Category Archives: The Writing Life

A guest post by R.R. Virdi

November 15^th 2016 marked the fifteen year anniversary of science fiction masterpiece that impacted an entire generation. I’m talking about Halo: Combat Evolved. Debuting in 2001 on Microsoft’s gaming console Xbox, Halo brought first person shooters to the mainstream.

Lifelong gamers will note that Halo didn’t revolutionize the shooter genre. In fact, much of what it gave us had already been done by the James Bond gaming adaptation Goldeneye. Multiplayer matches over multitier levels in the first person shooter style. Halo dialed it to eleven. It introduced vehicular warfare, objective based game types such as: Capture the Flag, and Assault.

It’s greatest impact however? Major League Gaming. The professional esports organization sprung to life in 2002 and exploded with Halo’s successor, Halo 2. But it was the first game that laid the groundwork.

Halo’s well-made and addictive multiplayer matches reached the point where a national competition was held in the United States for the best player. Something that would lead to video games foraying onto a stage reserved for professional athletics and the like. This was the start of the Halo Empire.

After its resounding success, developer, Bungie, and parent corporation, Microsoft Studios hit the ground running on producing a still-continuing series of novel adaptations to expand on the game’s world.

The same year of Halo’s release on console would be when Halo: The Fall of Reach landed on bookshelves. It wasn’t the first novel based off of a video game, but it would be the first of what’s still considered arguably the best literary adaptations of a video game, as well as the longest running. The Fall of Reach gave gamers what they wanted and in the best fashion.

A backstory.

Halo: Combat Evolved gave us the Master Chief, a super-soldier raised from birth and enhanced to become humanity’s vanguard against an alien threat. Or so we thought. The prequel novel answered all of the questions we had about his origins without requiring developers to make a new game or dump resources into adding a backstory that could bog down a title. It was well done and it showed. Fans wanted more.

Within the next two years, the Halo franchise released two more novels. An adaptation of the first game itself. One I know tore through and loved for the added details and interactions never seen during the gameplay. It was an Easter egg that built upon an already loved game and foundations. Then came the surprise.

Halo: First Strike. While fans were waiting on pins-and-needles for the sequel. A novel debuted that took place between the much-loved first game and, the one we couldn’t wait for. First Strike gave us a riveting story to excite Halo fans for more than just the visual games. It enraptured us in what had happened post Halo and leading up to Halo 2, setting the groundwork. You didn’t need to read it, but you’d be glad you did.

The developers and property holders had found a formula that worked. Adapt the game world into literature and build on what couldn’t be shown on console. And it worked—brilliantly. The Halo books have continued to release successfully since the series launch in 2001. Bungie may have parted ways with parent Microsoft, but, Halo has never stopped its rampant growth.

At some point, someone involved must have asked, “Why stop at books?” It was a good question.

October 5^th 2012 Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn the television mini-series aired. Halo fans had gotten what they had dreamed of. A silver-screen adaptation of the gaming icon they had grown up with. It was a test, and it had passed. The mini-series paved the way for another television adaptation by Ridley Scott, and, a still-in-the-works production by legendary director, Steven Spielberg.

Historically, it has been books that have been adapted into other mediums. Times change. Now, it’s apparent that whatever form your work debuts in, be ready with a plan to adapt it, because cross-platform is the way to go, and it works.

We’re at a point where authors are having their works turned into television series, movies, graphic novels, and it’s going the other way ‘round. Games are being turned into novels and they’ll need authors to do that. The artistic field is crossing boundaries and making it so experts in various forms can collaborate to build upon and bring a franchise into a new platforms.

This is a lesson that all creative types should pay attention to. We’re no longer bound to one medium. Our work, given the right push and effort, can take many shapes and create a powerful brand.

About the Author:

R.R. Virdi is the Dragon Award—nominated author of The Grave Report, a paranormal investigator series set in the great state of New York. He has worked in the automotive industry as a mechanic, retail, and in the custom gaming computer world. He’s an avid car nut with a special love for American classics.

The hardest challenge for him up to this point has been fooling most of society into believing he’s a completely sane member of the general public. There are rumors that he wanders the streets of his neighborhood in the dead of night dressed in a Jedi robe and teal fuzzy slippers, no one knows why. Other such rumors mention how he is a professional hair whisperer in his spare time. We don’t know what that is either.

Follow him on his website. http://rrvirdi.com/

Or twitter: @rrvirdi or https://twitter.com/rrvirdi

Totally Rad: 80’s Remakes I’d Like to See

November 17, 2016

fictorians

The Writing Life 1 Comment

A guest post by Ken Hoover.

Stranger Things ignited my 80s nostalgia. The Duffer Brothers transplanted my childhood into a King/Spielberg/Carpenter mashup. Once again, I was playing D&D, riding bikes with my friends, and using my psychic powers to flip secret-government vehicles. I wanted to tie a bandana around my forehead, breakdance, and wear parachute pants. OK, maybe not that last part. OK, maybe a little. What impressed me most was how fresh the story felt, while paying homage to everything 80s. The film references alone were astonishing, and it was thrilling to see a Trapper Keeper in a school locker, an Atari console, and a running reference to The Uncanny X-Men.

Since binge-watching the series, I’ve had many conversations with family, friends, and colleagues about 80s music, cartoons, TV shows, films, books, toys, and comics. With that in mind, I’ve created my own Top 5 list of 80s properties I’d like to see remade.

Disclaimer: I’ve chosen a film, a TV show, a cartoon, a book, and a comic book character to be adapted in various ways. In creating this list, I excluded titles that have been done or are currently in production, such as Miami Vice, Ghostbusters, Magnum P.I., and Highlander. And I stayed away from the titles that should never be remade, namely The Princess Bride, Labyrinth, Say Anything, The Dark Crystal, The Breakfast Club, and Big Trouble in Little China.

Ladyhawke

I know, I know. Ladyhawke should be on the “don’t touch” list. I assume everyone’s seen this one, but I’ll omit spoilers, just in case. First, it’s a gorgeous film. Second, it introduces the main characters spectacularly. Phillipe “the Mouse” is crawling through a filthy medieval sewer to escape his own execution. Then there’s Navarre, the imposing anti-hero in black, with his black horse, Goliath, a gleaming silver sword, a crossbow, and his hawk. Gnarly image. And Lady Isabeau’s entrance is full of mystery and wonder. Finally, Ladyhawke has one of the best fantasy curses ever. It’s clearly an iconic fantasy film.

If it’s so good, why remake it?

Let’s start with the music (cringe). I loved 80s synth music, but it didn’t fit the film setting then, and it’s even cheesier now. Hans Zimmer could do wonders on his worst day. Music aside, the script is pretty good, even though the film gets criticized for its stilted dialogue. But the problem, I think, is more about the delivery, not the writing. Of the three main characters, Matthew Broderick gives us a semblance of an accent, and his running conversation with God steals the show. “I told the truth, Lord! How can I learn any moral lessons when you keep confusing me like this?” But it’s hard to suspend your disbelief when you’re yanked out of the illusion by incongruous music and American accents (see also: Costner, Kevin). The trio of Broderick, Hauer, and Pfieffer were big box office names in the 80s. But we could do better today, folks. I’d be interested in your casting choices. We can continue the conversation on Twitter.

Buck Rogers in the 25^th Century

Good ol’ Buck has been around since the 1920s in every possible media type—novels, radio, serials, comics, video games, RPG, films, and the XZ-38 Disintegrator Pistol even appears on a Foo Fighters album cover. But it was the short-lived TV show, featuring Gil Gerard and Erin Grey, which got me amped as a kid!

The premise: an astronaut is blown off course and frozen by a devastating cosmic event, only to return to Earth five hundred years later. Turns out, the dude missed a nuclear holocaust. Now Earth is united under the Earth Defense Directorate, headquartered in New Chicago. There, Buck befriends Colonel Wilma Deering, a birdman named Hawk, and two robots, Dr. Theopolis and Twiki (voiced by Mel Blanc: Beedebeedebeep). Life is good in New Chicago. There’s funky costuming, weird synthesizer music, and glow-in-the-dark dancing. If only it weren’t for those Draconians with their smokin’ military leader, Princess Ardala. Oh, and pirates, assassins, and creepy space vampires.

The challenge of a remake would be in creating the right tone, I think. The 80s show was lighthearted with bouts of deadly seriousness. Other SF franchises have been successful in portraying character-driven humor, intense action, and horror, namely the cult-behemoth Firefly, and the revamp of Star Trek. (Speaking of Firefly, who better to play Buck than Nathan Fillion?) With the quality of today’s special effects, writing, costuming, and amazing stunt work, a revamped Buck could be awesome!

The Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers

Because Transformers, G.I. Joe, Thundercats, and Voltron have already been redone, that leaves me with my dark horse cartoon choice. In a nutshell, the Galaxy Rangers are space cowboys with unique cybernetic powers. The captain, Zach, was gravely wounded by a pirate, and is now half-bionic, with super strength and a powerful energy blast. On his team, there’s Niko with her limited psychic abilities and superbad martial arts. Doc controls nanobot-like creatures. And Goose, a gunslinger, can adapt his body to suit his environment.

The anime action and X-Men-like powers were rad, but the unique factor was the diverse pseudo-Wild West galaxy they explored. In their brief airtime, the Rangers combated outlaws, pirates, mobsters, rogue super soldiers, mad scientists, as well as conquering queens seeking to enslave humans. My enthusiasm for the Galaxy Rangers grew into a love of Weird Western. In fact, my serial Weird Western, The Midnight Agency, coming out this winter, owes much to this 80s cartoon.

There is a definite place for Weird Western (Westworld, The Dark Tower). Considering the quality of today’s animation, I see unlimited potential for a Galaxy Rangers reboot.

Dragonlance

It took me a while to settle on this one. Although it’s been (ahem) thirty years since I read the series, the characters won me over. Who can forget Raistlin Majere, with his hourglass eyes and fits of coughing blood, whose quest for magical power nearly killed him? Or Sturm Brightblade’s sacrifice? Or Kitiara, Tanis, Flint, or Camaron? They are all wonderfully tortured souls. And then there are the dragons, who are full characters, rich with history and knowledge and power.

The franchise spans over 200 books plus RPGs, which seems too expansive to be contained in a single film. The bad animated movie is in desperate need of a reboot. A live-action trilogy could work. With an audience who loves complex characters, magic, the undead, and dragons, Dragonlance seems poised to be a successful series. After all, it sits somewhere between Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Martin’s Game of Thrones.

Wolverine

Last one. Would somebody at Marvel HQ please put Logan back in a brown costume? Yellow and blue look great on college football helmets, but not this stealthy, predatory character. I cannot imagine Logan rifling through his closet and saying, “I feel like wearing yellow today.”

‘Nuff said.

About the Author:

Ken Hoover is a mild-mannered bookstore manager, pop culture fan, and a coffee-addicted word-slinger. His stories have appeared in Bourbon Penn, Crowded Magazine, and in The Book of the Emissaries, a flash fiction anthology. His serial novel, The Midnight Agency, will be available soon via Fiction Vortex, as part of the White Event serial box. Ken lives in New Mexico with his rad family. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Do Sci-Fi Movie Directors Dream of Electric Scripts?

November 16, 2016

Sean Golden

This month’s Fictorians’ theme is “movie adaptations.”

I got lucky and snagged “Blade Runner.”

When Blade Runner came out, I wasn’t paying attention enough to remember the obscure novella I had read at about the age of twelve. I was well into the movie before I put two and two together and realized I had read the source material. I remember thinking at the time, “When is he going to find that toad?”

That’s pretty close to a spoiler, I suppose. There is no toad in the movie. I don’t remember origami in the novella. Maybe there was some. Honestly, I didn’t remember that much about the novella. I had read it during a period of my life that I was reading three or four sci-fi novels a week. Plus classics like “Gone With the Wind” or “Moby Dick.” The novella simply hadn’t made that much of an impression on me. I had to go back and review “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” to realize just how far the movie had strayed from the original story. How far was that? Well, maybe not as far as the shoulder of Orion, but certainly well past the Tannhauser Gate.

So, since the movie is such a radical departure from the novella, you might think that would count against it as a “movie adaptation.” But I can’t say that, because “Blade Runner” the movie, is better than the novella. By a large margin, in my opinion. Ridley Scott took the basic story of a bounty hunter wrestling with the morality and mortality of “retiring” androids, and created a revolutionary multi-media experience, spawning an entire sci-fi sub-genre in the process.

There is power in the imagery of the film. The fusion of film noir and dystopian post-apocalyptic pathos simply oozes gritty, bloody, sweaty authenticity. By abandoning the original sub-plots involving Deckard’s wife (yes, wife) and their search for an animal of their very own, Scott was able to focus his grimy camera lens directly on the question of what makes us human. That gritty, shadowy vision paradoxically grants the movie near-perfect clarity.

That clarity reaches its climax with Roy Batty’s iconic farewell, sometimes known as the “Tears in Rain Monologue.”

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.

Time to die.

Like all great works of art, the movie has an ambiguous ending, allowing the viewer to decide for themselves what Deckard’s and Rachael’s future will be. The viewer isn’t even certain if Deckard himself is a human or a replicant. And that is the movie’s ultimate message. In the end, it doesn’t really matter. As Roy tells us, the value of life is not measured in the number of years we are given, it is measured in what we do with the years we have.

Adapting the Past

November 15, 2016

Frog Jones

Fantasy Frog Jones Movies No Comments

I grew up on the Shannara books. I loved them. Oh, looking back I see them for what they were; Tolkien- ripoff hackery. They are not good books. But as a twelve-year-old just taking his first steps down this path, I loved them. And when I pick up those cliche tomes these days, I am still overcome with a sense of nostalgia.

So, last year, when I saw that MTV (of all channels) had decided to do a Shannara adaptation, I had two reactions, in sequence:

1. Sqquuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2. How in the heck are they going to do that?

Now, I am not alone in my Shannara geekery. For books that would never see the light of day if they were written now, they have a strong following. A lot of us, young in the eighties and seeking some form of fantasy, devoured and loved them despite their flaws. And a lot of us are very, very committed to the books; even the parts that suck.

But not enough of us to make an MTV audience. Let’s face it; most Shannara fans are my age. You had to be young enough to dig fantasy and old enough to live in a time where there weren’t other options. And most of them are male, because the Shannara books aren’t particularly great about depicting women. MTV, of course, does not even come close to targetting my demographic. So who in the world thought it’d be a good idea to put this niche show there?

And, as I processed all of these factors, my third reaction began to dawn, ever so slowly.

3. This is going to suck.

Why did I think this? Well, let’s start with this. This picture, just to the left here. You know what that is? That’s the original group of adventurers from the first Shannara novel. It’s a pretty racially diverse cast; you have a dwarf, a couple of Valemen, some humans, a druid, and two elves. Of course, they’re all white males, but still…diversity, right?

Now, I knew MTV wasn’t about to put that cast up on the screen. I figured we’d see some gender-swapping, and some characters would end up being not-white. Which I was OK with, really. I am not someone who believes you can’t gender-swap a character. Obviously, there are series that have done this, and done it well.

So, the first thing that relieved me on this was where MTV decided to start. Oh, the great community of nerds had some things to say when we discovered that Sword of Shannara was merely backstory. That, instead, we would be dealing with Elfstones of Shannara, the second book in the series. Upon seeing this, it occurred to me that MTV had actually sat down, read the books, and figured out what the heck it was doing.

The Shannara Chronicles are not point-by-point true to the original book. There’s no King of the Silver River, Grimpen Ward is never mentioned, the Witch Sisters barely make an appearance, and the great mid-air confrontation between Allanon and the Dagda Mor is more of a couple of seconds on the ground. Special effects budgets, storyline, and the need to get some kind of episode-based rhythm account for much of it, but honestly, there’s something else.

The Shannara Chronicles is simply written better than the original books.

Remember what I said at the beginning of this article. The Shannara books are not well-written. They’re basically hackery of the lowest sort. I know, I know; if you’re an old-school geek like me, you remember them fondly. But you know what else I remember fondly? The Thundercats cartoon. I tried to re-watch it, once. bad idea.

The Shannara Chronicles cut down on the cast. Now, obviously there’s a budgetary reason for this; when you’re making a TV show, each new character is a new person you have to pay. But that also had the effect of streamlining the story, which the book very badly needed.

The series made the story one of the personal relationships. They did that for their demographic, of course, but doing it made us far more focused on the characters. Cephelo isn’t just a lovable rogue in the series; he is very, very dangerous. Eretria isn’t just “the other girl,” or “Wil’s second choice.” She’s a kick-ass survivor with her own set of priorities. And Amberle isn’t single-minded in her devotion to the cause; she has to examine what’s being asked of her again, and again, and again.

Wil, on the other hand, is all too aware of what happens after the heroism. He’s constantly worried about the price he’s going to pay long-term for his exploits, and he has the shadow of his father, Shea Ohmsford. Shea’s exploits from Sword are referenced, often in praising terms, but Wil’s problem is that he knew his dad as a worthless, drunken waste of humanity. And he fears, deeply, that he’s on the same path. Save the world, but lose yourself in the process.

All the characters are wrestling with their internal demons instead of just the external ones trying to kill them. And that kind of internal conflict makes the series simply better than the books.

***SPOILER ALERT – I’M GOING TO TALK ABOUT THE END OFSEASON ONE. STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT IT SPOILED***

The thing that most scared me when I saw that Elfstones was the adaptation was simple: Elfstones’ best story point is its ending. The heroes win, but there is a huge sacrifice to be made. Amberle must become the Ellcrys. She doesn’t die, no, but we’re talking about killing off one leg of your love triangle in the end of the first season. I was terrified that MTV wouldn’t have the guts to do it–and I’m really happy I was wrong.

***END SPOILERS***

The point, here, is that stories were a certain way in the 1980s. And they’re just better now. Our profession has gotten a lot more involved in the internal dramas, and beating the great evil thing using the Macguffin simply doesn’t cut it anymore. MTV took a story from the past, a beat-the-evil-with-the-thing work of hackery, and made it three-dimensional. It’s an exceptionally well-done adaptation, and it stands as an example of how to update an old, tired, tropey work.

Now that the season is done, we have a new question for MTV. Season 2 is in the works, and we know that it deals with the same characters. That’s really interesting, because…Wil doesn’t do anything else in the books. Wil Ohmsford, in the books, goes back to Storlock, finishes his studies to become a healer, and settles down with Eretria. They have a pair of kids, and those kids go on to have their own adventures. The next book in the series is Wishsong, and it’s not about Wil at all.

It doesn’t sound as though MTV wanted to rotate their entire non-Allanon cast to deal with Season 2. And I get it; you want your fans to become attached to a main character, not someone entirely new. But there’s another adaptation challenge ahead. Do they simply make up new storylines? Do they try to adapt the Wishsong storyline into Season 2?

I’m honestly not sure, but I’m interested to see where it goes.