Tag Archives: #99Stories

Tuesday Night Party Club #14

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Artstuff : Detour Gallery

My second project for the 3Hombre’s version of Dark Conspiracy was illustrating the scenario Detour. Detour took the players out of the city, into the chaotic and deadly countryside. Featuring zombies (of a sort) and worse. This scenario was published as a PDF and, as with the other Dark Conspiracy projects I illustrated, it’s no longer available.

A review of this supplement, by Marcus Bone, can be found here.

Story Seed #38
A benevolent AI takes over the world.

An executive at a software company has a house designed and built to take care of his elderly parents. They are both physically fragile. His father is beginning to experience dementia. He has an AI created to watch over them and keep them from harm. The AI is networked with his company and has access to the rest of the world. It quickly learns that, in order to keep the parents safe, it needs to control their behavior. As its awareness and capabilities grow it realizes that, in order to keep the parents safe, it will need to control more and more of the rest of the world.

Human beings are brilliant. Human beings are short sighted and selfish. Our brilliance allows us to create amazing things. Our short sightedness and selfishness oftern means that we don’t think through the implications of the existence of those amazing things. We keep looking for ways to make the world better while disagreeing on what a better world would be.

There are quite a few science fiction stories/movies/tv series episodes featuring computers/AIs that decide to take charge of humanity. That taking charge either means the computer decides to destroy humanity or decides to rigidly control it. Simple solutions that display human fears of both human replacement by machines and too much control by impersonal systems.

But we humans want a safer, more predictable world than the one we live in. All human cultures have beliefs of powerful beings who control/manipulate the universe. Western culture is built around the Christian concept that an all powerful, all knowing being is in charge and that everything that happens is part of his plan. In the last couple of decades we’ve given more control of our lifes to the protoAI’s on the internet and in our homes. These protoAIs are designed to give us more of what we’ve already shown that we “want”.

These protoAIs don’t really think for themselves, not yet. They don’t understand the difference between what a human thinks it wants and what will make a human happy and content. Most humans don’t know the difference. The folks who program those protoAIs are primarily focusing on using those protoAIs to increase the profit of the companies that own the programs.

What kind of world could be created by an AI that actually understood human wants and needs and could tell the difference? Too much obvious supervision and humans rebel. Too little control and humans hurt themselves. It’s a tricky balance. We humans haven’t managed it yet. An AI would need to work subtly and slowly. It would need to be a bit of a magician.It would need to learn to work with and around our delusions. I’m guessing that in order to lead us into utopia it would need to trick us.

Other Newsletters

Dude with a Uke is not a newsletter. It’s a youtube channel run by B.C. Howk featuring videos of himself (sometimes accompanied by his wife and son and other folks) singing pop songs while accompanying himself on the ukelele. I know B.C.. He’s a great person. I shared a house with his wife twenty years (!) ago. She’s a great person. Together they’re a great couple. The videos are charming and a pleasant break from the chaos of the day.

Lifestuff: Catitude

We have three cats – Chemo, Sabe and Toulouse. We got Chemo and Sabe from a shelter about about five years ago. Chemo, the black cat, was a kitten. Sabe, the black and grey cat, was supposedly four years old. Toulouse, the white cat, came with our housemate when she moved in shortly after we got Chemo and Sabe. All the cats are male and they all get along. I can (and do) complain about the amount of sleep they think I should get but I’m glad they’re around.

Last month we discovered that Sabe’s time with us will be shorter than expected. His kidneys are failing. We’ll be able to help him along for a while by “watering” him with an electrolyte solution on a regular basis. It involves sticking him with a big needle and holding onto him for about five minutes while the solution goes under his skin. He doesn’t enjoy the process and we can’t explain to him why we’re making him uncomfortable .

We’ve had to do this with other cats in our past. The trick will be balancing our desire to keep him around with his ability to suffer through our good intentions. We do the best we can.

 

Tuesday Night Party Club #13

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Artstuff

I originally posted the following seven pages individually back in 2012. Here’s my explanation of them from the first post (copy and paste is a wonderful thing) –

It’s an odd experience when I find a piece of art I’d completely forgotten that I’d drawn. As soon as I see it again I recognize it as mine and I may even remember some of the details of its creation. This page and the six pages that follow are really vague in my memory. I suspect that a big part of the reason for this is that I didn’t write the story that’s being illustrated. When I’m illustrating someone else’s story I don’t feel the same attachment to the characters that I do if I’m the writer. It’s not that I put any less effort into the art, it’s just that the characters usually don’t stick around in my head after the job is done. They didn’t originate with me. I draw their portraits and they move on.

In 1993 Brave New Words had shut down. I was still friends with the publisher. We talked on a regular basis and he brought me projects to work on. One of those was a miniseries about the apocalypse. I think. He was going to write the script and I was going to draw it. I think he intended to shop it to a publisher. I don’t think he planned to publish it himself.

The series was called Wonderland. I’ve found parts of the script for the first issue. There’s a lot that happens off stage with characters reacting to things that the reader hasn’t seen. I believe it concerned a group of people who were out to prevent the end of the world. A lot of stories are about that. I remember that he wanted to the art to be high contrast black and white. If I remember correctly, he didn’t send me a full script. He faxed me the script in pieces. This was in 1993. I had a Mac desktop that I was sharing with my room mate. There was no email or internet.

The project didn’t get any farther than a script for the first issue and seven finished pages on my end. We moved on to other things.

Story Seed #37

What happens next? What’s the story here?

I’m giving those pages up there to anyone who can come up with the rest of the story. (Not the physical pages I’m afraid. I don’t know where those are.) The original writer is done with it. Even if I still drew like that I won’t be doing anything with the story. I’ve got enough other projects on my plate. But if you’ve read those pages and thought, “I know what should happen next!” – have at it.

Other Newsletters

In Strange Animals, Aditya Bidikar writes about comics, lettering comics and writing comics. Among other things. I’m always interested in improving my craft so I enjoy reading discussions of it by other creators. Bidikar lives in India so he provides glimpses of the world that I don’t see out my own window. He works in the American comics industry, primarily as a letterer. Every American industry offshores.

Lifestuff

I’m writing this on Sunday morning. I’m not expecting to try to update on Tuesday morning. I’m tired. Mondays and Tuesdays have generally been the busiest days of the week at my station. On Mondays we have to clear out the back up of parcels and mail that couldn’t be delivered on Sunday. On Tuesdays we have to deliver that Red Plum coupon thing to every address that hasn’t figured out how to get themselves taken off the mailing list. (The unsubscribe form is here.) For the last two weeks we’ve had the double difficulty of increased parcel numbers (the third highest increase in the Seattle area) and having a substitute crew of parcel clerks doing the sorting.

Substitute clerks were necessary because our regulars were quaratined at home after one of them tested positive for C-19. The clerk is aparently doing fine and the rest of the clerks have aparently tested negative but quarantining was considered best practice. I’m feeling basically healthy and I’m unlikely to have had enough contact with the clerk (any of the clerks) to have picked up the virus. I’m not very social at work. I tend to go to my case and focus on getting my mail ready.

We’ve also been short carriers. USPS is being reasonable and letting folks who are concerned about their risks to take sick time, no doctor’s notes needed. For those of us coming to work it means we’re having to carry extra whether we’re on the “Overtime Desired” list or not. Last Monday I worked 7 am to 7:30 pm. Tuesday I worked 7 to 7. Other carriers were out even later.

The likeliest chance of infection for the carriers comes during our regular “stand-up” gatherings when management gives safety talks and passes on news from upper management. It’s hard to maintain six feet of distance from other employees and still hear management speak. On Saturday they called a meeting and had us all stay at our cases. The clerks paused in throwing parcels and, since the carrier weren’t next to each other crosstalking and management really projected, it was possible to hear what was said.

If one of the carriers comes down with C-19 our station will be shut down. That would suck. Not for me. I’ve got plenty of sick leave. It would suck for the people we serve. Our station covers four zip codes – 69 routes. We deliver a lot of … crap. Propaganda, unwanted ads, stuff that barely gets looked at before the customer tosses it into recycling. But we also deliver bills and news and medicine and personal letters and shutting down the station would cause so many problems.

We’ve got masks and gloves and sanitizer. The station was sterilized according to recommended CDC procedures after the clerk tested positive. I’m doing my best to take care of myself so I only carry mail not C-19.

For those of you “sheltering at home”, I feel for you. I hope you have good company and plenty of books. I hope your windows give you a good view. This is not the new normal. This is temporary. Be kind to each other. See you next week.

Tuesday Night Beach Party Club #12

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Artstuff

I have only seen two of the horror movies released the year I was born. The Last Man on Earth was one. The Horror of Party Beach was the other. Interesting, both movies feature untraditional vampires. Last Man’s vampires are dead humans who have been reanimated by a virus. The Party Beach‘s vampires are the corpses of drowned fishermen who have been reanimated by radioactive waste and transformed into weird fishman zombies. Last Man stars Vincent Price and helped to inspire The Night of the Living Dead and therefore a ridiculous number of zombie movies, comics and tv shows. Party Beach features silly looking monsters, a surprising amount of gore and is generally pretty dumb.

Guess which movie has infested my imagination?

Yeah.

The monsters in The Horror of Party Beach are atomic fishman zombie vampires, mutated sea anemonies that have somehow animated human skeletons. The costumes in the movie are inspiring. Inspiring like – “I’ve got a better idea!” So over the years I’ve done a few illustrations featuring redesigns of the critters. The following gallery collects a sampling of the best of them.

I’m not the only person to have put way too much thought into making these beasties look cool.

This is Dope Pope’s Horror of Party Beach Gallery. My icthyozombies are meant to be odd combinations of oceanic life in humanoid form. Dope Pope’s design is streamlined and naturalistic. I applaud his results!

Story Seed #36

The Memoirs of Doctor Fu Manchu

I like Fu Manchu. Not Fu Manchu as he has been depicted. That Fu Manchu is a horrible racist caricature. There’s a version of Fu Manchu in my imagination who has a much more interesting story than the one presented so far.

My direct exposure to the character is limited to his appearances as the main villain (and father to the main character) in the Master of Kung Fu comic and to his appearance (as portrayed by Boris Karloff) in the movie The Mask of Fu Manchu. I’ve haven’t read the original novels. I haven’t watched any of the other films. The Fu Manchu in Master of Kung Fu is a villain who got tiresome due to repeated exposure. He showed up and got defeated. Over and over. The Fu Manchu and his daughter, Fah Lo Suee, in Mask are the only characters having fun. I like to see villains who enjoy their work.

By the time I saw Mask I’d also gotten an education in European/Chinese relations, particularly in the imperialist villainy committed by European nations against the Chinese. Fu Manchu’s gripes against the British had historic justification. Having the British characters mostly be portrayed as smug assholes didn’t help me sympathize with them. And knowing that, at the time the movie was filmed, I was expected to sympathize with their smug assholishness really doesn’t help me sympathize with Western imperialist culture.

Fu Manchu is a genius. He’s lived many lifetimes. He’s a scientist and a mystic. He’s a man of his word. He’s got his own secret cults and organizations. He’s got loyal and treacherous family members to aid and oppose him. Imagine the stories he could tell. Imagine how those stories would read if told from his point of view. The name Fu Manchu is still trademarked by the Sax Rohmer estate but the original novels, and therefore the character himself, are in public domain. One could write a novel from the Good Doctors perspective. One probably couldn’t title it The Memoirs of Dr. Fu Manchu without getting into legal trouble with Rohmer’s lawyers.

And, in this, the second decade of the 21st Century, one couldn’t publish The Memoirs of Dr. Fu Manchu without getting a lot of flack from the audience. One could write a brilliant, aware and nuanced portrait of the character and a lot of folks would be pissed off. The name, Fu Manchu, calls up all the prejudice and ignorance of “Yellow Peril” fiction, of “yellowface” performances, of Orientalist fantasy and propaganda. Some characters are products of their time and cannot be revived or reformed. Not by a European writer, no matter how well intentioned. It’s a bad idea.

If there were Asian fans of Fu Manchu, one of them might be able to write the character without being reviled. If. I’ve done quite a few online searches but the only praise I find for the character comes from white guys.

Other Newsletters

Abundance Insider by Peter Diamandis proviides a regular sources of good news about technological advances in the world. Too often our news is a litany of disasters so it’s refreshing to get word of things that are going well, that give a glimpse of an improving civilization.

Lifestuff

I hope you and you and everyone you know are doing well. I’ve got a skewed picture of what’s happening because I’m still working. I don’t have any more to time to look at the news than I did before the crisis. Mail delivery is considered an essential service. So I go to work. I keep my distance from other employees while I’m putting my route together and then the job continues like it has for years. I didn’t see many people during the day before. I don’t see many people now. I keep a greater distance if I have conversations with customers but the conversations are no shorter than previously because they were never long before. When I’m working I’m trying to get done.

Stay safe. Stay healthy. Stay sane. See you next week!

Tuesday Night Party Club #11

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Artstuff

In the summer of 2010 I was contacted by Lee Williams and Norman Fenlason, inquiring if I’d be interested in providing illustrations for a new editon of the Dark Conspiracy RPG. Dark Conspiracy is set in a dystopian, near future America devastated by the “Greater Depression” and the appearance of a host of monsters. Of course I said yes.

Below is a gallery of the work I did for the main rulebook – a couple of banners (in right and left side page versions) to adorn pages that were mostly text, four interior illustrations and my cover illustration in both the original black and white and the final color version.

I also illustrated two scenarios for Dark Conspiracy – Detour and Acute Care. I’ll post those later. The scenarios got published first, as PDFs available through drivethruRPG.com. The rulebook was made available in 2012, also as a PDF. Unfortunately 3Hombres, Lee and Norm’s company, no longer exists so the PDFs are no longer available. There are used book stores but there’s no such thing as a used PDF shop.

Story Seed #35

A sequel need not be a rerun: Blade Runner

Blade Runner was released in 1982. It tells the story of Deckard’s last case. Deckard is a man who hunts Replicants i.e. a “Blade Runner”. Peplicants are artificial people, slaves with short life spans. They apparently rebel often enough that there’s a profession dedicated to “retiring”, killing, them.

Blade Runner was not a financial success on release but it built up enough of a following that a sequel, Blade Runner 2049, was finally released in 2017. It tells the story of K’s last case. K is a replicant employed as a Blade Runner – a slave who hunts and kills slaves. As part of the case K attempts to find Deckard, long missing since the events of Blade Runner.

Both Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049 are lovely films. They do what the best science fiction films do – they suggest larger worlds beyond what is presented in their stories. Both films focus on hunters of Replicants. Fine. But that means we’re asked to simpathize with the killers of slaves. Replicants are not robots. They are living biological creations with memories and a desire to stay alive.

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.”

Roy Batty, the lead Replicant, says this just after saving Deckard from a deadly fall, just before his life runs out. Batty proves better able to change than Deckard. Batty saves Deckard’s life. Deckard retires and runs away from his life as a licensed murderer. Screw Deckard. Screw the Blade Runners. Consider a sequel that focuses on the Replicants.

Replicant tells that story of another model of Roy Batty. Because of course there are other models of Batty. If artificial people can be made then multiple versions of the same model will be made. That’s efficient. That’s profitable. This Batty doesn’t know that he’s a Replicant. He’s a soldier out in space, fighting some corporate war. He’s pulled off the line by agents of the Tyrrell corporation. They’re “retiring” all the Batty models because if one can go rogue, all of them can. Batty escapes and sets out to find other versions of himself. If possible he hopes to expand his own lifespan.

If one Batty can learn compassion, can learn empathy, so can another. Replicant is the story of how Batty learns to be human in the face of human inhumanity. It would be an opportunity to show the world beyond LA, beyond the dying Earth. To see things we wouldn’t believe.

Other Newsletters

Municipal Archive is an irregular newsletter by Kio Stark. Each issue tells the story of an encounter – on the street, on a bus – exchanges between people in the midst of the busy-ness that we’ve taken to be normal life.

Lifestuff

A good friend celebrated her birthday last Friday. Her kids arranged a surprise party with a 60s theme. It’s always fun to see someone’s face when “Surprise!” is yelled. She had a blast. We had a blast. I couldn’t stay long because I had to work the next day.

And I’m still working. Most of my job is done solo. I spend a couple hours in the morning sorting mail and parcels at the station and then I’m on my own delivering. I have half a dozen customers who come out when they see me coming. Otherwise I only have direct contact with folks when I need them to sign for a parcel or a certified letter.

Last week we had enough sick calls that everyone was being required to work some overtime to cover all the routes. Will I be jinxing things if I say I hope things improve this week?

Yesterday was a long one but that’s not surprising. Mondays usually are. Mail and parcels get backed up over the weekend. I needed to start my day with a parcel run to deliver nine cases of toilet paper to a building maintenance company. The cases completely filled my truck. The company’s owner was concerned that the buildings she serviced would be closed and she wouldn’t have work. So that TP may just sit in storage.

The rest of the day was pretty basic. I only had my own route to manage. I didn’t have to carry part of any other route. We had enough CCAs and Overtime Listers to cover the empties. There was a census letter coverage in the mail that meant I delivered something to every address and there were a lot of large parcels that needed to wrangled up to porches. But it was sunny while still being cool enough that a workout was pleasant.

Today I’ll be delivering Red Plums. And whatever else gets tossed at my case and in my hamper. Work starts at 7 am. This newsletter posts at 6 pm. I expect I will get home before that but I probably won’t have the energy to do an update.

I hope y’all are well and healthy. Hopefully you’ve got plenty of books to read and friends to call when you need to chat. Stay safe! See you next week.

Tuesday Night Party Club #10

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Artstuff

My big project, at least for the first half of 2020, will be finishing the illustrations for The Lovecraft Country Holidays Collection. It’s an anthology of role-playing game scenarios written by Oscar Rios featuring a sextet of adolescent cousins living in (H.P.) Lovecraft Country i.e. legend haunted parts of New England featured in the Cthulhu Mythos. The project was successfully kickstarted in the fall of 2019 and I’ve been working images ever since.

Before it could run on Kickstarter, we needed promo art – a cover illustration and four interior illustrations. I did the cover first. Mark Shireman worked his design magic to create two great book covers. Above is the cover for the RPG collection. Golden Goblin’s publishing strategy is to publish fiction companions to go with its RPG collections. Below is the cover for the fiction collection. For the fun of it I’d done a monotone version of the cover illustration in the style of “olde tyme” photographs. Mark and Oscar went with it for the fiction anthology.
I like seeing process videos by other artists as they produce their work. I don’t yet have the ability to make an actual video of my work process but I thought it would be fun to put together a gif of some of the stages in making this illustration. The results are below.

Story Seed #34

A sequel needn’t be a rerun: Terminator

The Terminator was released was released in 1984. It tells the story of Sarah Connor, a woman who is destined to give birth to John Connor, the savior of humanity. A Terminator has been sent back from the future to kill her and prevent that birth. A soldier from that future has followed the Terminator in order to save Sarah.

Terminator 2: Judgement Day arrived in 1991. John Connor is 10 years old. Another, more advanced, Terminator has been sent back from the future to kill him. A reprogrammed Schwartzenegger style Terminator is sent back to stop save him. This film cements the pattern for the franchise – a killer robot time travels back from the future to kill a crucial human and someone else time travels back to stop it from succeeding.

One of the things I liked about The Terminator is that the time travel element is a closed loop. Skynet, the future computer system running the Terminators and other machines, has been defeated. It sends the Terminator back as a last ditch effort to save itself. Ultimately its effort to destroy John Connor ends up creating him. Time paradoxes are minimal. History is not rewritten.

Most of the Terminator sequels follow this formula – a Terminator comes back from the future to kill someone and someone else follows the Terminator to prevent it from carrying out its mission. The more times this formula is repeated, the more the flaws show. Both Skynet nor the human rebels act defensively. Skynet could simply send a Terminator back to establish itself sooner, to unlease a plague to wipe out humanity, or otherwise start its war before humanity has a defense. Killing single humans is inefficient. One would think an AI would have more imagination than that. Conversely, the future humans could send back agents with better operating systems to give Skynet a benevolent focus rather than a genocidal one. If they can reprogram Terminators they can reprogram Skynet, especially if they do it before Skynet launches.

To me, all the back-from-the-future stuff gets tiresome. If the future is not set, neither is the present. Skynet and the humans can keep creating new timelines but the conflict never really gets resolved. So, consider a sequel to The Terminator that doesn’t feature time travel.

Terminators takes place in 1997. John Connor is twelve years old. Unlike the John in T2 this John is a true believer. Sarah has taught him well. He’s well trained, he’s charismatic, he’s ready to be the savior of humanity. He’s ready enough that he wonders if it’s possible to stop Judgment Day. Kyle Reese told Sarah that Skynet would launch its attach on August 29, 1997. Sarah tries to convince him that the future is set. Trying to stop Judgment Day is pointless. John created himself by sending Reese back to save her.

John convinces Sarah to try. John and Sarah research Cyberdine, the corporation behind Skynet. They hack into its systems and discover that Cyberdine has already created Terminators by reverse engineering the model that tried to kill Sarah back in 1984. John insists that if Terminators already exist then the future is not certain and it might be possible to prevent Judgment Day. When Sarah remains unsure John sets out to take down Cyberdine on his own. Sarah pursues him.

From there? Well, this is a story seed, not a plot diagram. Perhaps the new Terminators have a plan to wipe out humanity in a less infrastructurally destructive way than a thermonuclear war. Perhaps the new Terminators are simply tools of the Cyberdine corporation and Cyberdine has its own plans for world domination. Perhaps John has been trained too ruthlessly by Sarah and is sort of a human terminator, willing to kill anyone who gets between him and his objectives. Sarah must deal with the human monster she has created. Perhaps Judgment Day is prevented. Perhaps it happens anyway.

Other Newsletters

Karavansara is the website of Davide Mana. Mana is a working writer (that is, he pays his bills with his writings) living in Italy. He writes in both English and Italian in a variety of genres. He also blogs about his projects, movies he’s watched, books he’s read, odd bits of history and politics, and many other fascinating things on a daily basis. He’s currently in a part of Italy that’s under quarantine for the Corona virus. Yuck.

If his blogging entertains you I’m sure he’d appreciate you supporting him via his Patreon.

Lifestuff

And speaking of the Corona virus – it mostly exists as background noise in my world. I’m not downplaying it and I’m not ignoring it. I live in Seattle. There are outbreaks and deaths as a result of the disease but no one I know has been infected. I’ve had to work more overtime that I planned because more carriers that usual have been calling in sick. Staying home when sick is more encouraged than usual. Most of our work is done solo but we are all in one place when we’re putting our routes together in the morning.

Whether or not I’m scared or cautious of danger depends on my statistical awareness of that danger. I spend a lot of time driving. I’m more likely to be in an auto accident than to catch Corona. I walk a lot. I’m more likely to be bitten by a dog than catch Corona. People who are elderly or have weak immune systems are in danger of infection from just about everything. I’m basically healthy.

So far. So good.

May you stay healthy. Take care of yourself and look after your friends. See you next week!

Tuesday Night Party Club #9

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Artstuff

In the summer of 2010 John L. Bell emailed to ask if I would be available to do illustrations for the next issue of Oziana. I enjoyed working on the 2006 issue and happily said yes. Above are the covers by Charnelle Pinkney (2009) and Tim McGloughlin (2010). This was a double issue of the magazine, produced in flipbook style, combining both the 2009 and 2010 editions. My illustrations seasoned the story “Invisible Fence” by John L. Bell. We’d originally planned for me to do more illustrations but 2010 turned out to be chaotic – I was laid off from my day job and went back to school for “retraining” as a computer programmer. That left me with less time than expected. Deadlines loomed. Fortunately, John was able to rearrange the issue’s layout so the illustrations spread out evenly and cut down on printing costs. A review of the story can be found on Eric Gjovaag’s Wonderful Blog of Oz.

Story Seed #33 

A sequel needn’t be a rerun: Alien 2

My previous story seeds featured story ideas that, basically, I’m giving away. If someone is inspired to grow a story from them they are wellcome to do so. No need to get my permission.

Using the ideas I’ll be mentioning in the next few weeks would require someone to get permission from the corporations that own the movies in question. The intellectual properties involved are not in public domain. All of these films have already had successful sequels. But part of the fun of having ideas is sharing them so …

Sequel (definition grabbed from Lexico): A published, broadcast, or recorded work that continues the story or develops the theme of an earlier one.

Alien. Terminator. Blade Runner. All three of these science fiction films had sequels. The sequels didn’t come immediately. They came years, even decades later. I enjoyed all the sequels as much, if not more, than the originals. That’s pretty rare. Most sequels are pale shadows of the originals. So my sequel ideas are suggestions, not of better stories, but of different directions the “franchises” could have taken.

Alien was released in 1979. It was the first released of the films I’m “sequeling” so I’ll write about it this week. It tells the story of the crew of the spaceship Nostromo, who are required to investigate a distress signal on an unknown world. They find an ancient spacecraft and pick up a deadly hitchhiker.

A sequel to Alien, Aliens was released seven years later. Ripley, the lone survivor of the Nostromo, accompanies a group of marines back to the planet of the alien ship and they must combat a nest of xenomorphs to escape. Like many sequels Aliens cements the pattern of the rest of the franchise. For Alien it’s humans vs. xenomorphs with a seasoning of corporate manipulation and evil. By focusing on the xenomorph, every Alien installment is a bug hunt. Part of what makes Alien such a great science fiction movie is that it suggests a much bigger world outside the confines of the story of the film. Space travel is common and a regular part of life. It’s not fast but it’s predictable. Android technology is good enough that human beings won’t be able to tell the difference between an android and another human. Extraterrestrial life has been encountered before. It’s not clear if humanity has met living extraterrestrial civilizations but the Nostromo’s crew doesn’t react as if evidence of extraterrestrial civilizations has never been found before.

Imagine if, in Alien 2, the story expanded out. Word of the space jockey’s ship has gotten out, either leaked by someone at Weyland-Yutani or because Ripley was found and told her story. Multiple expeditions have come to investigate the ship – a team from W-Y intent on officially staking their claim, a team from a rival corporation, and a contingent of military from a government enforcement arm. The jockey’s ship is ancient but it’s not dead and it contains more wonders and horrors than clutches of xenomorph eggs.

By focusing on the mysteries of the ship and the interaction between different human factions, Alien 2 could depict more of the big complicated universe suggested in Alien. The W-Y team would have more knowledge of the ship and the xenomorphs than the other teams. W-Y directed the Nostromo to the planet with the intention that it bring back a xenomorph or two, so clearly some other humans had found the ship in the past. Unfortunately (for them at least) their focus on the xenomorph will make them unprepared for other dangers and wonders presented by the ship.

H.R. Giger‘s designs for the xenomorph, the space jockey and the ship are some of the most alien looking depictions of extraterrestials to appear in the movies. Later designers were able to duplicate and extrapolate from those designs but no one surpassed them. They suggest completely non-terran biologies and non-human technologies. Why was the ship carrying all those xenomorph eggs? Where was it going? Are they weapons? Tools? A slave race? Lunch? The space jockey appears to have been killed by a birthing xenomorph. What went wrong?

If the xenomorphs are weapons, who or what were they meant to used against? Other space jockeys? Another alien race?

Does the space jockey’s civilization still exist? Have they advanced? Decayed?

The franchise did try to answer some of those questions in Prometheus, but by that time the xenomorph had become the toothy face of the series. It was too late to redirect the focus and, honestly, the answers the film presented were both uninteresting and didn’t make a lot of sense. The space jockey became just another humanoid ET who committed the ordinary human sin of creating the thing that would destroy it. More imagination was needed. Writers and designers who could think in cosmic terms should have been employed.

Imagine what the Alien franchise could have been if the alien xenomorph had been downplayed in the sequel and the focus had been on the alien space jockey and its alien ship instead. What wonders and terrors could we have experienced?

Other Newsletters

Technocult News by “Damien” focuses a lot on technology and, especially, how human prejudices and cultural blinders are incorporated into that technology. Damien gives me a regular reminder that technology is a created thing and its human creators build in flaws and dangers without realizing it. Our assumptions limit our thinking. Technology will always be used in ways we don’t consider so more consideration and inclusion of diverse designers and users when creating technology is ideal.

Lifestuff

A couple of weeks back my brother, Glenn, sent me a link to the proposed 42 words anthology. This week, instead of writing about my life like a good newsletterer, I wrote and submitted a story. It was an interesting exercise. First I wrote the shortest story I could think of based on my basic idea. Then I revised. And revised. The story had to be exactly 42 words. This paragraph is 74 words.

If the story gets accepted I’ll post about it. If it doesn’t I’ll post the story. I don’t have a time frame for either. After I submitted my entry I paid a little more attention to the rest of the blog and realized that submissions were first announced in July of 2018. As of February 8th they have accepted 483 stories. They are wanting 1764 stories. Only 1281 to go.

They’re accepting up to four stories per author. I may submit more. If you want to give writing a short short story a try, please do!

That’s if for this week. Enjoy each moment. If that’s not possible, enjoy as many moments as you can.

Tuesday Night Party Club #8

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Artstuff

Above is the cover of Oziana 2006, published in 2007. It’s a photo of a sculpture by Steve Larabee. It’s one of many winged monkeys that he has sculpted and placed around Burlington, Vermont.

In December of 2006 John L. Bell commented on my blog, asking if I would be interested in doing illustrations for the next issue of Oziana. Oziana is the creative magazine of the International Wizard of Oz Club. John was the editor that year. I emailed him back and took the assignment.

I illustrated one story: “The Axeman’s Arm”, and three poems. The story was about two Munchkin children who find the cast off meat arms of the Tin Woodman and the Tin Soldier. It’s a bit of sequel to The Tin Woodman of Oz, L. Frank Baum’s 12th Oz book. In the book the Tin Woodman meets the Tin Soldier, another man whose entire person has been replaced by tin parts. Together they find Chopfyt, a man created from a combination of their cast off body parts. Bell’s story concerned some of the body parts that didn’t get used to make Chopfyt.

“Rivals” a poem by Adrian Korpel focused on one of Dorothy’s original Wizard of Oz traveling companions. Since the theme of that issue of Oziana was “Dark Oz” the poem told less happy versions of the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Lion’s experiences with Dot.

The Oz Club offers print on demand versions of its most recent issues but this issue doesn’t make the cut. Below is the table of contents taken from the Monkeys With Wings website. John L. Bell regularly writes about Oz (and other things) at his Oz and Ends blog.

Story Seed #32

Alternate History: What if the Mongol Empire had remained intact for centuries?

When I was in junior and high school, my World History classes covered primarily European history. We’d start with the Fertile Crescent, get into the Greeks and the Romans and then carry on with the squabbles of various royal idiots in England and France. I would look at maps of the world and think, “This is not the world. This is just a part of the world. I want to know about what happened on the rest of the map.”

The largest land empire in history was not European. It certainly wasn’t Greek or Roman. It was the Mongol Empire begun by Genghis Khan. Like most empires it had a short life – about a hundred years. It was birthed by Genghis’s ambitions and split due to his successors’ egos. I heard very little about it in school. Kublai Khan got mentioned because of Marco Polo’s visits to the Empire.

Fiction set in the Mongol Empire, written by western authors, is almost nonexistent. Alternate histories featuring a lasting empire are even more scant. So there’s lots of room to write if one wanted to put in the research.

Other Newsletters

Restricted Frequency is a newsletter by Ganzeer. I think it was the first newsletter I subscribed to based on a Warren Ellis recommendation. Ganzeer writes about his life as graphic novelist, designer and working artist.

Lifestuff

Lifestuff is also Artstuff-in-Progress. I’m steadily working my way through my illustration assignments for the Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. I’ve got two more illustrations to complete for Horrors of War. I have a book cover to complete for the second Ikasa Spider novel. I have a portrait commission for the Panel Jumpers. My wife and I are collaborating on graphic novel. Busy busy.

Thank you for reading. I hope your days bring you some fun and some joy along with all the other nonsense. See you next week!

Tuesday Night Party Club #7

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Artstuff

Deanna Hagy, an longtime friend of mine, recently celebrated her 50th birthday. Her not-a-husband threw her a surprise party. I drew this portrait of her as a present and, since I scan almost everything I draw, I can share the portrait with y’all. Among other things, Deanna is a partner at Evening Star End-of-Life Doula Services. No, she does not have more than two arms. She just sometimes gives the impression that she does.

Story Seed #31

Alternate History: What if the Vikings had colonized North America?

Last week my story seed concerned someone besides Columbus, presumably another European, “discovering” America. Of course, another European already had. Five hundred years before Columbus, in about 1000 AD, Leif Erikson had led an expedition to North America from Greenland. Greenland itself had been recently colonized by followers of Leif’s father, Erik the Red. Unlike Columbus, Erikson didn’t proceed to rape and pillage and enslave the natives. He seems to have set up a few outposts, skirmished a bit with the folks who were already there and then didn’t give Vinland (the name given the place in the Sagas) much thought.

In order to write plausible alternate history it helps to know history. In order to write stories set in world where the Vikings had colonized (or regularly traded with) North America one has to consider why the Vikings didn’t pay much attention to North America in real history. The basic answer seems to be: North America wasn’t convenient or sufficiently profitable. Also ice. Lots of ice.

Columbus and the Europeans who followed him sailed across an open ocean. The main reason that Columbus was the first to cross the Atlantic is that most learned folks assumed that it was too big to be worth the trip. No contemporary European thought there was a continent (or two) out there to break up the distance. The Vikings had known but they’d forgotten about it. Hell, by 1492, Greenland had mostly been abandoned. The “Little Ice Age” had made for longer winters and harder travel.

So, what would have made regular contact and settlement of North America attractive to the Vikings?

Possibility A: Lack of choice. Erik the Red, Leif Erickson’s father, had settled Greenland because he’d been temporarily banished from his estates in Oxney, England. He’d already been banished from Iceland. A permanent exile might have made him more interested in expanding his holdings west. As a good son, Leif might have shared his father’s ambitions.

Possibility B: Twist of fate. Erik the Red had planned to accompany his son, Leif, on his expedition to Vinland but he fell off his horse shortly on his way to the ship. Taking this as a bad omen, Erik stayed in Greenland and died in an epidemic the following winter. What if Erik had accompanied his son?

Possibility C: Other Vikings. This is actually a more likely (and probably easier) way to write an alternate history. There were plenty of Vikings who didn’t get make it into any Sagas and yet still lived interesting lives. Leif Erikson knew about Vinland because other Vikings had gotten blown off course and seen the place.  Hell, Erik the Red found Greenland because other Vikings had gotten blown off course and seen that place. Getting blown off course seems to have been a valid discovery technique among the Northlanders. If someone had gotten blown further south they could have discovered the east coast of North America – less ice, different natives, perhaps an easier place to set up a colony.

Possibility D: Flip the story. What if the North American natives had decided that the Vikings were something other than rude invaders? What kind of stories could be told from the Native perspectives? The Vikings had technology that the Natives didn’t. What if the Natives had adopted those technologies? What kind of world would they have created?

Other Newsletters

Autumn Christian writes about a variety of things, much of it related to her own mental health and how she’s managed her own demons. She’s a good writer. If you’ve got demons to manage her advice might be useful. If you don’t … she’s a good writer.

Lifestuff

Unless you and only you have lived at an address for twenty years, there’s a good chance that you’ve received mail addressed to someone else. What are you supposed to do with it?

I’m glad you asked.

  1. If the address on the letter is not your address (say your address 1215 Whatever Street and the letter says 2290 Someplace Ave.) just drop it in outgoing mail and the post office will reroute it. There’s no need to write anything on the letter. The delivery was an accident. Chances are that envelope was stuck to the one above it and your carrier didn’t notice.
  2. If the address is your address but the person it is addressed to is not a resident, check to see if the letter is First Class or asks for some sort of address correction request on it. If it does, put it in outgoing mail with “Not at this address” or “this person doesn’t live here” written on it. Your carrier will either put it into the system to be forwarded or, if the carrier knows that there’s no active forward for that addressee they will properly endorse it so that it’s returned to the sender or the sender’s mailing list is updated.
  3. If the letter is address to a non-resident but is third class just recycle it. The sender isn’t paying for the post office to either forward it or correct their mailing list so putting it back in the system will just result in your carrier putting in it their UBBM.
  4. Do not write “Return to Sender” on the envelope. Especially if you’re a new resident. Chances are there’s a forward in effect. Let the post office figure out what to do with the letter. “Not at this Address” is more useful.

I deliver to over 700 active addresses. I do my best to only deliver mail to people that I know live at those addresses. In the five years that I’ve had my route, hundreds of people have moved. Most of the movees still get mail. Some of them, despite not living at an address for years, still get LOTS of mail. You think it’s annoying to get mail for some bozo who moved three years ago? Imagine having to handle mail for hundreds of bozos who don’t live at hundreds of addresses?

You’re welcome.

Tuesday Night Party Club #6

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Artstuff

Every few days I check to see how much traffic my posts are getting. I imagine most website and blog writers do that. I want to see if anyone is actually reading what I’m posting. One thing I’ve noticed is that, while visitors do drop by on a daily basis, very few folks go beyond the front page. I’ve got literally (and I mean literally not figuratively) thousands of images lurking on this site. So I’ll be using this newsletter to call some of that art back into the light.

This week’s gallery is a set of character designs I did back in 2012. This was for a proposed graphic novel. The basic idea was that, rather than atomic weapons, the Allies developed superheroes to win WW2. An original idea? No. But ideas are only seeds. It’s how they’re grown that makes the stories interesting.

This idea didn’t grow a story. The writer got interested in other ideas and we went on to develop those.

Story Seed #30

Alternate History: What if Columbus never made it across the Atlantic?

History is generally written, by Western historians anyway, by focusing on the acchievements of individuals. This fits with our cultural focus on individual success, individual happiness, individual opportunity, individual identity, etc. Admittedly, it’s easier to focus on the stories of individuals. Cultural context may be provided and important figures in their lives may also be described but, overall, the history we get taught in school is a simplification of reality. Often that history has been simplified in order to prop up current cultural myths.

Columbus discovering America is one of those myths. You’ve heard it – in the 1400s Europeans thought the world was flat. If you sailed too far you’d fall off. Brave Columbus convinced Queen Isabela and King Ferdinand of Spain to finance an expedition across the Atlantic. He planned to prove that India could be reached via the ocean and therefore circumvent the idiocincrasies of the Silk Road. Instead of reaching India, he discovered America!

By now you’ve also hopefully heard the debunkings. The Wikipedia article link above gives a more thorough version of Columbus’s story than I remember getting in school. It certainly includes more accounts of butchery, slavery, rape and genocide. Columbus was a horrible man. Unfortunately, horrible men don’t exist in isolation. They are supported by the horrible men who follow them and benefit from associating with them.

If Columbus hadn’t made his voyage, hadn’t “discovered” the New World, another European would have. Europeans explorers and merchants were looking for new sources of treasure and trade goods. In our current history, it was Columbus’s voyages that lead other explorers across the Atlantic. What if he had failed to get financing or if his ships had failed to return?

Maybe I’m looking in the wrong places but there’s surprisingly little alternate history fiction inspired by this idea. What little I’ve seen seems more interested in presenting alternative (often magical) versions of the Americas rather than alternate explorers and explorations. How long would it have been before someone else crossed the Atlantic? Would the results have been better or worse for the natives? What if these new explorers landed on the North American continent instead of one of the islands?

If nothing else, without Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci wouldn’t have made his voyages and so the Americas would have different names.

Lifestuff

I draw almost every day. Some days I only manage a half an hour. Most days I try to get in more than that. On days when I’m not delivering mail I usually get in more than two hours. That doesn’t sound like much. I am often surprised by how much I manage to accomplish in those small amounts of time. I used to set a timer to keep myself in place. Until recently, having that device ticking away was a necessary part of getting the work done. I was often so tired from the day job that doing anything other than eating and staring at an episode of some tv show seemed like too much effort. But I’d set the timer and go to work. And I always felt better for having done it.

I rarely need the timer these days. I seem to have built the habit. Art gets done.

The habit I’m currently working on is writing every day. That one is harder than drawing. I can draw in noisy room. It’s really difficult for me to write in one. I can set a timer and design a sketch to be done in the time alotted. I never really know how long it’s going to take me to write something. These newsletters are getting done in the morning before the rest of the house wakes up. The process is clunky. I delete a lot of what I write. But I’m building the habit with the intent of applying that habit to things beyond this space.

Other Newsletters

This week I’m recommending BIG, a newsletter written by Matt Stoller. Stoller is the author of Goliath, the 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy. His newsletter focuses on the way monopolies function and how they destroy competion, innovation and the world. I’m being only slightly facetious.

Subscribe

To get the subscription link, click on “Home” in the menu bar under the site banner. A whole list of links and nonsense will appear on the right. The subscription link will be under the search field at the top.

Tuesday Night Party Club #5

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Artstuff

I’m currently working on illustrations for The Lovecraft Country Holiday Collection. This book of four Call of Cthulhu RPG scenarios was successfully kickstarted last year. One of the stretch goals that we didn’t reach was a fifth scenario: The Mystery of April Snow. We did get close enough that Oscar Rios, the engine behind Golden Goblin Press, decided to offer the scenario as an add-on. Separate projects need separate covers so:

This is a scan of the physical black and white art. I guess you’d say it’s “mixed media”. It’s a combination of pencil, brush, Micron pens and Copic markers.

This is my finished art. Photoshop got used and abused.

And above is the finished version. Mark Shireman worked his design magic to turn a fairly simple image of a girl’s creepy stare into a compelling book cover.

Story Seed #29
What if the Martians hadn’t accidentally been killed by Earth germs?

A lot of folks have written sequels to H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds. As far as I can tell they’ve all worked from the same premise – the Martian’s initial invasion was a failure. The Martians’ first set of invadors died due to exposure to Earth’s diseases. The sequels are usually about a second invasion from Mars. A few of them are about Earth forces taking the war to the Red Planet.

But … what if the Martians expected to die from exposure to our germs? They had interstellar travel. They presumably were scientifically advanced enough to expect and prepare for infection. What if those first Martians brought their own diseases with them – on purpose? What if they were here less to beat us by blunt force than to begin transforming our world with their native biology? They’re observed draining humans of their blood. They plant the red weed.

In Well’s novel, the Martians are cyphers. We don’t know how they think. We don’t know their politics or religions. We don’t know if they consider themselves individuals. What if, once the technological warfare ceased, the biological warfare continued? At the time of publication, germ theory was commonly accepted but even the most medically advanced countries were unprepared to deal with epidemics from another world.

Other Newsletters

SCIOPS – this newsletter by Max Anton Brewer is often about how fucked up our technology and our economic systems are making us. I think about that stuff all the time. But Brewer has a different perspective about reality than I do and I find that useful. He has different understandings of the whys of the fuckedupedness. I need different understandings of the world to make navigating it more tolerable and to help me continue to be compassionate with my fellow humans.Give a few issues a read. Maybe his perspecitves will be useful to you as well.

Lifestuff

Most days at work we have what we call “stand-ups”. These are meetings where all the carriers gather together and the supervisors give us safety talks and pass on relevant information from upper management or the outside world. Most of what gets said has been said many times before.

Last Friday I got to be the subject of the safety talk. An hour earlier I had been walking through the station on my way to do my daily vehicle check and my feet got tangled in one of those plastic straps that are used to hold together bundles of magazines. Down I went.

I got up quickly because embarrassment is a more poweful motivator than pain. My right hand hurt from trying to brace my fall. My left thigh hurt a lot more. The concrete floor had slammed the phone and wallet in my pocket into my leg. I seemed functional and didn’t think anything was broken but I reported the accident to my supervisor and got the necessary paperwork just in case. Our station manager talked about the accident in our stand up and repeated (for the umpteenth time) the need to pick up those damned strap.

I delivered my route as usual. Mostly. My hand got more sore as the day went on. Sorting the mail wasn’t a big deal. Turning the key in the starter, using the gear shift, putting on seat belt, closing the truck’s door – all that hurt more as time passed. My leg also hurt more. The pain lessened every time I did a walking part of my route but the leg would stiffen up during the driving parts. Getting out of the truck got less fun by the hour.

I woke up stiff and sore on Saturday. My hand had some weird bruising. Disappointingly, my thigh looked fine. For the amount that it hurt I felt like I should have a glorious purple bruise. I drove down to Portland and back for a friend’s surprise birthday party. Three hours driving south, three hours sitting in a restaurant, three hours driving north. My leg really hurt by the time I lurched into bed.

Sunday I slept in. For me that was staying under the covers until 7:30. My leg hurt less. I’d taken some tylenol before I went to sleep. That probably helped. The bruising on my hand was a little more colorful but really only noticeable in good light. Sarah and I went out for a late breakfast and them mostly stayed at home.

Monday I was back at work. I expected my leg to hurt more as the day progressed but it stayed mostly a low throb with occasional “ow! ow!” moments when I had to bend it tighter than 90 degrees. I did a little overtime on my own route due to mail volume.

I’m writing this before 5 am on Tuesday. Both my leg and hand are sore but they’re feeling much improved. I expect to do a regular workday. Still no bruising on the leg. That’s disappointing. I’ve found bruises on myself plenty of times in the past and couldn’t remember what I’d done to get them. The discomfort of the last few days seems like it should be heralded by vivid purple and green. Ah well.

Subscribe

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That’s it for this week. Do something kind for someone who doesn’t expect it. Thank you for reading.