,” and the novella “Hardfought.”

Bear also broadened the field in other ways. In 1970, he helped launch the Golden State Comic Book Convention at the U.S. Grant Hotel in San Diego. His collaborators included a long list of locals, including such people as Mike Towry, Ken Krueger, Barry Alfonso, Shel Dorf and Richard Alf.

It wasn’t entirely obvious in the moment. But they were putting together an annual event that would become San Diego Comic-Con.

“All of these folks had one thing in common — they wanted to do a celebration of the arts — the arts we loved,” Bear told Valdez. “Of comic books, of science fiction, of fantasy, of movie-making, special effects and films, illustration.

“By all of us interacting, we kind of came up with this overall scheme to put a convention together. Kind of like putting a show on in a garage ... Now, it’s more than 130,000 people showing up.

The SFWA said that Bear is survived by his wife, Astrid and their two children, Chloe and Alexandra. *Reposted article from the UT by Gary Robbins of November 11, 2022

0 notes

captainpikeachu · 5 years

Text

DISCO S3 NYCC TRAILER ANALYSIS!!!!!!!

sMESA BACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And boy oh boy was Saturday, October 5 such a good Trek news day!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so....let’s get back to some good ole analysis of the teaser trailer for Discovery Season 3, still likely to be about a year away before we officially see it

Trailer begins with our queen Michael landing in the future

that is a lot of dirt you might say, it’s like she landed near volcano or something

ohhhhh a look into her gear - so it looks like her science division badge, a phaser, and a communicator maybe, the black one that looks like a phone and has the Starfleet delta decal on it, and there’s some other equipment that I don’t know what they are

then we hear Michael’s voice saying “I’ve spent a year searching for that domino that tipped over and started all of this”

and by this, I think she means she spent a year trying to find the cause of why the Federation has “fallen” in a sense, as this would tie into what looks to be the theme of the season by the looks of the rest of the trailer

accompanying her voiceover, we see the following images

we not only see Michael’s changing hairstyle, but also how her mood has changed, going from worry and fear to almost resigned and ready for whatever that’s coming - also we see that she did seem to pick up more equipment or other objects throughout this one year period as indicated by the growing piles behind her

it is confirmed that Michael and the Disco crew did not land in the future together, so it looks like Michael arrived first, and the Disco crew lands one year after Michael’s arrival

here we see Michael with our new series regular David Ajala who is playing a character named Cleveland “Book” Booker, from the looks of this scene, Michael runs into him at some point and they seem to be avoiding someone else or being chased by someone else and are trying to run away and hide

and it seems Michael and Book are running away from some Andorians with very interesting weapons, we also see some humans behind the Andorians - could this be some remnant of a Starfleet/Federation?

some sort of pulse weapon is released and Michael and Book are knocked flying and glass is breaking

Michael and Book are walking across some landscape and we got two planets in the sky - I’m not sure what this planet is or if this is even the same planet where Michael landed, but we do know from the panels and interviews that Michael and the crew did not land at Terralysium as they had hoped

Book asks Michael, “You believe in ghosts?”

Michael replies, “What does that mean?”

Book: “That badge on your shirt.”

the look on Michael’s face says it all - she realizes what he means - the Federation, Starfleet...they’re basically ghosts, something that doesn’t exist anymore

Saru and Tilly are the next shot that we see, the doors look to be the Disco bay area? Maybe they are getting ready to take a shuttle and go somewhere? They certainly looked to be dressed for it.

next we hear a man’s voiceover saying “I watch this office everyday, believing that my hope was not in vain...”

so Michael and Book are at this office and meeting the man speaking the voiceover, I don’t know if Book brought Michael there or if something else brought them there - like perhaps the people that were chasing them got them here?

and this man, I don’t know if he’s a Federation government member? or maybe this is a museum? or a believer of Federation ideals? or perhaps he is someone who is the descendant of a character we know from Season 1 and 2 (maybe like Ash Tyler) who has been told to wait for Michael and find her if she does appear in the future? that might be a bit of a stretch but it could be an easy way to explain his devotion and belief?

we see the flag of the Federation, interestingly this one has only 6 stars

just to compare it with, this is the usual flag of the Federation that we see

so at this point, it is looking like something caused the Federation to break up and become fractured? those 6 stars perhaps represents the 6 species/planets that are still standing together?

the man’s voiceover contines in this next scene, “...and that hope is you, Commander Burnham”

the fact that he knows her name is why I am inclined to believe that he is the descendant of someone who knows Michael and has been told to one day expect her

this next reaction shot of Michael’s face is not related to the scene before, as we see by the change in Michael’s hair, this shot is a year after the scene of Michael meeting the man above - this shot is likely Michael’s reaction to finding out that the Discovery crew has finally made it through

explicit confirmation of how many years we jumped into the future - so since Disco Season 2 mostly took place in 2257, this means that Michael lands in 3187 and one year later is 3188, when the Discovery arrives

at the panel, it was confirmed also that we would explore more of the Trill, and we see that in the trailer - the two people in red are likely Trills, the person in the foreground doesn’t look to be Michael, but it might be her, and the pool is where the symbionts are

this could be Michael in the pool? or it could perhaps be another character who becomes a host? we have heard rumors that Disco Season 3 is possibly bringing in a nonbinary character, so this may be that person as this looks like the actor I was informed they had cast

now these are definitely Trills, though it might be unlikely we will see the Dax symbiont from DS9 around in season 3, since I’m not sure the symbiont would be able to live into the 32nd century

and there’s Discovery!!!!!

REUNIONS!!!?!???!?!!

Michael has found her Disco family!

A shot of Detmer and Owosekun.

Culber looks rather concerned

some sort of confrontation is happening in the spore drive room, there is at least one person holding weapons, some non-Disco crew people, maybe someone after the spore drive? it was noted that the drive may become a target

we do see Stamets and Tilly in the top right corner, but the person to their left kinda looks like Stamets?

Stamets and Tilly both look very unhappy and alarmed at the same time.

Book and Michael are fighting on that planet we saw them walking across earlier, and it looks like those Andorians or whoever was chasing them has caught up to them

the person Michael is fighting doesn’t look like an Andorian, but Book is definitely fighting an Andorian

and here we see Georgiou getting into some fights as well, and we see Saru behind her - it looks like wherever Saru and Tilly were going, Georgiou went with them as well

this character here I believe is the nonbinary character they had rumored to have cast, and this might also be the same character we see go into the Trill pool and possibly be joined with a symbiont?

now this shot....ohhhhhhh

so from left to right, we got Andorian, a species that I cannot really be sure of, Human, Cardassian(?), Lurian, and another Andorian

they are part of the same group that we saw earlier in the trailer chasing Book and Michael

Book and Michael are booking it (sorry I couldn’t resist)

so through the last few scenes, we have been hearing Saru’s voice saying “This ship bears the name Discovery. She has carried us into the future, and it will be our privilege to make that future bright.”

Book and Michael are sure not skipping leg day in this trailer - this looks like some sort of science facility?

next shot is an interesting one - this could either be a flashback to Prime Georgiou, or this is Mirror Georgiou pretending to be Prime for some undercover sort of mission?

either way, she says “Let’s see how this plays out, shall we?”

Michael pointing a phaser at someone, now judging by her hair, this is one year after she landed in the future, and the person behind her is likely that nonbinary character (who I really need to know the name of so I can use their name properly)

also interesting to note about her uniform - the color stripes don’t look silver

and a close up look on her badge....that’s the command division badge

now Michael’s uniform is missing the stripes across the shoulders that indicate a captain, but the change in color and badge looks like Michael is officially moving from science division into the command track and she will be wearing gold and not silver anymore

something is happening on Discovery and Owosekun is getting shaken around

Georgiou killing some folks

Discovery flying

and finally, we hear the man say “Where will you go?”

to which Michael answers, “Wherever the answers are.”

but look at the way they are holding hands, you do not hold hands with strangers like that, I mean, short of this guy being a fan, this sort of familiarity speaks to a deeper connection, which just goes to further add to my suspicion that this character is likely a Ash Tyler descendant of some sort, or a descendant of someone who once knew Michael and has been waiting for her to appear in the future because they were told to wait for her by someone who had knowledge that Discovery went into the future

this logo color feels happier and brighter somehow

so there it is! the trailer giving us the first look into season 3! SO MANY POSSIBILITIES!!!!!

and I’m sure before its 2020 release, we will see at least one or two more trailers so we can have more of an idea, but I am so excited to see Discovery boldly go off into the future!!!!!!!!

whatever is happening this season, it’s looking like Discovery is going to be leading the way to rebuild a possibly fallen or broken Federation and restore it to the ideals that it once stood for! this is an interesting narrative, especially when compared to some of the themes we are seeing with Picard’s story and going rogue because the Federation won’t do the right thing to help.

I’ve said in other places already but it looks like Disco and Picard are both telling this overarching Federation narrative but going at it from two opposite ends with Picard detailing the gradual decline of the Federation while Disco is giving it a rebirth.

BRING ON SEASON 3!!!!! YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!

#star trek discovery #star trek discovery season 3 #disco spoilers #discovery spoilers #star trek #star trek discovery speculations #michael burnham #saru #sylvia tilly #paul stamets #hugh culber #cleveland booker #mirror georgiou #joann owosekun #keyla detmer

133 notes · View notes

duncanwrites · 4 years

Text

All the books I read in 2019, reviewed in 2 sentences or less.

The annual tradition returns! These are all the books I read in the last year, and how I felt about them in two sentences or less.

Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson: This was the final book of the science fiction trilogy that exploded my brain at the end of 2018, and the after-shocks lasted well into 2019. These books capture something essential about the relationship between place and politics that you can only do with science fiction.

Bark - Lorrie Moore: A thoroughly uneven book of short stories - when they were good, they were great, when they were bad, they were bumbling takes on the domestic side of the war on terror.

Farewell to Arms - Ernest Hemingway: Maybe it's just my mood in the forsaken year of 2019, but I just have no tolerance any more for works of art that aestheticize the degradation of the human spirit. This book made me feel near constant disgust.

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf: In contrast, I think you can create works of art that dignify people even in their darkest moments, and offer a bridge into the experience of others that can be a passage into becoming a better person. It's always nice to read a book for a second time and realize you can keep reading it again for years to come.

The Asshole Survival Guide - Robert I. Sutton: We all have assholes that we have to work with, and sometimes it's necessary to have some external validation that it's not all your fault, and that establishing distance between yourself and said assholes is a good idea.

My Invented Country - Isabelle Allende: It took me until the very end of this book to realize there was a different memoir by Allende that I meant to read instead. This one was not so great.

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller: Gonzo literary comfort food.

The Golem and the Jinni - Helene Wecker: I found this book charming enough, but it never totally wowed me at any particular point. I think it showed that the concept of two magical creatures from different cultural contexts meeting in turn of the century New York is an interesting thought experiment, but a struggle to land as a full narrative.

Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami: Prior to this, the only Murakami I had read was What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, and it's safe to say that did not properly prepare me for the surreal darkness of Kafka on the Shore, which seems to never stop going deeper into the abyss.

God Save Texas - Lawrence Wright: There are very few books about modern Texas that don't try to valorize it, or douse it with excessive nostalgia, and this is one of them. A politically-astute, funny meander through the state as it is, not as it might have once been, or never was.

M Train - Patti Smith: Patti Smith is obviously a genius, but this one didn't leave a great mark on me. Worth revisiting some other time, I think, since it's my girlfriend's favorite book.

Working - Robert Caro: I am shamefully still putting off my years-old plan to read Robert Caro's LBJ series, and finish his book on Robert Moses. In the meantime, this is a thoughtful reflection on how and why to tell stories about power.

Feel Free - Zadie Smith: I love Zadie Smith, and if you haven't read her non-fiction essays, you are missing out on some of her most exciting and moving writing. This is her second collection of essays, and you can tell how much the decade since the first has taken its toll - so many more of the pieces are about fear and frustrations, and the language is much wearier, even while it is still penetrating and beautiful.

The Telling - Ursula K. Le Guin: A slim, late novel from one of the best to ever do it, this book projects the sense of engrossing calm that reminds me most of all of listening to a story well-told - not incidentally, an experience that is a key theme of the plot itself.

Stories of Your Life and Others - Ted Chiang: On the other hand, the short stories in this book all came off as one note thought experiments that failed to build compelling worlds.

The Overstory - Richard Powers: Not just my favorite book of the year, but also one of my favorite ever, The Overstory is the book I talked the most about, and told the most people to read in 2019. The best way to explain it ('it's a book about people who become obsessed with trees') really undersells things, because it's also about forest ecology, generations of trauma, the terror and clarity of radical thought, and a soul-splitting vision of hope. It receives the coveted 3rd sentence in the review, because I just need to emphasize again that you should read this book.

The Flamethrowers - Rachel Kushner: Maybe it was the fate of any book that I read after The Overstory, but The Flamethrowers left me feeling cold. It wandered off into too many fanciful-seeming plot arcs that didn't develop all the characters to the depth they needed.

What is Populism? - Jan-Werner Müller: I re-read this book because I wanted to revisit his ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of populists ahead of the next election, and whether there is ever a version of populism suitable for the left agenda. I finished worried, and skeptical, respectively, on those two points.

The Great Derangement - Amitav Ghosh: I don't read many books about climate change - I find there are very few things that I really feel like need saying in the face of the obvious and overwhelming - but I'm glad I made time for this one, which focuses on both the global north-south dynamics of the issue, and the inability of storytelling to capture the problem in full. It's profoundly difficult to sum up in two sentences, but it's worth a full read.

There, There - Tommy Orange: I think this novel asks too much of characters that are too thin to hold what they are made to bear. Too busy at the same time as it's too ordered to be fully credible.

The Slynx - Tatyana Tolstaya: I somehow convinced myself that I had read this surreal post-apocalyptic novel set in Russia 100 years after nuclear winter, but not only had I not read it, I haven't read anything like it before. A wide-ranging nightmare about authority, literacy, and the power of fear, set in its own vernacular and kaleidoscopic distortions of our authoritarian world today.

The Iliad - Homer: I wanted to re-read The Iliad because I find the idea of a hero felled by a single, discrete flaw to be a fascinating allegory, not realizing that Achilles' fatal flaw is not his heel but his anger.

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood - Janisse Ray: There isn't much widely-read nature writing about the US South, and I think Janisse Ray's book dignifies and mourns the overlooked parts of the country that may not be wilderness but still contain bits of natural grace.

Sundiver and Startide Rising - David Brin: These two novels follow the same premise of humanity entering a universe of intelligent life as the only species to reach consciousness without patronage of, and servitude to, an elder species, and the power struggle that ensues. Sadly, the premise writes a check the execution can't cash, and while the first book, leaner and more focused, is solid, the second is over-long and distracted from what made the first fascinating.

Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry: It took a lifetime of seeing this book (a signed first edition, from an Austin bookstore that has left no digital trace) on my parents' shelf to finally read Lonesome Dove, and it was a fitting welcome back to Texas. McMurtry's characters are fully-grown from the beginning, made of both broad archetypes and fine detail, and the narrative gives them the journey they deserve.

The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt: There are very few novels that convey big ideas in balance with pot-boiler plotting, but this is one of them and my only regret is not reading it sooner. How dare anyone blight this novel with a terrible movie.

The Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula K. Le Guin: What makes this book special is not that it's speculative fiction about a world with unique gender arrangements; that's been done before by many other authors. What makes it special is that it investigates that world with tenderness towards its inhabitants, and an understanding of how gender weaves its way into institutions besides the family or the bedroom

Gun Island - Amitav Ghosh: I had high hopes for Gun Island, but felt it never quite rose above being a thought experiment carrying out his ideas from The Great Derangement.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P - Adelle Waldman: Your opinion of this book will probably hinge on how important you think it is to read books about writers in Brooklyn hanging out with other writers in Brooklyn. If you think that's still a useful world to explore, you will like that this book is merciless towards its characters, and startlingly accurate - but if you don't think that's important, you will be frustrated for the same reasons.

How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia - Mohsin Hamid: A gloriously rich experimentation in genre and contemporary global politics - playful, infuriating, and heartwarming, really everything you could hope for from a short novel. This is the second book by Hamid that I've read, and I'm going to set out to read all of them as soon as I can.

#books #book review #book list #2019

6 notes · View notes

jadedanddark · 5 years

Text

Book review: Day of the Triffids

https://images.app.goo.gl/w6HbHJRmhAxo4tAS8

Short version: A mysterious meteor shower causes all who see it to go blind overnight. Bill, a Londoner lucky enough to escape this fate, must now survive in a world where 90% of the population is rendered helpless. In the chaos, a species of semi-intelligent, mobile, venomous plant called triffids becomes a real threat.

What I thought: ugh, John Wyndham. I picked this up without looking at the author name, and considering how bothered I was by Midwich Cuckoos I wouldn't have done if is noticed in time. As it happened I was already involved by the time I looked, so here we are.

If you're looking for a story about post-apocalypse life, there's a lot to enjoy here, or would be if Wyndham weren't a coward. He spends a lot of time really getting to the bottom of Human Nature™ and what exactly is different about humans that we're the dominant species of Earth, but while he's doing that he forgets about the small things that make a story believable. Small, but important things. Such as women. And rats. You cannot possibly tell me that London has neither rats nor roaches nor sewage, but Wyndham's London is like that, and honestly I had an easier time believing in the triffids.

Oh the triffids! They're the reason I stuck around to the end. I wanted the title to make sense, but I got 100 pages in before they became relevant at all, and by the end they still hasn't had their day. They were a nuisance for the most part, and certainly did kill a lot of people, but not nearly as much as starvation, murder, plague and suicide. The story would have been exactly the same if they had been feral dogs instead of killer plants.

On top of all that, you get sloppy storytelling. I had the impression Wyndham ran out of plot about three quarters of the way through and just started casting around looking for something to say, getting bored with one potential angle and moving into the next before the first one had a chance to cool. So we move from this really detailed story about Anarchy in the UK and jump really fast into "found a farmhouse. Got married, had a kid, five years passed." It's that fast. About four paragraphs from the end he introduces a sudden rise in a military state, then everyone flies off in a helicopter to live on an island Utopia where every man gets three wives and everything is ok now. Special guest appearance: triffids.

LAZY.

UGH.

You want a story about the end of the Age of Men, a post apocalypse tale both harrowing and worth your time? Don't worry, those are in abundance, though you'd never know why anyone would read one again after a look at this crap.

Read instead: The Postman by David Brin, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, This Book Is Full of Spiders by David Wong.

#book review #book reccs #booklr #day of the triffids #john wyndham #post apocalyptic literature #read instead The Postman #read instead cat's cradle #read instead this book is full of Spiders #ugh #can we get a feminist in here

4 notes · View notes

mostlysignssomeportents · 5 years

Text

#9yrsago Gateways: Tribute to Fred Pohl with stories by Bear, Benford, Brin, Bova, Gaiman, Harrison, Haldeman and me!

I just got my contributors' copies of the Frederik Pohl tribute anthology Gateways, and I find myself in danger of losing the afternoon's work to re-reading it. Gateways is a collection of short stories written in appreciation of Pohl, one of science fiction's masters and living legends. It includes fiction by Greg Bear, Gregory Benford, Ben Bova, David Brin, Neil Gaiman, Joe Haldeman, Harry Harrison (A new Stainless Steel Rat story in Pohl style, no less!), Larry Niven, Vernor Vinge, Gene Wolfe -- and me.

My story, Chicken Little, is the closing novella, and it's my take on The Space Merchants: a darkly comic story about a man whose job is to come up with products to sell to immortal quadrillionaires who've speciated from the human race proper and now live as sovereign states in vats that supply their life-support.

Additionally, Gateways features essays about Pohl and his work by Isaac Asimov, Gardner Dozois, Connie Willis, Robert J Sawyer, Robert Silverberg, Joan Slonczewski, Emily Pohl-Weary (Fred's granddaughter and the Hugo-winning co-author of Judith Merril's wonderful memoir, Better to Have Loved) and editor James Frenkel.

This is truly a smashing volume, a testament to the impact that Pohl has had on several generations of sf writers and readers (he continues to write, of course, and his blog, The Way the Future Blogs is up for the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writing!). It was edited by Fred's wife, Elizabeth Anne Hull, who did yeoman duty on it while nursing Fred through several serious health crises in the past two years.

I'm so proud to be in this book. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Gateways

https://boingboing.net/2010/07/15/gateways-tribute-to.html

4 notes · View notes

setepenre-set · 6 years

Note

Can u recommand some good books pls?

I DEFINITELY CAN!

(I’ve divided them up into categories, and included a short summary of each, so that you can choose more easily, and put the list under a cut, since it’s fairly long.)

Comedic Fantasy With Emotional Center

Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (part of the Discworld series; everything in the Discworld series is excellent. main characters of this one are a god stuck in the form of a tortoise and his last believer.)

Hogfather by Terry Pratchett (Discworld. Death has to take over the duties of discworld’s version of Santa Claus in an attempt to keep the world from ending.)

Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett (Discworld. Death gets fired and decides to live as a human—as near to human as he can, at any rate. eventually he has to battle the New Death to save the discworld.)

Guards, Guards! by Terry Pratchett (Discworld. Sam Vimes, leader of the disgraced and dying Ankh-Morpork City Watch, regains his self-respect and his interest in life as he works to solve a mystery of who is summoning a dragon and killing off citizens of his city.)

The Bromeliad by Terry Pratchett (small ‘nomes’ live secretly in this world, hiding from humans. the perpetually out-of-his-depth and put-upon nome Masklin finds himself in charge, tasked with leading them to safety and finding their way home.)

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (an angel and a demon tasked with seeing that apocalypse happens as scheduled decide to try to avert it instead. completely and utterly fantastic.)

Long Dark Teatime of the Soul by Douglas Adams (murder mystery involving Norse Gods, record contracts, and the Ultimate Bubble Bath.)

The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber (novella told like a fairy tale, full of wordplay and beauty and fun. this one just absolutely shines.)

The Gates by John Connolly (young boy, his dog, and an extremely minor demon try to stop the end of the world.)

The Infernals by John Connolly (sequel to The Gates, featuring the same characters.)

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (a young lady is cursed to be old, decides to become cleaning lady for a wizard rumored to be dangerous but actually just vain, overdramatic, and irresponsible. so very fun and romantic.)

Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien (a local peasant finds himself unwillingly roped into facing a marauding dragon.)

Comedy

All of the P.G. Wodehouse books, particularly the Jeeves and Wooster series (wonderfully fun and lighthearted comedy set vaguely between the edwardian era and the 1920’s. Rich, cheerful, and kindhearted Bertie Wooster has a habit of accidentally getting engaged to girls he has no desire whatsoever to marry; his clever valet Jeeves gets him out of trouble every time.)

With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed by Lynne Truss (hilarious and surprisingly touching at the end. lots and lots shenanigans. really fun.)

Romantic Comedy

Cotillion by Georgette Heyer (romantic comedy, fake relationship, regency era.)

When a Man Marries by Mary Roberts Rhinehouse (romantic comedy with a stolen jewels mystery plot. cast of characters stuck in a house together.)

Romance

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer (historical romance with intrigue and comedy. The main character crossdresses and, to me, reads as genderqueer. The love interest is basically a villain who accidentally becomes the hero. I LOVE IT.)

Her Every Wish by Courtney Milan (regency romance novella. hero is bisexual. subplot about bicycles being scandalous. this is the one that I have Roxanne give Megamind in Code: Safeword.)

The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan (regency romance, the last in the Brothers Sinister series, all of which are good. main character reads as autistic. her love interest is younger than she is; they’ve secretly presented her groundbreaking scientific work as his, so that people will take it seriously.)

When a Scott Ties the Knot by Tessa Dare (regency romance; main character has social anxiety and made up a fiancee years ago to get out of her impending social season. but now a man with the same name has shown up claiming to be this fiancee, and intending to marry her.)

Mystery

Behold, Here’s Poison by Georgette Heyer (1920’s murder mystery with comedy and romance. The characters are wonderful.)

Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie (murder mystery featuring elderly heroine Miss Marple, who seems fluffy and harmless but is really a sneaky, nosy, and terribly sharp woman. I love her.)

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie (murder mystery featuring detective Hercule Poirot. intricate and enjoyable.)

Death Comes As the End by Agatha Christie (murder mystery set in ancient egypt. both the mystery and the historical features are extremely well executed.)

Difficult to Categorize

Three Bags Full: A Sheep Detective Story by Leonie Swann (A group of sheep decide to solve the mystery of who killed their shepherd. Funny and moving. The point of view is amazingly well done.)

Watership Down by Richard Adams (A group of rabbits set out on a journey to establish a new home. The worldbuilding and characterization are fantastic.)

Kiln People by David Brin (science fiction mystery. amazing worldbuilding. One of the main characters is a robot who, due to a slight malfunction, has developed a personality and will of his own.)

Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion (A love story set during the zombie apocalypse, between a young woman named Julie and a zombie known as R, who isn’t quite as dead as zombies are supposed to be. Horrifying and romantic and uplifting.)

Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving by Martin Millar (Main character Elfish is basically the living embodiment of ‘fuck you’. She’s a guitarist on a mission to claim the name Queen Mab for her—just at present nonexistent—band from her ex-boyfriend Mo.)

Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt (a young woman in the medieval era gets lost in the forest and nearly dies. When she meets Death, though, she convinces him to postpone her demise—she claims that love is stronger than death, and he tells her that if she can prove it by finding her true love within one day, he will spare her life. Full of joy and sorrow and love.)

The Halloween Tree by Ray Bradbury (A group of children go on a fantastic trip through time with a mysterious man called Moundshroud in an attempt to save the life of one of their friends. Fun and dark and beautiful.)

The Girl Who Owned a City by O.T. Nelson (An epidemic wipes out all of the adults in the world. Ten year old Lisa Nelson bands together a group of survivors and shapes them into a new society, with her at its head. Satisfying.)

Fantasy

The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley (Gorgeous worldbuilding, kidnapping, romance, magic, and adventure.)

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle (The last of the Unicorns goes on a quest to find out what happened to the rest of her species. Fun and frightening and hauntingly beautiful.)

Transformation by Carol Berg (The Emperor’s New Groove for grown-ups. Formerly a magician and currently a slave, Seyonne finds new meaning in his life when he and careless, proud Prince Aleksander work together to defeat the demonic forces that threaten the kingdom. Slavery and freedom, loyalty and friendship. Intricate worldbuilding.)

War For the Oaks by Emma Bull (Urban fantasy. Eddie has just broken up with her boyfriend, and, in the process, broken up the band they both played in. She has enough problems of her own, without getting dragged into a war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts of the Fae.)

Young Adult Fantasy

So You Want to Be a Wizard by Diane Duane (Young adult fantasy adventure. Preteen protagonists Kit and Nita journey into a terrifying shadow world to fight a dark entity. One of my favorite depictions of magic of all time.)

Which Witch by Eva Ibbotson (The Great Evil Wizard Arriman has decided to take a bride! The members of the local witches’ coven are invited to a contest—whichever witch performs the most dark and wicked act of black magic will be Arriman’s bride. The young witch Belladonna is absolutely smitten with Arriman, and desperately wants to win the contest. The only problem is that Belladonna is a white witch.)

Megamind: the Novel by Lauren Alexander (A little darker and a bit more grown-up than the movie; still incredibly fun. It features additional scenes from Megamind and Roxanne’s developing romantic relationship.)

Companions of the Night by Vivian Vande Velde (Teenage Kerry is in the wrong place at the wrong time, and ends up being taken captive by a group of people who are holding another person captive as well—a young man they insist is a vampire. Kerry thinks they’re crazy, and helps the boy escape…but it turns out they were actually right. And now she’s being held captive by a vampire on the run.)

Young Adult

Fat Kid Rules the World by K.L. Going (Depressed teenage protagonist Troy almost commits suicide, but is stopped by a homeless teenager named Curt, who is also a local punk rock legend. Curt convinces Troy to form a punk band with him, featuring Curt on guitar and Troy on drums…even though Troy can’t actually play the drums. funny and angry and deeply moving.)

The Undertaker’s Gone Bananas by Paul Zindel (Thriller. The misfit teenage protagonists are convinced that their neighbor murdered his wife, even though no one believes them. They set out to prove it.)

Older Children

The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Bernard (Recently orphaned, the disagreeable young Mary arrives at her uncle’s house—a house full of secrets and mysteries.)

A Little Princess by Francis Hodgson Bernard (Young, precocious, and strange Sara Crewe is sent to boarding school. When her father dies unexpectedly, leaving Sara a penniless orphan, the Headmistress forces Sara to work as a servant. Strength in adversity, the power of imagination, and an eventual happy ending.)

The Egypt Game by Zilpha Neatly Snyder (A group of children secretly play at being ancient Egyptians in a deserted lot. This one really captures the dangerous, wild, and intense feeling of childhood.)

Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix (adventure with young girl as heroine. genuinely creepy and exciting and so clever. my great-grandmother loved this one, too.)

The Witches by Roald Dahl (Young boy and his grandmother happen upon a convention of terrifying, evil witches.)

The Whipping Boy by Sid Fleischmann (Spoiled Prince Brat and his whipping boy Jemmy run away together, much to Jemmy’s annoyance. Adventure and friendship.)

Trapped In Death Cave by Bill Wallace (An adventure story with a secret map, a hidden cave, and an evil plot.)

#books #book recs #Anonymous

37 notes · View notes

rhube · 4 years

Photo

Am doing a book give away. List of books below the cut.

WOW! All the books have now been claimed. I was not expecting that!

Any or all of these are yours for the price of postage. If you want more than 3 we can go halvesies on that (UK only). If you've got no money, you can have as many as you'd like for free (UK only).

Tweet me on Twitter to claim a book or books: Rhube. First come, first served. Note, you *will* need to follow me on Twitter for it - we’ll need to DM about it and I can cope with DMs on Twitter ‘cause I use Tweetdeck and always have them open.

- Seven Forges, by James A Moore - Short Short Stories, by Dave Eggers (this one is tiny I'll pay all postage) - The Ravenglass Eye, by Tom Fletcher - Starship Spring, by Eric Brown - Otherness, by David Brin - The Fiery Cross, by Diana Galdon - Stormcaller, by Tom Lloyd - Royal Street, by Susan Johnson - Forgotten Memory, by Chloe Grant-Jones - Night of the Damned, by Stephen Bywater - Who Can Save Us Now? (Advanced copy; collected superhero stories) Edited by Owen King and John McNally - The Bridge, by Janine Ellen Young - The River of Time, by David Brin - Carbon Calculator, by Mark Lynas - Dead Streets, by Tim Waggoner - Cell, by Stephen King - Heirs of the Demon King Uprising, by Sarah Cawkwell - Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenger (who wrote The Time Traveller's Wife) - Crown Thief, by David Tallerman The Heat of the Day, by Elizabeth Bowen - Isle of View, by Piers Anthony - Tell Them What I Saw, by Matt Bialer (Poetry) - Malice, by John Gwynne

Feel free to ask questions about any of them. Some I’ve read, some I haven’t. A lot were free at conventions. Some I really enjoyed. But even having taken these off my shelves I still don’t have enough space for all my books, so...

0 notes

sciwritingfi · 4 years

Text

David Brin - The Crystal Spheres (1984)

David Brin has a Ph.D in space science from USC and currently works as both a consultant for NASA and as a writer that has won Nebula, Hugo, and Locus awards. His book “The Postman” was created into a film, and he has published sci-fi novels, graphic novels, and a few short stories. He additionally also writes non-fiction, and won the Freedom of Speech Award for his piece “The Transparent Society.”

https://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-crystal-spheres/

In his short story “The Crystal Spheres,” Brin uses his knowledge of outer space to paint a futuristic society of humans that seek to explore the universe and other intelligent life. Their primary problem in doing so is that every good, water-bearing planet they find is protected by a crystal sphere that prevents anyone else from coming close. Even Earth had this sphere too before they accidentally destroyed theirs. Eventually, the main character and his team discover one good planet that also has a destroyed crystal sphere, and it once housed intelligent, space-traveling life – the Nataral.

What I loved about this story was how it detailed loneliness. Here, humans desperately seek to know of worlds apart from Earth and are eager to finally meet another species in the universe. However, due to how advanced humans from Earth are, they are destined to wait a very long time until they can encounter other life that has the capability to travel through space to meet them. Here we learn that Nataral too ventured out into space to attempt to quell their loneliness:

“Now we, humanity, had been gifted of six beautiful worlds. And if we could not meet the Nataral, we could, at least, read their books and come to know them. And from their careful records we could learn about the still earlier races which had emerged from each of the other five goodworlds, each into a lonely universe.”

#David Brin #The Crystal Spheres #scifi

0 notes

cosmiclovepats-blog · 6 years

Text

Tzica and Tzoren

Herald to the Dragon, Magistrate of the Duchess, Seneschal to Her Will. Friend.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Then be prepared for life to knock over your pitcher and break all your glasses.

Tzica and Tzoren were a pair of NPCs I used in a game a few years back, one I’d refer to as River Kingdom Rambles. I liked them. She didn’t come to a very nice fate, but that’s just how things go when you let your precious NPCs intersect with your Players.

When they first met with her (rescued her,) she and her brother were escaped slaves, ‘living’ in the half-flooded bilge of a small pirate ship. Escaped slaves being returned to their owners. A little geography might be necessary.

You see that river just north of Loric Fells? Below the ‘M’ in River Kingdoms? That was the river this scummy band of freshwater pirates sailed. The two tieflings had escaped from Numeria beforehand. They’d made it to the River Kingdoms, tasted real freedom, then gotten abducted by pirates who may have been contracted by their previous owner and sent to retrieve them, or may have just figured a pair of escaped slaves would be easy money. Doesn’t really matter; their return voyage got interrupted by the PCs and a whole lot of violence.

Now from the player’s perspective, what you’re encountering is a pair of sodden, bedraggled tieflings who don’t look related to each other outside of, you know, tiefling, emerging from the stinking, fetid bilge of a river brig. Both of them look half-starved and mistreated. The guy’s a bit bigger, and he eyes you up with the wariness of someone who considers ‘good luck’ to be inherently suspect. The gal is a little shorter, a little younger, looks you over and smiles broadly, then goes “Ah, yes. My book. Thank you. Needed that, yes.” and takes the odd book the wizard found on the pirates and was trying to figure out.

Over the next day or so and further interaction (It’s been a few years; I think they were using the pirate ship to head down river. Likewise, her words are definitely not exact quotes, but approximations.) they determine a couple things; the tieflings are, naturally, pretty grateful for having been rescued; life didn’t look too great where they were headed. She, Tzica, smiles a lot, speaks peculiarly broken common, speaks a lot, and seems to lie or exaggerate or just embellish constantly and habitually. She’s a sorceress of some kind (Pathfinder. I’ll save my bitching about the system for some other post) and generally a pleasant but odd individual. Her ‘brother’(?) is mute, seems intelligent but doesn’t seem to know common, and is fairly protective- but can’t understand her any better than you, so...? She says he’s fine, he was born that way, then amends the next day that, no, he was injured trying to save her, then rescinds, no, he’s just very shy. She was grinning that time, she’s probably joking? Whatever. Not much she can repay you with- her ‘spellbook’ isn’t, though it’s clearly gimmicked to look like one. Presumably so that if someone wants to disarm the “wizard” she might be able to convince them that they can do it by taking away her spellbook.

There, an odd, quirky character, just strange enough to be memorable despite being the beneficiary of one of their good deeds, and that’s about it. Well, that’s fine. Not everyone needs to be more important than that- but oh, she was. To begin with though, where did she come from? Well, of course all NPCs have somewhat ephemeral backstory before encountering the PCs, but the broad strokes I had in mind were;

Slaves born in Numeria, owned by a magos of the Technic League.

(Millenia back a “star” exploded in the sky over Numeria and rained down in pieces. These had everything from androids to roboscorpions. The technic league are a bunch of natives of Golarion trying to gather scraps and pieces of this wondrous knowledge and power. Frequently, this takes the form of poking things until they do something. Sometimes something is useful. Sometimes something is ‘irradiate everything in a mile of here’. Very Conan the Barbarian vs Giant Roboscorpions vs The Adeptus Mechanicus)

Involved in the general unpleasantness the Technic League engaged with, usually with slaves and bizarre unintelligible magitek spaceships debris.

Not actually siblings, but hey, tieflings, slavery, similar sob story, etc. Perfectly chaste allies/friends/as close to family as either had.

Because I’d been re-reading David Brin’s Uplift Storm Trilogy (Brightness Reef, Infinity's Shores, Heaven’s Reach), in their slavery to a high-ranking member of the Technic League, Tzica had tried to escape (or backtalked one too many times) and gotten in real trouble. Tzoren helped her escape, in exchange got punished with a partial lobotomy; he’d lost the speech center of his brain. Again, this is based on the character from the books; he can do math, he’s a trained engineer, but he can’t even think in words, much less actually use or understand them. Tzica went back for him, they managed to both get out and flee south.

Well, Okay, That’s An Involved Backstory, But What Do They Do?

I’m so glad you asked. You see, they do come back. Much later, (maybe, four to eight months...) when the party happens to be fleeing a fey hunt with faerie riders hot on their heels, they reach salvation; a big river, a branch of the Sellen river. The boundary of the forest, the limit of the fey domain. They dive in and start swimming for the passing ship they see... and someone on board recognizes them. Waves, orders the ship to stop, and gets sailors to throw them a rope and help them up, all while the faeries mill on the shore, unable to chase them beyond the bounds of their realm. Who is it, but... Tzica and Tzoren, dragonslayers!

No, not yet. But the main ‘background’ to the campaign involved a dragon showing up in a city state towards the north of the River Kingdoms (whose king ruler had mysteriously vanished recently while travelling) and declaring herself Queen of the Realm. “Any objections?” the dragon asked pleasantly, daring people to raise their hands... But the long and short of it was that there were secret calls for heroes to come, for dragonslayers to arise from obscurity and save the world city duchy. Well, what does that have to do with a pair of ex-slaves? Tzica, it turned out, had managed to bluff free passage on the ship (towards the city in question) with claims of being great dragonslayers, answering the call and travelling to deliver the people of Wyvernmark! And when the opportunity to do a solid to some people who had done her a really good turn earlier arose, well... Can’t skip on that, can you? She was very smug and pleased about being able to return the favor.

Of course, the PCs weren’t dummies, and looked at a single sorceress and a single fighter, apparently off to fight the BBEG being set up in the background for the whole campaign, and quietly concluded that they’d never see her again. But of course...

When they next saw her, they were actually going to Wyvernmark. City the campaign had actually started at, sans dragon queen. There’s a public execution as they arrive- a spy trying to sneak into the royal lair palace (dragons particularly dislike thieves, after all) and it’s done by sealing him in a large brass bull, (for real, you might not want to click) and then melting that to slag in about thirty seconds with dragonbreath.

It leaves an impression. Pretty humane compared to the original, but it still leaves an impression. And then the players, who’d arrived just in time to witness that, receive personal invitations to the palace later that day...

Oh. Oh Shit.

But no- it’s not the dragon who spotted them in the crowd. It’s her right hand and number-one minion, Tzica. Tzica, who arrived in the city about as destitute as they last saw her, through sheer chutzpah and bluff managed to secure a meeting with the dragon and... hit it off. For real. She’s brave enough to talk to the dragon, to be funny and flippant while she’s doing it, wise enough to flatter and praise where necessary, willing to “act” impressed when appropriate. She’s from out of town and unlikely to betray her only ally in Wyvernmark- and hell, the idea of having to treat some tiefling, and a foreign ex-slave at that, as their equal or superior sent the local nobility into fits, a feature they both found hilarious. The red dragon kept her throne room absolutely sweltering, 120*+, because she liked fucking with the humans who came to whine at her, keeping them uncomfortable and so on- Tzica and her brother, being tieflings, had fire resistance such that they could not only tolerate such unpleasantness, but wear heavy clothing while doing so without breaking a sweat.

So. Tzica finagled herself a position as the dragon’s seneschal. Magistrate. Personal herald and emissary, minister of the Duchess. And spotting her friends in the crowds (or perhaps being informed by servants) decided she wanted to wow her friends with her new status, and do them a solid; she invited them to dinner, introduced them to her boss, and tried to toss some work their way. That’s not quite “Thanks for saving me from captivity, torture, and death”, but it’s pretty good and the thought is in the right place.

It went over pretty badly, no lie. Two of the players... well, let’s just say Kalythierixa Vel’darathys, She of the Crimson and Carmine, Duchess of Wyvernmark and Blazing Judgement nailed two PCs. Some people don’t know when to be diplomatic, and some people would rather die than cower, flatter, or beg.

But really, they were the most difficult players, and neither of them was the Ex-Numerian-slave PC, who Tzica was probably closest to. So, to the survivors, she repeats her efforts to throw them work; Dragon Queen wants Artifact, go and get it, you’ll be rewarded nicely for your efforts. (And privately, Abadar’s blood, I’m just trying to engage in a little remunerative kickback, why are you throwing a goddamn fit about it!)

Still, it got them out of the city for a bit, and they went questing, yea, even unto Numerian lands, found the tomb of a hero (Mesa Hack or something, I was cribbing pretty heavily off the plot of Shadow of Death- the Artifact they were after was the Elixir of Life) and came back- all the while more rankling at the fact that they were working for an evil dragon (Red, Chromatic) than grateful for the work their friend had managed to secure them. They also had real reservations about giving a heavy-duty Artifact to said evil dragon. (I think they eventually found out- Kalythierixa didn’t give a damn about the Vial, other than “hey, artifact, nifty thing for my hoard”- It was all being done as a favor to her favorite minion, maybe even friend Tzica, who thought that it could be used to cure her lobotomized brother.)

The PCs got rewarded with funds and a small fort to the south of the city- Kalythierixa even cleaned it out of hobgoblins for them. (The PCs were upset about that, which I found really weird. “No, we want to be gifted somebody else’s home and have to clean it up ourselves.”) One of the PCs was fallen nobility from Brevoy, so a small title and deed was exactly the kind of thing they’d been aiming for all along. However, he really didn’t like the dragon. I’m not sure why- my impression was that he went “Red dragon -> chromatic -> evil -> must kill”. Spindly, if you ever read this, feel free to set me straight.

Which was somewhat frustrating for me; the whole point of the campaign had been to have the players thrust into the position where they got to decide between restoring the mortal nobility or siding with the dragon. Tzica represented a major in with the dragon, and they were well placed to end up the most significant nobles in the city, with the ear of the dragon herself (and especially her seneschal). Who would dare attack a city ruled by a dragon, what games of nobility would see commoner pawns sacrificed for sport or intrigue? She wasn’t being that bad of a ruler....

Or, they could decide that, sure, a young dragon might not be that awful now, but what if she gets bored in ten years? A century? Two? Dragons go up in CR with age, right? What if she decides she’s tired of playing the long game in thirty years and decides to up an raze the city, hauling off everything valuable and killing everyone for the lulz? What if Tzica has nowhere near the influence on her she seems to think, what if she turns on us next?

It was supposed to be a balanced grey-on-grey choice with no particular ‘right’ (or wrong) answer; think about it, make the best guess you or your character can make, and profit from the results whichever way you turn. There was no wrong answer, and it kind of felt like they still failed, because with one player dead set on “dragon bad, kill dragon”, the amount of weight I’d have to place on the other side of the scales to make it an actual quandary for him meant it would be a no-brainer for everyone else.

All good things must come to an end, or if you’re an NPC, eventually the PCs show up to knock over your lemonade, smash all your dishes, and accidentally break your table in two. The party split, and a player shuffled PCs- Crafting-bitch ex-slave wizard (pregnant...) stayed behind in Wyernmark as a genteel hostage (this happened because player wanted to swap out PCs for a new one) while the party was sent to go deal with some rabble-rousing war-talk in Daggermark. Daggermark being the preeminent city of the River Kingdoms. So remember; party of four. One hates her boss, Ex-slave Wizard (Sara) here is good friends with her, and the other two died shortly after meeting the dragon. Suddenly the party has zero people who are ‘good friends’ with Tzica, and the only one who is still a buddy is NPC’d and offscreen, serving as a hostage for good behavior. (Admittedly, the dragon was aware that they had been plotting to betray her- the hostage was probably necessary.)

Despite that all, Sara the Wizard makes some good work. She is, and has always been, all about getting along with people, making friends, and trying to do right by everyone. She hangs out with her good friend Tzica (even helped Tzica cure Tzoren) and slowly ingratiates herself with the dragon- doing her best to turn the Chaotic Evil red dragon (and really, it was a kind of bemused, sedate CE to begin with) towards Neutral. Show her that the maximum wealth derives not from tyranny, but from wise, lasting rulership. Tzica had already started down this path, to be honest, but her concerns were much more limited in scope- Don’t torture. That was about the only limit she’d placed on her boss, and through her prudence in not actually ordering the prideful scaly teenager around, she’d managed to achieve it in effect without it ever being acknowledged. (Yes, brazen bulls are pretty horrible torture implements, but again, they were being used for rather swift state executions- being reduced from ‘intact human’ to ‘bubbling metal with a high carbon content in under thirty seconds isn’t exactly drawn out.)

But the party comes back oblivious to all that effort. They show up loaded for bear, throw down with their sworn liege, (Promises made to NPCs don’t count.:^)) and Wizard is indisposed during the fighting. (Player is only allowed one character at a time.) Tzica, sorceress, seneschal, herald of the dragon, fights in her defense- after all, given her public role as servant of the tyrant lizard, she’d be dead woman walking if the dragon was replaced. On top of that, the dragon is her friend. Friend. Simply through friendship and getting along, the dragon gifted her power and wealth quite literally beyond a poor slave’s imagination- And damned if she was going to let a bunch of ungrateful vagrants (even ones she didn’t want to dislike) tear down all she had and slay her best friend.

Tzica didn’t survive that fight. Sara the Wizard’s player was playing a Paladin in that fight, who zeroed in on the caster supporting the dragon with PC levels and (quite sensibly) killed her despite Tzoren’s best efforts to do anything to stop her. It was a pretty nasty and effective build, not that I can remember it in detail beyond a stupidly high AC.

Sara tried resurrecting her when she found out what had happened. It worked... sort of. Tzica came back... a little wrong. Or maybe that was just natural bitterness at having everything going for her in life turned upside down and shattered. What she thought had been some of her closest friends had betrayed her (Sara was married to one of the slayers, the other PC who’d been there since the start) and they’d done so by killing her actual best friend.

She took a bone and some scales from the dragon’s body and left without looking back, seeking a way to resurrect her only friend. A lot of her charm and levity was gone; you could hardly tell her common was weird and idiosyncratic with how little she spoke.

Tzoren, healed by his sister (but never quite so fond of the dragon as she was) loved her but felt like she’d changed a bit too much to really follow. There was no point in avenging her death when she’d been resurrected, and besides, it didn’t seem like it was her death that had made her so much colder. He moved to another city, and settled down semi-happily with another NPC; He’d just been a bodyguard, after all, servant-of-a-servant, not the chief quisling who’d served as the dragon’s enforcer himself.

Much, much, much later, in a different campaign in a different system (but still Golarion because I’m fond of the setting), the party came across a wizened old hag busy plating a dracolich in necromantic metal. A jaded, heartless caster with a dragonbone staff, empowering a horrific undead beast that was never a pleasant creature in life much less death. With a strange rapport, always punctilious and polite, infinitely respectful of the draconic titan, but rather closer to ‘peer’ than anyone would expect a dracolich to tolerate, even if she was doing a great service for him.

They never got her name.

#tiefling #rpg stuff #why npcs hate pcs #pathfinder #d&d

3 notes · View notes

macmillanusa · 7 years

Photo

MACMILLAN PUBLISHERS AT AWP 2017!

Visit us at AWP’s 2017 conference in Washington D.C.! We have an awesome lineup of authors and events that you won’t want to miss.

Be sure to visit Booth 682 for information and books, February 9-11!

9:00am: Amanda Petrusich joins panel for Dylanology (Capitol and Congress - Marriot Marquis); Meghan Daum gives a reading of Selfish, Shallow, and Self Absorbed (Room 203AB); Sarah Blake appears in “Global Narratives Within US Literature” panel (Room 204AB)

10:30am: Steven Sherrill joins panel “Leashing the Beast: Humanizing Fictional Monsters” (Capitol and Congress - Marriot Marquis); Alice Anderson appears in “But That’s Not How It Was: Memoir Writers on Pushing Back Against Expected Narratives” panel (AWP Bookfair Stage, Exhibit Halls D & E)

12:00pm: Chris Abani appears in “Not Just Novelists: On Publishing Contemporary African Poets” (Marquis Salon 6); Ruthanna Emrys and Kij Johnson join panel “The Infinite in the Finite: One Hundred Years of H.P. Lovecraft’s Legacy” (Liberty Salon I, J, and K); Dinty W. Moore appears in “The Multiheaded Beast: Challenging Genre in Creative Nonfiction” (Capitol and Congress - Marriot Marquis); Kelly Luce appears on “A Field Guide for the Craft of Fiction: Finding Structure” (Virginia Barber Middleton Stage); Christa Parravani joins panel “Write Your Memoir like a Novel” (Room 202A)

Also at 1:30pm: Gayle Brandeis joins panel “Speaking of the Dead: Craft & Ethics in Nonfiction” (Archives - Marriot Marquis)

Also at 3:00pm: Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich appears on “The New New New Journalism: Reporting with the I” (Marquis Salon 1 & 2); Deb Olin Unferth joins teaching roundtable “ R239. Together with All That Could Happen” (Marquis Salon 12 & 13); Meghan Daum appears on “Mommy Dearest/Daughter Darling: Putting Words in Her Mouth” (Liberty Salon N, O, & P); Joy Harjo and Amy Stolls join panel “Transforming Adverse Audiences to Verse: Lessons Learned from the NEA Big Read” (Room 102B); Joy Castro appears on “Celebrating 15 Years of American Lives: A University of Nebraska Press Reading” (Room 203AB)

4:30pm: Michael Byers joins the “Science in Literary and Mainstream Fiction: A New Wave” panel (Room 101)

6:00pm: Simone Zelitich appears in “Two-Year College Creative Writing Caucus” (Room 204C)

9:00am: Gayle Brandeis, Caroline Levitt, and Christa Parravani appear on “Can You Go Home Again?” (Marquis Salon 1 & 2); Rachel Dewoskin joins panel “Home: A Four-Letter Word” (Liberty Salon N, O, & P); Julia Fierro appears on “A Novelist’s Job: The Realities, Joys, and Challenges” (Room 203AB); Kristen Dombek appears on “Shape-Shifting and Writers' Centers” (Room 204C)

10:30am: Yusef Komunyakaa appears on “Outward in Larger Terms: Adrienne Rich's Collected Poems” (Marquis Salon 5); Thrity Umrigar appears on, “Writing the Dual Self: Opening Spaces for Hybrid Identities” (Marquis Salon 7 & 8); Nayomi Munaweera joins panel "I’ve Never Heard of That Country: Sri Lankan American Writers on Shaping an Emerging Literary Identity” (Monument-Marriott Marquis); Deb Olin Unferth appears on “Novels and Short Stories: How a Narrative Finds Its Form” (Liberty Salon N, O, & P); Anne Finger joins panel “Body of Work: Exploring Disability, Creativity, and Inclusivity “ (Room 203AB); Helen Phillips gives a reading on “Crafty: Four City University of New York MFA Graduates Read from Their Work” (Room 204AB)

12:00pm: Tyler McMahon joins panel “Peace Corps Writers: Crossing Borders, Spanning Genres” (Marquis Salon 1 & 2); Daniel Torday does a reading for the West Branch 40th Anniversary Reading (Marquis Salon 3 & 4); Amy Stolls appears on “Advice to Nonprofit Organizations Seeking Funding from the NEA” (Room 102B)

1:30pm: James Thomas appears on “From Flash Fiction to Microfiction: How Many Words Are Enough?” (Marquis Salon 3 & 4); Rakesh Satyal joins panel “Beyond the Book Deal: What Really Happens When a Publisher Signs Up Your Book” (Marquis Salon 6); Joy Castro appears on “Latina Memoir: Writing a New Chapter of the American Experience” ( Liberty Salon M); Brin-Jonathan Butler appears on “The Art of Rendering Sports into Writing, a Multigenre Discussion” (Monument-Marriott Marquis); Lisa Roney appears on “Foremothers: Southern Women Writers” (Liberty Salon I, J, & K); Kathleen Rooney joins panel “Surviving the End Times: Finishing a First, Second, or Fifth Book” (Marquis Salon 6)

3:00pm: Margot Livesey appears on “The Village of Your Novel” (Room 207B); Amy Stolls joins panel “Conversation about the Economy of Art (the Gift, the Market, the Puzzle)” (Room 202B)

4:30pm: Caroline Bock appears on “Young Adult Literature: A Political and Social Revolution” (Liberty Salon L)

6:00pm: Simone Zelitch joins panel “Two-Year College Creative Writing Caucus” (Room 204C)

9:00am: Alice Anderson appears on “Social Media: Breaking Barriers for the Marginalized, the Remote, and the Academic Outsider” (Room 204C); Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich appears on “Murder She Wrote: Women Writers on Writing Violence” (Liberty Salon I, J, & K); Derek Nikitas appears on “A PhD Program in an MFA World” (Marquis Salon 7 & 8)

10:30am: Caroline Bock joins panel “Get in Formation: Form in Young Adult Literature” (Liberty Salon N, O, & P); Traci L. Jones and Sophfronia Scott appear on “Writing White Characters” (Archives-Marriott Marquis); Kyoko Mori appears on “Does Gender Matter? Wrestling with Identity and Form in the Golden Age of Women’s Essays” (Marquis Salon 1 & 2); Frank X. Walker appears on “Subverting Reality: Using Real People in Fictionalized Settings” (Marquis Salon 3 & 4)

12:00pm: Geoffrey Brock appears on “What's Found in Translation” (Marquis Salon 12 & 13); Vicki Hendricks appears on “Such Mean Stories: Women Writers Get Gritty” (Room 202A); Yusef Komunyakaa and Robert Pinsky appear on “21st-Century Troubadours” (Ballroom B); Helen Phillips joins panel “Writing the Abyss: Turning Grim Reality into Good Fiction” (Marquis Salon 1 & 2); Irina Reyn appears on “Immigrants/Children of Immigrants: A Nontraditional Path to a Writing Career” (Liberty Salon N, O, & P)

1:30pm: David Odhiambo appears on “Narratives of Immigration and Displacement” (Liberty Salon N, O, & P); Lisa Roney joins panel “Practicum and Beyond: Publishing Courses and Literary Citizenship” (Marquis Salon 6); Laurel Snyder appears on “No Easy Readers: On the Art and Craft of Writing for Children” (Marquis Salon 3 & 4)

3:00pm: Garth Greenwell joins panel “Socially Conscious Fiction: Writing That Can Change the World” (Liberty Salon L); Louis Bayard appears on “Wayfaring Stranger: Writing Away from Our Experience” (Marquis Salon 7 & 8)

4:30pm: Sarah Blake, Sarah Domet, and Kathleen Rooney join panel “Attempting the Impossible: Strategies for Writing Creative Biography” (Room 101); Geoffrey Brock joins “Us & Them: A Writer/Translator Reading “ (Marquis Salon 6)

8:30pm: Margot Livesey joins “A Reading and Conversation with Margot Livesey and Colum McCann, Sponsored by Arts & Letters / Georgia College” (Ballroom C)

5 notes · View notes

khalilhumam · 4 years

Text

Former Yugoslavia's brutalist architecture shines in new Star Wars fan film

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/former-yugoslavias-brutalist-architecture-shines-in-new-star-wars-fan-film/

Former Yugoslavia's brutalist architecture shines in new Star Wars fan film

The Monument to the Unknown Hero atop Mount Avala became a Jedi shrine

Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story. Scene shot in the catacombs under Tašmajdan park in Belgrade. Photo by Tamara Antonović. Used with permission.

At the end of last year, a Star Wars fan film with a difference enjoyed its online premier. Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story is a 25-minute short movie made by a volunteer crew composed of around fifty professional filmmakers, film students and members of Serbia's Star Wars fan community. It is written and directed by the award-winning Serbian filmmaker Stevan Filipović. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ThsXKVbO90] The film was shot on locations near the Serbian capital Belgrade. The futuristic Monument to the Fallen Soldiers of the Kosmaj Partisan Detachment from World War II atop Mount Kosmaj and the Monument to the Unknown Hero of World War I atop Mount Avala were both successfully transformed into Jedi landmarks. The apocryphal story is set before the real Star Wars movie The Force Awakens and depicts the demise of the Jedi order perpetrated by Kylo Ren. Global Voices got in touch with Filipović to talk about the movie. Global Voices (GV): Your movie received very positive media reviews, and was lauded by local StarWars fans. Fan fiction rarely sees this level of production. How did you manage it?

Stefan Filipović (SF): I think one can easily underestimate how much Star Wars means to people around the globe. It's a crucial part of our identities, much more than some local cultural phenomena, at least for a lot of people of my generation. I think we could never do something like this — get a completely professional film crew, and such amazing actors, for a non-profit fan film — if we all didn't share a lot of love and respect for this fictional universe George Lucas has created.

Left to right: Darko Ivić, Stefan Filipović and Slaven Došlo on the set of Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story. Photo by Tamara Antonović. Used with permission.

But, the other key was the story. I didn't set out to make a fan film, I wanted to make this really personal story, that happens to be set in the Star Wars universe. I think people reacted to that, saw the raw emotions and the potential of it, very early on. Darko Ivić, who plays Nol in the film, was there with me from the very start when I started dreaming about this film. And then Slaven Došlo went to Disneyland, and brought me a gift — Yoda's lightsaber, and I knew I wanted him to portray the younger brother, Kess. He has this mix of naïveté and pain that I thought was integral to the character. Jana was selected through casting, but the moment she walked in, we thought — that's Mala. The rest of the crew was something of a filmmaker's dream. We had great support from Hypnopolis, the company that has produced all of my films. Basically, everybody who volunteered to help was listed as a co-producer, since we didn't have a budget. In the end, with almost no resources, with shared love for Star Wars, and connections from my previous three feature films, we got quite literally the top Serbian film crews in all fields: from stunts to world-class visual effects, professional color grading, award-winning sound designer, through amazing creatures and prosthetic make-up effects, insane music (available on our YouTube channel), and — of course — great help from the students of the Academy of Arts, where I teach.

A scene from Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story. Photo by Tamara Antonović. Used with permission.

GV: Artists from the Balkans, like Zoran Cardula from North Macedonia, have in the past explored visual similarities between Star Wars iconography and the brutalist architecture of former Yugoslavia. Your film has brought this connection to a whole new level and through a completely new medium. How did you decide on those particular monuments?

SF: There is something very deeply ‘Star-Wars-esque’ in the stories and legends of former Yugoslavia, or, rather – vice versa. The epic exodus and rebirth of WWI, and then — chaos, civil war, Tito's rebel partisans from all nations who overcame their differences to fight a great evil (the Nazis), their victory, peace, the creation of this New Republic, which leads to another rise in nationalism and the fall of the Republic… It's hard to separate our actual history from a synopsis of the entire Skywalker saga!

Jedi Temple in Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story, photo by Tamara Antonović. Used with permission.

So, these relics from our past were perfect to create the atmosphere of Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy — built after the wars, on the ruins of the bygone era — they represent the history which Nol and Dust never had a chance to learn from, yet which shaped their destinies. So, Ivan Meštrović's masterpiece, the Mount Avala Monument to the Unknown Hero became a Jedi shrine, and the Mount Kosmaj WWII monument became ancient Jedi ruins. From a filmmaker's perspective, the Brutalist ex-Yugoslavia architecture was very modern, created in an age where we were looking to the stars, to the future, for inspiration. That makes it stand out today. Both of these locations had mystery and majesty, and I really feel they add something unique to the film. We were very fortunate to get permissions to film there.

GV: The main characters of Breaking Point are commoners. In the official Star Wars movies, members of two ‘genetically superior royal families’ (to paraphrase David Brin) and their entourages tend to run the show. Rogue One (2016) is perhaps an exception. Do you consider your short a part of a trend anticipating ‘democratization’ of that universe, with stories that explore wider social issues through the experiences of people from all social classes?

SF: Yes, well, there's that famous quote from Clerks, about all the workers who built the Death Star and their untold stories. But, seriously, I think Star Wars mythology is now so rich and detailed that it can be compared to many of the existing, historical, myths around the globe, at least in scope and sheer level of detail. The place of the pop-culture in our modern societies is yet to be analyzed by historians and social anthropologists, but, I think it's safe to say that these modern pop-cultural myths occupy a very important place in our lives. In that respect, I feel Star Wars is now more than just another franchise, it's an integral part of global cultural heritage. So, it was interesting to me to try to find a local angle, to try to add to this mythology from our own point of view. We could never make something like The Crown here, but that doesn't mean we don't have amazing stories of our own to tell, and we sure as hell can make films like Dirty Dozen or Rogue One. And class is an important part of that. So we made the entire backstory of Breaking Point about class, in a way. It was interesting for me to imagine — could a poor kid, with no education, and no family, who grew up in the mean streets of Serbia in the 90s become a Jedi Knight, this zen warrior-monk? Or do the wounds that we all have, from the wars, the politics, crime, make us emotionally unstable, unfit? How can we escape that?

Jana Milosavljević as Mala in Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story. Photo by Tamara Antonović. Used with permission.

The protagonists of our film had really tough childhoods. They were separated, the older one became a drug dealer to survive. The younger one was sold to slavery to the same Dickensian crime boss who once owned Han Solo – Lady Proxima. Mala, the Twi'lek girl, was a sex worker from her early teens. They were then rescued by Luke Skywalker, and now they are training to be Jedi, but they have these gaping wounds in their hearts, all of them. These wounds are the weaknesses that the Dark Side exploits through Ben Solo, the future Kylo Ren. But, it's not Ben Solo who turns them against each other — it's their own fears and weaknesses and old wounds that make the brothers go for each other's throats. In short, they represent the history of the conflicts that led to the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Brothers, killing each other, over past wounds and revived nationalism. That rise of toxic nationalism in the former Yugoslav countries has a striking resemblance to the revival of the Empire that Ben Solo was rooting for, and that is a major political point in the sequel trilogy. I'm sorry they didn't elaborate on this backstory as seriously as George Lucas did when he was creating Star Wars films. Especially in the contemporary world, where we see the reemergence of politics that we all thought defeated so many years ago, and that have caused so much pain and suffering.

Final scenes of Breaking Point: A Star Wars Story. Photo by Tamara Antonović. Used with permission.

GV: Critiques of Breaking Point focused on length of the film. They wanted more. Do you plan any sequels?

SF: The ending was supposed to be mysterious, poetic, kind of elusive, like a dream. Kess dies, finding his faith again, because of the only pure thing in his life — his love for Mala. So, it's a completed story for us, and we don't plan to make a sequel. But making a prequel would be really interesting — Nol, Kess and Mala living on Corellia, before Luke Skywalker rescued them. On the other hand, perhaps it would be too dark for Star Wars. I don't know… We'll see. Difficult to see, the future, as Yoda once said.

GV: Science fiction and fantasy had been integral parts of mainstream culture in former Yugoslavia, currently very few authors from the region work in these genres. As a feature film director, you have been an outlier in this sense, with the successful fantasy film Shaitan's Warrior in 2006. In Next to Me (2015), you tackled the intersection between new technologies and society. Do you see potential for more sci-fi production in Serbia, or the wider the Balkans region?

SF: I don't care much about “genre” or “sci-fi” or other labels. I think the obsession with “genre vs. arthouse” is a very weird European phenomenon (much like the formulaic obsession with genres is a weird American phenomenon), and it kinda makes us lose focus on what really matters — telling good stories, writing from the heart, creating compelling characters that matter to the audiences. I think we have here the potential to dream about anything we want, but we often choose not to dream, and rather to create films made to fit European financing strategies and schemes. This results in movies that feel more like a product than your average Hollywood fare, minus the virtue of being watchable. And this is the reason people are more inspired by quality TV and games than movies these days. So, in short, yes — I think we can do pretty much whatever we want, but we need to fight for a different financing system to enable it and different standards to realise the potential of thinking “outside the box”.

< p class='gv-rss-footer'>Written by Filip Stojanovski · comments (0) Donate · Share this: twitter facebook reddit

0 notes

buzzdixonwriter · 4 years

Text

Writing Report April 4, 2020

Unless there’s an emergency or we need to move Soon-ok’s mom back to her apartment from the rehab hospital (she’s recovered from her fall but developed a mild case of flu -- ///not/// coronavirus, they tested for that -- so we’re waiting for the final okay), we’re not leaving the house until May except for tending our plots at the community garden (see previous post).

We did two last grocery runs on Friday (Costco) and this morning (Whole Foods) and we are as set as we’re gonna be for the rest of the month.

Meat and dried foods / nuts we can get delivered through Butcher’s Box and Thrive, we’ve pared back our meals so we’re eating enough but not too much, the TV / radio / Internet are working, and even if those weren’t, we’ve got hundreds of books.

So we’re good.

Writing that makes me realize how luck and privileged we are in this situation.

Thanx to Soon-ok’s pension and our combined social security, we can get by comfortably.

We’re basically homebodies, so other than missing meetings of my writer’s group or the monthly Christian Comics Art Society meeting, or not being able to just pop out and go window shopping, we’re doing 85% of what we were doing before the pandemic.

There was a lengthy silence among the various markets where I’d sent my short stories when the lockdown started, but now as people get a handle on working from home those publishing ventures that survived the initial lockdown are not getting back to contributors.

Some (as noted previously) have already imploded / dissolved / evaporated; I doubt seriously at this point they’ll come back in any form.

Others seem to be doing at least the courtesy of clearing their decks so nobody is left in the lurch, wondering what happened to their material.

The world after the coronavirus is going to be much, much different.

Not in any big ways, such as the dystopian worlds of The Postman or Mad Max, but in myriad small / subtle / almost invisible ways that will add up to a huge cultural change.

This is not just one generation succeeding another (though the Boomers’ era of dominance has definitely ended, even if the tail of the dinosaur is still quivering), but a change in the way the entire culture perceives itself.

Print is dead, at least in its traditional form.

Oh, there will still be books published, but that’s going to be a secondary market for writers, a niche market the same way live stage shows ceased being the default mass market for of entertainment once movies and radio arrive but went on to have healthy lives aimed at more tightly defined audiences.

eBooks ala Kindle and various online forms of publishing are going to be the new mass market, and as either Mark Twain or Josef Stalin once said, “When it’s steamboat time, you steamboat.”

So I’m reallocating my writing efforts: More will appear here in short form, if I find an online writing site that’s a good fit I may start writing there, books will still come out (hopefully at a faster pace than originally planned).

I’m not writing off (=snerk!=) games and media writing, but I’m not chasing those brass rings anymore. Too many hoops to jump through.

(Though if somebody wants to hire me…)

Because of Soon-ok’s mom and other important-but-not-serious family business, as well as reorganizing our garden and preparing for the lockdown, my productivity took a major hit last month (and hasn’t really improved by this moment).

I am still writing, and shortly will transcribe a new fictoid for posting early next year, so the fires are still stoked, the motor’s still purring.

(Indeed, I finally got an insight into an idea I had decades ago that might very well be a perfect fit for some online writing site; more on that in months to come.)

Of course, if you follow Twitter or are on Facebook, the Internet is currently crawling with folks determined to start writing and / or finish that Great Novel / Screenplay they’d once begun.

There’s going to be a lot of competition out there, but I’m not going to worry about that.

The writers who truly succeeded, the writers who matter were the ones who wrote to please themselves and while happy to share their efforts with the world, would have kept on keeping on regardless.

I’m in that category (the “keep on keeping on” portion, that is).

It’s going to be a radically different world in 18 months.

David Brin (cited elsewhere; go read Duty Now For The Future once observed that the great cultural leap forward happened between 1914 (the start of WWI) and 1919-20.

He cites kitchens as one of his cultural yardsticks: The homemakers of 1900-1914 would have easily comprehended and been able to work in a 1880 kitchen…or an 1860…or 1840…or 1800…or 1700.

It wasn’t that radically different.

But by the early 1920s, while old style kitchens were still plentiful, they were dying out, replaced by newfangled electric kitchen with newfangled technology such as affordable consumer refrigerators instead of ice boxes, toasters, waffle irons, mixers, etc., etc., and of course, etc.

The jump in that five year span was greater than the jumps of the previous two centuries.

And the homemakers of 1920 -- as quaint and as antiquated and as inefficient as their “labor saving devices” were -- could easily understand the functions of a contemporary kitchen, even if the individual bells and whistles might prove a trifle confusing.

Ditto the office worker of 1900 to the office worker of 2020.

We’ve sure got a lot more gadgets than they had, but they could grasp what a cell phone was used for because they had landline phones, they’d comprehend a desktop computer was a blend of typewriter and adding machine and tickertape and telegraph, Skype and Zoom would not be alien to anyone familiar with a party line.

The cultures of 1920 and 1990 are a lot closer than we imagine…

…but they’re also a lot different.

(I’d be remiss not to acknowledge there were other cultural changes that occurred after 1920 that drastically changed our world, and at some point in the future I’ll write on all that…but not today, not today…)

We’re about to see a big change in everything, and the future is going to belong not to those in one particular birth cohort or another, but to those who can see that future unfolding before them.

Catch you on the other side.

#writing report #coronavirus

0 notes