Stephen Hunt's Blog, page 3

The Wonder of WandaVision?

It’s been a quiet media twelve months, what with all new films/TV series being slow-walked, and all the titles that should have taken place being rolled down the hill, always tantalisingly out of reach … No! Come back, James Bond, come back Dune!

There are a couple of things I watched recently. Starting with the ongoing WandaVision TV series… the first MCU live-action TV beast. This is a bit of a slow burner, as it opens with Wanda and Vision inhabiting a gradually evolving set of sitcoms, which start out in the early 1950s ‘I love Lucy’-frame, before gently progressing to a 1970s ‘Bewitched’ kind of deal. What we end up with next? Friends with superheroes? Wasn’t that the Avengers?

Things are getting a little more interesting now as the camera pulls back from the pocket sitcom universe and shows wider society after the blip, and they introduce us to SWORD, a play on words as the offensive protection equivalent of SHIELD. This one has got legs. But I think I might have to stick with it a while for them to show.

On the other hand, sheer boredom and ennui, ably assisted by pleas from the younger members of the family encouraged me in a moment of weakness to lay down £15 – or $30 – for the two-day rental of Wonder Woman 1984 via the magic of streaming. Sadly, this film is more or less guilty of most of the charges laid down by many critics. It’s not as good a movie as the first flick. It’s too long and self-indulgent and features more holes in the plot than there are gaps in Swiss cheese. This includes Wonder Woman stealing a modern fighter jet, turning it invisible, and then flying all the way to Egypt on a single tank of gas from America with no mid-air refuelling. That must have been a heck of a two-seater jet plane.

Still, one thing I can say about it: watching the film was a marginally better experience than having to suit up in Arctic clothes and go outside in the biting cold, damp, miserable weather which exists beyond my double glazing at the moment – and has done, it seems, for many months (although my perception of time is probably merely a function of stir craziness mixed with lockdown blues).

Oh, and Snowpiercer is back for its second season, along with the ideal ice age billionaire psychopath Jeff Bezos-alike played by Sean Bean. At least they have got even worse weather than me – and a centuries-long lockdown on board a moving train for some reason. A slight consolation. But I’ll take it.

Catch you next week, amigos.

The Wonder of WandaVision?

A little bit of history repeating?

The middle of a pandemic isn’t much of a time to celebrate a birthday, but given this is the 30th year of my science fiction and fantasy magazine SFcrowsnest being online, I thought I might as well give limited celebrating a shot, anyway.

Yes, it was 30 years ago that we plonked a weird independent print science fiction magazine called Protostellar onto Steve Jobs’ online bulletin board system, AppleLink, a BBS intended to take on the likes of AOL and CompuServe.

Before launching on AppleLink, the sci-fi magazine was actually being bundled via the magic of a software program known as HyperCard, and stuck on the CD cover mounts of various retail Apple Macintosh magazines for computer nerds to read for free.

While Steve Jobs’ online endeavour pretty much failed – along with the concept of CD cover mounts – luckily for us, SFcrowsnest is still here. Protostellar rebranded as Hologram Tales in 1994 when the print magazine dwindled and disappeared, with Hologram Tales becoming a World Wide Web-only affair at the now lapsed generic URL of www.SF-fantasy.com.

This was so early in the history of the Internet that scifi.co.uk and sciencefiction.co.uk were both free to register, but when we applied for these, the British domain name authority sadly told us to push off because we didn’t own a limited company with the same identify as the URL – a pre-condition of UK websites at the time.

Eventually, Hologram Tales was itself rebranded as SFcrowsnest during the late 90s. Why? Well, back then the primary search engine was called Altavista. Because the online zine was drifting into the territory of a full vertical portal with its own genre directory and sci-fi search engine and whatnot, we thought we’d come up with a similar name.

A vantage point you could climb up high and look out on the Internet from. A crowsnest seemed apt. It always featured in many sunken pirate ships across various Asterix books, which was a bonus, too. SFcrowsnest the site has remained for over 20 years, resisting the itch to rename as something new and shiny again.

It is a sobering thought that if you are a fantasy and science fiction fan who is also under the age of 30, then you were born before this magazine even first hit the 14.4kb modems. Crikey O’Reilly.

Now, kids, grandad’s gotta go and get a nap before he knocks out some more wordage for the upcoming genre novel.

Q reads SFcrowsnest, but only because he’s a nerd.

Power to the People?

A bit of a different article for this cold January scribbling. I thought I might ask you, my dear readers, what you want to see from yours truly on the Stephen Hunt Author Patreon Page at https://www.patreon.com/stephenhunt

So far, what I have been doing with the Patreon is posting piecemeal fiction I’m working on as it rolls out, so that Patreon subscribers can enjoy my books in a slightly more raw state, pre-release.

I thought I’d throw it out to you, to ask what ideas you have on content you’d like to see me produce there?

Some example ideas: I could create a series of video blogs starting with a show-through of my impressive volume of bookshelves groaning under the weight mostly science-fiction fantasy books, along with assorted technical manuals, encyclopaedias, graphic novels, and the like. I can even do some reportage street-view wanderings, live streaming to answer reader questions on the hoof.

I could also post some exclusive short stories – stand-alone material set in the universes of my existing book series – Jackelian, Sliding Void, etc.

I’m fairly sure that my age, body shape, and gender means that nobody tenuously clinging to their sanity would want me to provide the content commonly posted to OnlyFans, so let’s keep those suggestions in good taste, please.

You can send your ideas to me by commenting on this page, below.

Here’s hoping for some better weather. At the moment I am uncharacteristically not leaving the house for many days if not weeks at a time, forget about daily exercise – it is is just too cold and wet and miserable for words.

May the sun shine on you soon (and maybe me too, please?)

Voyage of the Void-Lost (Sliding Void #6).

The Special One?

One joy of having a family grow up around you… you get to subject the young’uns to all the films they haven’t yet seen that you think they should. This has mixed results. And to be honest, it divides along gender lines. The Hunt daughters pour discouraging remarks on the dodgy special effects of past classics, despite admiring modern science fiction and fantasy offerings.

The Hunt sons, however, seem to lack in taste enough to forgive poor special effects, suspend judgment, and get into the storylines on the basis they were originally offered. Imagine my junior male cohort’s astonishment at such splendid achievements as the first and second Alien movie. And you get to mix them up with Predators too, in certain instances. As long as there is gore, battle, and danger, they are interested enough.

For the female cohort, however, the number of clear plot holes are painfully teased out mid-flow, interrupting the enjoyment of the movies somewhat.

We just tried Minority Report, which is now 19-years old. The special effects from this film hold up well. I remember at the time the whole Tom Cruise wearing interface gloves and tossing icons about midair became a bit of a thing, imitated in other films and an entire line of Currys PC World computer adverts on TV. The automated vehicles which can drive up the side of buildings to park outside your 200th-floor apartment still seemed like a good idea, even now. I wonder if Elon musk has watched this for Tesla?

Following Minority Report, we got into an interesting discussion about which films’ SFX have held up better over the years. The first Star Wars movie still seems to be fairly robust to me, but maybe that’s because the studio keeps on going back and tinkering with the models, making them better than they were back in the late 1970s?

The Fifth Element divided opinions. The colourful French graphic novel cartoon-style still holds a certain appeal to me at least. For the kids, not so much. And you just have to look at the difference between the original Blade Runner and the reboot to see that that original’s ingenuity is hard to beat, even with state-of-the-art rendering machines from an age beyond the point where the original movie was chronologically set (November 2019).

British TV output seems to be very easy to date. There’s no mistaking a 1970s shaky rubber suit in Doctor Who from the intricate computer-rendered monsters of the more recent Timelords. And let’s not even get started with Space 1999, Blakes Seven, and The Tomorrow People.

Of course, the best movies are still the flicks where the special effects complement a special storyline, as opposed to SFX being front and centre, with the spectacle itself standing alone and shivering.

By the by, I estimate the SFX in my genre books will hold up until around 2345A.D., after which they will look faintly ridiculous. 

Science. Not fiction.

I had a vivid dream the other night. It was recalling a genuine memory of an incident at university, rather than the usual surreal nonsense. This was at a time when only 3% of the young’uns attended college.

My course involved heaps of group projects where you had to work with dozens of other students. I was approaching the onset of finals when – after something far too long to go into here – I was struck by a sudden realisation, a thought at once perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, and pure.

None of these people I’m working with are particularly imaginative or even bright.

My second was, “In thirty years, this lot are going to be leading politicians and captains of industry.” My third immediate thought was, “Oh %$%^^ and ^%^&*.”

When I woke up, I wondered how I can have forgotten that deep life lesson, until now?

Almost everything good in our lives that has made it materially better has emerged from technology and science moving forward (vaccines, anyone?). All that is largely rubbish has come from bureaucracy, political games, rules for thee and not for me, and very sharp elbows. We often achieve because of the former and in the bitter face of the latter.

I’m certain there’s a good reason my subconscious surfaced this ancient memory.

I will leave you, dear reader, to courageously wade into 2021 with a few chronologically arranged predictions of the future from the great and the good – for I have glimpsed what is to come, and it is very much like the present, only a lot longer.

“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys.”

—William Preece, Head of the British Post Office (1876).

“The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty, a fad.”

—President of the Michigan Savings Bank (1903).

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

—Thomas Watson, IBM chairman (1943).

“There’s practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television or radio service.”

—Head of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (1961)

“There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share.”

—Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO (2007).

The thousand dreams I dreamed.

It is time once more for long lazy Christmas lie-ins under the nice warm duvet, what with the entire family at Chez Hunt now either furloughed or put into a mandatory Xmas leave period, so I bid a sad goodbye to the early 6am-ups to elbow my way into the crowded shower rota, and the opportunity to prepare breakfasts and packed lunches for many hungry mouths.

It is during one of those freshly discovered lazy interludes that I am accosted by her indoors with excited phone-based video imagery of the winner of this year’s Strictly Come Dancing TV show. No less than Bill Bailey, the comedian and actor from the noble Black Books television series (and familiar face on Never Mind the Buzzcocks) – who at 55 is the oldest champion of Strictly… the newly crowned God-Emperor of Dad Dancing.

This brings me a great and curious joy.

In a world where Bill Bailey can win this danciest of dance contests, surely anything is possible for old farts such as myself? I could become the first man to walk on Mars if I take up Elon on his kind offer. Perhaps I might create the world’s greatest business worth a quadrillion? Or establish first contact with extraterrestrials?

I now hope for great things in 2021, beyond just a jab in the arm and a return to normal.

I shall awaken on Christmas morning, lean out of my window, and accost some young ragamuffin in the snowy street below with the words, “You there, boy! What tier is this?”

The taste of life will be as sweet as rain upon my tongue. And I hope it is equally delicious for you, too.

Voyage of the Void-Lost (Sliding Void #6).

Paging Doctor Book.

I’ve had quite a few readers who are subscribed to my personal newsletter e-mailing or posting in to say thank you to me for mentioning in January 2020 that I was worried about a pandemic sweeping across the world and that I had taken action by selling all my unit trusts and shares in case events went sideways, going long on gold/silver mining.

Some of you, it seems, decided to emulate me and do likewise. You’re now asking if there’s anything you can do for me to say thank you for preserving your wealth.

A few things come to mind.

Firstly, what, are you freaking crazy! I mentioned that none of what I said should be construed as financial advice, and I wouldn’t recommend following me in selling off your hard-earned stocks and shares. I’m a science fiction/fantasy author for crike’s sake, not Warren Buffett. This will definitely be the last time I mention my personal investment actions in public. I’m perfectly happy to risk my own net worth on my super-predictor abilities and have been doing so since I had my first internship. Having anybody else’s happiness resting on my shoulders is a weight I would rather not carry, cheers very much.

That being said, I really need nothing for myself – I’m lucky enough to have a job (still) where I love what I do and all I require to achieve it is to apply my bum to a seat, make a 30p coffee, and away I go. Happy as Larry. I turned my back on the career world and running investment banks 20 years ago, and have never regretted it. If I wanted mountains of Jeff Bezos money, I would have stayed in that life and been unhappy till the day I retired. I would probably then have died in short order from stress-related illnesses, and my family could have buried me inside an Aston Martin, rather than my current ancient cheap-arse Skoda.

Happiness is a funny thing. People say you can’t buy it. But, you kinda can… just not with the folding green.

If you want to donate, write a cheque (or check, if you are American) to a charity of your choice. Smaller is better, usually, to get cash and resources to those who need it. If you’ve already done that, and your cup still brimmeth over, then pick up one of my old books and forward it to a family member, friend, or someone whose work you admire so they can enjoy it too.

You’re welcome.

The Pashtun Boy’s Paradise

Scientists, politicians, and hairdressers (choose one).

There was a plot in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books about a colony ship being sent to the stars from an about-to-be-destroyed world, but the whole mission was a practical joke to rid the planet of such supposed unwanted ne’er-do-wells as hairdressers and estate agents.

Oddly enough, I can’t remember politicians being on that list of useless gits, or council bureaucrats?

If I was the sort of person who spent years writing non-fiction books rather than pulpy scifi space operas, I think I might have a tome in me about how almost everything good in our lives has come from the advancement of science, often in the face of politicians, politics, government policies, pettifogging rules, local and national bureaucracies, and all their blooming antics.

The reason we are all able to eat enough, live in nice warm houses, don’t have mortality rates of 7/10 children dying before the age of 12, and are entertained by dancing moggies on our futuristic pocket supercomputers is pretty much all down to the fruits of science.

The recent vaccine race, by way of illustration, is nothing short of miraculous.

COVID-19 was genetically sequenced within the first month of the pandemic, that data then shared on the Internet, and many potential vaccines created in record time – often on the back of novel biotechnology solutions, and modelled using the latest tech in artificial intelligence.

To go from outbreak to cure inside a year is nothing short of mind-blowing.

And now that the DeepMind AlphaFold A.I. has just cracked protein folding modelling, we can expect to have a whole slew of rapid medical advances in diseases previously considered incurable. At least, all sicknesses that occur because of protein folding errors, which includes everything from Alzheimer’s to Parkinson’s disease, and many cancers, too.

Artificial intelligence and its swift progress are about to usher in a new industrial revolution that will change much for the better. And, as always, science-fiction stories on page and screen shall point the way to The Shape of Things to Come, whether by cautionary tales of dystopia, or the most optimistic predictions of utopian solarpunk. Carrot and stick.

Now, get out there and Christmas shop your local small businesses for victory, before rolling up your sleeves for a little injection of high science and the glorious amazing future into your bloodstream.

Scientists, politicians, and hairdressers (choose one).

Remembrance of all beauty that has been.

I missed honouring National Grandparents Day in October, so let me make up for it here by remembering my father’s dad – who I’m named after.

My grandfather fought in the First World War (and was too old for service in the second). Because he worked as a cook in London restaurants before 1916, when he volunteered they tossed him into the Catering Corps, and held him back in the UK to make canapés for the high-ups.

One day while running the Summer lawn tent at some aristocratic affair, he got annoyed at all the lords and ladies drinking champagne while his friends were being slaughtered in the foxholes in France. So he drank the contents of the tent’s beer barrel, and when a General’s wife found him passed out below it, they gave him what he wanted.

Active combat in a Royal Engineer’s tunnelling company… the lucky sods who got to dig trenches and tunnels under heavy fire, as well as making attacking earthworks under enemy lines.

He developed a dangerous habit of running out into no-man’s-land and carrying back wounded soldiers. His card was marked as a rabble-rousing working-class Union-type, however, and he received no medals for this – not that he would have accepted them, I suspect.

He survived the war (thankfully for my existence).

After he returned, he spent three years sleeping on the ground in his garden, because he couldn’t get used to a soft bed, again.

When he attended the annual Armistice parade, my dad was always struck by how many people would come up and thank my granddad for saving their lives, including one memorable gent with no legs who propelled himself on a square of wood with castor wheels in each corner.

This was my grandfather’s victory.

Remembrance of all beauty that has been.

Voyage of the Void-Lost (Sliding Void #6).

As I think I mentioned before, I’ve started work on the 6th book in the Sliding Void series for you fans of old-school space opera and high adventure hijinks.

It’s called ‘Voyage of the Void-Lost‘ and as I’m now 20,000 words in, I have just dropped the work-in-progress into my happy Patreons’ mitts.

These novels are usually between 80 and 100k long, so there will be three or four more drops similar to this one before the book is ready for its August 2021 publication date by Green Nebula.

Patreons can now download this first portion as an e-book over at https://www.patreon.com/stephenhunt – do remember this wordage flexes mightily before the fat alien sings.

Here’s the official blurb:

The Sliding Void series continues from the bestselling author of The Court of the Air.

When Captain Lana Fiveworlds seizes on a contract to fly a rough-and-ready bunch of grave robbers between the worlds of long-extinct civilisations, she’s expecting a nice easy ride for her misfit crew on board the starship Gravity Rose.

I mean, those unlucky perished alien species died of climate change, atomic wars, comet strikes, plagues, and mass solar flare ejections thousands, if not millions of years ago. So, what the heck can go wrong?

Plunder a few failed planets for priceless abandoned antiques and lost technologies and make out like a damned interstellar bandit!

Sadly, the karma of the universe has other ideas – and easy, it surely ain’t.

When their troubles slowly mount, Lana, Calder, Zeno, and the other crew members battle for far more than their lives. The ultimate cost could be more than the captain – or her dear friends and family – can bear.

Voyage of the Void-Lost (Sliding Void #6).