Steven Barnes's Blog, page 48

In my early 20’s, I wrote a lot of stories and scripts, a...

In my early 20’s, I wrote a lot of stories and scripts, and was optimistic about every one of them. Just KNEW that this was the one that would make my name (the script that was a cross between ENTER THE DRAGON and LORD OF THE FLIES was a particular favorite.  Oh, well…)

 

But as I wrote and submitted and saw rejection after rejection, it started hurting. The voices in my head hammered at me. The doubts I’d heard from Mom and teachers and peers started deteriorating my faith.

 

I knew that onl...

“The Hitman’s Bodyguard”(2017)

Saw “Hitman’s Bodyguard” yesterday. Wasn’t exactly “good” but I did have fun. Sam Jackson was seriously badass, and that’s always fun. Ryan Reynolds sometimes felt like he’d wandered in from another movie. And the “Midnight Run” comparisons (MR was definitely a better film) are unavoidable. I had the sense it started as a smaller film, then got pumped up after someone looked at the “Deadpool” box office. From time to time the shape of that smaller, perhaps better movie peeked out.

One thing o...

Time for more “Body Snatchers”

 Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956) Invasion of the Body Snatchers  (1978), was the first remake, was directed by Philip Kaufman and starred Donald Sutherland. Body Snatchers  (1993), the second remake was directed by Abel Ferrara and starred Gabrielle Anwar. The Invasion  (2007), was the third remake, was directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel, and starred Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig in the lead roles.

 

 

Clearly, Jack Finney’s 1954 novel is one of the most successful SF works in...

Thoughts on “Lucky Logan (2017)

By the way…have you seen the amount of pain white Southerners have been experiencing around their Statues taken away?  Even though there are tens of thousands of  books,  movies, television shows, documentaries, songs and folk tales about the Civil War?  THAT IS HOW IMPORTANT HISTORY IS.

A tiny problem, however.

All my life, white people have told me that  the TOTAL removal of history, myth, religions, cultures, and languages from black people didn’t matter.   “That’s all in the past! Live in...

Know yourself, know the Other

A reader said:   “I do think that promoting the idea that people can’t change– they’re bad, bad to the bone– helps lock them into the state you don’t like. I believe people can learn better, but meanwhile, I think saying that people you’re opposed to are intrinsically bad is one of the stupider human habits…”

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“Know your enemy and know yourself, one can go through one hundred battles without danger.  Know not the other, yet know yourself, the chance of victory is only half.  Know not your...

Sharing the view from the cross

“Do not think dishonestly”–Musashi Miyamoto’s first principle

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When I was about eight years old broke and in utter despair, my mom stuck her head in our oven, trying to  commit suicide.    I talked her out of it by insulting her enough to make her angry at me, I knew even then that anger was a way to mobilize fear. She came after me like a fury, spanked the hell out of me…

But it was better than watching my mom die.  Yeah, no kid that age should have had to think that clearly, act that clea...

A deeper explanation

I was kind of flippant to someone who said that my thoughts on Trump and David Duke disappointed them. It was certainly human of me, but it wasn’t my best self. Allow me to repost a more carefully considered response: ## “What I CAN do is pay attention to patterns. And starting with Trump’s “Birther” stance, he had my antenna up. When racist groups praise him repeatedly and speak of how he’s their guy, I pay attention. When he blames “both sides” and then retracts with a prepared state...

Control the narrative, control the fear

I first grasped the connection between story and when a UCLA student, depressed and believing he had no time or energy to write, suddenly became an answer machine as soon has he started thinking of himself as a character in a story he was writing.  He was so excited, and it was awesome!

 

What I realized was that the stories we tell ourselves control the way we interpret the world.  What was scary is that once the story “sets” it is like concrete.

 

My martial arts training was exactly like t...

A Step Beyond Coincidence

For the record, I think we may have passed a tipping point with Trump, and though I’ve not said a fraction of the things I’ve thought, I think it useful at this point to go more clearly on the record about a few things.

No, I don’t think the other side of the tipping point is a cliff.   Just that I see what seems the first serious crack in the dam.    How fast things deteriorate depends on other design flaws, and the pressure.  Can’t predict that stuff.  But something tells me that a positio...

What Wood Are You Chopping?

Once upon a time a monk was walking in the forest. Suddenly, a tiger springs at him. The monk fled, the tiger right behind.  He came to a cliff, and climbed down until he was out of reach of the tiger.  He heard a hiss, and looked down to see a cobra coiled and ready to strike on a rock beneath his heel. He tried to climb back up, and the tiger swiped at him, barely missing his head.   Below him, the cobra hissed and flared its hood.

 

Then the vine he was holding onto began to fray.  He look...