Stephen Hunt's Blog, page 5

I will honour Summer Vacations in my heart and try to keep it all the year.

Just come back from abroad, visiting elderly relatives for a couple of weeks – and now have an additional fourteen days of no-leavie-the-house-style quarantine to get through. Ah, well.

So, will it be Plan A: hard work and squeezing extra words out of the creative sponge for the next novel?

Or … Plan B: Netflix, Amazon Prime streaming, and Stellaris, and a touch of whatever else my steam account has in store for my PC (hopefully, Paradox’s Empire of Sin, soon)?

Or, perhaps, a mixed economy approach of vigorous work followed by hard play?

Whatever path I choose, the kids have forced me to be gamemaster for an RPG campaign based on the rulebook for my first book, For The Crown and the Dragon – grab a copy over at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/311019/Crown–Dragon-RPG if you too want to spend long hours devising side-plots, maps, character sheets and the like – so there will be plenty of old-style dice rolls going on.

There is no more family time. There is just time!

I’ll let you know how things work out next time, and how much work got done.

I will honour Summer Vacations in my heart and try to keep it all the year.

Rage against the machine.

So, finally completed ‘The Umbrella Academy’ 2nd series stream on Netflix, just in time to await Amazon Prime’s counter-fire in the superhero form of ‘The Boys’ landing soon with its own season two. I give the former a five out of six stars, and hopefully expect to hand the latter full marks.

Both of these play with the standard tropes of the superhero genre as seen in the Marvel/DC universes. They are also both kind of violent and sweary, although ‘The Boys’ turns the attitude up to Ten and adds a ‘capes as part of celebrity culture’ vibe to the whole outing.

I see that ‘The Umbrella Academy’ is now coming under fire from social media users accusing it of being ‘anti-Semitic’ after the main big bad who seizes control of The Commission, an evil Cruella De Vil-type character, The Handler, was heard dropping a Yiddish phrase – and if she’s Jewish, it’s, therefore, mainlining the conspiracy theory that Jews control the world. 

Umbrellas out?

I must admit, I didn’t actually notice this while watching – I vaguely remember some foreign-sounding idioms being swapped, but thought it was just the usual characters saying a few words in German/French/Russian, whatever, to sound smart – as in many a James Bond flick, and, heck, even Dora the Explorer (Bueno!).

Series creator Steve Blackman, who is himself Jewish and wrote the script, responded saying, ‘‘While I understand audiences sometimes receive things in a different way than creators intend, The Handler was not created as an anti-Semitic character. The Handler speaks every language, including Swedish, Mandarin, Yiddish, and English, as we saw this season, and The Commission is not an evil organisation; they do not control finances, governments, or the media. The only thing they control – and more importantly, protect – is the timeline of our fictional Umbrella Academy universe.”

Incidentally, one of my children has a best friend called Dora, and whenever she comes up in conversation, I always manage to drop in a totally superfluous Spanish word at the end of the English conversation, just like Dora does herself in the cartoon series. 

If you want to come after me on Twitter decrying this, I can only (a) point to my Spanish family and (b) highlight I can seriously do with the publicity to sell more books and boost my flagging career, please.

Mucho gusto.

The Old New Avengers?

Joy-of-joys, for the second season of superhero series The Umbrella Academy, is now live for Netflix streaming in full.

No piecemeal waiting for each episode for the UA to unfurl… it’s a binge-fest expecting to happen – not so much in Chez Hunt, mind, but that’s only because family maintenance and work commitments take precedence over locking myself in my office for days at a time, obviously goofing off.

Anyhow, I’ve taken my first bite of the crimson fruit that is the second season, and have to report to you, dear reader, it tastes like some Damn Fine Apple Pie.

Umbrella Academy always puts me in mind of The Avengers – not the Marvel group, but the colourful kinky boots spy-fy TV series of the sixties with Patrick Macnee, Diana Rigg, and Honor Blackman.

There’s something about its weirdness, spontaneous dancing, talking chimps, silent time-travelling Swedish sociopaths, and scenes set to soundtracks like I’m a Man by the Spencer Davis Group, and Rocket Fuel by DJ Shadow, which makes me think John Steed will walk out any moment and declare that Sir Reginald Hargreeves is Steed’s evil long-lost brother and must be stopped at all costs.

The showrunner, Steve Blackman, has admitted that he sometimes hears a song and then decides what scene he wants to write with that piece in his mind. A creator after my own heart.

A full spoiler-flavoured account of S2 will be yours as soon as I’ve watched the beast, and allowed enough time for you, too, to catch up on the complete season without choking on my reveals.

One other thing to report to you this week… BookBub is currently running a promotion for my sci-fi novel, Anomalous Thrust, which means it is reduced to 99 cents/pence/galactic groats in more or less every online bookshop in the universe. Grab it while it’s still cheap!

Full price lurks around the corner like a mugger in Gotham City, waiting to shank you.

Umbrellas out?

Snowpiercer: snow way to survive the apocalypse?

You were promised more thoughts on the Netflix Snowpiercer TV series when I finished the thing.

Well, dear reader, SPOILERS ON THE LINE, so only read on if you too have seen and completed Snowpiercer … or don’t give a stuff about seeing it in the first place (but then, that being the case, do you want to read this piece?).

I found the TV series quite entertaining and effectively produced. I might be biased, as when the movie version came out, fans kept on e-mailing me, asking if I had written the script? Possibly because of its OTT wonderland feel, which owes itself more to Korean filmmaker Bong Joon-ho than the original comic-book source material … and, yes, I agree, Bong would be a good match for directing a The Court of the Air show.

The TV series, being a series and not the short-form bonkers movie disco-explosion, had to find more of an arc & plot than the film needed, so it mixed in a murder mystery and a longer exploration of the class-based one-percenter themes. I like crime novels, too, so this was to my taste.

On the downside, I never entirely reconciled the logic of forting up on a train with a vulnerable track that requires maintenance. There were various hints of some perpetual motion tech on the locomotive which needs movement to work, but I didn’t quite understood that. So, if a new ice age strikes, I’d still rather find myself a nice underground city on the equator a la NORAD, with some reinforced agri-domes on the surface, thank you (although that scenario might end up as frostpunkgame.com)

If I wrote the series, I’d have rolled back the flashbacks in the ultimate episode to one of the mid-episodes, as dropping the recollections in the the last ep. foreshadowed the finale-surprise too much … you saw it coming, also, right?

Anyway, roll on the second season, Sean Bean as the enigmatic Wilford and all – King of the ^%$&*ing North and the Ice Age? Better look out for White Walkers on the horizon, although, to be fair, ice age zombies have already been done in the 2013 sci-fi film ‘The Colony’ with Laurence Fishburne and Bill Paxton.

All aboard the One-percenter Express?

The making of a role playing game: Stephen Hunt’s For The Crown and the Dragon (video).

There’s an interesting video up over at SFcrowsnest which looks at the process of turning my very first published work into a role playing game.

Watch it over at …

The making of a role playing game: Stephen Hunt’s For The Crown and the Dragon (video).

Coffee I need, or kill you I will.

Currently about halfway through a non-fiction book called Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli, by Steve Alpert.

It’s a memoir by Steve, detailing his time at Japan’s main animation house, Studio Ghibli. He was brought in as the resident foreigner to distribute Ghibli films to the USA, UK, Canada, and the like.

It’s fascinating both in the book’s detail of the many cultural differences between Japanese and Western companies, as well as the ins and outs of working for an animation company. At the time, the firm was switching from hand-painted cels to more computer-intensive animation tech, so it’s real era-defining stuff.

Already I feel like I know what it’s like to work with the firm’s mercurial demanding owner, Yasuyoshi Tokuma, and their artistic but genius-level head creative, Hayao Miyazaki.

Ghibli and the world of anime will never seem the same to me again.

Having worked with Steve Jobs myself, and many other a*^%le employers over the years, I’d say Alpert’s memories are probably fonder than mine of his time in the corporate trenches. I still wake up with stress dreams that start and end with my being conscripted back into one of my old jobs by some terrible stroke of fate.

Also new in my possession is a shiny coffee mug with a cartoon of a rather haggard and irritable-looking Yoda bearing the words, ‘Coffee I need, or kill you I will.’ It nicely complements the only other coffee mug I am allowed to use at Chez Hunty – ‘Life Begins at 50’.

I’m not sure which of those two statements best sums up my life at the moment, but I do know that wisdom begins in caffeine.

Sharing a House with the Never-Ending Man: 15 Years at Studio Ghibli, by Steve Alpert.

Wide boy?

So, I’ve recently made the monumental decision to ‘go wide’ with my (currently) ten indie genre novels.

For those of you with a British 1980s childhood, you can cancel those visions of Rick Astley and Duran Duran from your mind … wrong sort of Wide Boy.

Going wide as an author means withdrawing novels from the exclusive e-book lock-in deal which Amazon offers. This is the your-soul-for-gold deal offered by Devilish Jeff Bezos, where he gives you the best cheddar in return for your books ONLY being available via Amazon.

What this means in practice for you is that my e-books are now available from Apple Books, Google Play, B&N, Nook, and a host of other stores – as well as via your public library. Not just Amazon, anymore.

I have also made the print books available via Ingram, alongside Amazon print-on-demand, which means bookstores can now order the titles without greasing the big A’s palm with silver.

Given Amazon are about 90% of the English-speaking global e-book market, not to mention 75% of the print sales, this will probably mean a 30-50 percent hit on money coming in, with my books ejected from the exclusive Amazon pay-per-page lending system.

You can get the books via http://stephenhunt.net/bookstore-google-play/ for Google, http://stephenhunt.net/bookstore-kobo/ for Kobo, and http://stephenhunt.net/bookstore-apple-itunes/ for Apple. The ISBNs via Ingram are listed below each title.

Oddly, as soon as these went new ISBNs went wide, Amazon’s print copies started getting seriously delayed in shipping? A fit of pique at not being the only game in town? Who knows? Anyway, if you are a Patreon supporter at the ‘Lord Commander of the Dead Tree’ Level, your signed copies are now on the way to you thanks to Ingram.

Yes, I’m the widest of Wide Boys, now.

Hungry like the starving author?

 

Are pubs the anesthesia by which we endure the operating table of life?

I only used to go to the pub once every two or three months, to meet up with my old university friends, so it’s danged strange how much I’ve missed not being able to go so far this year. However, by the end of next week, that should change in the southern quarters of the UK at least (in Spain and France the bars have been open for a couple of weeks, now – with &^%-all chance of getting there, sadly).

And the date of our taverns re-opening in England? The flipping 4th of July!

So, the 4th of July will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice: We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! Our pubs are open again. This is our Gin Dependence Day!

To be fair, I’ll probably give the first few weeks a miss, as it’s likely to be punch-up and COVID central for a while. But maybe one day, during 9-5 working hours, I’ll sneak into one, and pray some contemptible sot of a rascal won’t steal the cork to my lunch.

There has to be a few non-taxable perks of self-employed author status, surely?

Are alien space pubs with talking roasts the anesthesia by which we endure the operating table of life?

Yesterday all my Tribbles seemed so far away?

So, the delayed movie pipeline is slowly rumbling again, with trailers gurgling through the media u-bend once more … The King’s Men, the next James Bond flick, the Wonder Woman 1984 film, etc, etc.

But will people head back into cinemas with (a) the memory of current events, and (b) substantial home-body habits formed and reinforced? 

It can take anywhere from twenty to two-hundred days for a person to form a new habit, with an average of 60 days for the formation of a recent behaviour’s neural pathways to become automatic.

People are hitting the pubs again here in the UK, at least, as long as the sun is shining, the weather is warm, and you can drink and chat with friends and family on nearby parks and commons.

But could a gloomy chamber filled with dirty coughers and popcorn rustlers prove a bridge too far, even by September and October? Only time will tell. 

Going to the pub with pals, the coffee shop for writing, meeting up with the wider clan, and hitting the gym for body maintenance are the things I’ve missed most.

Office worker mates of mine told me they’ve appreciated the extra four hours of productivity each working day, with meetings kept short and on point, rather than long, irrelevant, and rambling. They’ve also loved the lack of expensive, time-consuming commuting, plus a focus on what you truly deliver with your day, versus stressful water-cooler back-stabbing, politics and presenteeism games. 

So, what will the next few years hold? Well, those who live by the crystal ball soon learn to eat ground glass.

One thing I can tell you as a science fiction author and part-time futurist … after this, the future isn’t what it used to be.

Yesterday all my Tribbles seemed so far away?

Stay sharp?

So, another birthday has passed by at warp speed, along with an annual opportunity for a bit of life-goal crop rotation and soul searching.

Reader, I am sad to report that no great catharsis has been reached. No state of Zen-like satori gained. When you realise nothing is lacking, the whole world belongs to you.

I did, however, pick up a sweet set of hand-made Japanese knives to assist in all the Japanese meals I’ve been cooking, recently (even the dreaded ‘sushi’). Thanks, Family H.!

These blades are beaten and folded using the same techniques as Japanese sword-smiths and are objects of beauty, as well as practical tools that flow like a lightsabre through a chunk of chutoro (a medium-fatty tuna cut).

On the recent sci-fi-front, I’m currently half-way through the Netflix science fiction flick, 2036 Origin Unknown, following a space mission controller played by Katee Sackhoff and ARTI, her artificial intelligence system, as they track a mysterious possibly alien object on Mars. I picked this flick up as it seemed to be hovering in the most-watched charts, despite never having heard of it before. Possibly for good cause. More on this, later.

I’m presently tidying up my third novel, the space opera adventure ‘Six Against the Stars‘, for a re-release to accompany the recent re-do of ‘The Crown and the Dragon‘ and ‘The Fortress in the Frost‘.

I want to get this book re-published, as I’d like to let it go, rather than be dragged.