Lightning News Flashes: ‘Brave New’ TV Series; Gene Wolfe; Poe Letter

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I have some Lightning News Flashes for this post. The month of April has sadly seen the loss of two science fiction writers but it’s also seen some good news, too. New TV shows based on science fiction and fantasy novels have been announced as being in the works and also an Edgar Allen Poe Museum has acquired a genuine letter written by Poe. For longer versions of these stories, click on the links below.

Obituaries

Science fiction and fantasy author Vonda McIntyre passed away at age 70 on the first of the month. She wrote several Star Trek books, including the novel adaptations of movies ST II: The Wrath of Khan and ST III: The Search for Spock. Her 1978 novel, Dreamsnake, had won both a Hugo and a Nebula. According to Geekwire.com, McIntyre started the Clarion West writers’ workshop in Seattle in 1971. Geekwire also says she completed her last novel, Curve of the World, “in less than two weeks before her death” from pancreatic cancer. The New York Times says that “she was one of [science fiction’s] leading women”. 

April also saw the loss of acclaimed science fiction author Gene Wolfe. He died at age 87 last Sunday, 14 April. Two of his most famous works were the novella, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, and the series of novels, The Book of the New Sun. According to EW.com, he was most known for the latter which is set in a distant future when Earth’s society regresses back to a medieval-like way of life.

From Book To TV

And here’s news on some of the latest books in science fiction and fantasy that are to be adapted into television shows . . .

The Line Beyond, by Torsca Lee: This dystopian novel, about an epidemic rising from extinction and an escapee from an apocalyptic religious cult, has been selected by Radar Pictures and Marlboro Road Gang Productions to be made into a TV series. There is no known premiere date for the series yet.

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley: Alden Ehrenreich, who portrayed Han Solo in Solo: A Star Wars Story, will play the role of John the Savage in a TV series based on Huxley’s 1932 satirical sci fi novel. According to Sciencefiction.com, the series will debut on the new streaming video service, NBCU, which will go live in 2020. Sciencefiction.com says that, originally director Ridley Scott planned to adapt the novel into a full-length feature film but the plan did not follow through. Not that the TV series can’t do well, but I would like to have seen Scott follow through with his plan. It may have been interesting to see how he would have directed the movie which, like the novel, would be set in a utopia. He directed 1982’s Blade Runner which is set in a dystopian future.

Sleeping Beauties, by Stephen and Owen King: Sciencefiction.com has also reported that the father and son authors are adapting their science fiction horror novel into an AMC TV series. The book is set in the near-future when women in a small town go into a strange dream sleep and, if wakened, become psychotically violent. 

One of Poe’s Letters To Be Exhibited At Virginia Museum

The Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, has acquired an original letter by Edgar Allen Poe which will be put on display from 25 April to 31 July. According to the museum’s blog, the letter was written to an uncle of Poe’s in regards to the author’s attempt to establish a literary magazine. It was written “less than a year before Poe’s early death”. The blog states that the letter was donated to the museum this month by the great-great-great granddaughter of the uncle. Okay, so this is not an original, handwritten manuscript of one of the author’s classic stories such as “Fall of the House of Usher”. But, because he became so popular since after his death in 1849, “his letters are both scarce and highly sought-after by collectors”, the blog explains. The letter will give scholars more insight into his short life and his writing career.

And those are the Lightning News Flashes in science fiction and fantasy for the month. The next post will probably not be until the following Wednesday. That will be the first Wednesday of the month which is when I post as part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG), a blog group that discusses the challenges of writing and how to deal with them. So there may not be a post next weekend. The following weekend, however, I am going to try to have a Book-To-Movie review. Hopefully I’ll see you at the IWSG post!

Have you read any of Vonda McIntyre’s or Gene Wolfe’s work? What do you think of the upcoming science fiction and fantasy TV shows mentioned above? Have you visited any of the Edgar Allen Poe museums? Please feel free to share your comments in the box below!

Until next time . . .

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Science fiction Is Prophecy Whether We Like It Or Not

The thing that I don’t understand about some science fiction writers is how they can straight out deny the genre as prophecy. The late Ursula Le Guin (may she rest in peace) did this and Corey Doctorow does do it, among others. It’s nearly obvious that yesterday’s science fiction has become today’s science fact. Even so, authors such as the above like to explain away this fact with their rationalisation. But does prophecy have to be unexplainable or supernatural (at least directly)? No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t even have to predict the future correctly if at all. And so, like science fiction, prophecy doesn’t always get its visions of future society right.

The science fiction writers who like to deny the genre being prophecy often use the rationale that sci fi is a criticism of today’s issues re-imagined as futuristic ones. While this isn’t completely wrong, Ursula Le Guin thought of the genre in this way and Corey Doctorow does similar. Using Isaac Asimov as an example, Doctorow says in an interview ar CBC.ca that he doesn’t believe Asimov was predicting the future but was instead “reflecting” his concerns about the present. He also says in this same interview that authors like Orwell, Huxley and Shelley were not making predictions but were “giving warning.” But isn’t that a major characteristic of prophecy right there? Often prophets warn about negatively impacting future events or consequences of a society’s actions.

Prophecy doesn’t have to be a precise prediction of events and a lot of times it isn’t. It anticipates what the future may be but not necessarily predict what it will be. Even experts in the Catholic Church will tell you that prophecy does not necessarily predict anything. Prophecy can imagine the future but won’t necessarily predict it even though what has been imagined may turn into reality to some extent. So, prophecy is a lot like science fiction--it speculates on the future, a future that it only sometimes gets right.

Many science fiction writers say that genre as prophecy is a false notion. That’s only partly true. There are also sci fi authors who are at least open to the possibility of the genre as prophecy. Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Nebula Award-winning Annihilation, is one. In an article in The New York Review of Books, he says of surreal speculative fiction writer David R. Bunch’s stories, “In the years since his most prolific period, the nightmarish dystopia he imagined has begun to look increasingly prescient, even prophetic.” (By the way, as VanderMeer also says, Bunch’s work had been out of print for several years. But a new edition of his collection of works, Moderan, is now out. In fact, the article referenced above is from the book’s introduction that VanderMeer wrote. This is one I’ll have to get my hands on since I like dark and surreal spec fiction!)

Science fiction author Namwali Serpell straight out says that “the genre has predicted satellite communication, army tanks, tablets, submarines, psychotropic pills, bionic limbs, CCTV, electric cars and video calling.” In fact, she nearly declares herself a prophet: “I write science fiction set in the near future, so I’m constantly testing my own powers of prophecy.” She may only mean this metaphorically, but it indicates that she believes the genre itself has been prophetic.

Science fiction is not an accurate prediction of the future and not even prophecy has been that. Prophecy does not guarantee a society’s fate and science fiction guarantees it much less. Prophecy in its less mystical definition is an anticipation of what could happen and whether it happens or not is up to us as a society. As science fiction has influenced us in how we handle the course of society, prophecy has done the same. So, the prophetic fulfillment often depends on the people influenced by the prophecy and their reaction to it. Such foresight of coming events is more speculation than prediction. If those events come to be, then they were predicted correctly. If they don’t come to be, it’s because we as a people made them not to.

I’ll agree with Doctorow and Le Guin on one thing when it comes to the debate over whether sci fi is prophecy: most science fiction writers don’t sit down at their desks and attempt to predict the future. I don’t. Yet the stories themselves can be inevitably prophetic. If the events in the stories turn into reality then they do; if they don’t, they don’t. What’s important is that those stories make us think about how we as a society can improve the world while, at the same time, entertain us.

Do you think science fiction can be prophetic? Feel free to drop your answers in the box below.

Until next time . . .

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‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ Book; Former Out-of-Print Horror Novels Are Back

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I have some lightning news flashes on the releases, including re-releases, of dark fantasy and horror novels. But first, in case you missed it, my second post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) is up. So you can view it here. The IWSG is a network of author-bloggers who discuss the challenges of writing and how to deal with them. Even if you aren’t a writer, the posts that IWSG puts out can give you some fascinating insight on what goes into our work. This is especially a plus if you are an avid reader who digs behind-the-scenes! So check it out if you haven’t already.

And now for literary lightning news flashes on releases of some dark fantasy and horror novels . . .

Pan’s Labyrinth Novel Adaptation

The 2006 Oscar-winning film, Pan’s Labyrinth, is being adapted into a novel according to /Film. The film’s director, Guillermo del Toro (the Hellboy movies) is collaborating with best-selling author Cornelia Funke in writing the book. The book will be titled Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun. Besides the novel itself, it will contain short stories that will help develop the world of the Pan Labyrinth story line. The novel, like the movie, is a dark fantasy epic that features mythical creatures against a World War II background. The movie involves a young girl in Spain who flees from her fascist military officer of a stepfather to a dark fantasy land. According to the book’s synopsis, the novel is “for readers of all ages”. If this is so, then it will have to leave out certain scenes that are in the film since the movie has an R rating which includes brutal war violence. The book will include illustrations which will give more of a children’s and fairy tale flavour. Pan’s Labyrinth: The Labyrinth of the Faun will release 2 July 2019.

The Return of the Out-of-Print ‘70s and ‘80s Horror Paperbacks

Indie press Valencourt Books is releasing a limited series of five paperback horror novels that have been out of print for several years. The five books are from the 1970s and ‘80s, chosen by authors Grady Hendrix and Will Errickson. Hendrix is the author of the best-seller Paperbacks From Hell (Quirk Books) which the series of books is named after. The five horror novels will be in mass-market size format. Some will feature their original paperback book cover illustrations. Each book will include an introduction specifically written for the edition. The first title of the Paperbacks From Hell series, The Nest by Gregory A. Douglas, released 2 April. The story involves giant mutant cockroaches and so is reminiscent of Atomic Era sci fi horror while exemplary of the novel’s contemporary 1970s “nature strikes back” film trend. The other four titles, which each will release a month apart from each other, are:

When Darkness Loves Us, by Elizabeth Engstrom

The Reaping, by Bernard Taylor

The Tribe, Bari Wood

The Spirit, Thomas Page

The Spirit is another that is exemplary of its era which saw the Big Foot phenomena craze. In this novel, a Native American is on the trail of the legendary Sasquatch.

Valancourt Books specialises in re-introducing to publication “rare, neglected, and out-of-print fiction”. They were established “in 2005 to restore many of these works to new generations of readers.” The books they restore include Gothic, horror and supernatural fiction that go as far back as the 18^th century. It’s great to know that presses like these are raising out-of-print books back from the literary dead! This will give a chance for new generations to access and, hopefully, enjoy them.

Next time, I plan to talk about whether science fiction can be considered prophecy or not.

Have you seen Pan’s Labyrinth? What do you think about a book adaption of the movie? Are there any out-of-print horror novels or other speculative fiction books you would like to see back in print? Please feel free to leave your comments in the box below.

Until next time . . .

How Creating the Main Character First Can Prevent Writer’s Block

You may have had this problem before: an idea for a story bubbles and boils, ready to explode from the cauldron of your mind and onto the paper or computer screen. But when you get to your desk you’re clueless to how to start writing the story. Or if you do start writing then you come to a halt not even midway through the draft, like when you’re driving a car and then it suddenly dies on you. That’s definitely happened with my writing, especially my fiction, and it’s frustrating as hell. You start with an idea or event for a story, such as an alien plague attack or a stolen talisman (which are not really original ideas but are simply examples I’ll use for the sake of argument) but have no idea where to go with it when you try to write. Sometimes you may not have that problem because, for whatever reason, you already have one of the most important elements of the story in mind--character. However, a lot of times we don’t have our main character, or protagonist, in mind at the rough draft stage and so that may cause us to come to a standstill in the writing process and therefore come to a writer’s block. One of the easiest ways to solve this problem is to create your main character before writing the story.

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While I was at the World Science Fiction Convention last year, I attended a writers panel called “Idea Versus Story”. One of the speakers said that if you have a problem writing or developing your story then try starting with the main character rather than just the story idea because, as he put it, “your idea is your character.” This means that in order for your idea to develop into a story there has to be a character. More often than not, there has to be more than one character because in order for there to be events to make up the story characters have to make those events happen. If the characters don’t make the events happen then they need to respond to those events. As people in real life make events that make history, characters in fiction make events that make up the story. There has to be a sentient being in the story--a human, some other species of animal, a living dead person, robot with a conscience, etc.--and so a character to make things happen or to respond to events that are already there and that, in turn, create more events or actions in order for the story to unfold.

If I get a writer’s block during a writing session it’s often because I have a very vague or shallow main character in mind. In that case I’ll stop writing the rough draft and put it on hiatus until I have developed my main character or protagonist by sketching him or her out more. This means I’ll create that character’s character traits list. I’ll write down a list of the main character’s basic physical traits as well as behaviourial ones.

Keep in mind, however, that at the story planning and rough draft level you do not need the main character fully developed. The most important thing at this level is to get the story written before the idea and your enthusiasm for it disappears. So you only need the basic qualities of the main character at this stage, qualities such as his or her physical appearances: hair colour, eye colour, size, weight, etc. You will also need the character’s goal for the story and so will need to know what he or she is trying to achieve and a few behavioural traits that motivates that character to attempt to achieve that goal. For example, I’ll ask myself what my character’s interests are that relate to what he’s trying to achieve. If he’s trying to recover a cursed family heirloom that can release an evil spirit onto the world if in the wrong hands then what are his interests that contribute to his ambition to attempt to recover it? Maybe one of those interests are that he likes collecting old items by shopping at thrift stores and flea markets. Or maybe he’s an advocate for civil rights and is concerned that if the heirloom gets into the hands of a neo Nazi it can mean destruction of all people of colour.

If you have the basics of the main character in mind before writing the story, he or she can react to situations that will help develop it. Other characters can come along during the rough draft process and don’t have to be developed at that point. They only need to help make those situations happen so the story can move along and finally come to a conclusion. The real and full development will come during the revision process.

In real life, in order for events to occur, at least at the human level, people have to be around to make them occur. The same thing goes for fiction. In order for events in a work of fiction to occur, characters need to be there to make them happen and/or to respond to pre-existing events for the story to unfold. So, if you at least know the basic traits of your main character or protagonist ahead of time and, more importantly, his or her goal it will be easier to develop your idea into a full story.

Do you create your main character before writing the story? Have you tried writing the story before creating the main character? Which of these two come easiest to you?

The co-hosts for this IWSG for April are J.H. Moncrieff, Natalie Aguirre, Patsy Collins, and Chemist Ken. Thanks, all of you, for co-hosting!

Until next time . . .

Broadway Musical ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ To Be Adapted to Film

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Book-to-Movie adaptation news: actually it’s more of a book-to-live musical-to-movie adaptation. Variety announced during the week that the Broadway musical version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s gothic novel, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, will be adapted to film. Academy Award winner Alexander Dinelaris will be writing and producing the film that will share the same name as the live musical, Jekyll and Hyde. It will be the first full-length feature film produced through Dinelaris’s New York-based studio, Lexicon. The live musical was first performed on Broadway in 1997 and then went abroad. It is partly based on the novel which was adapted for the stage by Frank Wildhorn and Steve Cuden. But I’m in no hurry for it to come to the big screen. The problem I have with horror musicals whether live or on screen is that they take most of the horror out of the story.

Staged musicals often have a fantastical element. I mean, after all, most of us don’t sing out the events in our lives as they happen to us. The musical has an idealistic and more simplistic element to it that is almost of a fairy tale quality, a quality that most horror doesn’t have. Horror is more realistic in the psychological sense in that a fear of death of some sort permeates the story. The death is usually either physical or spiritual. (However, horror in it’s truest sense often has to do with the fear of spiritual death and so the death of one’s soul.) So adapting gothic horror novels such as Frankenstein, Dracula or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde into musicals almost never works and so too easily takes the audience out of the realism of the story. It’s a realism that the horror element, an element based on fear, depends on.

There are some exceptions. Opera is one. Almost all dialogue in an opera is sung and so, as long as it’s produced accordingly, opera can easily adapt a gothic horror story really good. This happened with Phantom of the Opera in which the theme of the source material, the novel by Gaston Leroux, was based on music. Which brings us to another exception: horror based on musical themes. An example is Phantom of the Paradise, the cult horror satire from the 1970s which was based on the Phantom of the Opera story. Now, Phantom of the Paradise is one I’d like to see made into a live musical after all these years of craze of musical adaptations of horror stories.

Which leads to another exception. Stories that satirize or spoof gothic horror, or any kind of horror for that matter, can adapt into a musical really good. Humourous stories tend to be simplistic in nature like comedy in its wider sense. Phantom of the Paradise being partly comical did this good and so did Little Shop of Horrors which was adapted to stage from the 1960s B-rated cinematic horror spoof that guest-starred Jack Nicholson. As crazy as his masochist character in that one was, it was still quite far from his psychotic Jack Torrence role in The Shining. And please! don’t give them any ideas to do a musical of that; they already did it with another of Stephen King’s novels, Carrie, and it flopped (and rightfully so).

I wouldn’t waste my time with musicals, live or on screen, that are based on a genre that is often far from the fairy tale or comical element. Broadway has capitalised on the popularity that horror has had over the years. They’ve done this to the point where the horror gets lost from what’s supposed to be a horror story. It’s an insult to the dark genre, especially the classics. Variety in another article even indicates that horror musicals become less art than commercial attractions, when it says of Wildhorn’s earlier work, Dracula, the Musical, that it is “a pre-sold . . . exceptionally well-packaged commodity that gives in wholly to the idea that theater is less an art than a tourist attraction.” And whether it’s on stage, on page or on screen, horror is an art—the art of fear. Unless it’s intended to be spoofed or satirised, you can’t have fear where there is comedy and that includes where the scenes are sung out.

Do you think musicals based on gothic horror novels work as horror or do they become too comical? Leave your comments in the box below.

Until next time . . .

Kim Stanley Robinson and the Missing Punk in ‘Punk’ Science Fiction

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Yesterday’s world-wide youth protest against climate change in no way occurred too soon. Our institutions needed to be wakened and made aware that the beauty spring brings around this time of year may not be around for too many more years if we don’t do something about the destruction to the environment. I was so impressed by the teens who took this stand that I shared a Washington Post article  about it on Facebook. But the news about the protest also got me to look back on what author Kim Stanley Robinson said about acting against climate change in his talk about his newest book, Red Moon, last month at the Avid Reader in Davis, California. For those of you who aren’t familiar with Robinson’s work, he’s an advocate for environmental solutions which much of his science fiction reflects. Several posts back I talked about the various kinds of punk science fiction which solarpunk and ecopunk are two them. Both deal with environmental issues. Yet, Robinson’s work falls under neither.

Or at least Robinson does not refer to his fiction as solarpunk or ecopunk. In fact, he doesn’t refer to it as any kind of punk. When I attended his talk and reading last month, I came into it about 15 minutes late and so by that time there was standing room only. He’s not only a best-selling and award-winning author but also a Davis resident. So I was crammed into a corner among other people, if not mostly Davis residents then Sacramento area residents in general, who were also standing like myself. So I wasn’t in a position to pull from my backpack my journal to take notes and so had to rely on memory and write down the key points when I got home that evening. That said, I’m not going to even try to write word for word what Robinson said but I’ll give you the basic ideas he was getting across to us. I asked him about his thoughts on punk science fiction and he said that most of that type of sci fi is not punk in its truest sense. He basically said the events in punk science fiction, especially the subgenres of it that came after cyberpunk, are not radical enough in their demand for social change.

After Robinson read an excerpt from his Red Moon he answered questions from the audience. At some point he said that science fiction is limited in its subgenres. I asked him that with all the punk science fiction subgenres springing up--such as steampunk, atompunk, ecopunk and solarpunk--wouldn’t he think the genre is continuously expanding. To this he said something like that the punk suffix is used for marketing purposes and isn’t punk in the true sense of the word. He said he preferred calling sci fi that deals with social problems, including environmental issues, something like “reformative science fiction” rather than punk science fiction. When I asked if he thought there was at least a small degree of social rebellion in the punk subgenres or even just a suggestion of it, he said that the characters don’t go to the extreme that punk rockers in the 1970s did, such as destroying property and doing illegal drugs, and so there is no radical reaction to the establishment in the fiction of these categories. He said that his own fiction does not reflect that kind of reaction. This is because he believes that in order for there to be social change the people have to campaign for it through the democratic process and the establishment has to help with that change. If we try to push for change through a radical process, Robinson explained, like punk rockers have it could bring on worse situations.

I have to agree with Robinson at least to an extent. Most people will not respond in an agreeable manner to radical and spontaneous actions and will probably counter-rebel. However, when it comes to punk science fiction, in my opinion the characters themselves do not necessarily have to react radically to bring about social change. In these kinds of stories, there only has to be a call for change in society’s infrastructures and a criticism of today’s status quo that keeps that change from occurring.

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Now in many ways, Robinson is right about the punk subgenres being used to market various types of science fiction. And they have been used to market stories that aren’t about social change in the least. So maybe sci fi punk, whether it’s steampunk, hopepunk, solarpunk, ecopunk or atompunk, is just a passing fad. Books are marketed according to the times and “punk” is a term that today’s speculative fiction fans turn to when they see it in the names of their favourite subgenres. As far as marketing goes, these sci fi categories have been misapplied. However, as far as reader’s interest itself goes they can be very useful. Not everyone likes the same types of science fiction. Some people prefer military sci fi, while others prefer space opera or cyberpunk.

But what’s important is not the term that’s used for a type of science fiction but what the stories in that type are doing. The best kind of science fiction is that which inspires people to make a better society. This kind either depicts a better future society that promotes diversity and equality or it shows what can happen if we don’t promote these social values and so scares us into promoting them. The former is utopian. However, for utopian sci fi to tell a good story that people want to read, it has to involve challenges that the protagonists must overcome in order to maintain that kind of society. The latter occurs in a lot of apocalyptic and dystopian stories.

So punk science fiction should do what all science fiction does: inspire readers to contribute to a better future. The difference in punk sci fi from other sci fi is that it more so emphasises social change itself, criticising our present day institutions in doing so. The social change can include environmental causes.

How much do you think science fiction should inspire to create a better society?

Until next time . . .

Movie Based on Cixin Liu’s Sci fi Story Coming to Netflix

Because the movie adaptation of award-winning author Cixin Liu’s short story, The Wandering Earth, is a disaster sci fi film I would see it on the big screen rather than wait for it to come out on DVD or to streaming video. And, when I say “disaster sci fi film”, I mean as in natural and not box office disaster. It’s far from that. At least it is in it’s native China. In fact, the movie did so well there ever since its February 5^th release that it is considered the country’s first science fiction blockbuster. 

Unfortunately, I probably won’t be seeing Wandering Earth on the big screen because it’s had a limited run in the U.S. It is showing in my home region of Sacramento but it’s at a movie theatre opposite of the part I live in and I take public transportation. If I tried taking a a bus there it would probably take me half a day to get there and then half a day to get back to my house! That’s how complicated the bus system can be here in the Sacramento region. So, why don’t I drive? Well, among other reasons, I take public transit in order to help prevent things from happening like in this film, which is a total climate change disaster caused by the sun. In Wandering Earth, the sun threatens to destroy the earth by the next century and so scientists use gigantic rocket engines to try to move the planet to another star system.

If you’re like me and have too hard of a time getting to the nearest theatre that’s playing Wandering Earth, the good news is that it’s coming to Netflix. The video service giant has bought the rights to stream the sci fi film. This will help the movie reach a wider audience throughout the world since Netflix services to several countries. If the movie’s received well enough it may reach other venues such as DVD or paid per view. The Wandering Earth is directed and written by Frant Gwo. It’s one more sci fi film I can do a Book-To-Movie review on, so expect one here!

Have you read or seen Cixin Liu’s The Wandering Earth? If so, what did you think? Feel free to leave your answers in the box below, but please no spoilers!

Also, in case you missed my first post for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG), which I posted this past Wednesday, you can catch it here. I will be posting for IWSG every first Wednesday of the month. IWSG’s posts emphasises the writing process, the challenges it brings and how to over come them.

Until next time. . .

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