Author Archives: natechen

Writing Men: Last Full Measure

Posted by natechen on

Humankind cannot gain anything without giving something in return. 

-Principle of Equivalent Exchange, Fullmetal Alchemist

So. Writing men, a recap in four five links: Introduction. Objectivity. Axioms. Boxen. Smash!

People are different from things. This pretty much goes without saying, but for the purposes of this series of posts they’re actually kind of similar. After all, men don’t just test their things to the breaking point, they put themselves under the gun, too. Of course, in many respects the things I said last week about the importance of testing limits and knowing more about stuff applies to people as well as things. The difference comes in a willingness to take on sacrifice as a part of growth.

Now there’s a lot of talk about the evolution of gender roles, men as gatherers and women as allocators, feeling vs. thinking and what have you when modern people talk about men and women. I want to say that I’m not going to try and address any of that. Here’s what I do know: In my experience, men are far and away the more likely to face a situation where they want something and immediately ask themselves, “What do I have to do get that? Do I have to give something up? I’ll give up (fill in the blank) for that.”

And they’ll immediately be warned of the consequences of their decision by their sister/girlfriend/wife. Now, as with many of the things I’ve talked about in this post, this kind of behavior is by no means restricted to men. Women can, and do, make these kinds of tradeoffs all the time. Sacrifice is not gender specific.

The difference is, men tend to get excited about it. Men are objectively driven thinkers. They want to get somewhere. This is how they define themselves. What’s often missed in this equation is how much a man wants to get somewhere. The man who wants to own his own business, the man who wants to get the girl, the man who wants to get revenge, these are a few of the faces of the man with an objective. He cuts himself to the bone to get there, and he measures the importance of the goal by how much he’s willing to set aside to get there. As sacrifices pile up obviously he’s getting closer to where he wants to be, right?

Sacrifice is one of the ways men express themselves. It’s a sign of devotion, of value and of respect. Men sacrifice with a single purpose in mind. They know they’re going to pay for it, that there may be unintended consequences, that they’ll hate themselves later. But that (for whatever value of that) is worth the cost. For a man, the widespread consequences of laying something aside pale before the sheer excitement of the change they believe they’ll create.

In an interesting corollary, don’t be surprised if a man drops a goal if he finds he’s not willing to sacrifice to get to it. There’s a sort of know-thyself revelation in these things. Don’t want to pay the price for something? How much did you really want it? How does it stack up to all those other objectives you had?

Men are creatures of sacrifice. They have to be, it’s part of how they’re wired. As with all other aspects of manhood, this is neither a positive or a negative. I hammer this over and over again but this is one place where it particularly stands out. Society today tends to think of sacrifice as a negative, when we think of it at all. I think this has something to do with being a consumer society, we just want more we don’t think about cutting back very often. The one exception is in dreams and the future. People are often told to settle, that what they can get easily is enough. Enjoy it and don’t look for more.

And there’s nothing wrong with that advice in some situations. There are plenty of self-destructive kinds of sacrifice out there. The man who spends eighty hours at work every week so he can get to the top but never sees his family. The athlete who totally destroys his body in five years of competition and is a virtual cripple for the next forty years of his life. But can you really get anything worthwhile if you don’t give something up?

The alternative is to over glorify sacrifice, something that was more common in the past but isn’t talked about as much now. It does seem noble to set aside something you want to strive more totally for something else. These days we gloss over those kinds of costs but once upon a time that kind of devotion was highly praised. But if you’ve traded time with your family to slave away at a job that you’ll ultimately retire from totally alone, was the sacrifice really a good thing?

Objectives are in the future. Many of them cannot be reached without sacrifice and, as I’ve already said, sometimes when they’re called into doubt men give them up. But should they?

The American Civil War required that over 600,000 men sacrifice their lives. People still can’t agree over what they sacrificed for. But no one who’s been born and raised in the United States would disagree with Lincoln when he said they offered their last full measure of devotion. Even when we’re not sure what that meant, the fact of it still move us.

When writing men, then, the questions are these:

What will a man sacrifice?

What does he expect go gain from his sacrifice?

What will he actually gain?

How will the sacrifice change him?

Will it be worth it?

At the end of the day, the sum of a man is not measured in what he gave up and what he gained from it. Character, once created, cannot be destroyed. But as a man builds up and sacrifices, as his circumstances and mindset change over time with new frameworks for thought being set up, tested and cast aside, a man grows. Let that growth be the measure of him.

Cool Things: Charades

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Welcome back to classic movie month! All through the merry month of May we’ll be looking at films new enough to be in color but old enough that you may not have heard of them. Today’s film features two of the greatest movie stars of any era: Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn.

Charades is a story of two people who meet in odd circumstances and have to learn to trust one another and somehow work together – or else. Regina Lampert (Hepburn), or Reggie to her friends, is on vacation with a friend and without the husband she’s seriously considering divorcing. But when she gets back to Paris she discovers someone’s saved her the trouble. Charles Lampert has been murdered trying to leave the city.

Thus begins a twisted yarn of murder, treason, theft and impersonations. At the center is Carson Dyle, a man left for dead during the Second World War, and thousands of dollars of gold intended to finance the Underground movement that was stole by it’s couriers. Among those couriers were Lampert and Dyle.

Of course, Reggie didn’t know about any of that. But Charles seems to have done something with the money and the surviving couriers from the theft all want their piece of the pie. Also among them is a dashing stranger (Grant) who she met at the beginning of the movie and she’ll know by a number of names by the time its over. The goal: Find the money and her husband’s killer and get out with her own skin intact.

There’s a lot going on in Charades. As the name implies, not everyone is who they first appear to be, and neither Reggie or the audience is in on who’s who, so the confusion and distress she feels is easily transmitted to the viewers. As you might expect from a tale of greed and revenge not everything that happens here is pleasant, in fact I would not recommend this as a movie to watch with young children. But the story’s not all dark. It does contain great quantities of Cary Grant being Cary Grant and that’s bound to ammuse. In fact, what might otherwise be a drab movie about characters we aren’t particularly invested in is transformed by the skill and charm of the two leading actors.

But no, that’s not true. For all the romantic overtones and moments of humor, Charades is a thriller at heart and from the moment we see the first corpse things start flying. The legacy of the stolen gold and an abandoned man are not going to be settled easily and the movie drags us along the whole story at a breakneck pace. We get only the occasional breather, a moment for a small smile and a romantic interlude before new discoveries are made and the rules change once again. Yet still, what keeps us caring about the outcome is the warmth and humanity of the central characters.

If you like normal people in surprising circumstances, mystery and action mixed together or tales of the past come back for a reckoning, then Charades may be the film for you.

Water Fall: Ebbing Tide

Posted by natechen on

One Week, One Day After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation

Helix

I realized about the moment that the first crack ran through the dam that I had a problem.

You see, if the world is like a sheet and heat is like a bunch of marbles on top of that sheet, then what I do is basically like pushing down on the sheet and letting all the marbles roll into one place. By the same token, cold spikes like the twins are basically pushing up and letting all the marbles roll away. My problem was, the laws of physics say there’s people at the corners of the sheet, gently pulling on them until the wrinkles and bulges are gone and all the marbles are evenly spread out.

When Frostburn, Coldsnap and I had been working together when we had created wrinkles in the sheet that let me break the dam and on my own, even with my impressive stats, I couldn’t keep the sheet from smoothing out under the relentless pull of physics. In other words, I was loosing my hold on the heat I’d gathered.

That wouldn’t have been a problem, except for the little part where I was surrounded by a ten foot deep river that had been frozen but was now melting fast.

The water was already up to my knees and the heat was getting away from me. Already my ball of plasma had shrunk down to just a couple of feet across and I was leaking heat fast. Temperatures were still high enough that most of the water within a foot or two was boiling away before it got to me but I was in real danger of cooling to the point where that stopped happening before I got out of the river. The air above me was returning to normal temperatures quickly and that left the ice around me greedily soaking up all the heat I’d brought down with me. And I’d been gathering heat for at least half a mile, maybe closer to a mile of the hike to the dam. I wasn’t sure how hot I’d burned but there was probably enough heat to melt all the ice the twins had created and then some.

The dam was on it’s way down. It was time I got out of the way.

I turned and started slogging my way towards the side of the river, mud sucking at my feet every step of the way. With all the steam boiling up and the constant hissing and shushing of steam and water all around me I lost track of where I was going. For a panicked moment the only direction I was sure of was up, since that was the direction the steam was going, but the deafening crack of the dam finally caving under the force of the melt water rushing up against it helped me get my bearings again.

The stream wasn’t that wide originally but there, up by the dam, it was almost a hundred and fifty feet from one side to the other and, even though I started in the middle, between the mud, the confusion and the steep incline of the river bed it was the longest seventy five feet of my life. I almost made it, too.

Unfortunately, with the dam broken, the water levels were falling and all sorts of debris had been caught up in it. A tree branch about an inch thick got sucked up somewhere upstream and, since tree branches don’t evaporate, made it through to whack me on the shoulder. I spun and lost my footing, falling to the ground. The cold ground sucked the heat out of my sink even faster than the water and even as I scrambled to my feet again the temperature around me dropped below the boiling point of water and the river closed in around me. There was a heavy thud next to me as I flailed for something, anything, to grab onto, then I wound up getting swept off my feet.

And just like that I was flying a hundred, maybe two hundred feet off the ground, with a beautiful view of the river, stretched out below me like a sidewalk viewed from a second story window, all kinds of crap rushing away down stream as the crux of Circuit’s instillation went to its final fate somewhere far down river. It took me a moment to realize Samson had dropped in and yanked me out just before the flood could claim me.

I could think of only one thing to say to express my gratitude. “Samson, a man in your position should know that God never meant for men to fly!”

“That’s questionable theology, Helix,” he said. “But regardless we’re not flying. I’m jumping. You’re just along for the ride. Now clench your teeth or you’ll bite your tongue.”

That last bit was all the warning I got before we landed hard enough we probably registered on seismic sensors somewhere. I staggered dizzily away from Samson and shook my head to clear it. “I’ve changed my mind, preacher man. I’m glad you came along on this trip.”

To my surprise he just shook his head sadly. “I’m not sure I made any difference, Helix. Except there’s a few of Circuit’s men who might have wound up as collateral damage because of our tussle.”

“What?” I turned back to glare at him. “You didn’t catch Circuit? Or find Dawson’s daughter?”

“It’s complicated.” He gave an eloquent shrug. “The electricity’s out all over the instillation now. The Guard should be dragging in the serious manpower soon. If they’re still here, we’ll find them.”

I wrung a little water out of my jacket and shook more out of my hair, then said, “Then let’s go find them, shall we?”

——–

Circuit

I woke up glued to a table, with Simeon looking down at me in concern. He was already reacting as I was getting my bearings. “He’s awake.”

He was speaking in the general direction of my feet. A second later Heavy loomed into view from that direction and Hangman leaned into view from the opposite side as Simeon. The lighting, vague sense of motion and cramped quarters told me I was in one of our vans, not one of the armored vehicles but a simpler cargo hauler that had a table stashed in the back end.

“What happened?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

“You got caught up in the dam breaking up,” Simeon told me, his tone and expression carefully neutral. “You’d probably be dead if Heavy hadn’t already been down river when you fell. He managed to get to the riverbank before the dam broke and changed most of the water to… well-”

“Pudding.” Heavy said flatly. “I caught you in a fist full of pudding, and you’re damn lucky I did, Circuit. It was a real chore getting through it all and dragging you out while keeping things syrupy enough that we didn’t get swept up in the water or junk coming with it. I left things that way to keep you from jostling and getting hurt.”

Which explained why it felt like I’d been dipped in rubber cement and laid out on the table. It took more effort than it should have to focus on Heavy’s face. His expression was hard and I’d never heard him call me Circuit in private before. “I owe you, Heavy.”

“No.” He folded his arms over his chest. “No more owing. You and I are even, Circuit. We’re done. I’m not planning to follow you down in a blaze of glory. This was my job, I plan to get paid. You were always good for that, so no complaints. And you did help with-” his mouth twisted slightly “-family problems. So we’re even. But I’m ducking out.”

Laughing hurt ever muscle in my body. “You chose a good time, looks like.”

“Actually,” Simeon said, expression still placid, “we started evacuation in time to transport the vast bulk of Chainfall’s product north to our installation there.”

I felt Hangman squeezing my hand. “You can still put something together. The Thunderclap array-”

“Hangman.” She leaned in closer, perhaps to hear better. Maybe just to be closer. “You should go home.”

Her eyes misted over and she shook her head. “I am home, Circuit. Nothing I did before I came here felt as meaningful.” A weak laugh. “Maybe helping suicidal men to their doom is all I’m good for.”

In that moment I was certain that was the most horrible thing I’d ever heard. And I have heard and said some truly horrible things. I closed my eyes and took stock of my situation. Sumter had won. It wasn’t that they’d taken the Chainfall site. That had always been part of  the plan. But they should have walked into piles of smoking rubble, with no clues to work on. A PR disaster, painting them as slow, ineffectual and unable to cope with the challenges of a new age.

But instead they’d beaten me.

No, Helix had beaten me. I’d always hoped he would. Over the years I’d come to depend on him, in the back of my mind, the small part that thought about what the world would look like after the Thunderbird Gambit was over and I was gone, I always hoped he’d be the one at the forefront, piecing things back together. And it looked like he would be, just far earlier than planned.

Helix had pushed hard enough, read deep enough and gone far enough that Sumter was in position to catch us down the final straightaway. The game was over. That just left the clean-up.

I turned from Hangman to my office manager. “Simeon.”

“Sir?”

“Heavy Water has left our employ. Take appropriate measures.” An alarmed expression crossed Heavy’s face, but Simeon just nodded. “And while you’re at it, inform Grappler, Wallace and Davis that they’re fired. Set them up with appropriate severance packages as well.”

“Of course.”

Heavy pushed Simeon to one side, almost tossing him to the floor given the unstable footing of the van. “Wait a minute, what-”

“Relax, Heavy.” I took a deep, painful breath and wondered how many bones I had left intact. I really didn’t need him roughing me up any more. “You five were never meant to stay in the plan until the end. There were always measures in place to make sure you were provided for. Offshore accounts. New identities. If you want them.”

He searched my face for a moment, then nodded slowly. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to do. But I think you’re telling the truth.”

“I always meant to explain it better…” The ceiling looked back down at me, offering no insights no matter how I searched. The sound of the pavement rolling by beneath the wheels was all we heard. “Elizabeth.”

“Yes?”

“Let’s go home.”

——–

Helix

Three weeks of talents in the public eye and I’d been in twice as many press conferences. It just didn’t add up.

I dragged my tie off and slumped down into a chair. We were finally, finally back in the office. Cleaning up Circuit’s hydroelectric experiments had taken an unbelievable amount of time, particularly as the National Guard had decided that making the arrangements all fell on us, since we’d led the raid. Project Sumter lacked the contacts to set up that kind of clean up quickly – we’d never had to do it before – so things had probably taken longer than they should have.

Worse, the Governor of Indiana and several state and national  Senators, including Brahms Dawson, had come to pay a visit to the site. For some reason Samson and I wound up leading a lot of these VIPs around and a few of those that showed up later on had arranged to have the wolves in press clothing be there as well.

I wasn’t sure if that was in the Project’s favor or not. They say all press is good press but then, most of them have never met me. But in half a dozen press conferences I’d managed to get bye without giving myself a terminal case of foot in mouth and, better yet, I hadn’t been fired. On the down side, at least twenty-odd reporters now had my code name and office phone number. The voice mail light on my desk phone was blinking wildly and I didn’t want to check it just yet.

Samson, my comrade in press conferences, sat down on the edge of my desk, the creaky metal frame groaning in protest. “Not too bad out there, Helix. At least you didn’t melt part of the audio equipment this time.”

“I got charged for that, you know,” I said, tossing my tie into a drawer haphazardly and slamming it shut. “Do you know how much those cost?”

“More than I care to imagine.”

I folded my arms on my desk and lay my head down on them. “How do you do it, Rodriguez? They’re so annoying.”

“I’m not any better, really,” he said, picking up a newspaper from my desk and scanning it.

I raised my head to look at him. “Don’t you do this on a regular basis? Talk in front of people.”

“Maybe not any more.” He seemed to be looking at the paper more for something to do than out of a real interest. “The eldership of my church isn’t sure what to make of a pastor who’s never been entirely honest with them. To tell the truth, I’m not sure I blame them.”

“Not your fault. Your work with talents over the years, in and out of the Project, was super hush-hush. Not even I knew about it.”

He sighed. “It’s not an quality suited to a leader in the church of Christ. He never lied about what he was, even when it would have saved him a lot of trouble.”

“I suppose.” I’d gone to church as a child but that wasn’t enough for me to want to argue theology with a priest, no matter how many tattoos he had. Time for a subject change. “Anything interesting in the news?”

“Special Agents Dunn and Rodriguez meet with Governor at Terrorist Base,” he read, then turned the paper so I could see the picture on the front page. I was shaking hands with the governor, looking a little nervous, while Samson loomed in the background.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to using real names with the public. Or maybe ever.”

“I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to the idea of someone who can melt through concrete being named Alan.”

I sat up straight. “What’s wrong with my name? It’s better than all the Hoffman identities they used to give me just because they shared initials with Double Helix.”

A smile tugged at the edge of his lips. “Helix just seems to suit you so much better. Sometimes I think you were born an agent.”

That was a disturbing thought. Much of who I was and the identity I’d built did revolve around Project Sumter, a government branch that was about to undergo a lot of changes. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that.

Samson chose not to comment on my silence, just kept browsing the front page. When he got below the fold he said, “It looks like some members of the Wisconsin state government are looking into whether they can recall Senator Dawson. They seem to feel his committee is guilty of a breach of public trust.”

“That’s a bit hasty. It hasn’t even been a month yet.” I leaned back in my chair and popped my knuckles absently. “There really should be a lot more investigating before we jump to the tar and feathers. Just my opinion, really, but still.”

He folded the paper down and looked at me over the top of it. “You know, I always thought you didn’t like him.”

“I don’t. But the devil you know, and all that.” I shrugged. “He probably wouldn’t stay in charge of the Committee after the next election cycle. But it would be nice to have a little longer to get ready for the change.”

Samson matched my shrug and tossed the paper back onto my desk and stood. “If you think of anything I can do to help let me know. I have the feeling you and I are about to have a good fifteen minutes of fame. We might as well try and parlay them into something useful.”

He started off towards his own desk, technically an empty desk he’d been using since he came back on active duty, and I nodded absently to acknowledge his offer. It was pure reflex, we weren’t really paying attention to each other anymore. I picked up the paper and stared at it absently as my thoughts went through their paces.

For eight years Circuit had been on my mind. Some times he claimed a bigger part than others but he’d been a constant. I seriously doubted he was gone for good. But it would probably be a year at the least before he was ready for anything big. It might be a good time to start thinking about other matters. A picture in the paper caught my eye.

While we’d been busy with clean up, other members of our office had been dealing with issues elsewhere. Teresa had been given onsite command and Voorman and Sanders had packed up and flown to Washington. Apparently they’d had a photo op with the president. We weren’t the only ones getting a lot of press.

And they say that there’s no such thing as bad press.

“Hey, Samson. What if we switched devils we knew?”

Rodriguez looked up from whatever paperwork he was working on. “I don’t follow.”

I held up the paper and pointed to the picture, which he had to have seen earlier. “What do you think about Senator Michael Voorman?”

He laughed and shook his head. Then he gave me a hard look. “Are you serious?”

“He has the experience. He has the exposure.”

“But does he want to do it?”

I grinned. “It’s a new day, Samson. Anything is possible.”

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Writing Men: Planetary Annihilation

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A real man creates nothing! Not one blade of grass grows where he has walked! So the true warrior lives for one thing! Planetary Destruction!

–Zekka, Battle Angel Alita, Last Order

So. Writing men, a recap in four links: Introduction. Objectivity. Axioms. Boxen.

Today’s subject: Breaking things.

It’s generally accepted that men break things on purpose where as women break things accidentally, which is somehow more acceptable or appropriate than the alternative. What people don’t understand about the manly tendency to destruction is a set of principles we’ll call the Laws of Awesome Dynamics (not an actual set of laws). The First Law of Awesome Dynamics is the Law of Conservation of Awesome (distantly related to the Conservation of Ninitsu). The principle of Conservation of Awesome can be stated like this: Once created, awesomeness cannot cease to exist, only change hands.

The Second Law of Awesome Dynamics states that, when two object collide the more Awesome of the two survives carrying all of the awesomeness in the equation.

So, why do men break things? The answer is, they’re not breaking one thing. They’re taking two things and seeing which is more awesome.

That’s not always the case, of course. Sometimes a man will take an object and test it to its limits, until it breaks. Thomas Edison was a strong advocate of this as a method for testing new inventions. This process lets you know exactly how much punishment a thing can take before it gives. But for the most part, men are breaking things as a method of measurement.

Let us look at a situation that is almost as old as men are. There is a fellow with a shirt. At first it is just a normal shirt but then he goes and plays touch football and wins overwhelmingly. He doesn’t think of it until a few weeks later he plays another game wearing that shirt and wins overwhelmingly again. The next several games he wears that same shirt and can’t be stopped! Without his realizing it, a little of his achievements have been absorbed the shirt and are adding to his effectiveness in following games! It’s a lucky shirt! Soon the man can’t play or sometimes even watch football without it. Of course, sooner or later the shirt will give out – it can only take so much washing and wearing, diving for passes and “accidentally” slamming into people – and that will be a sad day. But in the mean time, the shirt’s ability to endure is an inspiration!

Okay, let’s be honest. All this is a kind of convoluted way of saying that men value endurance and fortitude, both in themselves and the things surrounding them. Do they sometimes engage in behavior that could destroy something of theirs? Well, yes, they do. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s for the purposes of seeing it break (in can be, and that’s not this principle, it’s something a little more sinister). Sometimes the whole point is to measure something. What will happen? How strong and enduring am I, are the things I own?

The quote at the top of this post is an example of this principle pushed to it’s greatest extreme. If a man is powerful and enduring enough he will outlast everything he encounters. While that, in and of itself, may not be an appealing prospect it is the core of the matter.

Men test themselves and things around them, typically through some kind of competition. Not always violent, but men are more likely than women to recognize the value of controlled violence in competition. They want to know how far they can go, how reliable they are, how their limits will support or deprive them of their goals. These things cannot just be theorized about, they must be tested in the field. And if a man hurts himself in the process, well, sometimes that’s the price you pay for knowing.

When writing men, they must test things. Test them to the breaking, if they must. The testing will inform all that comes after. Oh, a man may be upset if something he truly loved is broken in the process. He may be angry, he may be sad but in the end he will be better off for it. After all, the Second Law says the awesomeness goes to the one who survives.

And, oddly enough, that brings us to our next principle. We’ll take a look at it next week.

Cool Things: The Adventures of Robin Hood

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Welcome to the merry month of May! For a while we’ve been looking at some old, black and white movies that are still worth the watching today. There’s still plenty of those out there, and I’m sure we’ll go back and look at them in time, there are a number of older movies, that you may not have heard of, which have been disqualified simply because they were shot in color. Well no more! This month we’re going to look at four great old movies that just so happen to have been made after the transition to color cinematography. Our first example is thematically appropriate in two ways!

The Adventures of Robin Hood is, in my mind, the definitive version of the legend. Why?

Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. Basil Rathebone as Guy of Gisborne. Claude Raines as Prince John! Some of the greatest large scale battle sequences outside Cecile B. DeMille before the starfighter sequences of Star Wars. This film practically oozes with talent and creativity, even as it breaks absolutely no new ground in terms of plot or story.

If you know anything about Robin Hood you already know the basics of this tale. The Good King is in exile, the Evil Prince oppresses the people, the Hero arises and fights the injustice. Hero gets caught but is saved with the help of the Heroine. In the end, the Good King returns and justice is done. It’s not The Downfall of The Lord of the Rings and the Return of the King because not all struggles are on that scale. Sometimes evil is petty and mean and transient and we wonder not if it will ever pass, but why it’s come right now and why it won’t leave us alone.

This movie shines in the strength of the actors. Everyone, from Much the Miller’s Son and Friar Tuck to the nameless knights at Prince John’s table, is given a solid reading. Even the cheesier lines are heartfelt. Flynn is swashbuckling incarnate, even more so than his Zorro counterpart, Tyrone Power. And Rathebone… he’s everything you could ever want in a villain. A razor sharp spring waiting to explode out and slash through anything that gets in his way.

They fight, of course. I could talk about it for hours, but it’d be better if you watched it for yourself.

The next best thing, after the actors, is the eye candy. The costume work, outdoor locations and all the set pieces in this movie are beautiful. Technicolor was a new technology at the time and the images don’t really have the same quality as modern day cameras would provide but even now it’s still beautiful. It’s almost like a watercolor painting brought to life.

Most importantly, it’s fun. Lots of fun. Sure, this story has it’s dark moments. All the good stories do – how could the joy at the end be as joyful if there weren’t a few dark times along the way? But it’s still more than worth it.

There’s nothing here that you haven’t seen somewhere else. But rarely will you see it like in The Adventures of Robin Hood. Check it out.

Water Fall: Swept Away

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One Week, One Day After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation 

Circuit

To say that Hangman was struck speechless wouldn’t be exactly true, but she did sputter helplessly for a second before snarling, “Dad wants me to come home? Did you come all the way here just to tell me that? Because I thought pastors weren’t supposed to lie.”

“No one’s supposed to lie.” He rested a hand on the railing of the catwalk and eased himself down to the floor, sitting cross-legged and looking very out of place, like a Cub Scout leader had decided to burn holes in his clothes with a six thousand volt current then strap on body armor before campfire. “I have a daughter – three, actually – and I know how I would act if one was missing and I wanted her home. Not eating, sleeping badly, losing focus constantly at work – your father has been acting exactly that way. I wouldn’t have come out of retirement if I didn’t think he was sincere when he asked me to. Especially not with all the hassle my wife has given me over it.”

She snorted. “Mom put him up to it. He wouldn’t have asked you on his own. You think I’ll just waltz out of here with you? Do you think it will be that simple?”

“Not after what I heard you saying a minute ago,” he said with a shrug. “But I know a lot about falling in with a bad crowd and I know it’s not the end, Elizabeth.”

“Forget it.” She put a hand on a pistol I hadn’t noticed on her hip. “I’m not going back. You didn’t really expect to come in here and rescue the screaming girl, did you? Because it’s not going to happen.”

Samson sighed. “You know, when all that time went past and there was no demands… I’d wondered. What you might be doing.”

“What do you care?” Hangman demanded.

His expression hardened, ever so slightly. “Calm down, you. I’ve been the angry kid, too. You think no one understands or should try to understand, least of all your parents.” He spread his hands. “But before I work for the government I serve a carpenter from Nazareth who was sent to turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers. I know homes aren’t perfect. I have three daughters and I’ve never been the father to them that I should be. I’m here talking to you instead of picking up one from a chess tournament. But things can be better. Won’t you try? For yourself, if for no one else? You’ll regret it if you never do.”

“I said-”

I put my hand on Hangman’s shoulder. “Don’t answer. Not yet.” She turned to look up at me, the thunder still raging behind her eyes. “He’s right. You will regret. Take time to think it over. Whichever of us is left standing, we’ll let you go home. No strings on my part, I promise. He’ll probably make you testify against me-”

“That’ll probably be a must.”

“-but you can go home. Think about it.” I gave her a slight push towards Simeon who took her by the elbow and started down the catwalk towards the exit. To keep Rodriguez’ attention on me I said, “That fine by you, Samson?”

He sighed. “I suppose so. Of course, you could just surrender and save us all this trouble. There might even be lenience in it for you.”

“No thank you.” I holstered my gun and switched on my maglev harness and charged the capacitors in my vest. Without another word I pitched backwards over the railing of the catwalk and dropped. There was enough damage done to the storage facility to reduce its capacity but the total storage down there was still more than enough for some clever tricks. With the magnets in my working rig active it was child’s play to jump current around and create just about anything I could want. I fell about two feet before catching myself magnetically and throwing myself towards the far wall.

Samson was back on his feet before I was half way across the bunker, leaping effortlessly from one section of the catwalk to another in long, flat jumps. But he couldn’t turn in midair and I swerved towards the bunker entrance as soon as he started one of those jumps, getting all the way to the door before he clattered to the catwalk again.

It wasn’t a light door, it actually had more in common with an old style bank vault entrance than a traditional fire door. It took a few seconds to cycle the locking mechanism and get through it. That put me in the small kill box just outside, a four foot long pair of concrete walls that would funnel any would-be intruders trying to reach the door into a lethal field of fire. Assuming they didn’t just tear through the back wall with their bare hands.

Plan A had been to fly up and out from the entrance then arm the land mines there, solving my problem as soon as Rodriguez tried to come out after me. Unfortunately, almost as soon as I was through the door and started it cycling closed again he was there, smashing his fist until he got a good enough grip to crumple the door to one side like wet cardboard. I got four feet off the ground before he had me by the ankles and dragged me back down.

I hit him in the chest with my taser, drawing out a grunt of pain and he spasmed, twisting shoving me back through the door and into the bunker. I flew a dozen feet before I got control of my flight path again. Time for Plan B. Instead of turning around I sped up and headed towards the hole Samson had made in the back of the building.

After extensive practice there are some things you learn to do by rote. In my case, early in my career disarming, arming and detonating explosives remotely using nothing but my talent and a specially rigged transmitter the size of a nickel was one of them. Like I told Hangman, there are some things that are just requirements of the job. Being able to cover your tracks effectively is one of them, and for operations on the scale of Chainfall the most effective way to cover your tracks is carefully applied explosives. As far as I knew the guards were still in the building and covering the fees that came with their deaths on the job would be more expensive than I liked, but the circumstances demanded that I accept the loss. The moment I heard the sound of Samson clattering across the catwalks after me I started the arming sequence.

There wasn’t quite time to get through the wall and out of the bunker before the small explosive packages went off. Fortunately these weren’t the Hollywood masses of raw pyrotechnics that you see in movies but rather shaped, directed explosions strategically built into the framework of the building that removed enough support it collapsed under it’s own weight. I still nearly got crushed by debris as I shot out the hole.

I got clear and pushed upwards, scanning the dust and rubble for signs of life. My earpiece chimed and Simeon asked, “Are you all right, sir?”

“For the moment,” I answered. A large chunk of rubble sloughed to one side and Rodriguez stepped out from under it, one of the guards slung under his arm. The idea that he might be unkillable nagged at the back of my head but it wasn’t very productive so I quashed it down. “Keep going, Simeon. Get everyone out of the command bunker that we can spare, it’s time to start evacuating. And keep Hangman with you!  Rodriguez is probably going to be looking for her as much as me and I want her out of trouble.”

“Yes , sir. Where will you be?”

“I’m going to meet Heavy. Take care.”

I suited actions to words, taking a zig-zagging path through the trees at a slower pace for the first minute or so, to avoid being spotted by Rodriguez. I had just popped back up over the tree line, intending to speed back to the crossroads where we’d been planning to greet the rest of Sumter’s agents, when Heavy called me.

“Boss, they’re at the dam! Guards there say the water’s freezing and it’s so cold they’re starting to change color. They’re bugging out, say they’re not equipped to fight frostbite.”

Once again I came to a sudden stop and started in a new direction. I hadn’t thought of the two women who froze the streets during our escape from the city. If they could freeze the whole river they could cut off more than half our power generating capacity. With the reserves out that would just leave the low headwaters turbines, not enough to power the full maglev relay network, much less charge empion grenades or allow the construction of CPC superconductors. “We have to keep the dam, Heavy. Get everyone there you can.”

“On my way, boss.”

The dam was farther than anything else in the compound, it took almost seven minutes to fly there, pushing the relays to their limits, and I could feel the available potential behind the network starting to drop off as I got close.

The dam was a surreal sight. The river wasn’t just frozen behind the dam, water had actually frozen as it fell from the sluice gates. A pillar of steam rose up from the surface of the ice maybe a hundred feet behind the dam. There were two people standing near the steam cloud, mostly obscured except for the long, blonde hair whipping in the unnatural winds of the altered weather they’d created. I stretched out to try and grab the building charges that wind had to be creating, to funnel the lighting down against them like I had with Helix outside the Diversy Street school building, but I didn’t have a full strength lightning funnel built into my current set of gear, they were too bulky to be practical and too heavy for  the maglev harness besides. I couldn’t extend my reach that far and, even if I could, there was no guarantee I could make the proper changes in potential without a funnel to back me up. The work is at once strenuous and delicate, I designed lighting funnels to do the heavy lifting and leave the detail work to me. I’d never attempted to channel lighting from a storm without one.

The only option left was the SIG. I dropped some altitude and drew my sidearm, fighting to stay steady in the winds that had kicked up. I mentally cursed Helix and all the other heat sinks and cold spikes in the world for their effects on the weather and did my best to get a couple of steady shots at them.

Heavy was yelling in my ear, “We’re here boss! Want us to just sweep up over the top?”

I glanced over to try and spot exactly where they were and yes, I could see Heavy and Grappler leading half a dozen other people towards one side of the dam. I was about to reply, something about tossing a grenade down the steaming hole in the ice I believe, when the world behind them seemed to bend and an incredibly intense, strobing light blinded me. With a confused yelp I threw my hands up in front of my face and, given all there was to think about, just for a second, I lost my concentration.

Suddenly I was falling, the magnetic fields that kept me aloft slipping out of proper balance and sending me careening wildly in all directions, but mostly down. Frantic, blinded and with no sense of direction I rubbed my eyes and blinked furiously, dropping my pistol in the process. My vision cleared enough to realize I was about to smash into the ground and I pushed out with my maglev harness, breaking my fall some but still landing badly. I gasped for a moment, fighting a new wave of stars in my vision and trying to get my wind back. The whole process took maybe five seconds.

I’d just pushed myself up to my knees when I heard a sound like a tectonic plate shifting. I didn’t have to be able to see to know the dam was breaking. Getting the focus and strength to push upwards again cost me a split second and it was just a split second too long. I’d just gotten clear of the ground, gone up maybe five feet, when a chunk of concrete clipped me in the leg and I tumbled into a torrent of icy water…

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Themes

Posted by natechen on

Writing is the process of taking ideas and putting them down on paper. All ideas have consequences, both the immediate and the more abstract, and exploring those consequences is part of what writing exists for. Most of the immediate consequences of ideas are explored in the plot, the series of events that the protagonist and his or her immediate sphere of influence are involved in. And, of course, the characters themselves  Themes, on the other hand, are a little bit different.

Let’s take a fairly well known work of fiction and examine the themes in it, shall we?

The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is a classic work of literature. It goes beyond stagecraft – people read the play just to get at the rich literary depth therein. Among other things, we still occasionally hear of the dangers of becoming a Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Hopefully you’re familiar with the story already, if not, or if you’re rusty, the Wikipedia page can bring you up to speed.

There are basically three themes in Hamlet:

Death. (Newsflash – everyone dies at end of Shakespearean tragedy!) The play begins in the aftermath of a murderer and doesn’t end until almost every last character we’ve seen on stage for the past few hours has suffered of poison, blade or both!

Revenge. The death of Hamlet’s father is what sets things in motion and his quest for revenge is the driving force behind the plot.

Insanity. Not only does Hamlet feign insanity and his lady love actually go insane, the presence of a ghost that many people see, yet others do not, suggests that more might actually be insane than is readily apparent. Of course, Hamlet’s thirst for vengeance looks a lot like insanity as well, complete with grizzly consequences in the death of Polonius, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. And some might say that the drive to murder that we see in Claudius and Gertrude is a kind of insanity as well.

Now you might say that these themes are a part of the plot – and you’re right. But where plot and characters exist in a kind of dialog, with characters able to adapt to the plot or the plot following characters as they run off the beaten path, themes constrain them both.

In Hamlet there are many opportunities for characters to avoid death. Something as simple as not believing the words of a ghost that could be a figment of the imagination or a demon in disguise would have kept Hamlet from his path of revenge. Instead, the themes of the story keep the characters and plot from wandering off track.

I’ve said before and I’ll say again, the primary purpose of fiction is to provoke a reaction from the reader. Every aspect must be carefully tailored with an end in mind, every plot point drive towards the eventual end of the story. Now the audience might not walk away with your desired reaction in mind but that’s just the nature of art. The point is to allow the drive to structure your art, that it might be as clear and as meaningful as possible. Even if the audience sees things differently than you, the strength of your purpose will come through in some form.

Themes are what give your story that strength. Just as the skeleton gives your body a great part of its strength, anchoring your muscles, so theme is a vital part of what anchors plot and character and keeps them from fighting one another. Hamlet’s themes are what keep the character Hamlet’s rage strong yet let him give his despairing “to be, or not to be” soliloquy. They allow for glimpses of humor, but only from gravediggers plying their trade. Ultimately, they allow us to feel the full weight of the decision to murder and to avenge.

Your themes are an essential part of your story. If you are going to write, you must start with a theme. Let it shape your plot, your characters and drive you to your ultimate ends. Don’t throw out things that don’t fit with your theme – that’s what Graveyarding is for – but keep your eye firmly on the goal. It will make your writing that much stronger.

Cool Things: Mindspace Investigations

Posted by natechen on

He had it all. He was a Level Eight telepath, specializing in Structure. With a lot of time and work he could rebuild a person’s mind, bringing people out of comas or restoring sight to people who hadn’t seen in years. He was a respected member of the Telepath’s Guild, the body governing psychics in the U.S., and eventually got a job teaching his skills to others. He was engaged to marry into a powerful family, and he was just one of a group of likeminded, idealistic and very talented people who were likely to chart the course of the guild for years to come.

Then he volunteered to help out one of his friends with a research project. The purpose of the project? To see if psychic abilities could be enhanced with the use of mind altering drugs.

Now he has no Guild status, no girl and plenty of guilt. He also has a nearly constant craving for Satin, a substance that not only doesn’t enhance the abilities of telepaths but has been outlawed by both the Government and the Guild in the time since he got addicted. He has next to nothing. He isn’t even allowed to handle his own money, on the off chance he might go out and blow it all on drugs.

What he does have is a job for the Decatur Police Department. Mostly he works the interrogation rooms, asking questions and gauging people’s reactions to them in more ways than the typical cop. Of course, with a bunch of felony charges related to his druggie days he can’t testify or work full time, but he can ask questions so long as another witness is along to back him up. And every so often the Homicide detective who pushed so hard to get him his job pulls him out of the interrogation rooms to take to the field.

You see, the world around us isn’t just shaped by our hands and feet, by the objects we take with us or leave behind. It’s also shaped by our thoughts and feelings, the joys we spread and the grudges we hold close. But those thoughts and feelings don’t leave marks in physical space, they leave them in Mindspace. The Guild doesn’t routinely send telepaths out to work with normal, telepathically deaf cops. He is unique. He and Detective Isabella Cherabino go out to murder scenes. There, she looks at the physical evidence and he looks at the Mindspace.

Browsing around in the places where people have died is no fun. In fact, it’s a profoundly disturbing experience. But he does it all the same. Part of this is pure pragmatism. The more time he spends solving murders, the more time he’s not getting high. Three years is a long time clean, and he has no desire to fall off the wagon. Well, that’s not true, he just has more desire to stay on it. And ultimately, that strong desire to stay clean is rooted in the past.

He had it all. Now he has nothing. Nothing, that is, except for a chance to make a difference. He can’t safely remodel people’s minds anymore. But he can find killers. Maybe, just maybe, that will be enough for him to sleep at night.

Mindspace Investigations is a series of stories by Alex Hughes. There’s two short stories and three full length novels, and they are excellent in a number of ways. Obviously, Mindspace world is a sci-fi setting. It’s not just the telepaths. Hughes’ world is set after the Tech Wars, when sentient machines spawned blood borne computer virus and nearly ended humanity as we know it. There’s a strange blend of technologies running around – flying cars juxtaposed with pen and paper. Antigravity building techniques are commonplace but paranoia about wifi runs rampant. Technology isn’t allowed to come even close to thinking for itself. Computers are now controlled technology.

In this kind of a world, a telepathic forensics consultant does a lot to push investigations forward. There aren’t nearly as many fancy technology investigation techniques as you might expect in the future, but there’s still plenty of good old fashioned police work in these books. Following the money, interviewing all the witnesses, the whole nine yards. And since psychics are required by law to inform people of their telepathic abilities before anything learned by telepathy counts as legal evidence gathering techniques… well, it can all get quite complicated.

But not as complicated as not using the protagonist’s name for the entire first book. That’s ridiculously complicated, and it makes writing reviews about them complicated, too. Less thrilled with that than many other aspects of the series.

Still, if you like flawed but relatable characters, good world building or whodunnit’s of just about any stripe, Mindspace Investigations might be right up your alley.

Water Fall: Storm Surge

Posted by natechen on

One Week, One Day After the Michigan Avenue Proclamation 

Circuit

It took a little more than five minutes for me to get from the command bunker to my destination, although that was at least in part because I had to go up, over the tree line, and come back down again to locate exactly where the crossroads I wanted was. Finding a trail was easy enough, making sure I had the right portion of the trail was trickier. Flying below the treeline at thirty miles an hour was definitely not an option and positioning technology is a double edged sword – I could risk revealing my position to Project Sumter if they were waiting for me to ping a GPS satellite. I could still tell where the maglev relays around the park were positioned and that gave me a general idea of where I was, otherwise the trip could have taken three times as long.

I’d just started sifting through the trees, looking for a good ambush spot, when my earpiece dinged to life with Simeon on the other end of the line. “I think we have a problem, sir.”

“Bigger than planning a very personal lesson on death from above for Project Sumter?” I asked, trying to keep my voice down in case the wave makers on the other side could pinpoint my location just from that.

“Yes, sir, quite possibly.” There was a loud, indistinct noise on the other end, then the distinctive popping sound of small arms fire. “Agent Samson was with Project Sumter’s team.”

“Yes, I know,” I said, rapping my knuckles on a nearby tree with impatience. “What’s all that noise? You aren’t out with a patrol, are you? You’re-”

“I’m in the power reserve bunker, as you instructed.”

“Then what-”

“The noise is Agent Samson.” Cutting me off twice in a row was a sure sign Simeon was upset. “He’s infiltrated the bunker and is in the process of destroying our reserves.”

I slammed my fist into the tree and kicked the maglev back into high gear, shooting up and across the trees at top speed. “How did he get in? If nothing else you could have armed the antipersonnel mines at the entrance.”

“He used the back door.”

“That bunker doesn’t have another entrance!”

“He’s renovated.” Another indistinct noise, followed by the sound of a large, center core power transformer being dropped. Or, in this case, probably thrown. “Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, he is renovating.”

“It’s not renovation if you don’t put all the pieces back together into something new and beneficial, Simeon.” I swooped in towards the bunker. By pressing the maglev array to its limit I managed to make it back to the power reserve in barely two minutes, helped by the fact that it was closer to my starting point than the command bunker and the fact that I’d burned out a relay to do it – if I couldn’t save the power reserve then I wouldn’t be able to fly and fire empion grenades at the same time and, of the two, I needed aerial denial more. Frying a few relays was acceptable losses. “I’m at the front door. I notice it’s not locked.”

“We’re a little bit busy in here, sir.”

The power reserve is basically a big, rough concrete bunker wired to allow a couple of hundred high capacity industrial batteries to charge in a protected environment. Most of the important bits are down below ground level, the entrance basically lets out onto a catwalk that overlooks the batteries – and yes, catwalks are a theme in villain design and I’m no exception. They’re cheaper than building a real floor and villainy is pretty much always on a budget.

About half the catwalk was torn up, mangled and twisted until it looked more like a pretzel than a walkway. Parts of it may have been missing entirely. One of the guards was actually wrapped up in part of the mess. At the far side of the bunker I could see a ragged hole where something roughly the size of a man had torn or smashed its way through a foot of reinforced concrete. My stomach turned over once and I swallowed. I’d known Rodriguez – Samson – was absurdly strong but it looked like I’d still drastically underestimated him.

Simeon was waving to me from the control room, the sounds of sporadic gunfire and tens of thousands of dollars in electrical equipment being torn apart came up from below. I slid to a stop on the catwalk just outside the door, crouching with Simeon in the frame to avoid the bulk of the dangerous stuff flying around outside. “How do things look?”

He shook his head regretfully. “Not good. I’ve already lost touch with two of our six guards and the engineer on the control panel bolted. We’ve lost about a quarter of our reserves and the remainder is dwindling fast. I’m still not sure how he’s avoiding being electrocuted with all the wiring he’s handling but the voltage doesn’t seem to be slowing him down at all.”

“That’s disappointing and extremely odd.” I slipped my SIG out of it’s holster and checked the magazine, deliberately not analyzing what immunity to electricity might tell me about Samson’s talent. I still had no idea how it functioned other than allowing him to perform absurd feats of strength. “We’ll have to deal with him in a little more direct fashion. He took cover when I shot at him at Diversy, and again when Grappler tried the same thing at the library. Bullets must hurt him.”

“They guards are trying that but not getting very far,” Simeon said, tugging absently at the lapels of his suit jacket. Even in the middle of a dingy concrete bunker he was dressed impeccably and, in a bizarre kind of denial of his circumstances, he’d refused body armor or a weapon. That was one reason I’d asked him to stay in the most out of the way bunker, so he’d be out of the line of fire. Not my greatest success, I’ll admit.

“Are the stairs still intact?” I asked, peering through the wreckage that was the catwalk.

“Sir, with all due respect, it may be best to pull back. There’s no way to be sure bullets will actually harm him and staying here just puts you in his reach.”

“I’m not letting him wreck this place ahead of schedule, Simeon.” I gave him my best disapproving look. “It could take months or years to track down the components to finish the Thunderclap array on the black market if we don’t finish fabricating the raw materials here.”

He held up a hand and, grudgingly, I waited to hear his piece. “I understand all that. You are intent on this and I’ve long since come to accept that. But if your set on getting yourself killed I don’t see why you’d object to blowing up a building or two along the way.”

There was a clatter from behind Simeon and Hangman rolled into the control room doorway on an office chair. “Wait, what?”

I glared at Simeon. “Why is she here?”

“The engineer bolted and she has the technical know-how to keep the systems running even when someone’s ripping the guts out of them.” Simeon shrugged. “It was a logical personnel allocation.”

What he wasn’t asking was why I had a problem with something that should be so obvious. Of course someone with Hangman’s computer background would be experienced in keeping an electrical system up and running. The only reason not to want her there was because of the danger. It wasn’t like me to ignore the obvious like that and Simeon didn’t have to say it out loud for me to know he was thinking it was purely for personal reasons.

“Hey, guys,” Hangman said, interrupting my thoughts, “can we get back to the part of this conversation where we’re sitting in a building with a bomb in it?”

“Technically there’s more than one bomb and they’re not that big. Blowing up your base is an essential part of supervillainy.” I ignored the look Hangman was giving me. “Simeon I’m not losing this round. It’s mine to win, we just need to stick it out a little longer and-”

“We don’t have a little longer, sir.” In an uncharacteristically familiar gesture he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “This is your last chance to make a clean break. I’ve never understood why you wanted to become a martyr, but-”

“Yeah,” Hangman broke in, pulling Simeon back as she crowded into the doorway with us. “Care to explain that part? What is he talking about, Circuit?”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead for a minute, wondering when it was I started feeling so old. “Hangman, how much of the plan – the long-term, gambit within gambit, let’s rule the world Plan – do you think you’ve figured out?”

She kept giving me the look and I stared at her until she sighed, accepting that this was a part of how things were going to go. “Well, first you use Thunderclap to take over a city’s electronics. Then you rule it with an iron fist while driving down crime rates and using your public persona’s influence to help bring the economy into line and establish functioning social services. Then you…” Hangman hesitated for a minute, clearly to the part of the plan she hadn’t quite figured yet. “Expand, I guess. Some people will come to you willingly and others can be bullied. At some point there will probably be a direct challenge or five, but-”

“But it will never get that far. Hangman, listen to me.” I reach out as if to put a hand on her shoulder or brush the stray hair from her face. She blinked, a little uncertain, and in that moment I had her by the lapels of the jacket and pulled her close in a way that no one would mistake for affection. “You are stupidly naive and it infuriates me, because I was just like you once. So here’s the truth, unvarnished. Tyrants crumble. Alexander the Great. Julius Cesar. King John Lackland. Napoleon. Adolph Hitler. Nothing they build endured. They don’t usher in new eras, they ripped down the old ones. It was always someone who came after then who did the work of rebuilding, all they were good for was the act of destruction. All.”

Simeon grabbed me by the wrists and broke us apart. “Sir-”

“This is a contest, Hangman,” I snarled, pushing myself to my feet using the doorway as a prop. I was mad and I didn’t know why. I’d spent the last seven years piecing together these ideas and the plans that would make them real, but talking about it always seemed to make me angry. It was perhaps the one thing I’d never stopped to examine. “I tear down their lies, their projects, their secrets, until someone comes and stops me. This is where I get the ability to do whatever I want and use it to find all the liars, the cheats and the bullies out there and grind them into dust so when they finally come and finish me off there’s no more trash out there to clutter up the new order. Because sooner or later that was going to be someone like me. Maybe Lethal Injection. Maybe the Enchanter. But me – I am going to do it right. I will make them hurt like they never have before, but it will be to make them better. And when I am done and buried, they’ll be able to rebuild without any of the old crimes weighing them down.”

“You’ve made a difference, Circuit,” Hangman said, slowly reaching out to take my hand. I jerked back instinctively and she hesitated, looking hurt. “Simeon is right. You’ve shown the world Project Sumter’s lies. You have almost everything you need to build the Thunderclap array. You can step back for a while, take stock, come up with a new plan. You don’t have to-”

“Do you know what a thunderbird is?” I asked.

“What does that-”

“Do you know what it is?”

“No.” She shook her head sadly. “I don’t.”

Simeon gently laid a hand on her shoulder and said, “It’s a creature of wrath, Miss Dawson. A thunderbird’s wrath is unchecked and uncontrollable. Come. We need to go.”

I shook myself back to reality and realized I’d set my gun on the ground at some point during the exchange. I quickly scooped it back up, saying, “We can still contain this, Simeon. We’re nowhere near the endgame yet. I said it this morning – we’re winning this round.”

“Sir, I know you haven’t been paying the best attention so I’ll just tell you.” He nodded towards the edge of the catwalk. “No one’s fired a shot down there for the last ninety seconds. Now you might be able to outmatch Agent Samson with your superior maneuverability and one pistol but I doubt Hangman or I could add much to you side of the equation. And I seriously doubt you or Samson want us here.”

The worst part was, he was right. There hadn’t been gunfire for the last minute or so and I should have noticed and sent them away a long time ago. I sighed and tried to let the tension ease out of me. “You’re right. Go. I’ll see what can be done about Rodriguez.”

They’d gone a few steps down towards the door when the massive bulk of Manuel Rodriguez, full time preacher and part time government strong man, vaulted up from the ground floor and onto the wall above the catwalk, stopping himself on all fours like a human fly, except he immediately slid down and landed lightly on the catwalk. How a man his size managed to land lightly I’ll never understand.

“Actually,” he said, dusting off his pants and bulletproof vest, “before you’re on your way there is one thing that needs to be said.”

I tensed and eased the safety off my sidearm. “And what would that be, Agent Samson?”

He didn’t answer me, not directly. Instead he looked at Hangman and said, “Elizabeth Dawson. I have a message for you from your father. He wants you to come home.”

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Genrely Speaking: Military SciFi

Posted by natechen on

Welcome back to Genrely Speaking, the part of the blog where we sit down and look at modern genres and what we mean when we mention them on this blog. Classifying things is as much art as science, so having style guides is important for you if you want to be clearly understood. Thus we get a monthly segment. This week’s genre: Military Sci-Fi.

Military sci-fi is a subgenre of science fiction (surprise!) and, if you’ve read enough of the previous entries in this subsection you know that sci-fi is the genre that examines human ideas. Military sci-fi is most closely related to hard sci-fi in that it takes ideas of human development in general, and military development specifically, and applies them to craft a tale about human ingenuity and courage. You can usually spot it a mile away by the title of the story and what’s on the cover, but once you get inside you’ll also find the following hallmarks of the genre:

  1. An emphasis on the idea of necessity as the mother of invention. Many people will quote the idea that wars drive progress, and that’s true to an extent. Wars will cause a lot of resources to be focused on solving a very narrow slew of problems. While normally money and attention is spent on whatever problems people think need solving at the moment, during war (or at least total war such as we last witnessed a generation ago during World War Two) the needs of the military override the preferences of individuals or nonmilitary groups. A big focus of military sci-fi is how this unusual confluence of money, time and intellect comes together to produce results in ways that are sometimes quite surprising.
  2. An examination of the interface of technology and conflict. Whether the author is Taylor Anderson examining what would happen if you dropped WWII era technology into a war fought with sailing vessels and crossbows or Ian Douglas spinning tales of daring and bravery backed by the bleeding edge theories of reactionless propulsion and sentient computer technology, military sci-fi examines how warfare will change, how it will stay the same and how people will adapt to the situation.
  3. Sound military theory. The more things change the more they stay the same. There’s a reason Sun Tzu’s The Art of War is such an enduing treatise on conflict – much of what it says is valid in just about any kind of conflict, regardless of whether it’s armed or political, futuristic or primitive, if you apply it correctly. The military sci-fi author recognizes that and relies on this and many other examinations of military theory to create their scenarios. Of course, if you’re writing in this genre it’s also important to keep an eye on the less tangible aspects of war – endurance, determination, courage and principles.

What are the weaknesses of military sci-fi? It can be a very impersonal genre. Military histories, the style of nonfiction our genre most closely resembles, tends to focus on leaders and decision makers, and the facts and figures they use to reach their decisions. This is because warfare is a vast and chaotic undertaking and even decades after the fact it can be hard to find a clear picture of what took place. But fiction is ultimately a much more personal thing than nonfiction. We don’t want facts and figures, we want suspense, empathy with characters, memorable dialog and exciting plot twists. While military sci-fi can deliver on all of that, it can be hard to do and not every author does it well.

What are the strengths of military sci-fi? It’s big, bombastic and fun. If properly written it delivers rousing speeches, sudden reversals and snatches victory from the jaws of defeat. It can be like Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Saving Private Ryan all rolled into one and there’s no doubting that, when it really works, it’s good stuff.

There’s a thin line between cool geek and irredeemable dweeb. With the mainstreaming of comics/graphic novels and other traditionally “geek” media over the past ten years that line keeps getting harder and harder to define. But military sci-fi remains so far into dweeb territory that you can’t even see geek from there. I like the genre, myself, but I don’t think anything I’ve ever read in it would make my top five books of a given year, much less all time. If you love geeky gizmos check it out. Otherwise, you might want to look elsewhere…