Author: David Steffen

David Steffen is an editor, publisher, and writer. If you like what he does you can visit the Support page or buy him a coffee! He is probably best known for being co-founder and administrator of The Submission Grinder, a donation-supported tool to help writers track their submissions and find publishers for their work . David is also the editor-in-chief here at Diabolical Plots. He is also the editor and publisher of The Long List Anthology: More Stories From the Hugo Award Nomination List series. David also (sometimes) writes fiction, and you can follow on BlueSky for updates on cross-stitch projects and occasionally other things.

The End that Ruins

We’ve all been there. You invest your time and money in a movie or read a book where, for most of the time you’re sitting there, you’re really enjoying it. It may not be the best you’ve ever read or seen, but you’re pretty sure you’d give it a thumb’s up to someone asking your opinion on it later. But when the ending arrives, you’re left with your jaw hanging open at how pointless, annoying, or just plain stupid the ending was, to the extent that it ruins the whole movie for you that the creators really couldn’t come up with something better than that. It really sticks in your mind, but not in a good way, and you’re left wandering the earth seeking out others who have experienced that movie or book so you can commiserate at what an incredibly stinky ending it was.

Well, this is a list of some of the most prominent examples of this from my movie and book experiences. Keep in mind that these are only examples of what I have personally come across, not the worst endings of all time. If you have any endings you’d like to complain about, I encourage you to leave them in the comments.

Obviously, this list will have lots of SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS GALORE , since there’s no way I can write a list complaining about endings which doesn’t tell you what the endings are. So if you’re worried about spoilers, maybe you should stop here, or you could scan the titles and only read the details for those you’ve read or don’t care about.

1. The Dark Tower

by Stephen King

Premise

A cowboy and friends travel a long, long way, facing insurmountable odds and traveling to many places (including Maine)Â just to find a big tall building for no apparent reason.

Overall

Yes, I’m sure it’s a shocker that Stephen King tops out the bad endings list, as he’s notorious for writing himself into corners and then writing whatever dumb resolution comes to mind at the time. Usually his ideas are great, his characters are well developed, and the ending most often invokes a WTF reaction. Which is why he gets the honor of having 4 stories in this top 10 list.

This series has spanned most of Stephen King’s career to date, the first novel “The Gunslinger” was serializeded in F&SF from 1978-1981 and the final novel was finally published in 2004. I generally liked the series, though I think book two “The Drawing of the Three” was my favorite. In the later books, there are major cases of Stephen King pretentiousness leaking into the story. By the time he hit mid-series he was famous enough that he could pretty much do whatever the hell he wanted, regardless of how stupid it was. This includes injecting himself as a character into the series of the book, revered as a god by the gunslinger himself who sees him as the creator. And, in typical King fashion, many of the books suffer from word bloat, expanding to more than double the size they’d really need to be.

The Ending

Long before the end of the series, you know that the final adversary will be the Crimson King. He’s one of King’s favorite villains, having made a major appearance in some of his other books, including an on-screen role in Insomnia. But, as time goes on, you wonder how the heck Roland the gunslinger and his group of other gunslingers will ever be able to defeat him. The Crimson King is extremely powerful, is actually undead, and is locked outside the Dark Tower that has been Roland’s obsession for most of his life. He wants Roland’s guns as a sort of talisman, but we’re told there’s no way to kill the Crimson King, so it seems like Roland’s just walking into his hands.

And then, a couple hundred pages before the end, Roland finds a note from Stephen King referring to a “deus ex machina”. This does not bode well. And sure enough, Roland’s group gets a new member, a mute artist. His sketches are so lifelike that you can hardly believe they’re not real, and if he draws something that he sees in real life, and then erases it, the real thing disappears too. Cue magical unforeseen ability added slapdash at the last minute. You may as well call the guy “Patch” because he exists solely to patch the gaping hole in Stephen King’s plotline. And apparently he realized it himself, hence his note to Roland warning him of it. Yup, sure enough, the artist is the one to kill the Crimson King by drawing a picture of him. Just drawing him in pencil doesn’t work this time though. He has to use blood for the eyes, which doesn’t erase, so the Crimson King is still around, he’s just a bodiless presence.

And as if that lame final conflict weren’t enough, when Roland finally enters the Dark Tower, he finds it in memorabilia of his own life, and then suddenly he finds his life rewound to a battle he fought decades ago when he lost his battle horn which the Tower has told him is a powerful talisman.ÂÂ And so he begins his quest all over again.

In a way this makes sense. The series began with Roland pursuing his quest alone, and so it’s somewhat fitting for his quest to continue alone at the end. But this is little better than the cliched and annoying “it was all a dream” ending. In the end, none of it really happened, so I’ve just wasted my time reading seven friggin books that the author has just unwritten. Roland has lived for his quest for so long that he could never be happy without his quest, but I just figured that would mean he would die at the end, or would find a new completely different quest, not just take up his whole same quest all over again.

I’m much happier with this one if I just pretend that the pages are blank as Roland approaches the Tower.

2. Dreamcatcher(the movie)

directed by Lawrence Kasdan, based on book by Stephen King

Premise

Childhood friends on a hunting trip (in Maine) fight off an invasion of alien shit weasels lead by a bodysnatcher.

Overall

Yup, another Stephen King, but this time, the movie adaptation of his book. The book adaptation was quite nice, and much of the movie was done very well also. There were some really great actors, including Morgan Freeman and Jason Lee in one of my favorite of his roles as Beaver. But the movie made some major changes from the book. The sort of changes that, if you’ve also read the book, make you wonder what the holy hell they must have been thinking to have done it. It’s still worth seeing, because many of the really chilling visuals are well adapted, and even some of the new stuff is cool. But the major changes kept the movie adaptation from being really great.

The Ending

The most important character in the story is Duddits, a friend these four guys made in childhood, a Down’s Syndrome kid who was more than he appeared. A recurring theme common in many of King’s books is that people with conditions that would often be called mental disabilities turn out to be special in some extraordinary way, often exhibiting psychic powers. In both the book and the movie, Duddits’s powers are somewhat contagious, gifting his friends with extra abilities, like psychic powers and the ability to find things lost. In both cases, he is integral to both the premise and the resolution of the movie, being the one who is most able to stand against Mr. Gray the body snatching alien.

In the book, Duddit’s contribution to the climax is a very powerful scene. In the movie, well, Duddits turns out to be shapeshifting alien fighting for the side of good, who comes and has a battle to the death with the evil Mr. Gray. I am not making this up.

3. Mulholland Drive

directed by David Lynch

Premise

Er… um… well, if you figure out what this movie is about, let me know.

Overall

I really liked Twin Peaks TV show, created by David Lynch, so I wanted to watch this one all the way through, to give him the benefit of the doubt. Halfway through the movie, two of the actresses swap roles for no apparent reason, and there’s a gremlin living behind a convenience store. Throughout the whole movie, it always seemed like I was just missing one revelation that would make all the previous nonsense come together in some meaningful way.

The Ending

Like I said, throughout the whole movie, I always felt like I was just on the verge of understanding what the hell was happening. The characters were interesting, despite their unexplained role swap. The gremlin behind the convenience store and all that weird stuff was interesting, but all sort of absurd and random, but not in a way that quite managed to make sense even in an absurdist light.

So I’m watching, watching, hoping that at the very end, some light will be shed upon the random hodgepodge that this movie has built up for itself. And what do I get? Definitely not what I was hoping for. Earlier in the movie, there had been a couple tourists, older, overweight folks in gaudy clothes. Well, these same people reappear as semitransparent specters, maybe 4 inches tall, creeping under someone’s bedroom door, giggling gleefully, and advance on the bed. And then (if I remember correctly) you get one more shot of the gremlin behind the convenience store. If anyone has any idea what was supposed to have happened, please do let me know.

4. Stardust (the novel)

written by Neil Gaiman

Premise

Lovestruck boy saves heavenly body from cannibal witch.

Overall

I really like Neil Gaiman’s writing, and in particular I really like this story, but this is one of a rare case when I think a movie adaptation of a book did better than the book itself. I’m a sucker for a good quest, and Tristran’s quest to find the fallen star to give to the girl he thinks he loves is a great one. I love the interaction between the very human star (named Yvaine) and the young Tristran. I love the comedy, including that provided by Robert Deniro as the cross-dressing Captain Shakespeare. Michelle Pfeiffer did a great job playing the witch.

Much of the book and the movie were similar, but the ending is drastically different, and the movie ending was much improved by the movie adaptation.

The Ending

Stardust is one of the few cases I’ve ever seen where I enjoyed a movie adaptation of a book more than the book itself. The most major villain in both stories is the witch who intends to eat the heart of the human-formed star to regain her youth and magic powers. She is responsible for setting up many of the obstacles in the story, and she is bad ass.

In the movie, they end up having a huge fight with the witch, and she pits her magic against their heroism. Most memorable of this is that she uses a voodoo doll in water to kill one of the major characters, and then uses the doll to reanimate his body. It’s a great effect, with the ghost of the dead man looking on from the side as his sopping wet body performs impossible moves without even looking at what it’s doing, its head dangling limply, obviously more pulled along by his sword hand than in control of it. This is an epic fight scene, and they’re finally only able to defeat the witch when Yvaine shows her unforeseen ability to shine so brightly that the witch burns right up. Okay, that last bit is a bit cheesy, but it worked well enough.

In the book, she gives her heart to Tristran (metaphorically), and when she finally comes face to face with the witch at the end, the witch says something along the lines of “You’ve given your heart to another, so it’s not mine to take.” Lame, what a waste of an awesome villain.

5. The Ring

directed by Gore Verbinski

Premise

VHS haunting ghost murders viewers. (This is the real, little known reason that VHS isn’t popular anymore)

Overall

The movie had an interesting, classic horror style. There are a lot of cool images here, especially in the ghost’s final manifestation. The eventual reveal of what the image of the ring represents is a cool one. Unfortunately, a lot of the details are inconsistent with each other, especially with a chicken-and-egg relationship of the question of whether the girl was killed because she had terrible powers or if she had terrible powers because of the way she was killed. But overall, most of the movie is a decent horror flick.

The Ending

The main character’s friend is a reporter investigating the phenomenon of the disturbing tape–if anyone watches it, they die a gruesome mysterious death 7 days later. The friend has a child who sees the ill-portented video near the beginning of the movie. So she and her reporter friend set out to solve the mystery of the video to find out where it comes from, what the odd images mean, etc… That search for knowledge is the entire point of the main plot of the movie, and they do eventually find it’s origin and seem to make piece with the ghost that it originates with. And then the ghost shows up and kills the reporter, completely unexpectedly. That part is fine, and is in fact one of the strongest images in the entire movie, with the ghost climbing out of the TV set, her hair completely covering her face. So it turns out that their knowledge didn’t do them a damned bit of good.

What really bugged me, though, is the reveal of what will actually save them. The ghost doesn’t give a damn if you know what the video is about. All she wants is for you to copy the tape and give it to someone else. If you do this, then you will not die. Sound familiar? Yeah, that’s the subject of about a million email chain letters “send this on or you will die/have bad luck/lose money”. Why couldn’t they have just left that list bit off and quite while they were ahead?

6. It (the novel)

written by Stephen King

Premise

Childhood friends (from Maine) reunite (in Maine) to kill a shapeshifting clown.

Overall

Yup, a third King entry. I haven’t actually seen the movie version of this, but the book version I quite enjoyed. It is very long, one of his longest, topping over 1000 pages. It was one of the very first King books I ever read, back in junior high, lots of really scary moments, and the action is pretty well interspersed throughout. The story flashes betweenthe past, when a group of 6 friends (5 boys, 1 girl) first came across this shapeshifting boogey monster type creature who’s been causing a series of deaths across the city of Derry, and the present decades later, where they have gathered again to drive the monster back once again. I’d recommend the book if you feel like a long read.

The Ending

The very very ending of the book with the confrontation with It beneath Derry is actually fine, told in parallel with the characters as adults and children. It’s the part that comes a little while earlier that really bugs me. When they are children, as they’re crawling through the tunnels, headed for their destination, they’re all losing heart in the face of the terrors ahead of them, and they’re just about ready to turn around. They stop, and are going to completely give up, but they find a way to get up the guts to go on. How? Well, all 5 of the pre-teen boys have sex with the girl. And after they all boink her, they magically find the will to go on Um…. where the heck did that come from? The scene was gratuitous, awkward, weird, and just plain added nothing to the story. Each of the characters had a role to play in the story, a reason why they were chosen by fate to face up against the evil monster, and with this turn of events it seems that her sole purpose in the group was to be their pre-teen sex object.

7. Under the Dome

written by Stephen King

Premise

A town (in Maine) is trapped inside a giant snow globe.

Overall

I reviewed this one last month, so I won’t go into too many details. Overall, good story, though quite long, interesting situation, good characters.

The Ending

This is reiterating a bit from the review. The people under the Dome are trapped in there for weeks. Most of the time people are dealing with each other, interpersonal problems, and only a couple people bother trying to figure out how to get out from under the Dome. Finally a few weeks later, a few people get the idea to find the source of the impenetrable shield surrounding their town. Finally they find it, a small device up on the highest hill in town. They try to move it, but it won’t budge, but touching it gives them a telepathic connection with strange lifeforms and they come to the conclusion that they aliens are children who have put the device there as a sort of game. The people try to throw a lead shield on it to suppress it’s signal, but the lead melts. And then they give up until the end of the book. What a bunch of losers to give up so easily? Try blasting it with dynamite. Try pouring acid on it. Try hitting it with a sledgehammer. Trying putting a lead dome around it, but at a distance so it is not touching the device.

But no, these people just decide there’s nothing they can do and go back to dealing with the interpersonal problems. A few weeks later, the proverbial poo hits the fan when the town’s meth lab, surrounded by a stockpile of most of the town’s propane, explodes, filling the down with a fiery inferno, Killing all but 30 people and 2 dogs. Fortunately the fire goes out on its own. Unfortunately, this is because there’s so little oxygen left to burn. On the outside the military has set up huge industrial fans, which provide enough force to push a bit of fresh air through the Dome so the survivors are those who can make it to that part of the Dome before they suffocate.

For the next couple chapters, they just sit in that area, gasping for breath, as they die one by one. Finally someone comes up with the idea to go back to the device, connect with the aliens and simply beg for their lives. And it works, solving everyone’s problems. So… I bet they were kicking themselves for not having tried that earlier, they could’ve saved many thousands of lives, instead of just a couple dozens. Seriously, people!

8. Evolution

directed by Ivan Reitman

Premise

Hyper-evolution! Take that, Intelligent Design!

Overall

This was a really cool idea, with a “hive” of aliens that are able to evolve amazingly quickly from onehostile form to another, from microorganisms, to giant flesh burrowing mosquitoes, and on. There’s a lot of good comedy here too, including great lines an ex-researcher science teacher played by David Duchovny, and some good ones from MadTV alumnus Orlando Jones. Sure, the premise of the movie isn’t really plausible, including a pretty shaky understanding of the actual scientific principle of evolution, but if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief the idea is really fun, and the special effects are generally well done.

The Ending

As the movie goes on, the alien lifeforms just get worse and worse, eventually evolving into ape-like analogs who can use tools, but they go even further, merging into one gigantic amoeba like blob which begins to crawl across the countryside absorbing everything. So our heroes, David Duchovny and his students are in a classroom trying to think of some way to stop the aliens. Together they come up with an absolutely ludicrous idea, which of course turns out to be the key. They bring out a periodic table, and point out that humans are carbon-based (point to the “C”), and that our poison is Arsenic (point to the “As”, down 2 and right 1). The aliens are nitrogen based (point to the “N”), so therefore their poison must be selenium (point to the “Se”). One of the students remembers that Selenium is the active ingredient in Head and Shoulders dandruff shampoo. So they manage to fill an entire fire truck with Head and Shoulders, and blast it up the bunghole of the big blobby thing, finally killing it.

There are so many things wrong with this:
-Humans don’t have just one poison. Arsenic is one that’s historically popular, but lead is poisonous to us, as is mercury. There are lots of elements that will easily kill us if ingested, and that’s not even taking into account compounds made of these elements.
-While the periodic table is a handy visualization, and separates out sections for metals, and nonmetals, and other handy separations, an arbitrary patterned jump is not meaningful.
-I really doubt a fire truck could pump shampoo well(though I think I could forgive this for the sake of humor if they’d given at least a show of making the rest make sense).

9. 9

directed by Shane Acker (not to be confused with Nine, a completely unrelated movie which also came out in the same year)

Premise

Rag dolls vs. war machines.

Overall

I really enjoyed this movie. Lots of good voice acting, including Elijah Wood, John C. Reilly, and a rare appearance by the ever-strange Crispin Glover.

This movie has a lot of great things going for it. Early in the movie, they accidentally awaken a sentient war machine by snapping a device to it. These little rag dolls are up against mechanical minions slapped together by the war machine that has apparently killed all of humanity. This was a great one to see in theaters because the sheer scale of the killing machines is terrifying, and even more so if it’s on the big screen so you feel no bigger than the rag dolls. The creature design is especially fantastic: the war machine has limited materials, so it cobbles together its minions from spare parts lying around, each one uber creepy and almost familiar in its mimicry of real animals, yet utterly bizarre.

One of the criticisms oft leveled against the movie is that the characters are one-dimensional. But that’s really a criticism for this particular movie, because the reason for that simplicity of personality is revealed: all 9 rag dolls have minds which are merely fragments of a single human. So each of them is a personality trait more than a personality of itself.

The Ending

As the movie goes on, the war machine catches the dolls one by one and in a flash of light sucks their life away with the small device attached near the beginning, and you see an internal view of them on the war machine’s viewscreen, sort of like a soul. 6 (the eccentric striped doll played by the awesome Crispin Glover) stops them from killing the machine when they have an opportunity, which to me seemed like a major plot point. He says that to destroy the machine would not solve their problems. His protests are enough that the war machine sucks out his soul in the meantime. He says that their friends are still alive inside the machine and destroying it would destroy them too.

So they keep running, and it picks off more and more of them. The way I interpreted this as time went on was that they should surrender and allow the machine to suck all of their souls away so that all 9 of them are all inside the machine. Remember, they are 9 fragments of one human mind, so if you recombine them inside the mind of the machine, maybe the human can take back over.

So how do they resolve it? Well, they grab the device off of the machine and suck the souls back out. This kills the war machine. Somehow they fiddle with the device, and it releases all the captive souls, and it seeds the clouds (or something) and rain begins to fall. Raindrops land on the camera and in the magnification, you can see microorganisms crawling around in them. It’s never explained why the release of a handful of rag doll souls would make it rain, or why it would return life to the planet. Unexplained, nonsensical, and completely against the most obvious conclusion that they all should have joined inside the machine to reunite.

10. The Faculty

directed by Robert Rodriguez

Premise

Misfit students who attack their teachers avoid life in prison by saying that it was self defense against alien bodysnatchers.

Overall

I’m not claiming that this is high quality cinema, nor that it’s even a particularly great example of an alien horror movie. But it’s a decent specimen of an alien horror movie, and you’ll probably enjoy it if you don’t go in with too many expectations. It was an early movie in several stars careers, most notably Josh Hartnett and Ali Larter, and had plenty of other stars like Bebe Neuworth (Lilith on Frasier), Robert Patrick (T-1000 in Terminator 2), and Elijah Wood.

Bodysnatchers take over the teachers in this school, and then take the popular kids one by one. The last ones left as regular humans are the misfits, the drug dealers, the losers, the new kids, and they’re the ones who end up having to fight the aliens and try to save the world. Yeah, the premise is a bit cheesy, and a bit wish fulfillment as well, but really isn’t a bad setup for a movie.

The Ending

During the movie, they discover all these little ear-worm aliens that are taking over everyone’s bodies. They hypothesize, based on movies that they’ve seen, that there must be a queen, and that killing the queen will kill the rest of them. And, of course, this turns out to be oh so conveniently true. But why would this be true? When I think “queen” I generally think of ants or bees, who have the one egg-laying huge insect who creates all the offspring. But killing her doesn’t kill the rest of them. They will raise a new queen from one of the eggs if they need to. And even if the hive didn’t survive, they still wouldn’t die instantly. It just bugs me when characters come to such a ridiculous conclusion based on no information whatsoever, and it turns out to be true for the sake of plot convenience.

Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World

written by David Steffen

Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World may be one of the strangest movies I’ve ever seen. It’s based on a comic book which I’ve never read (though I now intend to). Whether you like it or not depends almost entirely on whether you like your movies with a heavy dose of weird. For me, I like when a director dares to stray from Hollywood formulas and actually has the guts to try something different, even if the results aren’t spectacular. In this case, the results ARE spectacular, at least to my tastes. It’s a movie that will probably get love or hate reactions depending on if it hits your sense of humor. Some, but nowhere near all, of the humor is targeted toward video game and graphic novel aficionados such as myself. If you’re in that group, you’ll get a few more of the jokes, but if you’re not there is still plenty of humor for you, and video game knowledge is never vital for understanding the movie. I’m not going to hold my breath for it to win an Oscar, as I’ve lost all faith in the Academy’s willingness to consider awesome speculative fiction movies, or any movies that don’t fit its own cookie cutter shape (different than the blockbuster cookie cutter, but still a cookie cutte). But for a fun movie, especially if you’re squarely in the center of the target demographic like I am, it’s a huge hit, and is now on my short list of favorite movies. This will most definitely be on my Christmas list.

Synopsis

As the movie starts, the setting seems to be relatively mundane, and it stays that way for quite a while despite the strange and neurotic characters that populate it. Scott Pilgrim is a 23-year-old layabout with a garage band called Sex Bobomb (there’s one of those video game in-jokes). He has a 17-year old girlfriend in high school, pretty much as innocent as they come–they’ve been dating for weeks and they haven’t quite worked their way up to hold hands. Oddly, her name is Knives Chau. Despite this rather familiar setting, there are plenty of odd things about it, such as the fact that Scott sleeps in the same bed with his gay roommate (Scott himself is not gay). His roommate is played by Kieran Culkin, in the first acting role as an adult that I have seen him in. Yup, he still looks exactly like Macaulay Culkin but with dark hair, and his slightly creepy boyish looks just add to the comedy of his character. The relationships between the characters are weird and often dysfunctional, and played just the right way to keep the humor rolling as the plot continues.

From the beginning there are some strange visual effects, most of them evoking a comic book feel. Most sound effects are accompanied by a written sound effect somewhere on the screen. The doorbell is associated with a “Ding Dong!” popping up on the wall, and the phone is accompanied by a “Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing”. It’s a fun effect and they never overplayed its effect.

Throughout the movie, Scott has a series of weird dreams, most of them revolving around a mystery girl who he has never seen in real life. Until he runs into her at a party in all her pink haired goggled glory, she introduces herself as Ramona Flowers. He becomes immediately infatuated with her, and starts trying to start a relationship with her (without telling Knives). Meanwhile, Sex Bobomb enrolls in a local Battle of the Bands competition and it’s at the first round of that competition that the real premise of the movie really takes off. At the competition, Scott is attacked by one of Ramona’s exes. He is, in fact, part of the League of Evil Exes, an organization of her disgruntled exes dedicating itself to intercepting any of Ramona’s future love interests. To win the right to date her, Scott has to defeat all seven of her exes, each of them stranger than the last.

There are quite a few fairly well known actors in the movie, including Jason Schwartzman (Bored to Death, The Darjeeling Limited, Rushmore), Chris Evans (Fantastic Four, Push), Michael Cera in the title role (Arrested Development, Superbad, Youth in Revolt), and one big guest star but the movie doesn’t just try to ride their popularity. In fact, the roles and lines are often so absurd that it’s extra fun because these guys do not take themselves too seriously.

The fight scenes are what makes the movie really unique. Each one is different from the others, and most of them evoke a sort of Anime fight feel. They’re not even slightly realistic, with each of the exes tending to have some kind of improbable superhero-like power, and the effects showing these off are vibrant, even while the banter and stupid lines are hilarious.

My Views

I was pretty certain I would like it from the moment the Universal logo came on the screen in 8-bit color and graphics (picture the original NES circa 1985). And then recognizable Legend of Zelda theme music within the first few minutes.

Long story short: I loved it. If you like special effects, video games or comics, absurd humor, or if you just like movies that take the path less traveled, give this movie a try. Even before the fight scenes the special effects are great, and they just get better and better as the movie goes on. One of the greatest things is that I only saw one preview before the movie came out so I had little idea what to expect–too many times I have to shut my eyes when I keep seeing trailers because they keep giving away important details. Whenever there’s not action, there’s comedy, and there were some scenes that were so funny I had to laugh into my hand to keep from drowning out the movie with my guffaws. Great stuff!

One of the greatest parts is that the writers/director are aware of all the movie/game/comic cliches and they played them off very well for comedy effect. For instance, before they go to the opening competition of the Battle of the Bands, Scott gets an email from the first evil ex, telling him of the upcoming fight to the death. Scott reads it aloud for the audience, and we’re absorbing the information with a grin and wide eyes until Scott groans and deletes the email before finishing it before it’s so fatally boring. We’re expecting this to be the vital info-dump explaining the premise of the movie and it just gets cut off in the middle. So when the ex shows up, he has to re-explain everything from scratch, exasperated that Scott has such poor etiquette to not even read it.

All in all, I’d highly recommend it if you like a good laugh, if you like special effects or supernatural fight scenes, or if you just like a movie that doesn’t come from the Hollywood movie templates. Go see it in theatres while you still can–the special effects make it worth it.

SPOILERS

Not too many spoilers here, there were just one spoilerific thing I wanted to mention that particularly tickled me. Near the end of the movie, after he defeats all of the exes, Scott meets a shadow-version of himself. This is an old, old video game trope, the shadow self adversary. It’s always a grueling battle because your enemy has the exact same weaknesses and strengths as you. So when the shadow Scott shows up, I was mentally rubbing my hands together with glee. Ramona and Knives offer to join in the fight but he tells them this is one for him alone. They leave him alone to fight, cut scene, and the two Scott show up a while later after they’ve stopped at a waffle house (foregoing the fight entirely). “We really have a lot in common,” Scott says. Loved it. 🙂

Review: Under the Dome by Stephen King

by David Steffen

Stephen King is not known for his brevity. Many of his books are above the 500-page mark, with a few surpassing 1000. This can be good or bad. I never minded the longer books until I started writing, but now it’s hard to look at a 1000-page book and wish it had been trimmed down. Not that I only like short books, but I like a story that is exactly as long as it needs to be. Every part has some purpose, whether it moves the plot forward, illuminates character background, or a variety of other purposes.

Some of his books, like Duma Key are just far too long, and start much too slowly. In that book, there’s not much in the way of plot until about 3/4 of the way through at which point everything suddenly happens all at once. His recent novel Cell is not long by King standards, only a few hundred pages, but it seems long because the characters are not his usual well-rounded sort. They’re little more than placeholders, one-dimensional and uninteresting.

But when he finds a story and a cast of characters that merits the length, he can really make that cast come to life. This was the reason I really loved It and The Stand despite their gargantuan length. And now I can add Under the Dome to that list.

Synopsis

The premise is absurdly simple to explain–it’s the cast that makes it interesting. An invisible, impenetrable, and apparently indestructible barrier inexplicably appears along the boundary of a small town in Maine. Yes, in Maine. If I had a nickel for every inexplicable and paranormal event that occurs in Maine in Stephen King’s stories, I’d never have to work again. I do wish that he’d try some other settings once in a while. Write what you know, I suppose, but I think Mr. King could afford some traveling to make his settings more diverse. Anyway, so that’s basically it. No one knows where the dome came from, not even the government. Because the barrier is invisible, most of the boundaries are found first on the highway when cars smash into it. It also extends down into the ground, severing telephone and power lines. This inconvenience is alleviated somewhat because many of the rural Maine folk have generators, but it causes problems here and there, and they’re limited to the amount of propane they have on hand to run the gennies.

Now, populate this little town with a diverse cast from a pack of skateboarding teens to reporters to doctors to government officials, and we throw in our hero who is naturally an outsider. Dale Barbara, known to most as Barbie, is just headed out of town after a recent bar fight with some of the town’s less savory youth. Barbie is ex-military, hitchhiking around the countryside, and had stopped here for a while, but he’s decided it’s time to move on. The barrier pops into existence just before he’s able to leave town. Early on in the story he tries to mind his own business, but Big Jim Rennie, the power-hungry politician who runs the town, has a grudge against Barbie (it was Jim Rennie Jr. who Barbie bested in the bar fight). There are all kinds of conflicts going on in this town, many of them centering around Big Jim, a man you can truly love to hate. Among other things, the accidental death of the police chief leaves the police force in the palm of Big Jim’s hand. Without a chance of outside intervention, Big Jim is a dangerous man. He’s enough of a nasty character to be a threatening enemy without crossing the line into cartoon villain.

My Views

Overall, I very much liked the book, and I’d recommend it if you’re interested for a long haul. There were a few things that bothered me, though.

One thing that bothered me about the book is that no one, in general, seems that interested in figuring out why the barrier is there or how to get past it. There are a few dedicated individuals trying to deal with this, but for the most part people are just living their everyday lives under there altered in the minimum way to deal with their newfound seclusion.

Another thing that really bugged me seems to just be a problem with his technical research. It could’ve been fixed without substantially changing the plot, so it just annoys me that King didn’t realize it. A thirty second Google search could’ve found more accurate information. More on this in the Spoiler section, just in case you want to try to find the technical flub on your own.

There are occasional sections in the book, thankfully VERY occasional, where instead of telling the story in 3rd person close point of view, Stephen King writes a section as himself. I found this very irritating. He seems to think this writer’s voice is charming, but really it was grating. Ideally, I never think of the writer at all when I’m reading a story. I want to sink into the world and not surface again until I’m done reading. And speaking from the author’s voice ruins that. Example from the book, a section starts with “We have toured the sock-shape that is Chester’s Mill and arrived back at Route 119. And, thanks to the magic of narration, not an an instant has passed since …” I can like the occasional omniscient narrator, but mentioning the “magic of narration” is a worthless gimmick that he only gets away with because he’s Stephen King, He Who Shall Not Be Edited.

Though I’d recommend the book overall, there are definitely slow patches. At least 150 pages could be cut from the middle without harming the story. But it starts with a bang, and ends with a bang, so if you can power through that mid-book slump, I think you’ll enjoy it. And, though the ending section has lots going on, the actual manner in which it resolves wasn’t all that satisfying.

SPOILERS

Okay, so there are a couple spoiler-based things I’d like to complain about in this book.

1. The technical flub I referenced earlier. When the barrier pops into place, it’s not just above ground, but slices down below at least 50 feet (as far as they try to dig). This means that it severs any kind of utility lines laid within the ground. Electricity and phone services are cut off, which makes sense, but they still have internet access. Mr. King justifies this simply by calling it WiFi. Now, I realize there are forms of internet access that pass data via satellite, but those are very rare and very expensive. And are not called WiFi. Likewise, you can run a cell phone WiFi hotspot, but neither of these seem to be what King was referring to. Maybe he doesn’t have WiFi at home, but your standard WiFi is only wireless in the sense that your computer is untethered. The computer is sending signals to your wireless router, which then sends signals through your wall through your cable jack or phone line–both of which would’ve been severed. The plot never hinged upon having the internet available, so it would’ve been easy to just remove it.

2. The ending was rather weak. Like I said earlier, almost nobody is really interested in trying to figure out what put the dome in place or how to take it down. A long way into the story someone does find the generator, a little bit of alien technology sitting on the tallest hill in town. Touching it connects you telepathically with alien lifeforms who have apparently put the barrier in place just as a form of entertainment. The device is immovable, and putting a lead shield over it just melts the lead shield. When they realize that neither of these things work, they just give up and don’t try anything else until the very end of the book. Me, I’d be blasting it with dynamite, pouring acid on it, placing a lead shield at a distance without touching it to the device, etc… At the end, everything takes a turn for the worse, fires run rampant, and the fresh air is very limited. Almost everyone dies. (I’m happy to say that one dog actually survives! King seems to have a vendetta against dogs, they never survive in one piece, except for this one). As a desparate last ditch effort, a few of the characters go back to the device and they beg for their lives to the aliens. And the aliens lift the barrier and then the book is pretty much over. Seriously? No one thought of that before? Why wait until almost everyone is dead? It seemed to me that he just got to the end of what he’d planned and said “oh shit, how do I get them out of this now?” and wrote it on the fly.

Updates, or “I’m not dead yet”

by David Steffen

For those who’ve noticed that there haven’t been any new content on Diabolical Plots for a while, don’t worry. I’m not dead, and I’ll be posting some new content very, very soon. First up, I think, will be my review of Stephen King’s Under the Dome. I’ve also got my eye on some video game reviews (classic and otherwise), and a few movie reviews. I’d like to provide more interviews, but it’s been a little hit-and-miss corresponding with the guests lately–there have been several that have agreed to interviews, but not responded to the questions. It’s probably time for a followup email in several cases, but I’m putting it off for a bit longer–I don’t want to be a pest.

Why have I been absent? Well, I’m glad you asked, hypothetical interwebz audience. Every minute of my writing time has been occupied chasing a story to finish for a submissions deadline. Remember Northern Frights Publishing, the ones who were my very first publication (The Utility of Love in the Shadows of the Emerald City anthology) and who I’ve sold to another time (What Makes You Tick in the War of the Worlds: Frontlines anthology). Well they have a new antho coming out titled “Fallen” with a theme of demonic horror. I’ve been fortunate enough to make it into 2 out of 3 of their other anthologies, so I’d really like to make it 3 out of 4. I wanted to come up with something original, not just an Exorcist or Fallen (the movie) ripoff, so I spent a lot of time coming up with the concept and then an even longer time trying to put it in some kind of coherent order. The good news is that I’ve finished a rough draft and sent it off to beta readers. Now I have a bit of breathing room while they read it and comment on it, so I can catch up on some other things. I’ll be sending the completed story off to NFP very, very soon–wish me luck!

In other news, Bull Spec #3 may be out late next month, containing a previously unpublished story (my 4th story to be published) Turning Back the Clock. I’ve been really impressed by the previous two issues put together by one-man staff Samuel Montgomery-Blinn has put together so I’m really looking forward to it. Also in the issue are Katherine Sparrow and Lavie Tidhar, both great authors who I’ve read elsewhere (including quite a few stories on the Escape Artists podcasts, as well as Brain Harvest). Not only that, but my story will be ILLUSTRATED, which is a first for me, and by my good illustrator friend Joey Jordan, the one responsible for the kickass site art at the top of your page and under the Diabolical Art tab.

I’ve also been invited to write some articles for the Elder Signs Press blog. I decided to accept despite the fact that they lost the only submission I’d sent them. They’ve had a big staff turnover so I figure I’ll give them another chance.

Well, thanks for reading and keep your eye out for more content very soon!

Interview: Eugie Foster

Eugie Foster is a Nebula-winning, Hugo Award nominated author of speculative fiction living in metro Atlanta. In fact, if you read this interview right away, the Hugo ballots are still open for a few days until July 31, 2010. Her story “Sinner, Baker, Fablist, Priest; Red Mask, Black Mask, Gentleman, Beast” is up for best novelette. It’s an amazing story and I encourage you to vote for it. If you haven’t read it, you can listen to it for free on Escape Pod with an amazing reading by Lawrence Santoro. She has also had many stories run on the other two Escape Artists casts (Pseudopod and Podcastle) so check out her other work there as well.

She also released a short story collection last year titled Returning My Sister’s Face and Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice. Check out her website and LiveJournal page as well, get a full list of her publications on her bibliography page.

David: I’m always interested in hearing origins of a particular story. Where did the idea for “Sinner, Baker, Fablist, Priest…” come from?

Eugie: I had the idea for the story,a society where people change their identities and their societal roles, even their personalities, based upon masks they don,rattling around in my creative subconscious for a while. But it took me a couple years to get around to writing it. I’ve always found masks so evocative. They’re universal icons, found throughout history and spanning nearly every culture. The donning of another face, or the corollary, the relinquishing of one’s own, is a transformative act, an unambiguous exchange of identity.

Fundamentally, “Sinner” is an examination and exploration of themes of identity and self: who we are against a backdrop of societal roles and expectations, the external and internal influences that affect our sense of self, and the choices we make that reflect who we truly are.

David: If you could give just one piece of advice to aspiring authors, what would it be?

Eugie: Keep writing and read; read a lot. Oh, wait, that was two pieces, wasn’t it?

Okay, how about: take the time to acquaint yourself with how the publishing biz works. How it’s depicted in Hollywood and pop culture is so wrong: you rattle off a story or novel, it gets picked up by the New Yorker or one of the big publishing houses, you hit the best-seller list in a week and become a millionaire, and la, all your troubles are over. ÂThe reality is long waits, form rejections, interminable lead times, and really crappy pay.

David: When you were getting started writing, were there any times when you were sure you wouldn’t make it? How did you get through those times?

Eugie: I made it? Really? Sweet!

Honestly, I still get all excited and amazed whenever I hear that someone who isn’t a family member or close friend has read my work. As a short story writer, I don’t expect to have much name recognition, or financial success, for that matter. Someone actually asked me whether I was getting rich now that I’d won a Nebula Award. Can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard.

David: What is your first memory?

Eugie: It’s something terribly boring and unexciting, eating a cookie when I was three. But here’s an interesting bit of trivia (well I think it’s interesting): our brains aren’t really developed enough to form memories until we’re around three years old. People’s first recollections have been pretty consistently documented coming in at around three years.ÂÂ But then, recent studies in memory indicate that it’s possible that we write anew our memories each time we experience them.

David: What do you like to do when you’re not reading or writing?

Eugie: Hmm, sleeping and eating? Also editing,I’m a legal editor for the Georgia General Assembly for my day job and I’m also the director and editor of the Daily Dragon, the on-site newsletter of Dragon*Con,although editing sorta counts as writing.

I also do website design on the side, pandering to my tech geek proclivities and all. That began as an occasional project to provide a bit of extra income here and there, and I’ve found it actually eats a big chunk out of my writing time. Coding is easier and provides instant gratification, which writing rarely does. Bad writer me, no cookie.

David: If you were the first human to establish first contact with an alien, what would you say?

Eugie: Please excuse the mess; we’re still…actually, why don’t you take a leisurely cruise around the solar system and come back in about a century?

David: Do you have any works in progress you’d like to talk about?

Eugie: As always, I’ve got several short works I’m working on in various states of completion, and I’ve been plugging away at a novel for a while now, although I keep getting sidetracked by various other projects.

David: Any upcoming publications?

Eugie: Lessee, The Dragon and the Stars anthology from DAW came out in May which includes my story, “Mortal Clay, Stone Heart,” and “A Patch of Jewels in the Sky” will be reprinted in the anthology Triangulation: End of the Rainbow, due out any day now. There are also Spanish, Czech, French, and Italian translations of “Sinner” forthcoming in Cuà ¡sar, Pevnost, Tà ©nà ¨bres, and Robot, respectively.

David: What was the last book you read?

Eugie: The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature by Steven Pinker. One part psychology, one part language (two of my favorite subjects) and a big ole dollop of “ooo!”

David: Your favorite book?

Eugie: *Wail!* I can’t pick just one! Um, here’s some of my favorites: Candide, The Lord of the Flies, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Silver Metal Lover, Winnie-the-Pooh, Fahrenheit 451, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault, Journey to the West, and The Velveteen Rabbit.

David: Who is your favorite author?

Eugie: See above regarding *wail!*Â Some the ones that have influenced me the most as a writer include Ray Bradbury, Tanith Lee, and Ursula K. Le Guin. ÂThe lush prose and vivid imagery in their stories is so evocative; I can lose myself for days on end in their writing. ÂI also adore Neil Gaiman and A.A. Milne,Winnie-the-Pooh remains one of my all time favorite books,as well as Roald Dahl and George Orwell.

David: What was the last movie you saw?

Eugie: I saw Inception the week it came out and found it disappointing. For being the big SF film of the year, it was terribly predictable with uninteresting characters and lackluster FX. The main conceit which everyone is oohing and aahing over, being able to enter other people’s dreams, is an old SFnal one. It’s not even the first time that Hollywood has explored it. Inception did introduce a few clever premises, but the main one was an obvious plot device and when it became inconvenient, the filmmakers broke their own rules.

David: What is your favorite movie?

Eugie: See above regarding favorite author and favorite book. But a few of my top picks include American Beauty, Forgiving the Franklins, Fight Club, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

David: Eugie, thanks for taking the time for the interview.

Eugie: Thanks for interviewing me!


Review: Redstone Science Fiction #1

written by Frank Dutkiewicz

Welcome to the first issue of Redstone Science Fiction. Thanks for dropping byâ€.

Thus opens the newest pro-market, SFWA wannabe, magazine to hit the speculative market scene. It is the brainchild of Michael Ray (previously interviewed here on Diabolical Plots) and Paul Clemmons. Mr Ray has been waging an ambitious ‘get out the word’ campaign for his project. He has used facebook, blogs, emails, and my favorite writers workshop, hatrack, to alert as many lovers of speculative fiction of its coming arrival and to solicit material for its pages. Like a wise man bearing gifts from the east, I followed the newest star shining in the skyâ€.and I wasn’t alone.

They received over 200 submissions for their first call, including one of mine. As of May 11th, they accepted 10 of them for publication (not one of mine), with one they were on the bubble on. Since that time, they have re-opened and re-closed for submissions, its editors choosing to stick to a strict reading schedule.

Their debut issue has two of their earliest acceptances, as well as a couple of essays and a few interviews.

The Fiction

Raising Tom Chambers by Daniel Powell

Penelope Crump may be the last person alive on Earth. A devastating plague has wiped out the human population, leaving Penelope to fend for herself. Surviving a plague is one thing, overcoming loneliness is quite another. The Astras, little parasitic aliens brought back from Mars, are affected by their host’s sudden disappearance. Penelope is learning that even when you’re the only one left, you needn’t be alone.

Raising Tom Chambers follows Penelope’s life after she awakes from a disease that claims most of humanity. Doing her best to keep on, the last of the Astras find her. They need humans to survive. Penelope tries to stay indoors until the winter cold takes the last of them but one manages to latch onto her ribcage. At first she tries to pry it off, then does her best to get used to it. Like a lapdog that is always at its master’s side, Penelope becomes attached to the parasite that won’t let go. She names it Tom Chambers (long story) and the two live out the rest of their lives as the remaining members of their species.

The first third of Raising Tom Chambers was all back-story. We learn of who Penelope is, and of the couple of people she met, before they keeled over. The info of what the Astras are gets crowbar in, mid-stream. We discover that they were brought home on the second to last manned trip to Mars in 2013 (How did I miss the first mission?), and like a lamprey eel, they need a host to survive, but instead of fish, human is the limit of their diet (How’d they survive on Mars?). Which leaves for some mighty big holes in the premise.

The story is told from a very distant perspective, as if Penelope’s life is being examined through a TV news magazine profile. It is more of a fictional op-ed than it is a fictional life experience. The portion involving the Astra parasite is glossed over and Penelope’s life with Tom is compressed. More was said on how the Martian got its name than the effect it had on Penelope.

I believe I recalled reading that Raising Tom Chambers was the first story the entire staff of Redstone agreed upon. Fortunately for Mr Daniels, I am not a member of the editorial committee. It is obvious that they weren’t concerned about opening with an upbeat tale for their launch.

I love Sci-Fi, and eat up post-apocalyptic tales like they’re potato chips, but this story I found depressing with a capital D. Even though Raising Tom Chambers is about mankind’s last survivor, I can’t classify it as a dark tale. I believe gray is the right shade for it.

Freefall by Peter Roberts

How long is forever? A crewmember of a shattered ship would love to know the answer. Locked in an isolation chamber from an injury, she is adrift in space, waiting for an unlikely rescue, the chamber’s power to fail, or the end of the timeâ€whichever comes first.

Freefall starts off with a nameless character in the midst of insanity. She doesn’t know where she is or what has happened to her. Forced by immobility, she pieces together her sanity and the events that led her to her horrifying predicament. The chamber in which she is in allows her mind to be functional but nothing else, the equivalent of experiencing a complete paralysis with a fully conscience mind.

Freefall is good sci-fi. It presents a potential future problem that a modern person can identify with. Although I liked the idea, there were a few things that bugged me.

I didn’t understand the voices. No explanation was provided and I failed to see how she was able to hear them. I didn’t get why the MC didn’t have a name either. Author’s discretion, I suppose.

Freefall is a good example of how to write a story in so few words. Nice piece.

Essays

The Future Imperfect by Sarah Einstein

The world is changing. Technology has changed it in ways that would make it seem alien to our grandparents. Phones that aren’t secured to a wall but instead are as mobile as their owners. A device that can get us anywhere we desire, saving us the trouble of asking for directions or figuring out to refold a map the right way. Technology has made things easier for us, but does it attempt to make it better? How about the unlucky of us that are disabled? What if technology chose to exploit the imperfect of society instead of the imperfect exploiting technology?

Sarah Einstein examined this possibility while listening to Anne McCafferty’s masterpiece The Ship Who Sang. For those that are unfamiliar with it, society has decided to use the healthy minds of damaged people to make things better for the rest of us. The very notion bothered Ms Einstein, concerned that Ms McCafferty’s novel may be a foretelling of things to come.

Sarah’s deep thoughts on the subject set up Redstone’s first contest, The Future Imperfect. The editors seek submissions that deal with futures that incorporate the disabled. The criteria for the contest appears to be wide open, but it needs to about the handicap (a future disability would be welcomed, I believe).

The crux of Sarah’s concern (I’m guessing here) is the disabled are still shunned. Technological improvements in many fields leap forward, but any real advancements that help the ones in need, seem to crawl. That frustration is compounded when you have a loved one that suffers with an infliction. We land a man on the moon and bring him back safely, why can’t we make people whole again? Tweak this apparent insensitivity with a ‘sacrifice the few for the benefit of many’ philosophy and a future like McCafferty’s becomes a reality. Interesting thought, but highly unlikely.

Technology goes where the money is. Ipod’s sell well, and are improved constantly, because everyone wants one. A wheelchair lift for a car with a low gas mileage? Sorry, not a big market.

Truth is society hasn’t the stomach to inflict needless pain on another. Keep their inflictions hidden and ignore it, sure. The reason is the disable make the healthy uncomfortable. We see a blind man being led by a seeing eye dog and say ‘but from the grace of god go I’.

I submit that mankind would bend over backward for the disabled, if we thought we could end their affliction for good. If an elixir were presented that could make every person whole, but for a price, we would collectively break out our checkbooks and ask ‘how much’? However, if told we could all ride for free, and we would never need to burn an ounce of fossil fuel again, as long as we were willing to harvest the brains of a few of the lame, we would all say ‘No thanks, we’ll walk’.

Nevertheless, I do like the premise of the upcoming contest. Can’t wait to see what wins.

Barsoom or Bust! by Henry Cribbs

Quick! Name the first person to go to Mars. Times up! John Carter, confederate soldier transported to the planet in Edgar Rice Burroughs very first novel, A Princess of Mars.

Barsoom, for those who are unaware that Mr Burroughs wrote something other than Tarzan, is what his fiction characters call their world in his Martian Tales series. It was created almost a century ago and is on the way to becoming Pixar’s next big project. Which should make fans of the series excited, until they see how Hollywood butchers the story.

Henry Cribbs points out that fact, and I can’t help but agree with him. Burroughs collective works, in the early 20th century, would likely be a tough sell if written today. They’re filled with gratuitous violence and had characters with a chauvinistic spin. Burroughs is likely the master of the popular literary style, pulp. Young males love reading it but don’t expect accolades from the critics of today.

The influence that E G Burroughs has on the speculative fiction genres cannot be questioned. He is perhaps one of the first to create an entirely new world to support his tales, complete with its own geography, culture, and unique life. He may be the first author who had readers that couldn’t wait to get their hands on the next book. Carl Sagan admitted his love for the series, perhaps sparking a love with a greater universe.

Mr Cribbs has every right to be nervous about Hollywood interpretation of the late Burroughs classic. It could be they do it justice, as they did Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, but I doubt it. I do know if Pixar is handling the project, we will likely get something worth watching.

Interviews

An Interview with Lou Anders by David Alastair Hayden

There are plenty of people in every industry that rise to the top. They have an inside track of trends, and set the standard for everyone else. Than there is the person those people look up to. I wouldn’t know who that person is in the speculative fiction market, but I’d bet Lou Anders would be a leading candidate for the position.

If your desire is to become an award-winning author, Lou Anders is likely one of the people you will need to deal with along the way. Mr Anders has a very impressive resume and is one of those saints that keep the speculative fiction market alive.

In Mr Hayden’s interview, Mr Anders speaks of the trends in speculative fiction market. I was impressed on how well he knows the authors of today and which ones are the leading writers in the offshoot genres of the industry. He speaks of what makes an anthology worth reading and what it takes to get a book ready for the bookshelf. Mr Anders wisely stresses the importance of a good cover artist. As one that found all my favorite artists trolling through the bookstores, great writers get you to buy more of their books, it takes a great cover to get you buy their first one.

I enjoyed reading about Lou Anders. Nice interview.

An Interview with Kittyhawk by Michael Ray

Kittyhawk is an artist. She does the cover for Redstone’s first issue. Michael Ray proudly introduces her and asks what she has been up to. Judging by her upcoming schedule, she is a very busy girl.

Interview with Joel Hardy by Michael Ray

Joel Hardy has a job that I wouldn’t mind trying out. As an independent contractor for NASA, he is one of the lucky that lends his talents to the International Space Station. Mr Hardy tells Redstone of the work he does for NASA and shares his thoughts on the future of space.

The Skinny

I commend Michael Ray and Paul Clemmons. To start up a new pro-paying market when so many publications are pulling up their stakes is music in the ears of the writer and reader in me. They really want Redstone to be a SFWA qualified magazine. I hope they get their wish. Speculative fiction is the richest literature out there, in my opinion. So much can be done when the realm of possibility has no limits.

For a magazine to make a mark on the industry, its content should leave a mark on the reader. I thought the essays and interviews in this debut issue were interesting and enjoyable. The two fictional pieces? Not so much. The flash fiction I thought was okay, but it was the short piece. It could be just a matter of taste but if others feel the way I do, Redstone could have a rough time building a readership.

Now I could stress how well I thought the essays and interviews were done but not a lot of people pick up Sci-Fi magazines for its non-fictional content. That’s like if Playboy dressed all the woman in muumuus, but made up for it with great articles.

I think, the opening story to the debut issue of the next major magazine should have been from an author of star power, or at least a story that stood out above all the rest. I mean Nebula consideration good. Granted, it is just my opinion. Perhaps Raising Tom Chambers is Redstone’s Marilyn Monroe, a real knockout. Maybe it’s just not my type. That still doesn’t dismiss the lack of fictional content. Redstone Issue # 1 had a total of 5000 words of Sci-Fi in it. Two stories, that’s it. It will need to, at least, double that amount. 4 stories each issue, minimum. A magazine meant to capture the imagination of readers should have half (or more) of its pages devoted to imaginative content. A fiction magazine needs fiction.

Redstone can be excused, partially, because they are a monthly publication. Money could be the issue as well. Easy for me to say that they should shell out more cash when I’m not the one paying the bills, but a magazine needs readers first. If a limited budget is the issue, I suggest they scale back their pay rates. I know the editors want their magazine to be a professionally paying one, but I am betting the quality of the submissions they receive won’t dip all that much if they lower their rate a penny or two a word. Build readership up first, then raise the rates. I would also recommend soliciting material from a known name in the industry. Don’t wait for one to submit to the magazine, ask if they would be willing to part with one of their gems. Plenty of successful authors with a fan base. Start at the top and work your way down. A novel excerpt might also help. Free advertising for a grateful publisher (you do know Lou Anders, after all.)

I hope Redstone takes off. I really did enjoy Henry Cribbs’ essay and David Hayden’s interview with Lou Anders. I wish I could tell you I enjoyed the fiction as much. A lot of ambitious projects like Redstone hit the floor running, eager to head to the front of the line in the speculative fiction race. Perhaps the editors thought it would be wise to stretch first.

Snapper1_dog
Frank Dutkiewicz is every bit as cute and cuddly as his picture suggests. He has nine storiesÂthat have been published.ÂHis first eightÂwere all flash fiction then he got wise and rode Dave’s coattailsÂand sold one to the upcoming Shadows of the Emerald City anthology. The chicks digÂFrank andÂcan’t keep their hands off him but hate his cold nose. Frank’s owner is a truck driver for a car hauling company. He travels all across the country and may have ran you off the road at one point. He has a lovely wife and two equally as lovely teenage daughters.

Review: Eight Against Reality

written by Frank Dutkiewicz

I’ve sold stories. Dave’s sold stories. A sizable portion of the people reading this blog have sold them as well. Everyone (don’t deny it if you have sold one) couldn’t have done it without help. A friend to give it a look, lend a helping hand, and tell you when you are off your rocker and to change that thing you thought was so clever when you wrote it.

Writers never go it alone. Stories are their babies, babies that have had more than one uncle or aunt to help bring it to maturity. Most writers belong to a critique group. Some are large with an open door policy to all that want to join (Critters, Hatrack), while others are exclusive (Codex).

Eight Against Reality is an anthology put together by a very exclusive writers group called Written in Blood. It’s eight members vowed to help each other through thick and thin. So confident are they with each other’s abilities that they all contributed a story for all of us to read.

Let’s just see how good this exclusive club of writers isâ€

The Eminence’s Match by Juliette Wade

Eminence Nekantor is a difficult man to please. If His Eminence isn’t happy, then no one will be happy, and His Eminence is rarely happy. Bureaucrats run from his fury. The house-servants cringe from his cruelty. An entire nation will suffer when His Eminence is on a rampage. The task of pleasing Nekantor, and suffer the brunt of his fury, falls upon his Imbati manservant, a job that proves difficult to fill.

Kurek, an experienced manservant, is the latest to fail. Now the Service Academy must ready another. The Director is set to send one of its top students, but Details Master Arkad believes Xinta is the only one capable of handling His Eminence’s extrinsic need for perfection. Xinta has proved to have trouble dealing with the abuse of the academy, but Arkad senses a quality in him that may be just what His Eminence has desired all along.

The Eminence’s Match is a tale of a powerful man with an obsessive-compulsive disorder that has run amuck. It opens with the reader experiencing Nekantor tormenting his manservant, Kurek. Nekantor expects a level of perfection that any rational person would consider impossible. Trapped in his own sickness, Nekantor seeks to share his misery by making a game of breaking his Imbati manservants’ calm disposition.

The Service Academy is a school designed to teach young men to endure the abuse Grobal noblemen dish out on their manservants. The students must suffer through a gauntlet of physical abuse while a Grobal instructor verbally assaults them. The lessons taught within its walls would be considered felonious in any modern day western society. Xinta is a convincing timid and meek man-child that has been stripped of most of his pride so he will be able to live a life as a human punching bag.

The strength of this story is the characters. The tale is told from four separate points of view with most of it done through Nekantor and Xinta’s eyes. All the people are under an enormous amount of stress. From the start, the reader is led to believe that Nekantor is a spoiled man that is cruel only because it gives him pleasure, but he is in reality suffering from a mental illness that has him on the verge of rendering him incapacitated. The OCD that has consumed him is overwhelming, but not obvious from Nekantor’s perspective. In fact, Ms Wade did such a splendid job that the reader is able to piece together what is wrong with Nekantor without the character being aware of it himself.

The story done from Xinta’s eyes is equally as astounding. The academy challenges its students to defy the ‘turning the other cheek’ axiom they need to adhere to if they are to succeed. Ms Wade offers how such a character could rationalize enduring such an irrational task. I found him convincing and very likeable.

The Eminence’s Match is about insane people set in a crazy circumstance that is told so rational people can sympathize with it all. Juliette Wade managed an impossible task by bringing these people to life and making it all believable. I found the characters delightful and the story powerful, but like the theme of her story, all was not perfect. I have one complaint, and it is a big one.

The tale ended just as the really story was about to begin. The title and plot led me to believe that a titanic battle of wills was about to commence. The story from the first word to the last scene was written as a set up for a classic ‘unstoppable force vs the immovable object’ struggle. Instead, Ms Wade chose a different ending. The resolution was too simple and unsatisfying. I wanted, and expected, more.

The writing in The Eminence’s Match is first class. I loved Ms Wade’s style and her ability to bring her dysfunctional people to life. The story is fitting for an opening act for any best selling anthology.

Kip, Running by Genevieve Williams

Kip is a freerunner. She runs in a future Seattle that has grown tall and is connected with a complex mass-transit system. The races are run through the city’s skyline and the rules are simple; get to the finish line any way you can but you must do it on foot or by riding for free. Kip’s aim is to beat her rival, Narciso, and win the object of her affection in the process, Lily, Narciso’s girlfriend and freerunner groupie.

A freerunner race is a daring and dangerous game. The object of the race is to grab onto anything that moves to get you to the finish line, not unlike what modern day skateboarders do by grabbing the bumpers of passing cars, except this game has a 3-dimensional element to it with mass-transit lines running 80 stories above the ground. The racers give a whole new meaning to the concept of train jumping.

Kip, Running is a rollercoaster of a story. Kip glides through the tall skyline like a flying squirrel in a redwood forest. Following her run is an exciting adventure. Particularly enticing is the futuristic Seattle. The fast-paced city is very different from today, but not so different that it is alien to the reader. I could visualize Kip flying through its skyline, very well done.

Not as exciting is Kip’s obsession with Lily. Kip believes defeating her rival will win his girlfriend’s heart. It becomes the reason for her to risk her life, not the adrenaline surges of leaping from train to slidewalk hundreds of feet above an unseen street. Her obsession dulls the edge of a sharp adventure. It cheapened the thrill of the piece and made me less sympathetic for Kip. The sidebar story set up for a disappointing finish. I cannot remember an ending line that I disliked more. I would have preferred reading ‘The End’ in its place.

Despite my disappointment with the ending, I found Ms Williams’ story telling professionally well done. The writing is very solid and the visual narrative first class. I did enjoy 90% of Kip, Running and can see why it was chosen for this anthology.

The Lonely Heart by Aliette de Bodard

A thin street girl named Xia eyes a statue at Chen’s merchant stall. The girl is reminder of a life Chen escaped, but unlike Chen, Xia has fallen prey to a pimp. Powerless to help her, Chen returns home to the husband that rescued her ten years before and his mother. She tries to put the tormented child, and her pimp’s threatening words, out of her mind. Then Xia appears at her door. Chen is torn between looking out for her family’s best interest and the guilt of Xia’s empty life. But there is more to Xia than meets the eye. Chen has yet to learn how empty of life Xia is.

The Lonely Heart is a sad story that shifts unexpectedly to a creepy one. Chen is portrayed as one of the fortunate early in the story. She was lucky to survive the homeless existence of her youth to become a member of China’s lower middle-class. She is grateful to her husband for rescuing her. Ms Bodard does a masterful job of showing a life that most would find dismal as a blessing.

Xia has an effect on Chen immediately. Her presence tugs at Chen’s conscience. As the story progresses, Xia forces Chen to realize her role in her marriage, and why her husband rescued her long ago. The story would have been great if Ms Bodard would have stuck with this extraordinary theme, but she inserted a twist that I didn’t see coming. High marks for that.

I found The Lonely Heart special. A disguised horror that was so much more. Ms Bodard successfully created a character that is subtly filled with guilt. She set up a convincing past and a unique set of circumstances to make Chen’s choice believable. For anyone else, the price she paid at the end would be too high. Ms Bodard sold me that it wouldn’t be too high for Chen. Masterfully done.

The Flying Squids of Zondor: The Movie Script by Doug Sharp

Commandrix Dron and her valiant (and dense) crew of the Trigon have been saddled to play host to the female prince, and heir to the Tandori crown, Galina. To relieve her indignity of being relegated to a ‘whoremonger’, Dron spots a planet filled with flying squids to take her anger out on. The Planet Zondor is ruled by the giant squid Zondor the Fertile. The squids are a peaceful race (except for the second in command, Zondor 2). The primitive Zondor squids spot the Trigon approaching from deep space (no explanation how they were able to detect it), and do nothing.

Dron instructs her rocket crew to attack and floors it. Galina does her best to yank on the steering wheel (interstellar ships have steering wheels?). They crash on the planet, suffering only 60% casualties in the process. They proceed to attack the palace (the only structure on the planet) and that is when things get really weird.

The Flying Squids of Zondor: The Movie Script is more of a 20 minute skit than a movie script. If written, it would need a lot of actors. There of 17 speaking parts, 32 actually, considering MAN-16 is in fact 16 humans melded into one being. Reading it as a script is odd in itself. The narrative is preachy (just like a script), which made the story fast, as in a blur. Smooth prose was not an objective for this piece.

It is clear that Mr Sharp really wasn’t pitching the next great movie. The story is really a Sci-Fi satire. Well, more of a farce. I believe Mr Sharp was really writing a bit, but not one you would find on Saturday Night Live. I’m guessing Doug was going for more of a Monty Python flavor. The dialog, for example, was way over the top.

Treat Commandrix Den Dron like a whoremonger will you? Hump blatantly in my fearsome Trigon?

Record my vow: I shall wreak dreadful vengeance upon the Tandori crown.

The Flying Squids of Zondor: The Movie Script is simply silly. A silly premise filled with ridiculous characters. Some of the funniest comedies in history are controversial and misunderstood. The more over the top (Three Stooges, Family Guy, Cheech and Chong), the more diverse the opinions will be about them.

Writing funny stories in the fantasy/sci-fi genre is something I like to do, at least I think they’re funny when I write them. I bet Doug thought the same thing when he wrote this.

Humor is subjective, but when you are pushing the line on ridiculous, there is a point when the effort negates the humor. Kind of like when a horror movie goes way over on the gore and screaming women, it ceases to be scary to anyone.

I believe writing this as a movie script was a mistake. Sticking to the tried and true prose of a short story could have made this work. Some jokes need a set up, not much set up here. The Flying Squids of Zondor: The Movie Script is a story of punch lines, but no substance.

Spoiling Veena by Keyan Bowes

Shalini worked hard to make Veena’s birthday special and her best efforts are falling short. The snowfall she ordered became hail. The cake she bought was supposed to be a replica of the Snow Castle, instead they got America’s Congressional Capital. All Shalini wanted for her gender-manipulated daughter, was to make her princess happy. What will make Veena happy may be more change than Shalini expected.

Spoiling Veena is a tale of a parents desire to do what is best for their child. The story explores a future where gender tailoring is a possibility and how it affects the people around them. The author wisely sets the tale inside a future India, where old prejudices still linger in the progressively advancing society. Shalini’s generation is caught between her daughter’s ‘do what makes you happy’ philosophy and her mother’s ‘god intended people to be one way’ morals. The premise is a potential future problem, which makes for good Sci-Fi.

I liked the idea but I didn’t like the author’s decision to write it in a present tense format. The story is written over a time frame that covered a few months. I am not against the present tense style but it didn’t feel right for this one.

I found the ending fitting, one of those little twists that I like. Good idea. The story didn’t bowl me over but did make me think.

Man’s Best Enemy by Janice Hardy

The people of Atlanta, all 98 of them, are expecting this year to be one of the best in a long time, then one of their own falls to a juvie. News that the dogs are near is tragic. Hunters are needed to take it down. Shawna volunteers, but no one wants the doctor’s apprentice to go. Armed with only javelins, bringing down a juvie isn’t always easy. Juvies have a way of becoming adults, and if you aren’t careful, you may find yourself on the wrong end the food chain.

Man’s Best Enemy is set inside an Atlanta a generation removed from a devastating plague. Man’s best friend has become its vicious enemy. Searching for remnants of dwindling supplies is dangerous, but finding an undisturbed store may be worth the risk.

The dogs of Atlanta have grown and are now the top predator. The few people left are holding the downtown area, protecting their dwindling livestock in the abandoned stadiums, and doing their best to rebound in hopes of rebuilding a civilization. Shawna wants to become a hunter like her mother was and brother is. A fallen hunter, and her brother’s infection from a dog bite, has granted her a rare opportunity.

Man’s Best Enemy is hair-raising excitement. The young teens have become the front line defenders against a lion-sized enemy. The people of Atlanta are under siege and are holding the last bit of ground that isn’t overrun by packs of vicious maneaters. Ms Hardy has done a splendid job with this dystopia tale. I found the MC likeable and the Atlanta’s blight believable. I could see why they would be wary of using the last of their guns’ ammunition but found it odd they only brought javelins with them. Spears are easy to make and would do well against even a large dog. The tactics the young defenders used seemed foolish as well. Trying to outrun a predator is just plain suicide.

Although I could poke all kinds of holes in it, I still found Man’s Best Enemy a good story. I liked it.

Love, Blood and Octli by T. L. Morganfield

Ayomichi has found favor with a feathered serpent. Ehecatl is the wind god and gives Ayomichi a gift for her people, creating happiness for all. Ayomichi becomes priestess for her Ehecatl. She discovers that gods do have more than one side to them. Ayomichi and her people learn that gods are like strangers, and that you should be wary when they come bearing gifts.

Love, Blood, and Octli is a fable, a retelling of an Aztec myth. The story is told as Ayomichi grows from a small child to a leader of her tribe. Mankind is changed by Ehecatl’s gifts. Ehecatl himself changes as the story progresses. In the form of a snake, the god molts, and takes on a new personality when he does.

If you are one that can’t get enough of Aesop, than you’ll probably love Love, Blood, and Octli. The story does run a lot longer than a Greek fable and the moral isn’t as clear as the ones reflected in Aesop’s wisdom. In fact, I’m not all sure there is a moral in this tale. Never lose faith, perhaps?

I must say that I think it was a mistake sticking to the fable format. Yes, this was based on a myth, but it could have still been written in a style that was less like a religious lesson than a work of fictional entertainment. I think I would have enjoyed it more if it were.

Dancing by Numbers by Dario Ciriello

Lyra is a dedicated ballerina. She has been working on her focus, concentrating her whole being to find her center of balance, when she slips into another world and different Lyra. She has discovered a new reality, and realizes that she can repeat the process. Lyra becomes an explorer, an explorer of other Lyras. Her friends and workmates worry that she is losing it. When every decision that was ever made can spawn a new reality, losing it becomes just another possibility.

Dancing by Numbers is a new look at alternate universes. Dario Ciriello came up with a concept that makes it seem almost possible. Lyra One (as she comes to call herself) starts a trend. Once combined with her other selves, memories and thoughts become one. The brief visits spur her counterparts to make their own leaps. Lyra One becomes the pebble that starts a ripple in a sea of multi-able universes.

Mr Ciriello’s knowledge of history is a big plus. The universe of a Carthage victory I would have liked to know more about. Too bad he didn’t delve deeper into the different universes for us to learn more.

Alternate universe stories are like time travel ones. Questions that defy the premise arise for readers. For me, the story is too tight. I would have liked more of Lyra(s). The tale is crisp, but brief. I liked the idea and Mr Ciriello’s style, but the tale needed more story for me to fall into it.

Final Thoughts

I envy the Written in Blood writers group for their perseverance. I was once part of a group that attempted the same thing they did. We were about the same size with the same goal; get a group of emerging writers together and work for the benefit of all. Instead of equals that were eager to help each other, we devolved into something like a dysfunctional family sitting together for a disastrous Thanksgiving dinner. The group lasted less than a month. Three years later, Written in Blood is still going strong. Standing ovation for that feat.

Eight Against Reality is a risky endeavor. The separate styles in writing and shifting genres may turn some away. I love reading such anthologies but more than a few gravitate to collections that share a theme that interests them. The only theme to this collection is a shared history between the authors. However, if the only criteria that concerns you is the quality of the writing, then you have nothing to worry about.

I have yet to read an anthology with so many different authors where I liked all the stories. Eight Against Reality does not break that streak. However, rarely will you find the quality of writing this consistently high.

I found almost all the stories professionally done. Two were exceptional, in my opinion.

If you are looking for an example of a character driven story, study Aliette de Bodard’s The Lonely Heart. Ms Bodard took a character who lived a life that I could never envision, and brought her to life for me. Masterfully done.

Juliette Wade’s The Eminence’s Match was that and so much more. Yes, I was disappointed with the end, but only because I was not ready for it to end. Her characters, seeing what they saw and feeling what they felt, made for a powerful reading experience. If I were granted the honor of nominating one story for a major award (Nebula, Hugo, Campbell), I would be placing The Eminence’s Match on my short list of ones to consider at the end of the year.

Eight Against Reality was a pleasure to read. I give this anthology of virtual unknowns a solid recommendation.

This is the gold award that Frank proudly displays in his home. Emery Huang threw it through his living room window after readingÂFrank’s review of Writers of the Future Vol 25. Frank now plans on reviewing Eugie Foster’s works so he can add a Nebula to his collection.

The Best of The Drabblecast

If you like this “Best of” list, check out my lists for other podcasts.

Strange stories by strange authors for strange listeners (such as yourself). This is the aptly chosen opening tagline for the Drabblecast. Founded and narrated by Norm Sherman, the Drabblecast is an audio showcase of the weird. It doesn’t restrict itself to any particular genre, just so long as it’s weird, so there’s a mix of what could be called science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, mainstream, and some stuff that just defies any sort of classification–it’s all welcome on the Drabblecast as long as it’s weird.

Every week Norm provides a whole set of features to entertain and confuse. Every week there’s a feature flash story, approximately 2000 words or less. On top of this there is a weekly drabble (story of exactly 100 words) and a twitfic (story of less than 100 characters). On top of this there is often a Drabble News segment in which he discusses some strange news article like the celebration of Dead Duck Day in the Netherlands. As if that weren’t enough, Norm also includes some music segments written and performed by Norm himself. The most notable of these are the Bbardles–a donation incentive, if you donate a certain amount of money he will write a song in the style of your choice on the topic of your choice and turn it into a funny and entertaining piece of music. These are really fantastic pieces of work.

I don’t mean this as a slight to the other fiction podcasts I frequent, but the Drabblecast is more tuned in to my tastes (both as a reader and a writer) than any other magazine/podcast I’ve come across. It’s actually kind of creepy. I think that Norm has hacked into my mind and has downloaded some kind of insidious spyware tool directly into my brainstem which is both judging and altering my tastes to ensure complete control of my mind. This would make me worried if I weren’t enjoying it so much. So I say “Bring it on, Norm. You may be using unethical mind control techniques to ensure my continued listening, but I don’t mind. Maybe I only like it because your brain-virus is telling me to like it, but that’s okay, because I like it.”

Part of what sets the Drabblecast apart is their audio production. Many of the stories add dramatic music and sound effects at appropriate places. I’m not sure if I like this better than just a straight reading, but it offers some nice variety at the very least and it sounds really good.

By the way, I don’t know if it’s just me, but I haven’t been able to figure out a way to download the audio files directly from Drabblecast’s main site. I can listen to them there, and there’s a hyperlink to sign up for their mp3 feed, but not an actual download option. There is a Drabblecast archive, but it’s not updated as often as the main site. In any case, for my weekly download I’ve been downloading from other sites that re-post the episodes, usually CastRoller.

Without further ado, here is my Best of Drabblecast list. For the purposes of the list, I’ve only included the feature stories in the list. It’s not that I don’t like drabbles or twitfic, but even though I enjoy them, fiction that short doesn’t leave a long-lasting impression because it’s over before I’ve really gotten the story congealing in my brain. So, of all of the Drabblecast’s feature stories to date, these are my favorites:

1. Teddy Bears and Tea Parties by S. Boyd Taylor
Don’t be fooled by the title; this is not a chlidren’s story. Amazing, creepy, disturbing, weird. Teddy bears that bleed grape jelly. ‘Nuff said.

2. Babel Probe by David D. Levine
Time traveling AI visits the Tower of Babel to find the truth of the myth. It’s just as cool as it sounds.

3. Annabelle’s Alphabet by Tim Pratt
Is anyone surprised that Tim Pratt is on the list? This is a great piece of writing. I read this in print a while back and I loved it there too. The story is about a little girl, Annabelle, and it goes through the alphabet letter by letter, tying them into the story. This approach works surprisingly well, and Pratt does a great job of filling in backstory in bits and pieces so that the big picture coalesces smoothly and poetically.

4. Snowman’s Chance in Hell by Robert Jeschonek
This is a very recent one, but I’m glad it aired before I made the list. I love creation stories, especially ones which take a bizarre and irrational take on it all. This is the best one that I’ve ever read.

5. The Wrong Cart by Bruce Holland Rogers (in Doubleheader IV)
A short one, which is part of a Doubleheader special, which has two stories by the same author within the same episode. The other story is relatively good, but The Wrong Cart is a real gem, a perfect example of Drabblecast weirdness. You know how, when people realize that they’ve made a mistake, there’s a tendency to just go with and pretend like there was no mistake? Well, imagine that concept taken to the point of absurdity, and you have this episode.

6. The Fine Point by Gary Cuba
Ooh, existential philosopy of the best sort. The scary part is that these particular ideas have crossed my mind, but I never wrote a story about it, so Gary wins. 🙂

7. The Food Processor by Michael Canfield
A bizarre story, which gets weirder and weirder. Children living with their mother and their never-seen overbearing father. If, early on, you think you know where this story is going, you are wrong.

8. Charlie the Purple Giraffe was Acting Strange by David D. Levine
I never realized this, but it appears that I’m a fan of David D. Levine, since he got two entries in the top 10. This is another one that sounds like a children’s story but isn’t. It’s philosophy in a toon suit.

9. The Society of Eccentric Moustaches by Daniel Lemoal
If the title alone doesn’t make you laugh, then you may be a zombie. Odd facial hair always makes for quality entertainment–especially mustaches with funny names such as the pushbroom, handlebar, or walrus.

10. So You’re Going to Die by Robert Reed
Another very recent one, structured as a sales pitch, a former assassin selling a sort of death insurance. Good stuff.

Honorable Mentions:

Performance Anxiety by Weldon Burge (in Trifecta II)
I’ll let this one speak for itself. Just listen to it, and stick around til the end. It’s worth it, trust me.

Jelly Park by Aliya Whitely
Don’t expect any deep and profound meaning. This is one is cute, and sweet, and has an insanely catchy song.

2084 by Tom Williams
A glimpse of a risk-taker in the future. It’ll have you on the edge of your seat.


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She & Him Concert

So, Heather and I went to a She & Him concert at First Avenue for our 6th wedding anniversary.

“Music?” I hear you say. “WTF? Since when does Diabolical Plots cover music?”

Well, hypothetical questioner, there is a tie-in (however tenuous) to our more typical material, which I’ll explain in a bit, so hold onto your horses. What is this, the Spanish Inquisition?

Anyhoo, if you’re not familiar with She & Him, then you’re missing out. The “She” in the band name is one of my favorite actresses, Zooey Deschanel. She’s been in more and more movies over the last few years, and I just can’t get enough of them. The first movie that I really noticed her in was “Elf”, the only Will Ferrell movie that I like. She really caught my ear in that movie with her “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” duet with Ferrell. She has an amazing voice with crystal clear tones that seem to linger in the air, and a style that I associate more with styles of previous decades, most notably the 1920s. It’s no surprise that other movie directors have taken advantage of her musical talent, so if you want a wider sample, check out “500 Days of Summer”, a great story about love which is not a love story–an amazing movie on many levels. And, of course, her character in the movie “Yes Man” (co-starring Jim Carrey) had her own band called Munchausen by Proxy (best band name ever), in which they had several original and very catchy songs with Zooey as the lead singer. Also, for those of you who are programming geeks like myself, IMDB reports that she is scheduled to play Ada Lovelace (generally considered the person to write the very first computer program) in an upcoming movie.

“So…” you say. “Where’s that tie-in you were talking about?” Okay, okay. Well, Zooey is no stranger to speculative fiction movies. Elf is one, with its Christmas elves and Santa Claus. But, of more traditional SF, she played the role of Trillian in the 2005 movie adaptation of the late, great Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. And she also played DG (the Dorothy Gale analog) in the Sci Fi original Tin Man, one of the few Sci Fi originals that’re worth the time to watch (yes I know they call themselves SyFy but I die a little each time I use their official name). Oz is one of my favorite fictional worlds of all time, and my very first publication (The Utility of Love) was a horror retelling of The Wizard of Oz, so I was delighted to see Zooey in the lead role of the Sci Fi miniseries. I would really love to interview her for Diabolical Plots, and movies like that give me ample excuses to do so (If I didn’t have such excuses, I would still want to do an interview anyway because she is simply awesome). The trouble is, Hollywood people are rather hard to reach, for obvious reasons, and I have no idea how to go about it. So, while I try to figure that out, in the meantime I’m posting this article. If anyone has any ideas about how to initiate such contact, feel free to post a comment. Writers and editors tend to be much easier to find, because their careers depend on self-promotion, getting the news out about their next big book, so most have a Facebook or Livejournal account which can field messages. Actresses are much harder to reach, of course–I have found a Zooey Deschanel on Facebook but I seriously doubt it is the Real McCoy.

So anyway, like I was saying, She & Him has released two CD’s so far, cleverly named Volume One and Volume Two. We picked up Volume One pretty much the moment that we first heard that Zooey had a band, and loved it enough that the purchase of Volume Two was a foregone conclusion. The “Him” of the band’s name is M. Ward, another very worthy talent, who plays guitar for the band and also sings vocals for some of the songs (though not nearly as many as Zooey). The CDs include some familiar songs (like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot) but are mostly original music, generally with a catchy beat, often about love or breakups. My favorite from these two CDs is “I’ll Get Along Without You Now”, a story of a recently ended romance. But my favorite lyric is from “I Thought I Saw Your Face Today”: I somehow see what’s beautiful in things that are ephemeral. The lyrics are well-written, the melodies stick in my head all day, and Zooey’s amazing voice takes these great components and turns them into one marvelous whole.

Back to the concert. Unfortunately, Heather had to work late that day, so we weren’t in line at the door when they opened up. This is a bit of a pain at First Ave because there are only a few actual seats (which we were way too late for), the rest is standing room. So we had to stand, though we found a place where we had a decent vantage point.

The opening band was The Chapin Sisters, a duo who were working double-duty as She & Him’s backup singers. They were… okay. We like their backup singing, (to the extent that Heather’s considering a complete career change to audition for a position as back-up singer for She & Him), but they didn’t wow me as their own group. I think this was largely due to two factors:
1. The sound levels weren’t very well adjusted for this portion of the concert. As a result, one of the two sisters was so loud that she was both borderline painful to the ears and also nearly impossible to understand.
2. Of the lyrics that I could understand, the songs didn’t really catch my interest that much. The one that I do remember involved sitting in the dusty branches of a palm tree, which didn’t really make sense and simultaneously wasn’t an intriguing fiction.

Often I complain when bands talk too much, to the point that they just seem more interested in ranting and pushing their own agendas–usually long monologues about the general desirability of living in a constant muddled drug haze. Or, in the case of Rufus Wainwright, long long inflammatory political rants, occasionally interrupted by him “performing” his music, which he both managed to forget the words to, and also sang quite off key.

She & Him was on the opposite end of the spectrum, to the point that they barely spoke at all, generally flowing from one song into the next without a pause for breath. They stopped two or three times just for a moment to ask how we were doing and to let us know they were having a good time, once for Zooey to ask people to turn off the flashes on their camera, and once to ask one particularly obstinate individual to PLEASE turn his flash off who didn’t listen the first time. They introduced the band members only at the very end, with simply a listing of their names and no further elaboration.  The upside of this is that there was a lot of music packed into not much time. The downside was that I would’ve actually liked to hear them talk about themselves, to hear some more from Zooey, and to hear anything at all about M. Ward about whom I know almost nothing. He is Ferb to Zooey’s Phineas, almost entirely silent to the other half of the more vocal duo (if you don’t get that reference you need to watch more cartoons).

They were fun to watch, and they performed everything very closely to how it sounds on the album, which is always a plus for those who, like me, like to sing along. I have no complaints about the concert, they provided a great night of music. Check out their CDs and catch their concert the next time they come through town.

Storygasm Results!

written by Nathaniel Lee

Here are the stories resulting from the Storygasm event in rough chronological order of prompts received. Feel free to take yours and post it elsewhere or link directly to this page. Thanks for contributing!

—

Prompt – “Lonely Cowbots” by Damon Shaw

Initially, CP0012 ignored it when CP0013 arrived with a Stetson perched on his heat sink. CP0012’s programming contained very few instructions about non-bovine topics. The following day, however, CP0013 began broadcasting sounds and disturbing the herd:

“>10 N=BOTTLESBEER
>20 N=100
>30 PRINT N-1
>40 IF N>0 GOTO 20”

CP0012 opened a communications channel. “Query: Justification for broadcast.”

“Answer: I’m a cowboy! Howdy-howdy-howdy!”

CP0012 filed a repair request and returned to watching cows. Insofar as CP0012 felt anything, he liked cows. Cows were predictable.

In the distance, CP0013 emitted the first sounds of a synthesized harmonica. CP0012 shut down his microphone.

—

Prompt – “Lost Hearts” by David Longhorn

She answered the door on the fourth ring.

“I want it back,” I said.

She shrugged one delicate shoulder and turned away, leaving the door ajar. I stepped inside. Racks of cages lined the hallway, full of hearts. They were limp, despondent things, gazing out at her with hopeless longing. Three more, a bit better groomed, lurked nervously on the couch. She shoved them aside and seated herself.

“I don’t have it,” she said, crossing her legs.

“You†how?”

She shrugged again. “It got lost. You should take better care of your heart if you don’t want it getting lost.”

—

Prompt – “Buridan’s Ass” by Loren Eaton

The first thing I saw when I walked into the Philosophy department was Buridan’s naked ass.

“Buridan!” I shouted, covering my eyes. “What-? Are you†floating?”

Buridan rotated towards me, and I felt an odd pressure, as though I were suddenly under ten feet of water. Buridan drifted further away. “I have achieved enlightenment, of a sort,” he said. “Recall the donkey and the hay.”

“The free-will proof?”

“He was trapped between desirables. I, in contrast, loathe everything equally. Thus, I am suspended.”

“Department meeting starts in ten minutes.”

Buridan sighed. “Help me down. I need to find my pants.”

—

Prompt – “The Relativity of Relativity” by Matt Kempke

“Family Reunion!” the banner proclaimed. White puffs of hair and bristling mustaches bobbed around the pavilion.

“Have you met Cousin Bernie?” Meredith gushed, leading her charge over to the grill. “He’s discovered the reason hot dogs come in tens but buns only in eights.”

“Howdy!” Bernie waved his tongs.

“And here Uncle Cal. He’s discovered the relationship between sound and intelligence. How does it go, Cal? The quieter you are, the smarter you seem?”

Cal nodded solemnly.

“And me, well, this here is my final experiment. A=N^f~1.” Meredith smiled. “As the number of family members increases, personal aggravation approaches one.”

—

Prompt – “I’m Not Telling You Twice” by Jim Murdoch

“Matthew Roderick Johannson, get down here this instant!” Mom called from downstairs.

“Jeez, Mom. You don’t have to tell me twice.” Matt paused his game.

“I’m not telling you twice,” said Mom from the doorway.

“Oh,” said Matt. “Sorry, Mom1. I thought you were Mom3.” He squinted until the quantum phantasms merged back into a unified Mom, or at least a Mom-shaped cloud representing the current most likely Mom.

“Those games are terrible for your ability to focus. What if you’d slipped into the wrong stream completely?”

“Mom!” Matt rolled his eyes. “The chances of that are like mathematically zero.”

—

Prompt – “Walrus Planet” by Sam

They gathered in thousands on the vast ice floes. Along the edges, there was a constant transition as hungry individuals slipped into the chill waters while others hooked their tusks into the ice to heave their sated bulks out of the water and rest.

In the distance, off to the south, there were flashes of light, like a sporadic Aurora. Then, a rumble as of far-off thunder. Several whiskery heads lifted curiously, but when nothing further presented itself, they returned to the business of sleeping and digesting.

Another walrus slipped into the water. The southern sky slowly darkened to night.

—

Prompt – “Oh my god, this wasn’t a dream†it was all real.” by Joey Jordan

“I had such a bad dream,” said Remy. He leapt into the air and spun lazily in a circle, petting the barking dog-tree for comfort. “My house wasn’t endless, and I went outside to go to work, only I couldn’t fly. Then, in the car, the radio just played music and no one appeared or disappeared. I had to drive the whole time. I didn’t skip ahead at all.”

“Sounds unpleasant,” agreed the leprechaun.

“Then I went to get a haircut, and, Remy paused, his hand drifting to his neck. Cool air brushed the freshly shorn skin. “Oh my God,

—

Prompt – “What kinda person walks around in a yellow hooded cloak? It’s not like it would hide you from anyone.” by Joey Jordan, who apparently didn’t read the rules very closely

Chuck’s finger tightened on the trigger when he spotted the bright yellow figure. He pushed through the foliage.

“Hey,” he hissed. “What are you doing in a yellow cloak? Why are you wearing that?”

The man gave Chuck a quizzical glance. “Because it’s raining out,” he said, gesturing at the sweltering, sunlit treetops with his briefcase. Chuck saw wingtips poking out beneath the rain-slicker. “I’m not getting soaked waiting for the bus.”

Chuck looked for the rest of his squad. When he turned back, the small clearing was empty, save for a distant growling engine and the smell of diesel.

—

Prompt – “Bargain Messiah” by David Steffen

“There,” Jeezie said. “That’s the best I can do.” Sweat poured from his forehead and soaked his ragged beard as he handed over the cup.

Mary sipped and grimaced. “Cherry Kool-Aid,” she said. “Unsweetened.”

“Sugar is really hard,” said Jeezie, somewhat defensively.

“What about walking on water?”

“Sure!” Jeezie brightened. “I need a vat and a bunch of corn starch. I saw it on Mythbusters.”

Mary sighed. “Salvation?”

“Well†I do know how you can save money on car insurance.”

“Forget it,” said Mary. “Mom was right. Splurge on major purchases and only use the bargain bin for little stuff.”

—

Prompt – “Axe of Kindness” by Gary Cuba

“Here.”

“No ‘thank you’?” said Leon.

The barista glanced over Leon’s shoulder and paled. “T-t-thanks,” she stammered.

“You’re welcome.” Leon tucked a dollar in the tip jar. “See? Kindness pays.” He walked out with Throckdar in tow. Immediately, they spotted the traffic cop leaving a ticket on Leon’s car.

“Oh, really!” said Leon. “I’m only thirty seconds late.”

Throckdar hefted his axe significantly.

The cop swallowed. “I’ll just tear this up.”

Leon and Throckdar settled into the car, the suspension groaning. “So how’d you get stuck with this, anyway?” Leon asked.

Throckdar shrugged. “Community service. Goblin king had good lawyer.”

—

Prompt: “The last man on earth sits in his living room. SUDDENLY he
finds his mailbox full of bills” by Sebastian Kempke

Mortimer opened his mailbox. ÂBills, bills, ads, and bills. Automatically generated, computer-printed, sent in pre-paid envelopes through the mechanized mail system. ÂUntouched by human hands from the moment they were printed until the robotic delivery trucks shunted them into Mort’s mail slot. ÂHe handled them carefully, as though they might explode.

“Occupant, current resident…” Mortimer slit the envelopes open and read each word aloud. ÂNobody heard him, of course. ÂHe might be the only person left. ÂOther than the robots, of course.

“Here’s one with my name on it,” Mort told the cleaning bot. ÂIt whirred and trundled blithely on.

Nathaniel Lee is an amateur wordsmith with delusions of grandeur. He’s been writing stories since the second grade, but as yet has not found anyone willing to pay for them. ÂHe maintains a daily writing blog at Mirrorshards.org, and several of those stories have winkled their way onto the Drabblecast (Episodes 154, 156, and 158). Nathan and his wife keep two cats, Ozymandius and Belshazzar, and they spend most of their free time staring into glowing screens of one sort or another. ÂNathan is also an avid board gamer and roleplayer who suffers from a chronic lack of willing participants.