Category Archives: Essays

This is a very boring name for me writing about the stuff that’s on my mind. I strive to make the essays more interesting than the word “essays” and this description.

Essays, Reviews

The Martian

“The movie is never as good as the book.”

Actually… not never.

The Martian just cleared that bar.

TheMartian-MovieAnd in an even more amazing, and seemingly impossible twist on that thing everybody knows, not only is The Martian movie as good as The Martian book, The Martian movie is as good a movie as The Martian book is a book.

I realize that sentence is hard to parse. Maybe go back and re-read it? I’ve spent 30 minutes on that sentence, trying to communicate that thought but I need to get on with the rest of this post.

Put another way: I declared that The Martian (novel) was the best hard science fiction novel I had ever read. It is not a perfect book, but it is an outstanding book that does “book things” brilliantly.

I’m now declaring that The Martian, (movie) is the best hard science fiction movie I have ever seen. It is not a perfect film, but it is an outstanding film that speaks the way only a film can, and uses the medium in ways that the very best films do.

High praise, I know.

I’ve never seen book-to-film translation work this well before. I thought it was impossible, frankly. Now I know that it can be done, and I look at it and wish I’d been a part of it. The Martian is a magnificent achievement, and I have to content myself with watching it and gushing over it.

If you haven’t read the book, it’s a great book. Go read it! Do you want to see the movie first? Go! See the movie! It will not undermine your enjoyment of the book. Sure, whichever one you consume first will provide spoilers, but that doesn’t really matter.

Now, back to that “best” claim I made…

We could argue definitions forever. What distinguishes hard science fiction from regular fiction set in believable near-future technological settings? Down that road you’ll find only a forest of nitpicks and misery and not much movie-enjoying. When I say The Martian is the best hard SF movie ever, I’m stacking it up against films like Gravity, Interstellar, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Moon. There are a number of techno-thrillers that also qualify, including this year’s Ex Machina, and last year’s Transcendence. 

The Martian is a better hard SF movie than all of those.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a more important movie, and carries a lot of weight, but have you watched it recently? I love the thought of that movie, but can’t sit through it.

Gravity is a more daring movie, arguably more artistic for its use of a tiny cast and lots of silence. To my mind it’s the closest contender, but the power of The Martian‘s ensemble cast puts it over the top.

Insterstellar doesn’t come close. Cool moments, and I liked what it tried to do, but ultimately it was a preachy time travel paradox story, and as pretty as it was, it lost my interest by the end.

Moon? Powerful, and thought provoking, along with Transcendence and Ex Machina. The Martian says nothing about identity or singularity, but what it says about knowing science to survive speaks louder, at least to me, than the cautionary tales do.

I don’t often put this kind of stake in the ground. I’m sure more experienced film critics, students of cinema, and assorted experts by other names will argue convincingly against its placement. I suspect, however, that those experts will better serve their fields by dissecting The Martian in an attempt to determine how great books can be turned into great movies going forward. “Best” is hard to quantify. Answering the question “why did this movie work so well?” is easy, by comparison, and more important to address.

The Martian enters my 2015 rankings at #1, and when I look at the line-up for the rest of the year I’m pretty confident that it will keep that spot.

(ADDENDUM: Sandra and I saw The Martian in 3D. It was stunningly beautiful. There were a couple of moments where the 3D render was weird, but Sandra didn’t notice them. I wear progressive lenses, so it’s possible the issue really was just me.)

Essays, Journal

Sasquan Report

I haven’t attended a WorldCon without exhibiting since 2009 in Montreal. Sasquan, held in Spokane, Washington, would have been a fine show at which to exhibit, but I didn’t really want to spend the whole weekend working. That’s really haaaard.

So I only spent part of the weekend working. I wrote about 3600 Planet Mercenary words, and inked a week of comics. I recorded three episodes of Writing Excuses with Brandon and Dan, and I “networked” with dozens of peers in the genre fiction community.

That last bit doesn’t really feel like work. All I was really doing was talking to people about stuff I would have talked about anyway, and introducing friends, new and old, to each other.

The greatest unpleasantness was the smoke from the disastrous forest fires in western and central Washington. I inhaled enough smoke on Friday that I got sick and had to lie down, and the newfound shallow-ness of my lungs stayed with me even after the air cleared a bit on Saturday and Sunday. Walking and talking at the same time usually left me short of breath, sometimes to the point that my head would hurt and my vision would begin to narrow.

And then there was the Hugo Award thing.

The Hugo Awards, whose concomitant controversy was something I was pleased to not be sitting on stage for, have been better discussed by other writers. I watched the awards from the lobby of the Davenport Grand with friends new and old, former Hugo winners among us. I was pleased with the results, but like every year it was bittersweet.

My heart goes out to those who did not win awards this year, especially those whose work missed being on the ballot because of the hijacked slate. Their work will stand independently of this, however, and needs neither my pity nor the validation of the short-list. As a former Hugo loser, I know that it stings, but I also know that you’ve got to keep making stuff regardless of what happens with awards. I kept making Schlock Mercenary for five years after it started not winning Hugo awards. It still hasn’t won, and I’m still making it today.

Just as awards shouldn’t validate your decision to create art, they shouldn’t have any bearing on how you feel about the art you consume. Reading in particular is a deeply personal, intimate act. An award on a book is like a sticker on a banana: it might help you pick the banana, but if you eat the sticker you’re doing it wrong.

Essays, Faith, Funnies, Journal

“No, This is Not an Oregon Trail LARP”

From Tuesday through Friday my family and I are participating in “Trek,” which, in the local dialect of Mormon-speak, is interpreted to mean “hiking and camping with handcarts, hymns, and harmonicas.” Just like our pioneer ancestors. I joked that this event was a cross between a Mormon Pioneer cosplay and an Oregon Trail LARP, but I’ve been told that this is not the case, and no, I’m not allowed to pretend to have died of dysentery so I can go home.

If it sounds like I’m making light of it, that’s because I make light of pretty much everything. Especially things of which I’m frightened. Camping in general has lost its appeal for me. Hiking? Sounds suspiciously like work. Doing them together, so that after a long hike you get a crap bed and food you carried and zero long soaks in a hot bath? Let’s just say it’s not Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup math.

I am not, however, a heartless, spineless fool who cannot see the benefit in these things. Sandra and I have been given the opportunity to walk the trail our ancestors walked one-point-six centuries ago, and we get to do so with all four of our children. The window of opportunity for this activity is pretty much this year, or never. Our kids are growing up and growing out. If we want to be miserable, all six of us, together in Wyoming, this is the time to do it.

Am I making light again? Perhaps.

We won’t have “electronic devices” with us, which is Trek-speak for “no phones, no music-players, no movies, no laptops, no getting any work done Howard, and if you want to take pictures the camera must only be a camera, not a smart-something.” If I want to tweet anything I’ll have to write it by hand in my journal, and carefully count the characters on my fingers to make sure I don’t use too many.

I am issuing an electronics exemption for my Fitbit, which I will be wearing for the whole trip. I have it on good authority that the pioneers had 1) odometers, and 2) timepieces. Besides, this is the damaged one (the replacement from the manufacturer is still in the packaging) and the repair scars I’ve inflicted upon it exemplify the old saw about thrift:

Use it up, wear it out. Make it do, or do without.

PioneerFitBit

That particular aphorism probably dates from after the time period in question, but only because during the time period in question you didn’t need to say such a thing, because it was what everybody did without some pithy rhyme as a reminder.

In this spirit, everything I’m wearing, carrying, or packing is newly acquired for this trip EXCEPT for the anachronometer on my wrist. Especially the shoes, which I have already broken in and stress-tested on a 22,000-step day. If my ancestors had crossed the plains in boots like these they really would have sang as they walked.

The point is that I’m going dark for four days. We’ll be back on Saturday, and I’ll be refreshed and ready for my presentation at the Salt Lake Public Library.

DiedOfDysentery

Essays, Journal, Reviews

The Daring, Marvelous, Marvel/Netflix Daredevil

I’ll keep this as spoiler-free as possible. The Daredevil series on Netflix is worth the investment in a Netflix membership. It’s richer and more powerful than any cinematic superhero story, and while it is dark, it is not the trendy kind of dark. It’s the kind of dark a good storyteller uses so that when we get light, the light is blinding and brilliant.

If you don’t mind spoilers, this discussion of Catholicism in Daredevil is worth reading. If you’ve already finished the series that article will deepen your understanding and appreciation of the series.

The story of Daredevil goes well beyond what’s actually in those 13 episodes, and I’m not talking about what’s coming next season. The very existence of that story, in that format, on Netflix, is the beginning of a much broader narrative about the future of entertainment.

I’ll stand by that statement.

Back in 2013 Kevin Spacey said similar things when he talked about how House of Cards couldn’t be the show they wanted it to be without Netflix freeing them from the “shoot a pilot episode” business model of the networks. Here he is, saying those things.

I got chills when I first watched the excerpted version of Spacey’s speech back in 2013 (full version is here.) I watched it again last night after finishing Daredevil and I am convinced that Kevin Spacey has correctly prognosticated the future of the entertainment industry. House of Cards (which I don’t much like, but that’s irrelevant) and Daredevil serve as proof that Netflix can provide a superior business model for episodic storytelling, and that by so doing they’ll give us better stories.

We talk about storytelling quite a bit over at Writing Excuses.  Brandon, Dan, Mary, and I have recorded well over fifty hours of discussion in bite-sized chunks, and one thing we keep coming back to is the power that can be wielded by storytellers who know what they’re doing, and who have the skills and the space in which to do it. Episodic television has gotten much better in the last twenty years, and it will get far, far better once it finally breaks the shackles of legacy network business practices.

That doesn’t mean that all the stories will be great ones. It means that the great ones are going to amaze us. I’m really looking forward to this.