Staked

So I mentioned that one of the novels I brought back from Worldcon was Staked by Jeremy Lewis. I read it immediately after finishing Soon I Will Be Invincible, and was struck by an odd similarity.

Not only are both books written in first person, but both books are written in first person viewpoints that alternate between a male and a female character. However, and here's the neat trick, I think Staked makes better use of the alternating viewpoints than the big-time mainstream novel.

Staked is basically a vampire noir mystery, featuring Eric, a vampire strip club owner with memory problems. He comes to in an alley, after having just killed another vampire during a "rage blackout." Almost immediately afterward, he is forced to kill a werewolf, setting in motion a chain of events that will change Eric's (un)life, as well as the lives of everyone around him.

I have to admit, the first chapter put me off a bit. There's a lot of ugliness in Eric's world, and Eric himself is a bit of an off-putting character. Vampires in this world are not glamorous, that's for sure. Add to that the necessity to infodump lots of world detail right up front to get us up to speed on Eric's character and surroundings, and I wasn't sure if I'd like Staked after the first chapter.

But Lewis pulls off some major scores after this. Riding a thin edge of comedy and disgust, he pulls you into Eric's world deftly, showing you the standard vampire hero surrounded by a cast of stock characters.

But when the viewpoint shifts to Tabitha, Eric's stripper girlfriend/ vampire groupie, you find out that she's a deeper character than Eric gave her credit for being. And as the novel unfolds through their shared viewpoints, you realize that the world Lewis has created is a more layered, more interesting place than either of his main characters realize. By splitting the viewpoint between two characters, Lewis is able to show us things about the characters and the world that no single viewpoint could have given us, and by the end, I was eager to read a second book in the series to learn more.

Fair warning: the book is full of strong language and graphic depictions of violence and sex and foul bodily functions. And the mystery isn't very strong. It's one of those "mysteries" where you really only have one viable suspect, so the big revelation of who's behind all the madness isn't much of a surprise. But the trip getting there is mighty fine.

The Pose

So I mentioned last time about this funny thing I'd brought back from Worldcon. I've scanned it now, so here you go. But first, the set-up:

While I was at Conestoga, one of the Triple-F girls (I believe it was Tulsa resident Michele Bardsley) made a joke about how she'd been working on her standard urban fantasy cover pose. She then turned her back to us and looked back over her shoulder with one hip cocked out. I laughed, because I'd seen that kind of pose, although I didn't think it was nearly as ubiquitous as she made it seem.

So then while I'm at Worldcon, Ace is handing out these samplers of new books, with the headline "Brand-New Science Fiction and Fantasy from Ace and Roc." Only a scan of the 6 books they're sampling from reveals no science-fiction at all, only one alternate world fantasy and 5 urban fantasies. And when they show the covers on the back, here's what caught my eye (click the pic for a slightly larger view).


Anything look familiar?

Soon I Will Be Invincible

I had planned to scan something funny I brought back from Worldcon, but I haven't got my scanner set up yet, so I guess I'll do a book review first. Soon I Will Be Invincible came out in hardback last year, the debut novel from Austin Grossman. As you may tell from the title, it's a light-hearted look at superheroes, a mainstream novel that looks at some of the basic cliches of the genre and turns them on their heads, makes them fun again.

I was worried that this would turn out to be yet another parody by a writer who looks down on the genre, like Asimov's anti-Batman Batman story "Northwestward" in the anthology "Further Adventures of the Batman," or like Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude. As the authors take apart the silliest tropes of the genre, you get the sense that they're talking down to you: "You're stupid for liking this stuff, but I'll take your money anyway."

Grossman doesn't do that. He's smart enough to see how silly the genre can be, but he loves it anyway, and he lets that love shine through throughout the book. The book is written in first person, from the alternating viewpoints of two main characters, the megalovillain Doctor Impossible and the cyborg superhero Fatale. Evil genius Doctor Impossible escapes from prison and immediately launches into a new plot to take over the world; with his greatest nemesis, the superhero Corefire, missing, he actually has a shot at it this time. Meanwhile, Fatale is invited to join a superteam called the New Champions (their mission: to find Corefire and stop the doctor's villainous plot), which allows her to see the unglamorous details of the heroes' behind the scenes lives.

In some ways, it's what I wanted Hero Go Home to be, except that Hero Go Home will be explicitly series fiction, while Invincible is a literary one-off. Parts of it feel a little well-worn, but parts of it are brilliant. Grossman introduces the conceit early on that being an evil genius is actually a mental disorder, Malign Hypercognition Syndrome. So that whenever he does the obviously self-defeating things that villains do (parodied well but somewhat tediously in the Evil Overlords list), he's not being stupid or a victim of bad writing; he's merely exhibiting the symptoms of his disease, and often enough, he realizes it, which makes him even more human and sympathetic.

I wasn't as thrilled with the Fatale sections of the book. They're more drab, more downbeat, and occasionally drop into pure infodump. And though Grossman does a lot of things well in this book, sometimes the action scenes overwhelm him. A big scene in the middle where Doctor Impossible fights the New Champions single-handed suffers from some curious gaps and continuity errors; other scenes which could have been set-pieces are avoided completely and we see only their aftermath.

Overall, though, it's a funny and fast read. I recommend it for superhero fans.

Worldcon Continued

Sorry if this is hyper-detailed and boring, but I'm doing it as much for my own memory as for your enjoyment.

Friday: I mentioned yesterday that I'm in an on-line writers group called Codex. Friday morning, a bunch of us met up in the Hyatt for a get-to-know-you breakfast. Forgot my camera, of course. I'm going to name as many as I can, with links, because they're a really talented group, and probably much more fun to read than me.

Besides Mary and Ted (mentioned yesterday), there were a ton of others. Cat Rambo and her husband Wayne, Tina Connolly, Catherine Yoachim, Rachel Ann Dryden (no link, sorry), J.F. Lewis a.k.a. Jeremy, Eric James Stone, Sandra Tayler and her husband Howard (creator of Schlock Mercenary), Elaine Isaak, Rebecca Roland (sorry, no link), Camille Alexa, Lawrence M. Schoen. The two dudes I talked movies with the previous evening, Matt Rotundo and Larry Hodges, were there, along with Matt's wife Tracy. The lovely Alethea Kontis stopped in for a bit, and the equally lovely Diana Rowland (pictured at right; all party photos are from Sat. night, which is when I finally remembered my camera) organized the whole deal. I'm forgetting some people, so please forgive me, but there literally wasn't enough time to get to know everyone.

Whew. Like reading Matthew Chapter 1, isn't it? The breakfast was a $20 buffet AND I ONLY MADE ONE TRIP (thereby breaking another personal rule)! That's how busy I was meeting new people.

So anyway...

I don't remember what else I did for most of the day. I know I spent some time in the SFWA suite, eating the free lunch to compensate for the double-hit of Maggiano's and Hyatt buffet. Talked to some guys there, probably Ted and Jeremy (that's Ted to your left). I know I made a pass or two through the dealers room to talk to other Codexians at the SFWA table, and I went through the art show to check on another piece I was bidding on. I had a list of panels I wanted to attend, but for some reason, when the time came, I blew them all off.

At 4:00, I hit the Baen Travelling Slide Show, which was fun, and then I ditched the con to see a little of downtown Denver. Along about 7, I dropped back in to the SFWA suite for a bite to eat and the Analog/Asimov's Party. Lots of fun. Talked to a bunch of folks, including a Codexian I hadn't met yet, Jenny Rae Rappaport. I remember some sort of good-humored drunken argument with Camille Alexa, in which I don't think she ever got to her point, then a bunch of us went party-hopping. I stumbled back to the Marriott at 0-drunk-thirty.

Saturday: Somehow avoided a hangover and headed to the Marriott early to attend an editors panel. The one best thing about the con was meeting a bunch of people at all levels--newbie writers, rising stars, experienced pros, agents, editors--and finally internalizing the not-so-remarkable fact that people do this stuff all the time, and so can I. I've known it and paid lip-service to it for a long time, but for at least a couple of days, I really believed it. Crazy. And to prove how serious I was getting, I not only joined SFWA, but took out a year's subscription to Locus (although it didn't hurt that the curiously hot Amelia Beamer was manning the table).

Blew off the Wild Cards panel to wander the dealers room and talk to people, probably including Jeremy (pictured at right). Jeremy is the author of Staked, from Pocket Books, which is one of the books I brought back from the con and have in my To Be Read stack. At 1:00, I headed to the Upcoming Tor Books presentation. Man, Tor has a lot of books coming out. They had like five editors there presenting different pieces of the line. That was followed by a podcasting panel that was pretty informative, after which I headed to the dealers room again.

The thing about Saturday at Worldcon is, most other cons are three days long, and that's being generous. They generally start in the afternoon on Friday and go till the early afternoon on Sunday. At some point on Saturday, you realize the con is going into its fourth full day, and you're like, "God, isn't it over yet?" I was hitting that point.

In the dealers room, I hung out with Sandra Tayler at the Schlock Mercenary table for a while, then ran into Camille Alexa, who wanted to finish her comment from the previous evening, but somehow never did. She invited me to the Abyss and Apex party, then promptly left for another engagement. So I was stuck talking to lovely new writer Alycia C. Cooke for an hour or so (that's a pic of the party at left--Hadley Rille books editor Eric Reynolds, Camille Alexa and Alycia on the right--so you can tell I was really suffering by having to pass time with her), until she headed for the Hugo ceremony and I went to dinner with friends.

I headed back for parties at 10. Hit the Ace Books party first, where I spoke with the awesome Shanna Swendson (pictured at right), with whom I'd had a reading at Conestoga. You can't see them in the picture, but she was wearing killer-sexy red heels.

At some point, I hooked up with a bunch of Codexians--Rachel and her very nice friend whose name might have been Heidi, Matt and Tracy, Ted--and we hit some of the other parties, mainly the Baen Books party. I actually ended up getting stuck outside the party for ten minutes or so; the door guards said the party was crowded, so they were limiting entrance to just Baen authors and guests. Now, I'm not a Baen novelist (yet), but I have had two stories published in Baen's Universe, which was more than could be said of the rest of our group, and they all got in right away.

Eventually, they let me in, and I hooked up with my newfound friends just in time to take off again. After a couple of quick turns through other parties, we headed back down to the Ace party again, where I encountered the highlight of my night. As we're going in the door, John Scalzi comes out carrying his Hugo for Best Fan Writer (which is probably the closest I'll ever get to a real one), followed closely by Mary Robinette Kowal, who is...

wait for it...

...no longer a Campbell Award nominee, but a Campbell award WINNER. I pulled out my camera to get a picture of her and somebody there says, "No, you've got to take a picture together." So that's her on the left, there. We're both a little flushed. In her case, it's the glow of victory; in mine, it's beer. Plus, my gel was getting tired, so I've got the crazy Reverend Jim hair going, and I had spinach or something in my teeth, but I GIMP'ed it out.

Big, big congratulations, Mary.

Sunday: Hit the art show to pick up my O'Connor. Talked to a couple of folks and lingered in the dealers room, hoping to spot a few others. It was strange and sad. Saturday, I was ready to go home, at least until someone waved free booze under my nose. But Sunday, I didn't want to go without saying goodbye to the many really cool people I met, and I didn't get to. So on the drive home, though I was happy with the con, I felt incomplete.

So let this be my other excuse for all the name-dropping. Because if I mentioned you here in the recaps and went to the trouble to link, it's because I thought you were pretty cool and wish I could have talked to you more face-to-face. And if I didn't get to say goodbye in person, let me say it here.

Goodbye. It was nice meeting you. I hope to see you again.

Back From WorldCon

So I'm back from Worldcon, and gotta say, it was in many ways the best one ever (of course, I've only gone to three, so ever doesn't mean much). I had meant to liveblog via wifi, but my portable keyboard wasn't working, and neither was my wifi access, so no go. The con was held (mostly--more about that later) in the Colorado Convention Center, which features a giant blue bear peeking in. Looks pretty cute from the outside...

But from the inside as you made the long walk from the convention area to the exit, you got a prime view of bear-crotch.


Quick recap:

Wednesday: Went first to registration to pick up my badge'n'stuff. Stood in a LONG line behind this girl, kinda cute, with hair dyed shocking red and a blue dress with red lace at the bottom of the skirt--Superman colors. More about her later.

Took a couple of turns through the Dealers Room and the Art Room, both of which were still setting up. Broke my "never buy anything on your first trip through the dealers room" rule when I snapped up the new Naomi Novik, Victory of Eagles. Saw some art I liked, but didn't bid on anything.

Attended the Wizards of the Coast slideshow by the very cute and personable Erin Evans. I don't read Dungeons and Dragons books, really, but the talented Ms. Evans (who is apparently also an editor) convinced me to give one a try. After the panel, she put some free books on a table and I went up to get one. I managed to get a copy, but some other folks weren't so lucky, thanks to a couple of bookpigs who grabbed up multiple titles (one guy hoovered up six).

Also went to a panel for beginning writers, which I probably wouldn't have done if it hadn't featured Mary Robinette Kowal, someone I knew on-line from the Codex writers group (you'll see that word a lot in the rest of the recap). Mary, besides being a Codexian, is also the secretary of SFWA and was a nominee for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, which was to be awarded at the con on Saturday night.

Skipped opening ceremonies, but did attend the reception for Lois McMaster Bujold, the Guest of Honor at the con, with the friends I was staying with (who attended the first day of the con, then bummed around Denver and attended the Scottish Games over the weekend). It was not too crowded, pretty low-key. Great spinach puffs, not-so-great manners from several of the fans rushing at any waiter with a tray of food in his hands. I was still a bit fried from the drive up the day before, so we skipped the parties.

Thursday: Spent the early part of the day just wandering. Went through the art show again, and decided to buy something. This was not a small decision for me, given the amounts of money gushing through my hands at downtown Denver prices. I bought a beautiful piece: "Zephyr's Tomb" by William O'Connor. It was a Giclee' print on canvas which the artist had retouched with oils to brighten certain areas, giving it the look of an original painting. An absolutely gorgeous addition to my new house, but it means I need to make a sale now to help pay for it.

Attended a panel on getting an agent with several big names in the industry, then went to the dealers room and bought my membership to SFWA from Mary. Met Ted Kosmatka, who is also in Codex; Ted's mom Marilyn was also at the con, having co-written a book with Eric Flint from Baen. The SFWA table turned out to be a pretty regular Codex hangout throughout the convention.

Hiked over to the Sheraton to check out the SFWA suite and attend the Rising Stars reception. There was a lot of walking at this convention: I was staying at the Marriott, but the con was being held in the Convention Center, with other events held at the Sheraton and the Hyatt. Sometimes, the decision on which event to attend was made by simply saying, "How far away is it?" Met Ken Scholes at the event, another Codexian who has a book coming out with Tor.

There were some panels I wanted to attend, but skipped in favor of finding a bar where I could smoke a cigar and relax. After the cigar (Cifuentes y Cia Partagas Black Label), I went to the SFWA suite, where I got into a discussion with a couple of other writers (whose names I didn't catch) about underrated SF movies. We batted around a few possibilities, then I took off to join my friends at Maggiano's Little Italy, a fantastic Italian place, but ended up costing us $40 bucks a person. Really need to make some sales now.

After dinner, I headed to the Daw Books party held in the SFWA suite. It was fun. I talked for a while with a couple of brothers, Dani and Eytan Kollin, who have a book, The Unincorporated Man, coming out next year from Tor (I would link you to the book's website, but it seems to be down, so I'm giving you Dani's LiveJournal instead). Cool guys, and the book sounds interesting. Left the party fairly early to try the main party floor, but the line for the elevators was so long that I blew it off and headed back to the Marriott to sleep.

More con stuff tomorrow...

Off to Denver

I'm heading to Denver tomorrow for the 66th World Science Fiction Convention starting Wednesday. I expect that free Wi-Fi will be available, so I plan to do a bit of live-blogging, and hope to even remember to take pictures. I'm looking forward to meeting Codex friends, and may even join SFWA while I'm there.

They Stole Frazier's Brain Ep. 5

It's back. Yes, once again, I've dared to pick up the World's Cheapest Microphone (actually, I bought a new one, so it's actually now the World's Second-Cheapest Microphone). I've never been thrilled with the Internet Archive method of podcasting, so I'm trying something new. Click the widget below to listen to a streaming version or to download.

A New Old Secret Lab! Mysterious Noises! New Toy, Old Cliches! A Mysterious Enemy Arises! Running time: a little over 31 minutes.

Triple F

So as I was saying, I had a lot of fun at Conestoga on the panels I had with the Triple F (Fangs, Fur, & Fey) folks. The urban fiction writers appeared on several of the main Conestoga panels, but they also had their own dedicated track of programming. I only attended one of their events, their last panel on Sunday. And in some ways, I regret that, because I wonder now if it would have been a better use of my time. Not that I didn't enjoy the panels I attended, but after a while, there's a sameness to them all. The same writers talking about the same subjetcs in the same ways.

But the Triple F's don't come from the same fandom. They aren't stuck repeating the same tropes so often that they don't even recognize them as tropes anymore. The Triple F's come, often, from a romance background. It's genre literature. Like science fiction, it's often formulaic, has a devoted fan base and a professional literary organization dedicated to writing it.

But those formulas and fans and professionals are different from science fiction community's, and I wonder if it wouldn't have been valuable to learn more from them while they were there. The romance writers aren't just fluffy bunnies, after all. From my brief exposure to them, they are as professional, as dedicated to their craft and to the sales and marketing of their writing, as any SF writer I've met. And they do sell. Boy, do they.

Oh well, maybe next year.

I'm going to WorldCon in Denver next week. I wasn't sure if I would make it, but decided to take the plunge and bought my membership last week. I thought I had a place to stay, but that now appears to be in jeopardy, so I may need to find a room on short notice. But I'm looking forward to meeting some people I've only met via email, and I'm hoping to join SFWA while I'm there.

Conestoga 12

So another Conestoga is over. As usual, I had a lot of fun and forgot to take any pictures of it.

Fridays always present a slow ramp-up. I attended one panel about future trends in science fiction, then wandered around the not-fully-set-up dealers' and art rooms before running into Paula and Rick of Baen's Universe. Even though I haven't published with them in almost a year, they treated me like family, bought me dinner and a beer (thanks, guys). I never thought when I submitted "Astromonkeys!" to them a couple of years ago that it would yield such great personal dividends. I vaguely hoped to get a check; I didn't imagine friends would come with the deal.

Friday night was the Yard Dog Press party, which featured Hurling Monkeys and entertainment by Bradley "Bland Lemon" Denton and David Lee Anderson. Brad has written some of the most violent stuff imaginable, but personally, he seems like the nicest guy around. He spent the weekend carrying around a huge-ass Get Well card for Howard Waldrop, which he was having everyone at the con sign.

Saturday was when most of the action occurred. I started the day with a reading. Here's the deal: like last year, this year's Conestoga had another mini-convention piggy-backed onto it. Last year, it was 1632 fans, and I ended up attending a lot of their events, because 1632 is a Baen thing, and I really like the Baen folks (as I may have mentioned above).

This year, the con-within-a-con was a group called "Fangs, Fur and Fey," a group of urban fantasy authors. The books mostly seem to be by and for females, and usually seem to center around vampires-werewolves-witches in the modern world. One branch is mostly suspense, private eyes and like that, and the other branch is chick lit--funny, sassy books in the Sex and the City vein, only with, you know, vampires-werewolves-witches.

I'm glad they were there. Science fiction as a genre seems to be aging, and not entirely well, and the urban fantasy contingent have brought fresh life. Plus a bunch of the authors and their fans are hot. I had a great time on panels and readings with Shanna Swendson, Michele Bardsley and Dakota Cassidy. Dakota is a sultry-voiced natural beauty who had great fun purring into the microphone on our panel and teasing the audience. She sort of reminded me of those guys in the dunk tank at the fair, trying to taunt people into hitting the target, only, you know, hot. Later, Renee George took an awful picture of me, but in my defense, her flash thing took forever to go off and I got bored waiting... twice.

More later...

Conestoga Is Coming

I'll be a guest at Conestoga 12 this weekend in Tulsa, OK. I'll be giving a "Humorous Fantasy" reading at 10 AM Saturday, and I'll be participating in two other panels that afternoon, "Two Truths and a Lie" at 3 PM and "Great Cliches in SF and Fantasy" at 4 PM (yes, back to back). On Sunday, I'll be on the "Favorite Fannish Blogs and Websites" panel at 12:05 (and this is probably the only time you'll ever read the word "fannish" on this blog).

Now I just need to get my home internet access back so I can visit some blogs and websites.

Second Try

Went to a cigar and wine bar. Lots of women, insanely overpriced. And strangely, though cigar friendly, it was a non-smoking place, at least inside. Odd...

Cheap Beer

Blogging from Caz's Pub in downtown Tulsa. Cheapest night out I've had in a long time. I literally cannot buy a beer. Waitress walks right past me. I go up to the bar, and the bartender ignores me to start washing glasses. I'm saving so much money!

Absence Makes the Heart...

Well, this has been a long time coming, but here's the story behind the long absences: my wife and I are no longer together. The last couple of months have been filled up with finding a house and moving out and telling the family, not to mention all sorts of work craziness since the Newport buyout of Clear Channel Television. Never fails: ownership changes, then in comes the new broom to sweep clean and show the people left who's boss now. My group was spared any layoffs, but that may only be due to the fact that a quarter of my staff has left of their own accord. I'm trying to operate eight TV stations with the staff we used to use to operate two, and accomodate summer vacations at the same time. Not easy.

I don't have internet access from home yet, so updates may be infrequent, but they are starting again.

The Road To Hell

I know I said I was going to post more frequently and have this flood of new material, but something came up that has had me preoccupied for a while. I can't talk about it now, but maybe in a month I'll spill the beans.

So I'm going to try to write some catch-up posts here in the next few days. "Out of the Vault" may even make a return appearance; I had a lot of plans for that, but then I made a poor choice of books to feature, and have just not had anything to say about it.

The big news right now: "No Love for the Middleman" is up right now at Strange Horizons. This is the first story I've sold that does not star Digger (although it is in the same world--Digger is even mentioned a few times). For the folks visiting from Strange Horizons, welcome. If you liked "No Love for the Middleman," you might also like "Astromonkeys" and "Double-Secret Weapon," both appearing in Baen's Universe ("Astromonkeys" can also be heard free on Escape Pod). And if you like giant monsters, you might take a look at Daikaiju! 3: Giant Monsters vs. the World, which contains, among many others, "Out of His League," a tale of Digger vs. Something Really Big.

So go, read, enjoy, and I'll clean things up around here and make them more presentable.

God Hates My Mother-In-Law

She watches two (2) shows a week, both on the same night--Survivor and Lost. And it seems like every Thursday for at least the last two months has had some kind of severe weather alert, so that there's always a weather graphic on-screen and the breaks are always full of cut-ins by the weather guys showing radar images and saying, "It's not serious yet, but we're cutting in to tell you it might be." In fact, Lost was completely preempted last night because of tornado coverage.

Seriously, every Thursday. I'm sure she thinks it's like this all the time anymore, because that's all she ever sees.

Lost Blows Up

I know, I know. I promised myself that April was going to be a big month for this blog. I was going to post new stuff almost every day. But it hasn't worked out very well this week.

I'm almost through the DVD's of Lost Season 3, but I'll wait till I'm done with them to write more about that. Last night, Lost returned to hiatus with a ferocious episode that seems to be setting up a mad rush to the season finale. Characters die! Characters we thought were dead improbably survive! Expectations are thwarted! Expectations are met!

And watching last night's episode, it occurred to me how much of Lost is an exercise is cute structural tricks. The opening flash-forward sets up a mystery that we know we'll probably see answered by the season finale. The first scenes at the beach set up another mystery that will probably be answered soon. ABC's promos have told us that at least one character will die in this episode, so when Sawyer gets caught out in the open with snipers shooting at him, we think, "Oh no, not Sawyer!"

But he dodges a hail of bullets trying to save Claire, only to have her house blow up before he can get to it, and we think, "Oh no, not Claire!" but we're also thinking, "So this is why she didn't escape with Aaron," so mystery solved. But turns out she's okay, and the real death, when it comes, is a shock.

Meanwhile, the flash-forwards answer a mystery from a previous episode: why did Sayid agree to work with Ben?

Meanwhile, previous episodes have told us about the Oceanic Six, the six crash survivors who made it back to civilization--Jack, Kate, Aaron, Hurley, Sayid, and Sun. But those six are still separated. So when we get a scene late in the episode which sets up their reunion, we think, "Okay, finally, they're all getting together." But it's not to be. By the end of the ep, they're still separated, and one's heading in the wrong direction.

But the thing that makes Lost work for me (and it doesn't work for lots of people I know) is the way the writers are able to work really good character moments in among the tricks. The scene which teases at getting the Oceanic Six together segues into a really nice confrontation between Locke, Sawyer and Hurley that works because of the layers of character development that have occurred over the past three-and-a-half seasons.

Out of the Vault - The One

This week's Out of the Vault was a hard one to write for some reason. I made the scans, knew the kinds of things I wanted to say, and yet, it just never seemed to want to come together the right way.

It's hard to remember the way things were in the mid-80's. If you believed the media, there was widespread paranoia about nuclear holocaust. Ronnie Ray-Gun was in the White House, and he was craaaaazy, man. He had this silly idea about putting satellite-mounted weapons in orbit to shoot down the Russkie's nukes, and this, along with his general belligerence toward the Evil Empire, was going to push us into global thermonuclear war. We were doomed.

You saw this in movies like 1983's "War Games" with Matthew Broderick and the TV movie, "The Day After," also from 1983. Songs like Nena's "99 Luftballons" also conjured up the specter of nuclear holocaust. Even comics got in on the act.

Everybody remembers Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, both of which play off of nuclear paranoia are generally regarded as ushering in the grim-n'gritty comics of the 90's. But before either of those comics came Rick Veitch's The One.

Veitch, along with Steve Bissette, was one of the first graduates of the Kubert school. Veitch and Bissette collaborated on several stories for Marvel's Epic Illustrated before Bissette moved on to draw Swamp Thing for DC. Veitch would take over the character when Bissette moved on, but first he made this six-issue adult-oriented take on nukes and superheroes for Marvel's Epic Comics imprint.

In issue 1, the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. launch nuclear strikes at each other. Before the missiles can strike, however, they are stopped by a mysterious flying figure known as The One. A large proportion of the world's population is unaware of this, however, since they were catatonic at the time. In the aftermath of the failed nuclear strike, both the Americans and the Russians release super-powered soldiers as the next generation of the arms race. The superhumans come into conflict, ultimately destroying the world. However, before the world can end, the good souls of the world complete the next phase of our evolution. Turns out The One was an oversoul created by the merging of humanity's collective soul. While the evil humans struggle to survive on the blasted, barren earth (merging into giant snakelike piles of wretched creatures struggling to reach the top of the pile as in the illustration at right), The One flies off to explore the universe.

It's an odd duck, this story. Unlike the classic stories soon to come from Miller and Moore, The One is quite clearly a product of its time, straddling a delicate line between drama and satire. This was during that strange period on the mid-80's when you could literally play rape for laughs. In addition, Veitch was one of those guys who seemed to think you should relate to unpleasant nihilistic characters as if they were just like you.

This was also early in Marvel's Epic line-up, when they were still trying to establish proper boundaries. This is a story about the death of hte entire world, after all, featuring widespread destruction, graphic dismemberment, drug use, rape, incest. Yet the only nudity I can remember is one partially revealed nipple, and the entire book uses the rather silly euphemism "shuck," as in, "I'll kill you, mothershucker!" It's hard to take it seriously as adult drama when you read dialogue like that.

And yet, in a lot of ways, The One was ahead of its time. It anticipated the deconstruction of the superhero that would continue apace into the 90's. What's more, Veitch pushed his super action over the top in ways that would look very familiar to later fans of Japanese manga and anime, say, Dragonball Z. For instance, look at the scenes below, first of Cell in Dragonball powering up his chi and causing devastation without lifting a finger. Then look at the sequence from The One, in which the Soviet super destroys a building merely by flexing his muscles really hard.



Another even more startling example: This scene, in which millions of souls merge into The One before leaving Earth...

reminded me rather forcefully of this scene from "End of Evangelion" when all the souls on Earth merge into Rei Ayanami (starting about 5 minutes in).



Veitch later took over not only the pencilling duties on Swamp Thing, but the writing as well, and later returned to satirical over-the-top super action with Maximortal and Brat Pack.

Lost Season 3

So I'm finally working my way through the Lost Season 3 DVD's, and I've got to say, so far, the season hangs together much better without the long gaps in between episodes (if you don't know or have blocked out the memory, they tried an experiment with Lost last season--responding to complaints about reruns, they aired the first 5 or 6 episodes at the start of the fall season, then put the show on a mini-hiatus, returning in February or so to air the rest of the episodes).

It's still a pain to have them separated into multiple groups, which means we don't even find out whether Locke's alive or dead, for instance, until episode 3. But being able to watch the episodes back-to-back really keeps that annoyance to a minimum and makes it easier to notice the good things going on. There was a lot of stuff going on under the surface in those early episodes when the Lostaways were being manipulated by the Others. Elizabeth Mitchell as Juliet turns in an incredible performance every episode. There always seem to be about three layers of thought and deception and self-control going into every twitch of her face.

She scares me.

I love this show.

After I get through Lost, I'm going to start going through 30 Rock on Hulu.

Movie Quote Madness

So I'm visiting the Livejournal of my writing group friend Sargon the Terrible and he has a challenge going where he lists a bunch of movie quotes and you have to name the movie. And one of the quotes he has is this:

“She is curvaceous. Not as pleasingly fat as I prefer them, but at night a cottonseed is the same as a bell.”

And the quote sounds really similar to a line from "The Golden Voyage of Sinbad," except I've always heard the line as "...at night, a stone is as good as a pearl," which has the advantage of making, you know, sense, since in the dark, a smooth stone and a pearl feel just the same. So I tell him he has the line wrong, and he adamantly insists it's cottonseed/bell, which, what the hell does that even mean?

But I don't have the movie on video, so I can't prove it. But I do have the novelization written from the screenplay, so I bust it out and look up the line, and in the book, the guy says, "...but at night..." and then leaves it hanging.

So apparently the actor, Gregoire Aslan, ad-libbed it and he has taken the secret to hte grave with him.

Oh well...

The Huge Hunter

Just finished reading a short novel from the 19th Century: The Huge Hunter, or The Steam Man of the Prairies, by Edward S. Ellis. I first heard of the book from Jess Nevins at a convention panel a couple of years ago. Nevins is the author of te Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana, an exhaustively researched book full of fascinating stuff. According to Wikipedia, The Huge Hunter was the first U.S. science-fiction dime novel, and the first known example of an Edisonade, a story based around a brilliant young inventor and his inventions. The illustration at right is from another Edisonade, a Frank Reade Jr. adventure featuring an electric man, inspired by The Huge Hunter.

In The Huge Hunter, the genius inventor is Johnny Brainerd, a hunchbacked dwarf who builds a steam-powered walking robot that he drives like a train. He hooks up with some prospectors in the American West, and they use the steam man to pull a wagon and scare off Indians while they try to get rich from a lucky gold strike. The writing is stiff, and the plotting is less-than-ideal. For instance, at one point, a man appears who is the nemesis of one of the prospectors. He shows up for about two pages, and then he's gone, never to be heard from again, which is too bad, because his presence could have brought some real dramatic tension to the book. As it is, there's no real drama in the entire story.

Which is not to say it's plodding or boring. It's fast-paced, and there is a lot of action. But as far as action that requires commitment and sacrifice and involves true jeopardy and moral choices, there's none of that. The boy builds a machine, the prospectors fight through a series of adventures, and they live happily ever after. A fun, fast read, but not an absorbing one, or one could say, a dime novel, not a real one. But I'd like to read more like it.

In fact, this book directly inspired the Frank Reade series, in which Reade first builds his own steam man, and later builds an electric man.

If you're interested in more information, start here and here. You might also be interested in reading about the real-life inspiration for the steam man, here.