Meanwhile…

Jens brought something up over his blog that’s been on my mind lately: casualty figures. He’s referring to the infamous Black Death that devastated Europe, killing millions.

For the story I’m working on, yesterday I stopped by the library and picked up An Ordinary Man, the autobiography of Paul Rusesabagina, who, during the mid-’90s Rawandan genocide, harbored over 1,200 people from the massacres going on in the streets right outside his doors. (I haven’t seen it, but the film Hotel Rawanda was about this.) The raw numbers he provides about the slaughter are staggering: 800,000 people killed, mostly by machete, in 100 days. Nazis would have envied the efficiency, if not the lack of bureaucracy. 8,000 people per day, by hand.

In fiction, especially science fiction, you see numbers like this all the time. Millions killed at the push of a button. Whole planets destroyed in the blink of an eye. Biological weaponry that wipes out whole species. Massive battles that kill hundreds of thousands of people in an afternoon.

It seems like, and I’m certainly not excluding myself from this, as writers we tend to throw these sorts of events out there for dramatic purposes. These things certainly happen, throughout history. But something we sometimes miss is the impact these sorts of things have. Alderaan explodes and an old man gets a headache.

(Not that it hasn’t been done well; most of the Ender’s Game books, for example, are all about a kid coping with events he triggers in the first novel.)

Just a few years ago, the sudden death of 3,000 people dramatically altered the political and economic landscape for millions of people, and our grandchildren will likely still be suffering the effects. Just something to keep in mind.

But at the same time, you don’t want to get too heavy-handed with it. You probably don’t want your story to turn into a ham-fisted morality tale about the Evils That Man Wrought. You want your story to be focused on, whatever, the kid and his best friend the talking cheeseburger. It’s a tricky line to walk.

And, as Jens says, it’s impossible to really wrap your head around the numbers. Even the people who’ve experienced it have trouble describing these events. And this is one of those areas where modern psychology utterly fails to explain human behavior.

I guess my point is really just to be careful with these mass slaughters; as plot devices they’re often simultaneously overused and underused.

Well, the Story Each Day contest is done, finished Sunday, actually. I wrote 11 of the 14 days, just shy of 7,000 words. I’m pretty happy with the results, both for myself and the group as a whole. In fact, of the people who really put the work in, I was the only one who didn’t make the 14-story goal! Congrats to everyone involved.

The biggest thing that came of it for me was what I began on Day 12. That’s a story that’s been floating around in my brain for about 10 years. I’ve started putting some more thought into it, and I may look around for some books, do the research, and expand on it. I’ve already written some more on it, and I can’t decide whether it needs to be a novel or not.

That means it probably does need to be a novel. Sigh.

Currently reading: Ghost World, by Daniel Clowes, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz

I feel especially fortunate that I got to see him in concert just a few months ago (I got to see him at a taping of Jay Leno a couple years ago, too, but that hardly counts). The guy was a legend.

I’m sure he’s somewhere smiling up at us.

So this weekend is the official Can’t Stop the Serenity weekend, when Browncoats around the world get together and put on charity screenings of Serenity. Everything raised goes to Equality Now, Joss Whedon’s favorite charity. If you’ve never been to one, I highly recommend it. Even if you’re alone, you’ll find yourself among friends.

Tim Minear will be here for the Dallas screening. It will be awesome. This will be my third, and I enjoy myself every time. Last year Jane Espenson attended it with us, and she’s very cool.

I keep promising to talk about The Incredible Hulk, but really, I don’t have that much to say about it. I enjoyed it a great deal, and in general it’s better than the Ang Lee version that came out a few years ago. There are some great action scenes (including the closest thing we’ll probably ever get to a match-up between Captain America and the Hulk), and the drama going on between the action is way more entertaining than it was in the 2003 movie. It’s hard to say if it was as good as Iron Man, simply by virtue of the fact that Tony Stark is by his very nature a charming and likable guy, whereas that Banner fella is always kind of a downer. But overall I’d say it’s pretty close.

In my second semester of college, I took an International Human Rights class. That was a huge mistake, as I was in way over my head. But I liked the teacher, and really learned a lot throughout the course. Something we talked about quite a bit were NGOs, Non Governmental Organizations. These are the people who go in and actually get things done when some disaster strikes a country or something. One particular set of NGOs we looked at were human rights groups that embed someone in a fascist state with a likely political target. The idea is that having a foreign observer there, preferably with a camera, will be enough to deter the authorities from disappearing the target. I’m totally blanking on the names of these organizations at the moment.

This always seemed like a concept rife with story ideas. Why hasn’t anyone ever made a movie about this? So it’s always been an idea hanging out at the back of my mind. Of course, I’m an completely unqualified to write it using any sort of real places/politics, so I put it in space. Luckily, I think science fiction is versatile enough to handle it. No aliens, though, I would want to keep this as grounded and gritty as possible.

I really like this beginning, so I hope to expand this at some point. Just over 500 words. Continue reading

I missed yesterday! I fail!

It’s cool. I was exhausted last night – we had the misfortune of coming across this lost dog, and, well, long story short, the evening ended with an epic chase for a good five or six blocks, which is way more running that I’ve done at one time in decades.

If I get a chance I’ll post about The Incredible Hulk tomorrow. I still need to write a Kung Fu Panda review for the newsletter at work.

Here’s a portion of today’s offering. Continue reading

Whew!

This is a little piece that may turn into a Simon Temple, aka, Tenebrous, adventure. Tenebrous seemed pretty popular with my writing group, and I do have a certain fondness for him. But until now I haven’t really put much thought into more Tenebrous stories. What sort of villains would he normally face? What are his nightly patrols like? What drove him to his crusade against crime? I’ll want to address all these questions. I really enjoy writing about him simply interacting with his civilian peers.

Saw the Hulk today. I may chat about that some tomorrow.

EDIT July 1: Evidently someone who goes by Tenebrous (an online name I assume?) stumbled across this and suddenly I’m getting a tons of hits on this particular entry. In case any of you are curious, this Tenebrous character is featured in my superhero story “Shades of Red,” available over at the journal “A Thousand Faces.” Continue reading

Whew! Just under the wire! I didn’t actually think I’d get anything done today. This was Hope’s birthday, so we were pretty busy.

I had a lot of fun writing this, though it is a bit rushed. I didn’t have time to research and come up with good names, so these are just what popped into my head.  Here’s an excerpt; who knows, I might clean this one up and submit. Continue reading

Not much to say about this one. I might expand it sometime. I like the whole concept of cities in unusual places, be it the moon or Mars or deep under the ocean. Simply setting a story in an exotic place like that forces your mind to come up with a whole new set of aesthetics and technologies.

As such, I’ve always thought the concept of Atlantis was awesome. I’ve never actually bothered to do much research into the actual Atlantis (though I think there’s not much to research, right? just a couple of references in ancient Greek texts or something?), but the possibilities are a lot of fun. Friend Erin has a good Atlantis story.

This is right at 500 words. Continue reading

Did my writing early today. Weekends are always crazy busy around here, and this weekend is no exception. We’ll be having a little Mystery Science Theater Birthday Party for Kevin tonight (I don’t believe it is his 3,000th, though).

A few posts back I mentioned a new character for my superhero universe, Astro Jack. I envisioned him as a Superman-type hero from the ’40s and ’50s. So I thought I’d give him a little chance to breathe. I may expand this into a full-fledged story. It’s only a little over 500 words at the moment. Continue reading