The Shape of Things to Come

It’s been a minute since we last touched base. Updates you haven’t seen have been implemented in the background and while they’ve been somewhat automated, they’re still taking up energy and onboard RAM as well as any outboard brains that I’ve connected to. I’m not sure what any of that really means, but it sounded fancy for a second.

Meanwhile, spring has been lovely here. I know because the weather while I’ve been out in the yard thinking about the writing I need to be doing has been very pleasant. My morning walks with the dog are still chilly and they trigger more thoughts about the writing, thoughts I explore on my morning commute.

Hi, I’m Jason and I write stories you might like to read. Thanks for coming by. If you’d like to get these very infrequent missives delivered straight to your inbox, put your email in the box below. 

Systems Update: TRUTH

As noted in the opening, work continues on the latest draft of MASQUE which is on track to be out to you sometime in the fall. I had plans at the end of March/beginning of April  to be writing 1,000 words a day which I’d been able to do for nearly a week when I made them.

Then, of course, life comes with other plans and anything I wanted went sailing right out the window. There’s a period of about twenty days where I accomplished a total of 2,000 words across five writing sessions and that made the stress I felt even worse. I’m as dedicated to getting this book out as I am to making it the best it can possibly be so there’s some friction in that, but quality matters and I need time to deliver that.

I will say this draft, even though you’ve heard it from me before, is the best version so far. It’s moving along, it’s tense, it’s steamy in places. I’m pretty sure you’re going to like it.

PIN UPS

This is an announcement that there will be other announcements down the road regarding some irons I’ve placed in a fire. I’m negotiating a few things that will begin to happen in the fall, hopefully around the time of Masque’s release.

So if you don’t want to miss the announcements when they DO drop, it’s easy to keep your ear to the ground and your eyes open by subscribing. You can use the box up top or wait until you get to the end of this post.

Stella is waiting patiently to subscribe so we can go for a walk…

FEEDBACK

I’ve recently read Nnedi Okorafor’s DEATH OF THE AUTHOR and I’m not going to give it a review, despite my immense enjoyment, other than to say that it’s an important book. Not just to me, but ultimately to the genre of science fiction. It’s got all the elements of speculation and interaction that make SF great. Others will determine how this book fits into the overall scheme of SF but my assessment is that Okorafor is a Grand Master-to-be and this work will be at the top of the list of all her titles. I’m really, really looking forward to her collaboration with artist Tana Ford this fall, THE SPACE CAT. (If you haven’t read their previous collaboration, LA GUARDIA, and you’re a comics/sff fan, you should!)

As is usual for me, I’m late to the party on getting into THE MINUS 5. The three songs I’ve heard off their latest album, OAR ON, PENELOPE!, are some great, garage-y type rock that is good in the car and on a walk. In particular, I’m really digging LET THE ROPE HOLD, CASSIE LEE which is super-catchy. I’ve had CALLING CORTEZ, their previous album, on repeat lately, too.

Watched THINGS TO COME (1936) which is based on H.G. Wells’ novel The Shape of Things to Come from 1933, and it’s prescient for its time in a number of ways.The film was supposed to be Hollywood’s answer to METROPOLIS and was just as expensive and sprawling. Wells adapted his book for the screen and there’s some overwritten expository dialogue that drives home the ideas a little too much and it relies heavily on rolling text to move through time but the script does some things very well, making it more than serviceable. Director William Cameron Menzies creates convincing visuals of a crumbling society desperately trying to adapt to its new realities. The hair, makeup, and costumes are top-notch, too. A lot of attention was paid to details to convince the viewer of the reality of the film. This attention really shows in every flying scene and the designs of the aircraft involved.

I’d never seen Things to Come when it ran endlessly on the UHF channels of my youth because as a teenager I was probably less interested in ‘old’ movies having seen the future of filmmaking in STAR WARS. Also, the thought of a third world war was an impossibility in my young mind, except if someone launched a nuclear attack. (Hey, THE DAY AFTER – a damn TV movie – scared the living shit out of all of us at the time.) If that happened, I knew that ‘duck and cover’ was a placebo. I’d been reading and consuming science fiction about the effects of nuclear war, including BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES, which is also a scary film. I digress…

This film, along with METROPOLIS, FORBIDDEN PLANET, FLASH GORDON, and a handful of others comprise the roots of filmed science fiction as we know it today. (There are a lot of roots but these are the ones that were prominent in the literature of science fiction as I grew love of genre in my youth.) Each of them executed a vision that was singular and boundary-pushing in its time. Each of them prove that so much is possible when the will to create is strong. For a long, long time science fiction was cheap and schlocky and disrespected. Now, with the advent of awesome special effects, bigger stories can be told and told well. 

And if I’m being honest, when ANDOR was announced my thinking was ‘who cares’? ROGUE ONE was a terrific film that paid homage in small ways to the root films of its genre, and Andor is advancing what big stories on the small screen can do when combining good writing with ingenuity. I’ve gone from my initial indifference as I began the first season when it aired to favoring Andor over all other Star Wars TV shows. How will such things compare to what’s available in 2110?

Just in case you’re wondering where any of these things might be streaming, I’ve found Just Watch to be really helpful. I use it to find things I don’t have a physical copy of. 

At Capacity: VICTIMS OF THE FUTURE

I’m getting back to writing on a daily basis and that’s good for my mental health. It’s not great for the physical state of my body, however, so there’s still some balance to be struck but I’ve made some strides in this regard this year so far. I’ve shed some weight, found time to be active, and am generally eating better than I have in far too long.. 

As I’ve been learning what triggers my eating binges I’m learning to make substitutions for things that do – when I focus – give me the same kind of stimulus. It’s true that baby carrots are not a 1:1 substitute for some cheap rippled potato chips, but the crunch when I bite into them is similar. And the sound of the crunch is similar, too. Both help trick my brain because it wants to be tricked into feeling satisfied.

What I’m getting at is the psychological aspects of eating have been a mystery to me most of my life. Yeah, I can repeat the tropes everyone else can, but when I made the clear-headed decision to do something about how much I weighed, I started really absorbing the stuff that I’d always known, and paying attention. It’s not as simple as “eat less and exercise more” for a lot of people, but that reductive piece of advice is true in its way. For me, it’s more like “eat better and exercise more”.

I just needed a bit more explanation.

So thanks for reading. And if you’re a regular here, I appreciate you more than I can ever say. (By the way, all the header titles are the names of albums where The Yardbirds’ song, The Shape of Things to Come, have been covered. Jeff Beck, David Bowie, RUSH, and Gary Moore have all done spectacular versions though Moore’s is a favorite for reasons I may share another time. The original is a protest song against the Vietnam War and Beck was the guitarist.)

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Take care of yourself. You matter a great deal to many that you may not be aware of. 

I’ll see you when I see you.