Author Archives: natechen

Code Red (Part One)

Posted by natechen on

Well here we are just two stories into the summer plans and we’re already off schedule. This story took me all of two and a half days to write so I figured it must be short – but when I went to post it I discovered it was about twice as long as what I would consider ideal post length. Looks like it’s perfect for a two part story!

——–

The position of chief technician on a Trenchman sub was a weird blend of chemical expert, mechanical engineer and botanist with a smattering of really weird expertise thrown in for flavor. They were very smart, very well respected people who the crew listened to as a matter of course, even when they didn’t personally like the technician in question. Captain Oscar Duffy had always gotten on fine with Old Phil, his chief tech, so when Phil called him off the bridge Duffy assumed it was important and made his way down the length of the Erin’s Dream to the rear Oxygen Processing compartment without protest.

“It’s turned red,” Phil said, as if that explained.

“I can see that,” Duffy said. He was, unfortunately, unenlightened by his chief tech’s explanation. “Unfortunately we’re not going to have a replacement on hand any time soon. The salvage bays are going to be mostly empty on our return run, though. Could we just load some extra air in tanks and use that to get us home? We could run part of the way on the surface.”

Old Phil gave him a disbelieving look. “You don’t know what this means, do you?”

“Assume I’m not entirely current on the nuance of every system on this ship.”

“Fine.” He rapped his knuckles sharply on the bulkhead just a foot from where the two men were standing. “You know what’s on the other side of this?”

“Oh.” Duffy felt himself turning pale. “That’s bad.”

“Yes, Captain, it certainly is. The pressure hull isn’t the only thing that’ll need fixing when we get to port.”

——–

Lauren Cochran looked up when Vern walked, or rather shuffled, into the assistant harbor master’s office. He wasn’t the type to intrude without cause, in fact he wasn’t the type to do anything at all to draw attention, so there was really only one possibility if he was crossing her threshold of his own volition. “Something the matter, Vern?”

Vern cleared his throat twice, an annoying but predictable sign of nervousness, and said, “Yes, ma’am. You know we’ve got a sub in port right now?”

“New Darwin’s always had a little Navy presence, Vern,” she said, fingers absently skimming over touchscreens as she tried to bring up the current listing of Royal Australian Navy ships in port. Was there an attack sub at dock just then? “Are they causing problems?”

“Not that I know of.” He fidgeted for a second. “Actually, I’m talking about a civilian sub?”

Flicked fingers sent the military berths away and she started flipping through the larger public listings. “A research sub or a salvage vehicle?”

“The latter.” He handed her the tablet he was holding and said, “The dock inspector found something you should see.”

Lauren grimaced as she took the tablet. It was clammy and sweaty and she did her best to surreptitiously wipe her hands dry as she woke up the device. “You could have just copied me the memory stick, you know.”

Vern shook his head vigorously. “You don’t want this running around the wifi, Lauren. Trust me.”

“Erin’s Dream, huh,” she muttered, thumbing through the screens of data. She stopped when she reached the fourth. “Does the harbormaster know about this?”

“Not yet.” Vern looked down at his hands as if ashamed of the fact. “He was in a meeting with the deputy mayor when we noticed. He should be back in half an hour but…”

“You didn’t want this in the datastream. Okay, you made a good call.” She pushed herself up and out from behind her desk. “Have him meet me at Pier 42 as soon as he can.”

“Do you want security there?” Vern asked tentatively. “Or the police?”

“If it was going to be anyone I’d have the military there. But there’s still a chance this is a misunderstanding.”

“You think so?” Vern asked hopefully.

Lauren sighed. “No. Not really.”

——–

The cramped surface deck of Erin’s Dream was cluttered with equipment, parts and crew. With the sub at dock there wasn’t much call for the Waldos so Herrigan found himself doing his best to keep order among the chaos. “No, not the welding equipment. What if Graham needs that to patch the hull? Put it aft with the other stuff going back down into engineering storage.” He scowled around at the rest of the junk on the deck. He’d thought nothing could be as tough as keeping an underwater salvage op from tangling in it’s own power and communication cables but he didn’t even know what half this stuff was, much less whether they’d need it below decks in the next few weeks. “Keep the spare parts for the Waldos and Eddie separate. I don’t want to try seeing if a Waldo battery is compatible with our power supply system, you hear me? Don’t get them mixed up!”

“Hey, Harry?” Herrigan looked down from his vantage up on the conning tower to spot Tank, one of his salvage sub drivers, down on the main deck by the gangplank, waving for his attention. “Harry, some guys here to see you. One of ’em says he’s the harbormaster.”

“Coming!” He rattled down from the conning tower muttering curses. He’d chosen his salvage pilots for experience, since bad salvage pilots were almost entirely weeded out by their first two jobs. If you survived that long you were good. That was the way the job went. But that kind of competence didn’t always come with good manners, something people like harbormasters tended to appreciate.

It was pretty easy to tell with a glance which one the harbormaster was and, just as Herrigan had feared, he didn’t look happy at Tank’s offhand way of referred to him. The kind of man who came out to look at a salvage sub in a three piece suit most likely expected to be addressed with respect, too. There were maybe half a dozen people with the harbormaster too, a pretty large group just to pay a visit to a lowly salvage sub. To say nothing of how unusual a personal visit from the harbormaster was, period.

For the second time that month Herrigan was hearing damage control alarms. Problem was, this time they were entirely in his own mind and he wasn’t sure what kind of damage he was dealing with.

“Hi, I’m Herrigan Cartwright,” he said, holding out a hand to the harbormaster. “Welcome aboard the Erin’s Dream.”

“A pleasure, Mr. Cartwright,” the harbormaster said, giving the offered hand a quick shake, his tone making it clear they were just words. “This is a fine looking ship you have.”

“Eddie’s got it where it counts…” Herrigan racked his brains quickly and, just as he was about to skip it remembered the name he’d heard during the ship’s initial inspection. “Mr. Bainbridge. What can I do for you today? Or are you perhaps a connoisseur of submersibles? Ours is a pretty unusual model.”

Bainbridge’s expression sharpened momentarily. “It is at that. We weren’t able to find anything like it in our records.”

Which was because Erin’s Dream had been build in Purgatory Ward’s shipyards at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, something the Australians weren’t supposed to know existed. Herrigan mentally kicked himself for that slip up, comparing submarine design and customization was a typical middle class topic of conversation for Trenchmen but he couldn’t expect others to share it. “She was a custom job, actually,” he answered, hoping it didn’t come off as lame as it sounded. “Would you like a tour?”

“Actually, I would. In a manner of speaking.” Bainbridge gestured behind him to a tall, careworn woman with gray streaks beginning to work through her black hair. “This is the assistant harbormaster, Lauren Cochran. We’ve come down here because there were some discrepancies in your registration we’d like to sort out. The two of us would like to take a look through your vessel if you don’t mind, Captain Cartwright.”

He flicked his gaze from the harbormaster to his assistant and back again. Best to buy time to work out a clearer picture of what was going on. “Actually, I’m not the captain. He’s below decks with our XO, getting a feel for some repairs that need doing.”

“You’re not the captain or the fist mate?” Lauren asked. “Then why did they call you over?”

“Because I am part owner. Captain Duffy and I each own half shares in the ship. So far as business decisions go I’m just as capable of making them as he is.” Herrigan offered her a casual shrug. “Tank must have figured this was about some of the repair supplies we’d requested.”

“Well, ‘Tank’ was close but not quite correct.” The harbormaster held up a flat device about the size of a notepad. “Our visit is related to the salvage you’re offering for sale. I notice you haven’t visited New Darwin before, so you might not be aware of some of the rules we have governing what kind of salvage we can and can’t take. We’ll need to inspect it, and do a second inspection of your vessel for possible illicit salvage.”

“Illicit salvage? That some kind of joke?” A glance between the two officials faces convinced him that no, it wasn’t. Herrigan sighed and waved to get Tank’s attention again. “Ring down to the galley and get Duffy up here, will you?”

“The galley?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah, like I said we’re doing some repairs down there. It’s a long story. I’d take you there but the place isn’t in any shape for company.”

“This is an inspection, Mr. Cartwright.” Bainbridge crossed his arms over his chest. “We’ll need to see all sections of the ship eventually.”

“All right,” Herrigan said, keeping a firm grip on his building annoyance. “We’ll go meet Duffy there. Then, since I’m sure we’re all busy people, I’ll take Mrs. Cochran to inspect our salvage holds and Duffy can give you the grand tour. Sound good?”

“Splendid,” Bainbridge replied. “Lead on.”

——–

The crew of Erin’s Dream was almost as strange as the ship itself. Almost everyone they passed in the corridors was wearing the same kind of slick, plastic shelled jacket that Herrrigan wore. Lauren hadn’t seen that many people on deck wearing them but that may just have been to keep cool. It quickly became apparent why they wore the jackets, temperatures belowdecks weren’t that bad but the humidity bordered on stifling. The jackets collected condensation and wicked it down to the floor quickly. She couldn’t tell what happened to the moisture after that, there certainly weren’t any puddles visible leading her to assume some kind of drainage system was at work.

The humidity was probably the driving force behind the almost total lack of hair on all of the men she’d seen. Most had just shaved their heads bald but some, like Herrigan, had enough fuzz on the top of their heads to be confused for a peach. The one woman she’d seen so far, the XO by all accounts, wore her hair short enough to be mistaken for a man most other places.

That might make things seem drab except the crew all seemed intent on wearing the brightest colors possible. Herrigan and at least half the crew had chosen a bright canary yellow for their waterproof jackets, most of the rest were an equally bright shade of blue. As nearly as Lauren could tell, the color didn’t correspond to job description in any way. While clothes tended to be loose cut and shapeless the crew seemed to favor crazy patterns on the fabric and, when mixed with tools sticking out of pockets,  bandanas on heads or broad leather belts, the whole crew had a vaguely piratical air.

Even Captain Duffy, who out of the whole crew wore the only gray waterproof jacket she’d seen and wore a button down shirt, accessorized with a bolo tie and iron gray hoop earrings.

Herrigan’s black trimmed, yellow clothes would have made him unremarkable in comparison to the rest of the crew except for the fact that he was armed.

Lauren caught sight of the weapons as he cranked open the pressure door leading into what he called the salvage bay. On the side of his belt he wore what looked like an ionizer with an unfamiliar control scheme. A knife handle stuck out from behind his back. She couldn’t tell more because as soon as she realized what they were he was pushing the door open and his jacket fell to cover them again.

“Tell me, Mrs. Cochran, what exactly is illicit salvage?” He asked, ushering her into a comparatively large compartment that, for all it’s size, was nearly crammed full with a set of six minisubs painted the bright sky blue she was starting to suspect was the signature color of Erin’s Dream.

Lauren cleared her throat, suddenly a little nervous. Herrigan Cartwright didn’t strike her as a particularly dangerous man, with no hair on his head his ears seemed comically prominent and the rest of him was a bit too gangly and awkward to be really threatening. If anything he looked kind of like a forty year old man who’d never outgrown his teenaged gawkiness. But an armed man was an armed man, and he might not like what he was about to hear.

“Australia has a law against salvaging any vessel that’s been on the ocean floor less than five years. Ships that do so can be barred from our ports and scrap companies that purchase such salvage can be fined.”

Herrigan’s brow furrowed. “Really? How can you tell? It’s not like they’re dated when you find them on the ocean floor, after all.”

“We have a process for that,” Lauren said, waving the tablet she’d brought with her and hoping Herrigan didn’t want any details she didn’t have. “It won’t take more than an hour to run the inspection, depending on how much scrap you have.”

“We only got the front hold half full before we had the mishap that brought us here,” Herrigan said, waving to their left. “There’s nothing in the aft hold right now, although you can have a look there if you want.”

“We can do that after.” He didn’t seem interested in what the tablet was supposed to be doing in all this and that was a relief. “Lead on.”

“You got it.” He threaded his way between the minisubs and the wall of the bay, taking a moment to stop and examine the manipulator arms on the vehicle as he went past. They passed a total of three minisubs and Herrigan stopped to look at each one.

“Can I ask what exactly it is you do?” Lauren said as he straightened up from inspecting the arms on the third sub. “You said you’re part owner of the ship but if that was all you are I think you’d be back at home, letting the crew do the earning for you.”

Herrigan laughed. “I’m not sure a crew like this would work for a guy like that. Still, since you asked, I’m the salvage team commander when we’re working on a wreck. The rest of the time I’m the deputy and assistant – well, chief cook now, I guess.” Lauren’s face twitched towards a scowl before she could catch herself and Herrigan caught it. “The food’s not that bad, honest.”

“I’m sure it’s not,” she said, absently rubbing at her wrist. “Deputy, you say? Are you a union man or something?”

“Or something,” he agreed, nodding vaguely. “But mostly, I cook.”

“I just don’t like the idea.”

“Of cooking?”

“Salvage.”

“Oh.” He was quiet for a moment as the finished crossing the bay. As he cranked the next pressure door open he asked, “Any particular reason?”

She mulled over what to tell him as he swung the door open and ushered her into the next compartment. The lights clicked on as he stepped in behind her. Finally, Lauren said, “My husband died at sea. I wasn’t… I didn’t really think anything about salvage before. But after… I have a hard time with the idea of total strangers pulling his ship apart around his body.”

Herrigan was quiet for a few minutes, leaving her with her thoughts and the sight of a dozen or so racks of neatly cut hull plates, crates of more complex parts like pumps or electrical boxes and who knew what else. Finally she gathered herself together and brought her tablet to life, pulled up the utility she needed and went to work.

“Ever heard of Erin McClain?” Herrigan asked after she’d been engrossed in looking over the salvage for a minute or two.

“No.” Lauren glanced up from her tablet. “Did she design this ship?”

“Not exactly, although it is named after her. She died a good five or six years before it was built.” Herrigan offered a casual shrug. “Kind of well known in shipbuilding circles. She was a big advocate of recycling. Said reusing what others left us furthered their legacy, rather than harming it. When Eddie was built I guess the christeners thought a salvage ship ought to be named after someone like that.”

“A nice sentiment, anyway.” Lauren went back to the salvage and tried not to think about where it came from or who it might have once belonged to. Or, for that matter, whether it was radioactive.

——–

“This is spare parts storage but most of that is up on deck right now. You’d be amazed how that kind of thing gets jumbled up over the years.” Duffy forced a smile. “Finding the patches and equipment to fix the hull breach you saw in the galley gave us a good excuse to sort it.”

“I was amazed to see a part of your ship look so… empty,” Bainbridge agreed, a hint of condescension in his voice.

“It’s a salvage sub,” Gwen said, ice in her voice colder than the Trench itself. “Space is at a premium.”

“Of course.” Bainbridge peered around at the empty shelves for a moment, boredom evident on his face. “Forgive me, Captain Duffy, but I’m beginning to suspect that this whole visit is a waste of everyone’s time. Maybe-”

“Captain?” Young Phil’s head poked through the pressure door at the other end of the compartment.

Duffy resisted the urge to try and shoo him away, after twenty minutes of the ship’s most boring features they’d almost gotten rid of the harbormaster. But shooing the young tech away now would look bad. “Yes, Phil?”

“Gramps wants you down in aft oxygen processing.” Old Phil and Young Phil were actually related, grandfather and grandson, and they had certain qualities in common. A tendency to ignore anyone that didn’t strike them as important was one of them and, given the fact that he didn’t even glance at Gwen or the harbormaster meant that whatever Old Phil wanted it was strictly Captain’s Business.

“I’m sorry, if you’d excuse me for a minute, my-”

“Captain, in case you’ve forgotten this is a total inspection,” Bainbridge said, immediately attentive. “We’ve started, we may as well finish. Let’s have a look at this oxygen processing compartment, shall we?”

“If you insist,” Duffy said, hiding a smile.  This might be to his advantage after all. It looked like the snappily dressed harbormaster just needed one more push to get him off the boat and oxygen processing would do nicely. “Right this way, gentleman.”

Their destination was several compartments aft and one deck down, requiring a little backtracking and a lot of edging past damp, sweaty crew. Once, when Graham came by leading a pair of crewmen carrying bags full of spoiled food from the ruined galley, he thought the harbormaster was about to bolt. But Bainbridge sucked in his stomach, smoothed down the front of his snazzy suit and let the three men by. A few moments later Duffy cranked open the pressure door into oxygen processing and let the harbormaster and his two men in first, sharing a smile with Gwen behind their backs.

“What is this?” Bainbridge exclaimed a moment later, a hand going over his mouth and nose in a vain attempt to combat the smell of compost and seawater. “Captain Duffy, why do you have a compartment full of seaweed?”

“It’s oxygen processing,” the Phils said in unison. The younger finished the thought, pushing into the compartment and trotting over to his grandfather. “We pump air through here and the seaweed breaks down the carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen and emergency food staples.”

Bainbridge looked around at the room in horror. The compartment was actually just a couple of narrow pathways through floor to ceiling water tanks crammed full of fernlike seaweed and clinging pillows of algae. “And this actually provides you with enough oxygen?”

“Well, this and the other two similar compartments throughout the ship handle about two thirds of our needs under normal circumstances,” Duffy said, pulling the pressure door closed behind him.

“Or they would if we could get that leak fixed,” Old Phil said, pulling an unhealthy reddish plant out of one of the tanks and tossing it into a bucket by his feet. Dozens of other dying plants already filled it to overflowing. “Captain if this keeps up we’re not going to be able to count on this compartment for more than half it’s usual output. The plants are dying off and it’ll take weeks, maybe months, for new splittings from the other compartments to get up to full size.”

“So we’ll take on some tanks of oxygen along with the other supplies. We’re already bankrupting ourselves on this run anyways.” Duffy shook his head ruefully. “We can handle running a little heavy in O2 reserves if we-”

A pinging noise from one of Bainbridge’s two men cut him off. The lackey, a big, tattooed guy with enough gut to suggest he spent more time in paperwork than honest work, pulled out one of the tablet computer gizmos that most of the dock workers seemed to carry and consulted it for a second. Then he said in alarm, “Harbormaster, this compartment is radioactive!”

“Well what do you think’s killing the seaweed?” Old Phil demanded. “Our reactor hasn’t cooled down enough to apply a patch yet.”

“It’s not dangerous to humans if we avoid long term exposure,” Young Phil added. “The seaweed is only affected because it’s been stuck next to the reactor for a week and a half.”

Bainbridge slowly turned to look at Duffy, sheer horror written across his features. “This ship is powered by a nuclear reactor?”

“Yes?” He hadn’t meant to be snide but Duffy’s answer still came out more like a question. The growing storm of emotions on the harbormaster’s face prompted the captain to add, “Is this going to be a problem?”

“Is it-” Bainbridge actually sputtered for a full five seconds, his men shifting nervously and exchanging glances as they waited for some cue on what to do. “This is an outrage, captain! Your ship will be impounded immediately! And you, Mr. Duffy, if that’s really your name, you will…”

At that point it looked like no more useful information was forthcoming. And really, after threatening to take his ship what more could there be to hear? Duffy looked at Gwen and said, “Tell Cartwright he needs to get up here. Now.”

——–

“Impound the ship?” Herrigan stared at the intercom in disbelief, as if doubting Gwen would somehow change what he was hearing. “Because of a reactor leak?”

“That’s what it sounds like. I – What?” The last bit was indistinct, not said into the pickup on the other end. There was a click and the speaker went dead.

Herrigan sighed and switched his own end of the conversation off. “Come on, Mrs. Cochran. Your boss is pitching a fit about our reactor.”

Lauren came out of the salvage stacks, her face noticeably paler. She could almost pass for a natural Trenchman. “Your what?”

“Our power plant has been leaking radiation since our accident. We’re planning to patch it tomorrow, once things cool a bit more.” Herrigan looked back through the door way as he waited for Lauren to catch up. She seemed oddly reluctant to get any closer. “I’m not irradiated or anything, it’s not a big leak. We can patch it, at least long enough to get it looked at by someone certified.”

“Who are you people?” She asked quietly. “And where are you from?”

“We’re salvagers,” Herrigan said, stepping back into the salvage bay slowly, wondering what he’d said that was wrong. “Our home port is Norfolk.”

“I thought that’s what your paperwork said.” She held her tablet between the two of them like it was a shield. “But no one calls it that anymore. Everyone calls it the Greater Chesapeake Port Authority, they have ever since the docks had to be moved out. And the Living States wouldn’t let a nuclear powered ship use that as home port.”

“The Living States?” The question was out before Herrigan could stop it.

“Who are you?” Laruen demanded, Herrigan’s confusion apparently making her bold.

He pulled in a lungfull of air and sighed. “Okay, fine. Game’s up. I’m Herrigan Cartwright, part owner and salvage commander of Erin’s Dream. And I’m a fully deputized constable of the Third Ward of the Alcatraz Pact, born and raised on the bottom of the Marianas Trench.”

Lauren stared at him in what he took to be an open invitation to continue. “We’ve been down there for almost ninety years, you know. It was a joint project, mostly Brazil and the US – you still got the US?” She nodded mutely. “That may not be good for us, then. Anyway, back then people were trying to combat global warming and decided to round up all the most committed skeptics and exile them some place where their ‘harmful practices’ couldn’t reach the world at large. And I think the sealed biosphere they were stuck in was supposed to help them see the errors of their ways, force them to adopt sustainable living and be less greedy or drive themselves to extinction. I’m not surprised you never heard of it, the project was kept hush-hush. At least to the public, other governments must have heard about it because we wound up getting people from just about everywhere except Australia – probably have your history to thank for that – and many of the later ones weren’t people exiled for views that didn’t match the political climate.”

Herrigan leaned against the doorframe and watched Lauren’s expression. He’d been hoping for a good mix of conflicting emotions – our at least outrage over his bad joke at the end – but all he was really getting was shock. Maybe a final push. “Funny how that worked out, given as how we finally get back up to the surface and, as near as we can tell, you’re stuck in the middle of an ice age with falling sea levels and everything. What caused that?”

Lauren finally looked him in the eye. “Nuclear winter.”

It was his turn to process things, and he took his time doing it. Then summed up his thoughts. “Huh.”

Fiction Index
Part Two

Stumbling Blocks

Posted by natechen on

Writer’s block is widely viewed as the creative disaster and with good reason. When you sit down and. Just. Can’t. Write. It feels horrible. But rarely, in my experience, does the inability to write boil down to any one thing. Typically there’s a bunch of different things contributing to your inability to write and sometimes all you need to break the slump is to look at those things one at a time and determine if that’s your problem. By breaking things down writer’s block becomes a manageable problem. So here, in order of how often I find these things intruding in my writing, is a list of the typical building blocks of writer’s block and a suggestion on how you might deal with them.

  • Physical discomfort. Yeah, this is usually the biggest one for me. Sitting for a while results in cramps and sore muscles and getting up every so often to stretch, get the blood moving, ect, does wonders. Don’t discount hunger or thirst, either. While constant snacking while writing isn’t healthy, neither is starving yourself. A glass of water and a quick snack can do wonders to restore your concentration.
  • Stress. It’s an unfortunate truth that, while I enjoy doing theater or other such activities, juggling them all can often leave me too stressed or distracted to focus on writing. Now sometimes writing can serve as a bulwark between you and stress, allowing you to focus on something you enjoy while you recuperate for your next bout of stressful activity. But stress can build to the point where blocking it out for a time is not a healthy way of dealing with it. Sometimes you just need to slow down. Set writing aside and grab life with both hands for a while. Confronting the problem straight on, or slogging through a period of intense business with no distractions, is often the best way to get past this block. Constantly trying to write during times of high stress may make it harder to let go of the tension once the tough times are past, so it may be safer to just set writing aside for a while.
  • Lack of time (or sometimes laziness). This actually ties with stress in problems I have. Some stories need a lot of research, a lot of preparation and a lot of careful thought put into them. A case in point: If you’ve seen the Project Sumter Timeline you can see there are at least two major periods of time that are ripe for development. In fact, the story was originally supposed to focus on the Civil War, not the modern era. The early story ideas there just weren’t gelling because I didn’t know enough about the Western Theater of the Civil War to compile a good narrative. This situation is only nominally improved now. If a story needs more work than you’re putting into it and you don’t have the time maybe you need to simplify the story. Or maybe you need to shelve it and work on something else. Of course, if you do have the time, maybe you just need to focus more…
  • Convention. It’s very easy to get caught up in the idea that “this is how things should be”. For example, telepaths are almost always fearsome figures in paranormal fiction usually because they have ability to control people’s minds. How many stories can you do about that? How many different telepath characters can you create? But in Mindspace Investigations telepaths are feared more for their ability to directly manipulate the nervous system, knocking people unconscious with a touch or broadcasting pain so powerfully people keel over. The result is a  very different kind of telepath surrounded by different social dynamics and with different character quirks. Look over your story and make sure the tropes and conventions you’re using are empowering your story, not preventing it from going somewhere new and interesting. Because new and interesting is usually where stories need to go.
  • Original expectations. Sometimes you expect a story to go one way and it winds up somewhere else. Sometimes totally unexpected characters crop up in the background and start demanding attention. Under no circumstances can you let your original plot idea get in the way of where the story actually goes. Yes, make sure you stay on theme, but don’t be afraid of the extra work that comes with shifting focus to better suit the story you get rather than chasing the ghost of a story that may have never really existed.
  • Lack of ideas you like. Sometimes you can see stories places and just have no desire to follow up on them. Don’t force yourself. Instead grab a book, hit the movies or call up some friends and hang out and do something other than writing for a while. Give yourself a chance to recharge a little and soon enough your writer’s instincts will present you with something worthwhile. For me it usually takes fifteen minutes to an hour, but your mileage may vary.

Hopefully that helps you the next time you find yourself staring at a blank sheet of paper/word processor. Good luck!

Original Art: Hydroelectric

Posted by natechen on

Been playing around with the pen and ink again! This time around I employ the artist’s right to tinker with things to make a better picture – the astute viewer will note that the picture below is not remotely like anything that happens in Water Fall, although it’s meant to encapsulate the raid on Chainfall in a single image.

Hydroelectric0001

Circuit at top left. From left to right along the bottom we have Frostburn, Helix, Coldsnap, Samson and Massif.

I played around some more with the water and I’m more satisfied with it than I was when I did last time it came up. I still feel the white/black/gray balance is a bit off here and the “trees” in the top right don’t look quite right. Bob Ross made it look so easy…

But art is never perfect and that goes for the visuals as well as the written word.

Summer Plans

Posted by natechen on

This summer the plan is to write stories.

Shocking, yes, but I hope not entirely unpalatable to the majority of my audience. Of course, you may want to know what kinds of stories, how long they’ll be and things like that. Worry not! I have actually put some thought into that and I have plan. Of course, I had a plan last summer and things wound up going awry more than once. Hopefully this time things will work out better.

The current plan calls four a total of seven short stories, one of which was posted last week in honor of Memorial Day. Memorial to a Saint was a Sumter short but only one of two that I’m planning for this summer. The second will come at the end of the other five and will in no way serve as a prelude to Thunder Clap. Seriously, it’s related in only the most tangential fashion.

That gives us five stories to spread across three other sets of narrative worlds. We’ll start next week by going back to the divided futures and seeing what the crew of Erin’s Dream is up to and what Port Darwin looks like in a hundred years. Then we’ll jump a couple of hundred years further into the future and see how of the most powerful families on Mars lives. In three weeks we’ll be back on Earth, visiting a group of the Weavers of the Heartlands that live right here in my home city of Fort Wayne. Finally we’ll abandon Earth as we know it entirely and tag along with Dmitri Dostoevsky on the business of empire for a couple of weeks before we jump back to Project Sumter’s neck of the woods. Of course, with all that world hopping going on there’s no telling where in time we might come down, so be prepared for anything.

With all that out of the way it will be time to start the third and final novel planned for this visit to Project Sumter’s timeline. Thunder Clap is the culmination of all the work I’ve been putting into Circuit and Helix over the past couple of years and I’m excited about it. Further, there’s not much I could say by way of introduction that wouldn’t steal from the story itself so I don’t plan to write an introduction so we’ll be swinging straight into the meat of things. By my count that means that, if everything goes as planned (ha!), the first chapter of Thunder Clap will come out some time in early August. I hope you’re looking forward to it. I know I am.

In the mean time, please enjoy the short stories and let me know what you think!

Genrely Speaking: Low Fantasy

Posted by natechen on

Time to speak Genrely.  Low fantasy is, as you might expect, the polar opposite of high fantasy. Low fantasy plays around with many of the trappings of high fantasy but applies them to very different ends. The names of the genres kind of sum up the differences. While high fantasy focuses on the big ideas of the human condition low fantasy examines the minutia. Interestingly, it is possible to craft a story that mixes elements of high and low fantasy in one of the harder to quantify genres in existence (see Quintessence for one example).

So what is it that makes low fantasy what it is?

  1. An emphasis on characters who are not at all important in the scheme of things. The people who make up the central characters of a low fantasy story are not movers and shakers, not planning to overthrow governments and not wielders of forces that are out of the ordinary for their world. The scale of events and the people they focus on are, in some ways, much more normal than the typical fantasy stories.
  2. Focus on day to day activities. While this doesn’t exclude the kind of swashbuckling adventure that you’re accustomed to seeing in movies like The Lord of the Rings or reading about in The Chronicles of Narnia, the action in low fantasy ultimately has much less impact on the state of nations than the action in high fantasy. The genre simply assumes that there are people who do that kind of work for a living. There will always be tombs to rob, monsters to fight and evil wizards to put down. After a while it becomes kind of humdrum, and what does that mean for characters and societies?
  3. An abundance of magic. Magic in low fantasy tends to be commonplace. Not everyone knows how to use it but chances are everyone’s seen it a time or two. It tends to be of the sufficiently analyzed version, will come in all kinds in all kinds of shapes and sizes, might be tied in some way to a person’s ancestry or powerful artifacts, or follow any one of a dozen other rules, or just be available to anyone who takes the time to learn it. Its presence or absence in a situation is in no way significant.

What are the weaknesses of low fantasy? It tends to come off as the fantasy equivalent of status quo is god. The characters aren’t out for big purposes they are, at best, out to help a few people they know or just out for their own good. It can be hard to get invested in stories where nothing meaningful ever happens. Sure, the characters go out and have adventures but ten years later they’re sitting in the same bars, drinking and trying to figure out where their next big break will come from. I’m not saying stories about people in regular situations struggling with realistic problems are bad. But something about them cuts against the grain of a genre grouping that shares the same root with the word “fantastic” know what I mean?

What are the strengths of low fantasy? Low fantasy thrives on the way it proves ye olde maxim, the more things change the more they stay the same. We may not live in a world with flying carpets or travel between parallel earths but we can all appreciate the importance of paying the bills and keeping thieves and murderers off the streets – no matter how those crimes are accomplished.

At first glance low fantasy may look like an unappealing genre. Why add all the swords and sorcery if it’s ultimately incidental to the stories? Isn’t the author just being lazy, making sure they don’t have to research all the gritty little details of what they want to write about? Isn’t this a cop out?

The answer is, no. Low fantasy can act as a kind of insulation between the audience and the story. Some things may be uncomfortable when looked at in a way that hits close to home. By looking at these things through the perspective of the fantastic we can give the audience a degree of separation that makes these subjects easier to handle. Of course, by the same token the fantastic may turn off part of your audience as well. It’s important to know who you’re writing for, after all. What’s important is to take low fantasy on it’s own terms – stories of little people in big worlds. And after all, isn’t that what we all are?

Cool Things: Rear Window

Posted by natechen on

Let me just say that I have a soft spot for Alfred Hitchcock. Not the crazy horror movies like Psycho or The Birds, but the masterful suspense films like To Catch a Thief, North by Northwest or The Man Who Knew Too Much. In fact, I seriously considered making this month “Alfred Hitchcock Movie Month” but there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. So to round out Classic Color Movie Month, here’s Rear Window.

Rear Window is part of the National Film Registry, a perennial favorite of the American Film Institute and well liked on sites like Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic. What more can one man possibly add to the discussion?

Well, probably not a whole lot. Other than telling you that you really, really need to see this movie if you haven’t. But we’re going to try anyways.

At the center of Rear Window is photographer L.B. Jefferies (Jimmy Stewart). He’s recently broken his leg and spends his time in his cramped apartment confined to a wheelchair, watching the goings on in the courtyard outside his window and the buildings across the way. Equipped with a telephoto lens and a large supply of time on his hands, Jefferies alternates between contemplating the world below and trying to hold off the advances of his high society girlfriend, Lisa Freemont (Grace Kelly). A nurse, Stella (Thelma Ritter), provided by his insurance company also visits from time to time.

Things really go wild when one night, during a downpour, Jefferies hears a woman crying help. Among his neighbors there is a travelling salesman named Thorwald (Raymond Burr) who’s wife is a bedridden nag and who, after that one stormy night, Jeffries never sees again.

Jeffries soon begins to suspect that she’s been murdered. But if a man won’t stop at murdering his wife and cutting up the body to hide it, is there really any reason to think he’ll stop at anything else to get away with it?

It’s no surprise that Rear Window is considered one of Hitchcock’s greatest films. While the typical thriller starts at a breakneck pace and doesn’t let us off until it’s all said and done, Rear Window takes a very, very different approach. Things start mellow and almost relaxing and we get to know Jefferies and his friends. We’re most of the way through the first act before Mrs. Thorwald disappears. Even then, no one’s really sure what happened. And it’s not like someone would commit murder right there, in an apartment facing a courtyard where everyone has been sleeping with their windows open in an attempt to beat the heat.

Would they?

Perhaps the most brilliant part of the story is the fact that Jefferies is confined to his apartment. He really can’t leave to investigate, can’t talk to people other than those who come to his apartment to visit, can’t do much of anything that we, the viewers, can except talk to his friends and ask them for favors.  This creates a kind of empathy between audience and character, we’re alike in our powerlessness. We can only observe and hope things work out for the best. At the end, when Jefferies faces his reckoning, we almost feel like we should be there helping, because we feel we’ve been just as meddlesome as he has even though we ourselves have done nothing.

There’s more to Rear Window, of course. All the best stories are wheels within enigmas within mysteries of storytelling. Stewart is a brilliant actor and his costars match him in every respect. The cinematography is brilliant and the music is a nice touch. But, above everything else, the pacing of Rear Window, it’s incredibly slow but inexorable buildup to the climax, the way it feels at once relentless and light, inevitable yet somehow a little fun, is a lesson in pacing many modern film makers could draw on. A lot.

This is really a classic, not just for reasons of nostalgia but for it’s incredible construction and pacing. If you’ve never seen Rear Window, I think it’s time you went out and remedied that. Right now.

Memorial to a Saint

Posted by natechen on

(Author’s Note: I had originally intended to take a week off after finishing Water Fall to get the summer schedule knocked into place, finalize some ideas and share with you my plans. Long story short, this was supposed to be a post announcing another series of short stories in-between Water Fall and Thunder Clap. Then I remembered that today is Memorial Day and decided it would be more fitting to have this post today, take next week as the week off and continue from there. So today, a Project Sumter short story. Next week, the summer schedule.) 

For the first month and a half the Charleston office of Project Sumter had been one of the busiest places in the city, possibly in the state. But after a solid eight weeks of dominating the news cycles the existence of what the public had quickly dubbed superheroes but the government insisted on calling talented individuals had started to feel more blasé and less exciting. First superhuman stories didn’t make it above the fold anymore. Then talented people got relegated to the second page.

Freelance journalists like Addison Michaels weren’t happy about that, but they were learning to accept the changing realities. If nothing else a journalist knew how to be flexible.

That didn’t mean she didn’t find herself trudging down the street from the bus stop, hoping that this time there might be a worthwhile story hanging around the reception area. Sure Lawrence the receptionist left a lot to be desired, with his constant lisp and poor grasp of manners, but he was a hold over from the days when discouraging the public was the way things were supposed to work, not a deviation from expectations. And while Lawrence could be rude he did know everything that was going on around the office – and thus, he had a good grasp on what was up with talents all across the country. If there was a story to be had, he’d know it.

At least, so her thoughts had run as she came around the corner and started towards the steps up to the office building where Sumter Headquarters was located.

Then she saw the car.

Well, not so much the car, that was a fairly nondescript black sedan, the kind of thing people had been associating with secret government work since long before people knew about Project Sumter. It was more who was getting out of it that mattered. He was, as she had heard so many people say in print, on the radio and on the morning news, shorter than you expected when you met him in person.

In fact Alan Dunn, or Special Agent Double Helix as many people still insisted on calling him, was barely tall enough to see over the roof of the car he stood beside. But that wasn’t what really mattered to Addison. What mattered was that, next to Special Agent Samson, he was probably the most famous talent in the country. That wasn’t saying much at the moment, but the news that he was in town had to be worth something to someone.

She hustled down the street to the curb as he swung the door shut calling, “Excuse me? Agent Dunn?”

For a split second Addison thought she saw Helix’ shoulder slump forward but, almost as soon as it registered he was turning, drawing himself up straight and smiling. If the smile looked forced and his posture was a little more wooden than you’d expect she tried to be understanding, not for the first time reminding herself that these people didn’t expect the press any more than a freelance journalist expected respect, especially from those with steady employment.

“Good morning,” Helix said, taking a few steps away from the curb to meet her. “What can I do for you, ma’am?”

“Hi, I’m Addison Michaels.” She held out her hand for a handshake. “I’m a freelance writer.”

After a split second’s hesitation he accepted the shake saying, “I guessed as much. I’m sorry, Miss Michaels, I’m not actually here in any kind of formal capacity so I don’t really have anything to say at the moment.”

“No, that’s fine Agent Dunn – do you prefer Agent Dunn or Double Helix?”

“I haven’t answered to Alan Dunn for years, outside of tax purposes.” He offered an eloquent shrug. “Most people call me-”

“Helix! Is that girl a friend of yours?”

Sometime during their brief conversation a huge man with sparse white hair and a face like Ayers Rock had managed to slip in behind Helix and open the sedan’s back door. Now he was carefully helping a small woman in a flower print dress out of the back seat. Helix addressed his next words to her. “Grandma, this is Miss Addison Michaels. We’ve just met.”

“Oh. Have we?” Helix’ grandmother turned to stare at her with an eerily blank expression. A flicker of something passed behind her pale blue eyes and she turned to the white haired man and said in a poorly modulated whisper, “Introduce us, dear. We’ve just met this girl and she seems nice.”

It was a little like having her own grandmother visit her church before she passed away and Addison did her best to hide a wince of sympathy. For his part, the woman’s husband made no indication that he found anything wrong with what she said. He just nodded to his wife and said to Addison, “I’m Sergeant Wake. This is my wife, Clear Skies.”

A shiver passed up Addison’s back. Unless she had misunderstood something, Lawrence said these two were founding members of Project Sumter. “What brings you two to Charleston, if I may ask?”

“Charleston?” Clear Skies looked at Helix in horror. “Are we in Charleston, Helix? Daniel won’t like that.”

“Sunshine.”

Clear Skies looked up at her husband. “Don’t ‘sunshine’ me, you two have never gotten along and I know you promised him you’d avoid each other after the war.”

“Sunshine,” Wake said, his voice gentle as baby, his face showing all its years. “Daniel’s been dead for sixteen years. He had a bad heart, you know.”

“Oh.” Her face fell. “I’d forgotten.”

Suddenly Addison felt like an intruder. In many ways that was the job of the press, to intrude on behalf of the public, to keep those in the public eye honest. But these two had never been in the public eye and they’d stopped doing things worth public attention a long time ago. “You know,” she started to say, “maybe I should-”

“There weren’t imbedded reporters with our group, you know,” Wake said, straightening up again. “I never really missed them then, but these days. Well, there’s one story I always thought more people should hear.”

“Grandpa-”

“Don’t ‘grandpa’ me! It’s high time.”

Addison suppressed a smile, wondering if Wake even realized he’d mimicked his wife’s phraseology and town of voice exactly. “I’d love to hear your story, Sergeant Wake.”

Wake offered her his other arm and, after a moment’s hesitation she rested her hand in the crook of his elbow and they started towards the building at a pace clearly aimed at letting Clear Skies keep up with the rest of the group. Ever dozen steps or so, Wake would check on his wife out of the corner of his eye in a way that was really kind of cute. As they made their way leisurely towards the building Wake began.

———

Wake

I only knew him as Saint Elmo, he was this wiry little Italian guy with a mouth so foul you’d never believe the first part of his code name. Back then, Project Sumter was officially a part of the War Department and we were all in the war effort. And back then there was a real important word in front of Air Force – Army. They weren’t different services. So me and Elmo, we’d known each other since back in basic. But the eggheads up in Project High Command, which is what they called it back then, had Ideas about how they were gonna be using his talents. So after basic he shipped out to flight school and I went on to infantry training.

We found each other again in England. That’s a story all in itself. Point was, by the time we flew out over Europe in late September, 1944, we were old pals, me and Elmo. He was the mechanic on the plane that took me out on jumps. Then I’d catch a boat back and we’d do the whole thing again.

But this was something special. It was the last time I’d jump, although we didn’t know it at the time.

I can’t tell you about Operation Garden Grow, it’s still pretty scary stuff. I think about it, sometimes, but rarely on purpose. As I say, I can’t tell you what we were going to do or why high command thought Operation Market Garden would be a good time to do it. This story is about Elmo, so it’s more about getting there than what we did there. So it really starts when our modified B-24 was over the English Channel, me getting settled for another longish trip to Deutschland and trying to stay out of everyone’s way. Wasn’t that hard just yet, since most of the crew doesn’t do much until something unusual happens.

Now Elmo’s crew did these kinds of delivery runs all over, I wasn’t the only talented person running around doing stupid things behind enemy lines and there weren’t that many crews that could be spared to ferry them around. So he saw a lot more of the war than I did, all things considered, and he knew people who could find things, and on the cheap. So when Elmo sat down beside me and handed me a small box I knew it was going to be good.

I’m not real great at describing but she’s still wearing that ring, so you can see it if you want. Nice, ain’t it?

So I ask him, “How much?”

And he tells me, “For you, Sarge, at cost. Three hundred dollars.”

Now that wasn’t just cheap that was downright thievery. Three hundred dollars back then was a lot more than it is now but still. That ring was easily worth five hundred and I said so.

“I picked it up in Cairo from one of the British boys who came through Casablanca,” he says. Gives me the hand wave. “Everyone out there was selling jewelry to try and get out of town before the war. It’s still pretty cheap.”

So I said, “Okay.” And I promised to pay the man once I got back, so long as I did.

We shook on it and Elmo hands me the ring, says, “Now be there to pay up or I’ll make a liar out of you.”

And I give him a glare and say, “I ain’t never been a liar, Saint Elmo, and if you was a real saint you’d be able to see the honesty in my eyes.”

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?” He tells me, and crosses himself all pious like. Sometimes I wish he’d said anything else. And that I’d done something other than laugh at him.

There we are, two guys not quite twenty five, maybe over water, maybe finally over land, flying away without a care in the world when the Messerschmitts show up. Suddenly things get crazy. Flying into combat in a bomber ain’t like the movies. You don’t zoom around much, there’s no rolling or flipping. Usually the flight commander just tells you there’s incoming and you strap down. Then you listen to the guns going off until somebody’s plane quits working and crashes or the other guys decide to go home. When you’re the bomber’s actual payload you don’t even get to see what’s going on.

I’ll spare you what it was like. I don’t know why you kids like the kinds of movies you watch, the kinds of books you read. The whole point of that war was so you wouldn’t have to live all that but you still try anyways. But enough soapboxing. This is about Elmo.

I’d never seen him do anything unusual on any of our flights before. There were guys who were supposed to be able to mess up German radar just by sitting there and frowning, I always figured Elmo was one of them. Useful trick to have up your sleeve but not so great when they already know where you are. Turns out Elmo did his job once we were found, something that hadn’t happened on my last three trips into Europe.

So I’m strapped in down in the hold, Elmo’s up in the middle, ready to deal with problems, the gun crews are pounding away. Maybe we get hit some, maybe we don’t I honestly don’t remember. Maybe that lasts five, ten minutes, maybe it’s an hour. Hard to say.

Finally the flight commander yells from up in the cockpit, “Saints and ministers of grace preserve us!”

That’s Shakespeare, by the way.

So a second after he yells that I see Elmo go rushing past with a weird looking box under one arm. I figure if Elmo’s doing it then it must be Project business so I unstrap and try to get up to him without getting shot or falling over. And I made it most of the way, too, Liberators aren’t that big after all. But as I got to the point where I’d first seen him I happened to look out the window and said a few things that’d shame my mother.

Then, since it’s the kind of thing pilots like to know, I yelled up to the flight commander, “The wing’s on fire!”

“Relax.” Captain Benet, who was my supervising officer, caught up to me and started dragging me back to my seat. “It’ll be fine. Haven’t you ever stopped to wonder what it is Elmo does on these flights?”

“Radar, right?” Because what else would he be doing, know what I mean?

But the captain just snorts and says, “Do you even know what Saint Elmo’s fire is?”

“A… camping thing?”

“It’s a weird thing static causes around planes in flight or the tops of old sailing ships. It looks like fire but it doesn’t burn” He shoved me toward my seat and, since I trusted the guy, I let myself be sat down. “Elmo’s got a gizmo that lets him make the stuff pretty much whenever he wants. I’m guessing they’ve got him making it now. Which means-”

The plane suddenly dove down and I was fumbling to get strapped back in.

“-we’re going to be playing the wounded bird any time now,” Captain finished.

The floor remained tilted at a really uncomfortable angle for a while. And I mean at least a weak, possibly longer. Then the bombardier stuck his head into the bay and said, “There’s one plane that won’t break off. I think the rest left to play with the bomber streams, but if this last guy rides us to the deck he’s gonna nail us when we try and pull up.”

“Can’t your gunners peel him off us?” Captain asks.

“They’re trying. But you may have to jump out early.”

“I can do that,” I say, “but Captain Benet’s gonna splatter something fierce if he bails at this height.”

“Thanks for your concern,” he says, real dry like. Then he thinks for a second. “Jump now.”

“What?” The bombardier and I ask together.

“Fighters can turn sharper than bombers, so they dive longer too, and pilots like to attack from above because it’s easier to hit from that angle. Jump now and hop back up to take out Fritz as his plane comes in for the kill. We’ll circle back and I’ll jump once we get some altitude back.”

There ain’t anyone who sees the really stupid stuff coming. Particularly when it involves people jumping five or six stories straight up and tearing apart a fighter plane with their hands, though that’s not actually how it happened. The thing I remember the most is bailing out of a plane going well over a hundred miles an hour and pushing out, against the ground, as hard as I could as I came down. I hit hard and jumped a couple of times, like my dad and granddad taught me. Flailing around on the way down I caught a small tree, about as big around as my leg, with an arm and knocked it over, which gave me an idea. Rather than go up after the ME myself I sent the tree up instead.

Getting the leverage for that kind of throw is tricky – I had to wrap an arm around an even bigger tree in order to brace myself and get the thing started on it’s way, then I spun it around a bit to gain momentum. By the time I had that done I was sure that I’d lost my chance to hit the plane but all told it only took a few seconds.

I don’t think I need to tell you that flinging trees at incoming fighters is not something they cover in basic. Or even advanced training. I was pretty much on my own. So I gauged the angle as best I could and let the tree fly as the ME-109 got close.

Of course, I missed.

But the funny thing about a tree flying over your head at forty miles an hour is people tend to duck. It’s pure reflex. So when my tree sailed over his canopy I guess I can’t really blame him for swerving to avoid it. Unfortunately that messed up his attempt to pull out of his dive and he lost control, smashing into the ground seconds later. I winced and took a moment to shake myself out, then found a tree that looked like it could hold me and climbed it.

It took a few seconds for our flight crew to come back around and drop off Captain Benet. I knew when they did because for a few seconds the wings lit up with streamers of fire for just a second and I could see his chute backlit by them as he came down. That was the last I ever saw of Saint Elmo and his crew. I never paid him the three hundred dollars I owed him, because I made it back and he didn’t. Always felt like that made me a liar. And I never even knew his name. I came here today to fix that.

——–

Addison and Helix stopped by the door as Wake and Clear Skies headed out into the small courtyard at the center of the Sumter office complex. Maybe twenty gravestones dotted the grass. There was another pair of men there, one aged enough to need a walker, the other somewhere between Helix and his grandfather. As Helix’ grandparents made their way across the cemetery it quickly became clear they were headed towards the same grave the other two were standing at. In fact, the older of the two men there waved the younger away.

“Who is that?” Addison asked.

“Chief Stillwater,” Helix said, leaning against the side of the building as he watched. “Elmo flew grandpa in. Stillwater hauled him out. Grandma made sure the weather was good for the trip. It was a self contained team.”

“Until they lost Saint Elmo.”

“That was part of it.” But Helix didn’t elaborate on what else might have changed.

Rather than possibly alienate her subject Addison decided to accept a change in subject. “What did Wake mean when he said he came here today to fix something?”

“This is kind of like our Arlington Cemetery here,” Helix said, gesturing around at the gravestones. “Most of the talents killed in World War Two are buried here, those we could find remains of. But even here, their lives aren’t – weren’t – remembered with real names. Not until last month, when mandatory codenames were officially abolished.”

“So they can finally find out who he was. But… don’t take this the wrong way, but does that make a difference?”

Helix gave her a sideways look. “I heard a lot of grandpa’s stories when I was younger. He thought I needed to know what I was signing up for if I joined Project Sumter, so he didn’t spare me much and he didn’t worry about whether I had clearance to know what he told me. But he never told me that story.”

She nodded. “I’m honored.”

“No.” He scowled. “Well, yes. You were. But you were also practice. If I know my grandpa, and I do, he’s not going to stop with just a name. Elmo had family. Possibly kids, definitely younger brothers and sisters. He’ll find them, if he can. And then he’ll tell the story again. He’ll tell it to any of them that will listen, until he’s gone and it stops being his story and it becomes their story.”

“Not quite.” Addison leaned back against the wall next to Helix and watched the three old soldiers standing quietly by the grave, and said, “It’s history.”

A hint of a smile passed unnoticed and Helix said, “I suppose it is, at that.”

Fiction Index

Amazing vs. Spiderman – A Deconstruction

Posted by natechen on

A couple of weeks ago (actually, only a week at the time of this writing but longer once this actually goes up) I went to see The Amazing Spiderman 2. I’ve heard a lot about how Marc Webb’s Spiderman movies are superior to Sam Raimi’s, usually from the perspective of faithfulness to the comics, but personally I wasn’t sure what that was based on. I felt that Spiderman was a better movie than The Amazing Spiderman but then I’m not super familiar with the source material. People were saying the sequel was also really good, and that this new Spiderman franchise was shaping up to be great. So I went to see The Amazing Spiderman 2 expecting to see something better than the first movie.

I was… somewhat disappointed.

So I was thinking to myself, how can I turn this waste misapplication of time and money into something useful? Then I realized! It’s time for another episode of disappointment deconstructed!

OBLIGATORY SPOILERS WARNING! I CANNOT DISCUSS THE THINGS I WANT TO DISCUSS HERE WITHOUT SPOILERS! DO NOT READ PAST THIS POINT IF THAT BOTHERS YOU!

Okay, with the obligatory spoilers warning out of the way let me start by saying this analysis is going to be entirely about the writing of the first two Sam Raimi Spiderman movies and the first two Marc Webb Amazing Spiderman movies. Here are things that I’m not talking about:

  • Faithfulness to the comics version of the character. I’ve never read any large amount of Spiderman comics, although I have seen some of the 1990s Fox animated series. More on this later, but I just wanted to say –  I care more about the movie being as strong as it can standing alone than being totally faithful to the comic book character. Spiderman is like any comic book character who’s been around more than ten years – he’s been written by a lot of people in a lot of different ways, I’m not sure it’s fair to say there’s any one right way to depict him. The Raimi version may have been farther afield than most, but the real question is does that make the movies better or worse as movies?
  • Andrew Garfield and/or Toby Maguire. This isn’t about the acting in the films, most of the cast did well with what they were given. I think Garfield did a better job as Peter Parker in his two films than Maguire did. He’s better suited to the role, he felt more engaged in his performance and he’s got great physical humor skills. But you can hit a home run in a disappointing movie and the movie will still be disappointing.
  • Cinematography or effects. This have come a long way in ten years. It’s not really fair to compare them. They certainly don’t define how good a movie is.
  • The directors. While I’m going to be occasionally identifying these movie franchises as “Raimi’s” and “Webb’s” I do recognize that directors don’t usually have that much influence over the scripts they’re given. It’s just a way to refer to the movies without having to type out the longer titles – and the Spiderman movies are often tied back to Sam Raimi when they’re mentioned anyway. Why fight convention?
  • I’m not discussing the third movie in either franchise. One hasn’t been made yet, the other may as well not have been. ‘Nuff said.

So what, exactly, is it that disappoints me about The Amazing Spiderman and The Amazing Spiderman 2, particularly as compared to Spiderman and Spiderman 2?

Power vs. Responsibility 

Uncle Ben’s declaration that with great power comes great responsibility is such a classic piece of Americana that I knew it even before I’d seen or read any Spiderman at all. It’s supposed to be a foundational part of Peter Parker and Spiderman.

Raimi’s Spiderman takes this lesson to heart and becomes a costumed hero, defeats some villains and does his best to do it quickly, before anyone gets hurt. He feels bad about screwing up his job delivering pizzas, missing dates with his girlfriend and cutting class and, while he keeps doing what he knows needs to be done, he’s not sure he makes a difference. Spiderman eventually grows to the point where, when he faces down Doc Ock, he passes on what he knows – the Doc is the one to face up to what he’s done and clean up the mess he’s created, not Spiderman. Sure, Otto needed Spiderman there to smack sense back into him but ultimately the runaway fusion project is ended because Spiderman convinces Doc Ock of his responsibility to fix things, not because Spiderman is a hero.

Although in some ways teaching heroics to others might make him one.

Webb’s Spiderman doesn’t seem to learn anything about responsibility. He makes a promise to Captain Stacey which he clearly has no intention of keeping, wastes time yammering at crooks for no good reason instead of getting with the arresting, all while the city around him is shot up and run over by crazed Ruskies, and eventually sees another person he cares about die so he can relearn the lesson he supposedly learned when Uncle Ben died: he has an obligation to protect people with his abilities. Seriously, why did I sit through the second half of The Amazing Spiderman and 98% of The Amazing Spiderman 2 just to discover that Our Hero has made no appreciable character growth?

Most of the villains Spiderman confronts are representative of power without responsibility attached to it. Unfortunately all the slapstick antics Webb’s Spiderman spends his time on make it hard to see any contrast besides one of degree. Sure, Peter Parker’s not burning down the city or ruling the world but part of me wonders if a superpowered clown is really any better than a normal one…

Friendship vs. Obligation 

Harry Osborn is the son of Norman Osborn, heir to Oscorp and a friend of Peter’s. He’s supposed to serve as a kind of foil to Peter, they’re the opposites in terms of wealth, sociability and popularity.

In Raimi’s Spiderman we meet Harry almost as soon as we meet Peter. They hang out, they do stuff, they vie for Norman Osborn’s approval (well, more Harry tries to get some attention from his dad, Norman loves Peter).

Then Norman turns himself into the Green Goblin and fights Spiderman to the death. Harry never knows about his father’s alter ego but he does find Spiderman with Norman’s body, and forms a grudge. He knows Peter knows something about Spiderman and pressures his friend to do something to bring his father’s killer to justice. Suddenly Peter is caught between his friendship with Harry and his duty as Spiderman. It’s good, dramatic, character building stuff.

Webb’s Spiderman gets none of that. We don’t even see Harry until the second movie, we barely see Norman at all and he dies (of a genetic disease!) before he does a single thing of any significance. Peter doesn’t feel like he has any connection to any of the Osborns, except possibly through his parents who’s role in all this remains incredibly vague. Sure, Harry claims to have once been friends with Peter but we sure don’t see them acting like it much.

Harry and Peter’s friendship feels more like a plot contrivance here. They don’t have any real reason to know each other except that they need to argue with each other and a reason for Harry’s hating Spiderman needs to be established. This is achieved, but it’s sloppy and feels more than a little dumb. Instead of providing dramatic tension and giving character insight it just sort of sits there.

Acceptance vs. Rejection

Both Peter Parker and Spiderman are a kind of outcasts. Peter is ignored by his peers, Spiderman is reviled by a vocal portion of the general public. Both just want to be accepted for what they can do. This is one of the things that makes Spiderman effective as a teenaged and young adult superhero, as opposed to most superheroes who are depicted as mature, established adults. For must supers, even if their mask is hated they usually still have a stable secret identity to fall back on.

Now in Raimi’s Spiderman we get a sense of Peter as the exception to this rule. He delivers pizzas to make ends meet as a normal person and as Spiderman not only does the public view him with mixed feelings but J. Jonah Jameson, newspaper editor and occasional purchaser of Peter’s photographs of Spiderman, utterly loathes Spidey and is intent on destroying him in the press.

In short, Raimi’s Spiderman is in the middle of a classic teenager dilemma – no matter what he does he can’t seem to win. Why even bother? Other than Uncle Ben seemed to think it was a good idea, of course. And thus, conflict, character growth and story.

On the other hand, Webb’s Spiderman is… well, kind of a popular guy. At the least, the people of New York are happy to line up to help him in his final battle with the Lizardman and they all seem okay with standing around cheering during his fights with Electro. Sure, we’re told Jameson still hates the dude but we never see Jameson or hear any of his rants or really get any idea of how this makes Spiderman feel or how he struggles with it.

Gwen Stacey

Did anyone go to this movie not expecting her to die? Her death is apparently a major part of Spiderman’s character arc (or so I’m told.) I think it’s happened at least twice in the comics, maybe more. In fact, it is a trope.

So why waste two movies with her? Not to sound calloused, but the only reason to spend all this time on Gwen Stacey is to make a blatant bid to manipulate our emotions later on. I know that I’ve said the point of writing is to provoke a response but the key is to do it without being noticed.

It’d be one thing if Peter had started knowing Gwen, if she’d been the one bright spot for most of the first movie but we watched Spiderman slowly come between them – not necessarily as another love interest but just Peter’s new life interfering with his old – and they’d only come to an understanding as she died.

But instead we suffer through two movies of fairly unbelievable “romance” between the two of them, knowing that it can’t possibly go anywhere, until they finally kill her off. And, as I’ve said before, it doesn’t really feel like all this goes anywhere. Peter and Gwen don’t really grow as a result of all this. It’s just sort of there.

(Aside: if the writers really wanted to throw us for a loop they wouldn’t have killed off Norman Osborn without his doing anything. They would have let Gwen Stacey survive until the end of the series.)

In short, The Amazing Spiderman 2 was a mediocre movie at best. While it’s stars did a great job with the script they were given in the end there’s nothing there to elevate it out of the doldrums. In terms of writing it certainly wasn’t any better than Spiderman 2, although the acting may have been better. Should you not go see it? That depends on how much you like Spiderman and/or Marvel. If you’re a fan of either one, sure, go see the movie. You’ll be entertained. But I doubt you’ll still be raving about it in a year’s time. For my part, I’ve said my piece.

An American Tail

Posted by natechen on

So it’s classic color movie month here at Nate Chen Publications. But before that, I need to make a quick disclaimer – today’s post is not exactly a classic. It was released in 1986, making it younger than I am. However, that also makes it a part of my childhood of which I am very fond. So I hope you’ll indulge me, just a little bit, as I geek out about one of my favorite animated movies from early childhood.

Most people think of animated movies and they think of Disney films like The Lion King, or Beauty and the Beast, or Aladdin or, more recently, of Tangled and Frozen. Or maybe they think of the really classic Disney movies like Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. And, to be honest, I do too.

But An American Tail isn’t Disney and I mean in more ways than it’s studio. Yes, it was produced by Amblin Entertainment and Sullivan Bluth Studios. But for another thing, it eschews  many of the themes that define most Disney movies, such as the transformative power of romance or the danger of meddling in the affairs of wizards. Other themes, like talking animals or not entirely accurate song lyrics (“There are no cats in America!”) are there, and the art is similar. But this is very much it’s own work.

The story revolves around Fievel Mousekewitz and his family, immigrant mice who have left Russia. The movie itself leaves the exact reasons for this vague, other than that the Mouskewitz’ home was burned by cassock cats. Keen observers familiar with history will quickly deduce, from the accents of the elder Mousekewitz and their family name, that they were most likely targeted because they were Jewish but this is a subtext that will fly right over the heads of younger children. (I didn’t figure this out until I was telling a friend about the movie in college. All the pieces were there, I’d just never looked at them from the right perspective before.)

Fortunately, An American Tail isn’t a morality play about racism. It’s a fish (or mouse) out of water tale, a story where reality and preconceptions clash and protagonists come out better for it.

Fievel is separated from his family on the boat during a storm. Washed overboard, his family believes he is dead and he must take to the mean streets of New York to try and find them. (Yes, they left Russia and arrived in New York. Don’t ask. I think arriving in New York is a trope of some kind, although it’s not in the catalog.)

The adventure isn’t all Fievel’s, although he’ll have to face down street rats (literally), charity workers, city slickers, idealists and politicians to straighten things out. Through out the course of the story we also glance back to Mr. Mousekewitz and his grieving family. They all have problems to deal with but the biggest one of all – cats.

I guess not everything you heard about America those days was true.

An American Tail isn’t a fantastic movie. But it does touch something deep inside. It’s a story about homes. Fievel has lost his old home, not just left his physical dwelling but been separated from his family, and not every offer of a new one is something that he wants. He has to do a lot of growing up very quickly. But he never gives up the hope that he can get back what he lost. His father used to tell him stories about how things could be better, the good things that had been before and might be again. When offered the chance, more than once, to believe the good things weren’t coming and settle for what he had, Fievel choses to keep looking. With enough perseverance and the right goals, maybe he can make the good things real.

And in the end, he does. The Mouse of Minsk was an odd place to start – but he does.

Really, is there any tale more American than that?

An Incident in a Family Diner

Posted by natechen on

The eggs were dry and rubbery and the coffee was closer to water than an aromatic beverage. He wasn’t sure whether the blacked squares on his plate were supposed to be toast or some kind of scouring pad to clean the tabletop with before he put his elbows on it. But it was still a sight better than what he had been getting before they grudgingly let him go.

After a couple of months the folks called Project Sumter had finally given up fighting in the courts and allowed those people arrested while the organization didn’t technically exist and not yet tried in one of it’s shadow courts to go free. That mostly meant those who had been arrested as part of their operations intended to find Open Circuit, of which he had been one. So while the food in that shabby little diner wasn’t everything he could have hoped for it was still more than enough to satisfy him, at least for the moment.

Still, it was time to think about priorities. A safecracker of his talents, both mechanical and electrical, had been able to make a good living before the world knew fuse boxes existed. Doing a little accounting work by day was just a way to make a little on the side. Now, it might be time to start thinking about a new line of work. No one had ever been able to pin anything on him before because he’d been careful never to do anything big enough to draw the scrutiny of people like the Project but now that talents were out in the open it might be a different story. Perhaps if he went to work for the other side of things. Businesses would need security consultants to deal with all the new wrinkles talents could put in their security.

He was in the process of spreading the thin, unappetizing contents of a butter packet onto his scouring pad toast when two unfamiliar men sat themselves on the other side of the booth without bothering to ask permission. He glanced up and looked around, wondering if the small diner had really gotten so crowded that there was nowhere else to sit. As he suspected, it hadn’t.

The two men were a study in contrasts. One was skinny, white and dressed like a typical cubicle slave. Starched white shirt, tie, cheap dress slacks, habitual frown. The other wore blue jeans and a worn red shirt with grease as an accessory, his hair and complexion hinted at the kind of messy ancestry that made census workers throw a fit when it was time to put down an ethnicity. They looked like they’d walked straight out of a stereotype handbook.

He put his toast down slowly, eating forgotten. He’d worked with conmen in the past and even the worst had been better than these two. Maybe Project Sumter wasn’t done with him after all. “Can I help you two?”

They exchanged a look, then slid into the booth one after the other. “I’m Doug Wallace,” the mutt said, sliding into the seat last, the office drone already getting comfortable and pulling a strange coil of wire out of his coat pocket. “This is Greg Davis. We’ve spent a lot of time looking for you.”

Davis set the coil of wire down in front of him and it seemed to pull at him. He reached out to take it but Davis pulled it back with two fingers. “Careful,” the office drone said, his voice smug. “This isn’t quite ready for you to handle yet. But you can tell it’s special, right?”

He pulled his hands back and resisted the urge to sit on them, just to keep them under control. “What is it?”

“There’s no technical name for it, but it’s basically a special kind of electromagnet.” Davis tapped the metal rod, about as thick as a man’s thumb, that ran down the center of the wire coil. “When it’s properly attuned to the bioelectrical field of a category of persons like yourself, fuse boxes we call them, it allows that person to use their unique talent over a distance, rather than just by touch.”

He blinked once. “That’s not possible.”

“But you can feel it right now,” Wallace said. “We can tell by the way you’re looking at it. Even though it’s not attuned to you yet, it’s charged and close enough to your frequency that you can feel it even if you can’t use it.”

Wallace was right and everyone at the table knew it. Under the scrutiny of these two men, who’s cardboard cutout personas were apparently just a front for the even more confusing people beneath, he didn’t see any reason in denying it. He licked his lips and said, “Sure. I can see that. I don’t suppose I should ask how you know I’m a fuse box to begin with?”

“Does it matter?” Davis asked, holding the magnet up between them as if letting him see it from all angles. “Ask what you’re really wondering.”

He touched one finger to the coil of wire then jerked back in surprise. The electric potential inside actually seemed to grate on him like nothing he’d ever experienced before. “How can I get one I can use?”

“It’s fairly complicated, actually,” Davis said. “Calibrating one properly can require as many as a dozen MRIs, several weeks of troubleshooting. Once one is properly configured more can be made fairly easily, but getting that first template measured and tested can cost upwards of a hundred grand. On top of that, you’d need-”

“They’re not available to the general public,” Wallace summarized, he friend glaring at being cut off. “It’d take months and thousands of dollars of medal work to get you set up for one. Why, are you interested?”

He stared at the small coil of wire and let the possibilities roll over him. “With something like that you could control pretty much any electric motor, possibly any microchip, in a city block.”

“Not quite that large an area, not with one of these,” Davis replied, tucking the electromagnet back into his pocket. “But you wouldn’t be limited to touch anymore.”

“Nothing will be safe,” he said in amazement. “You could crack practically any modern lock in seconds with the right training. Shut down electronic surveillance, hit computerized records to cover your tracks-”

“All been done already,” Wallace said with a shrug. “You’ve heard of Open Circuit, right?”

“Sure.” He scowled. “Apparently I was working  for him before I got arrested. Not exactly something that appeals to a person, not knowing you’re working for a terrorist.”

“Come now,” Davis said with a condescending smile, “if you had access to technology like ours would you really want to advertise your existence?”

His expression turned thoughtful. “No, I suppose not.” Then his eyes sharpened and he was back in the present. “What do you  two want with me then? I’ll tell you up front, after my last experience working for Open Circuit I’m not exactly eager for another.”

“Makes sense to me,” Wallace said. “But this won’t be like your last. This time you’re not going to be one of the rank and file. This time you get to be one of the inner circle.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And why should I believe that?”

“We need a fuse box to make these gadgets worth something,” Davis replied. “You were the easiest to find and the most likely to agree, but you don’t have to work with us.”

“You’re not doing a good job making your case.”

Davis leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “What if I told you we were building a network of devices such as the one I just showed which would allow a fuse box to control all the electricity in a city?”

There was a moment of silence as the three men stared at each other over the tabletop. Finally he asked, “And what would I do with such a thing, Mr. Davis?”

Davis answered with an unnerving smile. “Anything you want.”

Water Fall – Fin

Fiction Index
Previous Chapter