phywriter.com

I started a new MMORPG this weekend, DC Universe Online. It’s like City of Heroes-lite (and was developed by the same company, Cryptic). I got to level 10 in essentially two standard days of very casual gaming. It looks like it’s got about 20 hours of gameplay to hit 30 (the max) and then there’s some other side things to do for additional richness and value, etc. It’s nowhere near as complex or expansive as CoH or Champions Online, much less WOW. All-in-all, I think I’ll finish it before my ‘free’ 30 days is up, and I’m ok with that. I was looking for something to really lose myself in over a long weekend, and this fit the bill perfectly, just easy enough to level up on my own, just hard enough that I didn’t feel I was coasting. I had to really use my MMORPG wits, but 5+ years of CoH have given me some awareness. For instance, I know not to do an AOE attack in a room full of baddies and then sit there and get pounded. Instead, I save that for when I’ve been working on three or four baddies and they’ve all been worn down a little. I pull that out and two drop immediately and I can mop of the remaining two without breaking a sweat.

I created a character called Bola Firebrand. She’s impulsive, not completely bright, but very, very formidable. They have the usual flight or superspeed travel powers (which you get right away at lvl 1) as well as my personal favorite, a hybrid called acrobatics. It’s like 3/4s super speed, but you can also climb literally anything (I sometimes find myself climbing things I didn’t intend to) and once at the top of a tall building, you can glide for a very long way like a poor man’s flying. It’s pretty cool.

Because it’s in the DC Universe, you get to meet Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, The Flash, and a host of lesser DC heroes (Hawkman is apparently Native American, and the Martian dude has very good English for a furriner). This is a stripped down game with a big world and relatively few other players compared to CoH. I was easily able to solo as long as I used my head. They made it easy to get into the game and learn the controls without hitting you over the head “TRAINING MISSION” or “BIG, SLOPPY EXPOSITION.” The way they advertised this, I thought it was supposed to be a WOW-killer. As such, it’s clear that their audience was much different; PS3 players would had never played a MMORPG (and also those stray PC gamers who were comic book geeks or looking for a break from something else).

As a light summer diversion, I’m quite enjoying DC Universe Online.

Tags: DCUO, MMORPG

Hey, if I don’t have anything to say at the moment, you have no reason to keep signing up for this blog. I’m tired of going through and weeding out the logins of people who clearly have no interest in what I’m not posting. If I find a new blogging lease on life, I may relax that, but for now, if you really /really/ want to register to login and make comments, leave me a msg at johne dot cook at geemail.com.

That is all.

So this is a little out there.

Inception, as you know if you care, is the latest movie by Christopher Nolan, and has been called ‘James Bond meets The Matrix.’ Nolan is known as a writer and director for clever, intricate-ly plotted films such as Memento and The Prestige and the rebooted Batman franchise, Batman Begins and The Dark Knight. He also did a film called Following, which you can find right now on Netflix streaming, a black and white little mindbender which is worth checking out when you have some time and are up for something a little daring.

None of Nolan’s films are perfect, but their flaws are the most forgivable I can think of. If you’re going to dream, dream different. Dream big. Roger Ebert noted:

I thought there was a hole in “Memento:” How does a man with short-term memory loss remember he has short-term memory loss? Maybe there’s a hole in “Inception” too, but I can’t find it.

I was chatting about Inception with friends on an off-topic e-mail list when a bunch of little things that had lain dormant finally coalesced and turned into something truly mind-bending.

Continue Reading »

Tags: Inception, Movies, sick of being sick

The second installment of my homage to classic SF author Keith Laumer is now featured in the June edition over at Digital Dragon magazine.

I placed a story with Digital Dragon magazine last year called Blessed Are the Peacemakers about a former space marine named Tenerife who has just started a new career with the Terran Diplomatic Corp. It’s now a year later and Digital Dragon magazine asked me if I’d consider sending them another story. It occurred to me that there are a total of eight beatitudes, so I wrote a new Tenerife story called Blessed Are the Persecuted. However, while last year’s story came in at an economical 2250 words, this one is triple that word-count. Due to the length of this story, I pitched the idea of splitting this one in half, and they agreed. Therefore, Part 1 is running now in June, and the triumphant conclusion will appear in July.

If last year’s Tenerife story was my Star Wars, this year’s is my Empire Strikes Back. It’s longer, bolder, darker, and deals with more weighty issues. In this story, we meet some familiar faces, and introduce new ones, including a complex alien race called the Garconne, who… well, you’ll see:

“After the Klakx, I understand the Garçonne are quite peaceable.”
“Oh, they are, as far as we know. The question is ‘why?’ They have no standing military that we can see.”
“Maybe they’re standing somewhere else.”
Phlagg laughed. “Where do I begin?” He started ticking things off on his fingers. “The Garçonne are shorter than we are. They’re apparently gentle beings who excel at cuisine, the arts, and making colorful, ingenious devices with their slim, nimble fingers. They don’t have hair on their heads the way we do. Instead, they’re covered head-to-toe with a fine, downy fur. They have an subtle sense of humor and the most interesting lavender eyes.”
Tenerife raised an eyebrow. “Lavender?”
Phlagg blushed. “Whatever. Purpleish, yeah.”
Tenerife crossed his arms and shook his head. “I still don’t get it. Militarily-speaking, the Garçonne sound remarkably unremarkable. I wonder what Rache’s real interest is?”
Phlagg couldn’t resist a knowing smile, almost as if he’d been waiting to deliver a punchline. “It’s a matter of the sexes.” He paused for effect. “All three of them.”

I hope you enjoy Part 1 of the story, and I’d love to hear from you if you like (or hate!) it.

Tags: Digital Dragon magazine, Keith Laumer, SF, short story, Tenerife

This is the first scene of the first day of my NaNo2k4 project, The Sky Pirate. Do I find dialogue fun or not? You be the judge!

“It was a moonlit night, and magic was in the air,” whispered Eggplant nervously as he crouched behind the barrels with the others.

“Ssh,” said Bola, trying to look around under the canvas awning that stretched over them on the dock.

“He speaks in the third person when he is nervous,” explained Eggplant of himself, helpfully.

“He’s going to get his tongue pinned to the dock if he keeps making noise, isn’t that right, Coop,” murmured Bola, drawing a wicked big knife to demonstrate her point Continue Reading »

Tags: The Sky Pirate, tsp

How do I know when I have the right name? When it just… fits.

My WIP, The Adventures of the Sky Pirate, is a hybrid swashbuckling / steampunk / space opera, some of which takes place on a planet that is not Earth but was inhabited by people from Earth. Therefore, some names are familiar to an Anglo reader, and some are new. That gives me freedom to alternately crib from names that fly around me and make up my own. Add to that names based on local color ala Mike Resnick’s space Tall Tales, and you get a nice mishmash of names which are familiar, new, and flat-out exotic.

For instance, the characters on my swashbuckling privateer crew sport a rogue’s gallery of colorful names; Cooper Flynn (Capt), Clarissa McDougall (Flynn’s fiery love interest), Mr. Horatio Pitt (First Officer), Deena Prentiss (Dr, Mr. Pitt’s estranged wife), Cleric Mathen Vaneras (Van-air-es, converted assassin), Bola (Amazon merc and weapons expert), Eggplant (navigator, not his real name), Chain (mechanical genius who keeps the ship in the air), Tuy Meklanek (advisor to the Crown), The Barracuda (legendary assassin), Mr. Humble (sailor, his real last name, if a smidge ironic), Lt. Gillings (Lieutenant, duh, heh), Blind Bart (a once-clumsy navigator who has earned his unfortunate nickname), and the colorful Friar of Briar Island (Long John Silver-ish sometime privateer / sometime pirate). Piro and Miro are father and son servants for The Friar of Briar Island, and the Friar’s Champion is a short, slim, and utterly lethal fellow named Mok Moire. There’s a mysterious figure named Felo who is not of that world, and whose form is variable.

Each character’s name came to me in their own fashion. I’ve labored for days over some of them, and others, like Eggplant’s nickname, dripped straight from my fingertips to the page.
I have a love / hate relationship with names and naming. I hate doing it, and love it when it works out. And it always works out, sooner or later.

But there’s the rub. Some names come to me instantly, while others have taken weeks or months to correctly cobble together.

I was watching the guilty-pleasure film Twister again last night. I’m a sucker for misfit teams, and this team is right up there with the one from Sneakers. I went along for the ride, again, as Bill, former twister-hunter, tries to settle down and be a staid-but-dependable weatherman. But everyone knows that his heart (and art) is in being outside in-country sussing out where the next big one will hit based as much on chutzpah and seasoned feel as on observation and actual meteorology.

That’s how I feel about coming up with names; it is equal parts art and craft, with a healthy dollop of luck thrown in for seasoning.

And, yes, you just /know/ you’ve got the right one when you hit it. It’s like striking a tuning fork and feeling the tone resonating in your belly, in your very bones.

Tags: guilty pleasure films, names, The Sky Pirate, writing

12″ of thick wet snow were dumped on us here in S. WI overnight, and pretty much everything is closed today. I’m working from home today and enjoying a) VPN access to work, and b) lapdogs. The system seems to have sat down over us and slowing spinning as it adds new snow to the total. Tonight, the temperature is supposed to drop and the wind is supposed to kick up. We’ve been under a blizzard warning since last night.

buried

Katie Weiland was kind (or reckless) enough to interview me for the AuthorCulture blog. She asked fun questions, and I replied with what may be considered provocative answers.

In the interview, I talk about the genesis of Ray Gun Revival magazine and my “Adventures of the Sky Pirate” serial novel, as well as the challenges of writing a serial novel, the importance of writing out your million words of dreck, thoughts about the fine line between piracy and obscurity, and the vision I predict for for the future of the publishing industry.

AC: The publishing industry is daily growing more and more digital—something you’ve tapped into with RGR. What do you visualize for the future of the industry?

JC: There was a time that you had to go to a music hall or church or listen to the radio to hear music. The invention of vinyl albums changed that by allowing common people to collect and keep their own collection of music. It was that way for decades. However, today, the vinyl record is a largely historical technology. Few current works are pressed and released, and the only people who continue to seek them out are hardcore fans.

As strange as it sounds, I think we’ll see books as we know them today go the way of the vinyl album; something that was once venerable and ubiquitous that has been bypassed by technology and finally exists only as a rare occasion product. I’m a little surprised that well-meaning government types haven’t already passed regulations to prohibit dead-tree books for the sake of preserving the environment or something.

But necessity if the mother of invention, and I think we’ll see development of as many different kinds of inexpensive digital reading devices tomorrow as we saw portable music players yesterday. I think new generations of readers used to reading content with multiple levels of metadata will find actual paper documents both flat and quaint.

Thanks to Katie and AuthorCulture for the interview, and please do let me know what you think!

Tags: AuthorCulture, dreck, interview, RGR, space monkeys

It’s not V. Will it be The Prisoner with Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen? The reboot of the clever 60′s spy / psychological thriller with Patrick McGoohan looks very promising, and headlines two titans in a war of wills as they play around with the fundamental idea of what is freedom.

An update to the cult favorite series from the 1960s about a government agent who is kidnapped and sent to a remote island known as “the Village”.

The Prisoner, on AMC

Tags: Gandalf, Jesus Himself, Smart TV, The Prisoner

I am extremely sad to report that the rebooted ABC sci-fi series V is neither fresh nor bold, but is instead merely vapid¹ and vacuous². I know, that sounds harsh, especially considering the show’s ‘MASSIVE’ ratings, but it is what it is.

Look, I knew within the first five minutes that Joss Whedon had a brilliant show when I watched Firefly, and I knew equally quickly that this show was, well, a rock. (As Halloween has just passed, I’m thinking here of Charlie Brown. When trick-or-treating, while everyone else is getting candy, Charlie Brown’s refrain is ‘I got a rock.’) The pilot episode was one clunky cliche’ after another; the divorced cop parent with the rebellious teen, the ambitious upwardly-mobile TV anchor, the Catholic priest who’s questioning pretty much everything, the buddy partner with a dark secret. Even the special effects were cliche’. The alien capital ships hovering over city centers were done better in Independence Day or even the prior V series. (Serieses?) The dialogue was predictable and cringe-worthy, and the Big Reveal was exposed what felt like twelve minutes in.

I mean, really? Steve Davidson didn’t give it more than A Passing Glance, but he spent enough time on the show to rip it a new one.

Yawn o-rama. City sized ships. Way, way advanced aliens. All your diseases cured. Mein Fuhrer, I can valk!

O sweet whatever you invoke during moments of total incredulity:

Chad: “You mean ‘universal health care’”?

Anna: “That’s what your people call it.”

Been there. Done that.

I’ll repeat here what I wrote over there:

I mean, I’m probably the demographic they’re going after, but could you be any more ham-fisted and obvious? The only surprise in the entire first episode was just how cliche’ and clunky everything was. I laughed out loud when divorced FBI mom stepped in front of her son to protect him as they stared up at the green screen.

Look, I’m all for serious discussions of, well, all these issues. But this isn’t a loving canvas painted by a master. It’s a mass produced paint-by-number set that we’ve already seen before. I’m a Theist, and even I hate preaching to the choir.

I’d rather go back and watch reruns of Firefly. Again.

That’s not to say the show is completely hopeless. Showrunner Scott Peters (4400) was replaced after four episodes by Scott Rosenbaum, a former executive producer for the quite excellent show Chuck. After these first four episodes, V will go on hiatus until March. I’ll give it another shot then to see if it’s gotten any better. At this poing, it really can’t get any worse.

If you’re in the mood for smart, more serious science fiction, give the new Stargate Universe series³ a try. SciFi author John Scalzi is a consultant for the series, and the questions they grapple with feel genuine, something anybody in that situation could be faced with. There’s even some geeky humor provided by a genuine geek.

1. Vapid
   –adjective
   1. lacking or having lost life, sharpness, or flavor; insipid; flat: vapid tea.
   2. without liveliness or spirit; dull or tedious: a vapid party; vapid conversation.

   Synonyms:
   1. lifeless, flavorless. 2. spiritless, unanimated, tiresome, prosaic.

   [↩]

2. Vacuous
   –adjective
   1. without contents; empty: the vacuous air.
   2. lacking in ideas or intelligence: a vacuous mind.
   3. expressing or characterized by a lack of ideas or intelligence; inane; stupid: a vacuous book. [↩]
3. Stargate Universe follows the adventures of a present-day, multinational, exploration team unable to return to Earth after an evacuation to the Ancient spaceship Destiny, which is traveling in a distant corner of the universe. [↩]