Matt Maxwell's Blog: Highway 62 on Goodreads, page 29

Book fear

 

Here’s a 270 degree panorama of my office. Why am I posting this? Because in the near future I’m going to need to pack all of this up and move it out so the flooring can be redone here (as is going to happen in the rest of the house, apparently.) This thought terrifies me, and I’m sure you can figure out why from the pictures. You can’t even see the second table really, or the guitar amp and effects or the junk under my desk.

This process may indeed kill me. Or I may pack up all of my books and then get around to unpacking them and just saying “Nah.” Which I guess wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but doesn’t sound appealing now. I dunno. I’ve been collecting these things for a long damn time, and still can’t resist a trip to a used bookstore for a book about X-raying the Pharaohs or any period book on Los Angeles or a slightly better copy of LO! And I’ve been buying comics trades since they were just paperback collections of comics. Funny thing about that is most of those that I have now are basically valueless, with maybe the exception of the SANDMAN first edition collections. Otherwise, c’mon, who pays money for reprint comics.

Have fun poring over the book titles on the shelves. Had a pretty good time amassing them.

Lizard update

Bit of a scare yesterday. Was going to take Doc Connors in for a routine weighing (his low was 4.7 grams at his worst point, which is not far from skin and bones) when my son called me over to take a look at him. The lower part of his belly was a mess of purple veins and yellow-orange masses just below the skin. Gonna be honest. My heart dropped right out of my chest. It’d been a long struggle to get him stabilized and eating again and I really wasn’t ready to be told that it was time to pack it in.

But I took him to the vet anyways.

Turns out that he’s fine. The swelling in his liver has gone down (not much, but some) which means that his body is beginning to process all the fat that accumulated there. He’s also putting on weight, up to 7.1 grams now, which is still lower than when we bought him (somewhere near 9 grams), but far better than the lows when we thought he was going to need to be put down. The shocking visuals were courtesy his innards starting up work after a period of very low activity if not inactivity. The orange masses were small fat pads that are beginning to build up (as well as at the base of his tail, which is where geckos normally store fat.)

So it’s more or less back to normal. The worst is past, but there’s still no clarity as to whether the liver swelling will affect him long-term. Just a matter of keeping him fed and hydrated and more activity to help burn off or redistribute the fat that’s left in his system. Then figuring out what can be done to get him some more exercise. He seems to like exploring outside of his tank, but that’s not a viable option. Maybe a gecko obstacle course or something.

Doctor Connors, I presume

So I’ve been busy lately. Just not with stuff that you can really see.

Like the tiny creature above. This is Doctor Connors, your average leopard gecko from a big pet store which my son bought as a pet. And things were fine for about four or five days. Then he stopped eating. And kept stopped eating for another few days. So he went to the vet. He got a tube feeding and weighed out (already skinny) then sent home with medication and instructions for administering said medication.

Note that Dr. Connors is about six inches long and at this point weighed six grams and change. We get to give him medicine and watch him not eat. After a few more days, he goes back to the vet. They take him and say “fifty-fifty chance that he’ll make it.” I bring my kids around to say goodbye to the little fella, my son especially as the lizard is his pet (and really doesn’t have a name at this point as we’ve only had him healthy for about a week and the rest of the time has been pins and needles.) The vet, who really has done a much better job than perhaps I’ve suggested in this narrative, says that we should go to the pet store and invoke the warranty and get a new lizard.

We do. He’s a giant gecko named Apollo and has settled into things quite well.

Four days later, I get a call from the pet store saying that Dr. Connors has been stabilized at the vet and can come home. And since our house is as close to home as he’s got, I go to get a new tank and lights and water dishes and hides and reptile carpet and bugs to try to feed him. Dr. Connors still refuses to eat. So it’s calcium drop and water/pedialyte baths and me trying to feed him what amounts to finely-ground dog food in an effort to put some protein into his system and get his metabolism started again.

See, once geckos go anorexic, they take the fat that’s stored in their tails and break into it. And if the stress is big enough, they metabolize it quickly. Too quickly, in fact. Hepatic hyperlipotosis or something close to it. The fat in their bloodstream collects in their liver and it swells up, as does the gallbladder. This was noted earlier, but as a side symptom, not as a potential cause of his failure to eat. Previously it was thought that he’d maybe picked up a parasite or a dreaded Cryptosporidium infection (which is always terminal, usually sooner and not later.)

He’s still refusing to eat, though is otherwise relatively active and pretty calm, contentedly crawling over my hands and up my arms, not freaking out when he’s handled. But not eating either. At this point, I’m pretty desperate. It’s been three weeks of off and on care and trying to hand feed this tiny creature. It’s become impossible to even give the food that I’d been able to trick him into eating. So I try an emergency diet (which is mostly an egg-based thing, as far as I can tell) and he’s able to eat it, mostly because it’s one step above liquid and will lick it off his lips.

Three days of this.

And then something happens. The butter worm that I’d put in his dish, more as an act of desperation than anything else, disappears while I’m out shopping. I take stuff out of the tank, looking for the escaped worm. There’s no way he’d eaten it. That would be like you or me eating a whole ham in a sitting. But the worm is nowhere to be found. So I put another one in. It disappears that night, even though Dr. Connors doesn’t do much other than hide out under the fake plastic rocks he’s got.

Two days ago, he started eating crickets on his own.

His liver is still swollen, or was as of Monday. The vet says the only thing to do is to keep him fed and get him some exercise to metabolize the food and hopefully getting his body to work normally will cause the stored fat in the liver to be processed. No guarantees of that.

In the meantime, I’ve learned far more about the keeping of leopard geckos than I intended to, from creating a heat gradient (and using the temperature gun that my brother in law gave me for Christmas to check that), to the right food for a growing gecko, to how to trick a gecko into opening its mouth (which only sometimes works). Mostly I’ve had to learn how to be very, very, very gentle, as the creature that I’ve been spending all this effort feeding could be snapped like a twig at any moment by my stupid sausage-like fingers.

Hopefully he’ll stick around awhile.

 

Blog tour

Trying something new. Back when I blogged and it was considered cool (hahaha) in the early 2000s, I got tagged in a couple things (mostly comics stuff). I mean, this was back when I was on Blogspot which was basically forever ago. But I saw Andrea was looking for tagees, so I volunteered.

You can read Andrea’s post here.

 

 1. What are you currently working on?

The biggest current project is revisions to a novel called BLUE HIGHWAY. It’s also a horrible example for talking about process, because I’ve been working on it for some time, and it’s taken several different forms (screenplay, comic script, novel).

BLUE HIGHWAY is probably best categorized as near-future science fiction, but even that feels like it’s off the mark. But this is always the problem. It’s up to the writer to write the book and then they have to worry about marketing it afterwards.

 

2. How does your work differ from others in its genre?

Probably by emphasizing the human and cultural aspects above and beyond the technical. BLUE HIGHWAY isn’t hard SF. It’s not trying to bend over backwards to make accurate predictions about the world how ever many years from now.

One thing BLUE HIGHWAY isn’t trying to do is worry about the apocalypse, slow-motion or otherwise. If anything it’s a Nopocalypse book. The world doesn’t end, even after a series of events that could easily be portrayed as the borderline between civilization and regression.

If you’re curious, some research and snippets from the book can be seen here.

 

3. Why do you do what you do?

Because I haven’t been locked up yet? Because nobody else is doing it the same way? Because it’s the only way to keep the little voices from taking over? Because I like making stuff that I’d want to read?

I know. Lots of question marks. Ultimately I can’t even properly answer it for myself If I’m being honest, it’s three and four above. But even this only keeps the little voices away for a little while at a time.

 

4. How does your writing process work?

That’s assuming I have a consistent process, even for novels. Short stories, I get an idea and then I usually just run with it. It’s relatively easy for me to support up to about 10K words with just that in mind.

Novels are trickier. They’re like a series of marathons and sometimes the finish line changes and suddenly you’re running uphill and you don’t know why.

I’ll start with the basic idea (which is the easiest part) and then try to work out characters who can play in that space. The thing is to let them drive the story. You can do it plot-first, but that’s hard for me to make work effectively. This means the development is often slow. Right now I’m using Scrivener and a lot of cards with little pieces that I’d like to use and seeing where they fit and where they don’t. That gives the plot arc (which is a character arc if I’ve done it right). Then it’s a matter of fleshing out and executing.

Have to remind myself that I can’t get bogged down in research too much, because it’s a perfect excuse to not actually write. And it’s the writing, even notes or little sketches, where the work gets done.

Then it’s a matter of knowing where you screwed up in the structural phase and taking advantage of opportunities that your subconscious allows you. Which is why I write a *lot* in the development phase, because sometimes something slips out and that’s better than what you started with.

 

I’d tag other writers, but I think most of ‘em are too busy to deal with this kind of thing.

FULL BLEED: LIVING LIKE SKELETONS

So I’ve been wracking my brain, trying to figure out why things are the way they are. Not everything, mind you. I don’t have the time to compose a supertheory of super-everything. But when I spend time in a place or situation, my brain gets to considering how it got there, the way it is and what brought it to where it is. Nothing happens in a vacuum, right? It’s all accretion and decay and rebuilding, particularly in matters of culture and the like. That stuff isn’t planned, no matter how many would-be-franchises get put out there. Particularly in fandoms.

And I’ve spent more than my fair share in a number of fandoms: science fiction, music, blogging, comics, academia (oh yeah, that’s a fandom, too). I end up never really belonging in any of them. It’s that outsider’s outsider thing working in my favor.

Slap a big question mark at the end of that last statement. Seriously. There’s nothing stranger than thinking “hey, these should be my kin,” looking around and figuring out that they’re not, that this place you’re ‘supposed’ to belong in simply doesn’t fit. There’s plenty of people I enjoy hanging out with, but once it moves past that circle, buckle your seatbelts for fandom.

So much of fandoms now is the whole basis of personal identity through consumption, which is something that often baffles me. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy comics, as an example. I’ve written ‘em, written about them on and off for more than ten years (two volumes worth of material if one was so inclined to look them up on Amazon), have been to more comic shows than I can count, starting in 1989 and read them since 1981. You’d think, true-blue comic fan dyed in the wool, cut me and I bleed four colors forever, right?



You’d also be wrong. I read these things and love ‘em (have even been accused of fetishizing them on Intrapanel, which is perhaps half right) but I don’t identify as a comics fan. What’s more, you’d be hard-pressed to get people to identify me as one on sight. As an aside, I own exactly two comics-related shirts, and only one based on a character, that being Dr. Blasphemy from Rick Veitch’s BRAT PACK. I don’t scan as a comics fan, not even as an artcomix fan. But I do enjoy them. Even counting that, I don’t derive a significant deal of my personal identity from them.

Though they do take their fair share of time and attention on my part.

Another example. I like metal, particularly the doom/drone side of things. But wow, am I ever not a metalhead. I like a lot of punk (and have a fairly expansive definition of it, going from garage up to the Brits who adopted it to the West Coast/East Coast strains in the eighties and beyond.) You’d never mistake me for a punk rocker by dress or demeanor (other than perhaps not giving much though to how you choose to define me). In general, I like a lot of strange, outsider music, but again, you wouldn’t guess it at first glance.

There’s plenty of aesthetics I enjoy, whether it be in film or design or music or video games, but none of them are badges that I wear. Sure, oftentimes I fall in with crowds who derive identity from these things and can get along with ‘em pretty comfortably, but I’ve yet to find a uniform that fits other than say, normcore (go ahead, look it up, I’ll wait.)

The idea of taking these fandoms and deriving community from them, that makes some sense. And I suppose it makes some sense to dress yourself accordingly, marking your allegiance so that you can be recognized and accepted. But that’s never quite worked out for me. It’s okay. I’ve had a lot of practice not fitting in. Like, forever.

Advantages and disadvantages to it. I don’t feel like spending a whole ton of money on uniforms or things that make me belong, which leaves more for weird effects pedals and used books.

But all this outsider-ness does mean that I see things differently sometimes. I can see the commonalities in fandoms and that leaves me wondering how they manifest themselves in completely different ways.

Take science fiction, for instance. I could care about your gatekeeping. I’ve been reading and watching science fiction since I could read and watch anything, and I’m older than a bunch of you (at least in comics). I won’t pretend to be the most widely-read person in the genre, particularly because there’s a lot of it that simply doesn’t appeal (like when the science rides high and in front of the fiction part) and never will. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think the genre holds promise. It certainly does, or I wouldn’t be writing it (and BLUE HIGHWAY, for better or for worse, is science fiction – heavy on my mind since I’m in the middle of line edits on it).

I’m also spending more time in the social world of science fiction, at shows for the most part. I’m rather burned out on specialized discussion groups online, but don’t mind talking this stuff out in person. Lots of interesting folks to talk to out there as well, which is why I enjoy going to these shows. And I do enjoy it, no matter that it’s going to sound otherwise as I continue here. That’s okay, if I’ve got stuff that I point out about SF fandom, I could point out just as much in comics and videogames and music and academia, but they’re not the examples I’m working with right now. Comparisons will be inevitable.

This entry has been awhile in coming, really since I started going to science fiction fandom shows a few years back (though my first big one was Worldcon in 1993 I think, maybe 1992—it was a long time ago so I can’t nail down the year right off the top of my head.) And I noticed the difference in the shows and fandoms that far back, since I’d been a veteran of the San Diego Comic Con since 1989.

I know what you’re going to say next. “Nothing compares to SDCC! It’s the biggest thing ever! That’s unfair!” But SDCC in 1989 barely even compares to Wonder-Con now. SDCC in 1989 really comes closer to a show like Big Wow Comics Fest today. Sure, over the years, SDCC has become the née plus ultra of pop culture shows, but it wasn’t always like that.

Let’s break some things down. Ostensibly, science fiction fandom and comics fandom are the same thing: groups of people who enjoy works of popular culture. That’s what it boils down to. You can argue semantics/forms if you want. Go ahead. Science fiction fandom revolves primarily around books (and movies and television shows and cosplay and filk). Comics fandom revolves around comic books (and movies and art and cosplay and toys and television).

So, mostly the same thing, right?

But if you’ve been to both kinds of shows, you know they aren’t. At all.

For the last couple years I’ve gone, all the science fiction shows I’ve attended are set up in hotel meeting facilities, with a selection of meeting rooms, gallery, breakout rooms and a dealer’s room, along with a few tables usually promoting other shows in the hallways. Generally there’s no central location around which everything else is focused. If anything, that’s the hotel bar after hours, otherwise it’s ebb and flow.

Comics shows have all the same things (and are usually at convention facilities, not hotels): meeting rooms, galleries, etc, but the center of the show is the main floor, of which the closest equivalent in science fiction fandom is the dealer’s room (which is all but an annex, for the most part). This has been the case for every comics show I’ve attended, and I’ve attended a lot, particularly since 2008 when I started promoting STRANGEWAYS (that being a series of weird western graphic novels that you haven’t read).

Of course, one of the primary functions of the comics show is to offer independent publishers a place to sell into the comics marketplace. Science fiction shows don’t seem to serve that function, particularly in terms of the direct publisher-to-reader pipeline. I mean, it happens, particularly at the biggest of the big shows, but not nearly to the extent that it does at comics shows. Which strikes me as odd. Seems to me that these conventions are exactly the kind of place that publishers would be working. And yes, there are usually a couple of self-publishers/small publishers working science fiction dealer’s rooms, but no big ones.

Seems odd to skip over the audience like that.

Another major difference in the kinds of shows, and I can’t underestimate how major this is, is in size. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if a show like Big Wow got twenty times the attendance that the last few science fiction shows I went to did. This may be an apples to oranges comparison, but Big Wow is hardly a gigantic show, even on the west coast alone. It’s grown steadily since I started attending them back in 2007 or so, but it’s nowhere near the size of even Emerald City Comic-Con, much less SDCC.

Science fiction shows (again, in my experience) show significantly smaller attendance numbers. This has advantages in terms of atmosphere and accessibility of guests and the like. And honestly, some comics shows get pretty overwhelming pretty fast, but fewer attendees means you’re reaching fewer people, right?

There’s other factors that come into play here, namely cost. I’m just going to look at door fees, not hotel, bar tab, etc. I go to Sac-Con, a local comic show, and I spend maybe ten bucks to get in, usually less. Something like Big Wow costs all of twenty or twenty five (for a day membership) and takes a good couple hours to survey. Wonder-Con, well, I don’t know, since I haven’t had to pay to get into one for years. SDCC costs something like two hundred bucks, right? But you’re getting your money’s worth in terms of programming (anyone who complains about the price for SDCC is looney, by the by.)

Most of the small sci-fi shows I’ve gone to are mid-to-high double digits for membership. The membership price for Bay-Con (not to pick on them, but they’re fresh in my mind) was eighty dollars for the weekend. Keep in mind, I’ve seen criticism of indie comic shows for charging all of ten bucks to get through the door and that means that folks don’t have money to spend once they get in. Now, most if not all SF shows are run by non-profits, but so are the bigger comics shows (which is a smart move for a lot of reasons, primarily how all kinds of shows live or die on the utilization of volunteer labor.)

Granted, it’s pretty clear that commerce isn’t a major factor in SF shows, but it certainly is in comics shows. This is neither good nor bad, but a difference in the mindsets.

Here’s where we really start seeing divergence in the two kinds of shows. My observation of comics shows is that there’s not a lot of concern placed on the preservation of traditions. They’re seen as places to go and get books signed and buy stuff and see artists. Science fiction shows seem much more interested in history and tradition of the conventions themselves. Again, neither good nor bad, but it does make for a different experience. (Though I’ll go to any Jack Kirby appreciation panel that crosses paths with me.)

And to extend the metaphor, science fiction shows feel a lot like a holding action. Whereas comics shows are on the move, trying to bring in more attendees, offering different content. Perhaps the holding action is by design. But if it is, then what’s the goal? What’s the endgame? I know, this is positing that there is not only an active plan, but an endgame to reach. Which is probably asking too much of everyone involved.

So, as far as I can guess, science shows exist to perpetuate the model of science fiction shows. Yes, of course, anything exists to perpetuate itself, but comics shows at least have shown willingness to change and to take on new content and audiences. Sure, there’s a lot of people complaining that comic shows are about a lot of non-comics content (sometimes I even agree, particularly in SDCC’s case, since it’s now Show West, Mk 2—giving the networks and studios a shot at a pre-consumer audience). But comic shows, by comparison are growing and science fiction shows feel moribund.

Which is baffling to me. But then I’m a guy who grew up in the seventies reading books out of my mom’s sci-fi book collection (and she wrote the stuff, too, under the name Ann Maxwell, all long out of print but she holds the copyrights) and got exposed to all kinds of things from Hal Clement’s NEEDLE books to DHALGREN by Samuel Delany and DOCTOR ADDER by KW Jeter and Roger Zelazny’s fantasy books. Back then, science fiction was pretty outsider entertainment. You have to remember life before STAR WARS, or at least imagine it, before there was a mainstream success like that. Before franchises.

I know. I’ll stop the nostalgia trip now.

Science fiction should be a chrysalis, not a cocoon. And my experience of science fiction shows of late is that it’s about the preservation of an esoteric order, not expansion. I’m not talking about gatekeeping necessarily (and I’ll note that borders of inclusion are being broken down in SF shows and comics as well).

But the shows themselves feel like they’re meant to conserve a way of fandom, not to create or to include more fans, more readers. If people wish to filk or cosplay or discuss their favorite authors, that’s great. But I want to see more readers of the genre (or really anything). Just like I wanted to see more people reading comics instead the preservation of an imaginary construct called “comics culture”.

I love science fiction. I really do. Have for a long time. But the subculture doesn’t need to be saved or preserved. Don’t worry, comics feels like it needs saving sometimes too, and it doesn’t. Misers need to save things and only dead things can be enshrined in gold leaf. Know what I’m saying?

Science fiction needs more readers, not fewer, harder-core readers. Don’t feel bad. Every kind of book needs more readers. But then they all need fewer readers who are out to preserve the purity of the genre as well. And I can’t help but feel like science fiction conventions serve that purpose and that purpose only, enshrinement and not celebration or, >gulp< mere commerce.

I suppose that one man’s enshrinement is another man’s community. But I’d offer the heresy that if you have active readers, you will end up with a community. Granted, you have to watch the kind of community it becomes, whether it’s inclusive or exclusive, walled and guarded by gatekeepers. Because exclusivity only favors those who are letting folks in behind the velvet rope.

Where’s this going? Seems clear enough to me. The phenomena of science fiction show as we’re currently seeing it, isn’t an expansive process, but in contraction. It’s a domed garden inside a jungle. The environment outside the dome isn’t necessarily hostile either, it’s still being kept out. The seeds for science fiction’s success have already been planted a thousand times over. It’s gone from pulps to novels to television, film, video games, etc. It’s no longer an outsider genre (or even collection of genres.) But why do SF shows feel esoteric and hidden by design? Fantasy is underground? What’s the most popular show on HBO again, folks? The most lauded fantasy in history is a six-movie series for crying out loud.

Is it a matter of simple economics? I know, it costs money to rent the hotel facilities and pay for guests’ travel and the like. Comics gets around that by living off the money brought in by merchants at the dealer’s room (as well as volunteer labor, one of the unspoken truths behind all pop-culture shows, and one that’s likely to change in the very near future, particularly for shows run for profit). Is book-driven SF popular enough to support anything more? (I hesitate to use the term “literary”, not because SF isn’t worthy of such a lofty crown, rather literary being a hodgepodge descriptor of critical opprobrium and not any intrinsic value.) And if that’s the case, then why? Where’s the excuse? GAME OF THRONES is how popular? The Harry Potter books? STAR WARS? STAR TREK? DR. WHO?

Those are all mainstream properties, but perhaps they’re being read by people who aren’t accustomed or comfortable with deriving some sense of their identity from what they read. In theory, there should be something for just about everyone at these shows, but often it’s just set up for folks who are already into these shows. But if that’s the case, then where does the expansion and renewal come into play?

Or is the design to keep the hothouse closed?

Comics, at least in terms of the physical comics show, has grown far beyond that, but then it’s supported by other media as well (again, not always to everyone’s approval/taste – there’s plenty of people who complain that SDCC was better when it wasn’t a media event). I see plenty of self-identified comics fans at these shows, but I see just as many (if not more) who aren’t, who just read comics or enjoy the movies and probably even read books.

I guess what I’m looking for is the sort of rejuvenation and expansion that comics shows have enjoyed to hit science fiction fandom, and honestly, I wonder if that’s even possible. Granted, I’m wanting this for purely selfish reasons (mostly so I can expose my work to more people at one time, but that’s all any author wants to do unless they’re King or Patterson or in that class). Still, with science fiction shows constructed in the way they are (ie, needing to be plugged directly into the fandom to even know about them, willingness to pay higher entry fees, etc) it’s tough to make them grow. If people even want them to grow.

Maybe it’s time to open up the dome, learn to coexist and grow. I know what there is to lose, but the other option is watching it be lost completely.

“But don’t give me up for dead

We’re living like skeletons”

-Borland/Dudley/Green

Intrapanel Extra

So I shot some stuff for Intrapanel, but I’m away from my regular office and don’t have my updated Tumblr password, so it won’t get posted until Tuesday, likely.

But here’s a taste. It’s not the usual thing.

You’ll just have to wait.

So if anyone knows how to reset a Tumblr password without having the old one, let me know and I’ll post it early, otherwise, be patient.

 

FULL BLEED: YOU CRY AND CRY BUT HE DOES NOT HEAR

I’d have posted this to my regular weblog, but WordPress is being stupid.

Spoilers for everything. No whining.

GODZILLA is a tough one. On paper, like say, superheroes, Godzilla is a no-brainer. The no-brainerest of them. He is a titan, a walking natural disaster, the reversal of human hubris and belief in a subjugated nature (particularly that in the harnessing of the atom and unleashing it against its fellow human in the form of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.) Godzilla is the shadow cast by the artificial daylight of the atom bomb. This is not hard.

Of course, this is the primal Godzilla, the first one, the black and white monstrosity that unleashed death in footsteps and atomic breath upon Japan in the dark horror of GOJIRA. Eventually, that force, like the atom, was tamed and trained and reshaped into a being that not only tolerated humanity, but became its protector in ever-more elaborate scenarios (MONSTER ZERO, DESTROY ALL MONSTERS and GODZILLA VERSUS THE SMOG MONSTER being personal favorites).

The pendulum swung in the opposite direction later, where Godzilla once again played the role of a terrestrial vengeance, the id of Gaia, punishing civilization for disrespect (and I’ll admit only partial familiarity with the turn-of-the-century Godzilla offerings, yes, I’ll turn in my membership card). But there’s room for interpretation, as with any iconic figure.

Which brings us to the most recent interpretation of Godzilla, courtesy Gareth Edwards, screenplay by David Goyer and from Legendary productions. I was familiar with Mr. Edwards feature debut, MONSTERS, which has its fingerprints all over GODZILLA. For the record, I thought MONSTERS was a pretty good movie that leaned on some structural devices which I have no tolerance for whatsoever (but I’m a notorious hardcase). Still, I enjoyed it, particularly in its portrayal of creatures that aren’t out to get humanity, but aren’t *not* out to get humanity at the same time. We’re bugs to them. Sure, we can get their attention with a rocket launcher, but once the ammo is spent, we’re back to barely making them notice we’re here.

That, of course, is the harshest insult that you can throw in the face of civilization. Indifference. It’s not even that we’re being punished for being naughty children and opening the Pandora’s box of nuclear power (which offers its own terminal reward, or at least did back when GODZILLA was first birthed.) But the creatures in MONSTERS aren’t even that…aware of us. We’re nothing. Our achievements, our technology, even our ability to stick our necks out for one another, all just so much background noise to them. MONSTERS went out of its way to present that side of the creatures, as well as to show what happens to the human world in the face of this new threat, that being the appearance of action: the construction of walls and warning signs and quarantine zones (some of which resurfaces in GODZILLA, but not enough.) MONSTERS did that well, but then so did PACIFIC RIM, which upped the ante in a number of ways.

Don’t worry. I won’t talk about PACIFIC RIM very long. Like I’ll stop after I say that whoever was working on GODZILLA probably got worried after the hot kaiju-on-robot action of the former hit screens last summer. Like THE INCREDIBLES before FANTASTIC FOUR, the bar just got raised in terms of audience expectation of what sort of action will get depicted on screen.

Maybe I’ll say a little more in that the monsters/kaiju of PACIFIC RIM were designed by intelligent and malicious creators to remove humanity from our little blue marble. They’re walking hit-men for civilization, but not out of the planet’s moral outrage at being exploited, rather because there’s new tenants that want humanity kicked out. The monster’s destructiveness is couched in terms of hurricanes/storms/natural disasters both implicitly and explicitly, just things to be endured. Things to be walled out and hidden from. They’ve gone from sudden and unthinkable horror to locational hazard, just that their location is global (at least until someone figures out that indeed the kaiju are the ushers of Armageddon, multiplying past a point of any hope of control.)

Sorry, totally derailed trains of thought as I went and used the monkey-wrench on a misbehaving printer from Epson from whom I will *not ever* buy another printer. Ever.

Okay, let’s get back to GODZILLA.

I’m trying to figure out where to start. Start with the bad or the good?

Aw hell, let’s go with the bad. The humans are the weak link in GODZILLA. With the exception of Bryan Cranston who offers himself up totally to the role, trotting us right out to the ragged edge of desperation and hope. His performance is stellar and painfully human, painfully relatable. He drives the first act of the movie, but man, that’s not enough. Particularly when the humans who are marched out after him are so flat. We’re supposed to care about them because we’re supposed to care about them and if that sounds circular, the movie presented it as twice that. It’s as if all the urgency and drama in the movie had been distilled into Cranston’s performance, leaving us with hair and skin in the other performers.

That’s unfair. Ken Watanabe as Dr. Serizawa had moments of the same sort of drive and obsession that Cranston showed us at the beginning, but he is not given the space to breathe in the script. Nor is Sally Hawkins as Dr. Graham. If the story had been allowed to dovetail from Cranston to Serizawa/Graham, perhaps there might have been room to work. As it stands, however, the story that we’re given is flat and thin as a butterfly wing and by the numbers without tension. I can look at this as a conscious choice, to emphasize the reality of the monsters with the humans just orbiting about them like so much implosion debris, in which case, yay, mission accomplished!

But then you have to consider the mission that you were on, right?

I’ve seen reviews that reflect this sort of existential-lite read of GODZILLA, where it’s just a portrayal of human futility in the face of oncoming mortality and blah blah blah (which in itself strikes me as a huge misread of what the existentialists were after and more like nihilism.) If I want nihilism (and I don’t) I know where to find it.

I’ve also seen reads where GODZILLA is trying to have its cake and eat it too, eschewing the traditional blockbuster plot and trying to turn things inside out, making it a people movie where there just happens to be a monster in it. Yeah, I suppose, maybe. But then what kind of movie does that leave us with?

Ultimately, these dodge the nature of the sorts of engagement that I’m usually after. Like Eno says, art isn’t an object, but a trigger for experience. You can look at a beautiful something, and maybe it needs only be beautiful/horrible/whichever. Maybe that’s enough. Goodness knows I’ve watched enough things that only were made because the nature of the movie would get butts into seats on a Saturday night.

GODZILLA, I think, really wanted to be a good movie. It wanted to use the big grey lizard as allegory because that’s what good movies do, right? They have a life beyond the surface, beneath it, filled with richness and complexity. But I don’t always ask my movies to be good. I do ask them to be entertaining.

Was GODZILLA entertaining? At times, but man, did it ever make you work for them. There’s something to be said for that, for not blowing the atomic breath out in Godzilla’s first ten seconds on screen. In that, it certainly succeeded. But to carry you to that, you have to do a lot more than say “well, I’m already here so I may as well ride it out” while these characters give us no sense of tension and no real story because the only story is to get from point A to point B, fail and fail and fail and then get reunited with family.

Which should be a great moment. It should be, dammit. We’ve watched Godzilla and the almost-character-less MUTOs fight it out in downtown San Francisco (yes, of course kaiju have characters). And it’s beautiful, Hieronymus Bosch hellscapes lit by William Turner, all in motion. It’s gorgeous, if not faulting to the grimdark color palette far too much for me (contrasted with PACIFIC RIM’S big fight in Shanghai’s Technicolor nightmare explosion). It’s beautiful.

It’s emotionally blank. There’s no tension. There’s no urgency. Not once Cranston’s conspiracy-chasing scientist gets into the quarantine zone surrounding the nuclear reactor accident that killed his wife and left part of Japan a disaster area (a good set piece that was used and then discarded when there was more meat on those bones—ordinarily forgivable if you give me meat in other places, but this didn’t). GODZILLA pointed at urgency, pointed at panic, but also went out of its way to undermine itself all throughout the middle part of the movie, when humanity was first coming to grip with square-cube-law-defying dinosaurs and insects coming to life.

Pointed at, but didn’t deliver. Through no fault of the special effects artists involved. I’m sure no expense was spared in depicting every scale and twitch of muscle. But if the monsters are in service of a story that is for lack of a kinder word, dull, then there’s no helping it. If you want to write a story about human futility, then goddammit go for the throat. Don’t chicken out because it’s going to kill the box office. If you’re serving up the end of the world, then let’s see it. Let’s live it through the characters. Prove it. Armageddons are easy these days. It just doesn’t have that thrill anymore. Needs a stronger kick.

So no, GODZILLA wasn’t a good movie. There were the makings for it, but it didn’t gel.

However, it showed us some new things. One of GODZILLA’s great successes was working with scale, at least in relation to raw size of humans to kaiju. There was a true sense of the titanic, beyond overcranked cameras and collapsing buildings. This is a hard thing to pull off, harder than you’d think without just doing the same old thing over and over.

And as said before, it’s beautiful in places, and honestly wasn’t as disaster-tastic as I was afraid it’d be from the trailers. But I’m not sure the creators of the film could find a unified vision of what they wanted it to be. Is Godzilla a villain? No. Is he the hero? I guess? As much as a tornado can be one. Are humans chumps? Sorta. Do they band together to pull victory from the jaws of defeat? Hell no. Where is the movie that was being shown in the trailer? Beats me.

I dunno. It’s a frustrating movie. There’s a lot of potential to work with, but to do that, you have to embrace the story that you’re trying to tell, and the story here is that there’s a monster and he fights some other monsters and people are just in the way and on screen for far too much, not doing enough to justify their presences there.

Indifference. The ultimate insult hurled back.

FULL BLEED: I THINK IT’S DARK AND IT LOOKS LIKE RAIN YOU SAID

This afternoon saw me put to bed a project that’s been hounding me since August. It doesn’t matter that I still don’t think it’s complete or that it’s only good in patches. I’ve done what I can do to smooth them. Someone else’s hands will be on it now. But this one’s been a monster. I can talk about only some of why it’s been so. The other stuff isn’t important really, no matter how juicy you may think it is.

So last year, I started the draft in late August. Wrote four hundred pages between September and the week before Christmas. Add to that being a dad, husband, out sick for a week and undertaking an ill-conceived short story submission (“The Black Mass Variations” which may or may not see the light of day), throw in one major but nebulous health scare, spice with a hernia diagnosis and Making Christmas Happen, I hit the wall. I shambled through the holidays, utterly shellshocked. Was a zombie through New Year’s Day. Went into surgery for said hernia not long after.

And then I set in to rewrite. Not only to rewrite, but to tear the whole thing down. This after examination between me and my collaborators where a number of things weren’t working. Didn’t matter if they were all my fault or not, all the problems *felt* like they were my fault and that I wasn’t doing enough. After taking an outline and turning it into four hundred coherent (but not without problems, some of them major) pages in three months and change. Go ahead, try it sometime. No, I’m not a believer in NANOWRIMO. Write a short story instead.

So I went back to square one. Threw out two hundred pages and their attached outline. Re-cast the main character, the second lead and the villain. Wrote and cut wrote and cut wrote and cut. That’s been life since puking my guts out right after hernia surgery. Yeah, I took a whole week off, but really I didn’t, because I was hip deep in that book after two days, trying to unlearn the way I’ve been writing for the last let’s just say ten years because that’s a less depressing number than how long it’s really been.

And now it’s all done but the crying. Well, that and a final pass or two. And the ending. Endings are tough and this one is likely above my pay grade. It’s been a process that started as exhausting and then got dipped in a healthy coating of self-doubt and complete belief in my inability to do any of this right. Not sure I’m through that last part, honestly. The whole “write to please yourself” thing works great if you’re the guy cashing the checks.

Going back to the beginning, trying to undo years of being a feral writer, it’s not easy. And by “not easy” it’s like trying to cut down a sequoia tree with a chainsaw that you can’t even hold because you’re sure that the chainsaw is turned the wrong way and is going to cut your damn hands off the second you try to flip the ignition switch.

Self-doubt is a crippler. Make no mistake.

Which takes me to DISINTEGRATION by the Cure, which turned 25 last week.

I know. Time-machine-whiplash go!

So it’s 1990 (I got the album almost a year after it came out because I didn’t see the video for “Fascination Street” until early that year) and I’m about ready to graduate from college. I have two degrees and absolutely no concept as to how to grapple with the real world using either of them. Good thing I didn’t graduate in say 2008, right? I’d have really been up the chocolate creek without a popsicle stick.

I’m graduating and I have no path. Not the whole Joseph Campbell path of the hero thing, but no clue what I’m going to do next. Which is not a happy place to be. And The Cure managed to find a perfect soundtrack for that. If my copy had been a tape, I’d have wrapped it around the playback head, I played it so many times. If it had been vinyl, I’m sure the grooves would have been worn so badly that it would all sound like surface noise with the occasional drum hit.

See, I wasn’t a big Cure fan back then. Kinda liked some of the songs (and probably would have gotten into PORNOGRAPHY in a big way if any of my multiple groups had been back then). But I got DISINTEGRATION in a big way. It was familiar territory already, anxious and trying to shake it but not knowing how and just riding it out. Which is how I’d spent most of my days as graduation loomed (remind me to tell you about the missed final that almost kept me from walking sometime). Nervous, unsure, borderline panic.

There are times that this crap can be held back. There’s even days that it doesn’t show up at all. But it didn’t take much to let it in, just crack the door a little and like a hungry bear, it’ll just stroll in and push you around and you get to take it.

You don’t take it because it’s fun. You take it because you don’t have a bear gun in your hands to drop it in its tracks. Or rather, I do it like that.

But listening to DISINTEGRATION, I wasn’t reveling in that sort of clobbering helplessness. Matter of fact, that was usually the furthest thing from my mind as I’d listen to “Closedown” or “Lullaby” at high volume on my brick-heavy Sony “portable” soundsystem. It was something else I was feeling. Like someone else had been there and through it. Which is of course the secret to all this depressing music, and that goes all the way from the blues to outsider stoner doom beats. Someone else is out there and they’ve had an experience like yours. And they got through it so maybe you will too.

Maybe. Or at least you can hold it off for awhile.

Someone once told me that when you get older, you get more like you already are. Which in my case is probably not a good thing, and explains why self-doubt can wander in and make me its punk (and I mean that in the terms of the prison punk; suppose the more contemporary term would be bitch). It’s a tough thing to fight. But then you’re fighting yourself, and that’s not a winning match up.

Don’t fight yourself. We’re already standing in deep water most of the time. The world already has arrayed a number of horrors against us, pelting us with them on a regular basis. There’s wonders too. Don’t get me wrong. But they’re tough to see sometimes.

Your own abilities are tough to see sometimes. But so’s your resilience. That’s invisible, especially when you’ve been bleeding for awhile and it’s nothing but blood in the water.

Made it this far, though. Now it’s just grappling with the terrifying thought of what to work on next, since the world at large isn’t exactly demanding the next entry of my never-ending franchise entertainment series. It’s mighty good content.

The Terrible Tome

Art by Tom Fowler, text by Matt Maxwell

 

What is THE TERRIBLE TOME, you ask?

It’s a book of monsters from a fantasy game that never existed, an exercise in imagination and worldbuilding from the inside-out. It started as a joke on Tumblr, inspired by Chris Cooper’s (you might know him better simply as Coop) art based on THE MONSTER MANUAL from DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS. In particular his Rust Monster, which you can see here. And that got me to thinking about how our entertainment was built to be franchised, infinitely repeatable ad nauseum. Yet there was a time that it wasn’t. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS used to be a bunch of guys (mostly) getting together and riffing off of their favorite fantasy works, but also adding to it. That’s the important part. Adding to, not just replicating.

Creatures like the Rust Monster and the Bulette (which may or may not have been inspired by plastic dinosaurs, both) as well as the Xorn and Umber Hulk, the Stirge and Doppleganger, Demogorgon the Demon Prince and Jubilex the Faceless Lord. All of these were new things, invented for DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, and not necessarily just being adapted from Tolkien or other authors (so far as I know), nor were they adapted from existing mythology (though plenty of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS was). This is where the game really began to breathe. And sure, it was crazy and nonsensical half the time, with perhaps a sheen of natural science to suggest that yes, it’s perfectly logical for a creature to exist solely to eat the armor off of adventurers by turning it to rust and then metabolizing the ferric oxide goodness within. But it also makes no sense as anything beyond an exercise of the imagination.

DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on this sort of thing. Any good fantasy/SF game brings along a raft of worldbuilding with it. And like D&D, most games inevitably become more conservative, trying to shoehorn things in and make it all believable, less frantic, more professional, more coherent but often at the cost of vibrancy. Sure, it all comes together, but never feverishly, and often with a sad listlessness. The roaring fire cools. Maybe that’s life. But it doesn’t have to be.

Anyways, I’d envisioned THE TERRIBLE TOME as a unique artifact of a world that never existed, and probably doesn’t make a lot of sense when you try to put it all together, but is fantastic and vivid at the same time. Not a copy of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, because that’s pointless, but a work inspired by it. Given the best of all possible worlds, I’d line up a bunch of artists and writers to come up with a crazy collection of creatures (many have already expressed interest in it, like Tom Fowler above, who went above and beyond the call of duty to draw up something based on my half-joke about the project; which I went ahead and wrote up in the spirit of things.)

Ideally, it would be a hardcover book that suggests a larger world beyond its pages, but wouldn’t map it all out.

Sadly, I don’t see many folks actually picking something like this up. Which makes it tough to pay for all this work, y’know?

And please don’t suggest Kickstarter. I’ve backed projects there, but I’ve seen enough projects go bad or take ethically questionable paths after funding that it’s not something I’m interested in. Maybe I’m old-fashioned (that’s rhetorical). Besides, who do I sell this to? Comics fans? (It’s not a comic.) RPG fans? (it’s not an RPG.) Art fans? (the art comes out on the small side). Fantasy fans? (there’s no narrative.) It’s the ultimate neither fish nor fowl project, which is something I seem to specialize in (hint: people usually buy fish or fowl, but not something halfway in-between.)

I’d feel pretty uncomfortable asking for volunteer work on something like this as well. But it’s hard to pay folks for something that won’t pay for itself. (Go ahead, ask me how much money I made on STRANGEWAYS: hint – I haven’t paid for the printing costs, much less the art costs, much less going to conventions or heck, just for giggles a minimum wage payment for the guy who made it happen.)

So perhaps it’s better at pipe-dream status.

Perhaps.

FOG-Con 2014

Ah, one of my infamous travelogues/con reports. It’s been a little while.

FOG-Con 2014

I’m still pretty new at science fiction/fantasy shows (as opposed to comic shows, which were old hat for me in 1990 and 2008 as an exhibitor). Still getting used to things. Still figuring out how to talk to other humans without all these electrons as a mediating force overcoming my own outsider-ness. It’s a work in progress.

FOG stands for Friends of Genre, but the focus was certainly on science fiction and fantasy, with a touch of horror here and there (and YA, which really isn’t a genre in and of itself, but more a target audience.) Of course, playing to that audience expectation becomes kind of a set of genre expectations over time, doesn’t it?

Right, I’ll stop being meta.

FOG-con was held over in Walnut Creek, which I have to say, is just not my kind of town. It’s blank, at least the parts of which I stayed in (and passed through on the hunt for dinner on Friday night). Expensive, crowded, lots of monoculture options for food, at least along the beaten path. I know, that describes just about everywhere, but this was moreso. Ultimately, not a big deal, since I wasn’t spending much time outside the hotel during con hours.

Though I did venture out for a Japanese dinner on Friday, which tasted great until I got back to the room and started having an allergic reaction to something I ate (nothing exotic, seriously, raw fish and tofu yakisoba). Which precipitated me finding the closest drug store and hitting the Benadryl hard, then to stare at UFO documentaries (the modern kind, not the cool 70s kind) and keeping the drool from running down my chin.

But I did fun stuff at the con before that. Was on a panel alongside Griffin Barber, Catherine Hinglersinn, Andrés Santiago Pérez-Bergquist and Shannon Prickett moderating. A quick word about our moderator: he wore a black T-shirt with the words GRUE REPELLENT emblazoned across the chest. I told him I thought that grue repellent would light up and he replies “Oh, it glows in the dark. But I’m surprised that you caught the reference.” It’s because I’m old, Shannon.

The subject of the panel was secrets, entitled “A Secret is Something You Tell One Person at a Time”, to which my natural reply is “A secret is something that two people can keep if one of them are dead.” Robert Anton Wilson taught me that one. I’d say the panel was about half split on tech-focus and the other half on the social/human/power relationship focus of secrecy. The point being, it all comes down to the behavior of various kinds of hairless apes and what they do to get along. The tech is an often-fascinating tool, but the humans pushing the buttons are much more interesting to me. Still, we managed to keep the audience well-entertained and perhaps even informed for more than an hour.

I always feel like the guy who brought a fish to a knife fight given that I’m hardcore liberal arts/social science and only marginally a techie in that I learn just enough to keep my tech more or less functioning (and often not even that.) Hopefully that brings a different perspective that’s valuable in and of itself. Which is sometimes why I have trouble with calling my writing science fiction since I’m not as wrapped up in the world-building itself. Far more interesting are the things that people do with the tech/situation/whatever, which means I pay short shrift to a lo of what people look for in SF. Happens in my fantasy work too. My world building is just enough for things to go on in, not particularly deep.

Sat in on a panel about occult/secret history and conspiracies, which there was no way in hell I was going to miss, right? Was pleased to see a number of familiar notes hit (Aliester Crowley, OTO, Rosicrucians, Jack Parsons et al) and a few unfamiliar ones as well. Always nice to come away from a panel needing to research a few new things. In particular, the SHADOWRUN module that apparently blew the lid off the higher-order Scientology stuff in the early 90s, which I need to track down now. Sure, that’s all old hat now with the internet and thirty seconds, but there was a time that this was genuine suppressed knowledge that was hard to get a hold of. And Tim Powers is always fun to hear from, though it’s weird now to hear him talked of as one of the three fathers of steampunk (KW Jeter and James Blaylock being the others). I mean, I just read his work because it was different. Though I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that Robert Anton Wilson’s ILLUMINATUS trilogy wasn’t discussed at any length, since it’s basically the blueprint for conspiracy fiction (or maybe that’s just me.)

But then I never really was a joiner, and haven’t wanted to do a steampunk anything since mid 1991 when I hammered out an adaptation of AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS script. Sure. That’s as natural as Nutella and graham crackers now, but in 1991? A little less so. Though I still have those notes but I think I’d rather work on something more my own, y’know?

So right, after that, it was get to my assigned room, only to find out that it was 76 degrees inside it, with no opening windows and an air conditioner that only blew hotter air into the room. Luckily I was able to get another room, thanks to the crew behind the desk.

And now we’re up to the allergy fit, which meant I watched TV (that’s how crappy I felt) instead of prowling the hotel bar. Also I knew precisely nobody there, which always makes me feel weird in that kind of situation. Woke up in the middle of the night unable to sleep so I worked on a thing that will probably see the light of day, collaboration with a musician, making up some more backstory for his VHS synth-rock/coldwave/what have you projects. I’m doing this for pure fun since I’m kind of in a rough patch with the day job and could use some pressure relief. Anyways, it’s bonkers, and deliberately so. I hope I get called on its unbelievability, then I’m just going to laugh. I’m not writing believable, I’m writing crazy.

Breakfast the next morning at a local chain diner then off to the convention again. Panels on alternate history and the secrets of the writing world. Oh and late for a networking panel that morning (which is only fitting since I have the networking skills of a beached jellyfish). The Secrets of Writing was certainly the most entertaining of the bunch. And really, for all the secrets revealed (Nobody Cares But You, You Will Not Get Paid Well, Atavan is Your Friend) there were many not touched upon, but you have to leave something for the sequel. Great level of representation in terms of place in career, editor versus writer, publisher versus editor versus writer. I always like my buckets of icewater to come with a laugh and this delivered.

Then on to my reading. You saw that right. I read. In public. The entirety of “Tug on the Ribbon”, from the collection of the same name. Thanks much to Julia Dvorin and Andrea Stewart for moral support and actually talking me out of bailing. Okay, not really, but the thought crossed my mind more than once. Surprised I got through the whole thing. I guess I shut down higher functions long enough to stay out of trouble, though I suspect I didn’t have a lot of stage presence. But I didn’t quit, so I want credit for that.

Ducked out to San Francisco to meet a friend. Which was cool for a variety of reasons. I’d never driven the 24 before, and it’s a fun little freeway that bores right through Diablo Mountain. Before I hit the tunnel, though, I spotted the art deco marquee of the Orinda Theatre off to the left and was determined to go see it on the way back. So yeah, I get distracted pretty easily. Little art deco, little neon and I’m occupied for hours. Good dinner with said friend (Japanese food that didn’t cause a full-blown food allergy, thank you very much) and some photography in SF’s downtown. Afterwards, he handed me a bunch of comics to read. I just don’t know when that’s going to happen…

Back over the white serpentine curve of the new Bay Bridge and over the hill to Orinda. Got lost on very small two-lane roads and finally found the place (meaning I’d overshot it very early). Spent half an hour just staring at it and taking shots. I love real movie theatres. Multiplexes, not so much. But pictures are worth thousands of words, so let’s just do it:

Didn’t sleep a wink. Worked on more crazed SF, tried to sleep, felt the impending dread of losing an hour, finally gave up and woke up at eight. Breakfast at the same diner, since they did well the day before. Returned and caught the From Inspiration to Draft panel. I dig attending process panels, mostly because I’m lazy and if someone has found a way to work better, I sure want to know about it because doing more work than necessary isn’t my thing.

Trouble is that these things often just work for them, and not necessarily for anyone else. Still, I keep trying to find another shortcut.

Chatted with a dude wearing a P-Funk t-shirt in the dealer’s room, and man that doesn’t happen enough. Bought a book of IWW protest songs and the first volume of Moorcock’s BYZANTIUM tetrology (that’s a word, right?). I mean, who expected an anarchist bookstore in the dealer’s room?

Bid FOG-Con farewell and went off to Alameda to visit the town. Alameda really is right out of a Tom Waits song, built on the rubble of the 1906 earthquake (or so I was told) and definitely its own place. Good antique stores (and yes, I left empty-handed, though I could have easily picked up a few more books, always more books) and choice of restaurants. But the real attraction was meeting a friend from Twitter and hanging out at the High Scores Arcade Museum and playing a bunch of cabinet machines. Places like this seem to get fewer and fewer every year. One day I’ll write up the arcade experience in the 80s, but not here.

Suffice it to say, I’ll be heading back to High Scores again. One afternoon certainly wasn’t enough. All the games were kept in great shape (burn-in aside, but that’s a hazard of any CRT of any age) and there was a good selection of titles to play (though I’d liked to have played DRAGON’S LAIR again, but I understand they’re pretty hard to maintain.) Still, it was great to commune with the phosphor-god spirits through their mechanical oracles or avatars or whatever they are. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Then it was time to head east to home. Digest and process. Try and figure out what I learned and if I’m smart enough to really apply it.

Thanks to the organizers and panelists who made it a fun weekend away from real life for just a little while.

Next up is Bay-Con, though I have no idea what I’ll be doing there. But I’m sure I’ll fill folks in.