Michael Offutt's Blog, page 63

The February 2019 question from the Insecure Writer's Support Group asks what other creative outlets do I have?

The first Wednesday of every month is officially Insecure Writer’s Support Group day. Post your thoughts on your own blog. Talk about your doubts and the fears you have conquered. Discuss your struggles and triumphs. Offer a word of encouragement for others who are struggling. Visit others in the group and connect with your fellow writer - aim for a dozen new people each time - and return comments. This group is all about connecting! Go HERE to learn more.
And foregoing all of that above, you answer the monthly question (which I oftentimes do these days). 
February 6 question - Besides writing what other creative outlets do you have?
I draw and I play tabletop roleplaying games, which kinda seems to crossover with both drawing and writing? Inevitably, tabletop roleplaying games benefit greatly from the more props you can bring to the table, and drawings and maps and things like that seem to be greatly appreciated by "most" people.
As far as drawing (and by extension just art in general) goes, the biggest challenge to this is space and light. I need lots of light to be able to perceive the colors in which I want to work. Additionally, a lot of the time, it takes so much effort to get everything arranged from having been put away, that there's this desire to just leave it all out. But if you don't clean it up, then it's all just cluttering up my living space.
So foregoing any kind of studio which I set up in my home that has access to lots of natural light (this would mean a pretty major remodel), writing ends up being the outlet I choose the most. All I need for that is a computer with a word-processing program on it.
I'm betting that this is gonna be a pretty common pursuit, so I'll have to read some of the other IWSG posts out there and see how many other writers also draw. I'm betting that the percentage is quite high. And yeah...Alex, I already know you play music :)

How To Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World pushes the message that men will always lose their best friends when a woman comes along to marry them.

This weekend I got a somewhat rare early access ticket for one screening of How To Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World. I'm going to review it now, and this post may have a few spoilers in the sense that I'm examining it for what it is: the end of a trilogy. In other words I'm asking myself and others who read my blog if this really was a good ending for a trilogy.

So here we go.

First off, I want to say that How To Train Your Dragon 3: The Hidden World is a good movie. It has a solid plot arc, it advances the story from the previous installments, and it provides a conclusion that is indisputable in its finality. I mean...there's literally nowhere else for this franchise to go. It's done, nail in coffin, so to speak.

My big question about this is why? Maybe Dreamworks was just tired of doing this series, even though it was a money-maker for them? It sure seemed that way in the telling of this particular show. We get two big time jumps in this movie: Hiccup marries Astrid (which you know was going to happen), and you see Hiccup with his kids and Astrid at the end of the movie visiting the dragons that (spoiler warning again) they set free to live in the Hidden World that they found in their youth. All the dragons go away to live in this world, including Toothless and his mate. Poignant maybe? But why? If the point of the show was to be about humans and dragons living together, the ultimate lesson we learned is that humans and dragons were incompatible (in this fictionalized universe) and that ultimately it was the humans that caused this to pass. It's a weird thing to be harping on, and it makes for a kind of strange tone as the movie repeats the same theme that you've seen before: bad human threatens dragons yet again and bad human gets defeated but this time there's a permanent way to give dragons a home so that we can't use this plot again.

Additionally, this movie shifts its protagonist from Hiccup (who is front and center in both movies) to him taking a backseat to Toothless courting his mate (the Light Fury you see in the trailer). I'm sure this will be very popular with kids (as it probably should be). But there's probably thirty minutes in this film with no dialogue. It's just Toothless doing cute things with the Light Fury and because we cannot speak dragon, it's like watching cat videos of felines playing with each other with no narration for thirty minutes (there is good music). It's kind of the same thing that 2001: A Space Odyssey did with its enormous expose's of space travel...you got musical overlay because in space, there is no sound.

The definition of poignant is a thing that evokes a keen sense of sadness or regret. I felt that in walking out of the theater after having watched this final installment of the HTTYD movie franchise. I felt it mostly because the character of Hiccup was so young when they just decided to time jump, have him marry Astrid, time jump again to middle age with kids that are probably 8 and 10 years old only to see him take a boat to where the Hidden World is located in the hopes of seeing Toothless one last time (which does happen as Toothless is playing with his own litter of kids at this point). And at first, Toothless doesn't even recognize him.

I'm not sure why we needed to see any of that. Maybe it's because there needed to be absolutely no sequels for this thing. Maybe it's because the creators were tired of trying to come up with stories that might be good and worth animating. But as the series ended, I have to think that the final message (and point) of the entire story is that:

1) Humans don't live well with other intelligent species and probably never will (except for maybe a rarified few).

2) Men will always lose their best friends when a woman comes along to marry them (to the point of not even being able to recognize them as Toothless did at first).

3) A woman is worth the sacrifice that the man makes of his best friends because, hey, you get kids.

These are weird messages to be pushing from a series that I very much enjoyed in the first two installments. Additionally, the lack of a fresh story (just more of the same from HTTYD 2) seemed just a bit disappointing.

I would still recommend seeing the movie; it is a lot of fun.

The Expanse Profiles: Winston Duarte

Today is my last profile that I plan to write for The Expanse storyline. I couldn't find any illustrations of him online, and thus far in the series, he hasn't been cast. But he's really the biggest bad guy of the entire series because of what he ends up doing with stolen protomolecule technology.

We first meet Winston Duarte in Nemesis Games. He's formerly an admiral of the Martian Congressional Republic Navy, and he has the soul of a dictator/strong man the same as others of that ilk who are alive and oppressing people in today's modern world. In Nemesis Games, he is commander on Hecate Base, and he kind of gets mixed up in arming Marco Inaros' Free Navy, however, he does not directly reveal any involvement with all that as the distractions that Inaros' is affecting throughout Sol system draw eyes away from the stuff that he's doing.

Duarte has his own long-term goal with regard to the emergence of the Ring Gates: he basically wants to become the first emperor of a galactic-level civilization. To do this, he pilfers some ships and military tech from Mars, and then he finds a system within the Ring Gate complex that offers a planet with what looks like ship-building facilities in orbit around the planet (built by aliens). He then sails into that ring, names it Laconia, and tells people to leave him alone (under pain of death). Unfortunately, that's exactly what the people of Sol System do. They leave him alone for thirty years.

In that time, he experiments on people with a protomolecule sample that he stole from a safe in Fred Johnson's room at Tycho Station, basically turning them into vomit zombies. It's very reminiscent of the stuff you hear that Nazi's did to Jewish people held in concentration camps during World War 2. In the thirty year span where he and his cronies are left entirely to themselves, he institutes a totalitarian government where, if you are guilty of any crimes, then you get turned over to the doctors who are free to experiment on your flesh with protomolecule stuff. It's quite grotesque and ensures almost total obedience.

Additionally, the scientists on Laconia construct three new warships from protomolecule/alien technology. By the time they are done, these things are so advanced that nothing that the Sol system has can even deal with them should they go to war. And that's exactly what happens. One of Duarte's hand-picked commanders takes a battleship into the Medina Station Slow Zone and vaporizes a ship as an example to anyone else that would possibly attack him. When they don't listen, and attack this new warship, all of their weapons are completely useless. It's the same as throwing small rocks and sticks at a modern tank. There's just nothing they can do. And the weapon that the new warship employs uses powerful magnetic fields...so powerful that they can spaghettify hydrogen atoms. So yeah...nothing survives.

Well, the warship (having conquered Medina Station and the slow zone space) sails on into the Sol System. All of Earth's fleet, the Martian fleet, and the Belter Fleet attack the new warship. They even hit it with a nuclear weapon. Nothing...nada. Then it destroys a few ships and asks for a system-wide surrender. Being smart, the President of the O.P.A. stands down. And that's basically how Duarte conquers everything and forges the "Laconian Empire." It's not like anyone can say no to him and expect to live. His one warship can destroy an entire planet with billions of people on it the same as one person stepping on a bug. It's kind of ridiculous, and it holds many parallels to the uphill battle all the people without dragons face in A Game of Thrones by HBO. The dragons are basically super weapons that no army can deal with. That's what's going on here. Duarte has the "dragons" of The Expanse universe.

Also, Duarte has the same hubris that a lot of authoritarian leaders seem to share. In Persepolis Rising, he's using protomolecule technology developed by his scientists to give him everlasting life, and (at least from Holden's perspective when he sees him at the end of the book because he's taken prisoner) Duarte doesn't even look human anymore. I think Captain Holden says something like, "You're using that shit on yourself? What happened to you?" So yeah...there's that.

Here's a few great quotes from Persepolis Rising, which is the book where Winston Duarte really gets going:

"We have expended two-thirds of our rail-gun ammunition," the weapons tech announced. "Shall I maintain fire?" "Yes," Drummer said. "Then start putting chairs in the launcher. We hit that thing until we're down to pillows and beer."

"I'm as surprised as you are," Avasarala said. "Though I feel like I shouldn't be. I actually read history. It's like reading prophecy, you know."

"Prepare us for what?" Holden asked. "To poke gods with a sharp stick?" "No, Captain Holden. No sticks," Duarte said. "When you fight gods, you storm heaven."

"The sad fact of the human species that High Consul Duarte understood so well was that you could never overcome tribalism and jingoism with an argument. Tribalism was an irrational position, and it was impossible to defeat an irrational position with a rational argument. And so, instead of presenting a logical plan for why humanity needed to give up the old national and cultural divides and become a single unified species, the high consul obeyed the old forms that everyone would understand, and went to war. Thankfully, a brief one.”
“It’s the reward of old age,” Avasarala said. “You live long enough, and you can watch everything you worked for become irrelevant.”
I'll be back to my regular random topics on blogs this Monday. Thanks for reading and sharing my passion for The Expanse.

The Expanse Profiles: Praxidike Meng

I found this really cool drawing by artist Dana-Redde on DeviantArt. You can see more of their
drawings HERE. As you can see, the artist has done portraits of all the major characters featured in The Expanse books (although they may be a wee bit cartoony). Meng (my subject for today) is seen in the lower right.

Praxidike or just "Prax" for short (as he's called that both in the chapterheads that bear his point of view and in conversation) was an unusual main character. For one, he's really not all that exciting. However the few skills that he has and the plot device of his missing daughter make for some fascinating storytelling.

In the television adaptation, Prax is played by actor Terry Chen, and his picture is embedded in this article below and to the left. Prax is a botanist on Ganymede station, and he has a daughter who needs a regular dose of medicine to live. When she goes missing, he hires Holden's crew to find her. It turns out that Mei (Prax's daughter) was kidnapped by the people working for ProtoGen, and they are using children this time as hosts for samples of the protomolecule. The fact that they were on Ganymede to begin with leads to an incident where a human-protomolecule hybrid attacked soldiers from Mars and the United Nations, killing everyone but Roberta Draper. The attack and the radio blackout was misinterpreted, and this led to a battle above and on Ganymede that destroyed a crucial dome and infrastructure for the manufacture of food by growing plants, and it led to catastrophic system wide failure from this important space station.

Meng does get his daughter back, and it happens before she can be infected by the protomolecule. Additionally, Prax's insights into botany help Holden figure out things about the protomolecule's behavior that they didn't know before. Prax does become a crucial figure in rebuilding Ganymede station after the attack. In so doing, he creates a kind of yeast "food source" that is way more effective at feeding starving populations than anything else that people are using. He sends that biological technology to Earth (which is desperate to feed billions of people) and in so doing, probably saves many people in the human race.

In reading The Expanse books, the Prax chapters weren't the most entertaining ones, but they were an excellent way to deliver a lot of technically dense information to the reader on how things were supposed to work in this universe. In other words, he was a great character to use for information dumps.

Coming up on Friday: Profile of Winston Duarte

The Expanse Profiles: Clarissa Mao

On The Expanse television adaptation, the character of Clarissa "Peaches" Mao is played by actress Nadine Nicole. There really isn't a good art piece done by an online artist (at least I couldn't find one on DeviantArt), so I just skipped finding one and included the one at right so you know who I'm talking about.

Clarissa is the daughter of Jules-Pierre Mao and the sister of Julie Mao (who is the protomolecule-infected person responsible for setting off the destruction of Eros Station and who consequently saves Earth by piloting Eros Station into a collision with Venus). Jules-Pierre Mao is a famous and very rich scientist and psychopath who thinks that the protomolecule is the best thing ever, and that it represents untapped wonders for the human race (no matter what the cost).

It's clear in the story that Clarissa has a lot of family baggage. Jules-Pierre Mao loved Julie way more, and Julie was always the center of attention despite the fact that she ran away from home to live in the asteroid belt and essentially disowned herself of the family wealth. However, when Jules-Pierre Mao's crimes finally caught up with him (mostly due to the actions of Captain Holden but really coming from Chrisjen Avasarala's political power), the wealth and power the Mao's enjoyed all ended. Clarissa's family was essentially, completely destroyed, and their reputation marked them as "pariah's." This made Clarissa very angry, and she set off for the stars meaning to avenge herself namely on Captain Holden and everyone he loved.

Along the way, she indulged her psychopathic side and got implants that gave her the strength of ten really strong guys so that when she got into a scrap, she killed whoever dared to raise their hands against her (or stand in the way of her plans). She killed multiple people, even keeping one person's body in an oversized suitcase that she managed to squeeze him into so that she could put him in a locker (and this was a friend by the way). She engineered the destruction of an entire starship and its crew in an attempt to incriminate Captain Holden of the Rocinante. When she tries to kill Holden's crew directly by flying to their disabled ship, she gets stopped right before she can kill Naomi (Holden's lover) and then she's arrested.

That isn't the end of her story. Clarissa (after the Ring's open) is taken as a prisoner to Earth where Amos (when he's visiting Earth in Nemesis Games) goes to visit her. That's where the "Peaches" nickname comes from. Amos just likes calling her that, and it becomes his pet name for her in every conversation that they have. I think it's mostly because it's obvious that Amos loves her in a way that only Amos understands, and that she's pretty and soft to look at, but at the same time, she's an incredibly dangerous serial killer psychopath person.

Clarissa ends up making a home on The Rocinante and Holden and the crew make peace with her because the time in prison, the destruction of Earth, and everything that they've been through just all seems to bring out the humanity in everyone. She lives with them for thirty years (there's a thirty year time jump between Babylon's Ashes and Persepolis Rising). When she finally meets her end on Medina Station--helping Naomi and others get away from the center of the Laconian occupation--I gotta say that it really got to me. As she's dying, she says to Naomi, "I'm a monster." Of course, without context, Naomi didn't understand what Clarissa was saying (and it goes back to a thing that Amos and Clarissa shared together). Clarissa had said in that earlier conversation (in a prior book), "I have killed. But I am not a killer." And there was this whole thing about her not being a monster just because she killed people. Only, at her very end (after having just killed somebody), Clarissa realized that all of the years she'd spent living with regret, doing quiet penance for the lives she'd ended, didn't really matter because killing the last guy a few seconds ago really felt fun.

Peaches was a spectacular character that kind of came out of nowhere, and it's one of the reasons I love this show and these books so much.

Coming up on Wednesday: Profile of Praxideke Meng

The Expanse Profiles: Detective Josephus Miller

At right is a picture by an artist called "Acedhampir" of Detective Josephus Miller, who is a crucial character in James S.A. Corey's The Expanse. If you like the art, you can see more of it HERE. 

You first get introduced to Detective Miller (who is described looking pretty much as the artist as pictured here) in the first book of The Expanse called Leviathan Wakes. It also happens at about that same point in the television adaptation.

As far as heroes go, he's a bit of a Sam Spade (from The Maltese Falcon). He's a tough talker straight from the pages of a 1930's noir pulp fiction. He's got that same kind of tough personality that you get from Humphrey Bogart's character (in that famous film), and in a different time, he'd be smoking cigarettes constantly and calling women by the names "dame" and "broad."

Pretty early on, he gets hired to track down a missing rich girl by the name of Juliette Mao. In doing so, he ends up falling in love with her even though he's never met her. Going through all of her private things gives him a mental image of this "ideal woman" and he kind of tortures himself trying to unwind what exactly happened to her. Because of this, he starts seeing her when he's alone and even has conversations with her "ghost."

Eventually, he tracks Juliette to an apartment on Eros station, and in so doing he also joins up with Captain Holden of The Rocinante. This sets off a chain of events where they are attacked by forces friendly to a corporate interest that is doing experiments on the alien protomolecule (of which Julie is an unwilling participant). When they find her in her apartment, the protomolecule has already overrun her body and is exploding outward in black tendrils that quickly endanger the station. But (unbeknownst to Holden and Miller), the corporation has determined that Eros station and its fifteen million inhabitants would be a perfect test area for the protomolecule. Miller and Holden barely escape the station alive while most of the other inhabitants suffer the most gruesome deaths at the hands of the protomolecule (which turns them into a kind of undead).

Shortly after that, Miller returns to Eros Station and convinces what remains of Juliette Mao (which is at the center of the station and in control of the entire thing through the protomolecule network) to crash the station into Venus instead of Earth. In a strange kind of dream, Juliette Mao was going home and taking the protomolecule with her, which would have wiped out all life on Earth.

With Miller's death, the protomolecule somehow co-opted his image and his personality and mixed it with its technology and used the image of Miller to contact Holden and give him advice and instructions. These came in particularly useful in Nemesis Games, even though a lot of what happened in Nemesis Games was a direct result of The Rocinante having a small amount of protomolecule on board (that the crew didn't know about). This small sample started to awaken all the alien technology on the planet Ilus, to the point that it endangered the lives of every living thing on the planet.

In The Expanse television adaptation, Detective Josephus Miller is played by actor Thomas Jane. He's pictured at left. I think the actor does a great job of portraying Detective Miller, because he successfully channels the 1930's gumshoe detective pretty well. 

Coming up on Monday: Profile of Clarissa Mao

The Expanse Profiles: Bobbie Draper

At right is a fanart picture drawn by JujuFei on DeviantArt of the character Bobbie Draper in The Expanse series. HERE is a link to the page where I took the art from. In the book, the authors describe Bobbie Draper as being of Samoan heritage, and they use this as one reason for her being incredibly tall and strong. I guess we are all used to thinking of Dwayne Johnson whenever anyone says "Samoan" so it's a pretty effective racial stereotype as it leaves little need to explain anything. I'm also not positive on how "true" it is, but it definitely works for the character as she's a kind of female version of all Dwayne Johnson's roles wound into one.

Bobbie is a Martian marine and former Gunnery Sergeant. The low gravity of Mars hasn't affected her because of the intense training that she puts herself through. Additionally, the books go out of their way to point out that Bobbie wears an older model of the Martian power armor because it fits really well (unlike the newer ones). It seems somehow appropriate in this particular illustration that she be wrapping her hands with the kind of tape you see boxers using. Her character is essentially about fighting and killing and she's a weapons expert as well as a damn good detective and overall leader. She spots everything. When she goes to work for Chrisjen Avasarala, she figures out pretty early that Chrisjen's assistant is up to no good, tracks him to a clandestine meeting, and then exposes him to Avasarala who promptly fires him.

The actress who plays Bobbie Draper in the television series is Frankie Adams. I think she does a pretty good job of playing the rather stoic and incredibly athletic Martian soldier, and she does come across as a badass, which (I think) is the most important aspect of this character. In Persepolis Rising, there's a fight between Amos and Bobbie that almost kills both of them when Amos turns to Bobbie and says, "Babs, when did you become such a pussy?" She promptly begins to put the smack down on Amos (who is trying to kill her) until he's bleeding and has got nothing left to even pick himself up off the floor.

In The Expanse books (and some in the series), Bobbie is either in the right place at the right time, or she accomplishes some incredible feats. Here's a rundown of things I noted:

1) She faces down and destroys single-handedly a protomolecule monster.
2) She takes over as Captain for The Rocinante when Holden retires, and later she becomes captain of a Laconian ship stolen from Medina Station.
3) She beats up Amos, which no one has ever been able to do.
4) She's the person who first realizes that Fred Johnson is dead during the high G maneuvers in Nemesis Games.
5) She saves Chrisjen Avasarala's life when the yacht she's in (owned by Jules Pierre Mao) takes her prisoner.

I look forward to seeing what Bobbie Draper does with her new "protomolecule" designed space ship when the next book in The Expanse, called Tiamat's Wrath, comes out in March.

Coming up on Friday: Profile of Detective Josephus Miller

The Expanse Profiles: Fred Johnson

There aren't any real good pictures of Fred Johnson that artists have done, so I'll just include the one for the SyFy series. Here, Fred is played by actor Chad Coleman who we last saw on the series, The Walking Dead.

Fred Johnson is the defacto leader of the Outer Planetary Alliance (O.P.A.) because he's the guy in charge of Tycho Station. It's established pretty early on (in the books) that Tycho Station is where "the impossible" stuff happens. If you were to build a space elevator for example, it would occur at Tycho Station. They have the best space engineers and the most talent, and Tycho Station itself is a wonder of the futuristic world.

It's there at Tycho Station that the largest plot device is assembled (called The Nauvoo). It's an enormous generation ship with its own spin gravity core (it's so big in fact that it is essentially a space station with thrust). It was commissioned and paid for by the Mormons, who are wanting to use it to sail to the stars. With space being so big and speed being so slow, it's obvious that to reach the nearest star will take lifetimes. So The Nauvoo is built for that...for people to be born, live their entire lives, and die on the ship while sailing to their destination. Only it never quite gets there. At first it is used in a last ditch effort to destroy Eros Station once the protomolecule kills the 15 million people on it that call Eros home and is clearly targeting Earth. It fails because the protomolecule doesn't obey the laws of physics, and decides to go to Venus instead. The O.P.A. goes after The Nauvoo, captures it, and declares it to be maritime "booty" since it would (otherwise) be a complete loss (having been commandeered in an act of war). Then they rename it The Behemoth, and make it crucial to their fleet until after the Ring Gates open. Once this happens, The Behemoth is instructed to take up residence inside the Slow Zone (the space inside the Ring Gates) and is renamed "Medina Station." By being at the center of the Slow Zone, it is well-placed to control all traffic going to and from the 1300 habitable worlds.

Fred Johnson also has a nickname. He's called The Butcher of Anderson Station because Fred was responsible for massacring a group of Belter civilians on Anderson Station when it was taken by insurgents. The battle earned him fame in the inner planets and the Medal of Freedom (the UN Marines' highest honor). But it also made him infamous and hated among the O.P.A.

Fred was a puppeteer in a lot of the events that took place in the books. He repeatedly fixes Holden's ship, The Rocinante. He allows Michio Pa safe passage to Ceres station, which sets off a chain of events that undermine Marco Inaros' power (with his Free Navy). And it's through a meeting of OPA leaders that he calls together (but doesn't make it because he dies to high-g in a battle with the Pella en route to the meeting on Tycho) that Holden has his first real introduction to Duarte (the biggest villain of the series).

Coming up next Wednesday: Profile of Bobbie Draper (I won't be blogging on Monday because it is a holiday.)

The Expanse Profiles: Chrisjen Avasarala

In the Expanse television series we meet the diplomat Chrisjen Avasarala in the first episode. However, she doesn't actually make her appearance until book two of the Expanse published works entitled Caliban's War. I was kind of surprised by this, as I thought she would have made an appearance in the story much sooner.

Chrisjen is light on description, as are most of the details in The Expanse books. The dialogue does all the heavy lifting, which ends up being a decent tool through which to visualize people as it allows your imagination to fill in the details. The things that we do know about her are that she's 1) a skinny and short grandmother, 2) she's Indian by decent, and 3) she swears like a sailor (preferring the "f" bomb to just about any other swear word). You kind of need to get used to seeing it on the page in any chapter that you read.

Chrisjen starts out as the Deputy Undersecretary of the United Nations, which is the second most powerful position on Earth. This was a decent starting point for this character and made it so that she could ascend to Secretary-General of the United Nations in Nemesis Games after Earth is destroyed by rocks hurled by belter terrorists from outer space. An Artist by the name of TenshiRisu visualized Chrisjen Avasarala as looking like this picture (inset above and to the right). I don't think that the artist did a very good job of nailing the character. For one, Chrisjen is always described as wearing these bold and beautiful sari's. Second, she's always eating pistachio nuts, so there should have been something along those lines in the picture. If you are intrigued, you can see more of TenshiRisu's art HERE.

In the television series adaptation of The Expanse, Chrisjen Avasarala is played by actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, and I think she does a fine job of bringing the character to life. This is what she looks like on the small screen (at left).

Chrisjen Avasarala is my favorite character in the series for a number of reasons. She's incredibly smart, and she knows all the power plays to be made by the different factions in the solar system at all times, and she's able to gauge how dangerous any situation is with extreme accuracy. Additionally, she has some of the best dialogue that I've ever seen. Here's a sample of some of the things she's said.

To Bobbie Draper (a tall Martian marine): "Would you sit down? I feel like I'm at the bottom of a fucking well whenever I talk to you."

“Holden’s an idiot, but he’s not stupid. If he realizes he’s being watched, he’ll start broadcasting pictures of all our Ganymede sources or something. Do not underestimate his capacity to fuck things up.”
“It'd be a better world if there was always at least one right answer instead of a bucket of fucked."
"I feel like I went away for one day and when I came back, everyone was speaking Mandarin."
Chrisjen always has a way of cutting to the gist of any situation, and I look forward to seeing Shohreh Aghdashloo in the role (in the upcoming seasons on Amazon) as she ascends to power during the biggest crisis the Earth has ever seen.
Coming up on Friday: Profile of Fred Johnson

The Expanse Profiles: Alex Kamal

Alex Kamal is the last of the "main" crew of The Rocinante that I'm profiling here (and my knowledge is based on the books and on the television adaptation of those books). To the right, I've included an illustration I found of Alex Kamal on a DeviantArt page. It's drawn by a person that goes by the name "BlackPandaOps" and you can see more of their work HERE.

For pretty much the first three books, and well into the television adaptation, this character is kind of flat. He's basically your "hot shot pilot" stereotype that you've seen in a half dozen other space opera stories ranging from Star Wars to Battlestar Galactica. In the television adaptation, he is brought to life by actor Cas Anvar, who is a Canadian. I discovered that he speaks English, French, Persian, Arabic, Urdu, and Spanish. I thought that was pretty amazing. At left is a picture of the actor playing the part of Alex Kamal.
As you can see, the illustration by the artist above is deeply influenced by the portrayal by the actor. I couldn't really find any online that weren't influenced by Cas Anvar, which makes me believe that the television adaptation has probably brought in legions of new fans (like myself) for this series.

Alex Kamal, Like Naomi and Amos, all met Captain Holden on the doomed Canterbury, which (as I previously mentioned in another post) was a corporate ice hauler grabbing spacebergs from Saturn's rings and then making the voyage to a station where it could be used as a source of fresh water. He's a Martian, and because of this, there's a kind of "instant connection" that builds with Bobbie Draper once she's introduced in the series (Bobbie is a Martian marine and Alex is former military as well).

Alex gets fleshed out in the book Nemesis Games pretty thoroughly, with hints of his back story in the previous four books. He self-describes himself as a terrible husband and talks of the main woman in his life with glowing colors as she pretty much faithfully stuck by him, even though he spent many months away from home working as a pilot for the military. When that all ended, and he could finally stay at home, he actually didn't like being at home. So without his wife's knowledge, he went and got another job as a pilot and walked away from their marriage. Needless to say, he's not a great communicator (or even a good one for that matter). There's a scene in the books when he tries to patch things up with his ex-wife, and it realistically does not go well at all even with his apologies and whatnot. This is really how it should be, and I was surprised that the writers 1) went there and 2) that it was such a shut down with incredible finality to it. Also, kudos to the writers for Alex to get absolutely no closure on that part of his life; this kind of thing happens all the time to real people. That it happened here just makes me like the story even more.

Alex's piloting skills, kind of like the protomolecule whenever it shows up, are kind of a deus ex machina. If the situation looks hopeless, he can kind of fly them out of it. Although to be fair, he's also the one that killed Fred Johnson unintentionally, because the incredible forces he generated while making banks and turns while trying to outrun rail gun armaments and torpedoes were too much for the old guy (who ended up stroking out in his crash chair). I'm really looking forward to where they go with this character once Tiamat's Wrath gets published in March. Bobbie Draper is now captain to a ship built with alien technology, and I bet Alex gets to fly it. That's going to be a lot of fun to read about.

Overall, Alex Kamal is that one character that always seems to pop up in these types of stories: he's a broken man whose only true love is being in the pilot's chair, but who also is attractive enough that women end up in his bed for a short while, but a relationship just never works out.

Coming up on Wednesday: Profile of Chrisjen Avasarala