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Max the Fifth

June 9, 2024 at 8:50 am
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Saw FURIOSA last week on an Imax screen.   The latest Mad Max movie… though, oddly, without Mad Max.   I don’t think there’s a better action director in the field than George Miller.   The  fights in FURIOSA are spectacular, especially on Imax.

I saw my first Mad Max film back in 1981.   That was ROAD WARRIOR, the second in the series (did not catch the first one until a few years later — I am not even sure it was ever released in Santa Fe).   The chase sequence blew me away.   The best ever put to film, I thought.   So good that I dragged Roger Zelazny out to see it a few days later, to show him what  the film version of DAMNATION ALLEY should have l0oked like.. and could have looked like, if they had hired the right director.  And they almost did, as it happens.   But that’s another story.

I would still rank ROAD WARRIOR’s climactic action chase as one of the best in movie history, especially since it was all practical, amazing real world stuntwork and not the sort of SFX and AI that dominates so many movies currently.   George Miller keeps trying to top himself.   BEYOND THUNDERDOME had some great action too, with the train chase… and the fight in the Thunderdome, though that was a different sort of animal.   After that there was a long hiatus before FURY ROAD came along, with a different Max and several huge chase scenes.   You can make a case for that one being bolder and bigger than any that had come before, though on balance I still liked ROAD WARRIOR more.

With FURIOSA, though, there’s no doubt.   Of course, Miller had a much bigger budget this time.   I think the original MAD MAX was made with the loose change he found in his couch pillows.  FURIOSA probably cost more than the first four Max movies put together.   Given its structure, it could just as easily been five features, or maybe three seasons of a television series.   I liked Anya Taylor Joy, who played Furiosa this time around.  The girl who played Furiosa as a child was good as well.  I liked Tom Burke (Praetorian Jack) and Chris Hemsworth as Dementus too… and the Citadel is a cool set, though it was used with more impact in FURY ROAD.

Overall, though, ROAD WARRIOR is still my favorite Mad Max movie.  FURIOSA and FURY ROAD both had their merits, but I’d still rank them below the second and third Mel Gibson films.    The new ones are bigger and more expensive, and the action scenes are huge… but the worldbuilding, the secondary characters, and the stories cannot compare.

And I miss the epilogues.  The closing scenes of both ROAD WARRIOR and BEYOND  THUNDERDOME are beautifully written, and make me choke up whenever I see them.

 

I love the bittersweet flavor of the epilogues.   In both instances Max is left by himself, standing alone in the road… which fits the character that was established in the first film, the loner so broken by the death of his wife and child that he no longer wants to be part of any community.   He does not want to be a hero (as Aunty Entity sings in THUNDERDOME), does not want to love again (and lose again, perhaps), but there is still a remnant of the cop he was buried inside him, and he finds himself dragged into heroism regardless.

FURY ROAD and FURIOSA have much darker endings than the earlier films.   They take place entirely in the Wasteland, where no shred of civilization remains.  The Green Place, where Furiosa is born, is seen in the new movie and sought after in previous one, but when finally found only death and corruption remains.   The Wasteland is ruled over by bloodthirsty gangs and their insane overlords.   In FURIOSA the only choice seem to be between Dementus and Immortan Joe… and slavery and death, always  on the menu too.   Is there anything beyond the Waste?  If so no one mentions it.  The earlier Mel Gibson films were much more balanced, their characters painted in shades of grey, even Max himself.   Bartertown and Auntie Entity, Master Blaster, the Lost Tribe (and the legendary Captain Walker), the pilot and his son from THUNDERDOME, and from ROAD WARRIOR Pappagallo, the Gyro Captain, the Mechanic and the Warrior Woman, and of  course the Feral Kid…  some of them die along the way, but more survive.   Max might be might a reluctant hero, but he is a hero nonetheless, and thanks to that  heroism, we get a semblence of a happy ending… at least in the epilogues.

George Miller has talked of wanting to do another film in the sequence, a movie called THE WASTELAND that would tell the story of what Max himself was doing between THUNDERDOME and FURY ROAD.   Having Mad Max in a Mad Max movie seems like a good idea… though less so if all he is going to be doing in wandering the Wasteland again.    Surely by now we have seen enough sand and stone and desolation.

I would be far more interested in seeing what is happening elsewhere in Australia.  How is the Gyro Captain doing as the leader of the Great Northern Tribe  (on the ocean somewhere, presumably, maybe up by Darwin or Townsville).  How long did he rule?  Did he build more gyros?   When did Feral Kid succeed him (presumably after he learned to talk), and what happened then?   And the Lost Tribe from BEYOND THUNDERDOME, they wind up in a ruined Melbourne at the end, lighting the lights to bring the wanderers home, and telling the tell the tell to the next generation so they remember who they are and where they came from (a beautiful speech).   There are stories there that I would love to hear one day, stories richer and deeper and more moving than anything going on in the wastes.

The problem is, Max can’t be part of those stories.  The epilogues made it clear; neither the Lost Tribe nor the Great Northern Tribe ever saw the road warrior again…

Ah, well.   That’s a problem for George Miller and his team.   I have my own issues back home in Westeros and Essos.   Worldbuilding can be a bitch.

I understand that FURIOSA has not done nearly was hoped, so maybe Miller will never get to make another Mad Max film.   That would be a pity, I think.   Whether set in the Great Red Center or the ruins of Melbourne, regardless of which characters it featured, I suspect Max VI would have splendid action scenes.   No one does that better than Miller.

Maybe someone should hire him to do a remake of DAMNATION ALLEY.   We’d finally get a proper Hell Tanner, and Roger would get the movie he always deserved.

 

 

Current Mood: thoughtful thoughtful

Reginald and Roger

July 6, 2023 at 3:14 pm
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When I’m not writing, you can often find me reading.   I’ve been a voracious reader since grade school… and I love talking about books almost as much as I love reading them.   So when a British fellow named Reginald asked me to come on his podcast to discuss one of my favorite books, I was pleased to agree.   The hard part was picking a book.   I have a lot of favorite books, and favorite authors.   Tolkien, Heinlein, Lovecraft, Waldrop, Fitzgerald, Dickens, Bernard Cornwell, Stephen King, Jack Vance… the list goes on and on and on.

We could only do one, however.  So I finally settled on Roger Zelazny.

Ah, but WHICH Zelazny, though?  Roger wrote so many great ones.   LORD OF LIGHT, EYE OF CAT, CREATURES OF LIGHT AND DARKNESS, DREAM MASTER, DOORWAYS IN THE SAND… and the short stories, he was great at shorter lengths as well… as his shelf of Hugo and Nebula Awards bears witness.

Hard choice.  In the end I went with NINE PRINCES IN AMBER… and the Amber series in general.   (Soon to be a TV series, we hope).

We filmed the segment at Beastly Books in Santa Fe.

Reginald did not turn up.  I gather he does that a lot.  Fortunately, his friend Dominick Noble was on hand to fill in, as he does often.  (Dom has a great YouTube channel of his own, LOST IN ADAPTATION, where he compares films made from books with their source material).

We had a lot of fun.  You can watch the discussion here:

After you’ve had a listen, go out and read NINE PRINCES IN AMBER… or any of Roger’s books, really.  They’re all great.

Current Mood: cheerful cheerful

Cooters Invade Montreal?

November 5, 2021 at 7:20 am
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Maybe.   Probably.   (We hope, we hope).

We made a little short film of Howard Waldrop’s classic short story NIGHT OF THE COOTERS back in August, right here in Santa Fe.   From a script by Joe R. Lansdale, directed by and starring Vincent d’Onofrio.   Shot the whole thing green screen, then turned it over to the wizards at Trioscope Productions (https://www.trioscopestudios.com ) who are adding… well, pretty much everything except the actors and the horses.

The film probably won’t be finished until next March.   Maybe February, if we are lucky.

But Howard Waldrop is going to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award at the World Fantasy Convention in Montreal, the first weekend of November.   He will not be able to attend to accept in person, alas… but we wanted to mark the occasion somehow, so we’re working as fast as we can to finish a short teaser / trailer for NIGHT OF THE COOTERS that can be shown at the con.   A little treat for all the Waldrop fans.

I hope we finish it in time.  I hope those of you attending the con will see it.   I hope you will love it.

Did I mention that this honor for H’ard is well deserved?   And long long overdue?

Current Mood: bouncy bouncy

Who Is That Strange Dude?

September 11, 2021 at 9:49 am
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There’s a lot of strange stuff on YouTube.   I never know what I’m going to stumble on.

Sometimes I stumble on myself.   As in this interview from 1991 (or so it says), where I pontificate about science fiction and fandom.

(In those days, five years before A GAME OF THRONES was published, science fiction was what they asked about when they interviewed me.   When they bothered to interview me at all).

I have absolutely no memory of this interview.   Where I was, who was intervieweing me, why…  none of that.

I remember those glasses, though.

I don’t remember that hair.   My hair was dark brown when I was young.    When I got older, it went to gray and then white.   Judging from this clip, I guess 1991 was when it changed, but I don’t ever recall it being half-and-half like that, or having a dark beard with white hair.   But I guess I did.

Blasts from the past.

I See a JOKER MOON Rising

July 7, 2021 at 1:13 pm
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Is it a bad moon?

Or a new moon, full of hope?

You will need to read our new Wild Cards book, JOKER MOON, to find out.

Our latest volume, number thirty in the overall series, contains stories by Christopher Rowe, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Walton Simons, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Michael Cassutt, Leo Kenden, Steve Perrin, Caroline Spector, David D. Levine… and the last story from the late great Victor Milan, completed by his friend John Jos. Miller.

Theodorus was a dreamer.   As a child, he dreamt of airplanes, rockets, and outer space. When the  wild card virus transformed him into a monstrous snail centaur weighing several tons, his boyhood  dreams seemed out of reach, but a Witherspoon is not so easily defeated.

Years and decades passed, and Theodorus grew to maturity and came into his fortune. . . but still his dream endured.  But now when he looked upward into the night sky, he saw more than just the Moon . . . he saw a joker homeland, a refuge where the outcast children of the wild card could make a place of their own, safe from hate and harm.

An impossible dream, some said. Others, alarmed by the prospect, brought all their power  to bear to oppose him. Theodorus persisted . . .  never dreaming that the Moon  was already inhabited.

And the Moon Maid did not want company.

Copies of JOKER MOON are now available at your favorite local bookstore or online bookseller.

And if you would like an autographed copy, we have those too… at BEASTLY BOOKS.   Go check out the listings at https://www.beastlybooks.com/

 

Current Mood: accomplished accomplished

More Sadness

December 7, 2020 at 8:49 am
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The deaths just keep on coming in this worst of all possible years.

I was very saddened to read of the death of Ben Bova, another victim of Covid-19 (and Donald J. Trump).

Bova was a major science fiction writer, a hard science guy, talented and prolific.   I could not begin to name all his novels; the list is longer than my arm.   He wrote some good short fiction as well, including his collaboration with Harlan Ellison, “Brillo,” which became the basis (uncredited) of a short-lived TV series and one of Harlan’s famous lawsuits.

For all his accomplishments as an author, however, it was as an editor that Ben Bova had the most profound impact on the field… and on my own life and career.   When the legendary John W. Campbell Junior died in 1971, the Conde Nast Publications, publishers of ANALOG, chose Bova to succeed him.  For all his accomplishments, JWC had become increasingly idiosyncratic in his last couple of decades, and ANALOG had become moribund and out of touch.   Ben Bova came in and revitalized the magazine, welcoming a whole new generation of writers who Campbell most likely would never have touched (myself among them).   The changes were not without controversy.   During the first couple of years of his editorship, ANALOG’s lettercol was full of angry “cancel my subscription” letters from readers who insisted that JWC would never have published this or that story.   My own stories were the subjects of some of those complaints, along with work by Joe Haldeman and many others.   The complainers were not wrong; odds were, Campbell would never have bought the stories Bova did.

Back in the 70s, I was selling to all the magazines and most of the original anthologies, but ANALOG became my major market, and Ben Bova was the editor who had the biggest influence on my work.   Previous generations of SF writers were writing for JWC or H.L Gold or Boucher & McComas.   If I was writing for anyone, I was writing for Ben… at least some of the time.

My first sale to ANALOG was actually a piece I did for a journalism class at Northwestern, about computer chess: “The Computer Was A Fish.”   But fiction soon followed, lots of fiction… thanks in large part to Ben Bova.

I got my first cover on ANALOG with “The Second Kind of Loneliness.”   Ben bought that.   The cover was by Frank Kelly Freas.

My first Hugo- and -Nebula nominee (lost both) was “With Morning Comes Mistfall.”   Also published in ANALOG, by Ben.

The second Nebula loser, and first Hugo WINNER, was “A Song for Lya,” a novella from ANALOG.   Bought and published by Ben.   That year, worldcon went to Australia for the first time.   I was still directing chess tournaments to supplement my meagre (growing, but meagre) income from writing, and there was no way I could afford a trip down under, so I asked Ben Bova to accept for me if I won.   I did!  And he did!

Ben also bought “The Storms of Windhaven,” the first my Windhaven collaborations with Lisa Tuttle.   Got a cover for that too.

Oh, and “Seven Times Never Kill Man.”   That one got a Schoenherr cover (one that alledgedly inspired George Lucas to create the Wookiees).  And lost a Hugo, the same year as “Storms.”

Ben serialized my first novel, DYING OF THE LIGHT, in an abridged version called “Mockman.”   With a cover by Vincent di Fate.

And along about 1978, when Ben left ANALOG to take on the editorship of a new slick science fiction/ fact magazine called OMNI, he took me with him.  I published several stories there as well, most notably a novelette called “Sandkings” that some of you may recall.   It won the Hugo and Nebula both, and was the most successful thing I ever wrote until I began A GAME OF THRONES.

Looking back, it is amazing to realize how many of the stories that made my name were edited and published by Ben Bova.   Without him, I cannot say for certain that I would have had a career at all    He won four Hugo awards in a row as Best Editor, as I recall, and deserved every one.   If he had continued to edit, I have no doubt he would have won more… but writing was his first love, and in the 80s he returned to his own work.

His family and friends have my condolences.   I know he will be missed.

These are dark times… for science fiction, as well as the world at large.    I am still reeling from Kay McCauley’s death last month… from Gardner Dozois’s death in 2018… and now this.   The lights are going out.   Giants are passing.   We shall not see their like again.

 

 

Current Mood: sad sad

Words For Our Times

July 11, 2020 at 10:02 am
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Current Mood: contemplative contemplative

At the Irish Film Institute with Robby the Robot

September 12, 2019 at 10:59 am
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One of the highlights of my time in Dublin was my visit to Altair IV, courtesy of the kind folks at the Irish Film Institute.  The IFI has an impressive facility there in Temple Bar, and as part of the celebrations of worldcon, they invited me to present one of my favorite films, and speak about why I loved it.   I was delighted to do so.

No one who knows me or has read this blog for long will be even remotely surprised by the movie I chose: the MGM science fiction film, FORBIDDEN PLANET, from 1956, a classic whose influence on all the SF films and television shows that followed was profound.   Starring Leslie Nielsen, Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis, and Robby the Robot.

((I couldn’t bring Robby with me to Dublin, alas, but I did bring Commander J.J. Adams and Altaira)). 

Maura McHugh joined me afterwards for a discussion of the film, and some Q&A with the audience.  Listen in, if you’d like (sorry, it’s audio only).   And then go out and watch the movie again.   It’s still great… and I hope to hell that they NEVER remake it.   They’d only mess it up.

Current Mood: geeky geeky

Shout Out for Mike

September 2, 2019 at 2:54 pm
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Mike Resnick is one of the giants of our field.  A former worldcon Guest of Honor, a Hugo winner (many times) and Hugo loser (even more times), founder and editor of GALAXY’S EDGE magazine, novelist and editor and anthologist and unfailing champion of new writers (he calls them his Writer Babies, and they are legion).

Now he needs help, to deal with some staggering medical bills.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help him.

Go ye, and contribute.  Every dollar helps.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-mike-resnick-pay-off-a-neardeath-experience

 

Current Mood: hopeful hopeful

Wahls Wins Sense of Wonder

June 6, 2019 at 7:04 am
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Back in 2017, I announced that I would be sponsoring an annual scholarship to the Clarion Writers Workshop in San Diego.   I named it the ‘Sense of Wonder’ scholarship.  This is what I said then:

” I’ve made my life in the worlds of science fiction and fantasy, and an awful lot of people helped me along the way.    I wouldn’t be where I am today without them.   But if I may echo something that Robert A. Heinlein once said, you can never pay back the people who helped you when you were starting out… but you can pay forward, and give a hand to those coming after.

 “With that in mind, I’m pleased to announce that I will be funding a new scholarship for the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers Workshop.  Held every summer at the University of California San Diego under the auspices of the Clarion Foundation, the workshop’s roots go back the 1960s and Clarion College in Pennsylvania, where it was founded by Robin Scott Wilson, Damon Knight, and Kate Wilhelm.  Its alumni include more professional sf and fantasy writers than I can possibly hope to name, and the list of Clarion instructors over the years is a veritable Who’s Who of our genre.

 “Many of the students at Clarion already  receive financial aid through a variety of existing scholarships and grants that cover all or part of their expenses, but there’s always need and there’s never enough money, and it’s my hope that this new scholarship will offer an opportunity to one more worthy applicant who might not otherwise have been able to afford the experience.   It will be a full scholarship, given annually, and covering tuition, fees, and lodging for a single student for the full six weeks of intensive writing and criticism that is Clarion.  

” We’ll be calling it the Sense of Wonder scholarship.

 “The award will not be limited by age, race, sex, religion, skin color, place of origin, or field of study.   The only criteria will be literary.

 ” The first science fiction novel I ever read was Heinlein’s HAVE SPACE SUIT, WILL TRAVEL, a book that begins with a boy named Kip in a used spacesuit standing in his back yard, and goes on to take him (and us) to the moon, and Pluto, and the Lesser Magellanic Cloud, along the way encountering aliens both horrifying (the Wormfaces)  and benevolent (the Mother Thing), as well as a girl named Peewee.  In the end it’s up to Kip and Peewee to defend the entire human race when Earth is put on trial.   I had never read anything like it, and from the moment I finished I knew I wanted more; more Heinlein, more science fiction, more aliens and spacesuits and starships… more of vast interstellar vistas that had opened before me.

 “Since then I have read thousands of other science fiction novels, and written a few myself.   Modern imaginative fiction is a house with many rooms, and I’ve visited most of them.   Cyberpunk, New Wave, magic realism, slipstream, military SF, dystopias, utopias, urban fantasy, high fantasy, splatterpunk, the new weird, the new space opera, you name it. I’ve sampled all of it, and I’m glad it’s all there, but when it comes right down it, the SF I love best is still the SF that gives me that sense of wonder I found in that Heinlein book almost sixty years ago, and afterwards in the works of Roger Zelazny, Jack Vance, Alfred Bester, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jack Vance, Andre Norton, the early Chip Delany, Jack Vance, Frank Herbert, Robert Silverberg, Jack Vance, Eric Frank Russell, Cordwainer Smith, Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, and so many more.  (Did I mention Jack Vance?)   I love the aliens, be they threatening or benevolent, the more alien the better.  I dream of starships, strange worlds beneath the light of distant suns.   I want the sights and sounds and smells of times and places and cultures colorful and exotic.  That was the sort of science fiction that I tried to write myself with the Thousand Worlds stories that made my name in the 70s, when I was just breaking in as a writer.   

 It’s my hope that this new Clarion scholarship will help find and encourage young aspiring writers who dream the same sort of dreams, that it will give a small boost up to the next  Roger Zelazny, the next Ursula Le Guin, the next Jack Vance. “

#

This year’s winner of the Sense of Wonder is JAMIE WAHLS.

Here’s the official press release from Clarion:

Clarion Workshop Announces George R.R. Martin’s

’Sense of Wonder’ Scholarship Recipient

BERKLEY, Calif. — Jamie Wahls had his plans in order after receiving his acceptance to the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop. Then George R. R. Martin picked up his tuition by awarding Jamie this year’s Sense of Wonder Scholarship.

The scholarship, administered by The Clarion Foundation, seeks to encourage aspiring writers who strive to capture that sense in stories which cross the vast vista of interstellar space. The workshop, now in its 51st year, is hosted at the Arthur C. Clarke Centre for Human Imagination at the University of California, San Diego.

Wahls’ short fiction about transhumanism, regret, people falling in love with spaceships, galactic stewardship, and the dangerous security flaws in our mental architecture can be found in places like Strange Horizons and Clarkesworld.  He works at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkley, Calif., a nonprofit that researches the question of how to make super-intelligent machines safe and useful.

His day job sounds challenging enough. When asked about why he also writes science fiction, Jamie responded:

“Why do I write? I grew up reading 1950s science fiction, and I am very glad I did. It had its flaws, sure — our culture is now more progressive in many wholesome and clearly good ways — but that era had an underlying sense of possibility and determination that I found noble; a deep, unembarrassed belief that the future could and would be brighter than today, and the raw, bastard resolve to seize that future and bring it to all humanity.

“Nowadays, few of us had our formative years in the shadow of total war. This era’s Great Causes are important, still, terribly so — but they’re subtler, and therefore harder to feel certain about. It makes us … embarrassed to care too deeply about something. It makes us shy to believe in something truly wondrous.

“But! As text conveys knowledge, fiction conveys experience. I want to show characters fighting for things that are actually worth fighting for — such as a really, really good future for all of humanity. I want the next generation who grow up reading this to say ‘yes, that’s the sci-fi future I demand — that’s the one that’s anywhere near good enough.’

“Because settling for anything less will mean we, as a civilization, will slouch onward into one of the boring dark corporate dystopia futures, if we get a future at all.”

 

Kim Stanley Robinson, celebrated science fiction writer and board member of the Clarion Foundation, said of Wahls, “One of the great delights of reviewing stories during application season for Clarion is coming across talents like Jamie’s. For George R.R. Martin to support up-and-coming writers through his ‘Sense of Wonder’ Scholarship is a tremendous gift to the next generation of science fiction authors.”

Find more about Wahls at what he describes as his “brutally minimalist” website jamiewahls.com. His twitter account is @Jamie Wahls.

The Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers’ Workshop is an annual six-week immersive workshop taught by a rotating staff of renowned science fiction and fantasy writers. The application period for the 2020 workshop opens in December. More information is available at theclarionfoundation.org.