Stephen Hunt's Blog, page 7

Shining suns and free books!

Well, the sun is shining, the day is beautiful, and – probably – like you, I’m experiencing a little more staying-at-home than even a geeky self-employed author with a home office and passion for the noble pursuits of genre TV, reading, model kit making, and computer games is comfortable with!

I’ll forgo swapping pandemic stories for this blog post, but heck, if Cabin Fever is the worst thing we catch this year, we’re all good, right?

As many authors are now doing, I’m offering free books as about the only useful thing I can contribute to your life.

You can now download the first three books in the ‘Sliding Void’ series free for any reading device via,

Sliding Void (book 1):

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/8yy4i7ax0d

Transference Station (book 2): 

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/4ekwn9bpwl

Red Sun Bleeding (book 3): 

https://dl.bookfunnel.com/u0a3pylws0

There’s now a list of SFF writers doing the same over at https://bsfa.co.uk/reaching-out-some-opportunities-to-read-watch-listen/

Stay healthy and positive, my friends.

Stephen

PS – you can also get the Kindle reading app, gratis, for any device from a phone to a PC/Mac over at https://amzn.to/2UFV6uD in the UK or https://amzn.to/39gKUhq in the USA, if you don’t have a hardware reader..

The man who understood nothing until there was nothing left to understand.

Well, it’s time to hunker down for a while here in the UK – local schools are closing for deep cleans and the nearest supermarkets are looking a lot like a scene from the second or third episode of Fear The Walking Dead.

Will I get more writing done with all this quality free time, or is it a nudge from the universe to binge-watch Netflix/Prime and download the new Federations Update of the best PC space strategy game, Stellaris? Questions, questions, and so few answers.

One thing is certain, last year would have been a very good time to get that singing Japanese toilet with seventy-six bidet functions I’ve been lusting after, but never financially justifying since I came back from Tokyo.

If you have some unexpected free time on your hands, I am putting up the second chapter of my new comedy science fiction novel on Patreon tomorrow for download.

Get yourself over to https://www.patreon.com/stephenhunt to join me.

The paper books may sell out along with all the bog roll and paracetamol (yeah, yeah: if only), but the pixels will remain forever!

Stay healthy and well, my friends.

Chance Zapman and the Planet of Deadly Doom

The Beginning is only the End.

So, I’ve been watching the new Picard series (thanks Amazon Prime) and more or less enjoying it – good FX, a decent if slow-burn story, and, of course, lashings of Jean-Luc.

My main complaint is that to re-spin the show for modern sensibilities, they’ve jettisoned a few of the core concepts from the original series. The main change is that the Federation is now intellectually in retreat. No more high-minded Roddenberry values. It’s more of a self-doubting, broken institution in full reverse ferret while being assailed on all sides by hostile forces.

Now, if you take the view that the original show was always more about how Americans saw themselves in the mirror (albeit an idealized version), then perhaps in an age of ISIS, climate change, pandemics, and a rising swell in hostile Orwellian one-party states, this is how some of America views itself?

I miss the Federation’s idealism. I miss ours, too.

Talking about new things, I now have the first chapter of a new science fiction novel I’m writing up on my recently launched Patreon over at https://www.patreon.com/stephenhunt. Just to keep things fresh, this is my first comedy sci-fi novel – shades of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. It’s tentatively titled, Chance Zapman and the Planet of Deadly Doom … but that, and much else about the book will undoubtedly change between here and the final publication finishing line.

Lastly, I’m presently in full possession of a seventeen-year-old student currently seeking the quest of an unpaid 2-week work shadowing in London (starting 23rd March this year) as part of their BTEC-level Computing and IT course. Ideally, something computer and IT-related would be fab. They’ve been working their way through the first year of such esoteric teachings as network security, PC repairs and upgrades, C# programming using Visual Studio, Bootstrap website design, SQL databases, game programming with Unity, and other stuff which makes my head hurt just by dwelling on it. Seriously, whatever happened to HTML and a bit of PHP in Notepad? This new world of computers is far too complicated for me!

If you and your organisation has room for an extra office chair filled with someone to peer over your shoulder and occasionally ask pointed, youthful questions, while receiving a prophetic gaze through the window into gainful 9-to-5 employment for ten working days, then do please drop me a line.

Chance Zapman and the Planet of Deadly Doom

Coronavirus: it’s just the flu, right – so why has China shut down their country?

I re-posted the informative ‘What we know now about Coronavirus‘ summary article from SFcrowsnest on my Facebook page, recently, and subsequently got snowed by comments along the lines of “Pah, it’s just like the flu/cold, right? Nobody worries about that.”

Which rather begs the questions, then why has China more or less shut down their entire country, and why are increasing numbers of nations halting all flights in and out of the country – not to mention diverting the rescue evac flights of citizens into quarantine zones at army bases? (a wise precaution: three of the Japanese citizens evacuated on the last rescue flight to Tokyo have tested positive with the virus).

I would be really, really happy to be proved wrong on this, but the basic math behind Coronavirus is not looking promising. My one caveat is that most the underlying stats are provided by the Chinese government, and, given this is still early days, are subject to change (caution: the smart money is on the fact that China is probably underplaying its health stats in the cause of domestic social harmony – and retrospective revisions are likely to be deeply upward).

Here are the basics:

The virus can be passed on between 3-14 days before symptoms show, making it very easy to spread (so all those temperature gun checks at airports are ineffective as a way of screening out carriers).
Unlike normal flu, Coronavirus seems to be an equal-opportunity infection – it’s not just the usual suspects, elderly and babies, catching it (those with weak immune systems) … it’s hitting 20 years olds, and even younger doctors in hazmat gear working with the sick, who just let their guard down once. Basically, it transmits as easily as the common cold. But it ain’t, because …
Of those infected with Coronavirus, China says 20% go on to develop serious complications – pneumonia – requiring an ICU unit bed. Most countries have a limited number of these beds in hospitals, which is why China is now crash building a series of new hospitals in three days containing 100% ICU wards (a seriously impressive construction feat). Fairly sure in the UK we’ll all be infected in the planning permission stage if we tried to go down this rapid building route. “And, excuse me, have you done the Pigeon Impact Assessment Report, yet?” I guess being a one-party state that regularly executes citizens, and whose word is the Word of God, has its advantages in edge-case situations.
The initial claimed death rate of those infected is officially reported by China to be 3%. Now, one thing we do know from the West’s current truthful medical stats is that the fatality rate from those infected by normal flu who go on to develop pneumonia is between 5-10% in a standard ward, and up to 30% when a pneumonia patient is finally admitted to intensive care. The WHO reckons that in terms of infected patient experience, the Coronavirus symptoms – and how crap you feel – are about three times worse than standard flu which we possess some immunity from. If you are left scratching your head about a ‘mere’ official Chinese 3% fatality rate, then join the rest of the world scientific community.
So, a potential bad-case scenario number is that if Coronavirus swept your country, 20% of those infected could end up in an ICU, and 30% of that 20% could die – right up until your health system runs out of ICU beds and doctors, and then the question – to which we have no current realistic answer – becomes, how many of that 20% would survive with little or no treatment available? To put this in historical context, the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, infected about one-third of the planet’s population and killed an estimated 50 million people.
Here are some 2017 stats from the Kings Fund research paper into NHS strategy – the total number of NHS hospital beds in England has more than halved over the past 30 years, from around 299,000 to 142,000. The UK currently has fewer acute beds relative to its population than any other comparable health system. In 2016/17, overnight general and acute bed occupancy averaged 90.3 per cent, and regularly exceeded 95 per cent in winter. Basically, if you’re planning to catch Coronavirus in the UK, best do it early, while there are still a few NHS ICU unit places available.

Looking at these numbers, anyone who doesn’t understand why most of China now resemble scenes from science films such as Contagion or Outbreak (complete with Walking Dead-style citizen militias guarding illegal checkpoints into their bricked-off village), and why your government is slowly locking down incoming international flights, needs to re-sit their High School maths class which covered the concept of compounding – or probability, SIR models, epidemiological parameters and R(0) for you undergraduates.

Here are a few useful tips from a proper doctor to help keep yourself virus-free, this Winter.

Beyond this, let’s just hope that China can contain the outbreak internally, with other nations locating and quarantining sick people fast enough that we don’t get into ‘shutting down most cities with everyone staying at home’-territory … until a proven vaccine is developed. This is being done with some real ^%%^^&ing urgency, as you might expect (yep, scientists understand the numbers above) … here’s some better news on this ongoing scientific fightback: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51299735

I’ve seen some extreme green online commentary along the lines of, (a) our human footprint on the Earth is far too large and this kind of outbreak is nature’s way of culling the herd, so (b) if two out of ten of us do die, that is simply Gaia at work.

Hmmmm? Your mileage on how you feel about that idea will depend greatly as to whether you or your family and friends are the ones at the shitty end of the culling stick.

Stay safe out there, my loves.

Coronavirus: it’s just the flu, right – why has China shut down their country?

Of endings and arcs …

As an author, what makes a good, indifferent, or terrible story is always a subject of interest to me. It’s something I’ve been pondering having watched the – possibly – final Star Wars movie of the first nine… Rise of Skywalker.

I think one of the main failures for me, story-wise, is that the last three films (The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker) feel as if they are not particularly linked as an integrated trilogy. The Force Awakens is just a better SFX’d re-make of A New Hope, with a weird contextless reset of everything we were left with from Return of the Jedi, right back to factory settings.

The Last Jedi then just meanders about without much story arc from the first film, and without feeding towards the last movie, and finally, The Rise of Skywalker almost reinvents everything again with its resurrection of you-know-who as the big bad.

Too many cooks in the kitchen, heapings of direction by committee, and everything all too important money-wise to trust to a single main competent story-teller, I suspect. At least with George Lucas as the boss, it was one person’s vision and the buck always stopped with G.L. – and it was his money to urinate up against the wall if he so wanted. That leaves one-off movies like Rogue One as the standard-bearer for half-decent films in the universe.

Picard episode one has a strong opening, story-wise, and The Mandalorian was certainly watchable – if only to spot all the Spaghetti Westerns it was riffing on, along with a healthy dose of the Lone Wolf and Cub manga, and the Western-flavoured sci-fi novels of the now sadly departed author Mike Resnick (Santiago etc).

It all feels a bit artificial when compared to something truly original and strange such as Jo-Jo Rabbit – my last date night movie: stunning photography and an original script not based on a comic-book or part twenty-eight of any franchise (well, it was based loosely on Christine Leunens’s novel Caging Skies … which just goes to show you).

I have spoken.

Of endings and arcs …

Ve’ll be back?

I just returned from seeing Terminator Dark Fate at the cinema with one of the junior members of the clan who has never seen any of the previous films in the series.

I don’t think it’s as bad as a lot of critics have been saying, but then it did use the old ‘but this a parallel timeline’ card to shred the second film in the cannon, which was guaranteed to send true fans of the original flick into a meltdown.

The critics appear to have plenty of company.

Ve’ll be back?

The Hollywood Reporter says that given its &^%-poor opening, the movie could be on track to lose up to $130m depending on international box office performance, which means pretty much definitely that “zay von’t be back, ever!”

Terminator feels a bit like the Alien movie series, following much the same pattern. Alien – brilliant. Aliens – better. All the following films – pah. Ditto, The Terminator … brilliant. Terminator 2 Judgment Day – better. All the following films in the franchise. Meh. Just a Moo Moo cash-milking exercise.

How could T6 have been put on a better trajectory? A more original plot than just a fresh killer A.I called ‘Legion’ retreading the first film’s premise of timeline alteration by assassinating key humans.

I would have plumped for a good A.I. from a peaceful timeline sending back human-friendly robots to battle the evil A.I.’s forces, just to mix things up a little. A bit of light and shade could at least have made for a more interesting philosophical exploration of humanity’s relationship with technology.

More questions than answers.

One of the more interesting things about being an established author is that you often get hit up by friends-of-friends wanting to mine your mind for tips and tricks on becoming a pro writer (because, hey, it’s so easy).

It’s such a wide-N-deep topic that it would take days to just begin to scratch the surface – and the situation isn’t helped by constantly dancing goal-posts, given it’s almost as much ‘tech biz’ as ‘writing biz’, these days.

I’m now considering writing a non-fiction book at some point addressing this topic, if only so that when someone asks me a specific question, I can say, ‘See chapter three, section two.’, and save myself some serious time in the long term.

The bottom line is that to make it as a professional author you need to be able to write cracking stories, word crazy hard, and then experience dollops of epic luck. The bad news is that while you can handle the first two, the ‘luck’ component triggering a self-propelling cascade of success, is a Black Swan event.

This is why while there are 30,000 new Kindle books added each day to Amazon, there are not 30,000 new Stephen Kings and JK Rowlings created each day (only one or two – on a good year).

Or to put it another way, if you quit your day job to become the next Stormzy, you’re as likely to end up playing Frank Sinatra covers in the Dog and Duck tavern, as you are to find yourself packing out the O2 Arena with your brave new band.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Hell Fleet (Book 5 in the Sliding Void series).

Never rub another supervillain’s rhubarb.

So, two words of advice from me, this week. First, never rub another supervillain’s rhubarb; and second, The Joker movie, is, upon reflection, probably not the best choice for Date Night with your partner. When we departed the cinema, her indoors stared wistfully at a poster for an upcoming movie – Zombieland Double Tap – and said, ‘Maybe next time we could see a fun movie like … that one.’

When the zombie apocalypse and the total destruction of modern civilisation became ‘the fun choice’, you know you’re in trouble!

The Joker is unremittingly bleak, albeit well-acted, while basically recasting The Joker from evil force of nature & chaos to that bloke from The Taxi Driver – a sorry sod with metal issues, an illegal revolver, and increasingly little left to lose until he snaps and goes berserk.

All the nonsense stories from the mainstream press about how this film either (a) has people walking out of the cinema too scared to watch it or (b) glamorises incel violence, is complete b****locks.

It’s not scary at all. It strips all glamour and mystery about the Joker. It just leaves him looking like a sad loser whom you feel total pity for.

The most interesting thing about the film is the unreliable narrator nature of seeing something through the eyes of an out-and-out lunatic. What is true and what is not? I think everyone who went into that cinema saw a different film because of that simple trick.

Worth watching. But never more than once. And certainly not on Date Night. Doh!

Never rub another supervillain’s rhubarb.

 

The Man Who Watched Netflix and then Amazon Prime.

Just started watching the movie ‘The Man Who Killed Hitler and Then BigFoot‘ which has finally ended up on Netflix (currently sitting high in their trending films charts, too).

In plot terms, the film does pretty much what it says on the tin, indeed following an old codger who killed Hitler and then goes on to pick a fight with a big furry critter from the ice age.

It has the always watchable Sam Elliott in it, and ships with a distinctly elegiac tone and a few nods to the style of The Big Lebowski. Sam’s character, Calvin Barr, is at the end of his life, lonely and full of both regrets and thoughts about the paths he did follow, didn’t, and all that he’s lost on the way.

I think it’s an age-thing that this type of plot is starting to appeal to me more and more.

You see your parents die of age-related nasties and start to question your wavering sense of mortality and whether another late night in the office is really what you’re going to be thinking about when your time arrives for you to be lying on a hospital bed, staring at the crap faded ceiling panels above you, thinking, ‘So, that was it, then?’

Ah, cheery thoughts.

Calvin Barr seems very similar to my character William Roxley in the SF novel Empty Between the Stars. He’s coming back in a new book, by the way, just not how most of you might be expecting!

On that mysterious note, I’ll bid you adieu.

Empty Between the Stars: a new science fiction novel hits the book stores.

To The Stars?

I caught the movie ‘Ad Astra’ this weekend at the newly refurbished Leicester Square Odeon Luxe … upgraded sound systems and every seat an expensive LZ-Boy-style armchair with electronic footrests and reclining spine system.

In the movie, U.S. Space Command scientist and astronaut Clifford McBride (played by Tommy Lee Jones) heads off on a deep space voyage to run some SETI scans at the edge of the solar system, but his science ship is never heard from again.

Now his son – who looks a lot like Brad Pitt – must embark on the dangerous mission to Neptune to uncover the truth about his missing pops and, more to the point, the strange exotic high energy pulses that are frying humanity’s electronics on Mars, Earth and the Moon.

I suspect this’un won’t be a commercial hit, if only because it is so slowwwwwww. More about absent parenting and the infinite void of space echoing the emotional void of purpose in our driven modern high-tech lives; despite some glorious SFX and the odd lunar buggy pirate shoot-outs, distress calls from Norweigan science labs, and various conspiracy sub-plots (wouldn’t you know it, The Man is up to shenanigans, again).

Worth seeing on the glorious big screen, but possibly better off as a ‘wait-N-see’ for streaming on Netflix or Prime or wherever this ends up.

Nice leg-room, though. Well done, Odeon.

To The Stars?