Themes Gleaming Darkly Part 5 - Inspirations
In this segment, I wanted to talk about the non-literary media that influenced the stories of Futures Gleaming Darkly.
It would be impossible to cover this subject and not discuss the following three: The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, and Flash Forward.
At a very young age, The Twilight Zone built the foundation for my taste in SciFi and horror. The episode "It's a Good Life" effects me to this day. No spoilers! Moral ambiguity, horror via negative space, and expert levels of handwaving away the nitty gritty and getting the audience's suspension of disbelief. The format of Twilight Zone was equally influential. Small, complete stories that often had a message and left a lingering feeling of introspection. My stories Beetle, The Doctors Fenster, and Fundamt were all lovingly written as if it were for TTZ.
Black Mirror, the grandchild of The Twilight Zone, forms another third of this delicious pie. Similarly, its stories are condensed, but focused on technology specifically, whereas TTZ was much broader in themes. Black Mirror's dark tone has always been a draw for me, but its ability to craft emotionally ambivalent stories such as the episode "San Junipero" is where it truly shines. Stoplight, The Body Electric, and Selves all draw from this notion of near future social science fiction.
And lastly, we have Flash Forward. A splendid little podcast written and narrated by Rose Eveleth, it marries speculative fiction and hard SciFi. As she says, each episode "we take a field trip to the future", wherein we hear a bit of fiction about the future she's writing about, and then she spends the episode discussing how possible that truly is. Bubble, Delicious, and Bippy all owe Rose and FF their thanks!
If you've never watched or listened to these, please do yourself a favor. If you've got a copy of Futures Gleaming Darkly, take in these inspirations and go back to these stories and see those direct lines of influence.
What shows/podcasts inspire you most? Let me know!
It would be impossible to cover this subject and not discuss the following three: The Twilight Zone, Black Mirror, and Flash Forward.
At a very young age, The Twilight Zone built the foundation for my taste in SciFi and horror. The episode "It's a Good Life" effects me to this day. No spoilers! Moral ambiguity, horror via negative space, and expert levels of handwaving away the nitty gritty and getting the audience's suspension of disbelief. The format of Twilight Zone was equally influential. Small, complete stories that often had a message and left a lingering feeling of introspection. My stories Beetle, The Doctors Fenster, and Fundamt were all lovingly written as if it were for TTZ.
Black Mirror, the grandchild of The Twilight Zone, forms another third of this delicious pie. Similarly, its stories are condensed, but focused on technology specifically, whereas TTZ was much broader in themes. Black Mirror's dark tone has always been a draw for me, but its ability to craft emotionally ambivalent stories such as the episode "San Junipero" is where it truly shines. Stoplight, The Body Electric, and Selves all draw from this notion of near future social science fiction.
And lastly, we have Flash Forward. A splendid little podcast written and narrated by Rose Eveleth, it marries speculative fiction and hard SciFi. As she says, each episode "we take a field trip to the future", wherein we hear a bit of fiction about the future she's writing about, and then she spends the episode discussing how possible that truly is. Bubble, Delicious, and Bippy all owe Rose and FF their thanks!
If you've never watched or listened to these, please do yourself a favor. If you've got a copy of Futures Gleaming Darkly, take in these inspirations and go back to these stories and see those direct lines of influence.
What shows/podcasts inspire you most? Let me know!
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Writing Sundries
A collection of my thoughts on writing, including descriptions of my own personal methods and advice for what helps me write.
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