Andrew Post's Blog, page 3

See Me @ Book Fest

Hey all, this weekend I'll be at the St. Peter Book Fest this weekend. It'll be held at the St. Peter, Minnesota Community Center (601 South Washington St. Peter, MN) and doors at 1:00 PM. I'll be offering copies to buy of Knuckleduster, as well as giving away some postcards for Knuckleduster and posters for Fabrick. If you want me to sign your copy for you, or a poster or postcard, I can do that as well!

Hope to see you there!

Highly Recommended April

Hello there, Andrew here with another edition of Highly Recommended! No major announcements this time, save for an interview I did with Sci-Fi Fan Letter last month. Other than that, on with the recommendations!


Movies



The Hobbit divided a lot of folks. Some (like me) really loved it, others thought it was a major disappointment. Whatever your opinions are of Peter Jackson's decision to stretch Tolkien's one-volume story of Bilbo Baggins into three movies, or the squabble over frame-rate or call-attention-to-itself moments of 3D, it's rare to see fantasy so lovingly adapted for the big screen. I can ignore all of the other stuff about The Hobbit and just enjoy the story. One among those reasons being I'm a huge dwarf enthusiast, and The Lord of the Rings is such an enormous part of my young-adulthood that I can't help but watch the films while simultaneously flashback to high school, hanging out with friends and discussing the films at length.

With The Hobbit Blu-ray, you get the film and the digital copy, and a 10-part video blog production diary. Which, while very interesting, doesn't seem quite up to snuff with the oodles of stuff you got with the Lord of the Rings DVDs back in the day. There's no feature commentaries (which would've been awesome to have the entire dwarf cast, plus Martin Freeman and Ian McKellen, all talking at once), no anything besides that ten-part video diary. Which makes me think in a few months, probably around Christmas time, shortly before part 2 of The Hobbit trilogy hits theaters, we'll be getting the Director's Cut with eight Blu-ray disks of goodies. I kind of hate how double dipping is so par for the course now with how studios release their content. Used to be they put out the standard edition, the bare bones DVD, then the ultra supreme deluxe edition at the same time for the fanboys to pick up if they'd be willing to dish out the additional ten or twenty bucks. Now they release the bare bones edition, let you go ahead and pick that up just because you're driven into purchasing it just to see the movie again, and then a few months on release all the stuff you actually wanted, later. But, nowadays if you want to be a serious fanboy of something and save yourself from having ten different versions of the same thing, you have to be patient and wait for the one you want to get released. Hell, I still have my Army of Darkness special editions on VHS, all four of them.

But, as far as just the movie is concerned, The Hobbit is a wonderful time. Great special effects, compelling story, well-done action, and loveable characters. I've already watched this twice since picking up and I'll probably put it on a few hundred times more.

Recommended For: I'm pretty sure you know if you'd be into The Hobbit or not.


Books



Fade to Black, Francis Knight.

Fade to Black is a really interesting novel in that it's not really sci-fi and it's not really fantasy either. Sure, there are mages (pain mages) but there's also use of semi-modern weaponry like pistols and a form of contained electricity called Glow that powers everything from carriages to lighting in and around the city. And as much as I hate the expression, "The setting is a character in and of itself!" it really applies here. The city of Mahala was built up and not out. The rich get to bask in the sun and see the sky while the poor live in the lower levels where the expression shit rolls downhill really applies. Fade to Black is a noir-drenched steampunk/fantasy novel set in a rollicking first-person perspective of Rojan Dizon, a sort of steampunk gumshoe with a troubled past who is sent on a mission to seek out his niece in the 'Pit, the lower-most sector of Mahala. I'm only about halfway into it and so far I am absolutely positive I'll be reading the next installment, and anything else Francis Knight puts out!

Recommended For: If you've ever wanted to read a novel set in the video game worlds of Thief or Dishonored, look no further!


Games



Bioshock Infinite


We've been waiting a long time for this one. And rest assured while I do not do spoilers here, I'll simply say Bioshock Infinite, if you're a gamer whatsoever, you owe it to yourself to at least try this game. You'll be thrilled, you'll laugh, you'll be repulsed. It says things games don't dare say, asks questions that don't dare be asked. And like Bioshock, puts a mirror up to the gamer and asks them to analyze the things they do.

Currently I'm playing through it on 1999 mode, which, yes, you have to enter the Konami code at the start menu to access. This is where the part of this game being Highly Recommended comes in. I absolutely love the addition of this mode. For a while there, my interest in gaming was starting to wane. They were getting far too easy and hand-holdy with refilling health bars and unlimited restarts and zero punishment for screwing up. Dark Soul rekindled (no pun intended) my love of gaming--difficult gaming--and for a while I was indifferent to Bioshock Infinite's release figuring it'd take after Halo and such with the aforementioned rounded edged gameplay. Nope. Dead wrong. With 1999 mode, Bioshock Infinite becomes a game straight out of my formative years as a gamer. I grew up playing the original Deus Ex, and before that, games that had three continues--and that was it. Games that were trying their damndest to stop you. And there was where the fun was, believe it or not; in the challenge.

And 1999 mode gets it exactly right.

Recommended For: Bioshock Infinite itself: Gamers. All gamers.

But 1999 Mode, on the other hand, is only recommended for those with patience, who don't mind having to struggle to make progress, who like having to think before going into combat situations, and enjoy actually being scared when big baddies come bounding along with murder in their eyes.


Another title I'd highly recommended is Banner Saga: Factions. Available on Steam for free, this is a turn-based strategy game that's kind of like someone said, "Hey, you know what? Chess is too simple."

Relax. I'm kidding. It's fun!

So you have various units that're capable of various moves that can be upgraded and promoted and . . . yeah. It's all about the numbers, like most RPG strategy games. But what makes this one really special is the art direction. Think of Ralph Bakshi's Wizards or that first Heavy Metal movie or the original He-Man series from the 80s and you'll get an idea of what I mean. Gone are the elves and dwarves, sadly, but instead there's a race of horned giants and a very mature feel to everything. What's also great is that while the violence, on screen, isn't so bad, the sound effects are ghastly. I found myself cringing whenever one of my warriors smacked an archer with his pole-axe and it made a sound that if you heard in a bar, you'd be checking the floor for teeth.

Recommended For: If you're a fan of turn-based strategy ala Final Fantasy Tactics and like fantasy fiction for grown-ups like Glen Cook's The Black Company. If you have an interest in both those things, like me, you'll really enjoy Banner Saga: Factions.


TV Series



Lost Girl

Lost Girl is an urban fantasy TV series out of Canada that puts me in the mind of something written by Patricia Briggs or Jim Butcher. Really, if Lost Girl was a series of mass market novels featuring cover art of Bo in a state of semi-undress and wielding a warhammer with a sultry, otherworldly glow in her eyes, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised. (Also, I would read the crap out of those books.) But Lost Girl is one of those series that's fun to just put on and kick back. It asks nothing of you other than to enjoy it. Monster-of-the-week plot, a little interpersonal drama, a great friendship between Bo and Kenzi, and a bit of love story between main lady Bo and Dyson the werewolf cop who looks remarkably like the lead singer of Coldplay.

It's a good time. It's also available for instant streaming on Netflix, with a few seasons ready to go.

Lonely Sad-Sack

Lonely Sad-Sack. How a Videogame Influenced Me to Seek Out Friendship.

A close friend of mine had been urging me to play the balance of the Mass Effect series for a few years. I'd played the first one when it came out, saw the second one advertised (a lot) but didn't pick it up. I'm the kind of person who tends to not jump on board for sequels so much. For movies and games: not really. Books are a different matter, I tend to read a whole series one entry after another back to back, but not games. I'm rambling. Point is, I picked up Mass Effect 2 recently and haven't been able to put it down. It's as compelling as a really great TV series, with each mission its own self-contained tale. It reminds me of a ton of novels, but at the same time, breathes new life into the space opera genre.

It seems everyone I talk to about the series has a favorite character. And with so many (your ship can become quite crowded toward the end of the story), there's so many diverse personalities that you'd be hard pressed to find someone you didn't relate to.

(Potential spoilers for Mass Effect 2 from here on out, by the way.)

One mission was to go and recruit an individual enigmatically referred to as only the Assassin. I figured they'd be like most videogame assassins, quiet and spoke in clipped phrases often about the philosophy on what it means to be an assassin, that they suffer no guilt for it because they consider themselves a tool for whoever hired them, etc. And with the drell Thane Krios--


This guy.

--you get exactly that. Whenever you go to visit him in the life support room of the Normandy, he's seated alone at a table with a mug of tea, hands folded and staring into the thick-pane window across the room that allows view of the ship's engine core. Praying, thinking. He's also dying of some lung disease that afflicts his species that've lived too long in a moist climate. (Drell, apparently, are a lot like desert-dwelling lizards and require an arid place to survive.) When you go to visit him, he goes into flashbacks about his life as an assassin, able to recall each hit he'd been sent on with perfect detail. Also, the way he recollects is interesting in that these memories come in like hurricanes; hitting him in staccato images, all of which he rambles out one after another, things if you have a good memory notice but don't realize you notice. "Holding my hand, looking up at me. Sunset-colored eyes. There was no time. Wind blows, cold on my cheek." Like that.

I was intrigued by Thane so I visited him often. Between missions, I had a routine of taking my FemShep (yes, I play as a female Commander Shepard) down to first talk to Miranda for possible mission hints for future excursions, then Garrus because we be tight yo, and then back toward where Thane can be found.



The ponderous drell will give information about his species, about his son if you so chose to assist him with that matter, and more flashbacks on his career as a killer-for-hire. He'll talk about the faith of the drell which I found really interesting, and about "disconnection." Which he describes as when a person is disconnected means that their mind and body have become misaligned either from the mind "suffering too much despair" or the body falling ill, resulting in a person who is never capable of being balanced, or happy.

Yeah. Cheery stuff.

But toward the climax of the story, I was presented with the choice of going after the captured crew or continuing with the mission. Survival of what even the game calls "Suicide Mission" is scant, but I felt I couldn't just terry on with my crew taken hostage. All I had were the main characters, but those faceless cadets and people onboard the Normandy were my people and I felt I had to go after them. (Seriously, I took close to twenty minutes working this out in my head, approaching the decision as I would in real life.) The ship, crew gone, was like a grave. All the people on the main deck or chatting around the water cooler in the crew's quarters were gone. Cups and papers on the table, chairs pulled out, but no people. I considered the Husks, what the Collectors turn their captures into. No, that wouldn't happen to my crew. We'd go get them, or at least try to.

Shortly before that happened, I made a stop-in with Thane. The game kept prompting me to flirt with him since I was playing as a female Shepard and apparently she feels the need to interject deep conversations about morality with suggesting taking a trip up to the private quarters for a roll in the sheets, but I refused. I wanted to know more about Thane, possibly figure out what led to his decision to become an assassin. Why, even after he'd caught the affliction that was killing him, he decided not to leave the killer's life behind. Why he left his wife and son. Why he didn't . . . get out of that room.



That was actually the suggestion toward the end of one of the conversation branches. I was wrapping up our talk about how all assassins are essentially weapons themselves, tools for their employees, and no one blames the gun for when someone's killed with it. But, I had to go. And in ending the conversation, Thane says something along the lines that he enjoys our talks and that I'm the only friend he's had in years.

Uh, excuse me? Did I just tear up a little at a videogame?

The conversation continues, Shepard already standing to leave, but with a different atmosphere to it. One option is to suggest to Thane to go and talk to people, to get out of the life support room once in a while. Thane admits he's spent a lot of his life alone and that, yes, being social once in a while probably would be a good idea. I left him there feeling good that he might want to branch out some, not spend so much damn time inside his own head, maybe make a friend or two from the scads of people aboard the Normandy.

Took me a moment to realize it, but wouldn't you know it, I had put myself in Thane's shoes. I was using Shepard to tell myself I need to stop spending so much time alone, to get out and be social and make friends. To stop spending so much time inside my own damn head.

Loneliness isn't so much a voluntary thing but kind of sneakily hops in to join you as close that hatch dividing you from a regular life when aiming to become a "serious" writer. Slips in, unnoticed. Isolation is good for writers, I think, helps to aid in developing thoughts, organizing yourself. Alone, there's no distracting noise other than what you make yourself, and silence is a great place to coax imagination gales into spinning up into full-blown mind-storms. My wife and I don't have kids, the neighbors are generally quiet, and if the TV's off and I'm in the office, it's me and silence for about ten hours out of the day. I have Saturdays online with my friends who're scattered all over the country, but that's really the limit of my social interaction outside of the girl who at Walgreens who rings up my weekly restock of smokes and Diet Coke. My wife and I spend evenings together, and weekends, and while I do consider that social interaction, you can't heap all of it onto one person. They can't be the source for all of your conversation. A lot, yes, but not all.

It's weird, being married and lonely at the same time. You'd think that'd never happen but it does.

"Get out of this room once in a while," Shepard suggests, the final line before the conversation sequence cuts out with Thane and I'm dropped back into control of my character again. Can't help but stand there for a moment, looking at Thane in his idle-character-mode, staring at the window, hands folded, blinking his two sets of eyelids, head heavy with thoughts it'd probably be healthy to share with someone once in a while. I want to talk to him, but if I click on him it'll just be the same talk we just had again.

Okay. I leave, a little personally jarred by what had just happened there.

Mission commences. We're going after the kidnapped crew. We pass through the Omega 4 Relay, into a suspended graveyard of shattered ships. The Collectors sit in the ruddy murk of deep space, in their ship that looks like a combination of a trash compactor and a burnt hunk of wood. They do not hesitate in attacking. No warning, no threat, no suggestion for us to turn back. They emerge from the camouflage rubble and open up with everything they have, immediately.

The ship is attacked and Thane, in that damn life support room, looks up as something punctures the wall of the ship. A girder leaps out from the hull, hits him, and pins him to the wall. One painful grunt, his head droops with his scaly chin on his chest, and he is dead. Just like that.

I actually gasped.

If only he had left that f***ing life support room. If he had taken my advice and gone out and talked to someone, he wouldn't have been in there and wouldn't have gotten killed. I mean, yes, I know, it's where the character is constantly positioned because all characters are always where they're positioned. Miranda's never seen anywhere but her office, Joker never leaves the helm, Jack is always down in the steamy, red guts of the ship sitting on that slab snarling at nothing. I know. But, there was just something about that. The impact of that. That he and I had just talked and Shepard suggested he should leave this room once in a while and the very next thing that happens is we get attacked and because he didn't leave it, he died.

Part of me hesitated before saving. I could revert to an old save, make some tweaks to decisions, and redo things so that Thane would live. Keep in mind he's a character that'll appear in Mass Effect 3 if he doesn't die in this one. But something about doing that felt wrong. Like it was sort of negating the message the game had given me. I mean, I'm guessing the writers didn't really expect someone to relate to that exchange about being more social, or maybe they did. Either way, going back and rearranging things so that Thane doesn't die would defeat the purpose of the lesson. I saved over the old file, with reluctance. Thane would stay dead.

I'm sure a lot of non-gamers would say, "Well there's your problem, you're lonely because you play videogames all the time!" but that's crap. Gaming is more social than you'd think. Most games come now with some multiplayer component and if so desired, you can talk to people the world over within seconds of logging on. But I'm getting defensive to something no one has yet said, so moving on . . .

What matters is, I took the lesson to heart. Leave this room once in a while. Talk to people.

Or get impaled by a girder, apparently. Heh.

Point taken.

Highly Recommended March

Hello again. Time for some more highly recommended books, movies, TV, music, games, podcasts, etc. from yours truly. Going to mix things up a little here and do these out of the typical order. Because I'm spontaneous and crazy like that. Yeah.


Music

So my musical habits have been pretty much locked into the spectrum of chrome lipstick, choker necklaces, little backpacks, and JNCO jeans of mid-90s alternative rock due in large because of The Siren House, my next project with Medallion Press and their TREEbook line. Revisiting the music of this era has been enormously nostalgic for me, mostly because I am a firm believer that as we age our tastes reach a point, then abruptly stop. We find something we like and stick with it. Like a haircut, or a certain flavor of ice cream. "Why should I try anything else when I know this is what I like?" So if you're in the mood to revisit the neon Era of the Pog, I'd recommend going back and digging up your old CD collection (remember those?!?!), closing your eyes, give a few a spin, and just see where it takes you. I honestly believe music--not sound exactly, but music--is second only to smell in its ability to transport you to yesterday.

On a personal note, my wife and I are planning on moving soon. So what better time to dump out some old junk? Besides clothes I haven't worn in years or shrank out of (lost about a hundred pounds about three years ago but still the XXL clothes linger like the wheezing ghost of my former self), I dumped our old guest room futon, and random boxes of things we didn't unpack when moving here. Then, kind of on a whim, I decided to get rid of another thing: my old boom box. My first boom box. From 1995. Yes, this hearty piece of electronics survived damn near 20 years. And it still worked when I tossed it out, mostly. The old Sony CD/tape boom box was covered in dents, spattered in droplets of paint from it having provided many a soundtrack to many a room-painting, and the door to its tape player was held on by a band of masking tape. I've thrown out many, many old pieces of defunct electronic junk over the years but this one actually stung a bit. But at the same time: new house, new town, fresh start. Actually, I feel kind of good about getting rid of it. So, something else I highly recommend: dumping old crap.

But, it being me, I can't let go that easy.

(Cue flashback transition waviness.)

(Queen's "You're My Best Friend" begins.)

Boomfred the Boombox. You survived more than a few falls off ladders and dressers, one particularly violent tumble down some stairs once, and even after the protective lens covering your laser eye thingamabob fell off, you still worked. Your sound quality was good--deafening volume if not always of great quality. Your antenna had snapped off during one of those falls or had been removed when you apparently decided to pick a fight with a bigger boom box, or something. Brave Boomfred. Your only option for adjusting your sound besides the volume knob was your one trusty button marked "Bass Booster." Which, let's be honest, didn't do much really. Also, ah yes, a memory . . . You had a compartment on your back for batteries so you could go cordless. I never used this compartment for that; instead, that was where I kept my stash. You remember, Boomfred? There was nothing quite like getting home before my folks, putting The Matrix on VHS in and popping open that battery compartment on your back and together, the two of us would watch Keanu shoot up some Agents, and really free our minds. Heh. Memories.

[Note: I really should limit how much I talk about activities like that last part, I write YA. I might accidentally be someone's role model some day. So. Drugs are bad, for the record. And naming inanimate objects is a great way to end up becoming a hoarder. Not recommended.]

Bye, Boomfred.

(Cue jump-cut to Dumpster lid slamming shut, cutting Freddy Mercury off mid-verse.)

Still, I can't help but think that Boomfred was my prominent method for listening to CDs. I got my first CD with the boom box (and no, I won't tell you what it was), and I think it was the place I listened to the last CD I bought--and how that album, Matisyahu's Light, is probably the last CD I will ever buy. If I buy music now, like most people, it's through iTunes. So that Sony boom box was a self-contained time capsule of the CD era for me. Farewell, clunky old friend.

(after peeking under the Dumpster lid, tearful, our humble Recommender eases it shut.)


Movies



Of all the recommendations I bring to all of you, this is always the hardest category. I have pretty much altogether stopped caring about movies. For the longest time, I was obsessed with film, watching and learning techniques and the "deeper message" behind the work of Lynch and Kubrick, but now . . . there's just so much crap out there. Sequels, remakes, reboots. (I know I just bitched about this yesterday, but bear with me.) I mean I understand in a tough economy the studios are going with the "sure thing" and there just isn't the finances to gamble on artsy projects or out-there concepts right now. And really, if I think back, it was right around 2008 my interest in film dropped off, right at the time of the economic collapse. But since I really enjoy doing Highly Recommended, I try to scrounge up at least a few picks that might be worth your time and cabbage.

This month's recommendation is Skyfall. Now available for rent through Redbox or your preferred method of catching flicks, it's James Bond as directed by Sam Mendes and starring Daniel Craig. Good, good stuff. Takes the Bond character places he's never been taken before, scrapes off the smarm and builds him back up, with great character development (or is it re-development?) and by the credits has relaunched the franchise without requiring an actual hard reboot. And Judy Dench is fantastic. As always. I mean, that lady . . . man alive. Just go and watch anything with her in it and tell me it was anything short of amazing.

Side note: When will Javier Bardem not play a bad guy? I mean, I know he has in smaller indie features, but I'd like to see him be the protag in a big budget flick sometime. And why, whenever he is a bad guy, does he have to have weird hair?


TV

I was just telling my wife last night about my drop-off in my movie interest, and how books, videogames, and TV series have rushed right in to fill the void. With ease, I might add. Like pool water around a sunken burrito. (Yep. That's right.) So this section is almost hard for me to write about in a different way from movies because I have too many choices.



Game of Thrones Season 2 came out on Blu-ray and DVD not too long ago and while it was missing some of the magic (figurative) of the last season, it certainly had a lot more magic (literal) featured in the storylines. This one, like the book, has the too many characters problem and largely has the middle child issue of being the period in an epic story where there's no huge revelation or outcome, but just pieces being set up for that to happen later. I still liked it a lot because I'm enthralled by the characters and the world George Martin has created and the production value is outstanding. Besides, outside of Peter Jackson, this is the most well done fantasy has been translated. There are other fantasy adaptations out there, yes, but none are nowhere near as good as this.

Also, with Game of the Thrones, the writers seem to have finally started to trust their audience. What I mean is, there is a lot less "sexposition" this time around and if some world details or monologue need to be delivered it's just delivered, not while two people are in a bath together or two prostitutes are being distracting with each other in the background. I like that they're trusting their audience's attention span and giving this great story the seriousness it deserves.

As much as I love the series, I can't really recommend it for anyone who has not read the books. A lot is lost in the adaptation and I really feel as if it was made for the readers. That or the writers of the series know the material so well they forget it might be hard for newcomers to keep up. So unless you don't mind spending time on the Game of Thrones Wiki, I'd read the books first then jump into the series.




Next is Battlestar Galactica. I'd heard so much praise for this series over the years and so many of my friends recommended it to me, but I just couldn't get into it. The first two episodes really hit the ground running plot-wise and it was hard for me to wrap my head around all that was going on. But once I got it, I became entirely obsessed. The writing here is so much better than a SyFy Channel show deserves. I'm watching this through Netflix and getting about three episodes a week down. I think I'm about a third of the way through Season 2 and absolutely loving every minute of it. If you're a fan of space opera novels or were a fan of Lost, I'd recommend this one. But stay away from the fan sites. Spoiler City.




You know I love me some Downton. Season 3 is finally available here in the States. That ending. Damn, man. Just damn.


Videogame



Dead Space 3 is, no duh, the third installment in the horror/sci-fi series that kicked off in 2008. Now, this is on Highly Recommended with a handful of caveats, mind. I'm putting it on here because I think if you're like me and have really enjoyed the Dead Space series up until now and are invested in Isaac Clarke's story, then you will enjoy this as well. But if you're looking for an entirely survival horror experience, you might want to go with Amnesia or one of the original Silent Hill games instead. Gone is the tension of Dead Space 2. Gone is the scrounging for ammo and health packs. Gone is the feeling of complete isolation. Gone is really anything scary at all except for a few jump scares. And jump scares that'll only make you flinch and get mad because you'll realize you were standing next to a vent at the time of said jump scare, the place the necromorphs rarely if ever appear from anywhere else.

So. Now, one could argue that the game isn't scary because by now Isaac is a bonafide badass, a slayer of 'morphs, and if he's not scared you shouldn't be either. And there comes a few times in which the writers make it apparent that Isaac is truly the head badass on campus here when he's the one giving the tutorial instructions to other in-game characters instead of someone telling him how to do certain things. I liked that touch, but at the same time, maybe a new enemy type or a threat that was over Isaac's head would've been nice. Something to make him have to re-establish himself as a badass again maybe. Dead Space 2 had Nicole, his dead girlfriend harassing him throughout the story as a tension-builder, but now Isaac has moved past that, there is no man-against-himself theme that made Dead Space 2 such an incredible meditation on guilt, nearly rivaling that of what Silent Hill 2 did with a similar theme. But it wouldn't be Dead Space without necromorphs and they changed up the enemies enough (redesigned entirely or tweaked them) that it still works and doesn't feel stale.

I dunno. I like being scared and feeling overwhelmed. I like when my character dies that I almost feel relieved that at least the scariness, for now, is over.

Tangent Alert. There was a game I played a few years back. Now, a lot of you might balk at it because it wasn't the best in the series of whatever, but Silent Hill 4: The Room scared the living crap out of me.



I remember I'd play it in half hour chunks, and I'd always had to have the radio on while I played it set to some upbeat pop top 40 station. All the lights on, too. Something about the claustrophobia of that game and the incredibly disturbing lengths it went to (you witness a man being electrocuted to the point his eyes start to bleed at one point) in order to scare or disturb you. On top of that, the levels were divided with sections where in first person view, you were in the main character's apartment. Looking for items, checking the peephole to the hallway (since you couldn't actually leave since chains had been put up, on the inside), and increasingly the apartment, each time you returned, would be creepier and creepier. Not such a big deal, you say? Well, my apartment was laid out exactly like that one, even down (coincidentally) to the placement of the furniture! So, yeah, I never finished that one. It just bothered me too much. And I like that, oddly enough. I like things to get in my head. I consider myself a pretty logical fella and if something can make me glance over my shoulder or unable to pee without checking behind the shower curtain first, bravo. Seriously.

Tangent Alert Has Expired.

I wanted Dead Space 3 to follow suit to Dead Space 2, a game I've played through at least half a dozen times and would consider one of my favorite games of all time, right alongside the original Metal Gear Solid, Half-Life 2, and Dark Souls. Or even go super-terrifying like Silent Hill 4: The Room. That would've been fun. Possibly. And don't get me wrong, Dead Space 3 has a lot going for it. Full drop-in, drop-out co-op, which is really a blast with a friend. Flitting around in the space-flotsam together is a geek-bro duo's dream. Seriously, we had a great time with that. And the weapon crafting system is incredibly deep and worthy of time to create the perfect machine of 'morph doom. All in all, if you really like Dead Space and don't mind it's strayed a bit into the action territory, I'd still recommend it. There's horror, yeah, and you pretty much know what you're getting into with a Dead Space game and a lot of people are bellyaching about the DLC and paid content stuff, but you can enjoy it just fine without any of that. I think the only way for gamers to combat overpriced DLC is to just not buy it. If we don't buy it, they won't try pushing it on us. Simple as that.



With Highly Recommended, I tend to typically talk about things that if you so chose, could go out and find right then and there. I leave the hyping to the hypsters (my word, I invented it just now). But then something like Destiny comes strolling along onto the Internet with a rather huge announcement trailer (or ViDoc as they're calling them), sweeping up unsuspecting geeks like myself (and all of my friends) like so much plankton. Yes, Destiny is the new IP from the gaming juggernaut Bungie, creators of the Halo franchise. My suggestion, if you at all enjoy FPS games or like multiplayer experiences akin to Borderlands, I'd climb aboard the hype wagon. This is going to be rather huge, I think.


Podcasts

I haven't really stumbled across too many new ones lately that I haven't already told you about. But I would recommend if you're looking for a new podcast, to go deeper than just what iTunes supplies on its podcast page. There's so many smaller 'casts out there that're really, really great if you're willing to dig. I've noticed iTunes rarely will put something on its main page unless its of the highest quality sound and production, and a lot of the times with the bigger-name podcasts, sure, they're well made but they've also got a ton of money behind them. And podcasts run by celebrities, I'm sorry to say, really stink. What's worse are the stand up comedians who run podcasts as just a way to kill time between trying to land a sitcom or guest spot somewhere. I'm not crapping on having a diverse approach to getting your name out there, but the best podcasts are done by people who just want to podcast and that's all.

So, dig a little. Imagine iTunes is like a video store (remember those?!?!?!) and instead of going to the new release wall like all the dullards, go to the General Release section, dig in, uncover and discover.


Books



Even though it was released in February through Amazon and a few retailers had it on the shelves here and there, the official release date of my novel Knuckleduster is March 1st, 2013. TODAY! And, if you love Highly Recommended, my stories, my riffs on this and that, please pick up a copy. It's available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble (on the shelves of a surprising number of locations), and many other independent sites and retailers as well.

Also, if you happen to be in Chicago April 26-28, swing by the Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo! Medallion Press will be there, and if you go up to the table they'll have posters for my novel Fabrick available. Say hello, grab a poster, they're truly an awesome team.

Well that's it for March. I'll be posting more regularly here soon as more projects are getting wound up and the move into the new place is complete. As always, please feel free to comment, share, whatever you like. I read all comments and if you have a question, feel free to ask.

Till then,

Encouraging writerly statement,

-Andrew

Adaptation: Stealing, Borrowing, and How Else Adapting Science Fiction Could Work in the Future

Adaptation: Stealing, Borrowing, and How Else Adapting Science Fiction Could Work in the Future.

As a fan of science fiction in all mediums, it's easy to spot influences and references in videogames. When playing through a FPS from the late 90s era, you'll hear many, many Evil Dead 2 quotes, namely in Duke Nukem 3D and Monolith's Blood. Aliens has been ripped off every way possible, from rather blatant homages to boosted design elements. Which, oddly enough, Aliens borrowed heavily from Heinlein's Starship Troopers, so there's that. But on the topic of direct adaptations of a sci-fi novels to videogames, there's hardly any.

Granted, sci-fi novels get made into movies quite regularly. A lot of the time, as in Philip K. Dick's case, the film versions drop a lot of the meditative elements of Dick's work in favor for car chases, foot chases, and shoot outs. (Seriously, look at Minority Report and The Adjustment Bureau.) The exception--and there always is one--is A Scanner Darkly, one of the few adaptations of one of my personal hero's work that sticks close to its source material. And I don't really mind those other, action-laden adaptations really, because it still gets people to pick up the book in most cases. Every time one of his books becomes a movie, the book gets a resurgence in sales. So if it gets people to read, any port in the storm I say.

And that makes me wonder, if they're going to go ahead and action-up sci-fi novels that didn't originally have a lot of action to them, why not just do a videogame adaptation? For one, a film is generally an hour and a half, two hours in length. With a game, there's so much more time to develop characters and get more of the book across. Plus, with a complete world already to go in a novel, that'll cut down on coming up with the spine of the story. It's already there, just tweak it to fit and boom, add some fancy graphics and sound effects and full speed ahead, captain.



And there are a lot of close adaptations, to the point that I think some game development studios should be putting authors' names in their special thanks in the credits crawl. Give the description of Larry Niven's Ringworld series and most people will say, "That sounds a lot like Halo." [Note: A few of Niven's works have been adapted into games, but I never heard of any of them until researching this essay. DOS-era point and click adventures, it seems to be. What's funnier is if you search for Larry Nevin on Amazon, you might get an ad for Halo 4 like I did. Coincidence?] Halo, as a whole, is a rather enormous stockpile of borrowed ideas taken from a myriad of space opera novels, the film Aliens, and countless other works. Also, Bungie's newest project, Destiny, if you read the description, sounds a whole hell of a lot like Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End. Now, don't get me wrong. I loved Halo: Combat Evolved and me and my group of gamer friends are currently salivating at every scrap of news that's being released about Destiny. But I think giving credit where credit is due is important. For some reason, though, games seem to get away with this a lot. If a movie were to be released with Destiny's plotline, I'm sure the estate of the late, great Sir Arthur C. Clarke would be placing some calls.

Oddly enough, the Halo franchise has gone on to have a series of novels set in their world. I've read the first one, The Fall of Reach, and actually really enjoyed it. I've also heard that there are some people who aren't even gamers who read this series. Makes sense, for as much as Halo is kind of the "Grease Mega Mix" of the genre, its world is really well fleshed-out and intriguing.



Speaking on direct references, the protagonist of the Dead Space series is a CEC engineer named Isaac Clarke. Any sci-fi reader who has gone back a few decades can tell you that name is a mash-up of Isaac Asimov and the aforementioned Arthur C. Clarke. This is one reference I really get a kick out of, especially when I get to be the nerd who unleashes that golden nugget of trivia on someone. While on the topic of Dead Space, let's just say that, like Halo, it too is another mega mix of the sci-fi genre except here incorporating one of my much-loved subgenres, sci-fi horror. Everything from Alien to Event Horizon is present in Dead Space. Although the world is less appealing than that of Halo and at times feels sort of tacked-on, the atmosphere is what really counts with this series and where it borrows, it borrows smartly.



But, there are a few exceptions. Because, as I said before, there always are. One being the Andrezj Sapkowski series of fantasy novels about Geralt, the Witcher. Which, if you're a gamer at all, have probably heard of the Witcher more than a few times, even if just for the lighthearted controversy surrounding the fact that one of the game's main characters was featured in a Playboy spread. (Yes, that's right, a centerfold of a woman made up entirely of polygons.) I really enjoyed the two Witcher novels that've been translated to English. They're mature, weird, violent, all the things grown-up fantasy worlds should be. I've never played any of the games, and again, if it gets the books in front of people's eyes (and for them to get translated so I can read them), I'm all for it.



Another title worth mentioning is The Darkness. Although not a novel, but a graphic novel, The Darkness was a phenomenal adaptation. I'd never heard of the comic series before the game, but certainly picked it up afterward. Starbreeze, who recently released Syndicate (with novelist Richard K. Morgan supplying some writing), did this one. Most known for their Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay from a few years back, The Darkness was atmospheric, built upon the world, and really delivered a visceral, beautifully crafted world.



There are other direct adaptations worth mentioning, such as I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream DOS game based on Harlan Ellison's work of the same name. As well as the mostly-forgotten Neuromancer DOS game as well. The latter of which, I believe, would make a truly fantastic RPG today. That is, if Deus Ex: Human Revolution hadn't already done exactly that. But, one could argue that Deus Ex, as a series, is less about deriving inspiration from particular works but more like setting their world in a cyberpunk landscape; an homage to the subgenre as a whole. Which I'm totally okay with because my love of all things cyberpunk goes that deep. (And just wait, because apparently in the near future we're going to be having a Deus Ex film and a Neuromancer film, possibly in the same year. Weird.) Another direct adaptation apparently releasing in the next year or so is a MMO based on Tad Williams' Otherland series. Word has been pretty quiet about this one recently, which makes me wonder if it didn't get cancelled. Hope not. The trailer was pretty.

Which brings me to the main attraction when talking about videogames borrowing from popular science fiction works. Mass Effect. Now, I won't go into huge detail about what and how BioWare borrowed, but suffice it to say if you pick up Dan Simmons' Hyperion, then play Mass Effect, I think you'll be dubiously cocking an eyebrow pretty damn often, namely around the A plot.



But, I think the game gets a pass because what is truly its own is so good. The alien races, the insane amount of lore about everything, and the characters are so original and (mostly) immediately lovable. This being another game series, like Halo and Dead Space and Metal Gear Solid, that has branched out into the world of tie-in literature. And let me tell you, Mass Effect fans are serious. I think one of novel, if I remember right, got so blasted by the online communities for the author getting things wrong, it got pulled, reworked, and then rereleased. Wow!

And while coming up with the world is often the hard part, what's harder is finding a good A to B plot that'll both be a personal story as well as one that dovetails nicely into the world you've crafted. Which I think is where a lot of videogame writers struggle. Case in point the original Borderlands. Great look, great world, great humor, but the story was all but absent. Thankfully they made up for it in the second one, but it seems almost to the point they over-corrected by putting in too much story because of a bellyaching fanbase. Which is a topic for another time, like I hinted above about the reworking Mass Effect novel, how the Internet gave a voice to everyone. Something that's both good and bad for creative types.

So, I think while it's healthy to borrow (Tarantino's cultivated a career out of it), and it's healthy to drop hints and homages and easter eggs in your work, I would really like to see the videogame industry--as the graphical power is increasing to the point that movie CGI characters and videogame characters are hard to tell apart--that the games industry begin to treat source material not as a place to skim from, but a place to acquire and adapt straight-out. Plus, by going straight from book to movie we can avoid the awfulness that generally occurs with movie adaptations of books that get a game. Those are universally bad. Or worse, the reverse: videogame movie novelizations. Yikes.

Let's just cut out the middle man and adapt in a straight line. Videogames pull in more than any other entertainment industry combined. And people are constantly saying how the stories of games aren't quite there yet, not enough to be considered art. Literature is one of the oldest art forms there is. Why not bind the two up? And really, if given the option, I'd much rather tromp around Hyperion and explore the Time Tombs than watch it as a movie anyway. Mind you I didn't say I'd rather do it more than read the book, that comes first, but anything after that, yes, a sitting-forward experience is so much more fulfilling I think nowadays than a sitting back one. Movies blow now. Fact. Reboots, rehashes, remakes. No. Let's somehow arrange it that Heavy Rain's David Cage and Neal Stephenson get together with a handful of coders, motion capture-ready actors, and a copy of Cryptonomicon. Just imagine that.

I stand by all I stated above and believe it should happen, except for epic poems. Let's not do any more of those, okay? Dante's Inferno was just . . . no.

A Steady Diet of the Weird

Born in the mid 1980s, by the time I was able to sit up without rolling over because of my enormous cranium and pay attention to the talking plastic box in our suburban living room, the world of entertainment had decided that it'd forgo trying to be anything even resembling normal. I think this was mostly brought about because of one man, Tim Burton. From the start with films like Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, he was a new voice that not only brought a dark whimsy to the mainstream, but also gently indoctrinated a new generation into what I lovingly call the Weird. Others would take over and tweak the Weird, adding in splashes of sci-fi, satire, or horror but overall the Weird was a very big presence in the 90s. For me especially.

Note: I have that exact shirt. And hair.

I couldn't get enough Tim Burton growing up. I drew Edward Scissorhands just as often as Sonic the Hedgehog. So much of stuff geared toward my age group in the early 1990s could get away with quite a lot because this was a time before we were all so worried about how this or that would "warp our children's precious little minds." We had reptiles that were given anthropomorphic qualities because of a mysterious green sludge who were adept at martial arts. We had motorcycle enthusiast rodents from the red planet. A Chihuahua and a dim-witted feline who lived together and often got into some really odd adventures. Some of the stuff, I think, went well and beyond what was suitable for kids. Namely Ren & Stimpy.

Not because of the content exactly. But because of the brain twist it provided.

"Brain twist? What do you mean?" you may be asking yourself.

Okay. You ever get that feeling after watching some really out-there animated show? Kind of like when the thing's over and you're plopped back into reality everything feels . . . off? I don't know what the hell that sensation is, or why it happens, and for the longest time I thought I was the only one who experienced it until my wife confessed that, yes, she too had that happen before, namely after watching some unsettling cartoons. It lasts a few hours, and more often than not it comes with a feeling of being preoccupied. People may ask you if something is wrong or inquire as to why you keep staring at the floor. Maybe it's just your mind trying to parse out what it was you just saw and make sense of it. Ren & Stimpy did seem to have a lot of things happen that came out of left field. But I think it went well beyond that. I think it was because the Weird had paid you a visit.

Just another Tuesday.

For a while, I became addicted to that feeling. I guess I was curious as to why it'd happen. But I'd get it not only in weird cartoons likely written and animated by people that had chemical imbalances (not judging, all creative types I think should probably be on some form of medication, myself included). But I don't think I was doing it voluntarily, really, seeking out my next shot in the arm of the Weird, voluntarily hopping directly into the path of a brain twist like a death-wish stormchaser.
I guess I just thought, "This is just what I like."

And the 90s was more than happy to accommodate.

Almost anyone who is a writer or an artist of any kind can retrace the things that influenced them and made them become the person they are. And just as many people like to kick dirt over that particular assortment of stuff and pretend they are true originals who had no actual influences. Others like to draw direct lines to their inspirations and heroes. I like to travel back and think about what inspired me, what contributed to making my muse the wide eyed, twitch-prone freak-thing she is. With ease, I can draw you a dotted line going back through everything I enjoyed growing up that influenced me, like when Billy terrorizes the neighborhood in Family Circus.

"Then, if I bury the body in Mr. Kline's back yard, everyone will think it was him who did it! Mischief: managed!"

While I can credit Tim Burton for a whole lot of inspiration, namely that of A Nightmare Before Christmas (Yes, I saw it in the theater when it was originally released unlike all of you Hot Topic shoppers that were born in 1997), I also have to pay my respects to the likes of Bruce Coville who wrote My Teacher is an Alien and its sequels. I think it was the first time that I was actually reading stuff of the Weird, and it was also my introduction to science fiction. After that, since my dad is a big sci-fi buff as well, I started in on Red Planet by Robert A. Heinlein. The cover art, which is wicked awesome, also gives a blurb about the book's premise: A Colonial Boy on Mars. How could you not want to read that?


There came a point in the mid-90s when the Weird, which was already being largely commercialized, became even more so.

The culprit, patient zero of this movement: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What started out as something rather tongue-in-cheek and wholly dark got bought up, made into a cartoon, and it sold a lot of toys. This wasn't exactly a new idea since Transformers was a toy line that they made up a TV show to operate as a giant half-hour commercial for action figures. Same as He-Man. With the major success of Turtles, something that came if nowhere else but from within the squishy green ventricles of the Weird, other properties got bought up and made into colorful cartoons that bore little resemblance to their source material. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. Or the Troma figurehead character, The Toxic Avenger. Yes, even he got a cartoon. Enter: The Toxic Crusaders.

So how many appearances of Ron Jeremy can we expect in this cartoon?

Did anyone in that board meeting ever actually see the original Toxic Avenger? I mean, the name Troma pretty much says it all. Don't get me wrong, I love Toxic Avenger, but I still don't think that was a well thought out. But, then again, if it was of the Weird, it got made. Hell, they even were considering doing a cartoon of Aliens. (Thus why the action figures looked so different from their movie counterparts--they were redesigns for an aborted cartoon.)

Aborted cartoon. Man. Remind me never to pair those two words ever again.

This was around the time that there was an enormous push for kids to do two things. Two things their shows and video games were constantly telling them to. One was to D.A.R.E. to keep kids off drugs and/or violence and/or gangs and/or violent gang drugs and two was to just please give a little bit of a shit about the environment. While Toxic Crusaders didn't really have much room to talk about staying off drugs (it came from Troma!), the show could reinforce a message per ep about the environment, the ozone layer, the streams and lakes and oceans, all in a roundabout way akin to a Captain Planet episode. Come to think of it, really, if it weren't for a sizeable chunk of my generation being brought up on Captain Planet, I don't think I'd get a dirty look--from total strangers--every time I tossed a soda can in the (gasp) trash.

Thanks, asshole.

My beloved Beetlejuice got a similar treatment, but that was one of those rare times that they actually got it right. Instead of being about Alec Baldwin and Gina Davis coming to terms with being recently deceased, it was about BJ himself and Lydia and their adventures in the Neitherworld. It was a cartoon that brilliantly coupled two things that couldn't be more different: German expressionism and bathroom humor. Pure. Genius.

Even something like The Simpsons could be considered part of the Weird. Look at those early episodes. So much of it revolves around Springfield being this urban sprawl of toxic waste polluted land, kids being mesmerized by violent videogames, the convenience stores pushing sugar water and so damn many of the characters smoked. It was a pre-apocalypse world. Not all that different from Tromaville, really, if you think about it. Later, that side of things got smoothed out in Springfield and the town didn't seem so much like a reflecting pool of our world--or a reflecting cesspool. But for a while there, and I remember it clearly, Springfield had grit.

Think about how many movies and TV shows had plots that revolved around trash, trash removal, and toxic waste dumps and/or superheroes borne of radioactivity. Think about Grunge. Even the name speaks directly of this. But, the toxic waste side of things I think came from when Chernobyl happened, just like how paranoia and us-versus-them mentality of now was sparked from 9/11. Except here it was a worry that soon the planet would be soggy from end to end with nuclear crap and we'd all be walkin' around in cleansuits.

It did little to soothe all the other stuff going on at the time. The 90s and its collective unhealthy lifestyle (sodas ads pushed the fact that they were "loaded with carbs"), and a new social unrest equaling that of the 1970s, and a confusing and unpopular war, AIDS, homelessness skyrocketing, and pretty much nobody giving half a crap about any of it because if the cable was still on, we were happy. I'm not judging. I was right there in it too. But when I think about the times then, I see a crap-ton of trash and ominously glowing yellow barrels forming a moat around a graffitied-up castle with a shit-ton of skater punks inside, all being chased around by suits wagging their fingers at them. Because that "Parental Advisory" sticker did so much to improve things.

Okay. Bellyaching complete. Sorry.

The garbage theme continued into video games, another major thing pushing its way into our world of entertainment. Game systems had been present in most homes for this time, but now they were taking off in a big way and considered not just a fun little activity but a genuine source of interest to a great deal of people. Of course, this being years, nay decades, before every video game title released had to sell billions of copies before being considered profitable. This was long before the FPS genre was the (really) huge deal is now, and before games got pumped out on a yearly basis with little to no changes to them at all installment to installment. Yes, EA, I'm looking at you.

This was when games were often made by twenty (or less) individuals, often taking upwards of two to three years to go from inception to finished product, often a cartridge or floppy disk. (Yeah. Remember those?) This was also a time during which the Weird was still fully embraced and if your story involved, you guessed it, toxic waste, neon (lots of neon), strange worlds of dead people or strange creatures or strange, dead creature-people, you were probably going to have some sort of hit on your hands. You could easily look at what's really popular now--vampires, werewolves, teenage deathmatches--and spin the clock back and see that, back then, it was the Weird.

Shiny Entertainment was a huge part, for me personally, that installed a heavy dose of the Weird in me like batteries getting clicked in place; it's charge I still feel today in my own creative endeavors. With games like Cool Spot (yes, a game designed completely around the marketing mascot of 7-Up), Earthworm Jim, Earthworm Jim 2, and MDK. Especially Earthworm Jim. Yet another example of a rather unassuming member of the animal kingdom suddenly granted super powers and a big, quirky personality.

Brass tacks here for a moment. Let's just say if Earthworm Jim didn't exist, my novel Fabrick wouldn't either.

Earthworm Jim's creator, Doug TenNapel, would later go on to create some other incredibly bizarre (and awesome) projects of the Weird, like the claymation video game The Neverhood and the mostly-forgotten cartoon Project G.e.e.K.e.R. The latter of which, if given to your kid in steady doses along with WB's Freakazoid (another personal favorite of mine) will result in them having a severe disorder of deficit of attention and strange. Guaranteed. TenNapel could almost be considered co-King of the Weird right along Kevin Eastman. The man is responsible for many amazing graphic novels (I particularly recommend Iron West), as well as Skullmonkeys for the original PlayStation. If you have a PS1 laying around and you don't mind it not being in HD, I'd highly recommend it. Or The Neverhood for PC as well. If you're looking to get that brain twist feeling, it's a sure place to get it. Nothing twists a brain quite like claymation. Nothing.

Don't believe me?



Another game carrying the theme of toxic waste (yet again), was Vectorman for the Sega Genesis. The Genesis, in my opinion, being the home of some of the very best games of the Weird, and almost a keystone of my early welcoming into said Weirdness. The Genesis, all sixteen bits of it, was a transporter for my spongy, little mind. "Come on," it'd say when I jammed in the cartridge and flipped the switch to turn the thing on (yes, it had a switch), "Let's go see some weird shit, yeah?"


Vectorman was a robot who after the entire population of Earth leaves because the planet's been destroyed due to pollution and oodles of trash everywhere, he's left behind to clean up while they're gone. A fellow 'bot loses his mind and decides that he'd be better suited causing mass destruction instead of sweeping up and Vectorman has to do his darndest to improve the situation of a rather f***ed planet.

Remind you of anyone?

Which brings us to the High Priestess of the Weird. Aeon Flux.


Now, I didn't see Aeon Flux in its original run on MTV's Liquid Television. I got into it much later after discovering it in the "animation for grown-ups" section of my local Suncoast while in high school. I knew about the show, had caught it a few times on MTV when I got brained by the insomnia fairy's magic wand, but I didn't fully grasp how terrifically strange the show really was until watching every episode back to back over the course of an afternoon. It had everything required to be receive the stamp of the Weird, to the point I felt like a few things I once considered Weird to be taken off because Aeon Flux really redrew the definitions, to me. I can say with absolute certainty that nothing else mentioned in this post has inspired me more than Aeon Flux.

Liquid Television, and MTV's animated show lineup, was amazing. It included Beavis & Butt-Head (which would later have a spin-off, Daria, which I cannot tell you how much I love), The Maxx, and a few segments based off of Art Spiegelman's work found in his Raw magazine. Beavis & Butt-Head, I don't need to tell you, took off in a big way and left most of Liquid Television in its heh-heh-hehing dust. But I think the real lost treasure was Aeon Flux.

Now, you can go ahead and tell me that Aeon Flux wasn't lost because it was made into a movie starring Charlize Theron a few years back and to that, I will give you a blank stare, shake my head, turn around, and walk away. No. Absolutely not. I don't draw a lot of lines in the sand like overly passionate fanboys often. But Aeon Flux, the movie, never expletive happened.

There have been attempts to continue with the Weird in the 00s and the 10s. Mostly animation has resorted to a more polished, squeaky-clean image because it's hard to do grit with computer animation I think. There are some exceptions, of course. 9 definitely had it. Dark, weird, scary and funny in equal measure. But it was produced by Tim Burton, so who can really be that surprised?

I still see a few examples of the Weird trickle out now and again. It's less about saving the environment and staying off drugs now. Mostly our big themes come out of that us-versus-them thing which I just find just oh so fun. I mean, what better way to provide escapism for people than making Gotham City the setting for every cartoonish reinterpretation of every bad guy America had to squash? Yeah. I really feel like I'm at the movies with that because it's just so different from our world!

I digress. I make fun of movies and games now because it's easy. I didn't know it then but what I hold close to my heart and warmly consider the Weird were just skewed looks at what was going on then. The AIDS epidemic found its way into so many comic book storylines and even certain sequences of Alien 3 ring of that fear of getting tested when Ripley, shaking and sweating, gives herself the sonogram terrified in confirming the worst is possibly true.

But that's what makes art so great, when you're a specific age. You don't really see the influences or the weld lines where things were surreptitiously borrowed and patched on, both from real life and the creator's own inspirations and muse-whisperings. I'm sure the Weird is still out there being made, but I'm just too old to not look for the puppet strings anymore. I'm watching the magician's other hand while he makes something go flash in the opposite. I'm constantly on the prowl for homages, hints, easter eggs, borrowed lines or allusions to Honey Badger.

I guess that's when you know you're grown up, is when you're trying to figure things out, wanting to look under the hood. It's when you feel the need to start making your own stuff, showing off your influences, paying respect to those mad geniuses that came before you and put a fire under your ass so you'd go out and do something with all of that pent-up creativity.

It's what I'm doing now. Since I can't see any of the Weird for myself with those same eyes I used to have, I have to start creating my own. And each thing I do is another little salute to those that inspired me, dared to create insane things and tell bizarre stories because that's just what they had in them. Me writing a book, something shaken loose of the dirt that they plowed, is just another shovelful contributed to the mountain. Another couple inches added to Mount Weird.