And now, our latest installment – Ann and John and the Search for More F$*ing money.
I have mixed thoughts on those pesky swear words. On the one hand, we are adults. If your characters are adults living in an adult world, they might swear once in awhile. Case in point:
“I’ve had enough of your goddamn cheating, John!” Ann said as she drew her gun and pointed it at him.
“Ann! No! What the f$%k are you doing?!” John asked.
“What I should have done a long time ago, you son of a bitch!”
Ann fired. The bullet ripped through John’s flesh.
“Owww!” John screamed. “My f$&king arm!!!”
I don’t like gratuitous swearing. I like to use it sparingly, avoiding it if at all possible. Whether it is for humorous or dramatic effect, I only like to use it when the situation absolutely calls for it.
It’s not that I’m some kind of prissy teetotaler. I don’t clutch my pearls, pop my monocle, and shout, “Oh I declare, I positively have the vapors!” whenever I hear naughty language.
Unless it is somehow central to the plot, or somehow works well with the story, I just fear that too many swears will alienate a reader.
The problem? Just as it is possible to overuse swears, it is possible to underuse them:
“I’ve had enough of your gosh darncheating, John!” Ann said as she drew her gun and pointed it at him.
“Ann! No! What the fiddlesticks are you doing?!” John asked.
“What I should have done a long time ago, you son of a female dog!”
Ann fired. The bullet ripped through John’s flesh.
“Owww!” John screamed. “My fudging arm!!!”
I suppose it is possible to split the difference. After all, if you’re going through a frightening experience, like say, getting shot, you would probably swear, but then again, you might be in such shock, you might forget to:
“I’ve had enough of your cheating, John!” Ann said as she drew her gun and pointed it at him.
“Ann! No! What are you doing?!” John asked.
“What I should have done a long time ago!”
Ann fired. The bullet ripped through John’s flesh.
“Owww!” John screamed. “My arm!!!”
Well, let me get to the whole point of why I seek your input. As previously discussed, I’m working on a sci-fi novel. It takes place in a gritty world, where life isn’t easy for my characters, and bad things happen.
It has aliens, robots, spaceships, monsters – or in other words, the odds are younger people will like it more than older folks. Although, maybe not. I feel like I’ll still love Sci-Fi when I’m eighty years old. The more sci-fi was around when you were a kid, the more you’ll like it as an adult.
As an author, I find swear words to be particularly vexing. Don’t use a swear and you might be selling out, overuse swears and you’ll push potential readers away. And the second you drop a swear word into your book you move from something that can be enjoyed by all to something that can only be enjoyed by few.
Alright. After four days, the film is in the can. God made his masterpiece in seven days. I made mine in four.
And just in time for Oscar night.
Here’s the trailer:
Ominous music…
MOVIE TRAILER GUY: This summer…pet store owner Fred Jones is going to feel like a fish out of water…
FRED: All day long I feed the fish. I clean the tanks. I watch them swim around. I’m tired of the monotony. I need a change.
MOVIE TRAILER GUY: He’s a man with a troubled past…
GENERAL SMITH rips off FRED’S stripes.
GENERAL SMITH: Every last man in your unit was eaten by a killer fish and what did you do? You ran away like the pathetic, sniveling pansy that you are! You make me sick! Get out of my sight!
FRED: Well, I guess I have nothing to do now but move to my hometown and start up a pet store. But God as my witness, if I’m ever given the opportunity to save people from fish again, I’ll save every last one of them!
MOVIE TRAILER GUY: There’s a lot at stake for Fred, and he might lose the love of his life in the process…
FRED’S GIRLFRIEND: I just feel like you love this stupid pet store more than you love me.
FRED: Well one of us have to have a job, Fred’s Girlfriend!
(Fred’s Girlfriend stomps out of the store)
FRED: No! Wait! Fred’s Girlfriend! Come back!
MOVIE TRAILER GUY: And when a mad scientist enters the mix…
MAD SCIENTIST: You ignored my warnings to preserve the environment, world! Now I’ll teach you a lesson by ushering in a new age of mutant fish masters!
(MAD SCIENTIST dumps toxic waste into fish tanks. Fish become enormous)
FRED: Thank God I kept this shotgun under my counter just in case I ever have to kill a bunch of murderous fish!
(FRED cocks the gun – shoots at the fish)
FRED’S GIRLFRIEND: I’m scared, Fred!
FRED: Just stay behind me, Fred’s Girlfriend! I’ll keep you safe!
MOVIE TRAILER GUY: …things are about to get fishy. Coming soon to a theater near you.
So there you have it. Now I’m just waiting for Hollywood to back the Brinks Trucks up to my back door and unload all the sweet, sweet cash.
And no, I’m not having trouble coming up with material for this one post a day for a year challenge at all.
As discussed yesterday, when I was approximately ten years old, give or take a year, I penciled in a notebook my first novel, Attack of the Killer Mutant Fish.
Now that I’m a big time blogging mogul with 3.5 regular readers, including my Aunt Gertrude, I have the resources to turn this novel into a major movie production.
Recently, I held a casting call. The following actors read for the part of Fred the Pet Store Owner, who, as discussed yesterday, shoots all of the fish. Why a pet store owner had a gun, I don’t know. But it wasn’t because when I was ten I was a lazy writer. I purposely left it up to the reader’s interpretation.
AL PACINO
Hoowah! You little fishy finned cock-a-roaches think you can come into my establishment and eat my customers? If I was half-the man I was twenty years ago, I’d take a flamethrower to this place! Say hello to my little friend!
Al, my people will call your people. Next:
MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY
Alright, alright, alright. Hello there kemosabes. Listen, y’all need to just take a deep breathe and chill out. Take off your pants and bang on some bongo drums. All this? Right here? This life? All of this interaction? This is all just a trick. We’re all just sentient meat, fooling ourselves into thinking that our base thoughts and emotions actually matter, when in the grand scheme of things, they really don’t.
Don’t call us, Matthew. We’ll call you. Next:
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
CAN YOU SMELL WHAT FISH THE ROCK IS COOKIN’?!!
God Sakes Alive, you have to be old as shit to get that joke. Next!
ROBERT DENIRO
You bloopin’ to me? You make those little puckery bloop bloop fish faces and bloop at me? Well, I don’t see anyone else around here, so you must be talkin to me!
I don’t know. A solid performance, but I just picture Fred being younger. Next!
CLINT EASTWOOD
Go ahead. Make my filet.
(Cymbal tap – ba dum bum ching!) Sorry, I said younger!
JESSE EISENBURG
Um…yeah…um you…you…you know I didn’t ask for any of this. I’m just a guy running a pet store. I keep the pets fed and if someone wants a pet I sell them a pet. But…but….but…this? I’m not prepared for this. Nothing in my life has prepared me for this…this, what is this? Fish, these Killer Mutant Fish and all they do is run around, trying to eat all the customers? And how are they walking on land if they need to be in water?
You had it until you started asking questions.
This might be a tough one. I’ll have to think about who would make for a good Fred. If you have any ideas, please post them in the comments. Tomorrow, we’ll be casting for the part of the Mad Scientist.
So for the past few weeks, I’ve been asking for your input as I build a world for a sci-fi novel that’s locked up in my brain. Naturally, I thought, why not help the process along by checking out a cult classic of Sci-Fi cinema, namely the 1982 Ridley Scott Directed film, Blade Runner, starring Harrison Ford.
(Forever Cinema Trailers)
THE PLOT
Ford stars as Richard Deckard, a Blade Runner, a special type of police officer assigned to hunt down and execute replicants on site.
Replicants are bioengineered humans. They’re built by the Tyrell Corporation to be stronger, faster, smarter, or as Tyrell puts it, “More Human than the Human.” (In case you were wondering where that White Zombie song came from).
Foreseeing the problem that replicants could use their superior abilities to take over, the government outlaws them on Earth, and only allows them to be used as slave labor on off world colonies. Further, Tyrell has put in a failsafe – replicants only live for four years, so none of them really have time to learn how to get too big for their britches.
THE WORLD
In the 1980’s, Japanese tech companies were booming, so naturally the creators of the film anticipated an Asianization of American culture. Although it takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles, open area Asian bazaar style shops and sidewalk noodle joints riddle the landscape. An enormous building size image of a geisha is prominently displayed.
Even though its in the future, everything looks old and worn out, suggesting that America may one day fight itself in abject poverty, everyone living in cramped, dirty spaces, tripping over one another just to get some room. (Sometimes when you look at today’s economy reports, it feels like we’re there).
THE CLOTHES
Oddly, even though it’s LA and the depletion of the ozone layer is only going to make it hotter, everyone in this film is bundled up like its Christmastime in Minnesota. This is where some science nerd will now explain to me that global warming can actually lead to global cooling. And you’re probably right, science nerd.
THE TIME
It takes place in 2019, so about four years from now, we’ll be subject to a number of “Where are the replicants?” stories like we did this year now that we’ve reached the age of Back to the Future II.
THE TECHNOLOGY
Much of the tech in the film, at least by today’s standards, looks like it was raided from the basement storage room of a high school AV Club. There’s a lot of tube based monitors and equipment that looks like it could display microfiche in your local library. But hey, it all probably seemed like top of the line stuff in 1982.
There are flying cars, but there are also regular land cars. Deckard has a land car. He does get a ride in Edward James Olmos’ flying car. And I was glad to see this flying car did have several instruments, computer monitors, controls, and Olmos even puts on a special flying hat. In other words, the people behind this film anticipated, like I do, that flying a frigging car will be serious business and not something you can allow just an y old jerk to do.
There are video pay phones. Video phones are here, but you know my feeling on the subject. Pay phones of any kind are long gone and I doubt they’ll make a comeback.
Also, nothing to do with tech, but people smoke like chimneys throughout the film. People don’t smoke as much today and when they do, rarely in public lest they be accused of a hate crime. Enter any dive bar and you’ll find people engaged in Russian roulette competitions, chainsaw juggling, wild and crazy orgies, but anyone who lights up a stogie will be asked to leave.
LEGACY OF THE FILM
It’s fun to make fun of, but in a time where Star Wars had put Hollywood on a “space opera” kick, the people behind this film did try to make something serious. It poses a lot of questions about bioengineering, and JF Sebastian’s creepy “toy shop” certainly leaves us wondering whether maybe we should let nature run its course with the human anatomy, rather than do our own tinkering.
There’s certainly a lot to discuss about life when it comes to film – the quality of life, how little time we have, how none of us want to die, even replicants.
Olmos’ character, Gaff, speaks in a foreign language of some kind through most of the film, only to clearly annunciate at the end, regarding Deckard’s replicant love interest Rachel:
“It’s too bad she won’t live! But then again, who does?”
In other words, Gaff uses his few precious words in the film to tell us that we all tend to walk around aimlessly, trying to get something out of life, but few of us ever get where we want or are satisfied if we ever do.
IS DECKARD A REPLICANT?
If I shake my magic 8 ball, it will read, “All signs point to yes.”
Deckard dreams of a unicorn. I don’t know if that’s really a sign, because frankly, I dream about unicorns all the time. I might be a replicant then. Replicants have implanted memories and since unicorns aren’t real, and yet Deckard has a vivid memory of seeing one, the suggestion is he was built in a lab where a scientist added a false memory of a unicorn. Replicants receive false memories, supposedly in an effort to make them happier and/or more human.
Also, Deckard has kind of an odd relationship with his boss, Bryant. At the start of the film, he tells Bryant that he’s out of the Blade Runner business and won’t help him. Bryant tells Deckard he doesn’t have a choice and so Deckard just complies and goes on a replicant hunt. Does that mean Deckard is a slave of some kind, beholden to Bryant’s will? Or is Deckard just like any other human who doesn’t want to piss off an overbearing boss?
ROY BATTY
The villain of the film is Roy Batty (isn’t batty another word for nuts?) aptly played by Rutger Hauer. He’s a replicant who roams LA, cutting a wide swath through various genetic scientists in the hopes he can torture one into coming up with a cure that will allow him and his friends to live longer. None of them are able to, which drives him, well, batty.
SPOILER ALERT (Although honestly, you’ve had like thirty plus years to watch this damn thing)
The surprise of the movie comes when Batty has Deckard right where he wants him. Dickard clings to a rooftop beam, about to fall at any second. Batty can easily step on the hands of the man who has been hunting him and be the victor. But instead, Batty uses his super strength to save Deckard and pull him to the rooftop.
Why? Could it be that Batty recognizes that Deckard is a fellow replicant and doesn’t want to kill one of his own? Or, does Batty just decide that killing Deckard won’t really accomplish anything, so why spill more blood?
In the end, Batty has this iconic “TEARS IN THE RAIN” speech:
I have… seen things you people wouldn’t believe… Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those… moments… will be lost in time, like (cough) tears… in… rain. Time… to die…
Out of the mouths of replicants. That’s pretty profound stuff, isn’t it? Forget about attack ships and glittering beams, just think about all you’ve done in your life. Long before I became Blade Runner fan, I would often get choked up just by thought that one day, I’ll kick the bucket and all the memories of all my accomplishments, including starting this blog that only three people read, will vaporize into nothingness. Who knew that I was just suffering from Roy Batty sadness the entire time.
And what is a tear in the rain? A tear is happening. A memory is happening. But a tear in the rain just becomes another drop of water. A life full of memories ends, just like so many others do every other day…well, I don’t want to say that life is meaningless or “a tale told by an idiot” as Shakespeare once said, but aren’t there times when we all feel a little bit like Roy Batty?
CONCLUSIONS
It’s worth a rental. And Hollywood hasn’t shown an interest in remaking it with a bunch of dopey starlets who would probably just screw it up…yet.
I’ve been looking forward to this one for a long time, mainly because I feel like they’ve been promoting in forever. Given that it is up against Seventh Son, a fantasy film, nerds have plenty to watch this weekend, though these films may be cannibalizing one another’s profits since their core audiences are going to be the same contingent of geeks and dweebs.
That’s not an insult geeks and dweebs. I am one of you.
And sadly, since they’re both movies that cater to a younger crowd, I think they’re both going to be trounced by…dun dun dun… Spongebob: Sponge Out of Water.
But enough about business talk.
The plot? It turns out that worlds aren’t so much natural occurrences as they are business assets of a corporation owned The Abrasax family. The three heirs, played by Eddie Redmayne , Tuppence Middleton, and Douglas Booth, as heirs to a fortune often do, squabble over their inheritances, always trying to gain more planets for themselves.
But they don’t want to rule them. They want to harvest them. We’re all basically cattle and once a planet’s population exceeds its resources, the Abrasaxes have all of the people killed and somehow they are turned into a juice that can be bathed in to reverse the aging process.
Umm…good luck with that. All I can say is if you bathe in a juice made out of me, you’re going to be pretty disgusted.
Somehow, and they don’t really explain how, but Jupiter Jones, played by Mila Kunis, is a reincarnated version of the Abrasax kids’s mother. That’s a problem for them, seeing as how their mother, before being murdered by Redmayne’s character, Balem, wrote it into her will that her reincarnated self would inherit Earth.
Sidenote – this movie realized that I’ve done very little to ensure that my assets will be transferred to my reincarnated self, and thus as soon as I’m done writing this review, I’m going to get my attorney on the horn posthaste.
Keep in mind that at the start of the film, Jupiter has no idea that she’s a reincarnated space queen. She was born a Russian immigrant and cleans rich people’s toilets for a living.
Middleton’s character, Kalique, is happy to have a version of her mother back. Booth’s Titus contrives a scheme to marry Jupiter, claiming that doing so will protect Earth and keep it out of Balem’s grubby mitts. However, Titus has his own evil plans.
Here’s a rundown of a conversation I had with the Wachowskis in my mind as I watched the film:
ME: So this guy is trying to marry a reincarnated version of his mother?
WACHOWSKIS: Yes.
ME: That isn’t incest?
WACHOWSKIS: No. She’s not actually his mother. She’s his reincarnated mother.
ME: But she’s his mother brought back to life so…
WACHOWSKIS: SHUT UP AND WATCH THE PRETTY SPECIAL EFFECTS!!!!
Anyway, Channing Tatum plays Jupiter’s protector, Caine Wise, a human-wolf hybrid, and at this point, the man’s abs must be a multi-million dollar business.
HOLLYWOOD: Channing, we want you in our next picture.
CHANNING: I’m gonna have to charge you a million per ab.
And much to my surprise, Sean Bean was in the movie and he didn’t die. He dies in every movie he’s in, so it was kind of a disappointment that his character didn’t bite the dust, buy the farm, or kick the bucket.
All in all, for a February film, it was pretty decent. I’ve seen ads for this forever, and when a movie is hyped for this long, you kind of go into it expecting your socks to be knocked off, and usually they never are. But sci-fi nerds and space geeks will be pleased. The Wachowskis of Matrix fame are masters of the genre and they don’t disappoint with their special effects skills. People fly, there’s space craft warfare, and so on.
Plus, the scene lampooning the bureaucratic process that Jupiter has to go through to be named Queen was amusing.
One minor complaint – there were a lot of characters, aliens, technologies, organizations – in short, just a lot going on. It leaves you with questions that unfortunately a movie just doesn’t have time to answer.
The special effects alone are worth seeing on the big screen though, and let’s face it, you’ve got nothing else better to do this weekend, so go see it.
“A towel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.” ― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
I think we need to transport Ann and John into the future.
If you’ve yet to hear of them, and why have you, when I only have three readers, Ann and John are my go-to fictional power couple that I use whenever I have questions about writing. You can catch some of their past misadventures in :
So now, let’s transport Ann and John to the year 2200, through a time machine. The three people who regularly read my blog, my Aunt Gertrude being one of them (hi Gertie), know that Ann and John inevitably end up battling a strangler. So behold, I give you – Bay Area Strangler III – Curse of the Robostrangler
So let’s start with a basic question. As a reader, how technically detailed do you want me to get when it comes to future tech? For example, take this scene that involves a robot:
EXTREMELY DETAILED
“We need you, Ann and John,” said General Jones as he lead the the world’s most notorious strangler hunting detectives into a secret laboratory deep below the Pentagon. “We’ve received a communication from the future. It’s a bleak world where the population has been decimated.”
“How could such a thing happen?” Ann asked.
“Robostrangler,” the General said. “Initially designed by Alpha Tech Corp in 2075 to provide neck massages to elderly nursing home shut-ins, his Nano Brain Chip malfunctioned. A nano brain chip provides both acceleration and deceleration of higher brain functions, creating a complex system of reactions, both positive and negative, and when mixed together through the funnel apparatus of a concave refractal interior nano scope, a robot’s artificial mind is able to replicate basic human functions. Unfortunately, Alpha Tech failed to realize that its product could replicate feelings found in the most evil of humans, and alas, Robomassager turned into Robostrangler.”
Compare with:
LESSER DETAIL
“We need you, Ann and John,” said General Jones as he lead the the world’s most notorious strangler hunting detectives into a secret laboratory deep below the Pentagon. “We’ve received a communication from the future. It’s a bleak world where the population has been decimated.”
“How could such a thing happen?” Ann asked.
“Robostrangler,” the General said. “Initially designed and marketed as Robomassager by Alpha Tech Corp in 2075 to provide neck massages to elderly nursing home shut-ins, his Nano Brain Chip malfunctioned, turning him into Robostrangler. Now he’s gone berserk and strangling everyone he sees.”
Which version do you prefer? Personally, I like the second one. Admittedly, I made the explanation up in the first one. I suppose if I really wanted to get detailed, I’d have to do some serious research into how robot brains work and how they could theoretically turn evil. But, as a reader, do you really have the time to care? Isn’t, “the damn robot went nuts!” enough? I submit that’s enough.
Let’s talk time machines:
LOTS OF TECH DETAIL
General Jones showed Ann and John the X21 Time Closet.
“This device has the ability to destabilize your bodily particles, eject them into the cosmos, send them hurtling to any time, past or present, where they will then materialize. Once you’re in the future, you’ll be on your own against Robostrangler.”
Compare with:
PRETTY MUCH NO EXPLANATION
General Jones led Ann and John into the X21 Time Closet. He set the date for Jan. 1 2200 and Ann and John instantly found themselves in a dystopian world where strangled corpses littered the streets, and the Robostrangler reigned supreme.
I’m torn here. I feel the destablize/materialize your particles was enough of an explanation of what’s going on without getting into the theoretical science of Star Trekian “Beaming” technology.
So those are just some examples, using my old friends A and J. The main question – when the author introduces a newfangled sci-fi gadget, do you want a detailed explanation of how it works, or should the author just make it work?
My 2 cents – I just like to see it work, because hell, I have no idea how have the shit in existence in my life now works, let alone how future shit will operate. You can explain to me a million times how this damn computer in front of me works and yet the best I can come up with is that each time I press a key on the keyboard, a tiny gremlin is poked in the ass, causing it to etch a letter on my screen.
I recommend their stuff, just check out Amazon and you’ll find them. I’ve yet to read The Beam but it looks like something Sci-Fi lovers would be into. I do love a good robot story so I will have to check out Robot Proletariat. I enjoyed Daniel Wilson’s Robopacalypse, and the sadly now canceled Almost Human on FOX, so anything with robots, I’m down.
I did read Johnny B. Truant’s Fat Vampire. I went into it thinking, “Well, he’s probably just going to bust on fat people,” but it was actually a story with some heart that showed the struggles that “Reginald” goes through.
They also have a series called Unicorn Western, which is basically, just as the title says, a Western where cowboys ride Unicorns. Cool idea.
I refer to them as “they” like they’re interchangeable, so I’m sorry, I don’t always remember which one did which book, or which of them worked together on which books, but in general, the three of them have some good self-published stuff out there, and I can’t say enough about Write Publish Repeat.
As I mentioned in a previous post about flying cars, I’m working on a sci-fi novel, building my world and keeping my fingers crossed. I thought it would be fun to bring you in and discuss sci fi ideas, topics, technology, various ideas that will help me as I navigate the terrain.
Today, let’s talk video phones. This isn’t a sci-fi stereotype that’s hypothetical. Video phones are here! They’ve been here awhile!
And sadly, they’re about as popular as a turd in the proverbial punchbowl.
As a kid, I remember watching Sci-Fi films and thinking, “What if someone gets a video phone call and they’re not wearing any pants?”
Thus, I proved to be a prophet as I grasped the issue early – no one is wearing any pants.
Seriously! Be honest! How many of you are wearing pants right now?! Show of hands! Be honest!
We have the power to call someone up and look straight at them, but we never use it. Why? Because people just want to sit around their homes sans pants and don’t feel like putting them on just to make a call.
Forget about pants. Maybe people are too self-concious. Maybe they don’t want someone looking at their face, seeing all their zits, being watched and judged for eating a bowl of ice cream whilst being on the phone.
Maybe it’s easier to call up and yell at the cable repairman for not coming between the window of 8 to 7 if you don’t have to stare at his face.
For whatever reason, video communication is here, and it is rarely being used. I have no one who wants to talk to me by video, and I can’t blame people, because my face is hideous and would probably break their phones.
For me, the 1982 film Blade Runner comes to mind when it comes to this topic. In that film, it is anticipated that in 2019, Harrison Ford will sit down at a video pay phone, where another woman takes a seat at her video phone booth, and they have a formal chat looking at one another through their screens. In reality, the pay phone concept, video or otherwise, is long dead, and that woman would probably just want to talk on an audio call, because she’s at home, and probably pantsless. Maybe not. She was kind of classy.
So as the title of this post suggests, let’s talk Sci-Fi. I guess it would be lame to have characters in a book using video phones. No one uses them today and I doubt anyone will be more pro-pants wearing just to take a phone call in the future.
One thing I see in Sci-Fi flicks is holograms. They look cool, but personally, if I’m not putting on pants to take calls, I’m not putting them on to be reproduced as a hologram.
I think far into the distant future, people will still be making audio calls only. What do you think?
And even if I think that, should my characters use hologram communication because, what the hell, holograms are awesome?
Bookshelf Battle 