A sci-fi novel by John Scalzi
I’ve read two books by John Scalzi. The first was a collection of his blog articles, all focused on guidance for prospective writers. It had a lot of similarities to King’s On Writing, but also emphasized Scalzi’s experience with online communities and things like blogs. It was in some part due to Scalzi’s suggestions that I went ahead and fired up Virtual Vellum as a blog, rather than just keeping a private writing journal in Word. He suggested that a writer who had taken the time to make a name for himself online would stand a better chance at getting published than an equally-talented writer without such credentials. What’s funny is that I mentioned this to Mil Millington, a humor writer whose work I’ve followed for many years, and Mil had a different experience. He said that having an online following seduced publishers into spending less on marketing than they otherwise would because “you already have an online following. They’ll buy your stuff regardless.” This despite the fact that his online followers were used to getting his content for free and weren’t the least inclined, generally speaking, to pay money for it. Mil also said that, essentially, getting published is a matter of pure and unvarnished luck unless you happen to already be famous for something else like winning the Olympics or sleeping with a politician. Well, I don’t think being on Good Morning America for two minutes really counts as famous (heck, I had lunch at the Dinosaur on Wednesday and nobody there even recognized me until I said hello to the owner). I think it’s safe to say that such fame, such as it is, is fleeting at best and probably isn’t going to help me sell any books. And my wife’s not a politician and isn’t likely to be, so that's that for the other option. All that’s left, then, is raw luck, to which I figure that my chances are as good as anybody else’s and I might as well have a go at it.
None of which has anything at all to do with the other book: Old Man’s War, by John Scalzi. But nobody’s paying me to write book reviews which means I’m free to ramble on during the introduction about whatever amuses me.
Old Man’s War is a quick read, though I’m not sure if that’s because it’s a short book (though it’s certainly not hefty by any means) or because it takes hold of you by the skull and pulls your eyeballs across each page as rapidly as they can rip comprehension from the very text on the paper. I literally read the entire book in a single (fairly long) night, and I can’t think of any other book I’ve ever done that with. I’m not a terribly fast reader and usually only read 60-80 pages in a sitting. Instead, I sat up until the wee hours and devoured Old Man’s War from cover to cover.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s the greatest book I’ve ever read, but like a really good movie or TV show it’s just a pleasurable, welcome read that does such a good job of making you care about the characters and their situation that you simply can’t wait to see what happens next.
The premise of the novel is very interesting – that, in the future, humans have achieved interstellar space travel, however the ones who have it keep the Earth, their ultimate homeworld, largely isolated from it. Those who leave the Earth can never return, whether they go to colonize new worlds or to join the spacefaring colonial military. In fact, those who do join the military are almost exclusively retirees aged 75 and up who are hoping for the advanced medical technologies of the colonial military to somehow make them young again. And without giving too much away, it’s fair to say that that is just what happens, after a fashion.
But the galaxy is a big, nasty place, inhabited by a wide variety of alien creatures, most of whom either want the same planets that humans are trying to colonize, or may actually want to have humans as a snack. Or both. So the main character who, like the author is named John and who, like the author lived in Ohio and who, like the author worked as a writer, soon finds himself hurled headlong into a series of pitched battles against monstrous extraterrestrials. As far as I know, the author hasn’t actually done that yet, but consciously or otherwise I suspect he wants to.
The strengths of this novel are several. First, the author handles the technology in a believable way that’s sufficiently accessible to the average reader to be engaging without being overwhelming or seeming too much like magic. Next, he develops very real-seeming characters who resonate as if they’re people you might actually have met. This makes it much easier for the reader to care about and identify with them as they experience some truly amazing, and in some cases horrific, adventures. Lastly, his pace is good in terms of balancing action with suspense, both interspersed with little dips into “daily life” to break the tension. Best of all, he raises some really interesting questions about everything from the application of medical technology to remake people into what they might want to be (possibly in violation of the basic design premises of what entails the human being) to the ethics of dealing with foreign powers (in this case true aliens) in a scramble for limited and precious resources and with an assumption that failure to maintain a balance of power (or, even better, actual superiority) puts the entire human species at risk of annihilation. He doesn’t ever get too deep – that’s part of what makes this a very quick read – but the issues are there for the discerning reader who cares to engage them.
Beyond the fact that I ripped through this book with unprecedented speed, the best compliment I can give it is that I’m very much looking forward to getting my hands on the sequels. Actually, the best compliment might arguably be that I’d love it if it were made into a movie. Hard to say which is the higher praise, but regardless it’s safe to conclude that I liked it a lot. If you’re a fan of futurism and small-unit combat against alien forces, then I highly recommend Old Man’s War by John Scalzi.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Fagbug
No, it's not homophobic - that's actually what it's called. Let me clarify - I parked next to this today:
It was certainly an eyebrow-raising experience to see this thing parked at a Panera Bread in Clay, NY. But the story behind it is very interesting. You can check out the website at www.fagbug.com but the short version is that the car's owner had anti-gay graffiti sprayed onto her VW bug a couple of years ago and decided to leave it there. She's since driven the car all over the country, worked on films and books about the experience, kept a blog about the whole experience, and given lectures and interviews pretty much everywhere. In the process she's sold t-shirts and stickers to keep herself on the road, driven in various gay parades and had the car "wrapped" in the rainbow pattern with logo that you see in the picture (it used to be just gray). Whatever your thoughts on the issues she's addressing, there's no question that the car's a real attention-getter.
It was certainly an eyebrow-raising experience to see this thing parked at a Panera Bread in Clay, NY. But the story behind it is very interesting. You can check out the website at www.fagbug.com but the short version is that the car's owner had anti-gay graffiti sprayed onto her VW bug a couple of years ago and decided to leave it there. She's since driven the car all over the country, worked on films and books about the experience, kept a blog about the whole experience, and given lectures and interviews pretty much everywhere. In the process she's sold t-shirts and stickers to keep herself on the road, driven in various gay parades and had the car "wrapped" in the rainbow pattern with logo that you see in the picture (it used to be just gray). Whatever your thoughts on the issues she's addressing, there's no question that the car's a real attention-getter.
What the Hell Am I?
Be nice when you answer
Today I did it – I wrapped up my course for Onondaga Community College. I backed up all of my files (so that should I ever teach this course again, I won’t have to create every test and presentation from scratch. That would be nice), tallied up all of my final averages, and posted them to the school’s online grade submission program. Tell me if this makes sense: all of my assignments were graded on a percentage out of 100. So my students received final cumulative averages such as 91% or the like. Now, of course, colleges usually register Grade Point Averages on a 4.0 scale (with 4.0 being the highest you can get in any class or for an average across all classes), so it makes sense that there’d need to be a conversion. However, the grades needed to be entered into the grade program as LETTER grades. Instead of a 91%, I needed to enter an A. Or is that an A-? And therein lies the problem – there doesn’t seem to be any consistent scoring scale at OCC to convert percentage scores into letter grades. So what ended up being an A in my class might have been an A- in some other teacher’s class. How can that be, you ask? I have no idea, but it’s among the dumber things I’ve run into.
And before you wonder, yes, I searched high and low on both the school’s own public-facing and internal websites as well as by doing a Google search against anything OCC-related and I came up mostly empty. I did find grading scales used by two different teachers in two different departments – modern languages and science – but their scales weren’t the same, so I gave up trying to be consistent and just did what I wanted. On the plus side, despite some students who massively failed to complete their work throughout the semester (including one student who just didn’t show up for the last several weeks of the semester), I ended up with only one F in my entire class. I’m not thrilled by that – this class was designed and intended to be a cake-walk for anybody who showed up, paid attention, and carefully followed directions. Some folks aren’t so good at those things, but given the high number of As in my class, I’m at least comfortable that the course itself was well-presented and that its objectives were achievable. It’s funny, though, to see students who are new to the college experience complain loudly and often about how hard a class is because they’re used to the rampant hand-holding of high school. I imagine my course was a bit of a rude awakening in that regard, but at least they’ll be better prepared when they run into a truly difficult class and/or a lousy teacher. Well, I can hope, anyway. Regardless, I really did enjoy teaching this semester and I hope I get to do it again in the future. I met some really great folks and was glad of the opportunity to help them master some key computer skills that are guaranteed to be of value in their studies and their careers.
So tomorrow, I write. Which raises the question: what do I call myself? You see, writers typically aren’t considered to be writers until they actually publish something. But I’d expect it will take me around 4 months just to write my first novel, a couple more months to edit and revise it (minimum) and who knows how long to find a publisher for it (assuming that I ever do). So during all that time, I’m doing nothing but writing for hour after hour every day, but according to the writing community, I’m not a writer. So what am I? Unemployed? I’m just going to say I’m a writer and anybody who doesn’t like it is welcome to complain and even hop up and down if it makes them feel better. It’s not likely to be a big deal, anyway. As long as I don’t hang out in places that other writers frequent, there won’t be anybody around who’ll care whether I call myself a writer or a bard or a street sweeper. Except maybe the street sweeper’s union. You know how unions can be about that sort of thing.
I met with my old friend Senthil for lunch today, and he was if anything more enthusiastic about the prospect that I’m going to write some novels than I am. I have to say that I really appreciate the confidence people who know me seem to have in my ability to craft an exciting and entertaining story. I’m anxious to get to work in the hopes that I can live up to their expectations. One thing’s for sure – I’M looking forward to reading my stories, whether or not I can find a publisher to bind them and stick them on some store shelves. That’s one of the great things about having a crappy memory – if I write a book and then set it aside for a bit, I can then pick it up some time later and it will be almost as fresh to me as if it were somebody else’s work that had showed up in an Amazon.com box. Granted, that may be a bit of a problem when I’m trying to write and edit for continuity, but at this point I don’t have any unrealistic expectations that it’s likely to change anytime soon. My memory stinks, and that’s how it is.
For those who are interested, I’ll be doing my writing on a Windows 7 computer running Microsoft Office 2010 BETA, which I installed just this evening. So far it’s very much like Office 2007, but the few changes I’ve seen I’ve liked. Once I’ve spent some time with it I’ll post a review. So eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I write.
Today I did it – I wrapped up my course for Onondaga Community College. I backed up all of my files (so that should I ever teach this course again, I won’t have to create every test and presentation from scratch. That would be nice), tallied up all of my final averages, and posted them to the school’s online grade submission program. Tell me if this makes sense: all of my assignments were graded on a percentage out of 100. So my students received final cumulative averages such as 91% or the like. Now, of course, colleges usually register Grade Point Averages on a 4.0 scale (with 4.0 being the highest you can get in any class or for an average across all classes), so it makes sense that there’d need to be a conversion. However, the grades needed to be entered into the grade program as LETTER grades. Instead of a 91%, I needed to enter an A. Or is that an A-? And therein lies the problem – there doesn’t seem to be any consistent scoring scale at OCC to convert percentage scores into letter grades. So what ended up being an A in my class might have been an A- in some other teacher’s class. How can that be, you ask? I have no idea, but it’s among the dumber things I’ve run into.
And before you wonder, yes, I searched high and low on both the school’s own public-facing and internal websites as well as by doing a Google search against anything OCC-related and I came up mostly empty. I did find grading scales used by two different teachers in two different departments – modern languages and science – but their scales weren’t the same, so I gave up trying to be consistent and just did what I wanted. On the plus side, despite some students who massively failed to complete their work throughout the semester (including one student who just didn’t show up for the last several weeks of the semester), I ended up with only one F in my entire class. I’m not thrilled by that – this class was designed and intended to be a cake-walk for anybody who showed up, paid attention, and carefully followed directions. Some folks aren’t so good at those things, but given the high number of As in my class, I’m at least comfortable that the course itself was well-presented and that its objectives were achievable. It’s funny, though, to see students who are new to the college experience complain loudly and often about how hard a class is because they’re used to the rampant hand-holding of high school. I imagine my course was a bit of a rude awakening in that regard, but at least they’ll be better prepared when they run into a truly difficult class and/or a lousy teacher. Well, I can hope, anyway. Regardless, I really did enjoy teaching this semester and I hope I get to do it again in the future. I met some really great folks and was glad of the opportunity to help them master some key computer skills that are guaranteed to be of value in their studies and their careers.
So tomorrow, I write. Which raises the question: what do I call myself? You see, writers typically aren’t considered to be writers until they actually publish something. But I’d expect it will take me around 4 months just to write my first novel, a couple more months to edit and revise it (minimum) and who knows how long to find a publisher for it (assuming that I ever do). So during all that time, I’m doing nothing but writing for hour after hour every day, but according to the writing community, I’m not a writer. So what am I? Unemployed? I’m just going to say I’m a writer and anybody who doesn’t like it is welcome to complain and even hop up and down if it makes them feel better. It’s not likely to be a big deal, anyway. As long as I don’t hang out in places that other writers frequent, there won’t be anybody around who’ll care whether I call myself a writer or a bard or a street sweeper. Except maybe the street sweeper’s union. You know how unions can be about that sort of thing.
I met with my old friend Senthil for lunch today, and he was if anything more enthusiastic about the prospect that I’m going to write some novels than I am. I have to say that I really appreciate the confidence people who know me seem to have in my ability to craft an exciting and entertaining story. I’m anxious to get to work in the hopes that I can live up to their expectations. One thing’s for sure – I’M looking forward to reading my stories, whether or not I can find a publisher to bind them and stick them on some store shelves. That’s one of the great things about having a crappy memory – if I write a book and then set it aside for a bit, I can then pick it up some time later and it will be almost as fresh to me as if it were somebody else’s work that had showed up in an Amazon.com box. Granted, that may be a bit of a problem when I’m trying to write and edit for continuity, but at this point I don’t have any unrealistic expectations that it’s likely to change anytime soon. My memory stinks, and that’s how it is.
For those who are interested, I’ll be doing my writing on a Windows 7 computer running Microsoft Office 2010 BETA, which I installed just this evening. So far it’s very much like Office 2007, but the few changes I’ve seen I’ve liked. Once I’ve spent some time with it I’ll post a review. So eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I write.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
[Game Review] Batman: Arkham Asylum
I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum on the PC and I’d say I’m pretty happy with it. It’s far from my favorite game ever (that’s probably Deus Ex), but it’s pretty good. Certainly the quality of the game is very high. It’s got some of the most visually impressive gameplay I’ve seen, both in terms of cinematic cutscenes and regular action. It’s also got very good voice acting and a dynamic, interesting storyline for the most part.
As the name implies, the game takes place entirely on Gotham City’s Arkham Island, home to an Asylum for the criminally insane, and, incidentally, home to many of Batman’s greatest rivals. The game begins with Batman escorting the Joker back to Arkham after having captured him attacking Gotham City. There’s a fairly long opening sequence as you walk with Joker’s guards into the depths of the Arkham facility before everything predictably goes to hell, but the walk gives you an opportunity to become familiar with some of the game’s controls and, if you pay attention, the layout of part of the Asylum that you’ll have to traverse again later.
The rest of the game is a hunt through the corridors and ventilation shafts of Arkham as you meet and defeat an array of villains ranging from Joker’s lackeys to well-known criminal elements like Victor Szasz and Harley Quinn. You also get to meet some of Batman’s notable and more noble acquaintances, including Commissioner Gordon and his daughter, the Oracle (formerly Batgirl). One of Batman’s gadgets is his computer-enhanced cowl which provides him with instant access to character biographies, maps, and real-time environmental information. This info often includes objects that Batman can pick up or interact with, as well as x-ray scans of everybody in the vicinity which are a big help in detecting thugs before they can jump you.
Batman’s other gadgets include his ever-present batarangs, which are handy for stunning bad guys and slicing ropes at a distance. He has his cape, which lets him glide down from above to avoid injury or even to launch a flying kick to an unsuspecting enemy. His Bat-grapple lets him zip up to high vantage points so he can climb buildings and perch on gargoyles. He can even drop down from those gargoyles to grab an enemy and hoist them up to dangle harmlessly above the ground.
These tools are especially helpful in what is arguably the most inexplicable part of the game – the Riddler has pointlessly scattered little question-mark-shaped statuettes all over Arkham. It’s a little hard to picture Riddler with a large sack of these statues thumping around in the ventilation shafts to hide these clues that do nothing but give Batman something to do to gain experience, but they’re there anyway.
So to summarize the positives: I like the graphics of the game, I like the story, I like the way the history of the Batman comics is woven through the game, and I like all of Batman’s cool gadgets (though I wouldn’t have minded if there were even more of them, as they’re as much a part of the Batman persona as his stoic manner and funky adversaries). Oh yes – and the game is quite long, so I feel like I’m really getting my money’s worth. Now on to what I don’t like:
It’s pretty apparent that this is a game that’s been developed with the console controller in mind. At the very least, it’s been heavily influenced by console-style gameplay, but as it was released first on the Xbox I think it’s safe to say that consoles are a key target market for Batman: Arkham Asylum. And here’s the thing – I don’t really care for console hand-to-hand combat. I’m a child of the 80s, before the concept was invented to that to succeed in a game you needed to know the secret combination of ←←→↑↓↑, which would result in a flying flipping lightning crescent jumpkick with triple-power and 10x experience score. Or something. I dunno. I don’t care to have to remember stuff like that when I’m playing a game. So in Batman, instead of relying on my aim and reflexes like I would in a more traditional first-person-shooter style of game (which, admittedly, Batman isn’t, at the very least because it’s a 3rd-person game where you see Batman running around at the center of your screen), instead I’m frantically clicking the left and/or right mouse buttons while double-tapping the spacebar and sometimes the left control key, plus occasionally hitting Q to toss a batarang, E to stun enemies with my cape, and C to grab them with my grappler. Combat is a fairly significant part of this game, and I find I dread it a little. It’s not truly enough to completely stymie my enjoyment of the game – particularly when I really enjoy using my grappler to zip up to the Asylum’s roofs and then glide down across the property, hopefully stomping on a thug when I land – but it’s definitely not as enjoyable for me as, for example, the combat system of a game like Wolfenstein which is much more to my liking.
The one other thing I’m not hugely fond of is the notion that a lot of the riddles you’re supposed to find are hidden in plain sight in places you’re not able to get to with your current equipment. And not just a few, but MANY riddles are hidden this way. So you know that you’re going to have to come back later and not just to one place, but to most of them. Worse, they’re not all accessed with the same gadgets, so it’s certain that you’ll need to come back to most locations more than once to collect everything. I do like the freedom to revisit parts of the game I’ve been to before, but I don’t really like the extent to which I’m forced to do so in order to complete the game. Worse, by the time you’ve gone back once only to realize that you have the equipment to retrieve some but not all of the riddles, it starts to feel like the game is teasing you. For the Riddler to taunt the Batman is one thing – but for the game to taunt me, the player, is quite another.
On the whole, this is a pretty good game. And for people who DO like the “Street Fighter” style combat controls (ie. the children of the 90s who came after my time in the arcades had passed), and there are a lot of them, this would probably qualify as a great game. I’ll certainly say that it seems to be one of the better superhero games, not that I’ve played too many of those. And it does generally live up to the hype I’d heard about it before I picked it up. I’m having a great deal of fun playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is, ultimately, the measure of the game, and so it measures up. I’d give it a B+, but those who embrace the console-style combat would probably be more apt to call it a solid A. Thanks, Eidos, for reminding me why I always liked the Dark Knight.
As the name implies, the game takes place entirely on Gotham City’s Arkham Island, home to an Asylum for the criminally insane, and, incidentally, home to many of Batman’s greatest rivals. The game begins with Batman escorting the Joker back to Arkham after having captured him attacking Gotham City. There’s a fairly long opening sequence as you walk with Joker’s guards into the depths of the Arkham facility before everything predictably goes to hell, but the walk gives you an opportunity to become familiar with some of the game’s controls and, if you pay attention, the layout of part of the Asylum that you’ll have to traverse again later.
The rest of the game is a hunt through the corridors and ventilation shafts of Arkham as you meet and defeat an array of villains ranging from Joker’s lackeys to well-known criminal elements like Victor Szasz and Harley Quinn. You also get to meet some of Batman’s notable and more noble acquaintances, including Commissioner Gordon and his daughter, the Oracle (formerly Batgirl). One of Batman’s gadgets is his computer-enhanced cowl which provides him with instant access to character biographies, maps, and real-time environmental information. This info often includes objects that Batman can pick up or interact with, as well as x-ray scans of everybody in the vicinity which are a big help in detecting thugs before they can jump you.
Batman’s other gadgets include his ever-present batarangs, which are handy for stunning bad guys and slicing ropes at a distance. He has his cape, which lets him glide down from above to avoid injury or even to launch a flying kick to an unsuspecting enemy. His Bat-grapple lets him zip up to high vantage points so he can climb buildings and perch on gargoyles. He can even drop down from those gargoyles to grab an enemy and hoist them up to dangle harmlessly above the ground.
These tools are especially helpful in what is arguably the most inexplicable part of the game – the Riddler has pointlessly scattered little question-mark-shaped statuettes all over Arkham. It’s a little hard to picture Riddler with a large sack of these statues thumping around in the ventilation shafts to hide these clues that do nothing but give Batman something to do to gain experience, but they’re there anyway.
So to summarize the positives: I like the graphics of the game, I like the story, I like the way the history of the Batman comics is woven through the game, and I like all of Batman’s cool gadgets (though I wouldn’t have minded if there were even more of them, as they’re as much a part of the Batman persona as his stoic manner and funky adversaries). Oh yes – and the game is quite long, so I feel like I’m really getting my money’s worth. Now on to what I don’t like:
It’s pretty apparent that this is a game that’s been developed with the console controller in mind. At the very least, it’s been heavily influenced by console-style gameplay, but as it was released first on the Xbox I think it’s safe to say that consoles are a key target market for Batman: Arkham Asylum. And here’s the thing – I don’t really care for console hand-to-hand combat. I’m a child of the 80s, before the concept was invented to that to succeed in a game you needed to know the secret combination of ←←→↑↓↑, which would result in a flying flipping lightning crescent jumpkick with triple-power and 10x experience score. Or something. I dunno. I don’t care to have to remember stuff like that when I’m playing a game. So in Batman, instead of relying on my aim and reflexes like I would in a more traditional first-person-shooter style of game (which, admittedly, Batman isn’t, at the very least because it’s a 3rd-person game where you see Batman running around at the center of your screen), instead I’m frantically clicking the left and/or right mouse buttons while double-tapping the spacebar and sometimes the left control key, plus occasionally hitting Q to toss a batarang, E to stun enemies with my cape, and C to grab them with my grappler. Combat is a fairly significant part of this game, and I find I dread it a little. It’s not truly enough to completely stymie my enjoyment of the game – particularly when I really enjoy using my grappler to zip up to the Asylum’s roofs and then glide down across the property, hopefully stomping on a thug when I land – but it’s definitely not as enjoyable for me as, for example, the combat system of a game like Wolfenstein which is much more to my liking.
The one other thing I’m not hugely fond of is the notion that a lot of the riddles you’re supposed to find are hidden in plain sight in places you’re not able to get to with your current equipment. And not just a few, but MANY riddles are hidden this way. So you know that you’re going to have to come back later and not just to one place, but to most of them. Worse, they’re not all accessed with the same gadgets, so it’s certain that you’ll need to come back to most locations more than once to collect everything. I do like the freedom to revisit parts of the game I’ve been to before, but I don’t really like the extent to which I’m forced to do so in order to complete the game. Worse, by the time you’ve gone back once only to realize that you have the equipment to retrieve some but not all of the riddles, it starts to feel like the game is teasing you. For the Riddler to taunt the Batman is one thing – but for the game to taunt me, the player, is quite another.
On the whole, this is a pretty good game. And for people who DO like the “Street Fighter” style combat controls (ie. the children of the 90s who came after my time in the arcades had passed), and there are a lot of them, this would probably qualify as a great game. I’ll certainly say that it seems to be one of the better superhero games, not that I’ve played too many of those. And it does generally live up to the hype I’d heard about it before I picked it up. I’m having a great deal of fun playing Batman: Arkham Asylum, which is, ultimately, the measure of the game, and so it measures up. I’d give it a B+, but those who embrace the console-style combat would probably be more apt to call it a solid A. Thanks, Eidos, for reminding me why I always liked the Dark Knight.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Starting My New Job
When I finished at my last job back in February, it was my intent to try to take some of the stories that are kicking around in my head and turn them into novels. Though I knew that that wouldn’t happen right away. The plan was to spend the spring and summer with my kids, whipping the house into shape and spending some quality time with the children. It was a busy summer and a very rewarding one – the kids and I did a lot of stuff together and got ourselves on a very workable schedule.
Just before Labor Day, I began making serious preparations to start my new “job” – to begin writing in earnest. I was days away from sending the kids off to school, the youngest finally entering Kindergarten. This would leave me with about six hours a day to write, write, write. I’d spent months getting ready – I had filled several notebooks and Word documents with my ideas for characters, plotlines, themes, conflict, settings, dialogue, and even occasional snippets of prose. I joined a local writer’s roundtable and hung out with them every Monday for a few months. I had at least two novels and a short story (the latter aimed squarely at a particular writing contest) on the launch pad, ideas for quite a few more kicking around, and I’d even bought some books about writing and publishing to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge. For all of having been an English major and later an English teacher, my actual professional experience with the publishing industry is effectively nil. Oh sure, I’ve written some magazine articles and I’ve written plenty of stuff for business. I even wrote a thick course on IT Project Management that I’m quite proud of, as a consultant to a local college, but with regard to writing (and selling) fiction, all I know is what I’ve read, and what I’ve read is very often contradictory, subjective, relative and only helpful if assimilated as information that could, possibly, maybe, potentially be relevant to me in some as yet undefined way, or may not end up helping me in the least.
Then came The Call. My long-time friend and former coworker Kathy Mollura gave me a shout to let me know that Onondaga Community College, one of my Alma Maters, was in desperate need of computer instructors to keep up with their skyrocketing enrollment. I’d certainly taught plenty of computer courses in my day and had the skills to tackle this one, so I signed up to do it. That was on a Saturday – the course actually began the following Tuesday. Oh, and Monday was a holiday. So effectively I was hired on one day for a course that began, for all practical purposes, the very next afternoon. I had no textbook, no curriculum, I didn’t even know the details of what I would be teaching that very day, let alone for the rest of the semester. Luckily, I can tap dance (metaphorically speaking) like nobody’s business. I dove right in, created some materials to get me up and running for the first week (as I was unable to access the college’s network during that time) and in record time I went from being Mike De Lucia, prospective writer, to Professor De Lucia, Adjunct with the Computer Information Studies department.
It was an accelerated course – only ten weeks long, with classes that were slightly longer than would have otherwise been typical. The textbooks weren’t terrible, but they were often vague and self-contradictory in places, which confused the students (and me) and necessitated that I practice direct lecture to ensure that the concepts the book couldn’t always convey clearly were taught. There did end up being some powerpoint materials that I was able to get my hands on, but still, creating two 90-minute lectures and related assignments, grading homework and creating one or two tests every week was a bit daunting. This was supposed to have been a little side-job that I did a couple of afternoons a week in addition to my writing. It ended up being a full-time job that wasn’t remotely worth the time investment on a dollar-for-dollar basis. I chose to look at it as an investment in the future – it may be that I’ll end up teaching for OCC again, and hopefully the materials I developed this semester will save a tremendous amount of labor next time. But I got no writing done. At all.
Now the course is over. I’ll finish grading the final projects today, then I’ll enter my final grades, make a backup copy of the entire course for myself, and put the whole thing to bed at least until next semester (assuming enrollment and staffing considerations warrant my return). That means that tomorrow I start my new job at long last.
Like a lot of people, I sometimes struggle with change. It isn’t that I fear it, though in this case the immensity of what I’m going to undertake and my wife’s occasional dire warnings as she’s tabulating our finances that “you’d better write a book pretty soon can be a bit daunting at times. But mostly I just find my mind racing during the lead-up to a major professional change, my thoughts awhirl in an attempt to grasp the complexity of my new role and to forcibly impose order on the chaos. At its worst, this tends to manifest in a week or so of sleepless nights, tossing and turning and ultimately giving up on the whole “sleeping thing” as a bad job as my fevered brow considers every challenge in the worst possible light and then attacks them in an often fruitless attempt to develop solutions that would allow me back into my comfort zone. Such has been my pattern over the last several nights as I fret over plot points for which I currently have no good direction or I agonize over continuity issues that may or may not even end up being a part of the story. But aside from being a touch exhausted, I’m no less ready to begin.
One of the nicer things about this 10-week delay in getting started was that I was able to assemble a workable office space down in the basement where, in theory, I might be able to write a little even if the kids are around (though I’m not really counting on it. 9 AM to 3:30 PM will be my prime writing time while the kids are in school. I’ll most likely need to scale back my writing dramatically when the kids are on vacation or breaks. I was able to get a nice scratch-and-dent desk from Staples for a very good price, and the hiatus even coincided with the launch of Windows 7. As such, I now have a brand new DELL PC on that desk, loaded up with Windows and Office 2007 and ready for some action. Today’s my last official day as a college professor, at least until next Semester. Tomorrow, I write.
Just before Labor Day, I began making serious preparations to start my new “job” – to begin writing in earnest. I was days away from sending the kids off to school, the youngest finally entering Kindergarten. This would leave me with about six hours a day to write, write, write. I’d spent months getting ready – I had filled several notebooks and Word documents with my ideas for characters, plotlines, themes, conflict, settings, dialogue, and even occasional snippets of prose. I joined a local writer’s roundtable and hung out with them every Monday for a few months. I had at least two novels and a short story (the latter aimed squarely at a particular writing contest) on the launch pad, ideas for quite a few more kicking around, and I’d even bought some books about writing and publishing to fill in some of the gaps in my knowledge. For all of having been an English major and later an English teacher, my actual professional experience with the publishing industry is effectively nil. Oh sure, I’ve written some magazine articles and I’ve written plenty of stuff for business. I even wrote a thick course on IT Project Management that I’m quite proud of, as a consultant to a local college, but with regard to writing (and selling) fiction, all I know is what I’ve read, and what I’ve read is very often contradictory, subjective, relative and only helpful if assimilated as information that could, possibly, maybe, potentially be relevant to me in some as yet undefined way, or may not end up helping me in the least.
Then came The Call. My long-time friend and former coworker Kathy Mollura gave me a shout to let me know that Onondaga Community College, one of my Alma Maters, was in desperate need of computer instructors to keep up with their skyrocketing enrollment. I’d certainly taught plenty of computer courses in my day and had the skills to tackle this one, so I signed up to do it. That was on a Saturday – the course actually began the following Tuesday. Oh, and Monday was a holiday. So effectively I was hired on one day for a course that began, for all practical purposes, the very next afternoon. I had no textbook, no curriculum, I didn’t even know the details of what I would be teaching that very day, let alone for the rest of the semester. Luckily, I can tap dance (metaphorically speaking) like nobody’s business. I dove right in, created some materials to get me up and running for the first week (as I was unable to access the college’s network during that time) and in record time I went from being Mike De Lucia, prospective writer, to Professor De Lucia, Adjunct with the Computer Information Studies department.
It was an accelerated course – only ten weeks long, with classes that were slightly longer than would have otherwise been typical. The textbooks weren’t terrible, but they were often vague and self-contradictory in places, which confused the students (and me) and necessitated that I practice direct lecture to ensure that the concepts the book couldn’t always convey clearly were taught. There did end up being some powerpoint materials that I was able to get my hands on, but still, creating two 90-minute lectures and related assignments, grading homework and creating one or two tests every week was a bit daunting. This was supposed to have been a little side-job that I did a couple of afternoons a week in addition to my writing. It ended up being a full-time job that wasn’t remotely worth the time investment on a dollar-for-dollar basis. I chose to look at it as an investment in the future – it may be that I’ll end up teaching for OCC again, and hopefully the materials I developed this semester will save a tremendous amount of labor next time. But I got no writing done. At all.
Now the course is over. I’ll finish grading the final projects today, then I’ll enter my final grades, make a backup copy of the entire course for myself, and put the whole thing to bed at least until next semester (assuming enrollment and staffing considerations warrant my return). That means that tomorrow I start my new job at long last.
Like a lot of people, I sometimes struggle with change. It isn’t that I fear it, though in this case the immensity of what I’m going to undertake and my wife’s occasional dire warnings as she’s tabulating our finances that “you’d better write a book pretty soon can be a bit daunting at times. But mostly I just find my mind racing during the lead-up to a major professional change, my thoughts awhirl in an attempt to grasp the complexity of my new role and to forcibly impose order on the chaos. At its worst, this tends to manifest in a week or so of sleepless nights, tossing and turning and ultimately giving up on the whole “sleeping thing” as a bad job as my fevered brow considers every challenge in the worst possible light and then attacks them in an often fruitless attempt to develop solutions that would allow me back into my comfort zone. Such has been my pattern over the last several nights as I fret over plot points for which I currently have no good direction or I agonize over continuity issues that may or may not even end up being a part of the story. But aside from being a touch exhausted, I’m no less ready to begin.
One of the nicer things about this 10-week delay in getting started was that I was able to assemble a workable office space down in the basement where, in theory, I might be able to write a little even if the kids are around (though I’m not really counting on it. 9 AM to 3:30 PM will be my prime writing time while the kids are in school. I’ll most likely need to scale back my writing dramatically when the kids are on vacation or breaks. I was able to get a nice scratch-and-dent desk from Staples for a very good price, and the hiatus even coincided with the launch of Windows 7. As such, I now have a brand new DELL PC on that desk, loaded up with Windows and Office 2007 and ready for some action. Today’s my last official day as a college professor, at least until next Semester. Tomorrow, I write.
Monday, November 16, 2009
The Chronicles of Heroes
I’ve always liked comic books. I began reading fantasy and sci-fi novels by around 5th grade or thereabouts (definitely not later, but quite possibly sooner), but by that time I had already been reading comic books for some time. I’ve written before about how I loved to haunt the Westvale Plaza shopping center, and one of my regular destinations was the Stop & Swap bookstore. In addition to shelf after shelf of used books, the Stop & Swap had quite a few boxes of used comics. Among them were some truly awful titles from the 60s and 70s, such as the very thick “Superman Family” comics – stories of Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and, I kid you not, their super-dog and super cat, as well as a host of villains bent on marginally inconveniencing the world.
I’m often amazed at some of the truly insipid titles I used to greatly enjoy – comics of that era hadn’t woken up to themselves, yet, and were often mired in trite, repetitive, unimaginative and just plain awful stories. I can’t begin to say how many times I read the “origin” stories of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the others, which often seemed to be repeated in nearly every issue.
What also surprises me is the truly dizzying array of comic titles I read, and yet I somehow missed the Uncanny X-Men and a few other titles that were trying to introduce a level of excellence in writing and dialogue that the comics of the era were lacking. Still, I read just about everything else – I was particularly fond of Superman, Batman, the Justice League of America, Green Lantern & Green Arrow and various related titles (like Black Canary and the Flash, for instance). I loved ROM, Space Knight and was very disappointed when it was canceled. I liked the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and I remember dabbling in Thor and the Silver Surfer (who was brand new at the time). I never got into The Avengers for some reason, and read very little Iron Man, but I was a big fan of the Legion of Super Heroes – a group of teen heroes from the Metropolis of the distant future, who included a time-traveling Superboy and a good-aligned Braniac among their members. But I’m not too proud to admit that Superman Family wasn’t the only crapola that I read – I vividly remember collecting Plastic Man for quite some time, even though I can’t conceive that I might possibly have overlooked that fact that it was terrible.
Comics served as a gateway for me – an introduction to more substantial works of fiction. I read comics avidly for probably around seven or eight years, but by the time I reached my teens I had outgrown the cheap, vapid storytelling of the comics I’d been reading. True, there were some titles around in the late 70s and early 80s that were trying to rise above the mindlessness that had tended to dominate the comics industry for so long – at least since the inception of the Comics Code had served to self-outlaw such a wide array of interesting plot devices and concepts – but as I’d said those weren’t the comics I was reading. I probably tended to gravitate either to those titles I was already comfortable with, or to those with the flashiest covers (or both – if given a choice between two flashy covers, I was certainly going to pick Supes or Green Lantern over Magneto and the X-Men, because I didn’t have a clue what an X-Man was, but I knew Green Lantern’s creed by heart. “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!” See? I still know it! Plus I Googled it to be sure I had it right.).
So I have a fond place in my heart for comics, even if my early love-affair with them was largely temporary. My family moved when I was almost fourteen, and at our pre-moving garage sale I sold my entire comics collection for what I vaguely recall was a pittance. I suppose this beats all of the guys out there whose mothers threw away their comics when they went off to college, but it’s still a touch disappointing. In amongst all of the crap there must surely have been some quality comics in that box.
It would be nearly ten years before I picked up another comic. That’s right, I entirely missed the comics of the 1980s, which is when comics really began to think for the first time. I was inspired to begin collecting once again in the early 1990s for primarily two reasons. First, my best friend Bill had gotten into comics in a big way, and his enthusiasm for them was infectious. In fact, one of the things Bill liked best was the one thing I least enjoyed even after I hopped back onto the comics bandwagon – crossovers. Bill thought nothing of picking up some 20-30 comics across four or six different titles across a year’s time in order to get an entire story. You see, a publisher like Marvel would introduce a storyline, and spread the details across a whole series of individual comic book titles. In order to get the full picture, you had to buy all of the related titles. Bill thought this was great – I thought it was horribly convoluted and expensive. Regardless, I did buy into it to an extent, in part because of a Saturday Morning cartoon.
That cartoon was X-Men the Animated Series, and it was pretty good for what it was. It was relatively smart, its characters had real personalities, its villains weren’t caricatures, and it had a story arc that crossed multiple episodes. It also took some of the best storylines of the last 10+ years of the X-Men titles and brought them to the small screen. I was intrigued and I found myself enthusiastically diving into comics once again. I’ve since cut back to only a couple of titles, but for a time I was taking a stack of comics away from the comic store every week or two – X-Men, Spawn, Witchblade, The Darkness (which was mostly for my wife. I don’t really remember reading it), a handful of X-Men spin-offs (though by no means all of them. Egads! There were lots and lots of X-Men comics back then) and a few others I don’t really remember just now. I still have them, though.
It was at this time that I first started to visit Comix Zone, which has been my comics store of choice ever since. I’ve watched owner Greg Van Camp grow his business during that time. I remember the store I first visited, which was just a straight run back from the door, with a counter on the left and several rows of tables stuffed with comics. I remember every December Greg would have a “Christmas Blow-Out” party, where a large group of comics geeks would gather around while Greg bestowed prizes and give-aways upon them. I was one of those geeks, obviously, or I wouldn’t be familiar with the ritual. I remember Greg’s shop doubling in size as he absorbed the store next to his. And more recently, I remember Greg moving across the street three and a half years ago to an even larger space with room for all sorts of non-comic merchandise as well as gaming tables in the back where regular customers would play various role-playing games, collectible card games and wage great battles between mighty little miniatures. And through this entire time, I’ve maintained a subscription to a list of comic titles that has changed quite a bit over the twelve or thirteen years that I’ve been a customer there.
For a big chunk of that time, I registered my protest against rampant crossovers by maintaining a subscription to one title that was guaranteed to never cross over – Marvel’s What If? comic. The concept behind this title was an investigation of alternate possibilities within the Marvel universe. Granted, by not reading every possible Marvel title I didn’t always fully grasp the full meaning of these alternate storylines, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. In part because most were fairly accessible – what if character X had been a bad guy instead of a good guy was pretty straightforward, after all. But also in part because they were self-contained stories that tended to turn the “known” world on its head. Anything could happen in a What If? comic, and I really enjoyed them. They’ve popped back up from time to time, but the comic as a regular title ended in the late 1990s.
These days, I subscribe to only a couple of titles. My subscription list essentially boils down to “Anything written by Babylon 5 Creator J. Michael Straczynski” plus the Dark Tower series based on the books by Stephen King. Since Straczynski is only writing Thor at the moment (and The Twelve, which is on some sort of hiatus), I’m currently just getting two titles. But whether I’m getting two or twenty comics, one thing is certain – they’re not the same kinds of books I used to read as a kid. Where the comics of the 70s had heroes who were unswervingly heroic and villains who were usually evil for no other reason than evil’s sake, modern comics are filled with all of the ambiguities and human foibles you’d expect to find in any decent novel. And so the years trek forward and I read the stories and look at the artistry as the tales are spun out thirty or so pages at a time, month after month after month. And I lose myself, for a little while, in the chronicles of heroes.
I’m often amazed at some of the truly insipid titles I used to greatly enjoy – comics of that era hadn’t woken up to themselves, yet, and were often mired in trite, repetitive, unimaginative and just plain awful stories. I can’t begin to say how many times I read the “origin” stories of Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and the others, which often seemed to be repeated in nearly every issue.
What also surprises me is the truly dizzying array of comic titles I read, and yet I somehow missed the Uncanny X-Men and a few other titles that were trying to introduce a level of excellence in writing and dialogue that the comics of the era were lacking. Still, I read just about everything else – I was particularly fond of Superman, Batman, the Justice League of America, Green Lantern & Green Arrow and various related titles (like Black Canary and the Flash, for instance). I loved ROM, Space Knight and was very disappointed when it was canceled. I liked the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and I remember dabbling in Thor and the Silver Surfer (who was brand new at the time). I never got into The Avengers for some reason, and read very little Iron Man, but I was a big fan of the Legion of Super Heroes – a group of teen heroes from the Metropolis of the distant future, who included a time-traveling Superboy and a good-aligned Braniac among their members. But I’m not too proud to admit that Superman Family wasn’t the only crapola that I read – I vividly remember collecting Plastic Man for quite some time, even though I can’t conceive that I might possibly have overlooked that fact that it was terrible.
Comics served as a gateway for me – an introduction to more substantial works of fiction. I read comics avidly for probably around seven or eight years, but by the time I reached my teens I had outgrown the cheap, vapid storytelling of the comics I’d been reading. True, there were some titles around in the late 70s and early 80s that were trying to rise above the mindlessness that had tended to dominate the comics industry for so long – at least since the inception of the Comics Code had served to self-outlaw such a wide array of interesting plot devices and concepts – but as I’d said those weren’t the comics I was reading. I probably tended to gravitate either to those titles I was already comfortable with, or to those with the flashiest covers (or both – if given a choice between two flashy covers, I was certainly going to pick Supes or Green Lantern over Magneto and the X-Men, because I didn’t have a clue what an X-Man was, but I knew Green Lantern’s creed by heart. “In brightest day, in blackest night, no evil shall escape my sight. Let those who worship evil's might, beware my power... Green Lantern's light!” See? I still know it! Plus I Googled it to be sure I had it right.).
So I have a fond place in my heart for comics, even if my early love-affair with them was largely temporary. My family moved when I was almost fourteen, and at our pre-moving garage sale I sold my entire comics collection for what I vaguely recall was a pittance. I suppose this beats all of the guys out there whose mothers threw away their comics when they went off to college, but it’s still a touch disappointing. In amongst all of the crap there must surely have been some quality comics in that box.
It would be nearly ten years before I picked up another comic. That’s right, I entirely missed the comics of the 1980s, which is when comics really began to think for the first time. I was inspired to begin collecting once again in the early 1990s for primarily two reasons. First, my best friend Bill had gotten into comics in a big way, and his enthusiasm for them was infectious. In fact, one of the things Bill liked best was the one thing I least enjoyed even after I hopped back onto the comics bandwagon – crossovers. Bill thought nothing of picking up some 20-30 comics across four or six different titles across a year’s time in order to get an entire story. You see, a publisher like Marvel would introduce a storyline, and spread the details across a whole series of individual comic book titles. In order to get the full picture, you had to buy all of the related titles. Bill thought this was great – I thought it was horribly convoluted and expensive. Regardless, I did buy into it to an extent, in part because of a Saturday Morning cartoon.
That cartoon was X-Men the Animated Series, and it was pretty good for what it was. It was relatively smart, its characters had real personalities, its villains weren’t caricatures, and it had a story arc that crossed multiple episodes. It also took some of the best storylines of the last 10+ years of the X-Men titles and brought them to the small screen. I was intrigued and I found myself enthusiastically diving into comics once again. I’ve since cut back to only a couple of titles, but for a time I was taking a stack of comics away from the comic store every week or two – X-Men, Spawn, Witchblade, The Darkness (which was mostly for my wife. I don’t really remember reading it), a handful of X-Men spin-offs (though by no means all of them. Egads! There were lots and lots of X-Men comics back then) and a few others I don’t really remember just now. I still have them, though.
It was at this time that I first started to visit Comix Zone, which has been my comics store of choice ever since. I’ve watched owner Greg Van Camp grow his business during that time. I remember the store I first visited, which was just a straight run back from the door, with a counter on the left and several rows of tables stuffed with comics. I remember every December Greg would have a “Christmas Blow-Out” party, where a large group of comics geeks would gather around while Greg bestowed prizes and give-aways upon them. I was one of those geeks, obviously, or I wouldn’t be familiar with the ritual. I remember Greg’s shop doubling in size as he absorbed the store next to his. And more recently, I remember Greg moving across the street three and a half years ago to an even larger space with room for all sorts of non-comic merchandise as well as gaming tables in the back where regular customers would play various role-playing games, collectible card games and wage great battles between mighty little miniatures. And through this entire time, I’ve maintained a subscription to a list of comic titles that has changed quite a bit over the twelve or thirteen years that I’ve been a customer there.
For a big chunk of that time, I registered my protest against rampant crossovers by maintaining a subscription to one title that was guaranteed to never cross over – Marvel’s What If? comic. The concept behind this title was an investigation of alternate possibilities within the Marvel universe. Granted, by not reading every possible Marvel title I didn’t always fully grasp the full meaning of these alternate storylines, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. In part because most were fairly accessible – what if character X had been a bad guy instead of a good guy was pretty straightforward, after all. But also in part because they were self-contained stories that tended to turn the “known” world on its head. Anything could happen in a What If? comic, and I really enjoyed them. They’ve popped back up from time to time, but the comic as a regular title ended in the late 1990s.
These days, I subscribe to only a couple of titles. My subscription list essentially boils down to “Anything written by Babylon 5 Creator J. Michael Straczynski” plus the Dark Tower series based on the books by Stephen King. Since Straczynski is only writing Thor at the moment (and The Twelve, which is on some sort of hiatus), I’m currently just getting two titles. But whether I’m getting two or twenty comics, one thing is certain – they’re not the same kinds of books I used to read as a kid. Where the comics of the 70s had heroes who were unswervingly heroic and villains who were usually evil for no other reason than evil’s sake, modern comics are filled with all of the ambiguities and human foibles you’d expect to find in any decent novel. And so the years trek forward and I read the stories and look at the artistry as the tales are spun out thirty or so pages at a time, month after month after month. And I lose myself, for a little while, in the chronicles of heroes.
Friday, November 13, 2009
There Can Be Only One
And that one is Stephen Colbert!
I'm a huge fan of the Colbert Report - not only because the cleverly biting political and media commentary is fun to watch, but also because Stephen and his writers are all about pop-culture references that speak to people like me (ie. roughly 40-year-old nerds). Last night's segment on CNN's Lou Dobbs leaving CNN to do whatever it is he's leaving to do was fantastic, as Colbert grabbed a sword and recreated a scene from the 1986 classic film Highlander. You can watch the clip here. It really gets going at around 1:18.
I'm a huge fan of the Colbert Report - not only because the cleverly biting political and media commentary is fun to watch, but also because Stephen and his writers are all about pop-culture references that speak to people like me (ie. roughly 40-year-old nerds). Last night's segment on CNN's Lou Dobbs leaving CNN to do whatever it is he's leaving to do was fantastic, as Colbert grabbed a sword and recreated a scene from the 1986 classic film Highlander. You can watch the clip here. It really gets going at around 1:18.
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