S. Evan Townsend's Blog, page 65

Movie Review: Rogue One

On Thursday (May the fourth be with you) I watched on Blu-Ray Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. I didn't go see it in theaters probably because of my disappointment with Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens which I did see in the theater (IMAX 3-D).

But Rogue One was fun. It was fun to be back in the Star Wars universe. And the writers took great pains to A) deliver an action-filled movie and B) not contradict the canon of Star Wars. Small spoiler: this move ends just before Star Wars IV: A New Hope starts.

There is one small thing that is inconsistent with Star Wars IV. But we'll let that slide.

As far as the movie, it is fun, action-packed, and heartfelt. It was a little disappointing in the end, however as (**Large Spoiler**) everybody dies. Well, except Darth Vader.

I don't know why but despite thinking it was fun to revisit the Star Wars universe, the movie is so relentless in its action and its black vs. white plot structure, that I found the movie unfulfilling. There was very little depth to anything. The Empire is bad, the rebels are good, period. I suppose the entire Star War franchise has the same issue but it was more apparent in this movie.

The rebels are portrayed as a bit grittier and more diverse than they were in other Star Wars movies. I remember when the only black person in the whole galaxy was Lando. So that's an improvement.

There were some slight of hand tricks. Some pieces of film were cut directly out of A New Hope. They probably used CGI to make an actor look like Grand Moff Tarkin but the voice wasn't quite right (except when they copy and pasted it out of A New Hope).

And for continuity's sake, to fire the Death Star still involves a 1980's vintage video mixer.

While I enjoyed the movie and found it, for the most part, fun. I didn't LOVE it, like I expected to. If you haven't seen it, go ahead, you'll probably enjoy it. But it's not on the level of A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back.

The Speculative Fiction Cantina with Special Guest Edward M. Wysocki, Jr.

Today on the Speculative Fiction Cantina we welcome special guest Edward M. Wysocki, Jr.
Edward M. Wysocki, Jr.

Edward M. Wysocki, Jr.Ed Wysocki is an engineer who is now retired after more than 30 years with a major defense contractor. His introduction to science fiction came in the third grade when he encountered Heinlein’s Space Cadet. Heinlein remains his favorite author. Like many readers of science fiction, he has occasionally tried his hand at writing short stories, but with no success at sales. Yet.

Ed has been a bit more successful at writing about science fiction. His notes and articles have appeared in The Heinlein Journal and Science Fiction Studies. His books, The Great Heinlein Mystery and An ASTOUNDING War , reflect a combination of his interests in science fiction, naval and military history and history of technology.

Edward's Books (nonfiction):
The Great Heinlein Mystery: Science Fiction, Innovation and Naval Technology
An ASTOUNDING War: Science Fiction and World War II
Edward's Links:
Website Blog LinkedIn
From today's program: Are Strange Bursts of Light Powering Alien Ships?
Listen to today's program at 6:00 PM ET / 3:00 PM PT, or in archive here.

Why I Blog

Back to the 52-week blogging challenge and today's prompt is "My Inspiration to Blog."

My first blog I started just to rant about stuff I was interested in. Which mainly turned out to be politics.

This blog (where I try to avoid politics) I do partly to help promote my books. But also as a way to talk about things I'm interested in such as University of Washington football, cars, movies and television, science, and whatever comes to mind.

But really, to be honest, the reason I bother doing this blog is book promotion. So please, buy a book!

(Wow, that's a short blog post!)

The Speculative Fiction Cantina with Elayne Griffith and Kyla Ross

Today on the Speculative Fiction Cantina we are happy to welcome writers Elayne Griffith and Kyla Ross.
Elayne GriffithElayne Griffith

I grew up drawing, writing, reading, riding horses, and climbing trees in a small town in the Sierra Nevada foothills. I then ran off to L.A. for a degree in art and not a clue of what to do with it. After seven years of bumbling around in the city, and being laid off for the fifth time when the recession hit, I was broke and bored and bummed.

One day at a coffee shop while job hunting, I thought of the tiny black unicorn statue that I used to admire on my mom’s shelves at home. I used to imagine it coming to life and taking me to a magical land, and a whole story suddenly began unfolding before me! There began my writing journey.

It wasn’t until I’d finished that first novel that I realized that I’d found a passion and love for writing. I ran back home to the mountains, and with the tenacity of a Honey Badger I’ve been avidly creating many more works. I now reside in Oakland and go to Sci-Fi writers of San Fran with Terry Bisson whenever I have the opportunity. I believe in doing what truly makes you happy, if you have the luck and opportunity, for life is short!

Elayne's Works:
Sapphire
Following Amur (novella)
"Glory" (short story)
Elayne's Links:
Website Facebook Twitter Instagram
Patreon
Kyla RossKyla Ross
Kyla Ross is a horror, thriller, and dark fiction writer from Detroit, Michigan. She posts suspense and horror flash fiction on her blog biweekly at kyrobooks.com and is the author of a collection of gruesome suspenseful short stories titled A Trinity of Wicked Tales Volume One: Jilted Love. Her first erotic thriller novel, When We Swing, will be released Summer 2017.
Kyla's Book:
A Trinity of Wicked Tales Volume One: Jilted Love
Kyla's Links:
Website/Blog Facebook Twitter
From today's program: Ice on Ceres is Linked to its Changing Tilt.
Listen to today's program at 6:00 PM ET / 3:00 PM PT or in archive here.

Scary

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "My scariest experience."

I had to think about this.

I'm still thinking about it. I haven't had a lot of really scary experiences.

When I was young (like a teenager) I used to snow ski. One time I got off the lift, started skiing down the hill. I hooked an edge and fell forward toward a tree. I thought I was going to hit the tree hard and break something like my back. I remember thinking "This is going to hurt a lot." But somehow the snow stopped me before I hit the tree.

One scary moment came two winters ago driving in bad conditions. I talk about it here. Also on that trip, coming back (it was a one-day trip to Seattle), we had freezing rain. Luckily it was on snow not bare pavement so it wasn't like sheet ice like freezing rain can be. I was driving maybe 45 mph (on an interstate with a 70 mph speed limit) and as I came around a corner I felt the car wobble a bit as if it was close to losing its grip on the road. Just then I saw a car on its side in my lane (that I didn't see earlier because of the corner). Due to slickness I didn't dare hit the brakes or even slow too much as it might send me out of control. So I carefully and not too quickly changed lanes (of course, I couldn't see lane markers due to the snow) as the car continued to wobble. I made it into the left lane and went around the wrecked car. Then I was able to slow safely and get the car better under control. That was scary.

When I was young (like maybe 8) my family lived in a house with a basement. Most every night we'd have ice cream after dinner (my father really liked ice cream). So once it was my turn to take the ice cream back downstairs to where the chest freezer was. I didn't bother to turn on the lights because I knew the room was empty and I could see the orange glow of the chest freezer's indicator light to guide me to it. As I was walking, I suddenly thought I saw a white face in front of me. Or maybe I didn't see it. But I dropped the ice cream and ran upstairs screaming. I thought I'd seen a ghost.

Probably the scariest of those three is the middle one. Which interestingly is not supernatural at all.

What scary experiences have you had? Comment below!

Movie Review: The Founder

Last week I watched the movie The Founder about how Ray Kroc turned McDonald's into the fast food empire it is today.

A lot of people have said this movie is anti-capitalism or anti-free markets. I disagree. Yes, according to the movie, Kroc did some not completely ethical things. But he didn't do things that hurt people. He claimed he started McDonald's (he didn't) and he claimed he came up with the "speedy system" that made McDonald's the first fast food restaurant (he didn't). None of that is illegal, either.

I think what a lot of people worry about is the McDonald brothers. But they actually came out pretty well. They were doing okay, I suppose, before Kroc came along. But they tried to franchise and it didn't work. Kroc managed to franchise McDonald's and after some mistakes and false starts, he figured out how to make it work and how to make it profitable. A lot of people got richer (or rich) and a lot of people got jobs because of what Kroc did.

The McDonald brothers each got $1 million after taxes in the final buy-out. Now days $1 million isn't that impressive. But in 1961, when Kroc bought out the McDonald brothers, that $1 million was worth more than $8 million in today's dollars. And they each got that much. If they wanted, they never had to work another day in their lives. In today's terms, invest $8 million at 5% interest and you'd make $400,000 a year. Live off $300,000 (you can live pretty well on that) and reinvest $100,000 a year to keep your equity growing.

And the McDonald brothers would have never made that kind of money doing what they were doing until Kroc took the restaurant national.

However, the McDonald brothers also asked for 1% of McDonald's profits "in perpetuity." That is, forever. Kroc said that would have to be a "handshake agreement" because his backers wouldn't allow it. And the McDonald brothers went for it. Now I was in business and I know a "handshake agreement" isn't worth the paper it's not written on. If it's not written down, it doesn't exist. The movie makes it sound like Kroc, who became a billionaire, screwed the McDonald brothers out of that 1%. But the McDonald brothers never should have agreed to a "handshake agreement." Business is brutal. It has to be. The McDonald brothers weren't good enough businessmen. Ray Kroc apparently was.

And look what Kroc accomplished. How many people had their first job at McDonald's? How many people got rich as McDonald's franchisees? I look at that and think Kroc did an amazing thing that the McDonald brothers couldn't.

Micheal Keaton does a great job playing Kroc. Laura Dern plays his first wife (who Kroc divorces to marry someone else, and yes, that was a jerk move). It was a well-made and interesting movie. And if you look at it from a business perspective, a very interesting movie.

The Speculative Fiction Cantina with Jayne Barnard and Felicia Cash

Today on the Speculative Fiction Cantina we are happy to welcome writers Jayne Barnard and Felicia Cash.
Jayne BarnardJayne Barnard

Jayne is a founding member of Madame Saffron's Parasol Dueling League for Steampunk Ladies and the author of the Aurora-nominated Maddie Hatter Steampunk adventures for adventurous women aged 12 to 92. Drawing on her early psychology studies, she's also a longtime crime writer, with numerous award-winning short stories to her credit. Fueled by love of the wild, she’s at work on a trilogy of wilderness suspense novels for Dundurn Press. She divides her writing year between the Rocky Mountain wilderness near Calgary, Alberta and a rocky Pacific shore on Vancouver Island.

Jayne's Books:

Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond

Enigma Front: Burnt

Maddie Hatter and the Gilded Gauge

Jayne's Links:

Website/Blog
Facebook
Twitter

Felicia CashFelicia Cash

I am a full-time mother of five, with three adopted girls and two bio boys. I am currently homeschooling all of them, so that doesn’t leave a ton of time for writing, as I’m sure you can imagine. However, writing is my passion and has been since I was a little girl. It is actually through my writing that I came to be an adoptive mother, and through being an adoptive mother, I believe that my writing has matured.

Felicia's Book:

The Last Sorcerer (book one of the Aurelius Series)

Felicia's Link:

Facebook

From today's program: Ceres has Briny Volcanoes.

Listen to today's program at 6:00 PM ET / 3:00 PM PT, or in archive here.

Life Lesson I have Learned

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "A Life Lesson I have Learned."

Oh boy, this one is tough.

If someone (a job, a boss, a spouse, a boyfriend/girlfriend, a friend, a relative) tries to make you be something you're not, it's not worth it. You'll be miserable. And when you're miserable, you aren't having much joy in your life.

It took me a long time to learn that.

Okay, that was short.

What life lessons have you learned? Comment below.

The Speculative Fiction Cantina with William Alan Webb and Stephanie Osborn

Today on the Speculative Fiction Cantina we are pleased to welcome writers William Alan Webb and Stephanie Osborn.
William Alan WebbWilliam Alan Webb

I’m the world’s oldest teenager. At a stop light you might hear my car thumping as I crank up the rock and roll, or wonder why I don’t get a haircut and a real job.

I was born and raised in West Tennessee, during the days when kids were allowed to get dirty and play with toy guns. My earliest memories are of a particular TV show (I was 2 at the time) and falling asleep watching it on our den floor, and reading books. I get bored quite easily, but for some reason books were like my soulmates. To this day, give me a beach and a book and I’m good to go.

I’m insatiably curious, too. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t, but I am. Don’t take me into a museum, we’ll never leave.

We have six dogs in our house, four of them rescues and one a gift. I like people well enough, but dogs won’t let you down. I’ve never been a cat person, yet we have one cat out of two kittens I pulled out of the middle of a highway after somebody abandoned them there. He’s an old bag of bones now, but Mr. Baggins has the run of the place.

Maybe I’m a cat person after all.

William's Books:

Standing The Final Watch (The Last Brigade, Book 1)

Standing In The Storm (The Last Brigade, Book 2)

The Last Attack: Sixth SS Panzer Army and the Defense of Hungary and Austria, 1945 (Nonfiction)

William's Links:

Website
Blog
Facebook
Twitter

Stephanie OsbornStephanie Osborn

Stephanie Osborn, award-winning Interstellar Woman of Mystery, is a 20+-year space program veteran, with multiple STEM degrees. Author, co-author, or contributor to 30+ books, including Burnout: The mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281 and the Cresperian Saga, she writes critically-acclaimed Displaced Detective, Silver-Falchion winner Gentleman Aegis, and the new Division One, her take on the urban legend of mysterious people who make things...disappear. She "pays it forward" through numerous media, and SIGMA, the science-fiction think tank.

Stephanie's Books:

Alpha and Omega (Division One book 1)

A Small Medium At Large (Division One book 2; available for pre-order)


Fear in the French Quarter (Displaced Detective book 6)

Stephanie's Links:

Website
Facebook
Twitter
Google+

From Today's Program: Ceres Has Organic Molecules


Listen to today's program at 6:00 PM ET / 3:00 PM PT, or in archive here.

Well, Somebody Has to Say It . . .

Time once again for the 52-week blogging challenge. Today's prompt is "Well, somebody has to say it..."

Well, tax day is coming soon. So I'll say our tax system is a horrible bollixed-up mess.

Okay, something else.

I support indie authors. I am a semi-indie author. Some of my books are traditionally published by a small-press publisher and some I've published myself.

But some (perhaps just a small minority) of indie authors suck. Then they get their friends and family to give them 5-star reviews (something I've never done). These authors are bad writers and they don't get adequate editing done. Part of that is NaNoWriMo, I think. Someone writes a manuscript in 30 days ending in November, and they think "I need to get this on the Kindle just in time for Christmas."

NaNoWriMo has taken steps to encourage writers to revise and edit their manuscripts. So I hope that is getting to happen less.

So, if you are a writer, you need to edit and revise your work, then edit and revise your work. And finally, edit and revise your work. Then have someone else proofread and edit it. And I hope that person will be brave enough to tell you it sucks, if it does.

There, I said it.