Michael Offutt's Blog, page 64

The Expanse Profiles: Amos Burton

When I'm explaining the character of Amos to friends who ask me about The Expanse, I refer to him as the lovable but psychopathic engineer. Because The Expanse authors (they write under the name James S.A. Corey) are kind of light on description preferring instead to let the dialogue and other people's observations of a character carry through in their point-of-view, I've got a simultaneously vivid idea of what he should look like and a vague-ish idea of what he should look like. At right is an artist sketch, and it differs from what you'll see of Amos in the SyFy/Amazon television adaptation. However, he's got the crazy eyes, which (to the credit of the artist) is pretty amazing. The artist, by the way, is named Tabitha Drambel and you can see her DeviantArt page HERE.

In the SyFy series (and I assume they are keeping the same casting for the Amazon series) the role is played by actor Wes Chatham. Here's a picture of him so you can see that he also channels the "crazy eyes" rather well. So who is this guy? Well he's a really good engineer and he knows how to keep The Rocinante in really good shape as it flies through space going from place to place and getting into dogfights with other ships depending on where you are in the storyline.

The authors are careful to describe Amos as "the last man standing." What they mean by this is that in any catastrophe, Amos is so tough that he would be the last one still alive while everyone else is dead. He also knows that he's a monster, having little or no feelings about anyone or anything, and he latched onto Captain Holden, because he is smart enough to know that on his own, he is capable of doing a lot of evil. Captain Holden has a very strong moral compass, and Amos willfully acquiesces to Holden's judgement because he knows (and believes strongly) that Holden will always do the right thing. Thus far in the books, he has not been wrong.

Amos really starts to shine in the book Nemesis Games. This is where I first noticed him getting a lot of his own chapters, and they are used to follow him as he visits Earth (where he hasn't been for many years) and to honor someone that he cared for that had died. He also reconnects briefly with some thugs and a drug kingpin that he worked alongside in Baltimore many years prior (Amos still has a formidable reputation). The drug kingpin is holed up in a sizeable arcology, which is a futuristic structure that supports a city-sized population all within one building.

While on Earth, Amos also visits with Clarissa Mao in prison (his nickname for Clarissa is "Peaches.") It isn't really clear if he loves her, but I kind of think that he loves Clarissa just about as much as a psychopath is able to do. To you and I, it wouldn't seem like love. But it's written in such a way as to hint rather strongly that there is a tremendous bond between them that goes beyond respect. In many ways, Clarissa is just as much a monster as Amos (if not more so), so maybe it's a bond that comes from being a fellow psychopath. When the rocks start falling on Earth, and the apocalypse starts, we get to see how Earth is affected through Amos's point of view. Escaping Earth is harrowing and there are many edge-of-your-seat moments that I can't wait to see in the television adaptation.

I think the funnest Amos chapter, however, happened in Persepolis Rising. Late in the book, Amos calls Bobbie (a Martian warrior) a "pussy," and it starts off a fist battle between the huge Samoan woman and Amos that is clearly "to the death." But she's so powerful and strong that he can't kill her no matter how hard she tries, and she eventually beats the crap out of him to the point that he can barely move. It's super therapeutic for Amos, because he realizes that maybe he's not the last one standing in any fight. Additionally, it pretty much solidifies Bobbie Draper as the incredible character that she's built up to be throughout the entire series. Yeah, I love Bobbie Draper. She's just too cool.

Monday: Profile of Alex Kamal

The Expanse Profiles: Naomi Nagata

 At right is an artist illustration of Naomi Nagata, who is the second officer on The Rocinante as well as Captain Jim Holden's long-term girlfriend. The artist that drew the picture is JujuFei, and you can look at more of her work HERE. As far as the books go, it's not how I would have pictured Naomi. But I think most people are not going to draw "Belters" correctly, because the author James S.A. Corey describes them as having overly large heads. When I brought this up to my community D&D group/collective, they argued that zero gravity would make your head swell disproportionate to the size of your body. In other words, Close Encounters of the Third Kind got it right when they had all these big-headed skinny aliens. That's what humans would look like were we to live our entire lives outside a natural gravity well.

In The Expanse television series, Naomi is played by actress Dominique Tipper. She's pictured below and on the left. Naomi served with Holden as a part of the crew of The Canterbury. As far as skills go, she's an excellent technician capable of hacking any computer to find any bit of information that the plot requires or to programming the magnetic bottle containment system that keeps a fusion reaction contained.

Naomi Nagata became super interesting after the Ring Gates opened to 1300 worlds. In the book, Nemesis Games, it's revealed that she had a kid named Filip with a Belter terrorist by the name of Marco Inaros. Marco, a Belter who is more than aware that access to 1300 habitable worlds means extinction to a lot of people who have evolved to live in zero gravity, takes his anger out on Earth by dropping a bunch of asteroids covered with anti-radar paint on the planet. The result is the death of billions of people, tidal waves the size of skyscrapers, and just massive extinction level events. Earth barely survives. Marco kidnaps Naomi prior to this event, and she becomes pretty essential in not only identifying who he is, but ultimately taking him out using a trick of the Ring Gates.

I can't wait until the Amazon series showcases the destruction of Earth. That is going to be some epic level destruction porn that goes on for probably an entire season, as the struggle in and around Earth's survivors, as well as all the characters impacted by it, go on and on.

In my opinion, Naomi was a pretty flat character until Nemesis Games. The introduction of her son, Filip, gave her a lot of depth. Additionally, I enjoyed the connection that she had with the terrorist Marco Inaros, because in many ways, it was the point of view we needed to have any sympathy for what the "belters" were going through in facing a kind of extinction with the opening of the Ring Gates.

Coming up on Friday: Profile of Amos Burton

The Expanse Profiles: James Holden

At left is some fan art by artist dana-redde on DeviantArt. It depicts what they think is Captain James Holden and his OPA (Outer Planetary Alliance) girlfriend, Naomi Nagata. I know I'm going to talk about Naomi on Wednesday, but I might as well mention that she's frequently described as being tall and kind of stretched out...a result of having lived her whole life in almost null gravity. At most, she's been exposed to spin gravity on stations like Tycho, Ceres, and Eros. As far as real gravity wells are concerned, she's probably only been exposed to Luna Station, Ganymede Station, and the resort built on Titan.
Anyway, we first get to know Captain James Holden--who is the primary protagonist of all seven books thus far--in the first few chapters of Leviathan Wakes (the first book in The Expanse series). As depicted in this illustration at right, the artist kind of gets the look of James Holden. I didn't quite picture him so small and cutesy, but his one consistent character vice in all of the novels is that he's constantly looking for a cup of coffee. As far as depictions go, the television series produced by the SyFy channel did a pretty decent job of casting an actor that I thought (retroactively applied since I watched the t.v. series first) did a swell job of filling out the role of Holden. A picture of him is included at left.
The actor that plays him is Steven Straight. In the book, he comes from Montana, and he is the only child to eight parents (it sounds a lot like a polygamist Mormon family, but without all of the kids that are normally associated with that). However, they never say that his parents are Mormon. Perhaps he's an only child because the Earth's population is already at 30 billion and no one wants to have kids.
At the time The Expanse takes place, the solar system is pretty much a colonized and functioning place. There are a billion people living on Mars and millions going back and forth to different stations throughout the outer planets. There are so many people, in fact, that stations like Eros have a population of 15 million or so.
In being the central pivot figure of The Expanse, James Holden is involved with everything. As the second officer on The Canterbury, which is a doomed ship that he sees attacked and destroyed relatively early in Leviathan Wakes, he follows his moral compass (which is very paladin-like) to report to everyone what he sees with the most transparency as possible. It ends up starting the biggest war mankind has ever seen, involving the Belters, Earth, and Mars (because of the attack on this one water hauler). He manages to come out of it smelling like a rose by commandeering (along with his small crew) a Mars gunnery ship that he renames The Rocinante, after Don Quixote's horse. It's a fitting symbolism because Captain Holden is forever tilting at "windmills" just like Don Quixote throughout this entire series.
Naturally, his fate gets entwined with a Detective Miller who is looking for the missing daughter of a mega-rich sociopathic scientist by the name of Jules Pierre Mao. Unbeknownst to anyone, the missing daughter, Juliette Mao, is the last survivor of a doomed crew that got infected by an alien virus called the protomolecule (because it was being studied by a bunch of psychopathic scientists who discovered the two billion year old strain in some ice around Saturn). I get the impression that Julie's crew was infected intentionally, and Juliette Mao (unaware of the danger her infection brings) flees to Eros station where Holden and Miller find her in the bathroom of her suite basically disintegrating into blackened tentacles as the protomolecule consumes her. From there, the whole of Eros station of 15 million are doomed and Holden and Miller barely make it off alive. They are both exposed to lethal radiation, but because of fantastic strides in medicine, Holden just has to take some cancer meds to keep the radiation from creating fatal cancers in his body.
One of the things that I think is brilliant with regard to the plotting of these novels (and story at large) is how every detail is never too small not to factor into a bigger plot point. Those cancer meds, which Holden swallows every day, end up factoring into the story of Cibola Burn, the fourth novel in the series. In that particular plot following the opening of the ring gates which lead to 1300 plus solar systems with habitable worlds, the first settled world called Ilus, comes to be very challenging for a bunch of colonists. There's this algae that floats in the clouds above the planet's surface, and when it rains, the algae can infect bodies of saline water (which it loves to multiply inside because that's its perfect environment). The colonists on Ilus get their eyeballs infected with this stuff which makes them all go blind...all except for Holden, who is on cancer meds that keep things from propogating out of control. So these cancer medications ends up being the cure that they can use to solve one of the many problems that the colonists encounter on their first visit to a truly alien world. It's brilliant writing, and a great example of having high stakes for characters to create tension.
Additionally, Holden's continued association with the protomolecule and what it creates extends way beyond the first book, Leviathan Wakes. After Miller dies by being on Eros as it crashes into Venus (all fifteen million people on board are dead by this point and the asteroid is being piloted by Julie Mao's consciousness whom Miller is in love with), Holden sees a projection of Miller created by a remnant of the protomolecule left on The Rocinante. This projection communicates with him and advises him on events happening both with the creation of the Ring Gates and on the events that transpire on Ilus. Holden eventually gets rid of that remnant of the protomolecule on The Rocinante, which ends his visions of Miller, but he is kind of forever linked with it. In the latest of the published books entitled, Persepolis Rising, Holden instantly recognizes the Laconian technology for being grown from the stolen protomolecule sample taken from Tycho station 30 years earlier, and he also recognizes the thing that appears on the Laconian battle cruiser The Typhoon as having originated from the same place as whatever killed the makers of the protomolecule two billion years ago.
And that's what's really chilling. The makers of the protomolecule were such an advanced civilization, that they colonized 1300 worlds and created wormholes that could bridge space itself. Yet Holden saw a vision that (at the end of their civilization), the makers of the protomolecule encountered something that they tried to defeat by destroying entire star systems. And it didn't work. Whatever it was, wiped them out completely. The first time the Laconian Battle Cruiser employs its magnetic weapon (created from protomolecule technology) in Earth space, an artifact from the destroyers of the protomolecule civilization appears and causes everyone in the entire Earth system to lose three minutes of time simultaneously.   
Having read nearly all the published material available for The Expanse, I can honestly say that Captain Holden ended up being a fine protagonist through which the story kind of unfolds just by living his life. Those are the best kinds of stories, are they not? 
Coming up on Wednesday: Profile of Naomi Nagata.

I am going to talk about The Expanse books and their television adaptation until February.

I really want to talk about The Expanse television series and the novels. I read all of them in December. Not to toot my own horn, but each of the seven novels clocks in at roughly 550 pages. So I plowed through A LOT of pages during credit card debt month, a.k.a. the Christmas season.

The way I see myself talking about The Expanse is by talking about the individual main characters first (touching on how they are represented in the television series up to the cliffhanger finale of season three) based off the books and novels in the series, which consists of:
And as many of you (who are fans of the SyFy series) know, it was canceled to make room for George R.R. Martin's "Nightflyers." This was a bad decision, by the way. However, Amazon did pick it up and season four should be coming along nicely sometime in 2019. So here's my publishing schedule that I've worked out thus far:

Monday, January 7: James Holden (the star and primary protagonist of the books). It sounds like a great place to start.

Wednesday, January 9: Naomi Nagata (partner to James Holden).

Friday, January 11: Amos Burton (Loveable Psychopath Engineer).

Monday, January 14: Alex Kamal (Dumpster Fire Hot Shot Pilot).

Wednesday, January 16: Chrisjen Avasarala (Firecracker Diplomat).

Friday, January 18: Fred Johnson (The Butcher of Anderson Station and Leader of Tycho Station).

Wednesday, January 23: Bobbie Draper (Martian Juggernaut).

Friday, January 25: Detective Josephus Miller (Detective Investigating Juliette Mao's disappearance)

Monday, January 28: Clarissa Mao (otherwise known as "Peaches" by Amos).

Wednesday, January 30: Praxideke Meng (the Botanist of Ganymede Station).

Friday, February 1: Winston Duarte (the Biggest Bad Guy there is).

Each of these characters is unique in their own way, and it's a marvel that they all came together so well. In case you didn't know, James S.A. Corey is the pen name of two authors who both live in New Mexico (so The Expanse isn't the work of a single person). In reading it, I would have been surprised to think of it as coming from just one person. It's just too huge...too big of an idea for anyone's head to handle. Additionally, one of the authors was the personal assistant to George R.R. Martin, and you can see Martin's influence (only the good influences) on just about every page. Point of View chapters told in the headspace of a single character have become my "go to" favorite for stories of this size. I wish more people adopted it, because it makes for one hell of a read.

Also, did you know that The Expanse started out as a pitch for a mmorpg based in space? I learned that by reading one of the interviews posted in the book, Persepolis Rising. I think that's kind of fascinating.

So tune in over the next few weeks if you want to know about all of these characters in depth. There will be spoilers as I intend for each post to be as thorough as I remember of what these characters did in each of the books, which is the source material for the television series. However, things will probably change in the adaptation. This has already happened, and I don't expect anything different from Amazon. Oh and (as usual) I will speculate on what happens next for these characters going forward.

Monday: James Holden!

The first post for Insecure Writer's Support Group in 2019 is about writers and the questions we get asked.

Yay, the holidays are over. I don't know about you, but I always feel a little relief when New Year's Day passes. It means that the month of big spending and credit card debt is finally behind me for another eleven months. And of course the start of a New Year means 1) starting up my blog again and 2) doing it with a post for The Insecure Writer's Support Group.

I actually have no idea how long the IWSG has been going on, but it's been several years. Has it been a decade yet? The only thing I know for sure is that it was started by Alex Cavanaugh, and it's accomplished quite a few things over the years. For one, it's one of the 101 best websites for writers (according to Writer's Digest). Second, it's got a lot of fine authors and contributors who bandy about all kinds of advice. If you want to know more, either google "Insecure Writer's Support Group" or go to the link embedded HERE.

The January 2019 question of the month is:

"What are your favorite and least favorite questions people ask you about your writing?"
Least favorite: This one's easy, and it goes something like, "Oh, you've written a book? What's it about?" The reason I say this is a least favorite question is because it's kind of exhausting to tell someone about my writing. There are a few elevator pitches that I have prepared, but I don't like using those for a friendly conversation. So each explanation tends to be organic and differs greatly from the prior one I used. I'm never satisfied with any of them (to be honest) as the need for brevity before a yawn or other sign of boredom shows up is strong. But it's just all around kind of annoying to answer this question. I would much prefer to be asked what authors inspired me to write. That's a much easier question and one I enjoy more in answering.

Most favorite: Hmm, do you have any advice?" This is a fun question because I get to ask the person asking me the question all sorts of things about their writing. It's so much funner to do that (for me) because I feel like I'm actually getting to know a person by taking an interest in the stuff that they are writing.

Happy New Year everyone, and I'll be around to check your blogs in a bit.

Happy Holidays y'all and have a great rest of 2018.

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, so I'm going to sign off my blog until the first week of January for Insecure Writer's Support Group. Until then, have a Happy Thanksgiving, a Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. Maybe I'll actually get some writing done.

Cheers.

Season 7 of Game of Thrones already established that the White Walkers don't stand a chance against an army that knows its Achilles heel.

HBO announced that Game of Thrones is coming back for its final six episodes in April 2019. That being said, I've been rewatching the episodes a little bit at a time over the last few months to catch up a friend who stopped watching (life happened) back in season four. It's been a good refresher, especially where I think my theories of the Great War lie. For a while now, I've been thinking that there's just no way that the dragon-slaying Night King and his minions could ever be beaten. They bring a lot to the table, what with an ever expanding army of undead that rise from the living who are culled in ever-increasing numbers on the battlefield. However, the actual White Walkers are few in number, and apparently, all you have to do is kill the Night King and everything just dies. This plot device happened in the penultimate episode of season seven, when Jon Snow (attempting to capture a wight to take it back to King's Landing), was forced to use his Valyrian steel sword to end a White Walker who was leading a band of undead through a ravine. When the White Walker exploded into ice, all but one of the animated zombies also perished.
"Why do you think that happened?" someone asked Jon Snow. He replied, "Maybe that White Walker animated them. So when he died, everything he animated perished with him." Or something like that; it's not a direct quote. So that's the Achilles' heel of this whole plot. You kill the Night King, and the game is up. Sure, he's an obvious "Boss" within the rules well-established by video games, but could he stop a hundred dragon glass arrows? Could he best someone of Brienne of Tarth's sword ability (or Jon Snow's) wielding a Valyrian steel sword so that they don't get to cheesily unmake every weapon that you use against them? I think not. So kill that one guy...and the whole war is over. In modern terminology, if you sack the quarterback the game ends instantly.
So really, the White Walkers don't stand a chance. Imagine having the best army in the world but if you took out one leader who was always present on the battlefield, it was just game over instantly. Even with an ice dragon and an army of twenty thousand zombies, that just seems like really long odds. I wouldn't want to be on that side of a war. It's putting all your eggs in one basket, and it's just going to end up really bad for the White Walkers. This is especially true given that the Night King likes to strut around in the open with no shield or tank or anything. He just walks around, and he oftentimes can be found on a hill overlooking the battle. Could you paint a more obvious target on someone's back? Here...I'll place my most important piece that is the person who controls everything out in the open on this hill and he's just gonna stand there and make badass faces without any concern for shelter of any kind. I realize that in season 8, he may be on the back of a dragon which is significantly harder to get to, but Daenerys could always ram him with one of her dragons and when he fell off then all you'd have to do is shoot him with a hundred dragon glass arrows. If any one of them touched him, it's over.
So there you have it, unless something incredibly stupid happens, we already know how the Great War is going to be resolved. You are all welcome :).

Why are Sabrina watchers asking real life witches and satanists what they think of the show?

My friend Meg got me to watch the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina with her this last week. If you haven't watched it, the series is like the hybrid baby of Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, A Norman Rockwell painting of small town America, and the movie Mean Girls. I thought it was clever, threading the needle with its plotline that somehow managed to give the audience room to sympathize and actually like the protagonist without compromising on the darkness and actual evil associated with Satan worshipers (in the town of Greendale). The fact that it exists alongside Riverdale (a CW series) is even more interesting, because it makes magic a completely plausible plot device. Not that Riverdale needed magic to be interesting...but that it takes place in a world where Harry Potter could actually happen opens up a ton of storylines beyond the old "teen angst" baseline where a lot of similar tales go to die.

However, since I read Facebook at least once a day, I've also discovered that I know people who are also watching the show, who like it, and who are asking real life witches and Satanists (whom they know) to weigh in on its authenticity. Why is this happening? The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is a comic book, just like Archie and Jughead is a comic book. No one I know has ever asked worshipers of Thor and Odin (yes they are around and they still exist), whether they are offended by their portrayal in a Marvel movie. It's kind of got me flabbergasted. Who cares what any of these groups think? It's fiction people! Comic books are their own intellectual property, and I don't think anything in them demands the approval of real life organizations on how they are portrayed. The following is a message that many people are familiar with already:

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Does no one but me not understand the difference between fiction and reality? On second thought...please don't answer that. I forget that I live in a world where I know a woman who buys colloidal silver online because it's cheaper that way, and it's a "cure" for all the myriad things that ail you.

I can answer my own question, because I know how people are. For example, I suppose in the end, that people just want a reason to discuss something and asking them to weigh-in on something like a popular t.v. series is like raising them up onto a pedestal with the words "Subject Matter Expert" engraved upon it. For a day, they get to pretend that they are Neil deGrasse Tyson, asked to weigh-in on the scientific inaccuracies in the latest Hollywood Blockbuster (only in this example it is Satanism and Witchcraft). And don't bother to try and tell them that they share more in common with a snake oil salesman than they do to the famous astrophysicist. It's not a good way to make friends.

For the November IWSG I'm talking about the importance of improv as a component to creativity.

It's Insecure Writer's Support Group day. If you aren't signed up for the blog fest, you can go HERE and sign up for it. Looking over my notes for this monthly event, I see that the co-hosts for the November 7 posting of the IWSG are Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor, Ann V. Friend, JQ Rose, and Elizabeth Seckman. If any of you happen to visit here during the event, then please make yourself at home :) Now...onto housekeeping. 

The November Insecure Writer's Support Group question is this: How has your creativity in life evolved since you began writing?


Well, I'm more aware of how "pantsing" plays a role in just about anything and how stories can come together by assimilating a lot of different ideas into a pot, kind of like a good chili can have lots of different ingredients. And what I mean by "pantsing" is simply "writing by the seat of your pants." Normally, I'm a plotter, tediously doing so on paper, and then trying to find a direction to take characters. But willfully following inspiration points on the spur of the moment can lead to some really weird and creative areas of a story. And I actually think I've gotten kind of good at spotting when other authors are doing this kind of thing.

For example, (and I say this full well knowing it can never be proven) J.K. Rowling has said that she planned the snake Nagini being a maledictus and having this huge backstory of once being human (that is coming to light in the new Fantastic Beasts movie) all the way back when she was writing the Sorcerer's Stone. However, I'm skeptical of this. I think she came up with the idea much later and thought...hey...this is a thing that I didn't have planned but it totally could fit into this narrative and people will hail me as a genius. You know what? I'll just claim that it happened since the beginning. Yup...I planned it all.

And my response to that is an eye roll and something along the lines of, "Ooookay...yeah...sure you did." And we'll just leave it at that. Who knows? Maybe she actually did have it all planned out. I'm just sayin'...it seems unlikely.

Anyway...pantsing and improvisation is as important a part of creativity as just about anything else. And that's what has evolved in me since I began writing.

Leviathan Wakes has a good reminder in it from its authors who admit that it took a village to bring the thing to life.

This weekend I finished the first of the novels in the Expanse series entitled Leviathan Wakes. Aside from it being a real page turner, I also discovered that the author, James S.A. Corey, is actually the pen name for two individuals: Daniel Abraham (a fantasy author) and Ty Franck (George R.R. Martin's personal assistant). Aside from being obviously well-connected, the writers acknowledge that the book took a village to make. In their thanks of gratitude are their agents, editors, people who took formation in the book (and yes they include George R.R. Martin), a few writers of the Futurama series, and a bunch of beta-testers.

What's remarkable about this is that it serves as a much needed reminder to me (and it should be a reminder to all aspiring authors out there): to spin a tale that's truly incredible you're going to need help. Very few of the awe-inspiring writers breathed life into their creations by being alone in a room with a typewriter. So network network network, if writing is what you want to do. Find connections, and then stretch yourself and find more connections. If you can get connected to someone that is important in the industry then you need to really invest in those connections to get everything blooming. It's just like putting fertilizer on your flower beds. Yes, things will grow in the beds all their own, but the ones that get amazing care are the ones that always look spectacular.

Anyway, I also want to say that it is not my intent to diminish the accomplishments of the solo artist out there, because I truly admire your toil. I tip my hat to you, dear writer, because what you are trying to do is walk the most difficult path that there is. It's like playing a video game and selecting "Nightmare mode" right off the bat while those who do have "villages" to draw on are on the easiest game setting. And if you don't have a village? Well, sometimes life just hands you lemons. I've gotten handed plenty of lemons so I feel your pain at having "citrus overload". That's why I spend most of my time reading what other people have written and not even worrying about my own particular village (which honestly has always resembled a wilderness hut somewhere above the Arctic Circle).

Oh, and if you haven't read Leviathan Wakes and love science fiction space opera, I highly recommend it. It took a village (with some big and connected names) to bring this thing to market, and yeah, it shows on every incredible page.