Ted Rabinowitz's Blog, page 9

Who's Up For Some Rhino? Yum!

A team of archeologists at a dig in Azraq, Jordan, have been conducting science with teeth. They uncovered a cache of ancient stone weapons and tools used by proto-humans about 250,000 years ago...and these tools still had "residue" from the animals that were killed. This allowed the team to figure out what the protos were munching.

It seems back in the day our early Jordanian cousins (these folks weren't Homo sapiens - maybe H. neanderthalensis? Erectus? Rhodesiensis?) liked them some meats. We're talking horses, cows, ducks...and rhinos.

Dr. April Nowell, who leads the team, can't yet explain how the protos brought down a rhino using only weapons like this:


Neither can I.
Much respect, my prehistoric brothers.

Rarely, Rarely Do I Shill

"Where there's a subspace quantum flux,
there's a Nakamura-Sordak isolinear chip!"But this is so goofy, you might want them.
Especially if your home is already decorated in '70s retro-future.

Mars Wants You!

NASA has another series of posters, this time for its Mars missions!

Stuck in Realtime With Peter Falk

Historical novels (even one as tongue-in-cheek as The Wrong Sword) rely on telling details to convey a sense of time and place. The best source of these details are primary sources - documents and other items from then and there. For my friends obsessed with mid-20th century America, here is my favorite visual primary source for the 1970s (besides having lived through it): Columbo.

Columbo was a long-running detective TV series in which the wonderful character actor Peter Falk played a disheveled schlemiel of a police lieutenant who put (usually) wealthy and arrogant malefactors behind bars, after passive-aggressively nudzhing them for 45 minutes. It may also be the most 70's-looking show ever.

So if you're looking for visual cues between 1970 and 1980...

Dig it.

Dig that high tech office!

Classy

Murder, 70s style
Los Angeles
What Shatners looked like in 1973

Notes From the Undergound

Now that New York has the High Line, folks have been proposing a Low Line - an underground park in an abandoned trolley tunnel, with piped-in sunlight and solar energy.
Before
After
More power to them, say I!

The Physics Is Theoretical, but the Fun Is Real!

So there is an actual, genuine board game called Peer Review.
I am gobsmacked.
Yay!

It's Buffy!

As I mentioned last week, back in my Hollywood days I wrote a bunch o' spec scripts for TV shows. Somebody suggested recently that it might be fun to post these bits of juvenilia, so I'm doing it. Last week it was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. this week it's Buffy the Vampire Slayer. See if you can guess which spec-script rule I broke with this one...

A Little Sumthin' Sumthin' - Star Trek:Deep Space Nine

As some of you all know, I used to write for the TV box. That involved a lot of "spec" scripts for shows that interested me at the time.

One of my more rabid fans (hi, Mom!) asked to see some of the specs I wrote. I figured, why not put them up here? So I will...starting with the one I wrote for Star Trek:Deep Space Nine. It's in the "Pages" section of the blog, right here. Enjoy!

When You Hate That Book That Everyone Loves

So, there's this book. A plucky band of travelers - some of them aliens! - have adventures in space. I'm not going to get more specific than that because I'm going to say Mean Things about it, I'm a writer not a reviewer, and there is such a thing as Writer's Karma. Sorry about that. However, judging by the rapturous reviews it's getting, The Book will probably appeal to you even if it doesn't appeal to me.

Anyhow...

This book - a newish book, 2014 or thereabouts - was recommended on io9.com, which is where I've recently been getting my recommendations. It's also on the shortlist for the UK's biggest SF book award. So I bought it. And I read it. And it was bad.
Not Eye of Argon  bad. But childish. With paper-thin characters and a plot that was picaresque at best. The best way to sum it up is "It's the future, and everybody is really, really nice." The author seems petrified of conflict. When characters have problems, they just talk things out and everything gets better. (Also, war is bad, and if you're in love, then your species shouldn't matter.) So if you're suffering from PTSD and you're afraid that any fiction you read will be a "trigger," then this is the book for you.

To be clear, I understand and support the idea of comfort fiction. I couldn't have gotten through childhood without P.G. Wodehouse, Susan Cowper, and Josephine Tey. But this book has the kind of problems that most writers struggle with in Year One of their careers. And everybody loves it.

So are they crazy, or am I? Have I wasted years trying to make believable characters? Are plots that actually extend across the length of the book just unnecessary? Is all that "writer's craft" stuff simply bullshit?

What Do You Do When You Hate the Book That Everyone Loves?

So, there's this book. A plucky band of travelers - some of them aliens! - has adventures in space. I'm not going to get more specific than that because I'm going to say Mean Things about it, I'm a writer not a reviewer, and there is such a thing as Writer's Karma. Sorry about that. However, judging by the rapturous reviews it's getting, The Book will probably appeal to you even if it doesn't appeal to me.

Anyhow...

This book - a newish book, 2014 or thereabouts - was recommended on io9.com, which is where I've recently been getting my recommendations. It's also on the shortlist for the UK's biggest SF book award. So I bought it. And I read it. And it was bad.
Not Eye of Argon  bad. But childish. With paper-thin characters and a plot that was picaresque at best. The best way to sum it up is "It's the future, and everybody is really, really nice." The author seems petrified of conflict. When characters have problems, they just talk things out and everything gets better. (Also, war is bad, and if you're in love, then your species shouldn't matter.) So if you're suffering from PTSD and you're afraid that any fiction you read will be a "trigger," then this is the book for you.

To be clear, I understand and support the idea of comfort fiction. I couldn't have gotten through childhood without P.G. Wodehouse, Susan Cowper, and Josephine Tey. But this book has the kind of problems that most writers struggle with in Year One of their careers. And everybody loves it.

So are they crazy, or am I? Have I wasted years trying to make believable characters? Are plots that actually extend across the length of the book just unnecessary? Is all that "writer's craft" stuff simply bullshit?