Letting in the Force again and the trouble with prequels

I have to admit that I was once a great Star Wars fan and that at one point in my life, there had been no (Official) Star Wars material released that I had not watched (or read in the case of the Star Wars Expanded Universe). With so many things in life, a person gets busy and you move on, many times justified in the belief that you have outgrown those interests. I found that my life moved on and away from Star Wars precisely when the Star Wars prequels were released. The first movie was unmitigated disaster and that carried through to the rest of the trilogy.

My problems with the prequels are:

• Anakin was a cardboard template of a good character and the shoddy character development carried right through from the first movie right up until the end of Episode 3. His ultimate descent to the Dark Side was almost pushed through to the last 30 minutes of the Episode 3. The prequels were meant to show us how a great or just man was forced over to the Dark Side with the Clone Wars as the backdrop. But how the character development was worked into the story, the character development should have been the subplot with the Clone Wars being more important. To be honest, the Clone Wars probably had way more meat on the bone and for me were way more interesting.
• The first movie should not have existed. The story should have started with Anakin as a padawan and the Jedi involvement with the Clone Wars. In fact, it might have been more interesting with the Clone Wars starting as the cliffhanger at the end of the first movie That way, rather than Anakin snapping at the end of Revenge of the Sith, there can be a definite more gradual descent toward that point where he murders Jedi toddlers.
• It would have also been far more satisfying (to me at least) if Anakin had been a “run-of-the mill” Jedi without all of the prophecy hokum about bringing balance to the Force. That way it would have been far more effective in showing that anyone can turn to the Dark Side, you just need the right circumstances pushing him there. It would also be great to say that even those men and women who start small can ultimately have great impacts on the world around them without someone foreseeing their arrivals thousands of years before. That way the Jedi council also don’t look like complete idiots… if there are only 2 Sith EVER, what other way would the “Chosen One” have of bringing balance to the Force other than decimating the Jedi until there are also only 2?
• Everything was just so gosh darn shiny. What separated Star Wars from other science fiction was that in the original trilogy, the world looked lived in. It made everything seem far more genuine that all of those shiny ships which look as though they have all just rolled off the production line.
• It all lined up so nicely with the original trilogy. Oh look, Anakin also had his right hand chopped off by being impulsive in the second movie of the trilogy. The only thing missing was Count Dooku wheezing “Annie, I am your father… search your feelings, know it to be true.”

Besides all of that, the prequels were all set just before the events of the original trilogy which meant that everyone who watches those movies after they watched the original trilogy would know exactly what the final outcome would be. SPOILER… Anakin becomes Darth Vader, who didn’t see that coming? That dude in the robe, Palpatine, is only going to get his come-uppance three movies later (or thirty years previously). Obi-Wan while an awesome character ultimately makes himself smaller and goes into hiding to protect Luke. The greater part of the Clone Wars were packaged into a cartoon series, it might have been more interesting if they had got more of the focus of the original trilogy with Anakin Skywalker and his evolution into Darth Vader being a sub-plot.

The thing that has finally got me excited for the new movies is that it’s in the future after the original trilogy and unless you have been involved with the writing of the new movies and avoid spoilers, you have no idea where the movies are going to be going when the opening ticker starts for Episode 7. You do not know what is going to happen with any of the characters (although I am pretty sure that none of them are going to be Game of Thrones’d). It’s going to be like the first time that you sat down to watch Star Wars in the sense of the great unknown.

Missing my writing

I have to admit that I am missing my writing incredibly. I started my Masters in Financial Management this year and as such I have not had much time or opportunity to be able to write and there is a feeling that I have an itch that I just can’t scratch. I am so busy with everything else, I just can’t devote as much time as I would like to the art. Yes, I am a financial manager and when I am in the depths of my job and busy with it I do enjoy it, although there seems to be so few of those days lately. But I am also creative and I miss being able to express that with my writing.

At the end of last year, I managed to finish the first draft of my Beast of Ragnarok and need to finish its edit to bring it closer to the end of being the finished product. But there is also another project which has really been crying out with a siren song and that is The Children of the Dragon and both want me to sit down and devote a little bit of time to it. But I just can’t seem to get there. I have been indulging the longing with short bursts that I can spare but it never feels enough.

One day I’ll be back!

The Ocean at the end of the Lane

The story and the novel are brilliant as one would expect of a Gaiman piece of work. A part of me is sad that it wasn’t longer but I know that if Neil had stretched the novel out to make it longer only for the sake of length that it would have suffered. The story is perfect at the length that it is.

There are some questions that go unanswered: What is the name of the narrator? Whose funeral did he escape from at the start of the novel to go and sit by the Ocean and remember? But ultimately those questions do not matter – what matters is what happened to the narrator’s 7 year old self all those years ago.

The majority of the story is told from the perspective of a 7 year old and so there are many points where it is perfectly done and events which are not completely understood or matter to the narrator are glossed over even though the older self knows what it means all those years later and we as adult readers can understand their significance.

I sincerely hope we don’t have to wait the same amount of time as there was between Anansi Boys and “Ocean” before Neil Gaiman brings out his next novel aimed at his adult readers.

Hellhole – don’t go there

This book was difficult to read because it was just so boring to read.  There are no direct confrontations, except in the prologue and even in that the confrontation isn’t that flash. None of the antagonists face each other directly and while I can understand that this is the first novel in a trilogy there is nothing compelling enough to pull readers through to the second or third novel.

There are several problems with the novel, which I’ll go through below…

The planet was a hellhole?  Really? It just didn’t come across that way in the text. A couple of “killer” storms blew through doing absolutely no damage and even when they were inbound, there wasn’t any sense of danger to the main characters or to anyone.  The planet’s ecosystem is supposed to be resilient and resist foreign plants, etc. but there is no follow through on this.  No one ever mentions how hungry they are or wonders where their next meal is going to come from.  General Adolphus (a horrible name for a protagonist) and his merry men may as well have been exiled to Planet Bland.

Characters were weakly drawn clones of each other.  One character, Antonia Anqui arrives on the planet fleeing from an abusive relationship using an alias and her new “boyfriend’s” mother doesn’t question her past or where she is from.  In fact, the galaxy’s worst criminals are supposed to be sent to the planet as punishment but none of the characters on the planet come across as being a hardened criminal and no one is worried about their safety or concerned about the nature of their neighbours. “There are just so many gosh-darn good people here”. Again, Planet Bland.

I honestly couldn’t have cared less about any of the characters and if the Diadem (head baddy) were to have thrown any of them into a blender I wouldn’t have been worried, there was another clone on the next page.

The writing was horrible and felt amateurish with many things told and not shown and didn’t engage me at all.  I carried on reading just because I wanted to finish the novel and not because I cared about what was going to happen.

Then there are the plotholes.  One guy dies after he falls into the Slickwaer Lake and yet no one else who jumped in suffered the same fate, they were all allowed to get out and are levitated out by the powerful aliens in the soup.  As to the Slickwater… where is Agent Mulder when you need him? Again, with a planet filled with murderers and rapists (other than just the rebels exiled to Planet Bland) one would think the general populace would be a little more concerned with their safety and yet NO ONE is paranoid that the aliens might be lying to them about the motives.  Really fast travel between planets requires stringliner terminals in the planet orbits. Adolphus has someone connect a new stringline to another planet toward the end of the novel to Hellhole (these stringlines are only allowed to come from Coruscant, I mean Sonjeera) and the opposition (the baddies) deliver a shipment of military ships to the planet after the terminal has been installed and the military commander doesn’t wonder “Gee, I wonder where that other terminal comes from?”

Loved ones die and people get raped (not that you’re made to care for anyone) but the only follow through is “oh well, shit happens” and they move on.  The rape victim throws herself into the slickwater, gets possessed and comes out five minutes after the rape just fine.

A person is murdered and there’s whole speech about how Adolphus must be better than the corrupt Diadem and that there needs to be a proper investigation… an investigation which lasted a whole 50 words more with the perpetrator not being worried at all that the ruling might not go his way. Hell, I suppose he is on Hellhole, where else can they send him?

None of the characters act like real people and can forgive some things in a blink.  Oh I think you manipulated my dad into killing himself and ruining my family but hey you threw yourself into the slickwater so you must feel really bad about it.  Let me come back and read all of your love letters and forgive you.  Completely unrealistic.

I used to really enjoy Kevin J Anderson but it seems as though his writing has only gone one way.  I won’t be back.  Hellhole, Hellhole 2 and Hellhole 3 can go to hell.

Rugby is becoming so ho-hum

Anyone who follows my blog and knows me, knows that rugby is a large part of who I am. I am a Sharks supporter and I am a Springbok supporter. But 2012 has really changed for me and by that I mean that life has got so busy that there isn’t enough time to do anything which doesn’t add value or provide some sort of entertainment or relief. I will always enjoy my sport but sometimes it is important to separate oneself from constantly watching and to define your own identity without the tag of Sharks/Springbok supporter. If your team loses it doesn’t mean that you are a loser.

The Sharks started 2012 off rather badly and lost several of their matches before they finally turned the corner and started to win and they started to win with the kind of excitement that made rugby entertaining. Keegan Daniel would flick back passes to Paul Jordaan who would cut back through the defence to score a try under the posts. That’s just one example of the kind of entertainment you would get while watching their rugby toward the end of the Super Rugby season. At the end of the season they made it all the way to the Super Rugby Final having to fly back and forth between the Antipodes and South Africa three times to reach that final. If they had won the final it would have been a fairy tale ending because no one had ever been able to do it before.

Did they win? No. They were beaten (and well beaten) by a team that had been the form team of the whole competition at home – The Chiefs. The Chiefs deserved to win and congratulations to them and their fans for the victory. We had just moved into our new house and there was a load of work to do to get everything ready so when it became obvious the Sharks weren’t going to win, I switched off the TV and got to work. There’s just not enough time any more to do anything that doesn’t pay off in the end or entertain.

Besides the Springboks were going to be playing a week or two and if anyone would be able to win, it would be the Springboks. Heyneke Meyer selected the best from the options that he had (well most of the best, but fans are always going to differ with the national selector on who should play) and gave them a game plan. The Springboks won the first match of the new Rugby Championship in Cape Town against the Argentineans 27 – 6. A good decisive win although they only scored three tries and missed out on the fourth try for a bonus point. The game plan was the most sterile, dull game plan possible. Good bye to the adventure and skill from the franchises and hello to the game plan of kick the ball as far and as hard as possible and hope the other team makes more mistakes. The Springboks didn’t deserve to score four tries. And not scoring four tries against an Argentinean team in South Africa was close to sacrilege. Keegan Daniel the creative flanker/eighth man for the Sharks was forced to try and play a bash-it-up, no brain game plan and he doesn’t suit that sort of Neanderthal tactic. Patrick Lambie, one of the most creative and attacking players in South Africa, was forced to sit on the bench and watch the whole fiasco without getting a single minute on the field.

After that game, I resolved that I would not care if I missed the next game against the same Argentineans in Argentina the following week. We had friends over for a braai (barbeque) the next week and I ended up missing most of the game which ended in a 16 – 16 draw and I was fine with it. The coach complained that the players hadn’t followed through with the game plan although it was the same one from the previous week. Patrick Lambie again got to ride the bench for the whole game without setting foot on the field. Keegan Daniel was dropped to the bench before the game to make place for a mediocre crash baller who was average at best I hear. The Argentineans had come ready for the same tired game plan as Cape Town and only a charge down try to Francois Steyn saved the Boks from actually losing.

This weekend the Springboks take on the Australians in Perth, no doubt with the same limp game plan and tired back line. Keegan Daniel was dropped from the Springboks and was instrumental to help the Sharks win in their Currie Cup match against the Cheetahs. Patrick Lambie will no doubt be confined to the best seat in the stadium and watch the sideline while valuable position is hoofed away.

And me? I’ll tape the game while I help my dad build a dining room table and if I hear that the game was worthwhile I might watch it. If I hear that the Wallabies anticipated the game plan and blunted our grunt and beat us, then I can delete it and carry on with my life and not worry that I had just wasted about 100 minutes of my life.

Favourite Bands – The Killers

Anyone who knows me will be able to tell you that I love my music and can barely get through life without some form of music playing in the background. Hell, my boss will tell you that the music that comes out of office sometimes doesn’t always fit with his image for an accountant. It’s also one of the things which act as a trigger for our memories and you can’t help but think of the first time you heard a favourite song and it brings back the emotions that you were feeling when you first heard it or when it was playing in the background during an important event in one’s life.

Recently, one of my favourites has been The Killers out of Las Vegas with Brandon Flowers as their front man. I only have to put their albums on shuffle on my iPod to relive some of the more poignant of my recent memories. Their song, All These Things That I have Done off their album Hot Fuss will make me think of Friday nights at the office where I did my articles as the article clerks cracked a beer and relaxed after some trying weeks. Or my wedding, when one of those friends was calling for the DJ to play the song for most of the night (he eventually did). Read my Mind from Sam’s Town will make me think of my time in New York when I was seconded there for four months away from the girlfriend (now wife) and how some of those days were so incredibly hard to get through.

The one song that never fails to bring the emotions welling up is Human off of Day and Age. It was the big single at the time when my wife was pregnant with our first child and I had voted for it in a local chart show. One day I got a call from my wife that something wasn’t right and I had to rush back from work to take her to the hospital. The nurses were busy with my wife and I got the call from the radio station that they wanted me to dedicate the song as an intro. This was five minutes after hearing that there was a very good chance that we had lost him. It was something very difficult to do without bursting into tears (ala Andy Murray) but something I managed to do. Thankfully, we didn’t lose him and six months later he was born.

Of course, every time I hear the song I think of Declan and how grateful I am that things worked out in our favour and he is in our lives.

The Current English Curriculum (and my problem with it)

If one looks at the works which are presented to children during their formative years while at school it becomes apparent that these titles are chosen because of their literary value rather than any possible enjoyment of the novel.  There is no argument that the work which is seen as set work are great specimens of literature – Macbeth by William Shakespeare, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee and Lord of the Flies by (I forget).

As stated above, they are great works of literature but hardly works which will inspire anyone to have a life of reading in their future.  Rather they encourage children to get through them as quickly as possible, find footnotes and other short cuts so that they have as little interaction with them as possible.

Wouldn’t it be far better for the syllabus to choose novels and works of fiction and non-fiction that are written closer to the current day and style and also something that the children of today would enjoy more?

Instead of Lord of the Flies let the children read something like The  Hunger Games by Susanne Collins or Deviant by Robison Wells. Both deal with the same subject matter of a dystopian world and might strike more of a chord with the current world.  If the students are interested in reading more, then the teachers will be able to suggest they go find one of the older novels in which the themes were first introduced.

If a culture of reading can be brought back into the world instead of one where people sit mindlessly in front of television screens and only watch the images projected there it would certainly be better than the current society where it is considered to be uncool to be a reader.

Sticking the Landing – the Lost Finale

It has been more than two years since Lost came to an end and I believe to date, I haven’t yet given a proper opinion on the ending. If I am honest, I’m not certain what my real feelings are toward the ending.

Lost came to an end… so what?

At the height of its powers, I freaking loved it. The first season was slow going but from the second season on it just ramped up as the mysteries became more and more.

My favourite season was a toss-up between season three and season four. I suppose that should show just how much I liked the show – I had a favourite season. I had my favourite characters and the characters that I despised. I’ve always taken the characters as a gauge for how well a series is written – if I can relate to characters and they make me want to root for them, I like the series. The characters in Lost were what made the show – remember that bit, it’ll come back into play later.

My interest in Lost started to wane after season four until it finally became the kind of show that I would tape and when I had the time to watch it later I would. The first four seasons made me schedule everything else around them. The last two could wait until I could fit them in. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse had decided to put John Locke in the coffin at the end of season 4. Terry O’Quinn was still in season five and six, but instead of being the man of faith as cast in the first four seasons that character had been snuffed out and the mysterious man in black had taken his resemblance.

In that instance, when they killed off Locke they ended the Man of Science versus the Man of Faith struggle which had been the underlying basis for the first four seasons. They let the Man of Science win by default simply because the Man of Faith “kicked the bucket”. The Man of Science had won and the last two seasons were really focused on Jack Shepard and his attempts to get back to the island and then save it. I suppose you could say that my connection with the show was destroyed in that instance because if there was any character that I wanted to be grabbed by that mysterious smoke monster it was the better-than-thou Jack Shepard. For me, he had always been the villain in the story because there was never any fair play – it was his way or no way. A spoiled brat who threw his toys out of the cot whenever he didn’t get what he wanted. Suddenly after the real John Locke was killed off, I was supposed to root for this guy.

Here’s where that character reference from earlier comes in. I couldn’t give a damn about whether the man character (and his love interest, Kate) lived or died. Actually, scrap that – they could have been sacrificed to a great volcano and I would have been more interested in the show afterwards.

The series ended with everyone getting together again, happy as clams as they move out of a purgatory they had created and which all of the side flashes in the final season had been showing. There were little or no answers shown in the final series for all of the questions raised during the course of the six seasons. The huge uproar after the finale aired was that none of those answers were there and I can understand the angst, although some of the answers were answered obliquely and required some thinking to get there.

The final scene in that finale was Jack closing his eyes (although you only see one) and then it’s credits. It was a nice bookend to the series because it started with Jack opening his eye in the pilot. It certainly made me happy – Jack the self-righteous had finally died. It had only taken six seasons of wishing for it to happen.

So did they stick the landing to series’ finale?

Definitely not… for me they missed the landing strip completely and crashed in the jungle with no survivors. They had so many interesting characters that they built up and killed along the way (they must have taken a course from GRRM – not that it’s a bad thing) and when it all came down to it, we all had to root for one character – Jack. Yes, Hurley became the guardian in the end but he was almost a secondary character in how they treated him – a little bit of comic relief.

Thank You Lightspeed

I just want to thank John Joseph Adams and Lightspeed.

 

I submitted my story, Necromancer, to them on Tuesday and I had my reply by Thursday – a two day turnaround. The story was rejected but the story has been rejected by other publications with similar policies against dual submissions where they took almost three months before responding. By having a standard two day turnaround it helps the writer know where he stands and he can then submit it to another publication to try find a home.

 

So once again thank you very much John Joseph Adams and Lightspeed.

A General Update

Pecan Hill

For some reason, I just can’t get Pecan Hill out of my mind. It has been almost six months since I put the project aside and dropped it into the trunk and I still can’t get it out of my mind. It really does drive a person insane. I should really just put this project out of mind, but it still crops up from time to time.

 

Necromancer

This short story, for which I got an honourable mention for the Writers of the Future Q4 is being sent out to possible publishers to find a home. I have sent it to one market and have waited longer than they asked, sent a reminder and have still not heard anything so the next step would be to try to find another possibility and submit there without waiting for the last one to respond. It has been three months for a story which is just over four thousand words.

 

Lords of the Apocalypse: War’s Regret

I have finished the first draft for this project. Although I’m more inclined to think of it as Draft Zero because of the massive amount of issues in it that need to be changed. A short list would be:

• Make sure everything tracks and that it just doesn’t jump around too much.
• One storyline was changed in the middle of the story – I have to get the storyline right from the beginning until the end
• One of the protagonists is far too passive – I will probably have to remove them entirely and reduce their plot line from being one of the more predominant ones to one which is in the background and viewed from the outside.

That, of course, excludes any line edits and all of them are pure story edits.

 

Reading

This is probably the one thing which is holding back my writing the most at the moment. I am about seventy percent of the way through George R R Martin’s A Storm of Swords and am pushing to try and finish reading it. It’s one of the novels I have enjoyed the most this year and has really grabbed me entirely.