Category Archives: Uncategorized

Mysterious Photograph

Uncategorized, Writing, ,

Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has a great monthly contest. They print a photo and your job, as contest entrant, is to create a short crime story around the photo. And by short, I mean 250 words or less. I submitted for a story for the Nov/Dec 2022 photo but wasn’t selected. I like the story though, so I’m going to post the photo and the story here.

Mysterious Photograph

“Was it just yesterday that we hiked to the summit?” said Ellen Mordew. “We were so foolhardy.”

“Perhaps,” said Ajay Singh. “Or perhaps we were celebrating life, as Stuart would have wanted.”

Wiping away a tear, Ellen said, “Nothing was too crazy for Stuart. You knew him longer than I did.”

“Best friends since high school.”

The pair sat in silence as the lava descended the slope, steam rising as it meandered towards the surrounding flatlands. 

By now the lava would have melted the gun that Ajay had buried under some rubble on their descent. The police hadn’t found the murder weapon, and now they never would.

Ajay smiled as he sat in companionable silence with the woman he’d loved in secret for years.

Mirror Mirror

Culture, Uncategorized, , ,

Following the passing of beloved Big Finish colleague Paul Spragg in 2014, the company initiated the annual Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trip competition. Like many Big Finish listeners, I entered the first competition in 2016.

I lost.

After listening to the winning entry by the great Joshua Wanisko, I immediately understood why. Aside from any other deficiencies, the tone of my story, a light-hearted tale in which the Fourth Doctor encounters Alice Liddell, wasn’t appropriate.

My entry was a story called Mirror Mirror. As per the rules, I provided a one-page summary and a one-page excerpt from the story. While awaiting the results, I completed the story. After Forever Fallen was selected, I posted Mirror Mirror on FanFiction.net.

Time passed, and I recently re-read the story and found I quite liked it. Alice Liddell, the inspiration for the Lewis Carol stories, finds herself in a pocket universe after crawling through the looking glass in her parlor at home. The Doctor’s TARDIS is apparently dragged along by the temporal undertow of Alice’s journey. To escape, they must foil the Red Queen, who is determined that Alice should stay.

Having recently dabbled in audio editing, I thought it would be interesting to narrate the story myself, bringing it to life so to speak. I removed Mirror Mirror from FanFiction.net and installed it in the fanfiction section of my blog. The spoken version is available on my YouTube channel.

Some notes about the narration: Mirror Mirror is very much a Doctor Who children’s story and is narrated as such. Also, I made no attempt whatsoever to “do” Tom Baker. That is beyond me.

As for the art, it clearly makes use of the classic Through the Looking Glass artwork by John Tenniel. I’ve added to it to convey some of the elements that appear in Mirror Mirror.

Having said all that, do please give it a listen. I hope you enjoy it.

Doctor Who: The Eighth Day

Culture, Uncategorized, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Earlier in the lockdown, a few of us collaborated on a Doctor Who fanfic. We call it “Doctor Who: The Eighth Day” and it features the Eighth Doctor and Charley. If you’ve listened to Big Finish audios, the authors might be familiar: 

Joshua Winisko (@CBoogerjuice)

Selim Ulug (@SelimPensFctn)

Harry Draper (@bowtieanimation)

Ben Tedds (@BenTedds42)

Sophie Iles (@sophilestweets)

Max Curtis (@MaxCurtis)

Lizbeth Myles (@LMMyles)

It came about after Lily May Sherratt (@IreneWildthyme) brought together the authors of the Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trips for a listen-along. The hashtag we used was #CelebratingPaulSpragg. To keep the momentum going, we came up with the idea of collaborating on a story on Twitter. We’d do it one tweet at a time, with no planning, no clue as to what was coming. We tagged the tweets (when we remembered) with #WhoFicTweets. If you’re not familiar with Twitter, one of the challenges was the 280 character limit. You had that many characters to move the story forward. 

The process became very organic, and additional writers were brought on board. Sophie, then Max and finally Liz. One writer for each day of the week. Josh had Monday, I had Tuesday, and so on. It was a blast. 

Illustration by Sophie Iles

About 2,000 words later, it was done. With the kind assistance of Kenny Smith (@FinishedZine), of Vortex magazine fame, we connected with Conrad Westmaas who would provide the audio narration. Conrad has performed on several of the Big Finish Eighth Doctor adventures, and what a performance he gave here! We were fortunate enough to have Jaspreet Singh (@TheJazNetwork) come on board to work on sound design and to set up the audio production for YouTube. 

If you managed to follow along on Twitter with us, well done! But whether you did or not, do check out the audio. We’re very pleased with it and I think you’re in for quite a treat. Just follow the link at the bottom of the post. We’re also providing a written version of the story. Again, you’ll find a link at the bottom. We hope you enjoy it. 

Aside from the group project, there are individual projects coming up which may interest you. Sophie has a Big Finish Short Tip, part of the prestigious Time Lord Victorious series, and the first to feature the Roger Delgado Master. It’s called Doctor Who – Time Lord Victorious: Short Trips: Master Thief / Lesser Evils. Liz has a Big Finish Seventh Doctor story, “Doctor Who: The Grey Man of the Mountain”. As for me, look out for a self-published collection of original short stories later this year. 

You’ll find a written version of Doctor Who: The Eighth Day here and an audio version here. The audio version will go live sometime on September 8, 2020. If you enjoy the audio, please consider giving what you can to https://www.mindout.org.uk.

Online Communities

Culture, Life, Uncategorized, ,

The COVID-19 pandemic affects all of us. Physical distancing guidelines mean we stay at home except for runs to the grocery and drug store. Physical distancing doesn’t necessarily mean social distancing, however. Not completely.

Software such as Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, and others, allow you to interact visually with people from, well, anywhere. Emails, messaging apps, and social media such as Facebook and Instagram also allow us to keep in touch.

It’s not the same, though, is it? Of course, it can’t be, not even if we had Star Trek-like holographic communicators. It’s no substitute for being in the same space with someone. Still, beggars can’t be choosers, and we’re lucky that we live in an age where so many means of communication are open to us.

It fascinates me how Twitter has come into its own during this crisis, and has allowed communities to interact with one another in real time. By community, I mean groups of people with shared interests, no matter where they are in the world.

I often write about Doctor Who, and those who enjoy the show and its spin-off media are certainly a kind of community, one which has been very active these past weeks. Emily Cook (@Emily_Rosina), of Doctor Who Magazine fame, has organized several global Doctor Who watch-alongs. She selects an episode, sets up a time, and everyone starts watching at the same time and can contribute to a Twitter dialog. She’s managed to snag previous showrunners Stephen Moffat and Russell T. Davies, and many cast members, including David Tennant and Matt Smith. TardisMonkey (@tardis_monkey) has done the same with some notable “classic” Doctor Who episodes, including “The Five Doctors” and the upcoming watch-along, “The Three Doctors”.

Lily May Sherratt (@IreneWildthyme) has organized some listen-alongs with content from Big Finish Productions. Among these were the four Paul Spragg Memorial Short Trips, including “Forever Fallen”, “Landbound”, “Last Day at Work”, and “The Best-Laid Plans”, with live Twitter commentary from the authors, including yours truly. Big Finish themselves recently organized a global listen-along to the Eighth Doctor story, “The Chimes of Midnight”.

There are other types of community projects. For example, for the past few weeks, seven authors of Big Finish Short Trips have collaborated on a Doctor Who fan fiction story, one tweet at a time. With a couple of weeks to go, we’ve just topped 1,000 words. Almost surprisingly, the story is working out pretty well. I say “almost surprisingly” because there’s been no coordinated plotting, and none of us has any idea what will come from a given day’s tweet. It’s been a fascinating experiment in minimalistic writing, because you need to keep your word count down while moving the story forward in some way. All in 280 characters. Look out for the hashtag, #WhoFicTweets.

Aside from being an interesting exercise in collaboration, particularly as I’ve never collaborated with other writers before, I find it’s given me a nice feeling of connection with the other writers. And in these times, we can use all the connections that we can get.

I would urge you, if you’re at wits end during this extended period of lockdown, to seek out community members with similar interests and engage in some activity, be it a creative endeavour or not. Don’t disparage the notion of online friends and colleagues. There are a bunch of people that I’ve “met” online, through writing fan fiction or in the world of Doctor Who, and I’ve enjoyed these relationships very much.

There’s many rewards to be had in the social media space. Just, you know, stay away from the trolls.

The Timeless Children

Culture, Uncategorized,

This (rambling exercise that bears little resemblance to an) essay is about Doctor Who and, in particular, the revelations in the final episode of Season 12. So,

  1. SPOILERS
  2. If you’re not interested in Doctor Who, then I’d suggest waiting until my next post.

So, in no particular order, here are some thoughts and questions.

First, overall impressions. I’m glad they’ve removed the twelve regeneration limit. Given the potential longevity of the show, future writers will be thanking Chris Chibnall. As long time viewers of the show will know, the fact that the Doctor had many lives prior to William Hartnell’s incarnation was first put out there in The Brain of Morbius. But the fact that the Doctor is as old as Time Lord society, older in fact, means that there’s all sorts of room for new kinds of stories in the future, and this is a good thing.

Are you concerned about continuity and canon? Don’t be. Given that we’re dealing with a time traveller, and that within the show time can be rewritten, I share the view of the TARDIS Wikia that there is, in fact, no canon.

This is such a major change for the Doctor Who universe that it surprises me they didn’t save it for the 60th anniversary. Unless they’re going to use that occasion to change everything (again) and bring back Gallifrey (again). How might they do that? I can think of a simple way. But let’s leave that as an exercise for the reader.

Is Tecteun still alive? If so, what’s he/she up to? No one said that she/he limited herself/himself to 12 regenerations.

We all know that the Time Lords are Gallifreyan, but I’ve wondered whether all Gallifreyans are also Time Lords. Now we’ve learned that they are not, and that the ability to regenerate was restricted to those who lived in the Citadel. That seems pretty elitist and it’s hard to imagine how witholding this from the general population wouldn’t have resulted in revolution.

I hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of the Sasha Dhawan Master. But, then, this is the Master we’re talking about. Certain death is never all that certain with him/her. Besides, after re-watching his last scene with subtitles on, it sounds like he had a contingency in case the Doctor (or Ko Sharmus as it turned out) actually used the death particle.

We’d previously understood that the ability to regenerate came from the Time Lords prolonged exposure to the vortex over millennia. Now we know it’s actually due to genetic manipulation. That means, possibly, that the race that spawned the Doctor came to be able to regenerate after their long term exposure to the vortex.

What’s next? If I were the Doctor, I’d be headed for the planet where Tecteun found me. If they don’t pursue that angle on the show, it would be nice to have the Doctor to visit places where she’s remembered but she has no memory of having been there.

I love Jodi Whittaker’s Doctor, but we really really need to see more of the Jo Martin Doctor.

The only thing that bothered me about the episode is the scene with the death particle where the Doctor is seemingly faced with two untenable alternatives. She faced the same dilemma on the last day of the Time War: Destroy Gallifrey or let the universe burn. But this time, she can’t do it, presumably to avoid sinking to the level of the Master. So why does she agree to hand it off to Ko Sharmus then leap for the nearest TARDIS? Why is that okay?

20 Years of Big Finish

Culture, Uncategorized, Writing

This month, Big Finish Productions celebrates 20 years of Doctor Who audio dramas. Quite a milestone. So what does the anniversary mean to me, personally?

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first. Big Finish has published two of my Doctor Who stories, for which I will always be grateful. This has not only brought my writing to the attention of the Doctor Who community, it’s given me the encouragement to continue writing original fiction.

I’m also grateful for the opportunity that Big Finish has given to classic Doctor Who actors to really shine, and to expand and grow their characters. This is obviously true of Paul McGann, whose Eighth Doctor only appeared in one TV movie (and, years later, in “The Night of the Doctor”). It’s also particularly true of Colin Baker and his Sixth Doctor. As Baker addresses himself in the extras for “The Legacy of Time”, his Doctor wasn’t exactly the most popular back in the day. While playing the Doctor for Big Finish, Baker has had all sorts of opportunities to shine as an actor, while his character has grown into a Doctor we can all love. Besides, you have to admit, it’s a godsend to be able to enjoy a Sixth Doctor story without having to look at his garish clothing choices… I have to say that while I wasn’t a big fan during his TV run, Colin Baker is now one of my favourites.

The same is true of the companions, and the first one that comes to mind is Third Doctor companion Jo Grant, now Jo Jones, married with children and grandchildren and still fighting the good fight. Her reunion with the Third Doctor in “The Legacy of Time”, during which she told him how he’d influenced her post-companion life was very touching.

Then there are the original characters with which Big Finish has enriched the world of Doctor Who. Benny Summerfield. Charlie Pollard. Lucie “bleedin'” Miller. Characters that a lot of us have come to love.

Finally, Big Finish has allowed characters from modern “Who” to continue their adventures. Think River Song. Captain Jack Harkness. The War Doctor. The Tenth Doctor! Actors and characters that we couldn’t get enough of, though now we can get our periodic fix to keep us going.

I have some favourites amongst the rather enormous Big Finish collection of audios. Needless to say, I haven’t purchased every single release. A guy’s gotta eat, after all. But of those that I’ve got my hands on, here are some of my favourites. They’re listed in chronological order of release, not in any particular order of preference.

  • The Sirens of Time. Notable, of course, for being the first Big Finish Doctor Who release, and a multi-Doctor adventure to boot. This release also serves as a yard stick of how far Big Finish has come in twenty years. While The Sirens of Time is very good, later releases have been great. As far as I’m concerned, a modern Big Finish audio is every bit as good as the best TV episodes. The quality of writing, performing, music, sound design is second to none.
  • Zagreus. This is a sentimental favourite as it’s my first Big Finish audio. After spotting the CD case with multiple Doctors in a record store (remember those?), I was entranced by the surreal, dreamlike story in which… well, there’s a lot going on here. And, of course, not all is as it seems. As far as I know, Big Finish have never released anything quite like this one.
  • Doctor Who: Master. A really fascinating, thoughtful story in which the Master and Doctor, well, talk to each other. Sylvester McCoy is the Doctor and Geoffrey Beevers is the Master. You’ll want to listen to this one many times over.
  • The Light at the End. A wonderful multi-Doctor story released to celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who. A particular treat for me was to hear the Fourth and Eighth Doctors going back and forth. Hard to believe that was six years ago now! (Hey, that means the 60th is only four years away…)
  • The War Doctor series. We were truly blessed to get four box sets with John Hurt’s War Doctor before his passing. I don’t think Big Finish has ever topped this series. Each episode in each of the four box sets is outstanding.
  • Falling. This one is my favourite Short Trip hands down, and one of my favourite Big Finish releases. A lovely story by Jonathan Barnes, exquisitely narrated by Anneke Wills. In this story about accepting change, we get a surprising preview of the crisis the First Doctor would find himself in in Twice Upon a Time.
  • The Legacy of Time. Just released this month, this is the big, anniversary celebration release. It’s a story with many Doctors in six stories that seem loosely coupled, but come together in the end beautifully. Of particular note for me is the Guy Adams Third Doctor story, The Sacrifice of Jo Grant, a story that offers some real emotional gut punches. Also of note is that, in this box set, Big Finish has expanded the history of the Time Lords with an important event in their past. Or present. Can’t say much more without spoilers.

In the end, all we can do is to thank Big Finish for their energy and enthusiasm for Doctor Who, and to wish them many more adventures in the future.

My Top Ten Doctor Who Episodes

Culture, Uncategorized

Contains spoilers for the ten Doctor Who episodes listed here.

Anyone who’s read this blog knows that I’ve a particular fondness for Doctor Who. Like many who watch it, it’s been part of my life for, well, a very long time. And like any other viewer, I have my favourite episodes. I’ve never actually thought through which were my very favourite, so this has been an interesting exercise.

10. The War Machines. My very first episode of Who was the last installment of “War Machines” starring the first Doctor. It took me a long time to figure this out. After picking up the “War Machines” DVD, I thought recognized the machines, but definitely remembered the last episode. This is why “The War Machines” is in the list. For purely personal, nostalgic reasons. Mind you, it’s interesting to see that it hasn’t aged all that badly, and that the methods the Doctor employs for defeating the machines aren’t dissimilar to what we see today. It’s also interesting to see that the Doctor is quite caring of the people around him, a trait I don’t recall from the early days of the show.

9. Rosa. In this episode, humans, with their hatred of “coloureds”, are the monsters, and that makes this story all the scarier. Set in Montgomery Alabama in 1955, “Rosa” tells the story of Rosa Parks, a key figure in the American civil rights movement, who famously refused to give up her seat on a bus. There’s also a more traditional villain in the form of Krasko, an escapee from a future prison. Stormcage, no less, the very prison that held River Song after her conviction for killing the Doctor. In dealing with Krasko and his attempts to change history, this is where the thirteenth Doctor came into her own. A very powerful story, this is one of the finest in the show’s history.

8. The Stolen Earth / Journey’s End. Really, what’s not to love about this episode. Daleks? Check. Every post-2005 companion (plus Sarah Jane Smith)? Check. Universe-ending stakes? Check. Plus one of my favourite Who scenes, one I keep watching over and over. When it appears that all is lost, the TARDIS, thought destroyed, materializes, and out pops the Meta-Crisis Doctor. As Captain Jack says, “Brilliant!”

7. Twice Upon a Time. This episode is not only my favourite (by far) twelfth Doctor adventure, it’s my favourite Christmas special. I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve watched it.

The twelfth Doctor meets his first incarnation at a time when both are reluctant to regenerate. The resulting potential temporal paradox causes a WWI captain to mysteriously appear in front of them in the Antarctic wasteland.

With this episode the twelfth Doctor has completed his character arc. At the beginning of this regeneration, coming as it did after hundreds of years of war on Trenzalore, he was so alien, so lacking in empathy, that Clara had to create cue cards so he could at least sound like he’s capable of feeling empathy. From that starting point, he developed into someone who implores people to be kind.

Was the first Doctor out of character? Of course he was. That was just Stephen Moffat having a bit of fun, in the same way that the twelfth Doctor had fun putting sunglasses on his predecessor and telling him, “Never take them off.” We also saw the first Doctor used as a way of highlighting how attitudes towards women have changed since the 60’s.

My favourite moment in the episode? The Testimony tells the twelfth Doctor that escape is not possible. “It is possible,” he retorts, “and it’s happening.” After some Doctor-to-Doctor exchanges, the Testimony reiterates, “Escape is not possible.” Then, as we hear the soaring twelfth Doctor theme, he says, “I’m going to do way more than escape,” and promises to find out what the Testimony is up to, and if he doesn’t like it, to stop them. “Who the hell do you think you are?” the first Doctor asks in disbelief. Placing his arms in a theatrical pose, twelve answers, “The Doctor.” Love that scene. Just love it.

6. An Unearthly Child. This is the one that started it all, and introduces us to the show’s big concepts. A police box, the TARDIS, bigger on the inside than the outside. It can transport you anywhere in space and time. The Doctor, a wandering, cantankerous alien who travels with his granddaughter Susan and the inadvertent stow-aways, Ian and Barbara. It’s aged surprisingly well and is always a pleasure to watch.

5. Blink. This episode is at the top of a lot of people’s lists, including @FilmCritHulk. It’s also the first episode that I’m aware of in which the Doctor, having instigated the action, steps into the background for much of the episode. Penned by Stephen Moffat and starring Carey Mulligan, this is the one that introduced us to the Weeping Angels, and they were scary as hell. A wonderful episode with chills, action, humour, and character development.

4. Utopia. If you’d been watching season 1 of Torchwood that year, you knew that Captain Jack Harkness couldn’t die. But no one, including him, knew why. This episode is where we find out. It features some fascinating dialog between Captain Jack and the Doctor, and we find the Doctor contemplating the fact that, without realizing it, he was feeling a kind of prejudice towards Jack. Of course, this sparkling episode is also notable for re-introducing the Master to modern Who. The War Master, no less, played by the brilliant Derek Jacobi. The first part of a season-ending trilogy, this is the episode that left me breathless.

3. The Day of the Doctor. The pressure on Stephen Moffat to come up with a 50th anniversary special must have been extraordinary. But he succeeded with flying colours, bringing the 10th and 11th Doctors together with the War Doctor, a regeneration that the Doctor had kept secret, even from himself. We got a complex but coherent story, our first glimpse of the Time War, and were introduced to fan-favourite character, Osgood. Let’s also add humour, ethical choices, adventure, conflict, all woven together into a seamless whole. Oh yes, and it brought back Gallifrey.

2. The Night of the Doctor. If there was an award for the most genius per minute, this short episode would win, hands down. “The Night of the Doctor” caused the Internet to virtually melt down, giving us that Holy **** moment when we realized that it featured the eighth Doctor, not seen on-screen since the TV movie in the 90’s. Every line of dialog is sheer genius (“Will it HURT?”), Paul McGann’s acting is brilliant, and, to the delight of many, it “legitimized” the Big Finish adventures because it named the companions that Eight had travelled with. At least, those he’d travelled with up until then.

1. The Impossible Astronaut / Day of the Moon. These are the episodes that, for me, changed Doctor Who forever, taking it to a whole new level. Never before (to my recollection) had we seen episodes of this complexity and mystery. Meeting the still-living Doctor in the diner was an unforgettable moment. The Silence scared the hell out me. Then there were the head-scratching scenes, like Amy discovering a photo of herself with a baby. In the end, when the Astronaut girl starts to regenerate, I was completely gobsmacked. Throw in a brilliantly written script, with the actors pushed to out-perform anything we’d yet seen in the Matt Smith era, and you get a shining example of everything Doctor Who could be and should be. If you’re inclined to say, “But what about the children?” my answer would be that you’re likely underestimating children.

Excerpt from Promises, Promises

Uncategorized, Writing,

What follows is an excerpt from my novel-in-progress, Promises, Promises. I started this at least a couple of years ago. I haven’t made a lot of progress. Part of the problem is that I write very slowly, so much so that I’ve focussed on (thus far, unpublished) short stories so that I have something tangible and complete to show for my time.

I keep coming back to this novel, though, in part because I love the characters that inhabit this world. Mind you, given that the novel is of the horror genre, some of these characters will have endings that are a bit less than happy. The interesting thing about coming back to this work repeatedly is that, in the interim, you grow as a writer, and view your earlier prose with completely different eyes.

Please note that I may never finish this, and if I do, I reserve the right to completely retcon this opening scene. Having said all of that, I hope you enjoy it.

#

Promises, Promises

by Selim Ulug

Copyright 2019 by Selim Ulug. All rights reserved. 

#

Jennifer Fern closed her messaging app and put away her phone. It didn’t help. The words felt burned into her retina.

“Hey Jenny, sorry to send this by txt but don’t really want a scene. I don’t think it’s working out. We should probably stop seeing each other. Besides, I’ve met someone and don’t want to see her behind your back so… yeah. It’s for the best. No hard feelings?”

Blinking furiously, as if that would help her unsee what she had seen, she took deep breaths and scanned the pub. It was late afternoon, but early for the supper and after work crowd. There were a couple of people seated at the L-shaped bar with its gleaming, dark mahogany wood. Behind the bar, backing onto the flagstone wall, were open mahogany cupboards filled with assorted bottles of liquor. Throughout the pub, the ceiling was covered with square sections of wood paneling. The bar area, with its high chairs and small tables, was separated from the dining area by a long booth backed by a glass partition. A smattering of people were seated here. Some seemed to be tourists, resting their feet after a day of sight-seeing, judging by the backpacks they’d set to rest on the floor. In the dining area, Jenny noted, where only a couple of tables were currently occupied, Alyssa was leading a couple of men from the host station to one of her tables.

Grabbing a couple of menus, Jenny strode towards them. Fortunately, she was used to putting on her game face regardless of how her day was going. Perhaps, she contemplated, that was why actors made good wait staff.

“Hi, I’m Jenny,” she said, smiling as she wiped the table. “Something to drink?”

“Absolutely,” said one of them. “We’re celebrating.”

“Awesome,” said Jenny. “What’s the occasion? Birthday?”

“Better than that,” said the other man. “We’ve each just purchased our first property.”

“Congratulations! So that sounds to me like a pitcher’s worth of celebrating. Harp, maybe?”

“That’d be perfect, thanks.”

“I’ll get that for you then come back for your food order.”

Noting that Dar followed her with his eyes, Chris smiled and said, “She’s pretty.”

Turning back to Chris, Dar said, “Sure, if you happen to like women that are good-looking and pleasant with a nice smile.”

There was a pause during which Chris and Dar looked at each other, past each other, in silence. Finally, Dar said, “You look as stunned as I feel.”

Laughing, Chris said, “I know, right? I kept looking for something wrong with it. The location, the units, the price, they were almost too good to be true.”

“We were lucky,” said Dar. “It won’t take long before they’re snatched up.”
Jenny returned with a pitcher and two glasses. Dar ordered a curry, Chris a lamb stew.

Chris wasn’t able to eat much of his meal. This was surprising as he was noted for having a big appetite. However, the excitement of the day made it hard to think about food. Beer, on the other hand, was a completely different story.

Dar seemed to have not much more of an appetite, and after taking a few bites of their meals, they both ended up sipping their beers in silence, their attention wandering to the hockey game on the pub’s screens. It was near the end of the first period, and the Senators were already losing to the Leafs 2 to 1. The pub was filling in, the noise level rising considerably.

Jenny cleared away their plates, and they both assured her the dishes had been fine. “In fact,” said Dar, “I told my meal, it’s not you, it’s me.” Jenny laughed and offered coffee and dessert. They declined.

“So,” said Chris, “October first is coming up quickly. “We’ll have to plan this out.”

“I was thinking about that,” said Dar. “With the condo settled, I expect I can head back to Kingston tomorrow. We’ll book a truck for the first. By ‘we’, of course, I mean ‘you’.”

“Thanks,” said Chris. “I’m honoured by the… honour.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Dar. “You bring it down to Kingston, then we load it up, move me into the new place, then pick up your things. Get you out of Kanata and into a proper, civilized setting.”

“Hey,” Chris said. “Lot’s of highly cultured people live in Kanata.” Silence for a time, then he asked, “Will you miss Kingston?”

“For sure,” said Dar. “But Kingston is too small a place not to run into mutual friends, and I’m the bad guy. You should see the looks I get. I’d rather get a fresh start.”

“What about your parents?” said Chris. “Have they mellowed at all?”

Dar shook his head. “Not really. I’ve shamed the family. It was no way for a good Egyptian to behave, and so on and so forth.”

“You’ve been to Egypt just the once, haven’t you?”

“That logic escapes them,” said Dar. “Even though I was born here, they’re Egyptian so I’m Egyptian.”

“I’m really sorry,” Chris said. “You know, really. To have things turn chilly with your family at a time like this must make it so much harder.”

“Yes, well, thank goodness I can heap abuse upon you and get it out of my system,” Dar said.

Chris grinned and raised his glass. Dar did likewise and they clinked their glasses. “To abuse,” Chris said.

“To abuse,” Dar repeated. “May it be harsh and rain down often.”

After taking a couple of swallows, Chris raised his glass again and said, “Well, you’ll have a new job in a new city, living in a new condo. To fresh starts.”

“To fresh starts,” Dar agreed.

Those guys toast each other a lot, Jenny observed. It’s kind of sweet how excited they are. Mind you, here’s me sharing a small apartment with Laurie, who wishes I’d move out. Okay, so I guess I’d be excited too.

Carrying a tray laden with several mugs of beer, Jenny was about to pass by their table when…

She stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t in the restaurant any more. Instead she was in a large, dark area with a smudge of light a few feet in front of her. Unlike the bustle in the pub, this place, wherever it was, was deadly silent.

“Hello?” she called, tentatively.

Within the light, dust motes danced about, until they began to coalesce, forming… what? It was formless, and yet it wasn’t. Then Jenny felt goose bumps form on her arms and the hair rise on the back of her neck. Her stomach began to churn so that she felt about to vomit. The amorphous cloud of dust became a face, as large as she was tall, with black eyes and yawning maw displaying sharp, many-rowed teeth. The mouth opened even further and the face began to close the distance between them.

That was when Jenny screamed. She screamed loud and long. She was back in the pub and still she screamed, all thoughts of the tray forgotten. Until she heard the sound of glass breaking, the feel of the liquid soaking into her leggings, and someone yelping in surprise. It was one of the two men, the ones celebrating.

Chris was stunned as he witnessed their server first freeze, then scream, and then dump the contents of her tray onto the floor. What missed the floor landed upon poor Dar, who was drenched in beer.

Wiping his face, Dar looked from the server to Chris. “And an auspicious start it is,” he said.

#

Indefensible

Culture, Uncategorized,

THIS POST CONTAINS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR MARVEL’S THE DEFENDERS.

DON’T READ THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE SHOW (HOWEVER, IF YOU DON’T CARE ABOUT THE SHOW, WHICH IS UNDERSTANDABLE, THEN GO RIGHT AHEAD).

YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

The-Defenders-920x584

Marvel’s The Defenders has made its much-anticipated debut on Netflix.

It wasn’t very good, was it?

That much is clear. The interesting question is, why wasn’t it very good? Let’s explore that and see what lessons we can learn to help us with our own writing.

The characters, as in, the too many characters. Granted, there were only four heroes, but then there were the “five fingers” of the hand. (Did we see all five? I can’t remember. Worse, I don’t really care.) On top of that, there’s a resurrected Elektra. That’s ten so far. Then on top of all that we have side characters from each of the previous Marvel Netflix shows.

The characters, as in Danny Rand. Let’s face it, Poor ol’ Danny, that snotty nosed, none too bright, brat of a character is rather hard to cheer for. If you’re like me, you cheered when Luke Cage tossed Danny around like he was nothing more that a clothing store mannequin.

The characters, as in Misty Knight. What was up with the unrelentingly bemused smile she wore no matter what was going on? Even when she was giving our heroes heck, her expression never seemed to change much. I suspect this wasn’t the actor’s choice, but the director’s.

The characters, as in the villain(s). Much has been written about this already. The Kingpin: a great villain for Daredevil. Why? We understand him and his motivation. He’s three-dimensional. Plus he can be genuinely scary when he wants to be. Same to some extent with Cottonmouth in the Luke Cage series. The Hand? Well, they want to live forever. Okay. They also want to go back to Shangri La, sorry, I meant K’Un-Lun. Wow. But we know little about what makes any of them tick, even Madam Gao, after all the series she’s appeared in. As a consequence, they have less impact on the audience, even though they seem to pose a danger to life as we know it.

The characters, as in Elektra. What was up with her? Elektra was destined to be “The Black Sky” (I’m already shaking in my boots), the Hand’s ultimate weapon. The prophecies might have oversold things just a tad. We see that she’s a better than average ninja, but we also see that  Daredevil can pretty much take her singled-handed. Or was she holding back because of her faint memories of their love affair? Who knows. What we can all agree on, I think, is that as an ultimate weapon, Elektra was a bit of a let down.

Fight scene exhaustion. We all love a good fight scene, and the Marvel series have excelled at that. But give people too much of a good thing and suddenly it isn’t such a good thing any more. Even amazing fights get boring after a while. You find yourself thinking, Here we go again, as you check your Twitter feed while the latest one plays out. The fight scenes were very effective in showing the differences between the heroes.

The silly premise. Everything leads to the climactic showdown between our heroes and the Hand. And it has to be them. It can’t possibly be the police. After all, it wouldn’t be safe for the police to even attempt to deal with the Hand. And yet, as I watched that climactic fight, it occurred to me that a well armored and armed SWAT team would likely do pretty well against the Hand’s ninjas. Then I remembered Indiana Jones just shooting the guy with the sword and started to chuckle. Probably not the reaction Marvel was looking for.

The ending. Did anyone actually think that they’d killed off Daredevil? I mean, for even a second? Of course not. So what was the point? I guess it gave the other heroes pause, caused them to reflect a bit, and we see that, in Matt’s honour, Danny Rand plans to stay in New York as a protector. Then we see him perched on a rooftop in a Daredevil-like pose, gazing out on the city. That, actually, was a very effective scene. But what happens when he realizes that Matt’s still alive? Does Danny say, “Oh well,” and then go off on holiday to Hawaii?

Well, that’s a lot of negative. Wasn’t there anything good about the show? Of course there was. There was some great humour, especially from Jessica Jones, whose job seemed to be to call bullshit. They also used poor Danny’s earnestness and eagerness to discuss his time in Shangri La, sorry, I meant K’Un-Lun, to humorous effect. In sum, the humour was character based, which is a very good thing.

There was some good acting. Our heroes were all good, even Finn Jones, who’s received a lot of flack for Danny Rand. But he isn’t responsible for the vision of the character that the show runners want to portray. He portrays their vision of Rand well. It’s just that, for most of us, that vision sucks. The side characters also did well, and Sigourney Weaver, as always, was more than convincing.

All this isn’t to say that I could have come up with a better story, but we can learn from failures and successes, ourselves’ and others’. Let’s do so.

 

Intolerance in Writing and Writers

Uncategorized

While growing up, I devoured the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft, and a visit to a bookstore seemed as magical as a trip to Ali Baba’s cave. Caught in the web of Burroughs writing, I could swear I was swinging through the trees with Tarzan, or fighting all sorts of nightmares to win the hand of Barsoom’s Dejah Thoris. And as for Lovecraft, well, he just scared the hell out of me. I loved it.

Sadly, Burroughs hasn’t aged very well. In his day, Burroughs got away with populating Africa with all manor of lost civilizations deep in the unexplored forests of the “dark continent”. A hard sell, however, in the era of Google Earth.

And as for traveling to Mars by… wishing yourself there? A bit much for even young children to swallow today. Mind you, do you remember the story that Carl Sagan related while hosting the original Cosmos? After reading John Carter of Mars, he ascended a hilltop and wished and wished and wished. But, sadly, he never found himself transported to the red planet.

Then there’s the quaint notion that, to make his mark, man is destined to tear apart nature and build things like railroads and smokestacks. Witness the Pellucidar books, where our heroes find themselves in an ancient, primeval forest in the centre of the Earth. Their hearts swell with pride after they’ve cut down trees, lain tracks, and constructed steam-engine trains that puff thick smoke into the pristine air.

Finally, even if we grant that Burrough’s audience is/was primarily boys, aged, say, 9-12, his books have structural problems with his over-reliance on the most amazing coincidences. So yes, it’s kind of hard to go back to these books, nostalgic as one might be.

1458759156549.jpegH.P. Lovecraft has fared better, and is still regarded as a major figure in horror literature.  While his writing style is definitely of the old school–Lovecraft loved old things and old places–he is still able to make your skin crawl, and, when he wants to, can dazzle you with beautiful prose. The novella, “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath”, begins thusly:

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvellous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles.

I never tire of that opening.

While we can agree that Lovecraft didn’t expend a lot of energy into fully fleshing out his characters, that was never the point. The point was to develop an atmosphere of dread that would have the hairs on the back of your neck stand up and your body temperature drop a couple of degrees; to make you begin to doubt the veracity of your own senses; to create a world where the old gods, separated from our plane of existence by the flimsiest of veils, hungered for our souls.

Yikes!

Lovecraft could also be oddly prophetic, as in this excerpt from “The Call of Cthulu”:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have thitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Could it be that the discoveries of modern science have caused some to go mad, seeking a new dark age where the climate isn’t changing, evolution never happened, and vaccines are to be avoided at all costs? Perhaps. But that’s a blog post for another time.

But now we get to the crux of the problem, which is the intolerance expressed in the stories of these and other writers. For example, in Burrough’s At the Earth’s Core:

“A white man!” he cried. “May the good Lord be praised! I have been watching you for hours, hoping against hope that THIS time there would be a white man.”

And as for Lovecraft, this quote from “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward” will indeed make your skin crawl, but not in a good way:

Here his only visible servants, farmers, and caretakers were a sullen pair of aged Narragansett Indians; the husband dumb and curiously scarred, and the wife of a very repulsive cast of countenance, probably due to a mixture of negro blood.

One could point to many other authors, including Enid Blyton with her Golliwog characters, Ian Fleming’s James Bond referring to Italians as a bunch of “spaghetti eaters”, going right back to the controversial Shylock in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”.

What do you do with books like these? One answer, I suppose, is to put them away. But to not read some of the greatest, most beloved authors of all time? It seems unthinkable. To a large extent, I believe, these authors were a product of the age in which they lived, though some, like Lovecraft, through his love of times gone by, may have reflected even earlier beliefs and prejudices. We know that prejudice must have been part of the social norms of the time. How else could such stories have been published?

My inclination is to follow the advice of B. J. Harrison. In in his Classic Tales podcast, Harrison reads aloud books and stories that are, well, classics. Noting the presence of anachronistic prejudice in one story, he said something like this (I’m paraphrasing from memory): Perhaps we should view stories such as these as a lens through which we can see how far we have come.

Consider now the case of the World Fantasy award trophy. I was initially disappointed upon hearing that it would no longer be modelled after H. P. Lovecraft. But digging into the reasoning led me to understood completely. After all, suppose you were, say, a gay black author, that you won a World Fantasy award, and thereafter had to stare into the disapproving glare of Lovecraft from your fireplace mantle. No, I wouldn’t care for that either. In fact, it sounds like a suitable basis for a horror story…

There’s an even thornier question: What to do about intolerance expressed by current authors? Today, no one would get away with the kind of prejudice shown in the examples above (unless you were giving voice to a character with prejudice). That’s not the problem. The problem is when a published author promotes opinions or beliefs that you find offensive. For me, two authors come immediately to mind, one dead, one living. Both have written classic books in the SF&F genre. But while their books may be benign, I find their voiced beliefs and opinions to be offensive. Initially I tried to put that aside, concentrating on the book, not the author. In the end I found that the books suffered from guilt by association. I just can’t and won’t support them any longer.

This is an essay without any conclusion, I’m afraid, except to note that each of us, when faced with these kinds of moral dilemmas, has got to do what we’ve got to do. However, there’s one thing we can’t do under any circumstances, and that’s to ban books outright. That only deprives us of the opportunity to think and to follow our own path.