Jonathan Moeller's Blog, page 100

GHOST IN THE SUN, a short excerpt

Still editing GHOST IN THE SUN. Let’s have a short, spoiler-free excerpt!

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“It’s good to see you again,” Caina was saying, “but what the hell are you doing here?”

“I suggest we have the reunion elsewhere, not in the middle of the bloody street surrounded by reveniri and a dead vyrkolak noble,” said Morgant.

He was right. Morgant was often right, though he had the knack of being right in the most annoying manner possible.

-JM

GHOST IN THE SUN Table of Contents

I’m finally far enough along to share the Table of Contents for GHOST IN THE SUN!

If all goes well the book should be out sometime next week.

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 94: Finishing GHOST IN THE SUN

In this week’s episode, I talk about finishing GHOST IN THE SUN, the final book in my GHOST NIGHT epic fantasy series.

I also answer reader questions, and discuss the new DUNE movie.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

GHOST IN THE SUN, a brief excerpt

I’m going to spend this week editing GHOST IN THE SUN, so let’s have a very brief excerpt!

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Calvia glanced at Caina. “He won’t make trouble for us? You seem to have a history.”

“We do,” said Caina, “but he has larger problems just now.”

Calvia snorted. “Yes, and the magi are so good at putting aside petty grievances in the face of bigger problems. Why, it’s the defining characteristic of the Magisterium.”

-JM

Diablo II Resurrected & Metroid Dread

I’ve been playing two new games lately – Diablo II Resurrected and Metroid Dread – and I have thoughts!

Video game companies tend to have a short shelf-life. That’s likely inevitable, given how rapidly the technology changes and the brutal amount of work involved in developing a game. For that matter, it’s extremely expensive, and if you develop a video game, there’s no guarantee at all that you will get your money back, or that the company can even sustain itself. Like, if you look at a lot of the great video game names of the past – Microprose, Maxis, Sierra, and so forth – most of them have gone out of business or been devoured and assimilated by larger corporate entities. Blizzard is still around, but it was eaten by Activision.  I think it’s plain that Blizzard’s glory days are past, and the company is sort of a zombiefied shell of its former self.

Nevertheless, Diablo II Resurrected is a final echo of Blizzard’s good old days. Of course, they did outsource the game’s development to a company called Vicarious Visions, which was clearly a good choice because the core game itself is pretty good. It feels exactly like Diablo II but with modern graphics and some of the rough edges sanded off. I could tell it was just like the original because I stayed up way too late trying to find the Black Marsh waypoint so I could save my game and go to bed.

But! A caveat. I only play Diablo II in single-player mode on Switch. (I rarely play multiplayer games because games are where I go when I’m tired of people and want to recharge for a bit.) There have been widespread reports that the multiplayer and online for Diablo II Resurrected have been horrible, which makes sense, because while Vicarious Visions made the game, Blizzard maintains the server backend, and as we’ve mentioned above, Blizzard’s glory days are long past. (And it seems that the reward of Vicarious Visions for making Diablo II Resurrected is to be eaten by Activision.)

So Diablo II Resurrected is worth playing, but only if you play in single-player mode.

Let us turn to a happier topic – Metroid Dread, which I can recommend without reservation! I really like it, and frankly think it’s a masterpiece.

It’s a 2D sidescroller game in the vein of the old Metroid and Castlevania games. It plays a great deal like Super Metroid for the SNES and Samus Returns for the 3DS, but much more smoothly and with better graphics. Like, wall-jumping in Super Metroid is difficult to time properly. In Dread, it’s quick and fluid. While the old Metroid challenge remains, the in-game map, accompanied by little animated tutorials that appear every time Samus gets a new ability.

A new feature is the EMMI robots, who guard specific areas and start hunting Samus every time she enters that area. They’re fast, quick, smart, and hard to fool, and they can one-hit kill Samus. Admittedly, the EMMI robots look like fancy can openers, maybe high-end ones produced by a Scandinavian kitchenware company with a name like Sigurd & Bjornsson. But once they get moving, they’re really scary, because they’re fancy can openers that want to open up poor Samus.

Anyway, my conclusion is that Metroid Dread is an instant classic, and if you’re enjoyed Metroid/Castlevania type games in the past, you owe it to yourself to give it a play.

-JM

The Spice Must Flow, Part III

I’ve mentioned that I’ve never seen the 1984 version of DUNE all the way through, so I watched it last night.

I’d say that 1984 DUNE was an ambitious failure. It was probably doomed from the start, given how troubled its production was.

The biggest problem was the movie’s length – the version I watched was 2 hours and 15 minutes long. That isn’t nearly enough time to tell a story with the length and complexity of DUNE in a satisfactory manner. By contrast, 2021 DUNE was 2 hours and 35 minutes long, and only covered about forty percent of the book. This unfortunately means that the final 45 minutes of 1984 DUNE kind of watch like an accelerated Cliff’s Notes version of the story. So I think all the movie’s problems stem from that collapsed length. 1984 DUNE also spent way too much time in ponderous exposition of the backstory, which 2021 DUNE deftly handled with a few lines.

1984 DUNE also changed the story in significant ways – the ending, for example, where Paul uses his powers to make it rain on Arrakis. That’s neat and tidy, but it completely defeats the point of the book. It would be a bit like if the film version of THE LORD OF THE RINGS had Frodo calmly drop the Ring into Mount Doom and stroll away without any inner struggle.

The Wikipedia entry for the movie notes that critics “heavily criticized the screenwriting, lack of faithfulness to the source material, pacing, direction, and editing, although the visual effects, musical score, acting, and action sequences were praised”, which I think is a fair summary.

In the end, I will rewatch 2021 DUNE, and go see the second part when it comes out in 2023. 1984 DUNE is the kind of movie I will watch once out of intellectual curiosity and then never see again.

Though if the 2021 version of Baron Harkonnen saw how he was portrayed in the 1984 movie, he would probably have David Lynch assassinated.

-JM

get a free short story when GHOST IN THE SUN comes out!

I’m now writing GHOST SPIRE, a Caina short story. Newsletter subscribers will receive a free ebook copy of GHOST SPIRE when GHOST IN THE SUN comes out next month, so this is an excellent time to subscribe to my newsletter!

-JM

GHOST IN THE SUN rough draft done!

I am pleased to report that the rough draft of GHOST IN THE SUN is done!

I’m now working on GHOST SPIRE, a free short story my newsletter subscribers will get when GHOST IN THE SUN comes out. Be sure to subscribe today!

Meanwhile, let’s share the cover image:

-JM

The Pulp Writer Show, Episode 93: 14 Ways To Keep Smartphones From Ruining The Plot Of Your Novel

In this week’s episode, we look at 14 ways to keep smartphones from ruining the plot of your novel. Romeo & Juliet wouldn’t have been a tragedy if Juliet could have texted Romeo, after all, and we’ll share some tips & tricks to avoid smartphone-induced plot holes.

I also answer reader questions and discuss the new Dune movie.

As always, you can listen to the show on Libsyn, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Amazon Music.

-JM

The Spice Must Flow, Part II

Yesterday I passed the 80,000 word mark of GHOST IN THE SUN, so as a reward I went to see the DUNE movie.

I’ve mentioned before that I read DUNE twice and didn’t 100% get it either time. Consequently, I liked the book, but I didn’t love it the way I loved, say THE LORD OF THE RINGS or the original Sherlock Holmes stories or THE THRAWN TRILOGY. Nonetheless, I was excited to see the movie because I was intellectually curious how the filmmakers managed to turn this extremely complicated (and people who love DUNE will agree it is extremely complicated) book into a movie.

I’m pleased to say that the filmmakers delivered. DUNE is excellent. The pacing is quite slow in the first half, but it is in the book as well, and the movie has the advantage of absolutely gorgeous scenery. The director apparently spent weeks flying around in a helicopter picking the perfect desert filming locations, and the work payed off. The movie does a good job of explaining the complicated aspects of the DUNE world – shields, spice, FTL travel, the Bene Gesserit, stillsuits, and so forth – without clumsy and heavy exposition. For example, having Paul and Gurney engage in a practice duel at the start of the movie demonstrated how shields worked without a word of dialogue on the topic. It also did a good job of paring away some of the complexity of the plot while retaining the core story, a necessity in any movie adaptation. (This is, for example, why Prince Imrahil or Elrond’s sons do not appear in the movie version of THE RETURN OF THE KING.)

The actors were perfectly cast – after seeing Rebecca Ferguson in MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, I thought she would make a good Lady Jessica, and she did, but all the actors disappeared into their roles. Oscar Isaac finally got to be in a space movie worthy of his ability. Stellan Skarsgard’s version of Baron Harkonnen was particularly creepy, showing both the Baron’s depravity and his deep intelligence at the same time. I wasn’t sure Timothee Chalamet would work as Paul Atreides, but he does, especially when he gets angry and you start to see glimpses of who Paul becomes in the second half of the book.

The soundtrack was excellent and fit the movie well. Hans Zimmer also did the soundtrack for NO TIME TO DIE, so he’s having a good year.

So, to sum up, I think DUNE is well worth seeing and I hope Part 2 gets made.

-JM