Fear and ray guns, and books that other people fear

Maybe I've said it before, but I watched a lot of TV as a kid. These days I pass on it unless there's a show on with two guys named Adam and Jamie, and even then I get them either on disc or streaming. Neither I nor Claudia can stand it when we watch something, the tension is built up to a near climax, and then we have to sit through a commercial for hemorrhoid ointment. It sort of kills the magic.

One of the shows I used to watch was Space:1999. I think that even when I was watching it for the first time, I could tell that it had a different pace, and a different presentation. The focus is more on the choices, usually moral, that the characters make, and less on the monster of the week. The challenge of space isn't presented in bold, heroic terms, but in human success and failure. It isn't about exploring space, but growing as human beings, and it spoke in more mature language than Star Trek ever did.

Some episodes of it were also scary as hell. They had an atmosphere that was darker than ones from the original run of The Twilight Zone. In those stories, reality wasn't as solid as the characters, or as we the viewers, needed it to be. The problems were dragons, ghostly parasites that floated through walls, and immortals who wanted to be gods of chaos and destruction. The humans have been tossed into the dark void, and they don't have the greatest success in dealing with it. People die, and even though the series never had long story arcs, we feel those deaths, because we get to know the people before they die.

One of the characters, Professor Bergman, is supposed to be the head scientist, and there's something about him that makes me think. I'm not done re-watching the whole series yet, but through what I've watched and what I remember, he is consistently wrong, a day late and a dollar short, and so blasted useless that it's almost funny. Except of course, his errors get people killed. He's the one that the commander always asks for an assessment, and most of the time, he shakes his head and admits that he has no clue. Or his opinion is the sort of good, solid advice that science-fiction fans are used to hearing, from the grumpy old man in authority who doesn't have the imagination to believe in spooks and wonder.

Ponder that. This is a science-fiction show. In this genre, our worth as a race is symbolized by our accomplishments. As the show opens, we've gone to the moon, built a sustainable presence there, and are planning to send explorers to other worlds. There are rays guns to shoot monsters with, artificial gravity generators so our heroes don't have to skip down the halls as they rush to defend the nuclear power generators, and ships that protect our heroes from the cosmic rays that in real life are the reason most space missions stay in low earth orbit. There's never (that I remember) any mention of faster than light propulsion, but if we can zip from the earth to the moon in one episode, we're going pretty damn fast. So in the show, we've made progress, and a lot of it.

So in the show, when the smartest man in the room doesn't even have a clue how to proceed, what the hell are we supposed to do? Martin Landau does a fine job as a rugged commander, and a hell of a lot of his tough decisions fall into the twentieth-century (remember the title) equivalent of circling the wagons. He's always willing to be the one to lead the way into the darkness, and frequently is in damage-control mode, so there's no questioning his courage. But his strength is in contrast to the hideous things that defy his understanding and tear his base apart.

The show itself is in constant contrast to Star Trek, for good reason. In a weird dance of character/actor juggling, Landau and Barbara Bain had quit Mission: Impossible a few years prior to starting this series, and Leonard Nimoy took over Landau's role as the IMF's master of disguise. Hold the two shows up side by side, and you'll see a lot of similarities. Plots, some settings, and even the three familiar roles of commander, adviser, and doctor are used in both. But, as I said a few paragraphs up, Space: 1999 is different. A heck of a lot of scenes in it are dark, as opposed to the nearly always well-lit halls of the Enterprise. Commander Koenig is an everyman's hero, where Kirk is Shakespearean down to the way he sits in his chair. There's a mission behind all the wandering in Star Trek (even if it was tidily ignored when it got in the way), but the crew of Moon Base Alpha were blown into deep space because mankind used the moon as a nuclear waste dump without knowing the consequences. Brave explorers versus lost victims. Which do we dream of being, and which do we fear becoming?

For something completely different, Banned Books Week started Sunday. I don't care if it's written with ink, clay, or pixels; the printed word is something to be valued. Go read something that people don't want you to read.

Yep. Still writing.

Not Just Blood

“Don't waste it. Now sign.” - The Devil, 'Phantom of the Paradise'

In Danse Macabre, Stephen King did something that made a hell of an impression on me. He grouped the monsters of popular literature into a sort of supernatural tarot deck, doing a nice job of analyzing the deeper meanings and symbolism behind each one. He did it so well, in fact, that every time I have ever tried to use his theory as a stepping stone in this blog or elsewhere without first going back and brushing up on it, I have made a royal mess. I keep adding cards of my own (no jokes about me not playing with a full deck to begin with, please), and turning his concept into something it isn't. I love the idea, and constantly play with it. Needless to say, I keep a copy of Danse Macabre on the shelf in my study. Needless to say, I had to rewrite this damn entry because I didn't consult that book first.

King's deck includes these cards: The werewolf, the ghost, the thing with no name, and the vampire. But these cards tend to bleed colors, and if you shuffle them quickly the differences blur. Two of them are undead, and some of the old legends held that if you were a werewolf in life, you would rise as a vampire after you died. The 'thing,' as personified by Frankenstein's monster, burns with a bestial wrath that we also see in the werewolf, and is driven by an intangible hunger that will never be satisfied, like the werewolf. Missing from the deck, because he has wider implications than our concepts of what it is to be human, is the devil. But very frequently, Old Scratch makes a guest appearance in a story, usually in a mood to make a deal. When he steps on stage, he's cultured, articulate, and plays on all our suppressed insecurities and desires. He offers so much, but takes more than he ever gives, and his pacts are sealed in our own blood. Like the vampire.

Part of what seems to set a good vampire story apart from a mediocre one is the type of threat that the bloodsucker represents. The vamp in a monster-of-the-week show will stalk you down a dark alley and stab you in the neck with two razor-sharp fangs. But will it attack your bank account and credit score, draining them drop by drop? Does it hunger for your job, your house? Will it feed on your friendships and your family ties, weakening them until you call someone close to you to spend time together, and they say they're busy, maybe dropping a hint how much it annoys them when you always expect them to change their plans at the last minute?

In 'Dracula,' the count is a slow, deliberate predator. He first attacks Jonathon Harker, a clean-cut young man with a bright future, and that first attack doesn't even break the skin. The isolation of Dracula's castle, and the fact he's the only living person in it bites Jonathon's sense of self, his sense of identity as a cultured Englishman, easily capable of dealing with an eccentric European noble. In a very real way, Dracula attacks Mina, by taking Lucy before her. In existing in the first place, he hurts that sense of pride that a good Christian man and woman must feel at knowing that God is on their side, and that he has granted them stewardship over the whole earth.

In the films, 'The Moth Diaries' and 'Let's Scare Jessica To Death' (both examples of movies where the vampire never shows a fang) the monster strips the heroine of her support structure first, sending friends away or turning loved ones against her. She goes from being part of a loving group to an isolated loner who doubts her own sanity almost as much as those around her doubt it. Of course, the whole time the damage is being done, the vampire wears a sympathetic smile, offering a friendly ear and a shoulder to lean on. She's stealing the heroine's life, all of it. Not just the red stuff that keeps oxygen circulating through her body.

There's a subtle hint in that storytelling technique, one that shows the reader or viewer something about this monster. If it feeds on intangible concepts, how can it be natural? A virus or bacteria can (in this world we shape with a tap of our fingers on a keyboard) alter someone's biology so that they can only subsist on blood, sure. Just as another bug can make someone shapeshift into a wolf when they're exposed to enough lunar radiation. (Yeah. I know I'm reaching) But to feed on friendship, let alone someone else's friendship? How can anything like that be real in the sense that we understand the word? How would you fight that attack? If you say 'well, I'd just tell people. You can't trick someone who knows what's going on, and this is worth the risk,' then do this. Call up someone close to you, and tell them. Get out your phone and redial the last person you had a long conversation with, one that made you smile and feel happy. As soon as they answer, warn them not to talk to anyone named Elson. Tell them this man is at least two hundred years old, and that you personally saw him crawl like a roach up the outside wall of your local courthouse. Tell them you'll give more details later, but that this threat is real.

That cold sensation you got in your stomach when you imagined doing it? Yeah. That image you have of how that person would never look at you the same way again? Of all the calls they would make after you hung up? That's what would happen, if you didn't make the call, and even if you did.

Here's something to think about, too. This depiction of vampirism? It lets us use it with monsters that love to eat garlic, walk in and out of people's houses without an invitation, and who wear crucifixes while they sunbathe. That's where part of the horror comes from, knowing that those results can happen in our world, not just the ones we escape to. All it takes is us cracking up under the strain of modern life, or one semi-clever sociopath. Either cause is very real, and very human.

So vampires don't exist, you say?

To end this on a cheery note, I found out the other day that a friend of mine has started a YouTube channel, and is posting videos of his tips and mods for the game of Minecraft. I've been curious about this game for a while, ever since I was randomly browsing YouTube and found a video of a young man showing off this huge house that he and his friend had built. He then tried to build a fireplace in the house, and burned the whole thing down. On camera.

Go check out my friend's channel. His name is Vaygrim, and the vids are called 'Vaygrim's Chance.' I watched a couple of them, and even if you have no clue about the game, it's fun to watch someone slap together an underground bunker right in front of you, complete with a lava-powered forge.

Still writing.

One of those random kicks in the teeth

When it comes to how I spend what free time I have, I'm not very consistent. I have more hobbies and interests than I could ever explore, even if I was one of those people who go around with a katana tucked under their trench coat and who only really worry about whether or not whatever threat they're facing will decapitate them. I'll get on Facebook for a few weeks, get bored with it, and move on to World of Warcraft. When that gets repetitive, I'll catch up on all the channels I subscribe to on Youtube. So on, and so on. Interests and desires are the sorts of things that grow faster the more you indulge them, so I'm not going to start listing things because then that's all this post would contain.

No, the above paragraph is my clever way of not looking like a clueless idiot when I just now notice something that happened a few months ago. I've mentioned Fearnet a few times here, and just today I pulled it up, wanting to see what movie they're showing and what news they have of the cool and the creepy. The answer is none. No movies, no news, no photosets of graveyards where someone is having a teddybear picninc. There's none of that, because surprise! There is no Fearnet. It seems one of the companies that owned it bought out the other companies that owned it, and folded it into the ChillerTv website. I have that one open in one window on my computer while I write this, but I'm not getting the same 'wow, look at all this cool stuff!' vibe that I got from Fearnet. Yep, change happens, and it loves to happen when we're off doing something else and relying on them to not change. If I hadn't gone back to playing WoW semi-regularly, I might have noticed that this happened back in- um, *cough* April. What can I say? I was working on upgrading my battle pets.

This is not a rant on how much this new situation stinks. I'll take some time and get a good sense of Chiller. If it ends up doing the same type of job that Fearnet did, I'll use it. Media is what I use to promote my stuff, so I use whatever roads and sidewalks will get me from point A to point B. This is a rant about how good Fearnet was. I'll keep it as short as I can.

That vibe I mentioned a couple of paragraphs up? That was what I loved about Fearnet. It tried to cover everything, and as a result it was the sort of website where you could spend hours just browsing from link to link. They had streaming movies that I'd never heard of, and they put up photosets that showed everything from deserted villages around Chernobyl to graveyards that were supposed to be gates to hell. It held a very personal interest to me, and to this little occupation of mine, because they also had reviews of soon to be and recently released horror books. I found a lot of small press publishers that way, and those same reviews gave me a bit of a hint on who my competition for getting my words in print is. They had articles on film directors like Argento and Bava, introducing me to movies I had never heard of, (but that I made a point to get) and giving me little insights into the way those people thought, what gave them their vision. Little, important things.

Poof. Gone. Cue the sad music and zoom out so we can see the empty void left behind. Pan over the crowd of gawkers long enough to register their shell-shocked expressions. Fade to black.

Life moves on, and we need to move with it. I'll give ChillerTv its day in court, and we'll see what the verdict is. I might even finally see about setting up a links section here in this blog, to point out other cool sites while they're still around.

Oh, good news? It's September. Sing with me. “Two more months to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Two more months to Halloween. Silver Shamrock.”

Still writing.

The clay takes a while to dry

Ah, yes. That's what summers in Houston are supposed to be like. Air so humid that it feels like you're wading through wet cement when you go outside, and temperatures so high that after a few minutes you look like someone has dumped a bucket of water over your head. How could I have ever forgotten?

We've had a bit of respite from the heat these past few weeks. Lots of wind and rain, coming once every two or three days, kept things from being too bad. It was almost bearable.

All that's over and done with. I can get up at eight o'clock to take the dog out for a walk and be sweating before we make it to the gate. At work I have a fan blowing on me, a cup of ice water within reach, and find a reason to step into the air-conditioned part of the building every thirty minutes or so, and I can still feel sweat running down the backs of my legs where no cool air reaches them. It's hot.

I'm making what will hopefully be the last or next-to-last run through In The Dark. Getting the brackets cleaned out and making sure I don't have our hero sneering at someone at the beginning of a paragraph and they're best friends at the end of it. When you have to change what people say throughout a story because you've altered a small part of the plot, it can happen. In fact, I can't remember a story that I've written where it didn't happen. This is why it's so important to have a new set of eyes look something over before you send it out into the world in the hope that it will convince people to support your writing habit. Which brings me to my main point.

I still have an idea of how In The Dark was supposed to run. Way back at the beginning I thought I had a nice, clear plot all made up that would grip the reader and pull them in at the very first page. That perfect plot lasted right up until I had to put it down on paper. (well, a screen that's made to look like paper) Anything that only exists in your head may or may not be able to stand on its own two feet after being born. I've had one or two short stories that could do it, but nothing longer than a few pages. Ideas are little dreams that you have when you're awake, and as anyone who has ever tried to live them has found out, reality is very unfriendly to dreams.

In this reality a lot of characters that I never even thought of have come to life, wearing faces of people that I used to know. The place where they live is a little bigger, and no longer reminds me of my old high school. Little details, like knowing the color of the sky, and picturing parts of the world that none of the characters will ever see, bring it into sharper focus. Those details make it real.

I was able to change it because it hasn't been all that long since I first typed in the last words of the last sentence of the last paragraph of the first draft. (and I have to tell you, typing those words felt damn good) Of all the conflicting versions and explored possibilities that I've written down and erased, no one story has shoved the others out of the nest and let them die. Time or inactivity will do that, and both together will do it faster than you think. Form the clay into a shape that nudges your imagination, but your first result probably won't match what you pictured. So reshape it. Step away from it for a little while, to give the first image and what your hands have made a chance to merge into one entity. But don't wait too long. Picking up something you once smiled at and finding it shriveled into a dead, lifeless lump will kill something inside you. You'll feel it die.

That's why you'll probably never read any of the first stories I wrote. I remember the shivers that came when I was gathering my clay, going over bits of the stories just in my head, usually when I couldn't sleep. But that first time I finished a story and really read it with as much detachment as I'll ever have, it was a hell of a shock to get that sour taste in my mouth that comes whenever I read something that should have been quietly smothered at birth. I didn't walk away, I ran. I started other things, but I never came back to those first attempts. See my entry about crap if you think you want to read them anyway.

Now here's where I hedge my bet. I did say probably. Letting those stories die still gnaws at me, and I'm possessive enough that I will never let anyone take the seeds of those stories and write their own versions of them. We'll meet with drawn swords on some moonlit beach before that happens. Could I hook those withered things up to a taser and shock them back to life? That's a scary thought.

But not as scary as not writing.