The World According to Quinn

Guest Blogs A-Comin'

2012-03-01T23:10:00.000-05:00

During the next couple of weeks, I anticipate having a couple of guest bloggers. One of them will be James R. Tuck, he of Blood and Bullets, while the other will be J.M. McDermott, author of Never Knew Another and When We Were Executioners, the first two books in the "Dogsland Trilogy."

(I've read and reviewed Blood and Bullets here already. I haven't read McDermott's books, although the subject matter--innocent half-demons being hunted by religious zealots--reminds me a lot of my stalled early novel Seventeen Sons some of my college friends and members of my Kennesaw writing group might remember. Once I'm done with this mass of library books I've got out, maybe I'll give his books a look.)

Both of them will write about the writing craft. Not sure what exactly--I've given them very loose guidelines in hopes I can get the most interesting comments possible.

So stay tuned...

Why I Voted For Ron Paul But Hope Romney Is The Nominee...

2012-02-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

Georgia's early/advance voting started yesterday. Although I posted on Facebook saying I would probably vote for Mitt Romney due to him being the most electable of the four remaining Republican candidates, I'm not a Romney fan by any stretch of the imagination--I think he's ignorant on some issues (when commenting on an arms-control treaty, he made some comment that sounded like he thought ballistic missiles were fired from bombers) and prone to changing his views based on convenience. It's certainly possible he changed his views on abortion, for example, as a result of genuine conviction, but given the timing (i.e. running for the nomination of the national GOP, which is much more anti-abortion than the Massachusetts electorate), I'm skeptical.

In 2008, I was a Ron Paul supporter, but Paul's opposition to the bin Laden raid, a comment he made about how the troops would come home faster if their air-conditioning was de-funded, and the possibility he was not being honest about his role in the bizarre newsletters that went out under his name in the 1990s made me rather leery of him. Plus, even though I believe in smaller government, he takes it a bit too far and there will definitely be the perception of him as a radical. However, the candidate I came to support--Jon Huntsman--fizzled.

However, Rick Santorum is too socially conservative to win the general election, while Newt Gingrich has the whole "marry-cheat-divorce-remarry repeat" thing going. However, based on this poll, which is a composite of other polls, it's going to be one of them who wins Georgia when the primaries come on March 6.

If Romney was likely to win Georgia, there's a good chance I would have voted for him since the more states Gingrich or Santorum win, the more likely they are to get the nomination and get destroyed by Obama in November. However, one of those two is going to win Georgia barring some kind of last-minute Romney surge or Gingrich/Santorum implosion and so it's time to think strategically.

At this point, I think Paul and his people know he can't win, but the goal is to get so many delegates that he can have an influence on the party platform. That's something I can get behind--if some Paulite positions like not attacking Iran get made part of the platform, that will be both good for the country and will strengthen the nominee against Obama. Since Georgia is not a winner-take-all state, my voting for Paul could help him get a delegate here and there.

Another Note On "Martin's Middle Earth"--Female Warriors

2012-02-25T09:42:00.000-05:00

I've given some more thought to "Lord of the Rings if done by George R.R. Martin" scenario I posted here and I've come up with some more ideas. Here there be spoilers, so watch out...

Despite the faux medieval setting, Martin has included several notable "warrior women" like Brienne of Tarth (who's as big and strong as most men), Asha Greyjoy, Maege and Dacey Mormont and the other women of Bear Island, and the pint-sized death machine Arya Stark. Although the Norse had "shieldmaidens," women being active combatants in medieval times was fairly rare due to cultural norms and physical size issues.

It's been a long time since I've read Lord of the Rings or seen the movies, but the only female combatant I recall depicted in action is Eowyn. Galadriel is described as having thrown down both during the War of the Ring and in the era depicted by The Silmarillon, but that could have been in a command role as easily as physically grappling with an enemy. The movies depict Arwen as a better rider than Aragorn who evades the Nazgul to bring Frodo to Rivendell and even draws steel on them, but I don't think the rather old-fashioned Tolkien would have gone for that.

So, basically Martin's version of Lord of the Rings would have a far more active and violent female cast. I'm drawing comparisons now to the Elves, who are different from the other peoples of the West due to being immortal and the oldest race, and the Dornish of A Song of Ice and Fire who practiced equal inheritance regardless of gender, allow their women much more sexual freedom, and were never conquered by the Targaryens. The Elves could be a more gender-equitable society due to their smaller numbers and how long-lived the Elves are.

(Even if Elves have the same physical strength differentials than humans have, due to the Elves being so long-lived, Elven women would have more time to learn ways around that--think martial arts. Even if they'd still be at a disadvantage against Elven men who would still be stronger and have the same thousands-of-years-of-free-time thing going, they'd be a very dangerous opponent for a man, a dwarf, or an Orc.)

Thus Martin's LOTR, if it included the flight to Rivendell from the Nazgul, would resemble the movie more than the book. I'm thinking we might see Galadriel throwing down with the Forces of Darkness at the Battle Under The Trees and the destruction of Dol Guldur as well. I'm thinking you'd see female Elf warriors as well, probably more in the vein of Asha Greyjoy (who is fairly normal in looks and size and seems to rely on non-grappling weapons like throwing-axes) than Brienne of Tarth (who is physically man-like to the point some fans have guessed she had a glandular problem).

As far as humans are concerned, Eowyn would still be there. Making her, the one who slew the Witch-King of Angmar, into some Sansa Stark analogue who gets abused and forced into marriage for dynastic reasons, comes off as dubious and almost insulting even if there are some similar circumstances (a man who desires her, regardless of her opinions, and the dynastic thing) and the brutality is par for the course in Martin's work.

However, if she's the one who kills Wormtongue, makes the decision about what to do with his rape baby (be it abortion or telling her infanticidal brother that she isn't going to allow a child to be killed because the father is a pervy traitor) if Martin's LOTR includes that plot element, and engages in hard-core warrior stuff like in canon, that might make up for it.

She could still kill the Witch-King of Angmar per canon or perhaps Saruman, especially since in the latter case there'd be a revenge element. Even with the One Ring Sauron's physical body could be destroyed, so Eowyn could relieve Saruman of the hand with the Ring on it and then relieve him of his head. If she manages to avoid thrown fireballs or other magical attacks or telekinetic wizard-staff-kung-fu like in the movie, it'd be a fight worthy of her canonical battle with the Witch-King.

(Of course, apparently one reason Bilbo could carry the Ring for so long without ill effect is because of his good heart and how he pitied Gollum and spared him when he could have killed him while invisible. An embittered, angry Eowyn might be in serious danger of being corrupted by the Ring. Unless of course she's wise enough to have it gotten away from her immediately, and she seems like she's got a brain based on what I remember from the books.)

Great...now I'm tempted to write a fan-fic depicting the battle between Eowyn and Saruman, with the latter's taunts and mind-games expositing the whole sick back-story.

Not sure who else there'd be. If we want an analogue to Bear Island, where the women became warriors because the Ironborn and wildings would attack them while the men were fishing, maybe the Gondorian provinces closest to Umbar and its corsairs or the Easterling borders have a military tradition among the women as well?

About female warriors and the Dwarves, that might be trickier due to the fact that I think Tolkien said only a third of Dwarves are female and many Dwarven men never marry and instead devote themselves to their work. Such a culture would have even more surplus males to expend in war and would have even more reason to be protective of women, even though I can imagine female dwarves being very physically formidable.

Thoughts on "Lord of the Rings"...If Written By George R.R. Martin

2012-02-25T00:16:00.005-05:00

On my message-board, someone asked what The Lord of the Rings would be like if it were written by George R.R. Martin, he of the complicated characterizations and moral grayness, rather than by J.R.R. Tolkien. The user whose handle is Jello Biafra said in Martin's Middle-Earth, one of the protagonists who try to use the One Ring. Granted, that happened at the end anyway, but I imagine much earlier and with more impact.

That's a nice intellectual exercise, so I think I'll give it a spin. Here there be spoilers, so be ye warned...

*In A Game of Thrones, Ned Stark reveals to Queen Cersei Lannister that he knows she's been passing off the children of an incestuous affair with her brother as the heirs to King Robert Baratheon and tells her flee while she can. She has her cousin assassinate the king and Ned ends up being executed. In Martin's more cynical Middle Earth, I'm imagining the result of Aragorn's refusal to take the One Ring at Amon Hen (at least that happens in the movie) would be that Boromir successfully claims it or, more realistically, it is captured by the Uruk-Hai and taken to Saruman.

*As a result of possessing the One Ring, Saruman becomes MUCH more dangerous. In addition to his whole "evil persuasive ability" being cranked up to eleven, I'm imagining him becoming an even more powerful physical combatant and being able to supernaturally accelerate the breeding and growth of the Uruk-Hai. Rohan is forced into submission, with Eowyn made the puppet of her "advisor and consort" Grima Wormtongue. The Rohirrim are then forced to fight alongside the Dunlendings, the Uruk-Hai, and other minions of Saruman against their former allies in Gondor, much like how the Lannisters forced the Riverlords to lay siege to their own allies in Riverrun after the Red Wedding. Maybe Eomer survives Saruman's victory and wages a guerrilla war, hoping to rescue his sister and assassinate Wormtongue. This would be like the Brotherhood Without Banners and (maybe) what the Blackfish is up to after the fall of Riverrun.

*If you want to get really dark, have Eowyn become pregnant as a result of Wormtongue's...attentions. If Eomer is able to successfully rescue her and kill her "consort" (or, knowing her, she does it herself and escapes with her brother), she could try abortion and, given how crude the methods were back then, end up dead, infertile, or crippled. If the child is born, there'd be the choice of killing someone who, though personally innocent, represents a dynastic threat to any of Eomer's children or Eowyn's children with a better husband, or keeping it alive on the chance Eomer is killed in battle before fathering an heir of his own and that said child could be used to command the support of the Dunlendings.

(Given how Wormtongue is shorter than the other Rohirrim and darker while they're blonde, I'm guessing he has Dunlending blood. A half-Dunlending King of Rohan could be used to win them over if, say, Saruman suffers a major reverse or, if the Dunlenders get really hammered, he could be imposed on them as a vassal of Rohan.)

This would be analogous to how Tyrion Lannister marries Sansa Stark as a means of getting a claim on Winterfell, or how the vile Ramsay Bolton marries the (fake) Arya Stark for the same purpose. I can imagine Wormtongue being far more like Ramsay than Tyrion, although given the fiction that Eowyn is queen and he's her prime minister (or something close enough), he couldn't be as openly nasty and abusive.

Poor Eodred Grimasson or whatever his name would be. An tyrannical dad, a very unhappy mom, and an uncle who wants to kill him, use him for political shenanigans, or perhaps even both.

*Meanwhile, Gondor faces the possibility of being crushed between Saruman and Sauron. To avoid this fate, they resort to breeding their own armies of Orcs (possibly using the wild men who helped the Rohirrim get to Gondor in the canonical books as breeding stock, since they'd escaped from the orc breeding-pits in the past) and scorched-earth campaigns to deny the enemy resources. Since Gondor's armies are too small to challenge Sauron's in open battle, I'm imagining a brutal chevauchée across the Anduin into territory under Sauron's control to kill as many of his subjects as possible and bug out before Sauron can bring his armies to bear. This would be analogous to Tywin Lannister using Gregor Clegane, Amory Lorch, etc. to ravage enemy territory and strip it of supplies. And meanwhile, Denethor and Aragorn would plot against each other. Hopefully Aragorn will have learned from not taking the Ring to be more ruthless and sneaky--if he's still alive at this point.

After all, in Tolkien's letters, he wrote that Sauron was so evil that all kinds of "extreme" methods were justified in fighting him, including the West "(breeding) or hiring its own legions of orcs" or deliberately ravaging the land to deny it to the enemy.

In order to compete with the more industrialized regimes of Mordor and Isengard, maybe Gondor could impose Stalinist industrialization policies that involve squeezing the surplus of the agrarian population to feed industrial cities (and thus causing mass starvation) and slave labor.

*The Ents would be as genocidally destructive of the orcs per canon, with this being graphically depicted. Bonus points if the Ents have a druid-like cult of human followers that practice human sacrifice, much like how in A Dance With Dragons (I think) features flashbacks to human sacrifices being offered to the Old Gods in the weirwood groves.

*We'd have POVs in the areas where the armies are marching to show just how destructive the war is to the common folk. In A Clash of Kings, even though it's been a long time since I've read it, I recall Arya and her friends traveling through the Riverlands and seeing all sorts of horrible things. The Riverlands were being ravaged by war, with the soldiers of both sides preying on everyone. Maybe Mordor's armies use Gondorian peasants as human shields when laying siege a la the Mongols, or whole regions are stripped of men (conscripted or killed) and food (to feed the armies), leaving the women and children with the choice of starvation or attaching themselves to the armies as camp followers (i.e. providing labor or sex for the soldiers, who might not even be human).

*However, we'd have villain POVs that humanize the villains far more than Tolkien's world did. After all, I actually empathized with Tywin Lannister, who is a thoroughly despicable human being, after reading the following excerpt from A Feast for the Crows.

Tywin dreamed that his son would be a great knight, that his daughter would be a queen. He dreamed they would be so strong and brave and beautiful that no one would ever laugh at them (AFfC Harper ed. p. 835)

We might have the POV of the Orcs who hate Sauron and his Nazgul for brutalizing them but fight for the forces of darkness because they fear extermination at the hands of the humans (when Sam rescues Frodo in Mordor, I think he overhears a conversation between Orcs about this).

Or Wormtongue. Someone wrote a fan back-story for Wormtongue depicting him as the sickly son of one of Rohan's generals and his Dunlending wife who was rejected for military service and became a bureaucrat instead. He becomes infatuated with Eowyn and seeks out Saruman for advice. Saruman, who has at this point become evil, uses this to manipulate Wormtongue until he's too emeshed in scheming and treason to back out. He's still the selfish, treacherous pervert he was in canon, but he has a more sympathetic back-story and a reason for being evil. That would be a really interesting basis for a Wormtongue POV, especially if we add the ethnic issues into the mix--he could justify his abuse of Eowyn by citing the abuses of Dunlending women by Rohan's soldiers in the past.

Heck, given how the Silmarillon describes how Sauron may have legitimately repented after Morgoth fell but feared punishment by the Valar, hid in Middle-Earth, and fell back into evil as a result of his desire to repair it, you could have a Sauron POV. There are Sauron-defenders out there who claim he's a defender of a multiracial industrial state against a bunch of racist reactionary feudalists--if from Sauron's POV he's doing this for the good of the peoples of Middle-Earth, it's a lot more morally gray than "I WANT TO BE GOD AND WILL KILL ANYONE WHO RESISTS." The same with Saruman, who also has multiracial armies (Uruk-Hai and Dunlendings) and a nascent industrial complex.

And there'd definitely be a Gollum POV, especially since some people have compared Theon Greyjoy in ADWD to Gollum.

*Crank up the racial emnity between the Elves and Dwarves, as well as the jerkass behavior on both sides.

*Martin said there'd be a "bittersweet" ending to the whole series, at least according to the gossip I've seen on the A Song of Ice and Fire forums. I imagine Martin's LOTR would end with the defeat of Saruman and Sauron as the canonical books did, but it would be much darker and more costly for the forces of good.

So, what do you all think? I'm starting to think a "Martinized" LOTR would be really interesting, even if it'd be much less pleasant to read at times. Anybody want to take a crack at it? Martin doesn't like fan-fiction, but this would technically be LOTR fan-fic, which is tolerated.

EDIT: Added some more pondering about female warriors in Tolkien vs. Martin here.

The First Draft of "Battle for the Wastelands" Is Done

2012-02-21T13:55:00.001-05:00

I took last Friday off in order to have a three-day weekend for writing, as was once suggested by my immediate superior at the Griffin Daily News. I figured I'd just get a chapter or two done, and then I got ambitious. I decided I was going to complete the first whole draft Battle for the Wastelands.

(I say "whole draft" because between my own tinkering and cycling it through writing groups, a lot of chapters, particularly the early ones, have changed a lot.)

Two chapters on Friday, two chapters on Saturday, and two chapters on Sunday. The novel is now done, coming in at just over 102,000 words.

These last couple of days, I've left it alone. I've heard suggestions to let a newly-completed manuscript "cool" for weeks, months, or even a year. However, one of my writing groups has seen all but the last six incomplete chapters, so that really isn't an option. The maximum word count is 10,000 words and the current word count for those last six is around 12,000. I'm going to try to cut as much as possible without sacrificing action or character and if I can get it 10,000 or below, I'll bring it before the Lawrenceville group in one big block. If not, two smaller blocks of three chapters each. The entire manuscript will have been critiqued by them in either mid or late March, since the meetings are two weeks apart.

Once that's done and I make revisions based on group members' comments, I've got a few friends who have agreed to take a look at the entire package. After they review it and I make further revisions, I'll bring it before the Kennesaw group as a whole package. At this rate, that will probably be sometime over the summer.

My plan so far is to submit it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards when they open up again in early January. If I'd rushed, I could have had it complete in time for this year's contest, but it would not be the best possible product. Even if one is not the ultimate winner of the contest, one can still get a book deal out of it like my friend Alex Hughes, who was a semi-finalist, did.

However, DragonCon is a good place for networking and I did talk to a publisher last time that seemed interested in Battle. "Placing" in ABNA is a good set of laurels to attach to a manuscript and worth waiting a few months for, but it's always good to have multiple options and the steampunk craze won't last forever. Sometimes it's a good idea to strike while the iron is hot.

I'm told publishers prefer first-time writers' manuscripts be fewer than 100K words. As far as people I know are concerned, James R. Tuck's Blood and Bullets is 81Kwords, while some unpublished novels from Matt Schafer are in the upper-80K to mid-90K range.

So that's my most recent productivity update. I think my next projects will be to finish a new short story inverting TVTropes' "Doomed Home Town" trope for the next meeting of the Kennesaw group and work more on Escape from the Wastelands (the second book in the series).

Good To See Someone Else Agrees With Me On Israel-Iran...

2012-02-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

This article got posted on my alternate-history forum today.

Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets

I've said in the past that the Israelis do not have the numbers and the range to successfully cripple Iran's nuclear program. Good to see people in the Pentagon agree with me.

This is not the Osirak raid 20-odd years ago or the recent Israeli attack on that mysterious facility in Syria that might have been nuclear-related. Iran is much farther away from Israel and its air defenses are much more formidable. The reduction of Iraq's air defenses prior to the ground phase of Operation Desert Desert Storm lasted from Jan. 17 to Feb. 23, 1991, and that was with the combined military power of the Western World operating out of Saudi Arabia and several aircraft carriers nearby. The Israelis are much weaker both militarily and economically and would be facing a much smarter opponent than Saddam Hussein.

The only way I can think of that the Israelis could successfully destroy the Iranian nuclear program by themselves is nuclear weapons--use ballistic missiles launched from Israel proper and from submarines against the nuclear sites and Iran's air defenses, then send their air force in to mop up.

Thing is, that would be an extraordinarily radical step to say the least, something that will anger the entire world and risk the ruination of Israel's economy due to economic sanctions and the like. The Israelis would have to be very frightened or desperate to actually do that, and I would imagine the Israeli leadership is aware that the one holding the real power in Iran (the Supreme Leader, not the president) is not the one making nasty comments about Israel, holding Holocaust-denial seminars, etc.

Let's hope nothing comes to pass. An Israeli attack on Iran would provoke a major Middle Eastern war and jack up oil prices, which would throttle the economic recovery and probably cause a worldwide return to recession. And if nuclear weapons are used (and there's retaliation with chemicals or germs by surviving Iranian forces or their allies), the death toll would be huge.

Blast From The Past Movie Reviews...

2012-02-18T10:02:00.001-05:00

With all the local Blockbusters closing down, I'm considering getting Netflix, especially since they've brought back their DVD-only service.

(I don't have the gadgets needed for streaming and I don't particularly care to spend money on them.)

I checked out Netflix's inventory and found they had some movies I had not seen in a long time--The Presence, which I saw when I was in the fourth grade on NBC with its original title Danger Island, as well as Shrieker, which I saw on the Sci-Fi Channel when I was in high school.

Should I get Netflix, I'll probably order those movies and see how they held up. It's not the first time I've done this--when I was a freshman in college, I rented Dragonslayer, which I saw when I was in the second grade after finding the children's book based on the movie in the Mount Bethel Elementary School library. Dragonslayer was still an awesome movie, despite having been made in the early 1980s before the computer-generated special-effects revolution.

More recently, when I was living in McDonough, I rented the animated film The Secret of the NIMH, which I saw in school when I was in kindergarten. I remember the movie being downright disturbing, especially the scenes in which some of the rats fall down air shafts during the escape from NIMH and when Mrs. Brisby is captured by humans, has her cape taken from her, and escapes naked from the cage after bloodying herself on the metal. Watching it as an adult, it's not disturbing or frightening, but it's really, really well-done. Points again to Don Bluth.

Should I do this, chances are you'll see some of them reviewed here. I'll probably tag them "Blast from the Past."

Life Lessons from the Katy Perry/Russell Brand Divorce...

2012-02-18T09:40:00.000-05:00

http://www.tmz.com/2012/01/01/katy-perry-divorce-russell-brand/

Found the above article while looking for stuff about the upcoming John Carter movie.

It's sad that this happened, but it does provide a valuable lesson. The two of them didn't date for very long and due to their schedules, didn't spend a lot of time together. Based on this article, it seems like the whole situation was driven by infatuation. And they entered married life unaware of the impending land mines the article described--both being stubborn and unwilling to back down in arguments, or Perry being into parties while Brand being a homebody.

(Given Brand's history of drug addiction, I can understand why he'd want to avoid the club scene.)

Marriage is one of the most important decisions one will make in one's entire life and it should not be rushed into. Had the two of them dated longer or spent more time together while they were dating, these issues could have been dealt with earlier or their relationship could have ended earlier when it would have been less painful and problematic for all involved.

(And from a Christian perspective, there's the moral issues of divorce and remarriage afterward, which is another can of worms entirely. Bringing that issue into play and it makes the stakes even higher and getting to know the other person better and deal with any issues beforehand even more important.)

Hitler's Secret French Love Child?

2012-02-18T09:03:00.000-05:00

On my alternate-history forum the other day, someone posted an article from the Huffington Post citing the claim of a deceased Frenchman that he was Adolf Hitler's illegitimate son, from an affair with a French girl Hitler had while a soldier in WWI.

Although the evidence in the original article was somewhat scanty, MSNBC posted this article featuring some more solid stuff, including the German military giving the man's mother money during the occupation of France and the mother having signed paintings created by Hitler. Not to mention the woman's account of the young Hitler seems rather plausible--he's artsy, but really strange.

(It was a bit surprising to see Hitler doing something resembling The Right Thing by his ex and kid. I say "something resembling" because he never agreed to meet the boy and take fatherly responsibilities, but it's better than refusing to take responsibility entirely.)

What's the most amusing part of this story is that the deceased man's lawyer is making noises about trying to lay claim to the royalties for Mein Kampf on behalf of the man's kids. Given the brutality of the German occupation of France, having French people as Hitler's legal heirs is downright amusing. The only way the irony could be more perfect is if Hitler's heirs were Polish or Russian.

(The Nazis viewed Slavs as the lowest of the low and planned to kill tens of millions of them and enslave the rest had they won. Even before that, they were the worst recipients of Nazi brutality--millions of Soviet prisoners of war died because the German army didn't bother to feed them, while I think in Belarus the Nazis took the food out of the area and then offered bounties for dead "insurgents"--in effect paying starving people to kill each other. The French, on the other hand, were "Latins.")

Let's hope some vengeful anti-fascists don't come after the kids, or neo-Nazis don't seek them out to try to worship them. Of course, if the latter takes place, maybe the kids can enlighten them about evil and idiocy of their belief system.

A Dinosaur Playing Basketball...

2012-02-17T13:58:00.000-05:00

For the five-year-old in us all...

I remember this commercial from awhile back, when the Toronto Raptors were new. Very cool.

Thoughts On Writing And Length...

2012-02-11T13:09:00.000-05:00

Last Tuesday I went to the Foxtale Book Shoppe in Woodstock for the release party of Blood and Bullets by James R. Tuck.

Once there, I made the acquaintance of one of James's friends, another writer named Janice Hardy, who did a reading of The Healing Wars Book One: The Shifter.

After the readings were done, I asked both of them how long their books were. I think both of them were in the neighborhood of 81,000. Blood and Bullets is 351 pages long, while The Shifter is 384.

At present, Battle for the Wastelands is around 97,000 words long and that's with several remaining chapters partially finished. I was hoping to keep the first draft below 100,000 words, since I remember hearing somewhere that publishers don't want to risk a too-long book from a first-time author and 100,000 is a good ceiling to set. However, with the addition of a new chapter of politicking to break up what a member of my Lawrenceville group called "battle fatigue," it seems I'm going to break the 100,000 word ceiling.

Although James and Janice didn't seem to think this would be a problem, Janice offered me a tip for cutting word count without cutting characters or scenes. Instead, cut 10-20 words per page. That's a couple of sentences. In a 500 page book, this amounts to 5,000 words being cut at least.

She even gave me some words that are basically filler--"that, had, just, only." I remember going through Battle cutting the use of "had" already, which I've gotten into the habit of using in a journalistic fashion--simple past tense to describe something that just happened and the past perfect tense (the one using "had") to describe things that had happened at some earlier point. Some uses of the past-perfect survived, but others did not. And I've been trying to keep use of "that" to a minimum for the last couple of years, ever since one of my editors at The Griffin Daily News pointed out how useless "that" is in most contexts.

We'll see how it goes. The goal is to finish the first draft of Battle within the next couple of months. If I push myself, I think I can finish three chapters in fairly quick succession for the Lawrenceville group, although my last "creative spurt" when almost entirely into a short story I'm writing to "invert" the trope of Doomed Home Town. Writing 2,000 words in a single night is great, but those 2,000 words could have completed one or two chapters and gotten me closer to finishing Battle, which is a much bigger deal than even a successful short story.

"Blood and Bullets" Review (Trying To Keep It Spoiler-Free)

2012-02-11T10:45:00.000-05:00

James R. Tuck, a member of my Kennesaw writing group, premiered his first novel Blood and Bullets in early February. He was so kind as to supply me with a signed advance copy at the last meeting of our writing group, which I finished fairly quickly.

Now for the review. Given how new the book is, I'm going to try to keep it spoiler-free:

The Good

The book starts out with an epic grabber--protagonist Deacon Chalk is in the parking lot of the strip club he owns, pointing a handgun in the face of a teenage vampire who looks disturbingly like his dead teenage daughter. Most writing guides say to begin en media res (in the middle of things) or "when the story begins" and he does the latter well. Plus having the vampire resembling his dead daughter allows the reveal about Deacon's dead family without being info-dumpy.

The descriptive bits are really good. James does a good job of using verbs to describe a scene so the descriptive passages aren't boring. One passage that stands out is when Deacon is waiting for another vampire-hunter in an abandoned industrial park--he describes in detail overgrown bushes and a plastic bag drifting on the wind and it isn't slow.

The narrative is laugh-out-loud--a lot. There's a scene where Deacon is discoursing on vampires and how they're all evil in which he takes a major shot at Twilight.

"And vampires never sparkle unless they just ate a stripper."

There's another comment where Deacon talks about staking vampires during the day and how bloody it gets. When I read the line "I usually wear a raincoat," the way it was delivered was hilarious.

And here's one from Father Mulcahy--yes, he is a shout-out to MASH.

"No, Father, I am cursed. I am unworthy to be anointed with the cross."
Father Mulcahy sighed loudly.
"Are you fighting evil tonight?"
(Name redacted for spoiler reasons) nodded slowly.
"Then you are doing the Lord's work. Shut the fuck up."

Also, James clearly knows his way around Atlanta. There's a scene where Deacon and another vampire hunter go to downtown Atlanta--to get take-out and then an anti-vampire mission and he knows the area of North Avenue and Georgia Tech rather well.

And one of the more interesting parts of the book is the origin of vampires. James ties it in with the Crucifixion, although not in the same manner Dracula 2000 does. Not going to give this one away because it's one of the more creative elements of the book.

Finally, although lycanthropes are touched on more in the upcoming novel Blood and Silver than in this one, James includes were-gorrillas and were-spiders. That's a lot more creative than just werewolves. And although I don't want to get into too much detail just now, there are a lot of kinds of were-critters in the Deaconverse.

The Bad

The ending is a bit anti-climactic. Not going to go into a lot of detail to avoid even dropping hints.

Deacon references knowing another vampire hunter and how the two of them help each other out sometimes. He encounters said hunter later, in a rather sticky situation (not going to go into detail to avoid spoilers) and having more of a reaction to it would have been good.

There's an editing glitch on page 126. Instea of "a were-gorilla," it's "a WWere-gorilla." Three times. I know this is a glitch because on page 127, the critter in question is referred to as a were-gorrilla.

The Verdict

A fun little monster-hunting rampage. 8 out of 10.

Now to discuss some related matters. James brought a prequel novella entitled "That Thing At The Zoo" to the writing group for us to critique. This one features Deacon investigating diabolical doings at Zoo Atlanta. The novella ended up being sold as an eBook and released before Blood and Bullets. There'll be another e-novella called "Spider's Lullaby" that has not yet been released. He had to write that one in two weeks (!), so it never went before the group.

That's pretty clever. When I was in high school or college, I wrote a short story set in the "Wastelands" universe around 100 years before the story began. I never finished it and the "Wastelands"-verse has changed so much since then that the story is pretty much obsolete. And Stephen King has written a Dark Tower short story called "The Little Sisters of Eleuria."

However, I'd never thought about releasing them in advance of the main product as a buzz-builder. That partial story cannot be salvaged (in fact, I might have deleted it), but I could always write a new one. I'll need to think of a storyline first--if I followed James' pattern, it would be something that takes place just before the story begins.

Either way, I think this is a pretty clever idea. And with Kindles, e-publishing, etc. it's even easier to implement, since there won't be printing costs.

BTW, anybody want to start a TVTropes page for the series? Between Blood and Bullets, "That Thing At The Zoo," and the free fiction available on his web-site, there should be plenty of material.

Creepy Japanese Toilet Could Save Your Life

2012-02-04T08:05:00.000-05:00

Found this on Facebook the other day courtesy of my friend Charlie.

Japanese Toilet Analyzes Your Stool

He didn't think highly of it, saying it was creepy. Especially the part where you can set up a feed from a particular toilet.

However, I think there are some legitimate uses here. The Japanese government thinks likewise, considering it's associated with Bowel Health Week.

One of the things the toilet will scan users' waste for is blood. Blood in the stool, especially if it's on the inside and not on the surface (where it could have likely come from hemmoroids or anal fissures), is a major sign of colon cancer. Doctors recommend a fecal occult blood test after age 50 that's fairly icky--one has to take samples from one's own feces and mail it to a lab or conduct the test at home. This kind of technology could eliminate that entirely.

The device will also scan for fat in stool, which is also a sign of various diseases (or simply eating indigestable fats, which is obviously less of a concern).

Someone with a family history of colon cancer who can afford this kind of thing might do well to buy it. Yes, getting bowel reports on your phone is a bit peculiar, but if fecal occult blood tests are expensive, this might pay for itself, plus it's a lot more convenient.

Also, one can have all the data for a particular toilet sent to one's phone. If someone wants to do a study about bowel conditions or undiagnosed diseases in a particular part of the country, this tool might actually come in handy. I'm sure the feeds from hundreds of such toilets could provide a wealth of information about a particular area's bowel health.

"Game of Thrones" Season Two Videos

2012-01-29T22:01:00.002-05:00

Here're some videos for Game of Thrones Season Two.

This one is the introduction of Stannis Baratheon making his claim for the Iron Throne. Very grim and flat and Stannis-esque.

This one is a more general teaser here, featuring the burning of the idols of the Seven by Stannis after he allies with the priestess Melisandre, Joffrey being the evil brat he is, the riot in King's Landing, Theon going back to his Ironborn roots, Arya Stark at Harrenhal, and I wonder who that woman getting naked and then taking some fellow for a ride is? I'm guessing it's Jeyne Westerling, since the man she's offering herself to vaguely looks like Robb Stark.

Given how raunchy and violent A Song of Ice and Fire is, only HBO or some other premium network could produce it how it should be. However, I'm loathe to spend that kind of money on a channel just to watch one show. Luckily the Season One DVD/Blu-Ray comes out in March.

Pennsylvania Legislature Hails Lord Bacchus...

2012-01-28T21:22:00.001-05:00

Now that I've gotten your attention with the inflammatory (and a bit misleading) post title, here's what really happened...

The Pennsylvania state legislature just passed a bill declaring 2012 "The Year of the Bible" in the state. Here's an article about it, and here's the text of the bill. It's rather constitutionally dubious, to say the least--it's non-binding, but at the same time, it's a fairly explicit endorsement of Christianity and/or Judaism by the Pennsylvania state government.

A member of my alternate-history forum whose handle is Skokie created the following parody:

A RESOLUTION

Declaring 2012 as the “Year of the Bacchanalia and Our Lord Bacchus” in Pennsylvania.

WHEREAS, Lord Bacchus, he of the trees, God of unmixed wine, has made a unique contribution in shaping United States as a distinctive and blessed nation and people, especially in terms of viniculture; and

WHEREAS, Deeply held religious convictions springing from the loins of Bacchus led Benjamin Franklin to be really awesome;

WHEREAS, Bacchic-preserved concepts of civil government that are contained in our Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, Many of our great national heroes, among them Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine and William Jefferson Clinton paid homage to Bacchus;

WHEREAS, The history of our country clearly illustrates the value of wine production, sexual liberation and associated ecstasies; and

WHEREAS, This nation now faces great challenges that will test it as it has never been tested before; and

WHEREAS, Renewing our knowledge of and faith in Lord God Bacchus through his holy sparagmos of chicken hens can strengthen us as a nation and a people;

therefore be it

RESOLVED, That the House of Representatives declare 2012 as

the “Year of Bacchanalia” in Pennsylvania in recognition of both the formative influence of Lord God Bacchus on our Commonwealth and nation and our national need to perform holy rites that ensure his continued blessing.

Lest anyone say anything, I'm a Christian, but I'm just as much of a fan of satire as anyone. Not only is this really funny, but at the same time, it makes one think. Many Christians would pitch an absolute fit if the state of Pennsylvania passed a resolution honoring a pagan god, even if it were non-binding, but many Christians don't mind this bit of state sanction for our faith at all.

The Bible has been a massive influence on Western Civilization in general and America in particular, but this resolution isn't stating that people should know the Bible for its historical value or to be more literate, but because it's the Word of God. The former is the "clear, secular purpose" permitted by the Supreme Court Lemon vs. Kurtzman; the latter is not.

Let us Christians remember that a state that endorses our religion over others can easily endorse another religion over ours. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 says to pray for kings and others in authority, but it's so that they leave Christians alone to pursue holiness, not to impose Christianity on others.

I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people— 2 for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. 1 Timothy 2:1-2 (NIV).

Newt's Space Comments and the Military-Industrial Complex

2012-01-28T11:51:00.001-05:00

While campaigning in Florida, Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has been a vocal proponent of space exploration, to the point of promising a permanent American moon base by the end of his second term. Here is one article describring what he's been doing.

I'm not one of those people who thinks we cannot have space exploration because we have poor people at home, home being our own nation or other countries on Earth. There are enough places where there's wasteful spending already to cut to free up money for space-related stuff without reducing funds for things like literacy, AIDS prevention, etc. Farm subsidies come to mind, while the government could take the "weed is illegal but enforcing marijuana laws are not a priority" route that wouldn't save as much as full-blown legalizing it would but would cut some costs.

However, the U.S. financial situation is so dire with the debt and deficit being as huge as they are that the amount of spending needed to build a lunar colony, even a small one like the research stations in Antarctica, would be massively unjustified. The American Colonies weren't founded "just because," but for economic or ideological reasons. The Puritan colonies in the north were founded by people who wanted to create a godly society far away from the Church of England, Georgia to give debtors a new start, Maryland as a refuge for persecuted Catholics, South Carolina as a slave-based agrarian center, the French colonies in Canada to buy furs from the Indians, etc..

Much has been made of the Moon as a possible source for He3 to feed fusion reactors (the film Moon depicts an oil-rig-like colony mining He3 for this purpose), but we don't have that type of fusion yet and might not for quite while. Viable fusion always seems to be 40-50 years away and although I'm an optimist where scientific progress is concerned, one must be realistic. Fusion occurs in nature in the stars, but that doesn't mean it would be easy or cheap to do here on Earth.

And I'm not aware of any religious or cultural groups that want to establish their own ideal society far away from everyone else who've got the scientific training and resources needed to actually do it. Let's remember how dangerous this will be, especially given the recent laming of the American space program. One thing goes wrong in an attempt to establish a new Zion on the Moon (say a meteor smashes the greenhouse or the cosmic-ray shielding isn't thick enough) and the people back on Earth will be watching everyone up there die and be unable to do anything about it.

So not right now, Newt, however awesome it would be to do it.

However, thinking about the whole "space versus the poor" scenario has got me thinking. Many areas in the United States are poor due to industrial decline. The decline of the automobile industry is one of the reasons why Detroit is so awful. Georgia's political representatives have pushed for continued production of the F-22 fighter, despite us already having nearly 200 of them and very little that can face us in the skies, due to Lockheed being a major employer in my neck of the woods.

Some more left-wing people have claimed the U.S. government uses military spending as a kind of Keynesianism, to create jobs and keep the economy going. I admit being ideologically prejudiced against that kind of argument (it smacks of the U.S. being unable to sustain itself without an artificially-large war machine and international responsibilities to justify it), but given the defense of the F-22 program by Georgian politicians, I really can't argue against that being true in at least some cases.

So here's a thought for the long run. Instead of a military-industrial complex that with the defeat of fascism and Communism is no longer as necessary, how about orienting as much of it as possible to a space-industrial complex?

Lockheed, for example, was experimenting with a single-stage-to-orbit called the VentureStar that was canceled after running into some problems. If there was more demand for such technology, I imagine they wouldn't abandon it so easily. After all, it's (potentially) jobs and money that might not be so readily available if there are more defense cuts.

And then there's the space elevator, which would cause launch costs to drastically decline. If you're going to have space-Keynesianism instead of war-Keynesianism, this could lead to jobs in and around centers where materials research is conducted. The LiftPort Group, for example, managed a smaller-scale elevator test on Earth before deciding to focus on a lunar elevator for the time being. They're also engaged in other materials-science research that will bring immediate profits while allowing them to focus on their long-term goals.

Gingrich suggested prizes to provide incentives for private entities to work on this rather than simply increasing federal spending. This makes sense, given the financial constraints everyone is operating under these days and the slowness of many government agencies. The Ansari X Prize has shown promise. However, let's not forget that the Manhattan Project and the goodies that have emerged from the National Labs were government programs as well.

I May Go Kindle...

2012-01-26T10:17:00.000-05:00

Jeff Baker, a member of my Lawrenceville writing group, has self-published a story he'd written for an anthology to raise money for earthquake relief in Japan on Amazon.com for Kindle. He set it to be free for five days, to build up buzz and end up on the "People Who Bought This Also Bought..." lists and ended up moving 400 units. Then he started charging $0.99. As of a day or two ago, he'd sold 15 units and made just over $5, since Amazon gives 35% royalties for $0.99 material. Hopefully this figure has increased since then.

Although he has defended his decision in terms of retaining rights and the story never going out of print, he said the real purpose of this exercise is not to make money. Instead, it's to pave the way for him to Kindle-publish a young-adult fantasy novel he is working on now by generating an online fan-base. I've critiqued the first two chapters and although YA is not my cup of tea, it's a good story. He does not think he can get a good deal from traditional publishers and wants to hop on the train to the future, so to speak.

I admit I'm somewhat prejudiced against self-publishing because it smacks to me of someone taking their ball and going home because their stuff wasn't good enough. However, this might be somewhat outdated--thanks to E-publishing and E-readers like the Kindle and Nook, the publishing industry has greatly changed. And the industry's reluctance to take on new writers or invest much in promoting them (so they fail and then are judged not good, never mind that biggies like Stephen King and Dean Koontz get promoted like hell by their publishers) likely means some really good voices are going unheard.

I don't plan on Kindling Battle for the Wastelands and its planned sequels except at extreme need--say, due to major Values Dissonance between prospective publishers and I leading to them wanting unacceptable changes to the characters.

(I wanted to introduce some moral grayness to the world by making the hero rather racist and the villain as someone who has brought peace through conquest a la Aegon the Conqueror from George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, judges his minions on merit rather than ethnicity, and who married a non-white woman to unite his homeland. However, in some people's moral universes, being a "bigot" is the primary if not the only sin. Given how many cultural institutions tends to be more socially left-wing, they might assume the book is an endorsement of racism rather than giving the hero a flaw and the villain a virtue. Plus I have no problems with heroes killing villains.)

However, just because I don't want to take overmuch risk with my soon-to-be-finished first original novel doesn't mean I'm not inclined to give it a try.

In 2005-2006, I wrote a short story called "Nicor" about a teenage Dane on his first Viking raid who encounters the titular water-monster. Although it's an action-packed monster story with bloodshed aplenty, there's substance to it as well--it's about disillusionment with war and even a coming of age.

One of the earlier drafts, although it escaped the slush pile at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and was rejected by none other than the editor himself, wasn't all that good, and so I sent it to various other places, improving it at every rejection. Although now it's the best it's ever been, I am rapidly running out of markets to submit it.

(I did manage to sell it to the fantasy magazine Flashing Swords and was even paid $0.01 per word for it, but the magazine went under before the story could run.)

It is currently under consideration by Beneath Ceaseless Skies and according to Ralan.com, there's a new professional-level publication called Buzzy Mag (whose web-site was active yesterday but is down now due to server-switching). However, at present, that's about it. The number of semi-professional publications that would pay, say, $0.01 per word has dwindled with the economy. I could send it to a web-site or print publication for free or for a token payment, but these are smaller publications that don't have the same kind of prestige a larger publication will.

Given the choice between publication by someone else with no prestige and a small payment (sending "I am the Wendigo" to Chimaera Serials got me $20 and the status of a published writer, but I doubt it impressed many editors) and the possibility of making a few dollars a month for years with no prestige, it might make more financial sense to go with option #2 in the long run. Plus I can build up my Amazon.com author page, which exists only because of "Coil Gun."

However, J.M McDermott, also from the Lawrenceville writing group, has advised I hold onto my assets and wait for new publishers to appear. He has published some short fiction for Kindle, but the monetary returns have not been stellar. He has sold several books (including a new one entitled When We Were Executioners that just became available) and many short stories, so I am very inclined to take him seriously.

So here's the plan, all this rambling aside. If I cannot sell "Nicor" to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, I will seriously consider commissioning some good cover art (one of my beefs with self-published books is they tend to have really awful illustrations) and putting it on Kindle. Commissioning cover art will be a big cost that will take awhile to pay off, especially if the returns are low ($5-20 per month), but it might be a good long-term investment, since people do judge books by their covers. If I cannot sell it to Buzzy Mag and no new well-paying markets appear, I'll definitely dip my toe in the Kindle water. It's a good enough story that I'm not ruining my reputation by putting crap out there, but my options for it are rather limited at this moment.

Jeff says with my blog and it's 39,000 hits, I've got a substantial built-in fan-base. So what say you? If I put "Nicor" out on Kindle, would you be interested in reading it?

False Prophet Coming To America

2012-01-14T16:26:00.005-05:00

I found the link below on Facebook courtesy of my friend Gary.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/01/10/witch-hunter-ukpabio-spreads-her-poison-here/

Ignore the anti-Christian bias in the article--although it's there, that's not a good reason to just write it off. Here are some more "friendly" or neutral sources that describe just how destructive this belief system is.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,568140,00.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-05-18/world/nigeria.child.witchcraft_1_witches-nigeria-abuse?_s=PM:WORLD

http://theweek.com/article/index/205188/africas-child-witch-hysteria

Although the writer of the opening article and others have used this idiocy as a club to beat Christianity in general, this kind of thing goes against the Bible itself.

For starters, although there are Biblical accounts of possessed children, they child acts in truly bizarre ways--not like someone who has malaria or is simply undisciplined. Even Pat Robertson's people call this a bunch of nonsense.

As the CBN article pointed out, exorcism consists of invoking the name of Jesus, not anything remotely resembling physical abuse. And not only are these so-called preachers abusing children, they're charging the parents for it.

Compare them with the Apostle Paul, who did not covet anyone's silver (Acts 20:33). In fact, he worked as tent-maker to sustain himself while he preached (Acts 18:1-3).

Furthermore, Jesus said to let the children come to him (Mark 19:14) and said anyone who caused them to sin, it would be better they be drowned in the ocean (Matthew 18:6). I remember an account from an Irishman who abandoned believing in Christianity in the midst of being molested by some Christian Brothers and I can imagine children victimized in the name of these "Christian" teachings reaching the same conclusions. And let us remember Jesus will judge humanity on the treatment of "the least of these" (Matthew 25:31-46). And although Romans 2:24 in context refers to Jews whose bad behavior brought the worship of God into disrepute, it can also be applied to bad behavior of Christians as well.

Lest any Christian defend this kind of thing or any anti-Christian say that this false prophet is Biblically correct by pointing out the Bible describes witchcraft, let's examine some translation issues. The word in Galatians 5:16-23 translated as "witchcraft" is the Greek word pharmakeia, which pertains to drugs. Exodus 22:18, which says to not permit "witches" to live, has also been translated as "poisoner."

And let's look at the history of the church. Up until the early modern period, the more typical teaching in Christianity was that witches in the supernatural sense did not even exist. This view began to change and that is what spawned the witch-hunts that killed up to 100,000 people in Europe.

Jesus said "by their fruits you shall know them" (Matthew 7:16). The "fruit" of this belief in child witches is destructive to children (to say the least) and the good name of our Lord, and furthermore, it is not even Biblically based. Based on that verse alone, we can judge Helen Ukpabio a false prophet.

American Christians should not support Ukpabio or her belief system. In fact, the persecuted "witch children" of West Africa surely count among "the least of these" we are commanded to serve. Stepping Stones Nigeria is assisting children who have been driven away by their families due to their supposedly being "witches" and they deserve our support far more than a "ministry" that sows only bad seed.

And we can join the protest against Ukpabio and her ideas here. There's a petition to deny her entry to the U.S., which you can sign here.

An Amusing SG-1 Fan-Fic Scenario For Your Consumption

2012-01-08T09:19:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I had an idea for an interesting Stargate SG-1 fan-fiction scenario. It's inspired by a thread on my alternate-history forum's "Alien Space Bats" section in which the newly elected Pope Benedict is possessed by a Goa'uld named Jehovah who had apparently possessed Moses, then Jesus, and then all of the Catholic Popes starting with Peter.

(The show depicted the Semitic gods and the mythical Emperor Yu of China as being Goa'uld and the Norse pantheon as being the Asgardians, but the Abrahamic religions were left alone. I imagine it would have led to protests and boycotts if they depicted our God as being an alien snake with delusions of grandeur.)

However, instead of Catholicism, the religion under Goa'uld control is...Scientology. Imagine the cult of Seth, only with most of the cultists in Hollywood. Given the science-fiction aspects of the upper levels of Scientology's belief system, it could be ruled by a Goa'uld named Xenu or something like that. Tom Cruise could be the Goa'uld's First Prime or even the Goa'uld himself, given his devotion to Scientology.

Heck, here's an idea. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are both Goa'uld and Suri Cruise is a Harcesis. Creating a Harcesis is bad even by the Goa'uld's low standards, which might explain why, like Seth, the Goa'uld in question are living in hiding on Earth.

(If Cruise, Holmes, or their attorneys are reading this, this is a joke. Nobody sue me.)

So your challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to write an SG-1 fan-fic featuring SG-1 investigating Goa'uld activity on Earth and discovering the for-real alien connections of the Church of Scientology.

If Paul Winning Will Marginalize Iowa, Santorum Will Do Worse...

2012-01-02T18:23:00.003-05:00

I recently noticed a slew of articles taking shots at the Iowa caucuses that seemed awfully coincidental with polls showing that Ron Paul had a good shot at winning them. Here's one. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Iowans will suffer if they vote for Paul, such as this one, from the New York Post, along with another from Yahoo. Here's Chris Wallace weighing in.

Now it seems that Rick Santorum is rising in the polls, as an alternative to Romney. Politico confirms this.

The whole "Iowa better not vote for Paul" meme is based largely on how Paul supposedly isn't going to win the general election against Obama or even the Republican primary. However, that argument applies even more strongly to Santorum for the following reasons:

*Santorum lost his U.S. Senate seat by a huge margin in 2006. Read all about it here. I remember a lot of mockery about Al Gore losing his home state in 2000. If Gore had won Tennessee and its 11 electoral votes, he'd have beaten Bush, Florida or not. Come the general election, Obama can bring this up to attack Santorum. And all the stuff Casey used to slam Santorum can be used by Obama for the same purpose.

*Meanwhile, a surprisingly successful Internet campaign has made the top search for "Santorum" a rather gross sexual thing. Check out the Wikipedia article for more. That's going to make it even harder for people to take him seriously and can you imagine all the awkward questions kids who do an Internet search for him because he's the presidential nominee are going to ask their parents?

*Santorum said he would launch a military strike on Iran if they did not admit inspectors to their nuclear sites. Given how Obama got elected in part because he said he would end the Iraq War, even threatening to launch a new war (or even something equivalent to an old-school punitive expedition and not an outright invasion/occupation) is not going to go over well with the electorate at all.

*Santorum's very socially conservative views cost him in Pennsylvania and they're going to cost him in the general election. For example, the public is growing more supportive of gay marriage, something Santorum is strongly against. I am willing to say that a decade ago, a show like Modern Family featuring a gay couple adopting a child and being generally liked by everybody wouldn't have been made, and neither would the show Glee. Meanwhile, he has advocated against contraception. Given that Santorum is a conservative Catholic, him holding that view makes sense, but I don't think someone who intends to use his role as president to denounce contraception is going to be all that popular with female voters, especially since hormonal birth control is used to treat menstrual cramps and other conditions. Santorum has specifically criticized the mandate for insurance companies to cover birth control, but this is something that's proven rather popular.

The United States has been growing more and more social liberal in recent years, something that's backed up by The Emerging Democratic Majority and Whistling Past Dixie: How the Democrats Can Win Without the South. Santorum's social conservatism, regardless of whether it's morally right or not, is going to be lethal in the general election if he gets the Republican nod.

Now, I am not suggesting someone be so unprincipled as to decide on their morals due to opinion polls, but the purpose of the Republican primary is to choose the best candidate to defeat Obama in 2012. If Ron Paul's views, the racist newsletters that went out under his name, etc. make him unelectable and if his un-electability will discredit the Iowa caucus, then electing Santorum will do the same thing--only worse.

A WWI Alternate History Scenario for the New Year

2012-01-02T15:56:00.001-05:00

Here's my first post of the New Year: A WWI alternate-history scenario courtesy of the message-board I'm a member of.

The gist of it is that the Germans build a larger number of submarines, which the British did not take seriously (unlike the surface fleet, which ratcheted up tensions between the two states), in addition to their historical naval buildup. This strategy of asymmetric warfare (in this context following a totally different strategy than the expected one of matching Britain battleship-for-battleship) bites the British really hard on the behind when WWI comes as it did in our world.

Here's the link:

Prince Henry of Prussia: The Rise of the U-Boat

This world's version of the German raid on the British fleet base at Scapa Flow just got a lot worse for Britain. I get the impression the roll-up of Germany's overseas colonies is going to be a lot harder--for starters, the U-Boats just foiled the attempted blockade of Germany's Chinese outpost Tsingtao.

I don't think this is going to turn into a one-sided German rampage, although the comments in an in-universe history book seem to indicate ultimately Germany eclipses Britain as the world's premiere naval power. Let us remember that every action has a reaction...

Congress Lets Ethanol Subsidies and Tariffs Expire

2011-12-31T08:36:00.000-05:00

Ethanol subsidy expires; local effect unknown

Hooray for some fiscal responsibility! Congress allowed a $6 billion corn subsidy to expire and a tariff on Brazilian ethanol to die with it.

This is good for several reasons.

*Firstly, with our massive deficit and national debt, cutting wasteful spending should be a priority and this is a biggie in terms of uselessness. $6 billion is a drop in the bucket as far as cutting spending is concerned, but one has to start somewhere. After all, many drops and the bucket is filled. :)

*Secondly, corn ethanol takes crops that could be used for food and turns them into gasoline. This drives up the cost of corn and makes the poor pay higher food prices, both at home (where it's less of an issue) and abroad (where it is more). Ethanol production in Brazil, however, uses stuff leftover from processing sugar (cane fibers and various syrups) to make fuel, so real food isn't wasted. In any event, even if more sugar could be distilled from the stuff used to make ethanol fuel, sugar is much less of a necessity than corn is. One does not need sugar to survive, but one definitely needs staple grains. This is one area where I actually agree with Fidel Castro. And lest anyone think I'm some left-winger, so does The Economist. Both the bearded tyrant in Havana and The Economist think Brazil's ideas are better.

*Thirdly, this might be a sign the corn lobby and the sugar lobby aren't as strong as they used to be. According to one of my former professors at the University of Georgia, the sugar lobby has pushed for high tariffs on sugar that made it cheaper to use high-fructose corn syrup in soda. Here's a link corroborating this. And some material from the government too, lest you think the first site is too ideological. Ending a tariff on imported ethanol made from sugar will benefit Brazilian sugar producers--who've integrated sugar and ethanol production--and I'm sure the American sugar lobby doesn't like that At All.

However, without the subsidy, I suspect ethanol made from sugar will be more competitive now and it will be in the American sugar producers' interest to borrow the Brazilian technique and put it to work here. If they can grab a big chunk of the American fuel market, they won't need tariffs and quotas to protect themselves from foreign competition. Getting rid of those will in turn benefit sugar producers in other countries, to whom increasing exports is a matter of survival.

*Fourthly, with the tariff gone, the Brazilians will be able to sell us more of their ethanol and use the profits to increase their own production, which in turn might eventually lead to lower gas prices here. If we're going to be importing energy resources, they should be from responsible countries like Brazil and not unstable or unfriendly places in the Middle East.

So good on Congress for letting some unnecessary spending expire and making our trade with Brazil just a little bit freer. And good for the corn-ethanol people for not putting up too much of a fight.

Thoughts on Animating "Coil Gun."

2011-12-24T16:18:00.000-05:00

I'm about one-third or so through writing a screenplay based on my short story "Coil Gun," which was published in September in the third issue of Digital Science Fiction.

In order to transform a 5,000-odd word story into a 90-page (at minimum) screenplay, I'm going to have to expand the events in the story considerably. This I've done by beginning the screenplay several hours before the story, during the lead-up to the war.

Although this will get me to the proper length and allow for additional characterization, the events depicted would make the necessary budget for the film larger. Things include space battles in the vein of Battlestar Galactica, the depiction of submarine-launched nuclear attacks, etc. Anything depicted on a submarine bridge, for example, necessitates an additional set, while the special effects needed to realistically depict WWIII would cost a pretty penny.

However, the thought just occurred to me that this could be donate via animation. This would be much, much cheaper than doing it live-action, which would require Michael Bay-sized budgets for the action sequences.

The problem is, in the United States at least, animation is generally considered something for kids. One reason the film Titan A.E. failed despite being an awesome movie is that although it was animated, it was much more adult-oriented--it starts out with the alien destruction of Earth, features the protagonist being subject to racist abuse by other aliens, lots of gun-fights and space battles, an alien getting his neck snapped, and the female lead in a towel answering the door to her cabin and asking the protagonist "in or out?"

However, the more recent Avatar was marketed as an adult science-fiction movie and is now the top-grossing movie on the planet. Titan A.E.'s failure could be attributed to marketing--if I remember right, it was not marketed as science-fiction for adults but instead a movie for kids.

If "Coil Gun" were adapted into an animated film, I imagine it would be done using Pixar-style 3D animation rather than traditional 2D cel animation. I much prefer the cel look visually, but apparently The Princess and the Frog (Disney's last big cel-animated project) didn't do as well as Disney expected and that contributed to future Disney projects being digital animation. Legend of the Guardians did the 3D thing really well, so as long as it doesn't come out looking like Toy Story or The Clone Wars, great.

And the same rationale can be applied to my earlier project, The Gates of Vasharia. I've described that one as "Lord of the Rings with tanks" (to say nothing of an extradimensional demonic army), so adapting that one would require a Michael Bay budget as well. Of course, with animation, it would probably end up with an Avatar-sized budget.

"Prometheus" Trailer

2011-12-22T19:31:00.000-05:00

Here's the trailer for the movie Prometheus, which I'd initially heard was a prequel to Alien.

However, based on the Wikipedia article, it looks like it'll be about human scientists searching for alien involvement in the early days of human history. I think the aliens in question are the "space jockeys" whose ship carried the eggs that caused so much trouble in the first and second Alien films.

As I've said earlier, I'm not a fan of the ancient-astronauts theory, although the aliens-help-humans variant is not as bad as the humans-are-aliens version. A member of my message-board whose handle is 9-Fanged Hummingbird came up with the following, which points out both how absurd the idea is and the racist implication that certain cultures need alien help:

The ancient aliens hypothesis relies on the idea that these guys who mastered space travel are watching us and helping brown people to build tombs for their kings out of stone for god only knows what reason. Also, the aliens pile up random rocks in other places just because.

Seriously, to a civilization like that of the "space jockey," early humans would be little more than animals. Why bother with us?

Still, it looks like it'll be an entertaining film. Between that and John Carter and a bunch of other films slated for 2012, I think I'll be spending a lot more time at the multiplex.

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" Trailer with Comments

2011-12-20T22:42:00.002-05:00

Just found this online courtesy of TOR books, and here's the YouTube video...

It looks cool. The Dwarven songs in which they mourn for the loss of their homeland to the dragon Smaug are nice. We don't really see a lot of Dwarf culture in the three Lord of the Rings films beyond them living underground and favoring feasting and axes, so this is nice.

One quibble--Thorin Oakenshield looks too human. He's too tall and slender for a Dwarf. I remember hearing that there had been some kind of Twilight-induced attempt to make the Dwarves "sexy," although all I could find was this article here.

I'm wondering how they work Rivendell and Galadriel into the story. Gandalf and the White Council were active at the time in order to prepare the Free Peoples for the return of Sauron--who at this point was operating under the guise of the Necromancer of Dol Guldur--but I don't think the council dealt with him until well after the events of The Hobbit.

A thought I had was that they might work the White Council's defeat of disguised-Sauron into these two films somehow and have them physically destroy the Necromancer. He would not be killed, since his essence is bound to the One Ring, but this could explain why Saruman told Gandalf in the first film that "he cannot yet take physical form."