by crissly | Apr 29, 2022 | Uncategorized
Christopher M. Cevasco is an author of both fantasy fiction and historical fiction. As someone with a foot in both worlds, he’s constantly surprised by the lack of crossover.
“I don’t see the same faces when I go to the Historical Novel Society Conference that I do when I go to the World Fantasy Convention,” Cevasco says in Episode 511 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “Most people have either been to one or the other. I guess I’m the odd bird who goes to both of them.”
Many fantasy writers have read George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones, based heavily on the War of the Roses, but would never think to sample the work of historical novelist Bernard Cornwell, which offers many of the same pleasures. Cevasco loves them both. “I know that George R.R. Martin is a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell, and vice versa,” he says. “It makes perfect sense to me that they like to read each other’s work.”
Cevasco’s biggest attempt to bring together the two communities was Paradox, a magazine that he published for six years, beginning in 2003. “That was part of my impetus for starting Paradox magazine back in the day,” he says. “I was trying to highlight that overlap and bring the two together under the umbrella of a magazine that at the time was publishing short fiction that was either historical, or fantasy, or a mix of both historical and fantasy.”
Historical fiction and fantasy both allow readers to step outside their everyday reality and view it from a new angle. Cevasco hopes more authors will come to appreciate how much common ground the genres share. “I think the best science fiction and fantasy and the best historical fiction, it’s not just a period costume drama, it’s also something that resonates with the modern world—with our world—and comments on it somehow,” he says. “I think it’s an interesting way to explore those sorts of issues in an unconventional setting.”
Listen to the complete interview with Christopher M. Cevasco in Episode 511 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Christopher M. Cevasco on his novel Beheld: Godiva’s Story:
When [Lady Godiva] rides through town, in the legend, most of the townsfolk go into their homes and avert their eyes so as not to shame their beloved noblewoman. But one man, named Thomas, peeks at her and is immediately struck blind—or in some versions he’s struck dead—by God for his voyeurism. And this is of course where we get the concept of a “Peeping Tom” … If you look at it page by page, only a small percentage of my book has this voyeuristic, erotic content, but it is definitely a prominent theme throughout my book, and it is far more risqué than anything else I’ve ever written, short or long. So I was in this awkward position of having to write outside of my comfort zone, but I just felt like it was something the legend compelled me to do. I had to confront that head-on, and make it front and center in this book.
Christopher M. Cevasco on the Norman Conquest:
Everyone tends to think of the Norman Conquest as an event—that in 1066 the Battle of Hastings happened and the Normans conquered England. But I think it’s fair to say that that battle was just the start of their process of conquest, and really for about five to seven years after that battle there was an active resistance movement among the English that in many ways paralleled the Maquis in France during World War II. They were doing covert operations, there were all these colorful figures like Hereward the Wake that were living in the woods and sabotaging the Normans—and in some places fighting and winning pitched battles against William’s armies. It’s a really amazing period of history, that period right after the Conquest, and that’s the other big book that I’m shopping around right now, is one that’s sort of a wartime resistance thriller set among those resistance fighters.
Christopher M. Cevasco on Heorot: Beowulf’s Domain of Dread:
If you play Dungeons & Dragons, you know that there’s a setting called Ravenloft, which is basically all these different horror pocket dimensions—everything under the sun could be in this milieu. So I was like, “What if there were a setting based on Beowulf where the people in that setting are trapped in a never-ending cycle of violence and revenge? And this whole cycle resets every time Grendel comes in and slaughters everyone, and the mom comes in and gets revenge for Grendel being killed, and then it all resets, and these people are trapped in this never-ending cycle?” So I had a lot of fun putting this together. I thought it was going to be a little 10-page supplement, and it ended up being a 125-page gazetteer of Ravenloft and Beowulf lore that pulls in Norse mythology and Anglo-Saxon history and all sorts of fun stuff.
Christopher M. Cevasco on religion:
What’s cool to me when you’re writing about people and how they interact with their faith—you know, it’s one thing when you have a scene between two or three characters. They’re always going to be portraying themselves as “characters”—as they want to be perceived. But when you have a character who is interacting with their god, or some spiritual force, the power of their faith means that they are sort of stripped naked, and you are seeing the truest version of that character that you can possibly see because they know that they, in their minds, have nowhere to hide. So it’s really interesting to me when you have a character, in any book, that is dealing with the spiritual or the divine, because it’s very revealing about their inner thoughts.
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by crissly | Apr 15, 2022 | Uncategorized
The Apple TV+ series Severance presents a world in which office workers have their minds split into two personalities—one who only remembers what happens at work and one who only remembers what happens outside of it. Science fiction author John Kessel loves the show’s inventive premise.
“After we watched the first episode, I said to my wife, ‘This is one of the smartest shows I’ve seen in a long time,’” Kessel says in Episode 509 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I rank it—at least through this first season—as highly as I do things like Breaking Bad. I really think it’s classic.”
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley agrees that Severance is a standout series. “This is my favorite show of the last year or two,” he says. “I think you would have to go back to something like Devs or Dark for something I liked as much as this.”
Writer Sara Lynn Michener enjoys how Severance puts a unique spin on the idea of using robots or clones for unpleasant tasks. “This is obviously something that we’ve seen repeated in science fiction over and over again,” she says. “Who are the slaves? Who are the group of disposable people? And so what this show is doing is creating that concept out of splitting yourself literally in two, and having that side of yourself be something that you sort of kick aside. It’s really effectively unsettling.”
Science fiction author Anthony Ha is looking forward to Season 2 of Severance but worries that the show might be stretching its story out over too many episodes. “I did feel like the pacing slowed down a bit in the middle of the season, and I do wonder if there is an even better version of this that is the ‘one season and done’ narrative,” he says.
Listen to the complete interview with John Kessel, Sara Lynn Michener, and Anthony Ha in Episode 509 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
John Kessel on Franz Kafka:
We watched a whole season and we still don’t know what they do at this corporation. They’re sort of rounding up “bad” numbers and removing them. I keep thinking: Is this a metaphor? Is this connected to some other thing? The whole idea of the cult and the great founder, all that stuff is really intriguing to me. It reminds me of Kafka, with The Trial or The Castle. In The Castle, there are these people in the castle who are running things, and you never get into the castle—you don’t know who they are or what they’re doing up there. I don’t know if Dan Erickson had any of that specifically in mind, but there’s a lot of metaphorical stuff going on here that is very interesting to me.
Sara Lynn Michener on Patricia Arquette:
Patricia Arquette does a fantastic job in this show. She plays basically two different characters, but she isn’t severed. She intentionally has two different characters, and two different names, because she’s high enough up at the company that she can do that. Her work persona is this very creepy, rigid, obsessive person, and then in her “neighbor” persona she comes across as a crazy cat lady—she dresses completely differently than her other character. So it’s a really wonderful performance by Patricia Arquette because she captures both sides of this very unsettling, unnerving, crazy person.
Anthony Ha on set design:
The visual style is not about the kind of “Googleplex, brightly colored, all-glass, open floor plan” Silicon Valley ethos, but it is much more about this older style of work. It’s how I imagine the offices that my parents went to looked. Just the fact that it is a cubicle farm as opposed to a bunch of desks. I mean, I think there is in-world logic for that, because if they all had laptops and sat down and could immediately get on the internet that would kind of defeat the whole purpose of severance, but I think there’s also an emotional logic to it. It’s supposed to feel like this nightmare of what office life is, as opposed to a realistic representation of what it’s like now.
David Barr Kirtley on characterization:
There’s this constant idea that the [characters] are going to escape somehow, and I don’t see any way that really works. Even if they get the word out that this is this exploitative process, it seems like if the severance program were shut down and the chips were turned off, they would just all die, in effect. If their agenda is basically “we would rather all be dead than at work for the rest of our lives,” that makes sense, but I feel like that idea sort of gets pushed to the background in the show. It seems like they don’t just all want to die. It seems like they have some hope of escape, and I’m not sure what it is that they’re imagining is going to happen.
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by crissly | Jan 10, 2022 | Uncategorized
The new Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian follows the adventures of a ruthless bounty hunter named Din Djarin. It has a strong Western vibe, something science fiction author Rajan Khanna appreciated immediately.
“One of the things I’ve always wanted to see from the Star Wars universe is them tackling other genres, so not just space opera, but Westerns, thrillers, spy stuff, whatever,” Khanna says in Episode 395 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “I think the universe is broad enough and deep enough to handle that, so to have this Western feel worked really well for me.”
Din Djarin is a man of few words, and for virtually the entire show his face is hidden behind an expressionless metal helmet. Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley says that’s appropriate, since the character is clearly intended to capitalize on the popularity of another Star Wars bounty hunter, Boba Fett.
“[Boba Fett’s] appeal is basically that he’s so mysterious, and you don’t know everything about him, and there’s not a ton of character development,” Kirtley says. “So I feel like maybe it would not be true to that whole character or that whole appeal if [Din Djarin] had a lot of character development and you knew his backstory in extreme detail.”
But science fiction author Matthew Kressel found the lack of characterization frustrating, particularly over the course of an eight-episode TV show. “You get tiny little glimpses of who he is, but every time they give you a glimpse, it’s a cliché,” Kressel says. “Who is he? What are his values? What does he think? Does he have any great desires? I never got any of that.”
Fantasy author Erin Lindsey says the solution might be to pair Din Djarin with a more relatable sidekick, similar to the dynamic between Sherlock Holmes and Watson. This would allow Din Djarin to remain aloof and mysterious while still providing opportunities for richer characterization and emotional connection.
“We don’t have to understand him, but we do need to attach to him somehow, even if it’s via a third party,” she says.
Listen to the complete interview with Rajan Khanna, Matthew Kressel, and Erin Lindsey in Episode 395 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
David Barr Kirtley on nostalgia:
“This was really bringing back memories of watching The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. with my dad. I don’t actually remember the show that well. It’s a Western—I think sort of a Weird Western or Steampunk Western or something—but I just vividly remember the feeling of watching that show with my dad, and this really brought back those memories, because it does have this very distinct Old West kind of vibe to it. … What this show is doing is it’s a conscious repudiation of all the advances that TV storytelling has made in the last 20 years. Particularly in the middle, it’s very episodic. It’s simple and straightforward, and the characters are fairly straightforward, and it’s just fun. I think a lot of your reaction to it is going to be whether you find that return to a simpler era of television to be refreshing and nostalgic or just retrograde.”
Matthew Kressel on bad writing:
“I see this a lot in bad storytelling, where the storyteller wants a specific thing to happen, so they manipulate the reality of the world to make that happen. And in [the episode called] ‘The Prisoner,’ it’s this stupid beacon. It’s like, ‘Oh, if you press this beacon then X-wings come and blow you up.’ And I’m like, ‘OK? I guess?’ So apparently you could just take that beacon and put it anywhere, and the X-wings would come and be like, ‘Well, that’s the beacon, I guess we should blow it up.’ What reality is this in? And why is this prison ship not traveling through hyperspace? Why is it traveling through space at a slow speed? I don’t get that. So there were just really weird, stupid plot choices.”
Erin Lindsey on Giancarlo Esposito:
“Giancarlo Esposito is one of my favorite television actors. He’s played one of the most chilling television villains of all time. So they have some great raw clay to work with there. Clearly their intention with this season—at least I think so—was just to introduce him and let us know that he exists, and presumably he’s a recurring big bad in the next season, which is one of the reasons I’m excited. But one of the things that makes Giancarlo Esposito so amazing is that he’s such a subtle actor, and how do you really get the best out of a subtle actor in a black cape and Darth Vader outfit surrounded by stormtroopers? That’s about as subtle as a sledgehammer. So it’s going to be really interesting to watch how they blend those two things.”
Rajan Khanna on bounty hunters:
“I’ve always wanted more of a bounty hunter ‘scum and villany’ focus, so I think that was great. It harkens back to the ‘Han shoots first’ era of Star Wars. There’s a point at which the Mandalorian disintegrates a couple of Jawas right off the bat, and nothing is made of it. He doesn’t feel super guilty or whatever. And I kind of liked that focus. … I really liked the fact that the big bad [in episode 4]—the big thing that was so difficult and dangerous—was just an AT-ST Walker, which we’ve seen many times before, and Ewoks are able to kill them with two logs, but on this scale it’s something that’s devastating, and it takes this big effort to bring it down, which I appreciated. I liked seeing that smaller scale.”
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by crissly | Oct 29, 2021 | Uncategorized
The 1985 film Enemy Mine tells the story of two soldiers—one human and one alien—who become unlikely allies when they are stranded together on a desolate planet. TV writer Andrea Kail says that even a standout performance by Louis Gossett Jr. can’t save the movie.
“I remember really liking this movie when I saw it however many years ago, but it did not stand up to my memory,” Kail says in Episode 490 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “It was shot like a B-movie. Dennis Quaid was over-the-top, the music was overwrought. I just found it so much less enjoyable than it should have been.”
Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley agrees that the film is lackluster, which is a shame considering that it’s based on an award-winning novella by Barry Longyear. “The [novella] is really, really touching,” Kirtley says. “It’s the story of this guy learning to understand another culture, and then passing it on to a child. That’s what it’s about. It’s beautiful.”
The movie builds to a corny, tacked-on finale in which the human soldier goes on a gory rampage. Humor writer Tom Gerencer says the ending is particularly odd given the pacifistic themes of the rest of the film. “The whole part where he’s killing everyone, I’m like, ‘What’s the point here?’” he says. “Now he’s learned to be peaceful, and he’s just killing all these people?”
Science fiction author Matthew Kressel says the time is right for a new version of Enemy Mine that stays closer to the source material. “I think this movie could be remade, if they did it with modern special effects,” he says. “I think it’s a timeless message—that we shouldn’t dehumanize somebody just because they’re unfamiliar to us.”
Listen to the complete interview with Andrea Kail, Tom Gerencer, and Matthew Kressel in Episode 490 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
David Barr Kirtley on The Last Starfighter:
“When I saw it as a kid, it seemed much more serious and dramatic to me, and watching it now the tone is more like Galaxy Quest. It’s really, really silly—in a fun way. … I think they say this is a federation of 800 worlds or something, and they only have 12 fighter pilots to fight for them? And then they have this wall of satellites to defend them from the bad guys, and it’s like, ‘No, dudes, we’re in outer space.’ I mean, presumably it would have to be a sphere around all 800 worlds. So how many of these things are we talking about? Maybe that’s why they only have 12 fighter pilots—because they spent all their money on this gigantic wall.”
Matthew Kressel on Enemy Mine:
“Whenever we fight another group, we dehumanize them in order to be able to kill them. ‘Oh, they’re inhuman monsters!’ When you see them as another person—in this case it’s an alien—but when you see the soul of them, face to face, and that they’re just like you, and in some ways better than you, I think that’s a powerful message. … [The alien] says, ‘We were here a thousand years before you,’ and clearly it’s one of those things where both sides think they’re right, but they both essentially want the same things. So when we get to the end, where Davidge is reciting the ancient lineage on the Drac homeworld, I found that unexpectedly moving.”
Tom Gerencer on Flight of the Navigator:
“I had only ever seen the part where he’s flying around on the spaceship with Pee-wee Herman talking to him, so I was like, ‘That movie is absolutely stupid.’ And then when I had to go back last week and watch this movie from start to finish, I was like, ‘Holy crap, that’s so cool that he shows up, and he hasn’t aged, but it’s eight years later, and his parents are all bereaved.’ I was like, ‘Wow, I had no idea this movie had something cool about it.’ So I really enjoyed that, and by virtue of that I enjoyed watching the rest of the movie too, because I was like, ‘Now there’s context, and I understand what’s going on.’ So I really enjoyed this movie, but mostly because I had only ever seen the part with no plot in it.”
Andrea Kail on Short Circuit:
“I have very fond memories of this movie. I remember when I was a teenager thinking it was absolutely hilarious. There was one line that I hadn’t thought of in years, but as soon as Fisher Stevens said it, I was like, ‘Oh my god. I remember saying that back and forth with my friend at the time,’ because we thought it was so hilarious. It was the line, ‘I’m sporting a tremendous woody right now.’ And we would say it in that horrible Indian accent. I thought it was hilarious then, and I see it now and it’s so cringeworthy and awful. We’ve been doing all these ’80s movies—the bad ones, the good ones—and it feels to me like we’re not only being nostalgic, but also confronting the ghosts of our past: the casual racism, the misogyny that was so prevalent in the ’80s.”
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by crissly | Oct 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
In his new book Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn’t Fear Facebook and the Future, Robby Soave questions the conventional wisdom which says that social media represents an unprecedented threat to the well-being of America’s youth.
“I think there’s been a lot of panicking about social media that’s disproportionate to the actual harm,” Soave says in Episode 488 of the Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast. “A lot of this is hyperbole; a lot of this is overblown.”
He says the current furor over social media is reminiscent of the way politicians talked about video games like Doom and Mortal Kombat back in the ’90s. “Everything that was said about video games 20 years ago turned out not to be true—they don’t promote violence, they don’t turn young men into school shooters,” he says. “And I wonder if 10 or 20 years from now we’ll look back at this moral panic in a similar way.”
Much has been made over the power of algorithms developed by Facebook and Google, which Soave says recalls earlier panics over the danger of subliminal advertising. “I like that when I’m on Facebook, I’m getting [ads for] Dungeons & Dragons merchandise rather than commercials for cars,” he says. “If I watch TV, I get commercials for cars. I’m not going to buy a car. Not relevant to me. I wish I could fast-forward through them. On Facebook I see things I might actually like. That’s a good thing.”
Tech companies are taking fire from across the political spectrum, with everyone from Donald Trump and Senator Josh Hawley to President Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren calling for new regulations. Soave says it would be a huge mistake to let politicians exert too much power over one of America’s most innovative industries. “Maybe for a lot of people, they go, ‘Well, if everyone in government wants this, that means it’s right,’ whereas I go the opposite way—if everyone wants this, it’s definitely bad,” he says.
Listen to the complete interview with Robby Soave in Episode 488 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). And check out some highlights from the discussion below.
Robby Soave on Dungeons & Dragons:
“Right now I’m [dungeon mastering] two groups, and I’m playing in a third, although that one came to an end and I think they’re going to rapture my character into a different group. So there’s a lot of overlap between my various worlds and characters. It’s so much fun … Because I write for a libertarian magazine, my primary group is very libertarian in play style. The other group tacks a bit further to the right. The main difference I’ve noticed is that the group that tacks further to the right does like combat and killing everything they encounter, and killing characters I come up with, whereas the libertarians want to talk their way—or exchange things—out of every situation. They will avoid combat at all costs.”
Robby Soave on cancel culture:
“I’ve written a lot about cases of what people call ‘cancel culture,’ of people coming under attack or criticism for having written something or done something that was maybe insensitive or offensive in some way, but they didn’t kill someone—it shouldn’t be the end of their lives … It’s very weird, especially for the progressive left, who often believe in criminal justice reform, which is something I support—the idea that formerly incarcerated people should be able to live normal lives, and they should be able to get jobs again, and you shouldn’t necessarily have to ask them about their incarceration status—you can be forgiven. Which I totally agree with, but then someone who said something maybe racist when they were 15, and you found the tweet, they should never be employed again? That makes no sense to me.”
Robby Soave on the media:
“Really the villain of my book is actually the mainstream media and The New York Times in particular … You can go back through time, and every invention, especially in the communication space, you can find them absolutely panicked about it … But it makes sense from an industry’s perspective, because a lot of these technologies were perceived by The New York Times, by the newspapers, as a competitor.”
Robby Soave on Silicon Valley:
“The culture of Silicon Valley has become somewhat hostile to innovation, and it has made people leave [California]. My point in bringing that up was, let’s not repeat that nationally. The anti-tech rhetoric coming from everyone in Congress is so totalizing. They are treating social media like Big Tobacco right now—we heard that over and over again. But Big Tobacco has killed millions of people, and even the most serious accusations against Instagram, no one thinks it’s killed hundreds of people. So it’s a ridiculous comparison. This kind of knee-jerk anti-tech sentiment coming from policymakers and lawmakers does not serve our country well, does not serve our society well, and does not serve innovation well.”
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