Announcements

From the Department of Finally He Gets Around To It

Last year I commissioned a bonus story for Force Multiplication. The story was written by Sandra Tayler, and illustrated by Natalie Barahona, and it was supposed to be lettered by me.

Well, now it’s finally getting lettered by me.

FM-Bonus-P1-LetteredSAMPLE

This is a story from Bristlecone’s past. You’re looking at about 1/3rd of the 2nd of ten pages, so one thirtieth of the whole thing.

The story will appear in the print version of Schlock Mercenary Book 12: Force Multiplication, which will go into print as soon as somebody finishes lettering this stuff, and then makes a cover, and then does a bunch of other little things. So… gimme a bit, yeah?

Announcements

Spent The Weekend Making a Website

I spent the New Year’s first weekend making the new Writing Excuses website. It was fun, and challenging, and not at all part of my regular suite of work activities.

The byline? Yeah, it's a haiku.
Logo by Isaac Stewart, banner by Howard Tayler

You can see it at writingexcuses.com, where you can also listen to me, Brandon Sanderson, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Dan Wells talk about writing. This year we’re boldly staking out new territory by coining the term “Elemental Genre” in order to avoid arguments.

It’ll be interesting to see how that works out for us.

Reviews

Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, by Lawrence M. Schoen

Finally, you get to read Barsk: The Elephants’ Graveyard, by Lawrence Schoen.

BarskTheElephantsGraveyardI got to read it early this year, and I loved it. I wanted to tell you about it, but I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to wait, because you would not be able to have it until the very endmost days of the year, and we would all be happier (you, me, Lawrence, and the publisher) if I held off.

This is science fiction that gets the aliens right. With no human POV characters, our only eyes into the story are alien ones, and Lawrence does this so well I felt like I was a wrinkled, hairless historian with a prehensile snout and oversized ears.

I say “aliens,” but that term will get quibbled over. Barsk is a wet, cloudy world settled by the Fant, creatures who, as the full title of the story suggests, bear a non-coincidental resemblance to Earth’s elephants. The setting is, technically, an anthropomorphic one, but saying “oh, it’s an anthro story” does the book an enormous disservice. Barsk is to anthropomorphic, “furry” fiction as Heinlein’s Starship Troopers is to Lucas’s stormtroopers.

BarskFeaturedImage

The story is part detective story, part adventure, and part “idea” story whose central conceits do a delightful job of blurring that line between sufficiently advanced technology and magic. It hits familiar notes in ways that tell me “this is like other books I love,” and then delivers new notes in ways that remind me why I like reading stuff that is actually new.

I’ve raved over Lawrence’s “Amazing Conroy” stories before. As delightful as those were, Barsk: The Elephant’s Graveyard is better, and for all the right reasons.

 

 

Journal, Reviews

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

It’s been a week. If you haven’t seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet, I completely understand. Theaters have been packed. This review may spoil some things, however, so by all means click away from this page now.

Still reading?StarWarsTheForceAwakens

Still?

Okay, then.

Before I tell you how awesome it was, let me get something out of the way. Star Wars: The Force Awakens does NOT take my top spot for 2015. The Martian set a very high bar. Look at it this way: Star Wars: The Force Awakens was amazing, and restored my faith in the cinematic tradition and my hopes for the franchise. The Martian, however, gave me hope for humanity. The Martian penetrated all the way to my soul and changed me a little. Star Wars: The Force Awakens simply made me very, very happy to have seen a movie.

Don’t get me wrong, however. Star Wars: The Force Awakens was an amazing and powerful film. The Star Wars prequels made so many terrible mistakes that they ruined the franchise for me. That I again have interest in, and hope for the Star Wars franchise is close to miraculous.

An examination of the craft of film making is in order here, but I need to see the film a few more times to cement my thoughts. For now, I’ll summarize.

Everything the filmmakers did wrong with Episodes I, II, and III were done right (or simply not done) in Episode VII. More amazingly, almost everything that was done well in Episodes IV, V, and VI was done better in Episode VII.

And I mean “better.”

Not “bigger” or “louder” or “more.” BETTER. 

  • The emotional highs and lows? Better.
  • Connection with the characters? Better.
  • Special effects? Better.
  • Practical effects? Better.
  • Comprehensibility of action? Better.
  • The cantina music? Beeeyeah no. I like the original better. But give me time.

That said, Star Wars: The Force Awakens suffers from a story structure problem, likely  the result of a decision to move away from the Campbellian Monomyth, or at least obscure the Hero’s Journey a bit. On the upside, it makes the film less predictable. On the downside by stepping outside the syntax of Western cinema, the audience may end up confused. There are several places that feel weird, moments about which my inner writer is complaining. I don’t think those problems are accidents are oversights. I think the writers are experimenting, or perhaps playing the long game. I’ll reserve judgement for now.

The film’s biggest weakness, to my mind, is that Star Wars: The Force Awakens cannot escape the legacy of the films that came before it. In 1977 Star Wars changed the face of science fiction forever. That level of surprise at what a film can be is impossible to deliver again. In 1999 Lucasfilm tried to incite a similar revolution in the industry, and they gave us some of the most reviled blockbuster movies of all time. Like it or not, that’s also part of the legacy behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens. 

In short, we remember having been amazed, and having been betrayed by this franchise. We cannot help but compare Star Wars: The Force Awakens to six other films.

Me, I think it stands up really well.

 

Writer, Illustrator, Consumer