A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 37

New Publisher, Simon & Schuster

Greetings, Action Force.

As you may or may not have heard, I’ve recently signed a three book deal with Simon & Schuster.  This could be big news.  I am, as always, cautiously optimistic, but the move to a new publisher might be just what I need to reach a new audience.  Here are some more details.

This will be my first trilogy, and it will feature the endless adventures of Constance Verity.  Constance, through no fault of her own, has led a life of constant peril and thrills.  She’s Nancy Drew, John Carter, and a little bit Doc Savage all rolled into one.  She’s fought aliens, vampires, and dinosaurs (and alien vampire dinosaurs).  She’s been to the edge of the universe, the center of the Earth, and the beginning of time, and she’s lived to tell about it.

The first book is all about how exhausting it is being hurled into so much adventure since being a child.  Constance wants nothing more than to take a break and live an ordinary life.  She sets off on one last mission, but a simple mission to assassinate her fairy godmother soon leads (in typical Constance fashion) to a dark conspiracy involving apparently everyone in the universe BUT Connie.

It sounds funny.  I know.  And it is.  But it’s also a story about the roles we find ourselves in, the desire for change, and a chance to find out who we really are underneath it all.  Yes, it has a lot of absurd humor in it, but it’s not meant to be a silly tale.  It won’t prevent many people from seeing it that way, and I can’t control that.  I can only write the best book I can, and let the chips fall where they may.

Simon & Schuster has some great marketing plans in the works.  Some ambitious stuff, and I’m eager to work with them.  Will this be the big breakthrough?  I’m hopeful.  Time will tell.

As for the other two books in the trilogy, I don’t want to say too much about them yet, but part of Connie’s destiny is a “Glorious Death”.  (SPOILER ALERT)  But Constance and Destiny have always had a contentious relationship.

Stay tuned, Action Force.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

The Last Mortals (short fiction)

It looked like water, but if you drank it, you would live forever.

Dr. Brendon pointed his gun at Karen. “I can’t let you walk out of here with that.”

She held the vial between her finger and thumb, casually, as if it wasn’t the most valuable thing on this world at the moment. “Don’t be stupid, Ben. We’ve worked too hard on this, spent too many year. Now you’ve changed your mind?”

“I’ve thought about it,” he said. “We’re talking about a world where nobody dies.”

“People will still be able to die. But now it will be a choice.”

His hand was shaking so much, she was surprised he hadn’t shot her yet. “That’s a terrible choice to force on somebody.”

“It’s a terrible choice to take away from somebody,” she replied.

“Think of the consequences.”

She smiled. “There are always consequences, Doctor, whether we act or not. Why are your hands any cleaner of the misery this could remove than mine dirty with all the misery it might cause?”

Dr. Brendon didn’t have an answer. He didn’t lower the gun though.

“We weren’t meant to live forever.”

“You don’t know that. Maybe there’s a plan here, and maybe you and I are part of the plan.” She set the vial down on the counter and removed her coat. He almost shot her then. “Right now, a good person is dying, and this can fix that. Are you willing to tell that person they should die? It’s easy to shoot me. Could you sit every person down who is struggling for another day and tell them you don’t care?”

“You’re twisting things,” he said. “You can’t change the world without thinking about what it means.”

“Funny. I thought that was the history of the world.”

“Karen . . . ”

“I did it already. About an hour ago.”

She hit a key on her computer and the screen lit up, showing the formula, no doubt spread across the internet, out of their hands because it was in everyone’s hands.

He shot her. Twice. He didn’t realize he’d done it until he saw laying on the floor. He dropped the gun.

She sat up and poked her fingers through the holes in her shirt. “Hmmm. Works even better than we expected.”

“Karen, you don’t know what you’ve done,” he said.

“I know what I’ve done. I don’t know what happens tomorrow because of it, but who ever does?”

She put a hand to his cheek. He grabbed her wrist. “I’ll never forgive you.”

“Yes, you will,” she said. “It’ll take some time, but you will.”

She placed the vial in his hand, closed his fingers over it, and walked out of the lab.

He stood, staring at the computer, clutching the vial in a tight fist. He thought about throwing the vial against the wall.

He didn’t.

Wounds (short fiction)

Someone must have seen him because the police were at his door. He wasn’t surprised. Murder was a nasty business, and it was to be expected that his first one would be sloppy.

He opened the door and smiled at the two officers standing before him. One was short and round. The other was tall and thin. A matched set.

“Something I can help you with?” Ray asked.

“Mr. Rogers?” asked the taller cop.

“That’s right.”

“Can we come in?” asked the shorter cop.

“Sure.” Ray stepped aside, let the officers enter.

“Mr. Rogers, could you tell us—”

“I killed her,” said Ray.

The cops glanced at one another.

“That’s what you want to know, right? A guy matching my description was reported leaving the scene of the crime. Tall. Pale. Short hair. Blue eyes.” He nodded to the coat hanging from the rack. “Brown coat with classic pinup art stitched to the back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I can’t believe I wore the coat,” said Ray. “That was stupid. Why not leave a card with my room number and a confession while I was at it?”

“So you’re admitting you killed her then, sir?” asked short cop.

“Yes, Officer. I killed her, but I’m not sure it falls under your jurisdiction. She wasn’t completely alive in the first place.”

They put their hands on their guns. Ray waved his hand, focused his will. They froze.

“It’s a rotten thing,” he said. “I’m not a violent sort. I’m really not. But when I saw her checking in, just a few rooms down, I knew what I had to do. It’s an old wound, and some old wounds don’t heal. No matter how many centuries pass. Some things can never be forgiven.”

He sat on the creaky bed and sighed. “I’ve never killed anyone before. Can you believe that? All these centuries. I’ve never had to. I never slipped. Countless gallons of blood drained and nobody died. I thought I was better than the others because of it, that I had more respect for life than them. Turned out, it wasn’t a matter of respect. Merely motivation.

“So I killed her, but if it’s any consolation, she wasn’t one of the good ones. I looked down on her forever because of all the horrible things she’d done, and the irony is that it took me killing her to understand her. I still don’t forgive her. I still think it was the right thing to do. I’d drive that stake through her heart a thousand times. So much for the high ground.

“Old wounds, gentlemen.”

He laughed bitterly.

“Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to forget all about this conversation. Different guy. Different jacket. By the time you come back tomorrow, I’ll be gone. Justanother unsolved case.”

They tipped their hats. “Sorry to have bothered you, Mr. Rogers.”

“No bother at all.”

Ray shut the door, lay in the bed, and turned on the TV. She was dead, and it still didn’t make him feel any better. He remembered all the people, dead and undead, who had wronged him. Wronged other people who hadn’t deserved it. He’d sat on the sidelines too long, thinking himself above it.

She was his first murder. He hoped to hell she was his last.

The Plight of the Lonely French Fry (short fiction)

Another dead end.

Helen crumpled up the restaurant child’s placemat and started on a fresh one. She should’ve used a pencil, but that felt like cheating. She stuck with pen. No going back. It was a maze for five year olds, leading an anthropormorphic French fry to a box of his brethren. It shouldn’t be this hard.

She hit another dead end. Crumpled it up and tossed it with the half-dozen others she’d failed to complete. Troy had been watching her for a while. He finally said something.

“Problem, Hel?”

“No. No problem.” She ripped the placemat in half and sighed.

Troy took one of the failures and smoothed it out. “I’m surprised you’re not better at this.”

“I’m surprised you’re not better at math.” She immediately regretted saying it. She wasn’t mad at him.

He laughed. “I guess I deserved that. Although I am pretty good at math.”

“Of course you are.” Helen snorted. Her tail whipped against the booth. “Sorry. I’m lousy at mazes. People think I should be good at them, but if you recall, they built that labyrinth to keep the monster in.”

There were constant reminders of what she was. It wasn’t just the horns on her head or the fur covering her arms. It wasn’t just that she was a foot too tall or the clomp of her hooves on hardwood floors. It was everything. It was Frankie the lonely French fry, stuck with a guide who could lift the back end of a car but couldn’t remember to take a left at the happy hamburger instead of a right, no matter how many times she did it.

As learning disabilities went, it wasn’t so bad. Mazes and labyrinths were out of fashion. The only time it really mattered was at the mall, where she got turned around more than she liked to admit. But unless it was an especially twisty mall, she could struggle her way through.

But this French fry, this lonely little bastard, was getting on her nerves today.

She put the pen to paper, but Troy covered the maze with his hand.

“Do you want some help with that?”

“I can do it on my own,” she said.

“I know you can,” he replied. “But you don’t need to.”

He helped her get Frankie to his buddies, and while it was undoubtedly child’s play to him, he didn’t condescend. He gave her some advice when she was about to make the wrong move, and in the end, even if he did most the work, she felt like she’d done some of it. She’d never have been able to save Frankie on her own, but she wasn’t on her own.

“Thanks, Troy.”

He smiled and winked. “No problem, Hel. That’s what friends are for.”

Unwound (short fiction)

Todd had broken the lamp. Again.

Jackson pulled aside his son. “You have to be more careful.”

Maureen sighed. “I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal about it. We’ll fix it.”

“You can’t fix everything,” he said.

“Yes, we can.” She pulled her unwinder from her pocket, waved it over the lamp. The old lamp jumped back onto the end table and put itself back together. “See? No harm done?”

Jackson had always hated that ugly, old lamp. He would’ve been happy to sweep it into the garbage and never think about it again.

“It’s not about the lamp,” he said. “He has to learn responsibility.”

Maureen ruffled Todd’s hair. “He’s responsible. Go on, honey. Go play.”

Jackson stared at the device in her hand. “I hate that thing.”

“You’re just an old curmudgeon,” she said. “Stop being silly. Did you hear? They just released the newest ones. You can use them on pets now.”

“Shit. Really?”

“Barbara used it last week to unwind their cat after it was hit by a car. Worked like a charm.”

“That’s nice.” He’d always liked that cat.

“And Sally and John are just waiting for human approval so that they can unwind their marriage. Should be any day now.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it just wasn’t working out. They both decided to start fresh.” She kissed him.

She sat on the couch, reading her book. He loved her, but did that matter? If tomorrow, she decided it wasn’t “working out” would she unwind their life together. What would happen to them? What would happen to Todd?

“I hate those things,” he said.

“You’ll get used to them.”

He went outside for some air.  A few minutes later, he heard the lamp break.

Again.

The Company of the Dead (short fiction)

She decided to ask her father for advice. They had never gotten along very well, and that had only gotten worse after he’d died.

The graveyard was full of ghosts, but so was everywhere else. The living mounted monuments to the dead, then fenced those monuments off. As if death could be contained in pre-arranged acres. The world was a single giant graveyard, and the dead far outnumbered the living.

Everyone and everything became a ghost upon death. Most of those ghosts lasted only a few moments. Others centuries. There were ghost forests still standing in the deserts, and once, she’d even seen a dinosaur ghost. It’d been little more than a shadow, but it was still here. She thought that maybe they never disappeared. Maybe they just faded away so that she couldn’t see them anymore. Perhaps that was the cruel secret of the afterlife. There was no greater world beyond this. There was only this, and billions of disembodied souls wandering unseen by most people.

Willie leaned against his tombstone. He didn’t look up at her. “What do you want now?”

“Good to see you too, Pop.”

He frowned. Some ghosts wandered the world aimlessly. Some stuck around where they were killed. Some haunted their bodies. There was no rhyme or reason to it, and even the dead didn’t know why they did what they did. She’d long since given up asking.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” he said. “Not after you started taking the pills they gave you.”

She put her hand in her coat pocket and felt the bottle there. “I stopped taking them.”

“Don’t do that,” he said. “If there had been pills in my day, I would’ve taken them.”

“I know, Pop.”

“It’s not a gift,” he said. “It’s nothing but a distraction. You can’t help the dead, and they can’t offer you anything.”

“I know, Pop.”

“You’ll be here soon enough.”

“I know, Pop.”

“Don’t just say it. Listen, damn it! When your mother died, I wasted years of my life pining after her. But you can’t have a relationship with a ghost. Life is for the living. Leave the dead behind.”

She smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing. I just came to ask you a question, but you gave me the answer.”

Willie grunted. “I love you, too, kid. Now take those pills and go back to your life.”

She swallowed a pill. “Pop, I’m not going to forget you. Not seeing you isn’t going to change that.”

“I know, kid. Take care of yourself.”

He faded away. She wondered if the doctors were right, and that she was crazy. Not their words, but close enough. It didn’t matter. One day, she’d die and find out. Until then, she’d live. She’d live for her father and mother, all the people who had come and gone before her and all the people who were yet to come.

“I love you, Pop.”

The thousands of unshackled spirits vanished as she left the graveyard. Even so, she didn’t walk out alone.

Rainfall (short fiction)

It’d been raining for two weeks before the gods came knocking on Josephine’s door.

“Can we come in?” asked Hermes.

Josephine debated. The three gods standing on her porch, getting soaked by the rainstorm, was something she liked seeing.

“Sure.” She stepped aside, and the gods came in, dripping on her carpets. “I’ll get some towels. You wait here.”

She returned with the towels. Nathan was talking with the gods. Mictlantecuhtl, god of the underworld, held Nathan’s firetruck in skeletal gray fingers.

“The siren works, you say?” said Mictlantecuhtl. “My, what marvels you mortals create.”

She handed out the towels. “Nathan, go play in your room. Mom has grown up talk.”

“But Mom . . . ”

“Just do it, young man.”

He trudged upstairs back to his room.

“Good boy you have there,” said Hermes.

“Thanks.”

Izanami said, “He shouldn’t have to die.”

“No, he shouldn’t,” said Josephine. “But that’s not really up to me, is it? Why are you here?”

“You know why,” said Miclantecuhtl. “Why haven’t you built the boat yet? Did you not get the visions we sent you?”

“I got them.”

“Then you know the cleansing waters are coming?” asked Hermes.

She nodded.

“Yet you take no steps to save yourself?”

“The only protection I need is from you,” she said.

Miclantecuhtl said, “Don’t you understand? You’ve been chosen. You’re one of the lucky ones the gods have deemed worthy of surviving and starting the new world. It’s a great honor.”

“So the visions have told me. Repeatedly. And the letters. And the e-mails.”

“We weren’t sure you were getting the visions,” said Hermes.

“I got them. I’m just not playing.”

“Do you think this is a game?” asked Izanami.

“Isn’t it?” asked Josephine. “You screw up and when you’re unhappy with the results, you flip the table over and start all over. Except these aren’t game pieces you’re playing with. They’re human lives.”

“We don’t do this lightly,” said Hermes. “There were many meetings about it. The vote was very close.”

“Glad to know the gods have grown out of casual genocide,” she said.

“You don’t understand. This is happening, and if you don’t build that boat, you will die.”
“I understand.”

Izanami said, “And what of your son? Are you willing to—”

Josephine slapped the goddess. Hard. Izanami was struck silent by the blow.

“Don’t you dare! Don’t you fucking dare! You think that because you give me the opportunity to save my family that I’m going to overlook what you’re doing here. You think I should be grateful that you’ve given us a way out while you kill everyone else. I love that boy and his father more than anything in this world or the next, but I’ll be damned if I let you use that to make me play your game. Do you think I’m grateful that you’ve chosen us? Like it’s some grand fucking prize?

“And now, you come to my house, and you expect me to ignore your passive aggressive bullshit? You’re killing that little boy. You’re killing him and a billion other little boys like him and then you put that responsibility on my shoulders? If that’s the kind of gods you are, I don’t need you. And I don’t need your new world.”

Izanami glared with baleful wrath. The house shook.

“Do it then!” said Josephine. “Don’t hide behind a disaster. Do it yourself. Right now. Smite me and my family. And then go find someone else to blame for it.”

Mictlantecuhtl pulled Izanami aside. “You aren’t the only one. There are others. We don’t need you to carry on.”

“So not only am I chosen, I’m also expendable,” she said. “That’s comforting.”

“If you don’t build the boat—”

“Get out of my house.”

The gods left without a fuss. They bickered among themselves on her porch for an hour, but she didn’t listen. She went upstairs and played video games with Nathan instead.

The next day, the rain stopped.

The day after that, they went on a picnic.

If the gods were looking down on them and if those gods were smiling or frowning, Josephine decided she didn’t give a damn one way or the other.

Lost and Found (short fiction)

It was all gone. Everything except two buildings.

His house.

And a curious little shop without a sign.

He crossed the empty street. The world was an infinite horizon. Streets were still there, outlining an invisible grid of things no longer present. Just blocks of grass where someone had forgotten to put anything.

A bell tingled as he entered the shop. It was very clean, almost empty itself. There was only a counter and a clerk behind the counter.

The clerk smiled at him. “Hello, sir. Good to see you again.”

He must be dreaming. “Where is everything?”

“Removed,” said the clerk. “As per your request.”

“What?”

“We are the finest removal company in the business,” said the clerk.

“Also the only one. That does make the former easier to achieve.”

“What do you mean removed?”

“Exactly what we promise it means.”

“How?”

“Ah, that’s a trade secret, sir.” Smiling, the clerk put his fingers to his lips.

“I didn’t ask you to do that.”

“Yes, sir, I’m quite certain you did. We have the work orders right here.” The clerk thumbed through a stack of papers. “It started with your job. You didn’t like that, so you had us remove it. Then traffic. Then all those people, one by one, who annoyed you. Then television shows you didn’t enjoy. Then television itself.” The clerk shuffled the papers. “Well, I’m sure you get the idea. Are you unsatisfied with our service?”

“It’s all gone.”

“You were warned, sir. Nor can the process be reversed. Does this continue to upset you? Your last request was to have your memory removed. I take it this hasn’t solved the problem.”

He looked out the window and a world gone away. “Oh, God. Did I really do it?”

“No, sir. We did it. Per your request. This is a new service, and we are sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction. As always, we offer a free removal as way of apology.”

“I want to remove the removal,” he said.

The Clerk sighed.

“I’ve asked you to do that before?”

“Yes, sir. It is impossible. All removals are permanent.”

“So this is the way it’s going to be then? I destroyed it all?”

“Removed, sir. It’s still out there. Somewhere.”

“Remove me then,” he said.

“I wouldn’t recommend it, sir.”

“Just do it.”

The clerk had him sign a few forms. “It’s been a pleasure serving you, sir.”
With the last signature, the world (what little of it that was left) vanished. He tumbled through darkness and hit the ground hard.

It was all here. Buildings lay in ruins. Cars in heaps. Uprooted trees. All arranged in piles as if sorted by a lazy, indifferent god. On the horizon, he could see fires burning, and people huddled around those fires.

His old life. His new life. Everything he hated. Everything he loved. Everything he’d forgotten. Under a flashing blue sky, he set out to find it all again in the scattered pieces of a carelessly discarded world.

Death and the Clown (short fiction)

I was waiting for him when he entered the motel room.

“Well, well, Jim, nice of you to drop by.” His grin didn’t drop. It never did. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I’m here to ask you to stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Just stop. It’s gone too far. You used to be interesting. You used to play by the rules.”

“What rules are those?” he asked.

“You know the rules. Pick a gimmick. Commit some larger-than-life shenanigans. Screw around. But don’t just kill people. You do that, and you’re in my territory.”

“People will get hurt.”

“I get that. I accept that. But if all you’re doing is hurting people, you aren’t a joke anymore. You’re a dangerous maniac, a mad dog that needs to be put down.”

“Oh, come now. You must admit it’s fun.”

“No, it’s not. Eddie and his riddles. Those are fun. Pamela and her plants. Dangerous, but at least she stands for something. Oswald has his umbrellas, and they’re ridiculous, but at least he’s trying. What are you doing?”

“I’m anarchy personified,” he said.

“That’s a load of shit, and you know it. Anarchy is just an excuse to do whatever the hell you want whenever you want to do it. There’s no logic, insane or otherwise, to what you do. Not anymore.”

“But that’s the game.” He sat by the bed. There was a gun under the pillow. He didn’t think I knew. That flower on his lapel, a couple of years ago it would’ve squirted acid or laughing gas or something interesting.

Now all he did was shoot people.

“Games have rules. You can’t just blow up hospitals for shits and giggles. Or murder schoolchildren because you think it says something.”

“So they tell me, Jim, but I’m here to test that theory. I’m here to peel away the—”

“Knock it off. This is just us talking. He isn’t here. You don’t need to perform.”

“The truth then? The truth is that I really don’t give a damn about your city and its rules. I’m here to hurt people because it gets me off. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“I don’t know. Is it?”

A shadow crept up behind him and wrapped a wire around his pale neck. His eyes bulged, and everything he pretended to be disappeared. His gimmick, his persona, his feigned madness, his ludicrous smile, all faded away the second he realized what was happening. I got up and left the motel room as Bruce strangled the life out of him.
It was better than he deserved. Still, I couldn’t help but feel bad. Maybe he had been right. There were no rules. Not that I believed that. There was right. There was wrong.  In between, there was a lot of gray area to work with.

I lit a cigarette. I’d quit smoking last week. I’d quit smoking a lot.

“It’s done,” said Bruce quietly from behind me.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “Some souls aren’t worth saving. Are you going to be all right with this?”

“No, but one of us had to do it. It might as well be the vigilante.”

“Bruce—”

I turned around. He was gone. Just like always.

I shut the motel room door, pulled my coat tighter to keep away the chill air, and walked into the night.

First Impressions and Second Reflections

Once most people make up their mind, they’re unlikely to change it.  That’s a strange thing when you think about it.  When we’re children, we have a skewed and unrealistic view of the universe, and if you kept that as you grew older, you’d be very weird.  You’d be the kind of adult who still believes Santa Claus is real (spoiler alert) and that girls / boys / whatever are gross.  You’d still think Sesame Street is the height of intellectual stimulation and that Caprisun is a super awesome beverage.  We change as we grow older until one day, we stop changing.

If you have the same opinions on everything that you had five years ago, you are not honestly assessing yourself.  We all need to do that, now and again.

This is why so many of our conversations are pointless.  At some moment, we decide we are conservative, liberal, a geek, a nerd, a sports fan, cool, uncool, or a thousand other labels that determine what we’re supposed to think about anything.  The reason I find most political discourse empty is because we’re never really talking about ideas.  We’re waging a war of identity and reflexive values.  Love guns?  Hate guns?  Pro-choice?  Pro-Life?  It’s all just so much chatter aimed at reassuring ourselves that we are right rather than having an open discussion.

That’s not terribly surprising when it comes to politics.  There is a lot at stake in that game.  Passions run hot and deep, and we are bound to disagree on a lot of levels.  It’s frustrating, but it’s understandable.

What bothers me more, strangely, is how media takes advantage of our absolute refusal to reassess our opinions.  Hollywood has mastered this method by crafting carefully calculated nostalgia engines meant to thrill us for a few hours, leave us with a good impression, and then assume that we will never think about it on any other level.  By creating an enjoyable experience that we will never think about, it satisfies that most basic aspect of human opinion:  The First Impression.

I know that I have a tendency to overanalyze these things.  But most people don’t seem to analyze at all, and I’ll admit that bugs me.  It bugs me because great stories often have layers and those layers require one to reflect on the story to discover.  If you don’t reflect, you miss out on a hell of a lot of great ideas, and while there is nothing wrong with shallow, pleasant entertainment, there is something wonderful about stories that grow with age.

I love Kung Fu Panda.  I went in with trepidation, and I enjoyed the flick enough when I first saw it.  But with each subsequent viewing, I found there was more going on here than I first realized.  This is intentional.  The film is a deliberate zen parable, and like all great zen stories, it requires reflection.  There are scenes in Kung Fu Panda that only make sense in the context of later scenes.  The characterization, plotting, and themes are rich and rewarding, and it remains one of my favorite movies.  Yes, the movie about a chubby panda fanboy who becomes a kung fu master is nothing short of brilliant, and I have no problem saying that.

Not everyone agrees.  Hell, even I didn’t agree at first.  It’s easy to see the funny animal characters, Jack Black, and the slapstick moments (especially since those were the moments highlighted in the advertising) and miss the complex, wonderful film underneath.  It doesn’t help either that the movie is actually fun.  Nothing ruins people’s perception of nuance like actually having a good time, which is another weird thing to me.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Godzilla.  I found the movie irritating but inoffensive at first.  But the more I reflected upon it, the more empty it seemed.  The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is the exact opposite phenomenon.  Godzilla has serious actors, looking serious, in a serious movie.  It goes out of its way to be unfun, and it is full of such empty melodrama that it’s easy to see it as something interesting on first impression.  At least, emotionally resonate.  It’s only upon reflection that one discovers the scenes don’t add up to anything and that there’s nothing below the surface.  But that’s not a flaw.  It’s a feature.  It works because people won’t often think about it.

Granted, someone can enjoy the new movie, and it doesn’t mean they’re mindless followers.  Sometimes, people just want a mindless experience, and while it’s not my thing, we’re all different folks looking for different things.

Godzilla is the ultimate blockbuster though.  More than just about any other film, there’s nothing going on there.  This works surprisingly well.  Star Trek: Into Darkness is a hell of a thrill ride, but it’s full of plot holes.  Godzilla eschews this problem by simply electing not to have a plot.  Instead, it’s a series of vignettes with a few recurring characters, none of which actually add up to anything.  But while they’re happening, they work fine.  It’s the 2 Broke Girls of blockbusters.  Not an actual film or story, but a harmless simulation of such.  What’s great about simulations is that they aren’t offensive.  They can’t offend because they have no substance to offend with.

(Yes, I’m aware some are offended by 2 Broke Girls, but that’s all surface too.  Naughty words and childish sexual titillation.  The only genuinely offensive thing about the show is how far back it sets back gender and racial stereotypes, and even that is so obvious and shallow as to be mind-boggling.)

The secret the media has figured out (perhaps even by accident) is that if you make a positive first impression there’s not a lot you need to do afterward.  Just don’t screw it up.  Release some really cool trailers.  Build up hype.  Get people invested in your story before they’ve read a single page, watched a single episode, or sat in the theater and you’ve done 95 percent of the work.  Just don’t blow it, and the easiest way to not blow it is to just avoid having a story altogether.

Most films have not figured this out yet.  Though I feel like we are living in a zombie culture at the moment, enslaved to our own focus grouped nostalgia, most media still attempts to tell a story.  Into Darkness, Tron: Legacy, and Skyfall might be designed to tap into unearned fondness, but they do attempt stories.  Terrible, poorly executed, contradictory, nonsensical stories, but stories nonetheless.  Once the people in charge of such things realize how powerful first impression is (which they already know) and how much of a liability plot is (which they are on the verge of discovering), they’ll rely on the formula more than they already do.

None of this would matter if people attempted to move past first impressions, but we’re all busy.  Thinking about these things is my job, but most people don’t have the time or inclination.  Just like any profession, there are elements I care about that I don’t expect to concern most people.  That’s fair, and I know I tend to take these things too seriously.  I have a personal stake too because I work hard to create interesting stories with something to say (amid the space squids, humor, and moon monsters), and too often, I feel as if the first impression decides everything.

It’s more than that though.  I worry that, as the hype machine continues to dominate everything we do, we’ll move less and less from thoughtful analysis and more toward impulsive, unshakable opinions.  It’s hard to find a moment to think in the information age, and too often, it’s easy to borrow other people’s thoughts and use them as our own.  It’s a dictatorship of multimedia, and our only defense is to step back and consider things for ourselves.

It doesn’t guarantee we’ll arrive at a better conclusion than anyone else, but at least it gives  us a chance to form our own opinions rather than simply parroting thoughts taken from others.  And it might just allow us to appreciate stories and ideas that we once dismissed and discard old ideas we no longer find valid.  A little reflection is good for the soul now and then.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE