Long-Delayed Destruction of Phantom Menace in Seven Parts

Remember years ago leaving the theater after seeing Episode One: The Phantom Menace you thought “I know it was bad but I don’t feel like expending too many cycles analyzing why”? Well the myriad answers why are are contained in the clips on this page at Slashfilm.com: Strong language and content warning.

You also left the theater that day with no desire to see it again, and yet you have seen “Empire Strikes Back” nearly annually since your first screening. The gentleman in these clips explains why that might be, and in the process of deconstructing dismantling the Episode I, also conveys a good basic lesson in storytelling/scriptwriting.

Personally my own Star Wars orbit began to decay with Return of the Jedi. Besides the accursed Ewoks, I came away with the distinct impression that Lucas didn’t actually re-screen or review his own previous films for any “the-story-up-to-now” before scribbling the script for the next one. At the End of Empires Yoda states: “There is another.” Leia, I’d guessed. Made sense. But I never found out.

Tolstoy on Poetry

From August 1914 by A. Solzhenitsyn. Tolstoy is the revered Sage in this fictional work. In the opening a young idealist student on his way to volunteer for the army makes a pilgrimage to Tolstoy’s estate and imposes on his idol with questions.

“‘I very much want to write poetry. I do write poetry, in fact. Tell me, is that all right, or does it absolutely contradict what you believe? ”

The old man’s expression softened, but the question did nothing to lighten his mood.

“How can you enjoy lining up words in ranks like soldiers according to the sounds? Childish nonsense! It’s unnatural. The job of words is to express thoughts, and you don’t find much thought in poetry, do you? If you read 20 poems and then try to recall what they were about, you’ll get in a fearful muddle. It’s a case of ‘here today and gone tomorrow.’” Tolstoy’s brow darkened. Looking past Sanya, he said: “There’s a lot of poetry written nowadays, but there’s not a scrap of good in any of it.”

He was upset and shuffled his cane.

Sanya had expected Tolstoy to say that about poetry…

Hard Science Fiction: Toward a Definition

Embarking on initial research for an essay entitled “The Hard Science Fiction Manifesto” of course I immediately found a web site that covered it well enough to save me the work. The quote below is from Rocket Punk’s fine sci-fi glossary. The original page has anchorlinks to other terms in the glossary (”TECHLEVEL”) which I won’t reproduce here:

HARD SF. Written SF that adheres, or tries to adhere, to plausible science and technology. Therefore it generally implies a fairly modest TECHLEVEL; the most anal Hard SF may even preclude FTL. For obvious reasons, plausible is pretty much in the eye of the beholder. It is also a moving target. In fact, you can usually date Hard SF particularly well by its technology, which will lean heavily on whatever technical or scientific speculation was fashionable about five years before a book’s publication date. If this did not pan out (and mostly it hasn’t), the resulting Hard SF will sound very dated within a decade or so.

I would adopt this whole but for some quibbles: one, about the five-years-ahead tech level requirement, and two, especially, about the anality of precluding FTL (faster-than-light travel.) Some futurism can lean toward the hard, and assumption of non-proven concepts like FTL might be acceptable, just as the assumption of meeting non-terran-originating life forms (aliens!) may be as well, as long as they are treated in an internally consistent manner, and are subject to some “hard” limitations and constraints.

For instance, (and to put it into terms with which a non-sci-fi fan who has gotten this far may be familiar) why is the Transporter of the original Star Trek series generally fan-respected, while the Holodeck of the Next Generation the object of derision in some quarters? Well, first off the Transporter has a built-in limitation. It’s in the Transporter Room. Just a room, not a whole deck. Along with other mentioned limitations (atmospheric, electromagnetic) there are multiple episodes where the Transporter has trouble, and indeed breaks down, Although there was a Next Generation episode where the captain was trapped in the Holodeck, in general the tech served much more often as a go-anywhere, we’re-out-of-plots-crutch. This type of cop-out in the original series required that the Enterprise, the whole damned star-cruiser, find itself orbiting a planet where the population was in an Earth-like phase in its history: Chicago gangsters, Nazis, Planet of the Apes- ripped-off post-apocalyptic US Constitution-worshipping barbarians, etc.

Holodeck is internally implausible on its face. Was it all an elaborate hologram generated by computer? If so how could you touch things? How could things touch you? Was it generating matter on the fly? Where would this matter go when the fake images instantly vanished? It’s more than just Trek-geek nitpicking. At times you find yourself thinking these questions while watching (Well, I do anyway. Maybe that’s because I’m not a true Trekkie. I’m not. I swear.)

So in comparing these two fantastic technologies, the original series is harder than its sequel. “Proof” of relative hardness might also lie in the multiple recent breakthroughs that bring transporter tech closer to reality than holograms that can touch you.

Hardness is a scale in sci-fi, with a big H for hard on one end and a big F on the other, marking the border with the fantasy genre of magic and wizards. Every work has a place on this scale. Vampires and zombies are off-scale, beyond the F. At that far end there are paralleling and branching-off scales for most of what fits in the horror genre but that’s a whole other discussion. Frankenstein is sci-fi, and pretty hard at that, considering the time it was written. Dracula is fantasy. Alien is both sci-fi and horror; it’s a sci-fi work well down on the hard end of the scale near the Big H. The journeys take a loooong time, requiring suspended animation. The alien biology is elaborately outlined. The androids have “blood,” and “veins” to carry it. So even though the film is jump-out scary monster-in-the-house story, it’s superimposed on a hard sci-fi world.

Many works labeled sci-fi these days are on that Big F side. Thank George Lucas for that, since he misdefined his magnus opus for the hordes of non-sci-fi fans—and publishers and producers. Space ships, whether they make noise in a vacuum or not, does not a sci-fi story make, whether you’ve accumulated more money than God or not. Stars Wars is fantasy. The Jedi ability to render blasters useless with their fancy flashlight sabers alone puts the saga solidly over the border. Lucas’ attempt to harden it all in the fourth movie (I’ll never think of it as “Episode One”) with this whole ” high midi-clorian count” business in young the Darth’s bloodstream did not pan out, and he either abandoned it or forgot about it in the subsequent two highly forgettable movies. This is more evidence that George may not have watched his old movies from one project to the next. Another instance of this is the strong hint of Leia’s force abilities at the end of The Empire Strike Back. What the heck happened, George? I think he forgot. Or he decided to bag it and hoped no one would notice. An interesting hard sci-fi story might take place in the Empire’s R&D department: about a technician who’s given an assignment: figure out how to make a better Jedi-killing blaster. (But this treads into the scary “fan fiction” realm, a psychosis-induced danger zone in which you will never find this writer. Hopefully. And yea, I fear already having ventured too far into the Star Wars morass, but then, in for a penny in for a credit…)

Lucas was also much over-credited by dazzled non-sci-fi critics for adding all those easy details, like the trash compactor and how the fleet treated its trash… well, now that you mention it, a lot of it had to do with trash. Might be a topic for Lucas’s analyst. Somewhere a masters candidate fan-boy has probably written a thesis on it. (But we all have about 8 trillion things that take priority over tracking that down, don’t we?) This addition of the mundane aspect of his long-ago-far away land did much to create an illusion of hard in this really really expensive swords-and-sorcery serial, but we’re not fooled.

Simply put, hard sci-fi may include technology that could be more than five years away, but it must behave like technology as we know it. Making the one FTL concession is enough to get you out there. what happens once you’re out there is the question. The drawback to this is that if your scientists have made FTL safe, what the hell all else have they improved? FTL is the entry drug. Once you taste it you’re drawn tractor-beam-like ever more toward the non-hard, and the Big F.

For all of the knocking about of definitions, though, wherever you place your story in these genres and on the scale within them, your story will still have to be about people, or else, phhht, you can shoot all your technology out the airlock.

Why does it matter? Because hard is much more interesting, and fantasy magic is easy, not only for the writer, but for the reader as well.

What say you?

KiTE: A Novel in Earth Orbit

KiTE is a novel set in Earth orbit, by Bill Shears.

See below for synopsis.

You can purchase KiTE at:

Buy Kite at Amazon
Buy Kite at Barnes and Noble
Buy Kite at BooksaMillion
Buy Kite at Booklocker

The image below opens a free sample into a Flash application. You must have a Flash player installed on your computer for it to work. For best results: maximize the new window that will open when you click the link below and put your browser in Full Screen Mode. Press the “1:1″ button for actual size if needed for readability. More detailed reading tips are at the bottom of the cover image.

Kite Free Sample

Kite is available through favorite online outlets.

Dash, doubtful they’ll survive the encounter, would leave them to their fate when the alien, name of Troy, turns up. Troy’s a working stiff too but is authorized to defend himself. His sensors detect a threat and he’s armed with some powerful planet-busting weapons.

Kite: A Novel in Earth Orbit

Mason Dash, operator of Kite, Earth orbit street sweeper, along with beautiful, and virtual, stowaway Sheila face down spacejackers, a revolt inside the ship’s systems and  humankind’s first unearthly visitor. Kite is hard sci-fi with heart.

Kite available in these online bookstores, among others:
Buy Kite at Amazon
Buy Kite at Barnes and Noble
Buy Kite at Booklocker

Front Cover of Kite

Kite Synopsis
Mason Dash, operator of Earth Orbit street sweeper Kite, spots movement in a derelict space station where there should be none. Heading Earthward in his shuttle the last day of his three-month shift he detours, closing with the dark station. Something moving in there spooks him.

Dash, with the help of beautiful virtual personality Sheila, creates a plan to expose suspected hijackers. He believes Sheila is his secret but Janet, his brilliant AI expert spouse, informs him that she and Sheila are chums, and she’s even added some experimental “adaptive” modules. While preparing a simulation “scenario” to carry into orbit next shift, Dash dozes off and Sheila stows away in the code, her new adaptive behaviors kicking in. No way she’ll be left behind this trip.

Back in orbit Dash confirms the presence of intruders on the station, while inside the Kite computer systems there’s turmoil. Emerging from deep in the data depths He_Ra has assembled a powerful force to seize control from the old Main Process.

Sheila splits attention between Dash outside and her own adventure inside Kite, getting a taste of romance and revolution. The tyrant He_Ra has taken a fancy to her and wants to expand to other orbital structures, like the nearby space casino, then perhaps to Earth.

Dash sends Sheila to the space station to scout. She finds not hijackers but a team of inept diplomats, preparing to receive humankind’s first unearthly visitor.

Dash, doubtful they’ll survive the encounter, would leave them to their fate when the alien, name of Troy, turns up. Troy’s a working stiff too but is authorized to defend himself. His sensors detect a threat and he’s armed with some powerful planet-busting weapons.

Earth’s fate is in the balance and only Dash, Sheila, Janet, and Kite, can prevent disaster.

Publisher’s Note
Hard science fiction works, whether they keep you on or around Earth or take you to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, are those that adhere more closely to science fact than not. Much dispute and emotional argument can ensue among fans in attempting to nail down any definition, but the term hard should in no way imply that a work takes itself overly seriously. Kite, with its orbitweary workman co-protagonist and its strong women co-protagonists is one of those stories that builds in the humor with the possibilities, that a time will come when humans will utilize Earth orbit in a mundane, everyday fashion, and that going to space in ships will not be as costly and risky as it is now. The inevitability of this is as sure as the inevitability that wherever people go they tend to make a mess, and someone will still have to be out there doing the rough jobs, and the cleaning up.

Author’s Note
Kite is a story that had been latent for a few years before emerging. The amount of debris in orbit has been building up since the days of the Mercury program, and it seems like every shuttle mission these days generates a news story about a debris encounter. Now that the shuttle program is coming to its long-overdue end, if we’re every going to inhabit the space around Earth, and use it as the platform for leaping out, as Carl Sagan put it, into the nearby neighborhood, the next generation of technology would need to do something about all the junk. A ship like Kite is just one projection of how it might be handled. – Bill S.

Alan Furst’s Top Five Spy Books

Alan Furst

Master World War II espionage novelist recommends his five favorites.  

Oddly enough, it was Five Best spy novels by Charles McCurry that led us to sample one of Furst’s. We believe it was Blood of Victory. And we then proceeded to read then all .

Suggestion: read them in any order, but save Night Soldiers for last.

“You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din”

Gunga Din

Bolstering Big Hollywood as the go-to online spot for real writing about movies, Schizoid Mann’s manly and surprisingly “otherly” (no spoilers please) piece on Gunga Din is one of the best posts in the site’s short life. Very little of value about movies has been written or presented in the mass print or electronic dinosaur media for decades, decades i tell you, and that includes the Oscar broadcasts. (and excepting Robert Osborne on Turner Classics.) So if you’re interested in film and all manner of topics surrounding the art and the business of it you’ll want to give it a look.

“Kali!”

We watched Gunga Din here at the Shears Compound just a few months ago as a matter of fact; exposed Lance, Leo and Escella to it, or tried to anyway, and Mrs. Shears enjoyed it as well. This continued a family tradition of appreciation for the work. I remember my Ma and old late Paw loved the film, and the reason I remember is I have a clear echo of them in the 1960s pointing out that Sam Jaffe, who play Gunga played Dr. Zorba, hospital boss of neurotic TV neurosurgeon Ben Casey.

So hopefully they’ll pass it on to their offspring, to watch in whatever format story-telling will take further down the century. Maybe they’ll absorb it through their skin. The Movie Patch. Whatever. Gunga Din will be there because it’s just good storytelling.

Some people can’t watch those old films. They mock the stagey speech and sneer at the image quality. They’ve been raised, and conditioned, on color and the (supposed) naturalistic speech patterns of modern film/TV. But one of the facets I like best about films from before the 70s is that they speak the lines clearly, so that you can understand what the hell they are saying. This must have lent discipline to the writing, since the writer knows in the back of his mind that the lines he transfers to the actors mouths will be heard. Write lines for modern hacktors like Sean Penn and you know he will not only change them, but you might not even be able to decipher what he changed them to, since mumbling is what passes for acting now. When screening modern film/TV, on average once per viewing, and often more often,  we have to pause and go back to see what was said. Sometimes we even have to turn on the subtitles, for an American film!

Maybe improved sound is the reason. The audio technology from the infancy and adolescence of the talkies may have required more enunciation; and so the actors didn’t have to worry about modulation or their vocal instrument, they just spoke the lines, had some personality and looked great, something everyone in this film managed — even poor, brave Gunga.

The Blue Max and Barry Lyndon. Same movie, different heart throbs?

George Peppard and Ursula Andress

Two of our rewatchable faves are the WW I aerial drama, The Blue Max, and the painting that moves, Barry Lyndon. We watched the former on Netflix Watch Instantly over the last two days and noticed striking similarities between the two.

It goes beyond the severe market-directed miscasting of American pretty boys in European settings. In Max, dreamy, at-the-time, box office name George Peppard is a German WWI pilot, speaking plain-spoken American English, surrounded by actual Europeans — one of which is, James Mason. In spike od Paerppars presence and clear acting abilities, it makes you wonder, what are all those foreigners doing there?

Similarly In Lyndon almost ten years later, Ryan O’Neal is almost laughable trying to pull off that accent as he makes his way across 18th century Europe, completely outclassed by everyone on screen, even the beautiful lightweight Marisa Berenson. But the movie wouldn’t have been made without him, and he is a bit on the photogenic side.

No. That’s not all. The macro-story thrusts in both are also exactly the same. Both feature upstart social climbing, not-so-loveable rogues who value the trappings of wealth and fame but never get the hang of what having class is all about. The Blue Max is tragedy because  does redeem, slightly, then gets his anyway. B. Lyndon never does redeem and gets rewarded with a fate worst than death, for him. Obscurity. 

Still. Some movies rise above poor casting. Besides all the well-done flying and dogfights, the final dramatic airfield sequence in The Blue Max makes the picture. Thank director John Guillermin and James Mason for that. And the final image stuck with me a long time after I first saw it in the theater. I was ten and believe you me the Ursula Andress topless-with-towel-yoke scene had some staying power as well.

Barry Lyndon is Kubrick making art, and it has some enjoyable and authentic battle scenes as well. Visually impeccable, the long sequence of Redmond Barry’s dissolution set to the Schubert Trio Op. 100 will never be matched. They just don’t make ‘em like that anymore.

Watchmen (Updated 05 MAR 09)

05 MAR 09: Ah. Alan Moore is a warlock. From the picture on this post he looks like the reincarnation of Rasputin. Either way he’s put a curse on the movie version of Watchmen..

04 MAR 09: Sounds like Debbie Schlussel considers the movie will be a permanent blot on the culture, to say the least. Don’t sell her short in the area of comics. She’s a collector.

I must say I came across some of the items Debbie mentions in the aggregated volume of Watchmen books I started yesterday. Although I do not quease easily and the comics are self-consciously and ostentatiously “edgy” I would not raise the works to the level of high literature, as some have. The episode I finished was not as depraved as Ms. Schlussel makes the movie out to be, but you could easily see where a team of worm-eaten minds in Hollywood would gleefully enhance the visuals and action to the point of depravity.

03 MAR 09: Al Moore, creator of Watchmen, is immune to the Hollywood disease. He is so immune that he gets his name taken off projects and gives the money to the artists. What a guy.

The film adaptation opens this week and we’ll crash to read the original, our copy of which was misplaced. Son Leo located it today under son Lance’s slab.

It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. The only epic comedy

From the toss of the “little kiddie bike” to the final touch of backing up the pick-up truck Jonathan Winters takes out his frustration on one of the necessities of the mad modern world, a gas station.

Amd here’s Phil Silvers in the movie’s best semi-cameo.

In a film with so many comedic moments, what happens in this scene is the moving image we’ve carried with us through life: