Steven Lyle Jordan's Blog, page 5

The Post-Race Future

In my latest Medium article, The Post-Race Future, I point out that the trend to write exclusively-minority casts and cultures, to make up for the lack of diversity in popular literature, is no more realistic than the monocultural literature it challenges:

When I come across a story that takes place in a modern or future world where everyone is of one racial group, or one cultural group, or one sexual group, I can’t help but think: How unrealistic. There are fewer and fewer places on this planet where you can go and see only one racial group, or one cultural group, or one sexual group… After eons of spreading apart, the world is now homogenizing; and that trend is more likely to continue than not.

Read the article on Medium.  (Leave a clap if you like it… that would be nice.)

And now, on Medium

Just an announcement: I am now contributing articles on Medium, a new type of platform for writers and readers.  My first article is No Sci-Fi for Old Men:

Movie studios are increasingly passing on headier and more intelligent SF projects, and instead greenlighting simpler themes that, when big budgets are applied, tend to rake in the biggest profits. And as they’re discovering that star power and high concepts don’t bring in the lucrative crowds that space battles and gore-dripping aliens do, they are less likely to go with more intellectual fare. And that will truly be a tragedy for all of us.

If you like it, I hope you’ll follow me on Medium.com to see future articles.

Read No Sci-Fi for Old Men on Medium.

 

Carolyn Kestral: The beginning

Carolyn Kestral was a Commander in the Orion Fraternity’s Guard forces, a capable, popular and up-and-coming officer and leader, on the day when a Raian attack on her ship would change her life forever.  The prologue to Kestral’s new life begins here.

~

When the deck heaved the second time, there had been no collision alert sounded.  That was not good.  It meant that the bridge was either too busy fighting off attacking Spider ships, or dealing with damage control, to have time to issue alerts.

It also meant that when the deck dropped away, it sent dozens of crewmen, many of them in full run from one place to another, pitching into the air unexpectedly.  They came down everywhere, many of them tumbling into each other in alarmed, painful knots.  One such group of three crewmen carrying bulky power packs sailed across the corridor, collided with the deck and slid in a tumble across the floor, to impact against the wall and pin a fourth body that had already fallen there.

The crewmen cursed and shoved as they tried to untangle themselves and their gear.  They seemed to be having limited success, until a voice emanated from the body they had pinned against the wall.

“Get it together, Guardsmen!”

This seemed to do the trick, giving the crewmen the impetus to straighten themselves out and regain their feet.  The last one up looked back down at the person who had been pinned to the wall, and winced in apology.  “Sorry, Commander.”  One of the other Guardsmen, upon seeing who they had pinned against the wall, flushed violently, and his mouth worked open and closed without uttering a sound.  That was because the Commander was well-known on the ship, as beautiful a woman as she was intelligent and capable an officer, and any number of able-bodied crewmen would have given their eye-teeth to have been pressed so closely against her.

One offered a hand, and the woman on the deck used it to lever herself back to her feet.  At her full height, she was as tall as the smallest of the crewmen, none of whom would be considered short by any means.  Her height complemented a physical stature that had been known to reduce virile men to gibbering idiots in her presence… one of whom was apparently before her now.  His mouth still opened and closed like a fish out of water, his eyes reflecting his mortification.

“S’okay,” she said to the crewmen, the mortified one especially.  “Get those power packs to your stations.  Go!”

The crewmen gathered up their packs and bounded off down the corridor, leaving the Commander there with the other three-dozen crewmen strewn about the deck.  Most of them were on damage control, made necessary by a barrage of particle fire from the Spiders that had caused a power surge and blown out the conduits throughout the section.  The Commander had been closest to the section, and she knew how close the damage was to some vital shield cooling systems they could not afford to lose.  So she had immediately taken over damage control organization there.

Unfortunately, it already looked like the systems were too far gone… and if the coolant lines blew out, they would release a toxic cloud that would fill the corridor in seconds.  While the Commander gave orders, she expected at any second to have to evacuate the section.

“We’re back up, Commander!”

She turned to see one of the maintenance teams slapping the covering plates back down on an access box they had just finished patching.

“All right, lock it down and get out of this section!” the Commander shouted.  “I want minimum personnel in here until—”

Her orders were cut off when the deck jumped out from underneath them again.  And something different: A force that struck her from behind, accompanied by a deafening noise.  She was pitched into more flailing crewmen, and landed in a heap with them.

Being on top of this heap, she was up quickly this time, and swiveled her head about to assess the damage.  The far end of the corridor was filled with a peculiar colored smoke, obscuring the space beyond.  That wasn’t the color of the coolant, she knew.

Then she became aware of a noise… a keening, high-pitched wail that grew louder and more insistent.  Her throat constricted as her emergency training kicked in.

“Hull breach!”  She cried out, and pitched forward.  There had been crewmen just a few meters into that cloud, and she couldn’t see them now.  She had to see if anyone needed help.  “Everyone out except damage control!  Prepare to seal off this deck!”

She advanced into the cloud, waving her arms in an attempt to see.  A slight breeze tugged at loose wisps of her hair, but it did not seem to be too insistent yet… and it wasn’t dissipating the odd cloud… so she continued, cautiously but urgently.  She almost tripped over the first crewman she found, slumped against the wall.  She knelt and checked his pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief to realize he was still alive.  As quickly as she could, she pulled the unconscious crewman’s arm over her shoulder and used it to lever him onto her back.  He was a bit larger than she was, but she managed to position him so that she could half-carry, half-drag him away.

As she turned to leave, she saw something on the opposite wall, a vague shape in the fog.  She took only one step towards it, straining to make out the shape.  Then she recognized the telltale nosecone protruding into the hull, the shattered glass ports on each side, and the cryptic markings ringing the ports.

“Oh, shit…”

She spun about fast as she could, struggling with her unconscious burden.  “Somebody help me with this m—”

An incredible blow to the small of her back cut her off.  The Commander went flying in one direction, her burden in another, and both of them ended up on the deck.  She almost lost consciousness herself, so hard did she hit the floor… until a noise emanated from within the cloud, a tortured wail that turned her blood cold.  Pure adrenalin forced her to struggle upright, and she spun around to face a nightmare.

A shape seemingly twice her size came out of the cloud, bellowing, swinging massive arms and clenched fists.  No sooner had the Commander regained her feet, she doubled back down, and its first swing missed… following through, the Commander instinctively swung about to land a foot in her huge attacker’s midsection.  But her attacker was fast, too: Before she knew what had happened, her foot was caught in a viselike grip, and she was yanked off the ground.  The Commander felt herself swinging through the air, her regulation-cut short brunette hair almost brushing the opposite walls of the corridor.  Her breath left her, her captive leg burned as if about to tear free of her hip, and she was completely disoriented.  She was absolutely sure that her life was now over.

Then her foot was released, and she cartwheeled wildly through the air.  She hit the wall, and this time, consciousness did leave her.  The Commander slumped to the floor, limp as a rag doll.

Her attacker, meanwhile, had jumped on the poor unconscious crewman the Commander had tried to drag out of the fog, and in three swift barehanded strokes, had managed to rip off both of his arms and his head.  Then it bellowed again, the noise booming through the corridor.  With clearly murderous intent, it charged out of the cloud, right at the unconscious Commander.

Suddenly the corridor was filled with a flash of light.  A finger-thin beam of reddish energy lanced across the corridor, catching the attacker full in the chest.  There was a scream, and the smell of burning flesh, and suddenly the attacker was in several pieces.  Most of those pieces continued their forward momentum, falling to the deck and skidding several meters before coming to a stop.

“Got him!”

“Watch for more!”

Instantly the corridor was filled with people, most of them heavily armored, and carrying particle rifles and handguns.  They swarmed into the corridor, brandishing their weapons and watching every unmoving body closely.

One of the soldiers stepped close enough to nudge the severed torso of the wild attacker they had just cut down.  “Oh, damn… this is Drew Franks, he’s in my group quarters… look, he dismembered that guy…”

“Try not to think about it,” another soldier advised him.

They moved into the corridor only as far as the edge of the cloud.  The lead soldier peered at the cloud for a moment, then hurriedly backed off, fumbling at the atmosphere mask dangling from his neck.  “Venom!  Everybody out!  Masks on!  Seal off this deck!”

The soldiers retreated, wasting no time.  All were silent now, and many of them held their breath as they struggled intently with their masks.  Near the leader, another soldier bent down to grab the unconscious Commander slumped against the wall.

“What are you doing?” the leader batted his hand away.  “Leave ‘er!”

“Lieutenant—”

“Leave her, I said!” the Lieutenant snapped.  “She can’t be helped… she’s already infected!”

“We can’t leave her!” the soldier protested.  “That’s Commander Kestral!”

“I know,” the Lieutenant said, looking down at her.  “And she’s as good as dead.”

~

This was the fateful moment when the life of Carolyn Kestral was forever changed by an encounter with the Raians and their tailored virus.  This is the prologue to Race to Deep Abignon, the first of the Kestral Voyages novels by Steven Lyle Jordan.  Interested?  Order it from Amazon today.

Mr. Robot: Our fantasies, our selves

I watched the Mr. Robot finale last night, and it turned out to be exactly what I thought it should be. One reviewer described it as “weird, even for Mr. Robot’s standards,” but for a show that’s essentially about a main character with mental illness, you should expect no less.

[image error]For the uninitiated, Mr. Robot is a story of Elliot Alderson, a computer security pro by day, but on his own time using his hacking skills to fight evil world-controlling corporations and terrorists.  Elliot also has social anxiety disorder and clinical depression, which lead to schizophrenia and the classic “unreliable narrator” of his own saga.  At times, Elliot’s personal issues make it almost impossible to figure out what’s really going on around him, a premise that is fully realized in the series’ finale.

Elliot’s journey down his own rabbit hole went especially deep in last week’s episode, and even deeper, right down to Elliot’s core, in the 2-hour finale.  Along the way, we were presented with various icons of Elliot’s long journey, with the now-expected reality bending and fourth-wall breaking that has made this show so memorable. The final reveal—what’s really been going on in Elliot’s mind—was masterfully presented, and brought the needed coda to this story.

At the end, I found myself wondering what it is about such a story that makes it so compelling for viewers like me. Is it the unpredictability that mental illness suggests to the viewer… the idea that actions can be completely malleable, that characters can come and go, live and die, rinse and repeat, freely within a chaotic narrative?

Is it a simple desire to be shocked, to accept a narrative that can do quite literally anything in front of us?  Have some of us become so jaded and complacent in our TV viewing that we demand shows that are intentionally obtuse and unknowable in order to continue to be stimulated?  Do we want our shows to openly defy our ability to guess the next moment, the real agenda, the big reveal?

Or is it a more personal reaction to the witnessing of someone with mental instability? Does the viewer watch someone like Elliot Alderson, and wonder at some level whether their own viewpoint on reality could somehow be just as skewed? Do we worry that we in fact have as little connection with the real world as Elliot, and we’re just waiting for that moment when we witness something that completely shatters our own life-fantasy?  Are we watching, hoping (or perhaps fearing) that the show will make it easier for us to recognize that reality-shattering moment when it finally arrives?

Despite all of this conjecture, fighting to ruin our enjoyment of the moment, Mr. Robot actually gives us a happy ending of sorts; not a literal presentation of happy, relieved and optimistic characters, but at least a reassurance that Elliot’s seasons-long nightmare has come to an end.

I cannot say enough about Rami Malek’s amazing performance as Elliot, as well as the incredible work done by all the supporting characters, and led by show creator and lead writer Sam Esmail.  I scanned through the cast, looking for anyone in particular who stood out… but really, there aren’t any distinct standouts, because the entire cast did a phenomenal job during their run.  The awards that this show has earned over its lifetime have barely scratched the accolades it’s deserved.  Like another recent show, Orphan Black, Mr. Robot has done an incredible job of showing us how powerful and compelling genre television can be.

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And now, sadly, it’s time to move on, to say Goodbye to Mr. Robot and—after we take some time to fully digest the experience of the last few years—start to look around for what will be next.  We hope that somewhere out there is, or will be, a new series that will impact us as much as Mr. Robot did.  We also fear that we’ll never see its like again.  But some of us have faith that the medium of television still has the ability to allow the cream to rise to the top.  And we’ll be watching for the next signs of that cream.

 

Back in circulation

Because you demanded it!  Just in time for the holidays!  Rereleased for you!  Recovered from the annals of history!  Back by popular  

Oh, who am I kidding?  After being taken out of circulation a few months back, I’ve arranged to put my best novels back on the market.  (Don’t overreact… I know hardly anyone even noticed.)  And for very little reason, other than my deciding that they might as well be there.  I mean, they’re designed to be read… so, maybe, someone out there will want to read them.

Actually, there is one small reason for me to bring them out: I’ve got my feelers out for someone who could use the expertise of a novel writer, story editor, and follower of all things science and science fiction.  I’m hoping someone who is interested in my ability to write for other projects, or knows of someone who is, will consider these samples of my writing and storytelling ability, and maybe give me a shot.

At any rate, I present to you the 2 books of the Verdant series, the 4 books of the Kestral series, and As The Mirror Cracks, for your enjoyment.  The novels are available as Kindle ebooks on Amazon, and there’s always the possibility that there will be other books to follow.  Please mention and share them to anyone you know who’d get a kick out of these great stories!

Verdant Agenda

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The environmental crisis caused by the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera leads Earth’s desperate residents to seek refuge on the four city-satellites in Earth orbit—Verdant, Tranquil, Fertile and Qing—but the satellites are already at capacity, and further overloading will ruin their survivability as well. As the satellites find themselves fighting against a forced occupation by populations they cannot hold, a secret group on the satellite Verdant has an agenda of its own, one that will remove the satellite from the threat of attack… and if they succeed, will trigger the next age of human history.

Verdant Pioneers

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Life in deep space is nothing like what the sci-fi shows would have you believe: It’s nothing but a lot of emptiness, occasional sources of the chemicals and minerals necessary for survival… and the city-satellite Verdant, in forced exile from Earth. And when the deep-space discovery of the age is marred by the unexpected disappearance of one of Verdant’s freighters, CEO Julian Lenz and his staff must make a difficult decision: To take Verdant into hiding, perhaps forever; or to return to an Earth in uncertain condition, and risk Verdant’s survivability.

As the Mirror Cracks

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The Mirror is more than just another virtual world; it’s a worldwide phenomenon, with average and exotic character “reflections,” a unique physics of its own, and social, political and financial aspects that are deeply entwined with those of the real world. So when a plot is uncovered to destroy The Mirror, it’s serious. It’s a race to save The Mirror, and the real world with it, played out by the most clever minds of both worlds, and led by a mild-mannered reporter and his Mirror reflection, the greatest of virtual superheroes: Zenith!

The Kestral Voyages book I: Race to Deep Abignon

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Carolyn Kestral’s encounter with the hostile, spider-like Raians, and their attack virus—code-named Venom—didn’t kill her as expected, but all the same destroyed her career in the Orion Guard. Now the proud owner of a Quicksilver-class freighter, she gathers a small crew and goes into business on her own. But when a clandestine first run attracts the attention of the Spiders, Kestral’s crew worries that the stress could trigger the virus within her, turning Kestral at the worst possible moment into a lethal human weapon…

The Kestral Voyages book II: Defiance of the Concorde

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Despite Captain Carolyn Kestral’s best efforts, her medical past and hazardous reputation means she must accept sketchy freight jobs just to make ends meet… including jobs from shadowy and barely-legal organizations like the Concorde. And when one of those sketchy jobs at the remote Rho station takes a bad turn—and a group of innocents are marked for death—Kestral and the crew of the Mary realize that, to help them escape the Concorde’s wrath, they need the aid of an unlikely new ally: The wily and mercenary Captain of the Jovian Skies.

The Kestral Voyages book III: The Lens

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Planet Shura Dva seems to be deliberately resisting and sabotaging the terraforming work of the Oan Engineers. A local workers’ leader claims to be able to “feel” the planet’s anger… but the Engineers think he’s really a terrorist leader secretly orchestrating the attacks. And in the midst of local labor squabbles and strange planetary phenomena, Carolyn Kestral and the crew of the Mary arrive on Shura Dva to help out a friend in need… and discover that the planet itself may not allow them to leave!

The Kestral Voyages book IV: The House of Jacquarelle

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Carolyn Kestral and the crew of the Mary, as well as Coray Gheris and the crew of the Jovian Skies, get caught in a crossfire of rival planetary corporate entities, con men, assassins and killer robots, all centered around the wealthy House of Jacquarelle… and in the process, discover a shocking secret about one of their own!

Marvel’s modern movie mutants

There was much rejoicing amongst superhero fans when Disney threw its financial weight across the movie industry and regained the rights to the X-Men and associated mutant characters that had been sold to Fox Studios years ago.  Considering most of the X-Men movies produced by Fox weren’t exactly stellar, it was expected that Marvel Studios, owned by Disney, would be able to recreate the highly superior (and successful) movie formula that gave us the Avengers movies, Black Panther, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and so many others.

What many fans don’t consider, however, is that when Marvel won its X-Men characters back, the only things it really gained were the specific characters and names associated with X-Men.  They were already able to make movies with mutants… even if they couldn’t actually use the word “mutant” in them… because they had figured out a new way of creating characters with strangely-obtained powers for the MCU.

Consider that when the X-Men were originally created back in 1963, their original sci-fi-ish premise was that unintentional exposure to radiation, mostly from atomic bomb testing post-WWII, had resulted in genetic “mutations” in random members of the population, and later in their children… the so-called “children of the atom.”  Today we know more about the effects of radiation exposure, and we know that being exposed to radiation often causes genetic deterioration and health problems in the subjects, but never spawns positive effects.  Fortunately, the Marvel movies developed a more modern take on genetic experimentation that works in their universe.

Their new version of mutants mirrors the premise used in Marvel’s Ultimates comics universe, which postulated that mutants had been created, not by random radiation effects, but by direct experimentation by the government.  The Marvel movies also borrowed from the comics the evil organization HYDRA, now hiding in plain sight as a shadow organization within the good guy organization of SHIELD.  This provided the perfect basis for the new mutants of the cinematic universe.

In one of the post-credit scenes of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, after HYDRA had been exposed within SHIELD, viewers were presented with a secret HYDRA installation where it was revealed that human subjects had been experimented upon using secretly-obtained alien-inspired technology.  The viewers see two survivors of the tests: Wanda and Pietro Maximoff, who are sent against the Avengers in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but eventually end up fighting alongside them against the genocidal super-robot Ultron.

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Two other important pieces of information are given to the viewers in that post-credit scene: One, that there have been many other subjects; and Two, that there are other hidden HYDRA facilities.  The first reveal suggested there have been subject failures, but it leaves open a hint that there may have been other successes.  The second point leaves open the possibility that some of the other facilities may have also experimented on super-powered humans, with their own implied successes and failures.

With this information, we have a lot of possibilities to consider.  One possibility is that there may be other super-powered humans created by HYDRA, some that may honor the mission of HYDRA (and would therefore be considered super-villains) and some that may have broken away from the collapsed HYDRA.  That, alone, could provide plenty of story and character possibilities.

And even in HYDRA’s supposed failures, there are possibilities, mostly centered around two questions: Exactly what did HYDRA do with its failures; and did they always know when they had a failure?  If subjects were experimented upon within HYDRA installations, and did not work out, they were probably executed (as the post-credit scene suggests).  But HYDRA may have been more inventive about its experiments, and if so, their collapse could have kept them from continuing their experiments.

Suppose, for instance, that one or more of the HYDRA facilities secretly experimented on unknowing human populations, with the idea of monitoring them until stories of “strange children” or odd happenings started to surface, at which point they would come forward and take the children to be indoctrinated into HYDRA.  Now suppose that the experiment had resulted in some super-powered children, but the exposure of HYDRA in The Winter Soldier meant the unintended abandonment of the program.  There’s also the possibility that HYDRA didn’t find out about some results, maybe because the parents made an effort to hide their children’s abilities, or because the children themselves didn’t develop until much later.  These all point to the possibility of super-powered adults and children hidden all over the country and even around the world.

Now suppose a genetics expert, originally a HYDRA experimental subject who managed to extricate or hide himself from HYDRA, who discovers the existence of other subjects like himself.  He has the means to find these people and bring them to a facility where they can be trained to use their powers, hide them when necessary, and be encouraged to use their powers for good.   Maybe he develops a mutant task force intended to infiltrate the last of the HYDRA facilities and free the remaining subjects.  Maybe they even take the responsibility for finding and stopping other, already-freed experimental subjects who use their powers to rob from or hurt others, or who seek to strike back at governments for experimenting on them, with the hope of rehabilitating them.

Presto: You’ve just re-created the X-Men for the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Now that Marvel has the rights to the X-Men back in the MCU, they can use their already-formed premises as a guide to create a new series of movies about mutants, centered around ex-experimental subject Charles Xavier who uses his mental powers and the ability to detect mutants to find and recruit others into his circle, train them to work as teams to protect other mutants and stop those who seek to hurt others.  As well as the established characters of the X-Men, the MCU can use other related characters, create new characters, or pit them against other established characters in the MCU for some great, original and compelling stories about people who don’t fit in, organizations that take advantage of citizens and individuals, and learning to use their unique skills, for others, and for good.

IP: Pennies in a drawer

I’ve been spending the last few days in contemplation of the new science fiction premise I came up with a few weeks back.  And after reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s articles on Rethinking The Writing Business, which, yes, I’m referencing again, I decided to take a page from her book—er, blog—and try assembling a spreadsheet in which to put all the various premises, ideas, characters, elements, objects, ongoing or potential themes and situations, etc, etc, that would make up my concept and story potential.

[image error]At first, the idea of the spreadsheet was pretty daunting.  After reading the articles, I’d considering making similar spreadsheets for some of my past novels, with the idea of breaking them down into individual IP elements that might be mixed, matched and resold later (somehow).  But the sheer scale of the project drew me up short, not to mention my not knowing how I’d sell any of it in the first place.

But when it came to a new and as-yet undocumented project, I thought: Okay, let’s just buckle down and try it.  The result: 62 individual elements (and possibly counting) related to the original premise.  And was it all that difficult?  I’ll be honest: Not at all.  In fact, it’s really just a different formatting of the notes I usually take on any novel project, which encompass premises, characters, settings, themes, stories and backstories, technology, history, etc, etc, that go into my final writing.

When I outline a new story, I refer to my detailed notes as I go, and combine the two into a story breakdown, roughly a paragraph for each story chapter.  I refine that until I have a complete document of story points to guide me, and it allows me to write the novel straight through, with only minor adjustments as I go, start-to-finish within a casual month.  That’s been my method of novel-writing from the beginning, and it’s served me well.

After looking through the IP spreadsheet, I could tell it would serve me just as well as my usual notes for detailing my story elements and writing a novel.  But its value is in that it would also suit to use in other projects, say, writing screenplays or teleplays, developing web or audio content, or even creating physical products like toys and models.  And it can be expanded to include information on license purchasers, contract information, prices, effective dates, and a horde of other information.

Yes, the spreadsheet can do all that.  But will it?  Spreadsheet or no, I’m still an unknown independent author without a shred of this mysterious selling savvy I’m supposed to have.  Could I just go write a novel?  Yes; but I have little to expect in return for all that effort, so I’m not sold on that idea at the moment.  And if I don’t have the resources required to achieve my property’s potential, what should I do with it?

[image error]Maybe the thing to do, now that the IP spreadsheet is developed, is to put it aside in anticipation of a future time when I can properly market and profit from it.  Maybe the thing to do is concoct a new property, develop a new spreadsheet of IP elements, save and put that aside… then start another one.  And another.  Maybe I need to think of my IP like shiny coins, the kind you stick in a drawer because you think they just might be worth something in the future.  Until I someday make a useful contact, or gain a new resource, or get shown a new way to achieve profitability… and then I can open the drawer and pull out all this potential IP to apply.

It just might mean someday I’ll have a drawerful of ideas that never saw the light of day, and will be tossed when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil (if I don’t toss them myself before that).  It might mean I’ll have something to do in the future, maybe when I have nothing else to occupy me and I just want to burn through the days.  It might mean I’ll have something of some value to sell outright, when my interest has waned, my budget is wanting and I can use the extra income.  It’s too early to tell at this point.  Guess I’d better clear a drawer.

The evolving TV package deals

We’re facing another sea-change in how we consume entertainment.  It used to be that Americans signed up for cable TV services and selected “packages,” collections of certain types of channels or content, for a monthly fee.  But in the last few years, new channels outside of television, like Netflix, Hulu and many others, have given the TV channels a run for their money by offering their own original and compelling content.

The inauguration of Disney+ is significant, as it signals the media owner’s intention to pull the bulk of its content out of all other markets, to feature exclusively on its own (and Disney’s various properties are among the most popular in the industry).  Already Universal and Paramount are planning to follow suit with their own new channels, while channels like HBO create their own high-quality original content.  What this means is a lot of individual channels, which viewers will be forced to buy individually instead of through cable packages, versus the cable channels which will have less and less of the content that used to draw in their audiences.

For years, cable TV subscribers begged for an a-la-cart system of selecting just the channels they wanted to watch, with the idea that it would save them money.  Cable companies resisted, preferring to sell their preset (and large) packages and demand a higher cost, and even going so far as to bribe convince local governments to go along with their viewing monopolies.  But as the independent channels are created, and other former-only-on-tv channels like HBO are creating online channels, it is getting increasingly realistic to give up on TV packages altogether and switch to the independents.

[image error]The question is: At what point do the independents end up costing the viewer as much—or potentially more—than paying for cable packages?  Suppose you have a cable package that includes your basic local channels plus a few-hundred of the non-subscriber national channels (the Discovery channels, the Nickelodeons, Nat Geo, Syfy, MTV, TV Land, etc, etc, etc).  In some areas, that package could be costing you more than $200 a month.  Now, the independent channels are charging generally $7-10 a month to join.  Do a little math: If you sign up for, say, 25 of these channels, you may end up paying more for them than your cable package.  So you have to be clever about what channels you really want to buy.

And for those of us whose tastes are more… let’s say, eclectic… we may find ourselves given a choice of keeping an expensive cable package because none of the independent channels runs that one show we really like to watch… or paying for an independent channel just to watch that one show… or going full independent, and having to give up that one show none of the independents own…

[image error]Choices, choices…

I find myself rapidly approaching this ultimate decision, as the independents ramp up their content and exclusivity, as more and more shows premiere that sound very attractive to me, and as existing cable content gets more and more stale (Yardcrashers season 9, anyone?).  Soon my wife and I will be forced to sit down, look at the options and choices, choose new and online channels for content, then figure out how best to continue to watch them on our nice, pretty TVs.  And we’re the kind of couple that often wrestles with multiple persnickety remotes to figure out how to watch what we want; adding to that complexity will not a happy house make, and I guarantee will be figured into our ultimate decisions.

But maybe… just maybe… the cable companies have caught wind of what’s happening, and are actively working to stay in the game.  Maybe they are hoping to strike deals with these independents and, just like they already do with the networks and non-subscriber channels, find a way to bundle the likes of the new network owners, Disney+ (ABC), Paramount (CBS), Peacock (NBC), the other subscriber channels like HBO, Starz, etc, etc, into new packages for their cable subscribers.  Maybe, by the time my wife and I are about to switch, our company will offer us the new package or packages, optimized for easy TV access and ready made for our viewing pleasure (and at a competitive cost, one can only hope).

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The next decade (oy.) should see all of this shake out, and the results could be fun and interesting for us TV watchers… or it could drive us away from TV watching and into some other regular pastime.  I know, sounds pretty much impossible… but stranger things have happened.

I AM an IP licensor.

[image error]In a recent post, I recalled an old trope from the original Star Trek series, Dr. McCoy’s fondness for saying, “I’m a doctor, not a (fill in the blank)!” to describe my feelings upon reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Business Musings article Rethinking The Writing Business (Part 1).  In my post, I’m a writer… not an IP licensor, I described myself as a lowly writer, not cut out for today’s IP-centric market.

But upon reading further and into the other articles in the series, I was found myself recalling a specific moment of that series: In the episode “Mirror, Mirror,” Kirk, McCoy, Uhura and Scott are transported to a mirror universe, and have to secretly plot a way to get back home.  Kirk and Scotty, planning to make clandestine programming changes to the transporter, decide Scotty needs McCoy’s help in Engineering; at which point McCoy protests, “I’m a doctor, not an engineer!”

Scotty turns to him and insists: “Now, you’re an engineer.”  In point of fact, if you’ve ever watched Star Trek, you know that although McCoy complains a lot, he manages to do quite a few things beyond the duties of a doctor over the course of the series… whatever is necessary to get the job done.

And so I considered Kristine’s articles, which included the assertion that a book is, in fact, a form of licensing of a series of products, the collection of characters, elements and premises that are in the book.  I came to see that my books, all 17 of them, represented licensed products of the various characters and elements therein.

The fact is: I’m already an IP licensor.

And suddenly I was looking at the new SF project I’d started to develop in a different light.  I’m doing more than outlining a new story; I’m developing properties, premises, characters, arcs, vehicles.  All of these are individual bits of intellectual property that I can not only assemble in different combinations to tell different stories, but also apply to multiple venues, like written books, audiobooks, games and movies.

It sounds exciting, but overwhelming, at the same time… especially considering I’m a self-publisher, and quite unfamiliar with the selling of any type of products other than ebooks (for that matter, based on my track record, I’m clearly not that savvy about selling the ebooks either).  I don’t know what would be involved with selling my IP content elsewhere without access to agents or industry contacts in venues other than ebooks… or if any of that is even conceivable for a guy with no help, no connections and no money.

[image error]But I’m putting the cart before the horse, here; or, to be more accurate, worrying about selling a product I don’t actually have yet.  The first thing is to catalog and secure your IP elements; until that’s done, there seems little point in sweating the myriad licensing options and opportunities.  Strictly speaking, I’m getting overworked about a problem that doesn’t exist, when I shouldn’t let it distract me from the work I need to get done in the first place.

So, head forced dutifully back down, I’m concentrating on the task at hand: The outlining and notes that will make up the IP I’m developing.  Once that’s done, I’ll start to think about how I’m going to use my IP, who I may want to sell it to, and how the hell I’m going to do that.  Maybe, ultimately, I won’t be able to find a way to sell my IP, and I’ll end up putting it aside and developing something else.  But there’s no point fretting about that now.  One step at a time.

Superheroes at television level

[image error]I’m sort of piggybacking this onto a recent post by Thaddeus Howze about the news that the CW, following the success of the Supergirl TV series, is working on a new Superman series for TV.  Thaddeus is opposed to the idea, and bases his opinion on the fact that Superman is already the most-exposed superhero in television history, and after all these years, writers have essentially lost the ability to write new and interesting stories for him.

I tend to agree: Superman has been over-exposed on TV, and there’s nothing left that can be done to him that hasn’t already been done.  And if you ask me, CW is being incredibly short-sighted in deciding to make a Superman TV series; Supes might be the most well-known superhero in the world, but television can be so much better served by steering away from the Big Blue Boy Scout in favor of other characters.

Consider first that Superman is only one of an incredible roster of characters owned by DC comics… literally hundreds of heroes of every age, sex, color and creed, and with an incredible variety of powers and abilities.  Then consider that a television series needs extended stories, something good but not big, epic and quickly over… which is what you tend to get with super-powered heroes like Superman.  And you start to realize that you need a different level of hero for television.

[image error]Marvel comics understood this, when they developed their various MCU TV series… and which is why their series revolved, not around the powerful major characters that populated The Avengers, but with lesser, “street-level” characters like Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and the Agents of SHIELD.  These heroes still had powers, but they were more vulnerable, more dependent on others to support and sustain them.  Their villains were equally “street-level,” which made their conflicts more even, their victories less assured and often limited in satisfaction.  And because they were less invulnerable, their stories were more compelling, their stakes were higher, and their victories were sweeter.  Applying the standard TV storytelling methods of using complex and layered relationships, personal drama and more grounded stakes, contributed to their success significantly.

The series these characters shared had another advantage: Being less “superpowered” meant the series could be made with less spent on costly and time-consuming special effects.  So the series were more sustainable productions for television budgets and schedules.  When combined with clever storytelling, accomplished actors and quality production crews, the Marvel series were very successful and popular.

[image error]This is what the DC producers should be keeping in mind for future TV series.  They chose wisely when they decided on Arrow, for instance: Oliver Queen, a skilled but not super-powered archer, was a great character for multi-season episodic television.  Black Lightning, another more “street-level” powered hero, has attained similar success on the small screen.  And there are plenty of other individual characters that would support a series.  Choosing characters that can be believable in well-grounded stories with good supporting characters and comparable villains/threats is key, and the writing and production needs to be equal to the task of selling the concept.

DC should be following that strategy and thinking smaller for television, using characters that might not make a splash in big budget movies, but are better scaled for TV.  In fact, the bulk of DC’s characters fit this bill, most of them being much less powerful than Superman, and many skilled but non-powered heroes.  They should also consider smaller groups or individual heroes, as lesser numbers are easier to cultivate audience interest than large groups.  Their Legends of Tomorrow is an excellent example, in many ways mirroring Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD in its ability to delve into the corners of the DC universe and its many compelling characters and storylines.

[image error]DC’s comics have successfully featured small groups, especially duos, in their Brave and Bold series and other effective pairings.  Green Arrow had an off-and-on relationship with Black Canary, aka Diana Lance, which would have made an excellent superhero partnership for a series.  DC has also paired up complimentary characters Blue Beetle and Booster Gold, or Green Fire and Ice Princess.  And other characters, like the Atom, the Question and the Elongated Man, have thrived in interesting pairings with various other heroes.  Pairings like these would be ideal for TV series.

TV audiences are currently split on superhero shows, displaying a fondness for the shows at the same time as the beginnings of burnout for the many series competing for their time.  The only way to prevent burnout is to be highly creative in storytelling and quality in acting, to make sure the content is as compelling as possible, while being clever about giving the audiences the WOW moments they expect from superhero fare and modern effects productions.  Time will tell if the show creators can maintain those elements well enough to build audiences, or at least maintain them.  But they have a clear blueprint for success; they just need to follow it.