Diabolical Plots – Page 65 – From Inspiration to Ink…

Interview: Jonathan Maberry

interviewed by Carl Slaughter

JONATHAN MABERRY is one of the most versatile and prolific writers in the speculative fiction. His specialty is horror, but he also writes fantasy and science fiction, as well as mystery, thriller, western, and humor. He has 5 wins and many nominations for the Bram Stoker Award, wins/nominations for other genres and encyclopedic nonfiction, and recognition from writer and librarian associations. His first novel was in competition with one of Stephen King’s novels for the Bram Stoker Award. Several of his projects are in development with Hollywood. He has worked with Marvel and other major comic book companies. He has consulted/hosted for Disney, ABC, and The History Channel. He has written several series, most notably the Joe Ledger international thriller sci fi series and the Rot & Ruin young adult horror series. His has edited several anthologies, most notably an X-Files series. He has participated in a multitude of writer conferences and workshops, most notably Write Your Novel in Nine Months, Act Like a Writer, and Revise & Sell. He writes/speaks as an expert on the cannonal background and cultural phenomenon of the horror genre. He is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, Horror Writers Association, International Thriller Writers, Mystery Writers Association, International Association of Media Tie-In Writers, and Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators . He is a contributing editor of the ITW’s The Big Chill newsletter. He is a cofounder of The Liars Club writer network. His novelization of the Wolfman film – starring Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving, Emily Blunt, and Benicio del Toro – reached #35 on the New York Times bestseller list. Not surprisingly, Publishers Weekly featured him on the cover.

Jonathan Maberry’s full bio. Jonathan Maberry on Amazon. Jonathan Maberry on Good Reads. Jonathan Maberry’s website. Liars Club writer advice page.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHICH OF YOUR NOVELS IS BEING ADAPTED BY HOLLYWOOD?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I’m fortunate to have several of my projects in development for film and television. My Joe Ledger thrillers are being developed by Lone Tree Entertainment and Vintage Picture Company as a possible series of movies, likely beginning with Extinction Machine, the 5th in the series. And my vampire apocalypse series, V-Wars, is headed to TV, with a brilliant script by former Dexter head writer, Tim Schlattmann. Several other properties, including Rot & Ruin, The Pine Deep Trilogy, and others, are being discussed.

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW LONG AND HOW HARD IS THE JOURNEY TO THE SCREEN?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Like most writers I’ve coasted the edges of the Hollywood experience for years. There are some frustrations, of course, but that’s part of the game. For example, back on 2007 I co-created a show for ABC-Disney called On the Slab, which was a horror-sci fi-fantasy news program. Disney paid us to develop it and write a series bible and sample script; and then there was a change of management in the department that purchased it. Suddenly the project was orphaned and therefore dead in the water. Another time producer Michael DeLuca (Blade, Magnolia) optioned the first Joe Ledger novel, Patient Zero, on behalf of Sony, who in turn took it to ABC, who hired Emmy Award-winning TV writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (Lost) to write a pilot. Then after we’d gone a long way toward seeing it launch they decided instead to focus on the reboot of Charlie’s Angels, which flubbed badly. That’s Hollywood. I don’t take this stuff personally, though. And I never lost my optimism.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT ARE THE ROUTES TO TAKE AND NOT TAKE?

JONATHAN MABERRY: It’s important to focus on presenting a positive brand and to turn out quality products. Being a prima donna doesn’t help you get in through the door. Being someone people can and want to work with is a big plus. Patience is also very, very important.

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW MUCH CONTROL AND INVOLVEMENT DO YOU HAVE IN THE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS?

JONATHAN MABERRY: For most Hollywood projects the author has little input. I have a lot of friends who have had books optioned and developed, like Charlaine Harris (True Blood), Isaac Marion (Warm Bodies), Mike Mignola (Hellboy), and others. And although they dig what’s been done with their work –at least for the most part—they are often observing from a distance. That said, I own half of the V-Wars property, sharing ownership with IDW Publishing, so I will probably have a little more input there. And I’ve become friends with the producers who optioned Joe Ledger, and as a result they’ve invited me to participate in creative discussions.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHO DO YOU SEE CAST IN WHICH ROLES?

JONATHAN MABERRY: My dream casting for my characters changes on a daily basis.

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW INVOLVED HAVE YOU BEEN IN DEVELOPING THE CHARACTERS AND PLOTS OF WHICH MARVEL PROJECTS?

JONATHAN MABERRY: With Marvel my creative involvement varies. On projects like Marvel Zombies Return, the world was already created and I was asked to join a writing team along with Seth Grahame-Smith (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies), Fred Van Lente (Cowboys and Aliens) and David Wellington (Monster Island). We each had one issue to write and could pitch our own story, but that story had to fit into the overall five-issue arc.

With Black Panther, I was asked by Marvel’s editor-in-chief Axel Alonso, to come in and take over the book from Reggie Hudlin (producer of Django Unchained) who was leaving. I had to finish a few of Reggie’s storylines and then tie them into my own story arc, which I further developed into the DoomWar limited series.

Everything else I did for Marvel was entirely based on original pitches, including Captain America: Hail Hydra, Klaws of the Panther, Punisher: Naked Kills, and my series, Marvel Universe vs The Punisher, vs Wolverine and vs The Avengers.

I moved on from Marvel because I wanted to write horror comics and focus entirely on my original characters.

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW BIG OF A FISH ARE DARK HORSE AND IDW IN HOW BIG OF A POND?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Dark Horse and IDW are blowing up. If Marvel and DC are the top tier, then Dark Horse, IDW, and Image are the next level. They also deal with a lot of licensed products. Dark Horse has Aliens and others. IDW has Transformers, X-Files, GI Joe and many more. And, of course, Image has The Walking Dead.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP DO YOU HAVE WITH THEM?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I had a lot of fun working with Dark Horse, but I only really pitched that one idea to them.

My relationship with IDW is much bigger and covers several product and formats. I did the Rot & Ruin: Warrior Smart graphic novel, which was a one-off; but my deepest involvement is with V-Wars and The X-Files. The V-Wars project began as a series of shared-world prose anthologies. I’d write a large framing story and then invite other writers in to do individual stories. The third volume, V-Wars: Night Terrors, just debuted. I also did a run of comics which have been collected into graphic novels as V-Wars: Crimson Queen and V-Wars: All of Us Monsters. The V-Wars TV series is in development and on Feb 15 we launch a board game, V-Wars: A Game of Blood and Betrayal, with insane rules written by legendary award-winning game designer Rob Daviau.

I did Bad Blood for Dark Horse, with brilliant art by Tyler Crook, and two books so far for IDW –both of which are based on my novels, Rot & Ruin and V-Wars. However these are not straight adaptations of my novels but instead new stories set in those worlds.

CARL SLAUGHTER: X-FILES MADE A COMEBACK WITH A MINISERIES THAT STARTED AIRING IN JANUARY 2016. FOX MADE AN ANNOUNCEMENT IN MARCH 2015. YOU EDITED AN X-FILES ANTHOLOGY THAT CAME OUT IN JULY 2015. DID FOX COMMISSION THAT PROJECT?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I’m editing a series of X-Files anthologies. The first, The X-Files: Trust No One sold out its initial print run in record time. The second, The X-Files: The Truth is Out There, debuts February 16, and The X-Files: Conspiracy Theories is in development. The idea was cooked up by Ted Adams, CEO of IDW Publishing, and he asked me to come aboard as editor. Initially it was planned as a single anthology, but I talked him –and FOX, who holds the license—to let me do at least three. This was something we started working on before Chris Carter announced that he was doing a new series of the show.

CARL SLAUGHTER: JOE LEDGER SEEMS TO BE SHERLOCK HOLMES, JAMES BOND, RAMBO, INDIANA JONES, AND VAN HELSING ALL ROLLED INTO ONE. IS THERE ANYTHING HE CAN’T DO, ISN’T CUT OUT TO DO, DESPISES DOING, REFUSES TO DO?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Joe is actually based on several real-life Special Ops guys I’ve had the pleasure of knowing. They are a remarkable breed, and they need to be capable of extraordinary things in order to do what they do. They aren’t like other people. They have high intelligence, good language skills, amazing coordination, and they are deeply trained in a variety of skills. There’s nothing Joe Ledger does that these elite special operators can’t –or don’t—do.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT ARE HIS WEAKNESSES?

JONATHAN MABERRY: If Joe has a weakness, it’s the same thing as his strength: he is not motivated by politics but is instead a humanist. That means he gets hurt a lot, but it also means that he is damned hard to stop when he is doing what he feels is right.

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW IMPORTANT ARE HIS TEAMMATES / PARTNERS AND HIS INTERACTION WITH THEM? OR IS HE PRETTY MUCH THE STAR OF THE SHOW?

JONATHAN MABERRY: The team dynamic is what makes the Ledger series work. Although Joe Ledger is often alone for large sections of each book, his team always matters in getting the job done. That team includes the administrative genius of Mr. Church and Aunt Sallie, the tech skills of Bug and Dr. Hu, and the men and women of Joe’s field teams, notably Top and Bunny –his right and left hands. Without them, Joe would have died a long time ago; and with them he is a far more interesting character to write and, I’m told, to read.

CARL SLAUGHTER: YOUR 8TH JOE LEDGER NOVEL IS COMING OUT IN APRIL 2016. HOW LONG WILL THE JOE LEDGER SERIES CONTINUE?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I have no plans to stop the Ledger series anytime soon. In fact I just sat down today to begin writing the 9th Ledger book, Dogs of War, and we have two cool projects coming up that support the series. The first is The Joe Ledger Companion, which is a nonfiction book that takes readers behind the scenes of Ledger and his world. It’s being written by Mari Adkins and Preston Halcomb, and I’ll be contributing to it as well. And then there’s Joe Ledger: Unstoppable, an anthology of all-original short stories about Ledger being written by wonderful A-list writers including Scott Sigler, Sherrilyn Kenyon, Steve Alten, Weston Ochse, Mira Grant, Jon McGoran, Javier Grillo-Marxuach, Joe McKinney, Jeremy Robinson, Christopher Golden and Tim Lebbon, Dana Fredsti, James A. Moore, James Ray Tuck, Larry Correia and others. That will be out in 2017.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT’S THE EXPLANATION FOR THE VAMPIRE / ZOMBIE WAVE? WHY NOT GHOSTS, OR WEREWOLVES OR MERMAIDS OR UNICORNS OR DRAGONS?

JONATHAN MABERRY: People will always love monsters, but zombies and vampires have a very special appeal to writers and readers. Zombies are a blank canvas; they represent a massive shared catastrophe which impacts the lives of every character in equal measures. The characters have their lives, their hopes and dreams, their protections and resources, all stripped away and must struggle for survival while at the same time trying to discover who they truly are. One introduced, the zombies become immediately less important that their effect on the lives of the human characters, and therefore the true focus on these stories is about people in crisis. That is an endlessly renewable creative canvas.

Vampires, on the other hand, represent a variety of other metaphorical problems: rape, abuse in all its forms, jealousy, fears of sickness, dreams of immortality, forbidden love, and so on. The vampire stories were once straight horror but now they’ve either become romances or they are a kind of super hero tale, much like the myths and legends of gods and demigods. Again, there are a lot of stories you can tell with that model.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT ARE THE VARIOUS HORROR SUBGENRES?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Horror is a genre of fiction that has dozens and dozens of variations, including Gothic, body horror, suspense, psychological horror, ghost stories, religious horror, existential horror, monster stories, zombies, vampires, folkloric horror, extreme horror, paranormal romance, urban fantasy, dark fantasy, science fiction horror, and so on.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHICH ARE THE MOST POPULAR?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Groups like the Horror Writers Association has awarded its coveted Bram Stoker Award to books as diverse as Thomas Harris’ crime thriller Silence of the Lambs to Stephen King’s subtle Lisey’s Story to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, to Joe McKinney’s brutal zombie thriller Flesh Eaters.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHICH ARE YOUR SPECIALTIES?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Most of what I write tends to be hug on the scaffolding of the thriller, which is a model applicable to virtually any genre. I love the race against time to prevent something dreadful from happening. But I’ve also written in a variety of sub-genres in both long and short fiction and often go cross-genre.

Among the categories in which I’ve written we have vampires/American Gothic (Ghost Road Blues and its sequels), ghost stories (the short story “Property Condemned”), paranormal mystery (“Sherlock Holmes and the Adventure of the Greenbrier Ghost”), psychological horror (“Doctor Nine”), serial killer (“Saint John”), horror movie adaptations (The Wolfman), zombie apocalypse (Dead of Night andFall of Night), urban fantasy (“Mystic”), paranormal mystery (“Like Part of the Family”), dark fantasy (“We All Make Sacrifices”), weird western (“Son of the Devil”), historical ghost story (“Red Tears”), epic fantasy (“The Damned One Hundred”), Lovecraftian horror (“Dream a Little Dream of Me”), science fiction horror (Patient Zero andAssassin’s Code), weird science thriller (The Dragon Factory, Code Zero), post-apocalyptic existential horror (“The Wind Through the Fence”), Alt-History Steampunk horror (Ghostwalkers: A Deadlands Novel), post-apocalyptic zombie horror for teens (Rot &Ruin), folkloric horror (“Cooked”), historical horror comedy (“Pegleg and Paddy Save the World”), and so on.

Do I have a favorite? No, not really. I’m most in love with whatever genre or sub-genre I’m writing at the moment.

CARL SLAUGHTER: HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU TAKEN HOME THE BRAM STOKER AWARDS? HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU BEEN NOMINATED? HOW MANY TIMES HAVE YOU NOT BEEN NOMINATED?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I’ve been fortunate to win five Bram Stoker Awards. I won Best First Novel for Ghost Road Blues, then shared a win for nonfiction with David Kramer for a book on the paranormal we wrote called The Cryptopedia; after that I won two back-to-back Stokers for Young Adult novels for books two and three of the Rot & Ruin series (Dust & Decay and Flesh & Bone); and more recently picked up on for Graphic Novel for Bad Blood. As for how many times I’ve been nominated…I’m not really sure. Maybe ten or twelve times.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHERE’S THE STIFFEST COMPETITION?

JONATHAN MABERRY: Every year there is such amazing horror writing being published, and often by close friends. It’s odd –but also fun—to be nominated alongside people you like and whose work you respect. That way, no matter who wins…it’s a party.

My first time out, however, I was up against Stephen King. Ghost Road Blues had been nominated for both Best First Novel and Novel of the Year. I won the Best First but King took Novel of the Year for his wonderful book, Lisey’s Story. If you have to lose…there is zero shame in losing to Stephen King.

CARL SLAUGHTER: YOU’VE BEEN CRANKING OUT 2 OR 3 NOVELS A YEAR FOR THE LAST 6 YEARS. PLUS COMICS, SHORT STORIES, ANTHOLOGIES, NONFICTION BOOKS AND ARTICLES, WORKSHOPS, BLOGS, BROADCASTS AND WEBCASTS, DOCUMENTARIES, PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION LEADERSHIP. WHAT’S YOUR SECRET? DO YOU HAVE A DOZEN CLONES? AN ARMY OF ANDROIDS? A GENE THAT OPTS YOUR BODY OUT OF SLEEP?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I was trained as a journalist and that doesn’t encourage one to be a slowpoke. Some of my professors were very aggressive and had us cranking out a couple of thousand words in the space of a few hours. After college I was a magazine feature writer part time, but even though I was working day jobs (variously –bodyguard, bouncer, jujutsu instructor, college teacher, graphic artist), I wrote over twelve hundred articles and at least three thousand reviews and columns. And I wrote more than a dozen textbooks and nonfiction books on subjects ranging from a history of competitive sparring to the folklore of supernatural predators.

When I switched to fiction a little over ten years ago I brought that same work ethic with me. I like the fast lane. Not everyone does. I have friends who prefer to write a book every couple of years. That’s not for me. I put it in high gear and keep my foot on the gas. And I write my best stuff under tight deadlines.

The last two years I’ve written four to six books per year, plus comics and a slew of short stories. I just signed an agreement last week to add a fourth book to this year’s slate, and there’s a possibility I’ll do a fifth.

Nowadays writing is my full time job. I write, on average, eight hours a day, and usually log about four thousand words. Between novels, comics, short stories and novellas I write about a million and a quarter words for publication per year.

That wasn’t how fast I started, of course. My first novel took years to write and revise. I got faster as I studied my own process and worked to improve my habits and deepen my understanding of the writing craft. It’s fun, though. And writing so many projects means that I’m always exploring new creative areas. I write for adults and teens, and I write in a variety of genre including thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, horror, Steampunk, alt-history, weird science, action, westerns, mysteries and more. I am never bored.

CARL SLAUGHTER: WHAT WORKSHOPS, ADVICE COLUMNS, BLOGS, WEBSITES, AND BOOKS DO YOU RECOMMEND FOR WRITERS?

JONATHAN MABERRY: I always advise new writers to attend writers conferences. The classes are useful and the networking is golden. The only writing book I ever recommend, however, is Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. It’s brilliant and incredibly useful, either for helping you feel your way through the plot or revising a draft.

CARL SLAUGHTER: ANY ADVICE TO ASPIRING SPECULATIVE WRITERS?

JONATHAN MABERRY: There are several important things to know about becoming successful as a writer. Things I wish I’d known earlier in my career.

First –be very good at what you do. Having a natural gift for storytelling is great, but you need to learn the elements of craft. That includes figurative and descriptive language, pace, voice, tense, plot and structure, good dialogue, and many other skills. Good writers are always learning, always improving.

Second –learn the difference between ‘writing’ and ‘publishing’. Writing is an art, it’s a conversation between the writer and the reader. Publishing is a business whose sole concern is to sell copies of art. Publishing looks for those books that are likely to sell well. There is absolutely no obligation for anyone in publishing to buy and publish a book totally on the basis of it being well written. It has to be something they can sell. A smart writer learns how to take their best writing and find the best way to present it to the publishing world, and then to support it via social media once it’s out.

Third –you are more important than what you write. A writer is a ‘brand’. That brand will, ideally, generate many works –books, short stories, etc. Each work should be written with as much passion, skill, love, and intelligence as possible, but when it’s done, the writer moves on to the next project. And the next.

Fourth –finish everything you start. Most writers fail because they don’t finish things. Be different.

Fifth –don’t try to be perfect. First drafts, in particular, are often terrible. Clunky, badly-written, awkward, filled with plot holes and wooden dialogue. Who cares? All a first draft needs to have in order to be perfect is completeness. It is revision that makes it better, and makes it good enough to sell. So, don’t beat up on yourself if your early drafts are bad. Everyone’s early drafts are bad. Everyone.

Carl Slaughter is a man of the world. For the last decade, he has traveled the globe as an ESL teacher in 17 countries on 3 continents, collecting souvenir paintings from China, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and Egypt, as well as dresses from Egypt, and masks from Kenya, along the way. He spends a ridiculous amount of time and an alarming amount of money in bookstores. He has a large ESL book review website, an exhaustive FAQ about teaching English in China, and a collection of 75 English language newspapers from 15 countries.

DP FICTION #13: “One’s Company” by Davian Aw

He finds a forest clearing on a planet of perpetual night in the two hours out of a thousand years that stars spread twinkling across its sky. It’s pure luck that he lands there on his random planet sampling. It’s the most beautiful, peaceful, ethereal place that he has ever seen.

There are no people on this planet. It will never be inhabited. Life evolved to little more than trees (if they are trees, those branching things) that get their food from the soil beneath and what sun that struggles through the clouds. Rocky outcrops ring the clearing in sharp relief against the sky. Beneath the starlight, he forgets about his life and loneliness.

He’s still alone here, but it’s different in the fresh unsullied alien air that fills his lungs as he rests between untrodden grass and unwitnessed skies, different from spending each evening alone in a busy, crowded city, full of strangers he’s too shy to talk to and too scared to try and understand.

Clouds crowd back across the gap, shrouding starlight behind their familiar shield. Darkness falls to rule the clearing. Peter knows it’s time to leave.

He logs the coordinates on his device.

This place would be perfect.

***

Excursion Two

The next evening, he tweaks the saved coordinates to arrive some distance away. His office cubicle fades from view. And there he is, his younger self: gazing spellbound at the stars. There’s no need to bother him. It might risk a paradox thing. But it’s nicer, all the same, having someone else around. He smiles.

***

Excursion Three

He pops up near the tree line. Work-exhaustion pains his face. He sees his two selves in the distance and thinks it might be nice to greet them: just to have someone else to chat to, because people do that after work. But nervousness still stays his feet. Tricky things, paradoxes, and knowing how to talk to people.

He looks around for the fourth. There’s no one else there. Yet.

***

Excursion Four

“Hi,” says Peter shyly to the third when the latter turns to search for him. “Tough day at work?”

His other self blinks, and tries a smile. “Yeah.”

His memory warps and changes. He remembers this exchange from the other end. It feels exceedingly, self-consciously redundant. They stop talking, and rest in the quiet. Each other’s company is enough.

***

Excursions Five to Forty-Seven

But the silence has been broken, and each time he gets more daring. Tentative greetings turn to conversations, uneasy handshakes to awkward hugs. It’s been so long since he’s talked to someone, too long since he’s touched another person. They’re not quite other people, here, but he can still pretend. If they close their eyes, they can all pretend.

They don’t talk about their lives because they’re all of them living the same one. Futures talking to pasts and sharing tales… that makes bad things happen.

But they can talk about this place that they have taken for their own. They map out constellations, invent stories to explain them. They study the alien trees and shrubs and give them cool scientific names. They gather piles of broken rocks and build rough forts upon the grass, then split into teams and play at sieges, fighting off invasions of themselves.

His memory rewrites itself in overused palimpsest till there’s nothing left he knows for sure and all his past becomes a blur. Events back home grow indistinct in the dullness of their repetition. His one surety is this place, his one joy each night’s respite in the comfort of its familiar faces.

He never steps into the same crowd twice.

***

Excursions Forty-Eight to Three Hundred and Thirty-Six

Someone brings fireworks – he can’t remember who, but he recalls setting them alight and shooting colour into the sky in bursts of fire that draw applause from the homogeneous crowd below.

He can barely remember his original visit: the darkness, the quiet, the mystified awe. He recalls stepping instead for the first time into the midst of a roaring party, music blaring and people dancing beneath strings of lights and hanging lanterns: people like him, who welcomed him warmly and made him feel like he belonged, people who understood him, people who liked him, people who knew and bore his name.

He brings a guitar and an amplifier and starts strumming a favourite song. The next day he brings a keyboard; then a drumset, bass guitar, mikes for singing and backup singing.

He doesn’t sing very well. It’s okay. No one in the audience sings any better.

***

Excursion Three Hundred and Thirty-Seven

The live band is belting out upbeat covers of emo band The Cutting Age. The audience loves it: jumping and screaming lyrics, and he smiles at their energy as he stands at the edge of the crowd with a sandwich in his hand.

A drunk bumps into him and slurs out an apology. As he stumbles away, he remembers doing that.

He’s been everyone at the party. He’s been everyone in the crowd. He’s been part of every conversation, part of every quarrel, part of every friendly hug and every drunken brawl. It’s easy to forget that if he doesn’t look at their faces. It lets them seem like any other people. It’s better to think that he’s managed to find an entire crowd of willing friends; better than it being just himself pitifully entertaining himself on an empty planet.

But it’s all a fragile, delicate balance. It’s a miracle they have lasted here this long. His memories are a blur, his pasts a confusion, his body a shifting, changing thing of scars and bites and injuries as his selves change each other’s histories and history changes them.

He thinks it’s enough proof of how this time travel works, and the clearing is now too full of him. The party can never get bigger than this. There’s no more space. The forest is impenetrable. He doesn’t know what lies beyond. His next week here might be the last; perhaps this night might be the last.

He thinks of once more spending each night in the void of his room with that void in his heart, and despair drives his feet to walk him to the spot where he made his first excursions.

He doesn’t waste time thinking when his fourth self materialises. He tackles him, grabs the space-time device, and crunches it firmly beneath his shoe and the open-mouthed horror of his younger face.

The music cuts silent. The multitude winks out. He feels the relief of a thousand memories erased from the worn-out tape of his mind. He vanishes too, with his final act of destruction, and a cold wind sweeps the empty grass.

***

Excursion Four

There are four people in a clearing that has not yet known a crowd.

“Hi,” one says shyly to another when the latter turns to search for him. “Tough day at work?”

The other blinks, and tries a smile. “Yeah.”

He doesn’t know it yet.

But he will never be lonely again.

Author’s Note: Back when I was working in NYC, I attended a free concert in Central Park by the New York Philharmonic. It was crowded, lively and slightly surreal with the field full of shadowed human figures moving around to music beneath the night sky. I had the stray thought – what if all of them were the same person? Whereupon I went home and wrote out the first draft of this all in one go.

Davian Aw’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, Stone Telling, LampLight and Star*Line. He also wrote roughly 240,000 words of Back to the Future fan fiction as a teenager and has never been that prolific since. Davian is a double alumni of the Creative Arts Programme for selected young writers in Singapore, where he currently lives with his family and a bunch of small plants.

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens – The Feminist Movie We Need

by Maria Isabelle

Even before The Force Awakens hit the big screen, Star Wars fans were instantly enchanted by the effects, mysterious storyline and intriguing but relatable characters. In particular, Rey has become the heroine of every young girl’s’ dreams and has since resonated with a vast majority of audiences because of her admirable independence and unmatched strength. In a series that has focused for so long on its young male heroes, it’s high time that a fully-formed female character like Rey has come into the limelight.

The Force Awakens takes place thirty years after the defeat of the Empire in Return of the Jedi, and since then, the galaxy has reorganized itself. Luke Skywalker has disappeared and Leia, now the general of the Resistance, leads a splinter group that fights against the new Empire, the First Order. Rey first appears as a nobody, a scavenger on the backwater desert planet of Jakku, who is drawn into the conflict after she rescues the adorable droid, BB-8, who houses vital information about Luke’s whereabouts. Like both Luke and Anakin Skywalker before her, she goes from her humble beginnings in the desert to participating in events that shape the galaxy – and like them, she also discovers that she is strong in the Force.

Rey is a hero for today’s world, vulnerable and strong in equal parts. She is able to scavenge for herself and has developed many survival skills because of this. However, we see that she is utterly alone in the world of Jakku, waiting for someone who may never come back. Despite this, she forms bonds quickly and we see this through BB-8 and former stormtrooper Finn. Later on, we find her in a pseudo-father-daughter relationship with Han, which is both lovely and heartbreaking, considering the unknown origins of her own parents. Rey’s strength comes from her abilities to take care of herself as well as her hope that someone will come back for her.

Her relationships with the male characters of The Force Awakens also show her developed character. Despite Finn’s obvious interest in her, this love interest is not fully formed and instead focuses on using Finn to show Rey’s abilities. When they first meet and are found by the First Order, Finn repeatedly takes Rey’s hand to run, to which Rey responds with “I know how to run without you holding my hand.” Han Solo also recognizes her skills and even offers her a job aboard the Millennium Falcon and a blaster gun on the planet of Takodana because he knows she can take care of herself. Rey also shows her independence in multiple situations where she saves herself: when people try to capture BB-8, she successfully fights them off with her staff and when she is captured by Kylo Ren, we find her performing her own escape plan and Han Solo, Chewbacca and Finn (unnecessarily) trying to save her.

Rey’s skills are not only present in her knowledge of how to survive in the desert, but in how she adapts to the galaxy at large. Her scavenging is directly related to her ability to understand and repair starships, thus winning Han Solo’s respect. Her melee skills with her staff- because as Finn points out, nobody on Jakku seems to use blaster pistols – serve her well when she receives a lightsaber. And her latent skills in the Force may be the most useful of all. It seems obvious that Rey may have received training at some point in the past, and these forgotten abilities come to the forefront once she meets Kylo Ren. The Sith Lord in training attempts to seduce Rey with promises of instruction, reaching into her mind to pull out memories. Rey is able to turn the tables and this moment seems to flip a switch in her. Like Luke before her, all she needed to do was close her eyes and trust in the Force.

Rey is not a damsel in distress like many female characters of the 1970s were, nor is she the hypersexualized heroine so common in the late 1990s. She has more in common with Katniss Everdeen than she does the heroines of the pulp films that inspired Star Wars. She lets audiences see that women can be heroes and fighters in a galaxy far, far away. When fans watch previous films and Star Wars spinoffs on DVD or on local channels, they can see that The Force Awakens continues a proud tradition of following along Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey – only this time, the hero just happens to be a heroine.

Maria is a writer interested in comic books, cycling, and horror films. Her hobbies include cooking, doodling, and finding local shops around the city. She currently lives in Chicago with her two pet turtles, Franklin and Roy.

Japanese Drama Review: Death Note

written by Laurie Tom

death note live action Death Note is the story about Light Yagami, who discovers a notebook (the titular Death Note) that allows him to kill anyone just by writing their name inside it. It originated as a popular manga series that has been translated thus far into an anime, a series of live-action movies, and even a stage musical.

Most recently, it has become a live action TV drama series, and because the story of Death Note is known fairly well by the target audience at this point, the drama made a point to promote that it would feature a new ending.

Though Death Note the live action series is certainly watchable by those who have never experienced the original material, I think those who have either watched the anime or read the manga will get more of a charge out of it, as there are some changes made specifically to sway the expectations of those who think they know what’s coming only to throw them a curveball.

To go along with that, they make some fundamental changes to some of the characters. Light is now an easy-going college student of no notable skill level instead of the genius high schooler he is in the original. He works part-time at a restaurant and is hoping to get a decent job in civil service after graduation. Nothing crazy. Living a contented life is one of his biggest desires.

Unfortunately, he discovers the Death Note dropped by the shinigami (death god), Ryuk, which comes with instructions on how he can use it to kill people. Unlike the original Light, who takes to murder like a duck to water, the drama Light is horrified by the realization that the Death Note is no joke. It really works.

It’s only when his police detective father is taken hostage by a killer that Light intentionally uses the Death Note for the first time, to save his father’s life.

This results in a differently motivated Light than before, and while the story hits many of the same beats as the original, this Light is much more sympathetic because we can see why he chose to use the Death Note to punish the criminals the police could not stop themselves. At the same time, there are moments where making drama Light follow the manga plot doesn’t work as well because he’s a different person. You can see the show strain to justify why this nicer, more compassionate Light would justify murdering people and becoming the supernatural serial killer known as Kira.

As we know, power corrupts, and though Light is a more sympathetic character, he still slides down the slippery slope. This adds an element of tragedy that wasn’t in the original, because we can see how far Light has fallen, and that he had started down this path out of a sincere wish to make a better world.

One of the best changes from the original is the dynamic between Light and his father. Soichiro Yagami is one of the best middle-aged characters in manga. He’s devoted to both his family and his job as a police investigator, and though a supporting character, he does some pretty smart things to save the day. So I was surprised by his drama incarnation, who is much more distant and has a strained relationship with Light to the point where they are no longer close.

But even if they have difficulty talking, it’s clear that drama Soichiro still loves Light, and it makes their relationship that much more tragic as Soichiro is duty-bound to stop Kira while realizing that Kira is probably his son.

Overall, the drama condenses a lot of the manga plot, often running through a volume or two in a single hour long episode, which makes for breathless viewing, but on the other hand, there is no such thing as a filler episode. Something is always happening.

Despite all the stabs at upending the expectations of viewers already familiar with Death Note, the drama always manages to get back to the main plot, without ever completely breaking the backbone set by the manga. It might be kinder to some characters, who survive the story when they did not in the original, but even the ending was not as different as I expected.

The ending might actually be the weakest episode of the run. After the breakneck pace of the previous episodes, the last one hits the brakes with the last two-thirds happening in a single location, with a lot of ranting and talking that could have been done in half the time. While it might have been interesting if the show had ultimately gone in a different direction, the deviations from the original were not strong enough to put up with all the verbal recap of how things came to be. With some edits the final episode probably would have been fine.

I’m not sure that I would recommend Death Note the drama to people who haven’t read the manga or seen the anime since it can be a bit uneven, but for those who have it’s a strong alternate take on the story.

Number of Episodes: 11

Pluses: sympathetic protagonist, Light’s dynamic with his dad, fresh takes on same situations

Minuses: overly drawn out last episode, some plot changes seem arbitrarily done just to yank the chain of experienced viewers, can’t seem to decide how original it wants to be

Death Note is currently streaming on Crunchyroll and is available subtitled.

Laurie Tom is a fantasy and science fiction writer based in southern California. Since she was a kid she has considered books, video games, and anime in roughly equal portions to be her primary source of entertainment. Laurie is a previous grand prize winner of Writers of the Future and since then her work has been published inGalaxy’s Edge, Strange Horizons, andCrossed Genres.

Anime Review: School-Live!

written by Laurie Tom

School-Live! really needed to be promoted more accurately to find its target audience, because based on the promotional art (bunch of cute school girls) and the title (very similar to Love Live!, which is about young girls becoming pop stars), I never would have guessed that this was about trying to survive several months into the zombie apocalypse!

The creative team behind it was probably trying to keep the reveal a surprise due to how the first episode is similarly set up to hide the premise, but it really doesn’t do the show any favors.

When we first meet Yuki and the School Living Club, it seems like a common slice of life show where slightly goofy/lazy Yuki doesn’t seem to do everything right, but always gives it her best. Though there are a few things that seem a little off about how other people behave around her, and there is a corridor of the school that is oddly barred off with desks stacked one on top of another, the first episode mostly plays everything as Yuki wishes things to be.

Until the veil cracks at the end, and we see the viewpoint of the most skeptical member of the School Living Club, who has come to retrieve Yuki, who is standing in the middle of a shattered classroom talking with students who are no longer there.

Though the zombie outbreak is covered to a certain degree, most of School-Live! is about staying sane in a world where stepping outside is likely to get the girls killed. The four main characters are holed up in their high school, which fortunately has solar power and a rooftop garden. They do need more than that to survive and go on dangerous supply runs when they have to, but mostly they’re able to stay inside and keep their sanity through the group they’ve formed.

The School Living Club gives the girls a sense of purpose instead of mindlessly ticking off the days that go by, and also serves as a way to control the delusional Yuki, who understands that the School Living Club is a special club that lives at school and is not allowed to leave it. In return, Yuki’s insistence on maintaining normal activities such as club trips and competitions, allows for levity in a situation where the other girls would otherwise have lost any reason to smile.

Each of the other three carries a weight with her. Yuuri is the leader, trying to hold the group together. Kurumi is the warrior, who patrols the school daily to make sure no zombies have made their way inside their safe area (and if slaying must be done, she takes care of it with a shovel). Miki is the skeptic, who knows just how bad it is to be alone at a time like this, having survived separately on her own in a shopping mall before being found by the others on a “club trip.”

Because of Yuki’s delusional nature, the show is not as dark as it could be, and there is something absurd about a club excursion that involves driving a teacher’s car out of a parking lot full of zombies, but the series is not without its more serious moments, especially after the halfway point.

Even though it seems like Yuki’s delusions shouldn’t be tolerated, it becomes easier to see that indulging her is actually helpful to the other girls as many of the things she suggests they’re able to twist into activities that benefit life in their sanctuary while simultaneously lifting their spirits. As Miki knows from her time in isolation, surviving is not the same as living.

I am not particularly a fan of the moe art style, where teenage characters are drawn much younger (even the girls’ teacher, who is probably in her 20s, looks like she’s 15). The characters are all the Japanese equivalent of juniors and seniors in high school, but they’re drawn with proportions that are closer to someone who is ten or twelve. This makes the occasional fanservice scene a little squicky.

On the other hand, the cutesy art style does help establish the incongruity of living a normal school life while there are zombies outside in the courtyard. It’s just not to my personal tastes.

School-Live! is a definite mish-mash of elements that are not usually combined. Whether it’s fake camping trips (while there are zombies outside) or a swimming episode (while there are zombies outside), it wears them very well, which makes the dark lead-in to the finale genuinely nerve-wracking as we see the destruction of what happiness the girls have been able to find.

Though the zombies themselves are not particularly different from the traditional movie zombie, the series itself is a refreshingly novel take on the sub-genre, where optimism and even happiness can still find a place. I heartily recommend it.

Number of Episodes: 12

Pluses: interesting take on how to keep sane and even happy when surrounded by zombies, capable all female cast, build up to the finale is extremely well done

Minuses: the occasional fan service feels really wrong given the moe art style, sometimes Yuki gets a little too out of control and I’m surprised the others don’t invent a way to tamp down on it, even though one of the solutions at the end is plausible it still feels too easy

School-Live! is currently streaming at Crunchyroll and is available subtitled. Sentai Filmworks has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

DP FICTION #12: “May Dreams Shelter Us” by Kate O’Connor

The air screams around their ship, the atmosphere burning and clawing at the heat shield. The cabin is dark and too hot after the long, cold quiet of space. Their hands find each other and twine together. I’m here, their interlaced fingers say. I’m with you. It doesn’t matter if they make it through. That they have come this far is victory enough.

***

Raia let go of the controls. The radiation storm had passed. Her hands ached and her eyes burned. The images were already fading from her mind. She scrubbed at her forehead, dislodging the webbed crown of sensors. Her skin tingled and flamed as though she herself had been the ship, slicing through the thickening atmosphere as she hurtled down towards a new world.

She staggered to her feet, drowning in the quiet emptiness of the med bay. Around her, the children slept. Bone weary, she checked the displays. All was well. They had heard her and calmed. No more would be lost today. She sent Jessi the all clear.

She padded down the corridor towards her bunk. She counted hatches, stopped at the fourth on the left. Raia reached for the palm pad. The wall in front of her tilted alarmingly. She flailed for a handhold, wondering frantically if the ship had sustained damage in the storm. Would life support go next? How long could they function in zero-g?

Raia found herself on the floor, not quite sure how she had gotten there. The artificial gravity was obviously still functioning. The corridor was silent. No alarms blared. She closed her eyes for a moment.

“Overdid it again, huh?” Jessi stood above her, arms folded.

“Aren’t you supposed to be flying the ship?” Raia reached her hands up towards her captain.

Jessi took hold of her arms and heaved her to her feet. “You know as well as I do that she flies herself most of the time.” She held Raia steady and looked her up and down. “How scrambled is your head?”

Raia shrugged. “I think I skipped any permanent brain damage.” For now. The energy necessary to connect the link was scorching away her mind every time she used it. The time was quickly coming when the damage wouldn’t be reversible.

“Take turns.” Jessi frowned and palmed open Raia’s door. “Some of the others will help.”

“It has to be me. They don’t settle for anyone else.” If the children woke up too soon, there would be no way to sustain them. Even if they survived being born without the proper procedure to wake them, the ship barely had enough resources to support the twenty-six crew members onboard. It had never been intended for interstellar travel. It was only Jessi’s quick thinking and Raia’s medical knowledge that had turned it into a viable life boat.

“We need you.” Jessi said softly, tucking her into bed. “Maybe even more than we need them.”

***

The ramp opens with a hiss. All they see at first is dust rising in the air like smoke. Smoke is the enemy in a spaceship. Smoke kills. They are afraid.

Then sunlight splits the dark plumes. The air turns to gold, warm and sparkling. Tentatively, they go forward through the dust. The ramp clangs beneath their feet. For a moment, they are blinded by the light of this new sun.

When their eyes clear, there is a field before them. A warm, sweet-scented breeze sings through slender stalks of blue grass. There are trees in the distance, reaching straight and tall towards the golden sky. It is not like the home they left, but it is beautiful all the same. Even more so because of what they have lost.

They go slowly, scanners clutched in trembling hands. In the shuttle, they were ready to die trying. Now that they see the future ahead of them, they are not willing to let it fade so easily.

***

“How much longer?” Raia asked, leaning over Jessi’s shoulder as the other woman flipped through holo-maps of their route.

“A month, maybe two. How many times are you going to ask me?” Jessi grinned, her tone light and teasing.

Raia’s smile faltered. She couldn’t remember having asked before. She pulled away, moving to the dispenser and filling a cup with water. If Jessi saw her face, there would be questions. Raia was a scientist. The truth had always been too important for her to be a good liar. If she started talking, she would tell Jessi about the brain scans she had done on herself this morning. Her fear would spill out and then they would have to make a choice between Raia’s mind and their future.

“I’m worried about the kids.” Raia said instead. She had never wanted children. She had lived for her lab and the research that had taken up her days and nights far more fully than any lover ever could. But the three hundred and seventy-two little lives in the med bay had become everything.

“Something wrong?” Jessi shut down the map and swiveled her chair around.

“Nothing new. It’s just… they’ve been exposed to a lot.” They had started with four hundred. Four hundred artificially fertilized eggs meant for Raia’s experiments.

One hundred and fifty of them had been brought from the moon at nearly seven months along. She had wanted to know what effects gestation in lower gravity would have. Those had done better than the Earth grown children. Only two of that group had been lost.

If Jessi hadn’t been dropping off the embryos when the Earth died, none of them would have made it. The sky had gone dark, then red. The ground had trembled without ceasing. Communications were shattered. Raia had loaded her Earth-grown embryos and what equipment she could onto Jessi’s ship and they had taken off.

They still didn’t know what had happened. It could have been the first and final act of a new war. It could have been an untracked meteor or a natural disaster. In the end, it didn’t matter. They had hung in the asteroid belt and watched while the planet came apart. Then they had taken Raia’s experiments and run for the stars.

Jessi waved a hand in front of her face. “Where’d you go?”

“Same place as always.” Raia gripped Jessi’s shoulder. They didn’t have to talk about that day. It was always with them.

***

Raia walked through the med bay. They were stacked row on row in their improvised life support units, little faces sleeping behind translucent glass. She had slowed their growth as much as she could, but it was a long journey to the nearest habitable world. Most were well past the stage when they should have been born.

It had been desperation that made her link them all together so they wouldn’t be alone while they waited, so their minds wouldn’t stagnate and fail. It had been raw hope that made her plug herself in and tell them the first story to keep them asleep and help them learn. A neural link like the one she had created hadn’t really been tried before and the only equipment she had to use was salvaged from spare parts meant for other things. She had known there was risk. She hadn’t expected it to burn through her like it had. Certainly not so quickly.

She sat at her desk. Atmospheric disturbances made them restless. Anything the ship’s shields couldn’t blot out set them off. It was getting worse as they were getting older. Raia pinched the bridge of her nose. She was losing things. There were more and more holes in her days. Jessi and some of the crew were starting to notice.

They would be good parents. Jessi’s people were disciplined and steady. Most of them were kind. All of them were decent and used to working together. Jessi wouldn’t have kept them on otherwise. They would make good colonists, too.

Raia buckled her restraints with shaking hands. She hadn’t been able to feel her fingers for two weeks. It took three tries to get the sensor net settled over her head. Re-entry would be difficult on the kids, but it was their last major hurdle.

Numbers flashed on her screen, counting down the time to contact with the atmosphere. When she had realized what was happening to her, she had left written instructions on how to wake the children up and remove them from their units. She had stacked them by age. As long as the ship had power, they could wake the kids in batches. Hopefully when they were on the ground and the ship was settled, the children would stabilize as well.

The ship shuddered as the countdown reached zero. The planet had looked so small on the screen, green and blue and white and so far away. It had seemed farther once she could actually see it spinning below them. She hoped there was enough of her left when this was done to see it up close.

The ship shook again. She keyed the controls. It was time.

***

They build houses. It is hard work. It takes sweat and tears, sometimes blood, but it is done. They plant gardens and grow food. They are together. They are a family. Sometimes they fight and bicker. They learn to compromise, to listen to what is needed and learn what makes this world thrive. It isn’t the same as the one they left. The stories of what was are just memories, warnings, and hopes.

But they live. They live well. And humankind lives in them.

***

It wasn’t until the ship was secured that Jessi thought to wonder where Raia had gotten to. The other woman would be with the children, of course, but Jessi expected to have heard from her by now. Unless something had gone wrong.

She didn’t run, though she wanted to. The corridors got emptier and emptier as she approached the med bay. The crew was running scans, making plans for exploring the surface. So far everything looked good, better than they could have hoped for with only some spotty long-range survey records and outdated nav holos to guide them.

Her boots echoed in the deserted hallway. She took a breath and held it, working to slow her racing heart. She palmed open the door.

The familiar buzz and hiss of machinery greeted her. It was a good sound. The floor was clean. None of the spilled fluid and shattered glass that marked a failed attempt to save a waking child was in evidence. “Raia?” Jessi called, rounding the corner towards the control desk.

The other woman lay back in her chair, her hands limp and broken-looking on the controls. Jessi’s feet carried her forward.

Raia’s chest rose and Jessi let out the breath she’d been holding. “Raia?” She asked again. She hated the hope in her voice. She knew better. She reached the chair. Raia stared upwards, her eyes fixed far away. The sensor web was still attached. Jessi removed it, checking to see that the program had shut off. It had. Jessi blew in Raia’s face, pinched her arm. She didn’t even blink.

“Captain?” Her comm beeped. “The air’s clear. We can go outside.” Her first officer’s voice bubbled with suppressed excitement.

“Understood.” The word caught in Jessi’s throat. She coughed and forced this latest grief down with all the rest. “I’m on my way.”

She looked around the room. The little ones were sleeping peacefully. She was grateful, so grateful and so shattered. They would have a life on this new world. Humanity had a chance, even if there was no one else out there. Jessi hoped it would be enough.

She scooped Raia’s vacant-eyed shell into her arms. “C’mon.” She whispered, tears running down her cheeks. “We’ll go together.”

Author’s Note: This story was inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Match Girl. When I heard the story as a child, I really just wanted to get a hold of some matches that let me make my dreams real. When I heard it again as an adult, I was reminded of how our hopes and wishes can create a better world in even the most desperate situations. Wondering about what those magic matches would show at the end of the world led to “May Dreams Shelter Us.”

After graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Kate O’Connor took up writing science fiction and fantasy. Her short fiction has most recently appeared in Intergalactic Medicine Show, StarShipSofa, and Escape Pod. In between telling stories, she flies airplanes, digs up artifacts, and manages a dog kennel. Her website can be found at kateoconnor3.wordpress.com.

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Anime Review: Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace

written by Laurie Tom

ranpo kitan: game of laplace Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace commemorates the 50th anniversary of the death of renowned Japanese mystery author Rampo Edogawa, and each episode is based on one of his works, updating the time period from the first half of the 20th century to modern day.

Because the original pieces are not necessarily related, this results in a particularly disjointed feeling when the third episode appears to be a simple stand alone after the two-part opener, and I wasn’t sure if the series had anything more ambitious than modernizing a collection of fiction. Fortunately, Rampo Kitan makes an effort from episode 4 on to tie everything together into a loose, but cohesive story arc.

The main characters come from the Kogoro Akechi stories, though Akechi himself is now a dour teen detective instead of a married adult. Assisting him are Kobayashi, a middle school boy with a penchant for crossdressing (a trait he had in the original works), and Hashiba, Kobayashi’s worrywort classmate.

Together they get involved in solving criminal cases (usually murder) that in the real world a teenager, let alone a couple of middle schoolers, would never be allowed near. Despite the ages of the protagonists, Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace is definitely not for those with sensitivities as many elements of the show are violent, gross, or sexually disturbing. It makes me wonder why the adaptation team decided to make all the protagonists younger.

Rather than deal with excessively censoring the show to get it on the air, the animation studio, Lerche, opted to heavily stylize most of it, which as a result makes it a unique watch. Rampo Kitan is frequently presented as though it is on a stage, with things like interior monologues happening while the viewpoint character is standing on a wooden floor with a spotlight over them. Sets slide in and out of view as needed and autopsy reports are delivered in quick comedic sketches designed to get the grisly information across without dwelling on it.

Some of the crimes are gruesome enough that those with lighter stomachs might appreciate any attempt to soften what actually happens to some of the murder victims, even the ones that had it arguably had it coming.

The stylization extends to a few viewpoint characters who have trouble seeing the world as most people do. When the camera is depicting their points of view, individuals they don’t know or care about are not drawn recognizably as people until they become important enough to be worth it. For instance, Kobayashi, our first POV character, views most other people as simply silhouettes, indistinguishable from one another until they become intrusive enough that he’s forced to acknowledge them. Characters that cease to be important, go back to being silhouettes.

Rampo Kitan is stuffed with interesting visuals like those to frame the story and the frame of mind of the current POV character.

That said, it needs them, because the plot itself is not its strongest point, which is probably the most disappointing thing to say about a series made in honor of a celebrated mystery author.

Most of the time it’s not possible to figure out who the criminal is ahead of time, which is downright miserly for a mystery series, and as a procedural it doesn’t feel like there’s enough emphasis on procedure. If the criminal’s identity isn’t confirmed before capture, the audience rarely has a chance to draw their own conclusion, and if the criminal is revealed, then capture is rarely more complicated than bringing in enough police officers, with the exception of the main story arc villain.

After Twenty Faces becomes established as a central figure, the series gains its main plot, and Akechi is more clearly allowed to be a main character. Kobayashi dominates much of the early episodes, which is rough since he’s difficult to relate to. He’s the kind of character who is thrilled to be in the middle of a murder mystery, even if it means he’s the prime suspect, and it never quite sinks in his head that he should be bothered by that.

Kobayashi never fades away entirely, but it always felt like Akechi should be the primary protagonist, being based off Edogawa’s most famous detective. Here, as in the original stories, Akechi has a rivalry with Twenty Faces.

Despite being a teenager, Akechi feels like a young adult who has been worn down before his time. He’s constantly mashing up painkillers that he washes down with canned coffee and treats his work like a job rather than a game or a means to play hero. This makes him believable when he’s called on by the police as a consulting detective.

It feels like Rampo Kitan wanted to make a statement about society, alienation, and how the cycle of violence never ends, but it doesn’t quite make it. The only things that clearly come across are the bonds between Akechi and Twenty Faces, between Kobayashi and Hashiba, and that good people will do awful things when they feel they’ve been let down by the ones who should protect them.

Though I enjoyed Rampo Kitan I don’t think it’s one to easily recommend. It’s worth trying for something different, particularly if you like to see something new in animated story techniques, but most of the characters outside of Akechi and Twenty Faces are not that well developed and neither is the plot.

Number of Episodes: 11

Pluses: use of imagery and stylization make for a visually unique show, moving soundtrack, Akechi’s weary personality is a refreshing change from more enthusiastic teenage protagonists

Minuses: rocky beginning, too much focus on Kobayashi, plot is a little lackluster

Rampo Kitan: Game of Laplace is currently streaming at Funimation and Hulu and is available subtitled. Funimation has licensed this for eventual retail distribution in the US.

Energy, Pollution and Toxic Waste: Eco-Horror in Film

written by Maria Isabelle

Climate change has been a big button issue in recent years as more and more people have become aware of its negative effects. In fact, because of the burning of fossil fuels, the emission of carbon dioxide has increased about 40 percent since pre-industrial times, according to Ohio Energy. With this concern and changing environmental issues come a plethora of films that reflect our natural world’s burdens. Films have been warning us of impending ecological disaster for years. Whether it’s our own hubris coming to get us or the Earth fighting back, here are five of the most terrifying eco-horror-themed films.

Godzilla (1954)

Not only the King of the Monsters, Godzilla is also the king of the eco-disasters. Famously a metaphor for the unchecked use of nuclear power, Godzilla as a force doesn’t even seem to see his victims. He can only destroy, taking victims in a way that doesn’t discriminate, much like the radiation that created him. This classic film is powerfully written and directed, nothing like the sillier entries later in the franchise that would give it a reputation for high camp. Even with the oft-forgotten love triangle that dominates the majority of the film, Godzilla has a lot to say and does so fantastically.

The Bay (2012)

When two researchers discover a toxin in Chesapeake Bay (alluding to the actual pollution in Chesapeake Bay), even they couldn’t have predicted that it would release a parasite on the townspeople that turns them into violent killers. A straight-out horror film, The Bay gives us everything the genre needs: unnatural threat, savvy protagonists, and authority figures that refuse to do anything. It actually has shades of Jaws which it seems to homage quite nicely. Viewers who like heavy doses of irony will find a lot to like in this film.

C.H.U.D. (1984)

Photographer George Cooper (John Heard) discovers a civilization of “Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers” (C.H.U.D.s) who are intent on invading the surface world. This camp classic from the renewed monster trend of the mid-80s is not subtle about how toxic waste created these mutant maniacs and doesn’t try to hide a very strong pro-environment message in between the gore and special effects.

The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

An often forgotten Roland Emmerich classic, this is the story of scientist Jack Hall (Dennis Quaid) who discovers that the Earth is headed for an imminent major freeze – one that happens almost instantly afterward leaving the survivors to find a way to keep living until humanity can respond. Like most Emmerich films, the environmental message and reference to the effects of climate change is in your face and over the top, but also sincere and couched in high action with exciting set pieces and very human characters.

Into the Storm (2014)

A found footage disaster film, Into the Storm switches perspectives between several graduating high school students and a veteran storm chaser named Pete (Matt Walsh) who is trying to drive directly into a tornado. The action builds as the story goes on, getting the characters closer and closer to an encounter with a major whirlwind – another force alluding to climate change. This manages to use the found footage gimmick in a way that doesn’t strain the eyes and can integrate parallel plots naturally.

These are only some of the many movies we have made that look at how we’ve treated the planet and suggest that it might cause a negative reaction. Whether it’s personifying our lack of care for water or our fears of nuclear holocaust, eco-horror always hits very close to home.

MOVIE REVIEW (non-spoiler): Star Wars: The Force Awakens

written by David Steffen

I might write about the movie at a more spoilery level of detail at a later date, but for this review I’ll keep it as spoiler-free as possible, just the sort of information you’d hear in a synopsis before going. I finally saw Star Wars Episode VII yesterday. I didn’t feel like dealing with opening week crowds, but I was getting tired of trying to dodge spoilers on Twitter and Facebook.

The movie picks up about as many years after the original trilogy as have passed in real life, I suppose. The First Order, the still active remnants of the Empire, is still opposing the New Republic that replaced it. A group of storm troopers of the First Order raids a Resistance camp on the desert planet Jakku, looking for information. Resistance fighter Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) hides the vital information in the droid BB-8 and sends it away from the camp before he is captured. One of the stormtroopers known only as FN-2187 (who is later nicknamed Finn) (played by John Boyega) chooses to turn his back on a lifetime of training and chooses not to kill anyone in the raid. Finn helps Poe Dameron escape. Together they meet Rey (Daisy Ridley), a Jakku scavenger and they join forces to get BB-8’s information to the people in the Resistance who need it.

I enjoyed this movie. It wasn’t the best movie I’ve ever seen but I enjoyed it from beginning to end and I am glad to see someone has been able to turn around the series after the mess Lucas made of the second trilogy. The special effects were good, and not the fakey CG-looking stuff that was in the second trilogy. The casting of the new characters was solid and it was great to see old faces again. To have a woman and a black man be the main heroes of the story is great to see from a franchise that hasn’t historically had a ton of diversity. It was easy to root for the heroes and easy to boo at the villains. The worldbuilding, set design, costume design all reminded me of the great work of the original. I particularly liked the design of BB-8 whose design is much more broadly practical than R2D2’s. Kylo Ren made a good villain who was sufficiently different than the past villains to not just be a copy but evil enough to be a worthy bad guy.

Are there things I could pick apart? Sure. Some of it felt a little over-familiar, but that might have been part of an attempt by the moviemakers to recapture the old audience again. I hope the next movie can perhaps plot its own course a little bit more. And maybe I’ll have some followup spoilery articles where I do so. I don’t see a lot of movies in theater twice, but I might do so for this one so I can watch some scenes more closely. I think, all in all, the franchise was rescued by leaving the hands of Lucas whose artistic tastes have cheapened greatly over the years. I know some people knock Abrams, and I didn’t particularly like his Star Trek reboot, but Star Wars has always been more of an Abrams kind of feel than Star Trek ever was anyway.

I enjoyed it, and I think most fans of the franchise will.