Jonas David's Blog, page 68

The Expanse

This is another one from the category of ‘books I’ve read in the past few years being turned into movies or shows’ and hot damn am I satisfied with it. Don’t let the fact that its on SyFy dissuade you.

Sci fi seems to be making a resurgence, there are a lot of good sci fi shows lately, but what this one does different is it tries to be realistic. It treats gravity (and lack therof) as a real thing (including it’s long term effects). It cares about distances between planets, and the economics it would present, lack of oxygen and water and etc, and builds a brilliant story around all these aspects.

The characters are strong and well acted, and the story is interesting and engaging (as it should be, being based on a series of novels) some people have even called it Game of Thrones in space, except there is a lot less sex and violence–and that is not a negative. This show manages to keep the intrigue and power struggle factor turned way up without the need to distract you with tits and gore.

The show holds true to the book, for the most part. I think they cast the characters very well. I did imagine Miller as much older and grumpier, but Thomas Jane’s portrayal grew on me after a few episodes. Although, I did find myself saying ‘ugh, take off that stupid hat’ quite often, but then, thankfully, he did take it off!

Any sci fi fans should definitely check this one out, you are in for a treat!

 

Iapetus Shift update

It is very near! The editing is finished and ready to go, and cover art is in the works!

I expect it will be ‘on the shelves’ sometime next month. I am so excited to finally push the ‘publish’ button and send it out into the world. It’s been almost four years since I finished the first draft, and it’s a crazy feeling to finally be done with it. I look forward greatly to having you all read it!

In anticipation of next month, here is a taste of what’s to come. The first few pages of Iapetus Shift!

Keep an eye out for the release to read more!

Olan peered down through the skylight at the man he was going to kill.

Jep Crason, of moderate wealth and slightly above average power, was a board member at SedTec, a research and development firm. Olan’s career had started with SedTec, in a way, twenty years ago. A part of him found it fitting that his last job would be to off one of their employees.

He’d done some brief research to see if he could find dirt on Crason—fraud or embezzlement or even philandering. It always interested him to know what it was that had spurred the hit. All he’d found on this guy was a long history of voting “No” at board meetings on every attempt by SedTec to open new testing facilities. It seemed it didn’t take much.

Crason was roughly Olan’s height—which made things easier—balding, and a bit portly. He sat tapping at a computer terminal, pausing to scratch his head every so often.

Olan remembered a time when he would have been pacing on that rooftop trying to psych himself up for the kill. Now it was just another thing he had to do to get by. A job. People die all the time, he thought.  Olan would die too, likely sooner than most. It was just how the world worked; life fed on life. Death sells, and there’s always someone buying.

He had to get to work.

Olan pressed a suction cup onto the skylight and slid the nanocutter out from a compartment in his right ring finger. It made a soft, high-pitched whine as he touched it to the glass.

Gusts of wind ruffled Olan’s blond hair and snapped his maintenance jacket back and forth as he moved the cutter slowly along the pane. Olan felt a brief spot of envy for his victim; living in Olympus City—the capital of Mars—on the top floor, above all the traffic and smog with a clear view of the stars was no cheap thing. He wondered if Crason ever looked up to enjoy them.

Olan completed the cut and lifted the suction cup. The glass came out with the slightest scrape that made his heart pound like a machine gun. Crason didn’t move.

The maintenance bag Olan carried as part of his disguise held a thin rope and a needle with a pressure pouch, his own design. The needle was made of bone, the pouch a soft leather. He held the needle so that it extended from between his ring and middle fingers, and the pouch rested in his palm. The nanobots in Jep Crason’s bloodstream would be no match for the poison; Olan had seen Crason’s medical records. He zipped up the bag and tied one end of the rope around the handle, then stood and dropped through the hole.

He landed directly behind Crason with the silent balance of a cat. Two steps forward and he slammed the needle into Crason’s neck, squeezing his fist to inject the poison. Crason went stiff, dead before he could gasp.

Olan slid out the needle, carefully sticking an adhesive over the wound before any blood could leak out, then laid the man on the ground. And just like that, it was done. Simple, in the way that most kills were—but, this wasn’t most kills.

This was his last job.

In a matter of days, the rest of his payment would come through and he’d finally have enough for the upgraded nanobots. Then he wouldn’t have to constantly pay for medication.

His stomach flipped with excitement, but the work wasn’t done yet.

He stripped Crason, folding his clothes into a neat pile before dragging him to the bathroom and rolling him into the wide, jetted tub. He rubbed his face and tried to calm his nerves, then leaned over and pricked the body with a needle that extended and retracted back into his pointer finger in a flash.

Back at the skylight, he snatched the rope and pulled his bag down through the hole. It landed beside him with a soft thud, and he zipped it open to take out a pair of aluminum gloves that crinkled as he put them on. The vial he took out next sloshed with a murky, brown liquid. The vial was a large part of his expenses for each job, but when he did something, he wanted to do it right. Even murder.

He remembered when he’d just robbed people—people with so much money, they wouldn’t even have to change their lifestyle afterwards. But the price of the medication rose faster than he could find bankrolls to swipe. The Olan of those days would have been sick to think about what present Olan was about to do with the vial in his hands. Now, his guilt had been worn down like the sole of an old boot.

Desperation could change anyone. His accounts swelled after his first murder, and there was no turning back.

He disrobed, tossing the maintenance clothes—made of all-organic materials like wool and cotton—into the tub with Crason’s naked body, along with the bone needle and leather pouch. Then he threw in the maintenance bag and the rope and splashed it all with the brown fluid from the vial. The tub sounded like a pit of spitting vipers as he rinsed the vial in the sink.

He closed the door to the bathroom and focused. In a few minutes, he could wash what remained of the evidence down the drain.

A brief message projected on his electronic contact lenses let him know that the DNA he’d taken from Crason’s body was done being analyzed. Olan slipped carefully into Crason’s clothes. They hung loose on his wiry frame. He then sat down with his back to a corner that let him see the whole room.

He never got used to this part.

Olan let out a long breath and activated the program latticed throughout his epidermis, keying it to Crason’s DNA.

The pain lurched through his body like a seizure. His skin convulsed and rippled as his cells reacted to their new instructions. He clenched his teeth, fighting not to scream. His vision blurred as his eyes adjusted their shape to compensate for the shifting structure of his face. Once the process was done, he’d be able to walk out as Crason and vanish. Crason would be a missing person for days before anyone thought of murder.

Pounding on the front door sent him springing to his feet, the skin on his legs screeching at him in protest. There was no way he was ready to be seen yet.

The knocking continued, and Olan heaved himself into the bathroom. He turned the shower on the brown puddle that remained in the tub, then looked in the mirror. His face drooped and twitched, slowly tightening and shifting into place. Maybe they would leave. Maybe they would hear the shower and go away.

Slam! The front door cracked, echoing through the room.

Olan dove to the tub. The running water had washed away the sludge that was left of Jep Crason, but his mechanical enhancements remained—evidence of his death. Olan scooped the pieces out and tossed them one by one into the small trash can near the toilet. A high-efficiency stomach, liver, bifocal eyes—

The door crashed open, and Olan heard the pounding footsteps of several men. “Mr. Crason?” someone shouted. “Are you alright?”

Olan narrowed his eyes. Why would anyone suspect that Crason wasn’t alright? Something was wrong. If Crason had been fitted with a LifeMonitor, these could be paramedics. A LifeMonitor would send an emergency signal if it detected the wearer was in medical trouble, and a stopped heart would be plenty. But Olan hadn’t seen one in the tub, and there wasn’t one on his medical record. They were small things though . . . it may have washed down the drain.

It dawned on him that he’d been able to furrow his brow, and he looked to the mirror again. His face had settled down. It was still too thin and not the right skin tone yet, but it could pass as Jep. He could pull it off. His vocal cords convulsed for a moment as he triggered the program he’d made from months’ worth of Crason’s phone conversations downloaded from the tele-company’s servers.

“I’m alright,” he called weakly in Jep’s voice. “I think I might have had a heart attack.” He hunched his shoulders and leaned forward, letting the shirt hang down and hide his lack of a gut. He mussed what little hair he had, splashed some water in his eyes and opened the door.

“Oh no,” he said, gesturing feebly. “You didn’t have to go smashing things apart, did you?” He sized up the four men standing in the room. He didn’t see weapons but knew they were armed; it was in the way they held themselves, where their hands lay at their sides. And the way their eyes darted over entry and exit points told him they were cops.

“Mr. Crason, are you sure you’re okay?”

Olan knew that one was the leader. His face was haggard but strong, and his hard, grey eyes bored into Olan; he fought to hold on to confidence in his charade.

“I suppose my LifeMonitor must have given some kind of signal,” he said, rubbing his chest and hoping the gamble would pay off. He had no idea what had brought these cops here. “But as you can see, I’m feeling better now.”

Olan did some exit-scanning of his own. He glanced at the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the city. Thick Plexiglas—no way he’d break it. The skylight, which he avoided looking up at, might be low enough for him to jump and grab if he stepped off the shoulder of one of the cops, but he’d surely be shot before he could pull himself up. That left the now broken-in front door.

“Yes, we got the emergency signal,” said the leader with a concern Olan could tell was feigned. “Are you sure you’re alright? We should take you to be examined.” That one knew something was up. Olan accepted that he would not be fooling him and shifted his perspective.

“Yes, yes,” Olan said, coughing. “Maybe that is a good idea, but in a moment. I should catch my breath.” He hobbled toward the four policemen, all in drab plainclothes—simple jackets and button-up shirts. The leader wore a grey, wool cap pulled down around his ears, but otherwise they might as well have been wearing matching uniforms.

As he edged his way toward the door, they shifted to block him. He picked the youngest-looking face and stuck a hand toward what he hoped was a rookie. “Well, as you seem to know, I’m Jep. Nice to meet you, would you like a drink?”

Months of training were overcome by culturally ingrained impulses, and the young cop took Olan’s hand.

Olan jerked the rookie toward him, at the same time stepping forward and behind him. He lifted the cop’s arm up and pressed it into his back. Olan heard the pop of the shoulder dislocating. The rookie screamed. Olan shoved him toward the other three cops now drawing their weapons and darted through the broken door.

He sprinted for two seconds before he felt the sting in the back of his neck and heard the signal from his nanobots, warning him that he’d been injured. He reached back to brush away the dart and chanced a glance backward. The leader stood in the hall, weapon raised. Olan spared a moment to be impressed at the man’s shooting, then dodged around a corner into the stairwell. He tossed the dart to the ground, unworried. He didn’t know of any tranquilizer on the market that his nanobots couldn’t neutralize, and cops weren’t known to use poisons.

Olan leaped over the steps, touching down on the landing then turning to leap down the next flight. He was confident he’d outrun an elevator this way, and he wasn’t even breaking a sweat.

Six flights down, twenty more till the mall level.

Thoughts spun as he bounded down and down. Had Jep somehow gotten a LifeMonitor without it going into his records? It didn’t seem likely, but then why had the cops pretended to get a nonexistent signal from it?  Thirteen flights. He scrolled through his cache of stolen DNA and selected a never-used profile he’d been saving for an emergency. At twenty flights he triggered it and slowed to a jog as the pain kicked in.

By the time he reached the mall level, he was straightening his new, thick, black hair and exiting the stairway into a crowded clothing store with a calm smile.

He snagged a pair of omni-size slacks and a white, stretch-to-fit T-shirt from the racks and paid for them with his clean account, then ducked into a restroom to change. He stuffed Jep’s clothes in the hand-towel recycler and returned to the bustling mall a new man.

Olan walked slowly, letting busy passersby jostle him around as his heart found its normal pace. The rush was over; there was no way they could know what floor he’d gone to, or any way they could recognize him. In a few days, the transaction would be complete, and his payment for the death of Crason would come through. Then he would be well and truly free. But even so, he no longer felt safe in this city.

His contact list appeared at his mental command, projected against his eyes, visible only to him. He scrolled through till he reached Estha and composed a text to her.

Pack up, we’re moving on.

When she got the message, she’d collect all their gear and clean the small apartment on Kepler Street, in the slums of Olympus City, of any evidence they’d been staying there. Then in the next city, maybe they could even go back to doing easy robberies. She was always unhappy with him taking kill jobs, though her worry for his health outweighed her objections in the end.

He touched the back of his neck. The wound had long since been patched up, which, he now saw, he’d been notified of—just like he’d been notified of the injury itself. But he hadn’t been notified of any neutralized tranquilizer or poisons.

A ball of ice formed in his gut.

If the dart hadn’t been carrying a tranq or poison, then—

“Don’t move, hands up, please.” The voice behind him was a familiar one.

Making Mistakes, an evolutionary advantage?

I was reading this article about the origins of multi-cellular life, and remembered a thought I had a while back.

I was thinking about why we make mistakes. It seems strange, for example, when I’m typing this post out, that I several times hit wrong keys by mistake. Why do I do this? Why don’t I just hit the keys that I intend to hit? Why do I put the wrong ingredient in the cake mix, or call the wrong person, or take a wrong turn? This isn’t for a lack of knowledge or ability. I know that cake recipe, I know the way to work. So why do I turn at the wrong spot, or type the wrong word?

Well imagine if no one ever made mistakes, if every intention was carried out to the maximum physical and mental ability. Then we’d be missing out on a lot of discovery.

When I take that wrong turn, I might be late to work, true. But I also might find a faster route I didn’t know about. Or a cool new restaurant. When I screw up that recipe, I may stumble across something that tastes even better than what I’d planned. Or, I may stumble across a million dollar invention or life-saving medicine. And once that beneficial mistake is make once, then you can do it intentionally from then on out, and spread it to everyone you know.

Could clumsy or stupid mistakes that we make every day be evolution’s way of forcing us to try new things? Even if out of a thousand new things you try, the first 998 are horrible and number 1000 kills you… if number 999 was beneficial, and is remembered and used by the rest of humanity, then that is a net positive as far as evolution is concerned.

So next time you screw something up, and say to yourself ‘what is wrong with me how could I do that??’ stop and think about what you’d be saying if that mistake had turned out better than what you were trying to do…

A New Year

It’s here, the end of another year. They fly by faster and faster, so fast it seems that soon I wont even notice. I’ll start missing holidays in my distraction, and become one of those old people asking what month it is.

But for now I have my wits, and I have goals! I completed the previous years resolutions to blog about every movie I watched and book I read. This year I plan on continuing that goal, but I also want to blog more thoughts. More interesting things other than brief movie reviews, which seems to be the majority of my posts.

I also achieved my go related resolutions, but I’ve got another blog for that now.

This year I plan, aside from my blog goals, to write and publish two novellas. I am currently working on one, and have an idea for the second. I believe I can complete and release them by this time next year. That is my goal anyway! That would be a great achievement, and would mean I’d have three novellas out next year since… yes, I can do math… I have one coming out soon already!

I’ve decided on a title, I’ve finished up the editing, and I’ve commissioned artwork for the cover!

So. You’ll be seeing that soon, as well as the opening chapter, which I plan to post here soon.

Iapetus Shift, by Jonas David

One more kill, and Olan will have the money he needs to cure his damaged DNA for good–damage caused by his constant shapeshifting. But before he can get out of the business, it all goes wrong and he’s forced to complete one final job–kidnap a super-genius from a secret government facility on Mars, and transport her to a hidden base on Saturn’s moon, Iapetus–by any means necessary.

Well… that’s the teaser I have written so far, I may update it.

Keep an eye out for it soon!

 

 

The New York Trilogy, by Paul Auster

I don’t read a lot of (or any, really) literary fiction. But I was recommended this book, or, trilogy of novellas, I guess, by a friend and was impressed by its strangeness.

It grabbed my attention right from the start by being about a writer who seems to be confusing himself with his characters. Then gets even more interesting when that character starts getting phone calls from someone asking for Paul Auster… who is the author of the book I’m reading.

The ‘weird’ in these three stories is very subtle and very subversive. You don’t really notice how it is getting under your skin until it’s there, and you have no idea what is real and what is imagined and what is a metaphor and what is literal. The stories all seem to be connected, without really being connected on the surface. The stories all seem to make a deeper kind of sense, though the meaning is just out of reach, like a word on the tip of your tongue.

The theme seemed to be one of isolation and obsession. The characters all end up becoming overcome by some task and locking themselves away from the world to complete it. They then seem surprised that their lives have fallen apart in their absence.

I quite enjoyed this but I don’t think it is for everyone. If you want a story where you close the book with all the answers and the story is complete and done, then this one may leave you unsatisfied. It will stick with you, you’ll wonder what it means, and will be thinking about it long after you read the last word.

Phoenix (2015)

I’m not usually very interested in war movies. In fact war is the least interesting genre of any entertainment to me. But AV Club had this movie near the top of their best of 2015 list, so I checked it out on a whim.

Phoenix is about a woman who escaped from a concentration camp in World War Two, with severe damage to her face. After reconstructive surgery, she looks like a different person, and seeks out her husband only to find that he doesn’t recognize her. Not only that, but he tries to get her to pretend to be his wife–i.e, herself–in order to collect an inheritance.

You can tell a movie is going to be good when right from the first minutes, you are glued to the screen. It was refreshing to watch something so well crafted and paced and acted.

This movie is very tense, and there is a lot of buildup throughout, with the interactions between her and her husband and the strange, intriguing plot. And the final scene is one of the more stunning endings I’ve seen in a long time.

Check it out!

HO HO HO!

Merry Christmas everyone!

I hope you are all having a great evening and have big plans for the next year!

Do something for yourself! Do something for those around you! I don’t know what… but do something! Make a plan, have a goal…

Create something!

I’ve had a great year and have high hopes for the next one. Next month should see the release of my novella, Iapetus Shift. I am so excited to have it finally out! And I plan to write a lot more, and start releasing more stuff instead of just letting half finished projects pile up.

Lets make the next year a year of production!

Hyperion

I finished this amazing sci fi story a few weeks back, and am still thinking about parts of it.

I thought I had read this before, because I had owned it as a teenager, but after the first few chapters I didn’t remember any of it, and I think I may not have finished it because the parts I do remember have always stuck with me, and I think the later parts of the book, had I read them, I would have remembered them.

The story is about a group of strangers taking an interstellar voyage to the strange planet of Hyperion, each of them with their own reason and history with the planet, and the mysterious creature ‘the shrike’ that lives there. Deciding to get to know each other during the voyage, they decide to each tell their story, taking turns each night.

So the book is really six stories in one, each one is self contained, but since they are based in the same universe, and all relate to the same planet, they can’t help but be relevant to each other.

Each story is uniquely interesting and captivating. And some scenes are so vivid and visceral that I was cringing and gasping while listening. I’ve been inspired to write after listening to this, and I imagine this series has been incredibly influential in the sci fi world.

I was also very interested by the relationship this novel has with the poet, Keats, who I have not read. Hyperion is named after an unfinished epic poem by Keats, and there is more than a few references, and even major plot points, that have to do with the poet. I feel I may be missing some of the story by not having read him.

I found the end to be frustrating, as nothing is really resolved, and we leave our group of travelers right as they are reaching their destination. But I have the sequel ready to go and am eager to find out what happens next.

This is definitely a landmark for science fiction. It feels ‘thicker’ than most sci fi, even though it is not hard science fiction. It is thoughtful and beautiful and complicated and deep and intricate.

Check it out!

 

Krampus (2015)

I saw this family fun holiday film last week, and had a great time. I wasn’t scared, I wasn’t creeped out really, but it was a surprisingly well crafted movie, and I suspect it will be watched on the holidays by weirdos around the world for years to come.

For whatever reason there have been a surprising amount of Krampus related Christmas movies over the past few years, but this is the first one that is of any quality. When I first saw the trailer I just rolled my eyes thinking ‘oh another one’ and would have never given it a thought if not for the recommendation of the guys at redlettermedia.com. Thanks for pre-screening movies for me, guys!

The story centers around a family at Christmas, and a little boy who loses his Christmas spirit due to his horrible relatives. Then Krampus comes and starts killing everyone.

It’s an old and overdone tale, sure, but this is really fun to watch. The creatures are well done and creative, there is a good amount of humor sprinkled in but not so much as to ruin the dark tone, and Krampus himself looks really great and is not overplayed.

If you’re looking for a ‘Gremlins’ style scary, but safe for the whole family kind of movie, or if you just like weird Christmas movies, then I’d give this one a chance. It will be better than you expect.

The Force Awakens, reawakening my love for Star Wars

I saw it.

I had my doubts. After the prequels, we all did. After hearing it was sold to Disney, I got a bit excited, but then Abrams made ‘Into Darkness’ and… well, we know how that one went.

I feared a senseless, impossible to follow plot. I feared endless battle and fight scenes that had no consequence or reason. I feared being bashed over the head with nostalgia, and I feared the new characters would be just bit parts while grandma and grandpa hobbled around saving the day.

But there is no need to worry. The Force Awakens is better than the prequels. It could even be on par with the original trilogy. It’s that good.

It of course, had some problems, like any movie, but lets start out with what it did right.

For starters… it was an actual movie! Unlike the prequels, it had a plot I could understand, and characters who’s motivations stayed consistent throughout the story. Even if they were simple motivations, they were there. This is already a giant leap beyond the prequels, and beyond many action movies today, whose directors seem more and more to be happy with their movies being basically a series of non-sequitur action scenes.

Next, it wasn’t ‘too much’. I won’t say it was toned down, because it was definitely action packed and exciting, but, the action had consequence. You CARED what happened. It was more than just flashing lights on the screen. When there is a million ships covering every inch of the screen and thousands of guys with glowing swords flipping all over the place, and I don’t know who any of them are or why I should care who dies… then I don’t care. The Force Awakens kept me clear on who was doing what, and why–and who was in trouble–the whole time.

The Nostalgia was subtle, and not overdone, tiring or irritating. It was done lovingly, as if by a true fan, by someone who understands WHY people loved Star Wars. Not some blind executive thinking ‘hmm, people like those aliens and ships… shove those into every inch of the screen, then they’ll REALLY love it!’

The sets were creative, and interesting to look at. The desert where we start, full of dead ships being slowly torn apart by scavengers, is a great example of someone actually trying to create their own world and ideas, instead of just copy-pasting from the originals. There are a few other really great locations in this movie but I’ll avoid spoilers.

The new characters were great. They had personalities, they had their own characteristics. I know, I’m describing what makes a character a character, but it seems so hard for Hollywood to get these days. Take the prequels for example. One of my favorite movie review sites, redlettermedia.com, in their famous review of The Phantom Menace, asked people to simply describe the characters in Episode One… and it’s very hard. When you have an empty shell of a character with no desires or goals or fears or anything, all you can describe is their costume. Watch this video to see what I mean. The part I’m talking about starts at 6:40.

I did however, have some problems with the character arcs in The Force Awakens. It seems the characters completed their arcs instantly, with no effort. They go from weak to strong, for example, with no training or struggle. They go from wanting to run away, to returning to help fight… with nothing spurring their decision, no epiphany or lesson. They just… change.

But in the end, I still remember them, I still like them, and I’m wanting to watch them more!

My last complaint is that Solo and Chewie got way too much screen time, and were really a distraction from the new characters. Watching a 70 year old Ford running around shooting at aliens was almost sad, and I would really have preferred if he had been there as a wise advisor, letting the new kids know whats up–like an Obi-Wan figure–instead of running around doing crazy action moves and saving the day.

But these are small complaints in an overall great movie. I am excited for the next one, and will probably watch this one again before it’s out of the theaters!

I am so happy to be enjoying a Star Wars film again. I never thought I would experience that excitement and curiosity and drama again, but I have, and it’s great.

And, I think this could finally beat Mad Max to be my favorite movie of the year!