Moe Lane's Blog, page 661
September 28, 2021
‘John Barleycorn.’
Did it already, and I’m doing it again.
Today was… weirdly productive/unproductive.
I got everything done, eventually, but none of it was linear. We were all running around and disrupting our schedules and the rest of it, so my benchmarks are all off. And, to be truthful: I’m looking forward to the month being over. Because next month is October, and that means Halloween.
And by GOD I’m not going to be the only one doing Halloween this year.
09/28/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
We’re getting there.
Patreon!And how it looked! There was nothing like a face (although, ask a fly what a human’s looks like), — only a set of connected ovoids, each the size of the hopper itself. Spiraling corkscrews of corruption and violence sprang from them, coupling with the ovoids and each other in an endless, writhing frenzy. It was not obscene solely because concepts like ‘lust’ and ‘decadence’ at least assume a raw desire for life, and a standard of decency to transgress. This thing had neither of those, and as it reached out with its burning tentacles Tobias could feel that the monster welcomed the sensation of finally having its flesh scoured by plasma exhaust.
And scoured it was. The monster burned so terribly that Tobias thought he could smell its charred stink through the suit, the hopper cabin, and the vacuum outside. But it held onto the hopper, despite the way that its flesh sublimated away from the cleansing flame. Indeed, it began to pull the vehicle down, ever so slightly. It was dying — if dying meant anything to this thing — but it would kill Tobias first, if it could. It was only this certainty of death — which flashed across his battered mind in a flash — that drove Tobias to the next step. And even then he quailed as he reached out with a shuddering hand and slapped the emergency boost button.
The shudder was justifiable, because the only thing he could count on now was pain. The boost would give him a 10G burn, for fifteen seconds. On Earth, this would be considered rough, but not horribly dangerous, given the limited duration. On the moon, where humans still struggled to maintain muscle mass and strong bones, it all came down to whether or not his suit could handle the strain.
Agony rippled through Tobias as the hopper burned its way free of the enemy and did its own uncontrolled tumble through the lunar sky. But he smiled nonetheless, for he could feel a great unraveling as the monster in his head lost its grip. And as it fell away from it, the awful cohesion the monster had demonstrated likewise came undone. The strange energies of the plasma drive were simply too eldritch for it to withstand.
Tobias had time for precisely six seconds of savage exultation before the hopper crashed.
Quote of the Day, …Me, Too, GeekTyrant. Me, Too edition.
Ain’t gonna lie, this was exactly my reaction.
William Shatner’s ‘90s cyberpunk sci-fi mystery novel series TekWar might be making a come back with a new animated series adaptation. The nine-novel series has already spawned a TV series, four TV movies, a comic book, and a video game, all of which were released in the ‘90s.
I honestly totally forgot that TekWar was even a thing until this news of an animated series popped up!
I like Bill Shatner, but… I truly remember very little of this.
The Blasphemous DUNE Honest Trailer.
BLASPHEMOUS!
Mind you, it’s been years since I’ve seen DUNE. I might be remembering it through the veil of nostalgia. I certainly remember being bugged by the last scene…
…No, let’s go with my first instinct.
BLASPHEMOUS!
In the e-mail: THE LAST GRADUATE (The Scholomance Book 2)
Naomi Novik’s THE LAST GRADUATE dropped at midnight last night, and that’s a real problem for me. No, really: I have stuff I have to do today. I really shouldn’t try to squeeze it in.
But I will.
Moe Lane
PS: What’s it about? Oh, it’s part of a series about a magical school that’s horrible in every way, but the kids go because the alternatives are all worse. Novik’s a brilliant writer, and this is an excellent series: I can’t wait to hear this year’s excuse as to why they won’t give her a Hugo.
September 27, 2021
THE SANDMAN First Look Netflix trailer.
Okay, this one I retain a certain optimism for.
The clip is compatible with the Sandman books and Neil Gaiman is involved with the production. And since he’s got enough status to keep the outrages down to a dull roar, I can be reasonably sure that if changes are made to the TV version of the series, he’ll at least have agreed with them. I’m not a purist on this, by any means — Good Omens‘ changes to me made sense, since we were getting a TV series and not a book — but I’d rather that any done here were for a better reason than (to mangle… Bob Heinlein?) because editors like the flavor better after they’ve peed on it.
So, here’s hoping. Not for pee, obviously.
Babylon 5 is being rebooted, and I have a complicated reaction to that.
I’m not sure how I feel about this.
[The CW] is teaming with original series creator J. Michael Straczynski for a reboot of Babylon 5.
Described as a “from-the-ground-up reboot” of the original, Straczynski will pen the script for a new potential version of the former syndicated drama from Warner Bros. TV. The new take revolves around John Sheridan (originally played by Bruce Boxleitner), an Earthforce officer with a mysterious background, who is assigned to Babylon 5, a five-mile-long space station in neutral space, a port of call for travelers, smugglers, corporate explorers and alien diplomats at a time of uneasy peace and the constant threat of war.
(H/T: @brett_lemons)Obvious plusses: it’s more Bab5*, and coming from Straczynski. Obvious negatives: it’s a reboot and there’s an obvious question to ask (“But why?”). And that leads me to my real concern: who do you find to replace the secondary characters? — who were, collectively, the real draw of the show for me. Who the hell wants to be known as Londo Mollari the Lesser?
…And yet, I will probably watch this. Because it is Babylon 5, and Straczynski’s doing the script. Bab5 was always a show that objectively shouldn’t have really worked; and yet, it did. Maybe they can pull it off again. Worth watching the pilot at least, hey?
Moe Lane
*That’s a good deal, that, if you don’t have the complete set already (I have the complete set already).
09/27/21 Snippet, ETERNAL NIGHT OF THE MOON-BEASTS.
I am starting to become concerned about the ongoing lack of moon-beasts in this story.
Patreon!Regular time hit Tobias like icewater in the brain; and the distraction almost killed him, too. It would have killed him, except that he had already fired the engines. If the hopper was pointing straight down… well, it was, that was all. A fireball would do the job of wrecking the monster’s day.
He was lucky: the hopper was theoretically pointing to the sky. And the monster was sufficiently present on this plane of existence that raw amounts of kinetic energy could hurt it terribly. But Tobias couldn’t hold onto the detachment he’d been using to keep from focusing on his enemy, and in that few moments of fusion flame and the liveliest awfulness the human got a full blast of the truly alien.
That malevolence! That calculated evil! — For this creature operated under its own rules, no matter that Tobias’s brain could no more process or comprehend the monster’s thought patterns than it could understand his. It was only barely self-aware, from one point of view. From another it had perfect knowledge of space, and possibly even time itself. Tobias swore afterward that the monster anticipated his moves, striving to avoid the hopper’s wild arcs of fusion flame before they even began.
