A mini-reunion episode this time around. Weirdside joins the show again and we discuss the oldest university in the history of planet Earth, mutant boars, whether readers or writers should read outside of their typical genres, science fiction subgenres, the end of the Best American Anthology series, and much more. Tune in and enjoy! Don’t forget to answer the question of the week!
Anyone who knows me well enough to call me their best friend also knows that music destroys me emotionally. Not all music, just some music. Certain songs have something that hits me at some strange emotional core, shaking my innards in just the right way, like striking that perfect note on a cello or violin. These are the kinds of songs that I listen to over and over, but also take breaks from, because they really do get my emotional side reeling (which helps a great deal when it comes to writing). Now that you all know this, you can call me your best friend. Before I get into the list, I need to make one thing clear: some of the movies listed below are not science fiction or fantasy in a traditional sense, but are still part of one or both of those genres in some way. With all that in mind, I present to you my list of the ten most gut-wrenching songs from science fiction and fantasy movies or television (in no particular order): “Gentle Execution” from Battlestar Galactica, Season Three, by Bear McCreary “Gentle Execution” is one of those songs that uses just the right combination of instruments and the right tempo to create an incredibly depressing feeling. It’s also a perfect tune for hammering out sad scenes in your writing. It also helps to know that this song from BSG appears in an awful scene in which Saul Tigh has to kill his wife for collaborating with the Cylons. “Time” from Inception, by Hans Zimmer I’ve already written about “Time” in another context, but here I’d like to point out that the way the song builds up its layers produces tension and, for me, hits an emotional chord of sorts. I’m not sure how to describe it any better than that. “The Surface of the Sun” from Sunshine, by John Murphy For the same reason that I love “Time” and “Gentle Execution,” so too do I love “The Surface of the Sun.” The most depressing thing is that we had to wait for the longest time before they released the soundtrack; legal mumbojumbo and all that. If you’d like to hear an alternate version containing a fan’s addition of vocals, see here (yes, the alternate is quite good, too). “Trinity Definitely” from Matrix Revolutions, by Don Davis I’m going on the assumption that the primary instrument in this melody is an oboe, because it sounds like one to me. The oboe is one of those instruments that can only be played in two ways: so well that it sounds absolutely beautiful, and so awful that you want to kill yourself. In the case of this song, the oboe melody is so gorgeous and melancholy that one gets the impression that the best part of Matrix Revolutions wasn’t the film itself, but the music (an opinion I actually hold). “A Small Measure of Peace” from The Last Samurai, by Hans Zimmer Say what you will about the movie (it’s awesome, by the way), but the soundtrack is quite beautiful. “A Small Measure of Peace” is no exception. Zimmer knows his string instruments. See for yourself: “A Way of Life” from The Last Samurai, by Hans Zimmer There’s a reason why two songs from the same soundtrack are on this list. I love “A Way of Life” for the same reason that I love “A Small Measure of Peace.” Some of the same themes appear in this particular song, but the finale is intense (it’s from an equally intense scene from the movie, which might be the only movie that I think Tom Cruise really belonged in outside of Top Gun). “Into the West” from Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, by Fran Walsh, Howard Shore, and Annie Lennox There are few songs with lyrics that grip me in the same way as the non-lyric-based songs on this list do. “Into the West” (and one other song on this list) is an exception. The lyrics make sense when set against the movie and Annie Lennox sings it beautifully. Oh, and have I mentioned that I absolutely love the French horn? Yeah. “Anakin’s Betrayal” from Star Wars, Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith, by John Williams John Williams is probably the best thing about the prequel Star Wars movies, and I wouldn’t be the first to say so. “Anakin’s Betrayal” hits me deep mostly because of the scene it comes from, which consists of Anakin killing children and Palpatine ordering the destruction of the Jedi. The music fits this moment perfectly. All you have to do is listen. “Come What May” (Original Film Version) from Moulin Rouge, by David Baerwald and sung by Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman Have you seen the movie? Then the song should make sense without me having to explain why it hits me deep. Just listen and remember the ending of the movie… “Dumbledore’s Farewell” from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, by Nicholas Hooper I didn’t care for the movie, but Nicholas Hooper really hit the nail on the head with his music for the final scenes after Dumbledore’s death. Brooding, increasingly melancholy, and just all around sad. If you haven’t heard it, then here’s your chance. And that’s it, folks. So, what are your favorite gut-wrenching songs from science fiction and fantasy films or TV shows? Let me know in the comments!
I wanted to let all of you know that over the next couple days (starting tomorrow), there will be a lot of changes happening on WISB. I’m updating the design, which will take a while to set up, since I’m not as HTML/CSS savvy as I would like to be. This means that some things might suddenly be broken on the site, you might see a post or two pop up with very little in them (as a test), and so on. The new design is not a huge difference from what I already have, but the HTML is different, things are getting moved off of the sidebars, and so on. There will also be fewer sidebars, new pages (with an actual navbar), an updated header image (kind of), and so on. I should be done with most of the important tweaks by Monday. If not, then you can assume I broke something and spent Sunday night trying to fix it… Thanks for your patience. If you want to see what the new design will be, you can see it here. I am still taking comments, criticisms, and suggestions, if you have them. If there’s something you can’t stand about the new design, please let me know. Thanks!
I’ve become tainted against self-publishing. That is probably clear to those of you who read this blog, since I’ve written a number of posts about self-publishers (see this label for others), but it has now become clear to me on a different level. I’ve said numerous times in the past that there are good self-publishers out there who produce good books, have honest production practices, and are friendly. But they are an astronomically small minority when set against all of the rest who are effectively some of the best liars and manipulators of any stripe (they give FOX News a run for their money in the spin department); the good folks are like the Maldives in a global warming world–the more the sea keeps rising, the more likely those tiny little islands are going to get buried under water. (Bear with me on this. I’ll get to my fully-developed point towards the end; I need context first.) For me, this is a huge problem, because I want to be able to trust that self-publishers can all be honest people. My experiences, however, have shown that the opposite is true. I’ve been approached too many times to count by people claiming to be traditionally published, who, upon further inspection, are anything but; I’ve met people who try to tell me and others things about traditional publishing that are patently false (or not representative of anything but a severe minority), who then shrug off reality as if everyone else is ignorant and needs to learn the valuable lessons of Mr. Hoity Toity; and I’ve read dozens and dozens of blog posts and (about) books on self-publishing that make glorious claims about self-publishing, deface traditional publishing by showing only the darkest sides of the worst of them, and generally offer lists of lies, half-truths, or misdirections, which creates a vacuum that makes it very difficult to know where to look to find honesty about your options as a writer. For every one good self-publisher I have met (honest people who don’t lie about their publishing status, who are dead honest about what it takes to self-publish, who say that self-publishing is not for everyone, etc.), there are hundreds of bad ones. The fact that the second group is actively fighting to make changes go in their favor is disconcerting, because what they are ushering in isn’t a world of quality-variety, but just any-old-variety. They want a world where readers become the filter; considering that these are the same people who claim that traditional publishers publish crap, it’s somewhat self-defeating–turning literature into a game of “who has the most resources” or “who can play popularity bingo the best” is not necessarily going to produce quality literature. And all of this creates a lot of problems for me, because there is nothing within self-publishing, with the exception of the chosen few, that I feel I can trust. It’s mired in a sea of lies and misinformation that nobody seems interested in dealing with or is actually equipped to do anything about. Everywhere I look, the same things appear. It makes sense to me why so many people have come out of the woodworks with an anti-traditional view of things: when all you have to look at are half-truths or flat-out lies, you start to adopt those views too. People like me take all of this and become even less friendly to the entire industry. Maybe we shouldn’t, but it can’t be helped. I personally don’t appreciate being lied to or deceived; I want to know what I’m getting into before I actually get into it, to a certain extent (obviously I don’t want to know the whole plot of a novel before I read it). For self-publishers, this might pose a problem, particularly ones that mean well and probably are quite good at what they do (in terms of the writing). I have no doubt that I’m missing out on a great number of good books by self-published authors, but the problem for me as a consumer is that finding these gems is not an easy task; I either have to do a lot of work to find the stuff worth buying, or I have to take an unnecessary risk. Most importantly, though, is that even with this one huge flaw in the self-publishing model, there is the greater flaw of the body of unofficial representatives who have done a fine job tarnishing the self-publishing name in the eyes of people like me (and there are a lot of us). The question is: what can be done to bring people like me back into the fold? I used to read self-published novels, but after too many bad experiences, I stopped. What ways can self-publishers change the way their game is played so that people like me can feel some sense of trust in the whole “indie” thing? I have ideas, but I don’t think those ideas are favored among self-publishing types. Some folks have rejected the idea of creating a filtering system of some sort for self-published books, and others have thought me crazy for suggesting that creating your own press and not making it clear that you’re self-published is deceptive. Plus, defacing traditionally publishing is not a good strategy; it might be an effective one, but it’s also an intellectually dishonest one, since it does more to suggest that there is less “right” with the side that wants to be “right” than it does to suggest that the other side is “wrong.” Are there campaigns for self-published authors that aren’t in some way centered on or a part of the anti-traditional camp? Lastly, what can self-publishers do to make me think there’s value in what they do? I realize that writing is important to most self-publishers, but that is a reason for most writes in general, regardless of publishing status. What really makes what self-publishers do valuable to consumers? I’d also really like to know what strategies are being done to make self-publishing
Those of you who use Blogger might have noticed that they introduced a new template design feature and the ability to add “pages,” much as you can on WordPress. As a user of Blogger for almost four years now, I’ve been hoping and praying for this feature to appear, since it is one of the few things that makes WordPress so appealing (the only thing that kept me on Blogger was the fact that I could do just about anything to my template without having to pay a fee to access the CSS). Last night I decided to really play with the feature on a test blog to see what I can do about making WISB look even better. That’s where you come in. I’ll be honest in saying that I am not much of a design guru. I don’t have much of an eye for it when it comes to webpages, though I seem to do alright when it comes to other things. So, if you have the time to spare, I would appreciate it if you can offer your opinions on the test blog located here. Pop on over and then leave a comment on this post with your criticism. And, yes, when I say I want your criticism, I mean I really want your brutal honesty. If you think something looks downright ugly, say so. If you have a suggestion for improvement, I’ll take that too. I don’t want to move over to a new template until I’m sure I’ve come up with something good. Right now, I’m mostly trying to recreate this blog, but with more features. The only thing you’ll notice is that there really isn’t much content on the site. That’s just because I haven’t moved things over there yet. I’m worried about general looks right now. Thanks for the help!
I’ve been watching a lot of bio-disaster films lately, particularly ones involving a virus or mutated bacteria that infects and kills people instead of turning them into zombies or vampires or whatever. These films are actually quite interesting, because they’re usually low budget, but also strangely much more fascinating than a lot of zombie films in terms of character development and the examination of the human condition. In watching all of these films, however, I’ve discovered that there are quite a few repeated themes that indicate the incompetency of authority in a time of crisis. This acknowledgment led me to create a list of the five things that governments today can learn from bio-disaster films to survive a serious infection. Here are those five things: Don’t treat people like filth, especially when they’re infected. Almost every bio-disaster film I have seen has made this point painfully clear: if you want to maintain control and keep the infection from spreading at an astronomic rate, you have to treat every single person with care and respect. Why? Because the second you give people a reason to run away from authority figures, you’ve lost. Take the film Right at Your Door as a prime example of this. When the government realizes that the attack in downtown LA contains some sort of biological agent, the first thing they do is start rounding up people at gunpoint. Nobody knows what is going to happen to the people being shoved into black vans–maybe they’re getting medical care?–but it doesn’t really matter. The damage is done. The fact of the matter is that the government does not have enough manpower to control a serious infection with force. They need the people to be willing to cooperate with officials so that the infection can be controlled. If you can’t control the infection, then you can’t survive. Plain and simple. Don’t lie or keep valuable information from the public. Most people are not stupid. They can usually tell if you’re lying or keeping something from them. Worse yet, they already know that something is going on, and that it’s not good news. The best thing the government can do is provide some truth and useful information to the public. Tell them what is going on and explain to them what they should do. If you’re already treating them with a certain level of respect, then they’re very likely to follow instructions and use what little information you can give them to make sure they can survive. But if you lie to them or intentionally keep silent about things that they’re demanding to know, they’ll panic.1 Respond quickly. This particularly point is one we should already have learned from recent non-bio disasters, such as the New Orleans/Hurricane Katrian fiasco. But bio-disaster films have been making the case for quick response times for decades. If there is a biological threat, whether in the form of a zombie-style virus, a bio-weapon, or a mutated bacteria, then reacting quickly is the best and only way to go about things. The longer it takes for you to control the spread of the infection, the better chance the infection has of moving into the general populace. You have to keep the infection contained to one area, and do so as fast as possible. Infections spread like wildfire, and firefighters know how bad those can get. Provide food and medical supplies. There are two things that people care the most about during any sort of crisis: food and medical supplies. It should be pretty obvious why. We need to eat and drink, and some of us might be hurt, or infected. In the movies, both of these things are impossible to come by, either because the government refuses to hand them out, people steal them, or people are too afraid to leave their homes to acquire the supplies they need (maybe because the government shoots them if they are found wandering the countryside). This can be solved, if not entirely, then at least to a certain degree. Providing care packages to people, whether delivered door to door or dispensed at special locations across the city (the former is preferable), can go a long way towards making sure people survive, are less afraid, and are more cooperative. Starving people or people who need meds are not happy people, and people who are not happy are the kinds of people who tend to steal, become violent, and so on. All that is bad news for anyone trying to control an infection. Have a well-developed, and practiced, contingency plan for a bio-disaster. Reality #1: Biological weapons exist. Reality #2: Viruses and bacteria continue to evolve and super-strains do exist. Reality #3: Police and other public protection services need to be prepared to handle all of these. Officials should be trained in handling the infected or the potentially infected and in infection containment. Otherwise, it’s quite likely that all four of the things that precede this point will occur. And we don’t want that. So, what things do you think the government should learn from bio-disaster films? ———————————————— 1. The irony of this particular point is that the reason for lying to the public or keeping silent about pertinent information is usually to keep people from panicking. Yet in doing so, they end up producing the panic they were trying to avoid.
