SciFiJedi.com

Sci-fi Channel reported on February 14 that they would be picking up BSG for 13 more episodes, and stated that it’s move to Sunday had improved the ratings by some 8 percent.

Now, I love this show, I won’t deny it. As far as good sci-fi goes on TV this is by far number one on my list. It’s dark, it’s edgy, it’s got some great special effects, the acting is spot on, those are all the positives. There are unfortunately a few negatives, especially in this past season. And I’d say most of it stems from one plot twist…the jumping ahead one year at the end of last season.

I know, I know if I was going to complian I should have done it earlier, right? Well maybe, but I was waiting to see how they pulled this one out of the bag before I started moaning about it. The idea of jumping forward a whole year was so “out there” in terms of television drama that I wasn’t sure if I would like it or not. And now I can say with complete conviction, it screwed them up. (Read more…)

Every morning I try to drag my carcass out of bed at around 5:30am so I can have a solid hour of writing before it’s time for the kids to get up for school. Try is, of course, the operative word here. The last few weeks I can’t say I’ve been all that successful at either getting up or getting any writing done.

I’ve come to a few conclusions about what I need to be productive during writing time, just a few small demands it wouldn’t kill the universe to grant me.

First off I need to be left utterly and completaly alone with no distractions by either my beautiful children or my wonderful husband, or for that matter no TV, no phones, no Internet, no e-mail, no Jehovia’s Witnesses trying to save me from utter damnation (too late), no music, no background ambient noise…basically I need to write in a vacuum. Well a vacuum with plenty of oxygen and a comfortable chair. (Read more…)

It’s time for our first segment of Misadventures on the web. Basically the product of my complete and utter boredom and my struggle against the forces that push me to do something “good” or “helpful” to improve the human condition. Instead, I give you this. Useless websites that are nonetheless entertaining. At least to me. And I am easily amused.

First off today; inspirational Trek posters. If you don’t see the humor in some of these, you’re dead.

And who’s life would be complete without a list of the top 100 Sci-fi movies . I disagree with more then a few of these but it gave me something to occupy my brain with for a few minutes. At least until I saw something shiny.

This next one is truly useless, but it made me smile and really needs no introduction.

And finally, sex in space anyone ? Yeah, that woke some of you up from your stupor.

I love Heroes, I really do, but it is prone to doing things that make me crazy. Like another show I really like, Lost, it is doing this new thing that seem to be the rage among TV writers: stringing us along for entirely too long and leaving major questions unanswered for even longer.

I understand that a show needs to keep us in suspense, but sometimes they take it a bit too far. This guy in Heroes for example, Claire’s Dad, is way too creepy and the show has been promising for a while now to tell us what the hell is up with this guy.

Some time ago, the show teaser for the next week’s episode actually announced, ‘And what is up with THIS guy?’ and showed Claire’s Dad.

Next week came, no answer. I still have no clue if this guy is good, bad or indifferent.

I mean, come the frak on, is he a good guy or a perv? What’s driving him to do this stuff? Does he have a power or not? What is his frakin’ deal? And more importantly, how long am I going to have to wait? It’s not like there isn’t a thousand other questions you haven’t answered yet. Give us something.

Lost does this to me too, except that it’s a little worse. Major unanswered questions linger for frakin’ ever. If they keep it up and don’t start answering stuff soon, they run the risk of becoming tedious and we’re not going to believe what they finally do come up with when they say it. We’ll start to lose interest.

Personally, I don’t think they have the answers yet; I think the writers are all making it up as they go along. They’ll read blogs (like this) and listen to viewers until they hear something they like and they’ll go… “Oooh that’s a good idea, let’s do that.”

So, with that in mind (since OF COURSE the writers of that show are reading this blog), here is what I think this guy’s deal is: He is a bad guy. He has raised Claire for his own nefarious purposes. He wants Clare to become an indestructible fembot that can walk into Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Parlors and take all the money out of the kiddie rides, walking out unscathed from the inevitable gunfire that would ensue from such heinous a crime.

Then he’ll use that money to fund research into genetically engineering Tolkien Elves, just to annoy Shannon.

There. One less thing.

One of the things I plan to do when writing on this blog is to take everything that’s been cluttering up my brain and place it here, on these pages. This is one of those things that has my brain cluttered. Don’t be fooled though, even though it’s clutter, it is still extremely interesting and worthwhile. I am now about to clean it out and hope it doesn’t leave a stain.

So here goes: no matter what it is, no matter what you’re talking about, you can always make it sound cool if you add the following to the end: …of death, or …of doom.

Let’s try it, shall we?

• The station wagon. The station wagon OF DEATH.
• The banana peel. The banana peel OF DOOM.
• The monkey. The monkey OF DEATH. The monkey OF DOOM is also nice.
• The Easter Bunny. The Easter Bunny OF DEATH.

See how much cooler all those things sounded when you added those words? Another handy trick I like to use is to preface everything with the word EVIL.

The EVIL station wagon OF DEATH sounds even better, don’t you think? I also like the evil Easter Bunny of Death. That’s my kind of Easter Bunny.

What does this have to do with scifi? Well, you just try to write a story without an evil Easter Bunny in it and see how far that gets you. Even the best scifi on TV, Battlestar Galactica has an evil Easter Bunny of death.

SPOILER:
Not only is Baltar NOT a cylon, but a mysterious Easter basket full of brightly colored eggs will be discovered in his quarters later this season. You heard it here first people. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

How many blogs can a blogger blog if a blogger could blog… ummm… wood?

Sorry, that kinda died out on me there, I couldn’t come up with a good ending. I had fog, dog, and bog, the easy ones, but I never take the easy ones. Plus, it wouldn’t have made sense anyway.

Oh sure, I could have just not written that at all since it didn’t work, but that’s not how I swing baby. Once i start something, I commit. I stay with it and beat it until it’s unrecognizable. Like right now, you are SO wishing I would move on…

Okay, okay.

The thing is, I am writing a lot these days. This is my second blog and I also write for a website. So , what the frak am I doing here? FIrst of all, I wanted a place where I could write the word frak all the time and have it make sense to people.

Frak, frak, frak.

Hmmmm. That’s not as appealing as I thought it would be. Sounds like a duck.

Still, I’m looking forward to using it in almost every post I write.

I’m also here because I love scifi and fantasy. I also really wanted a chance to work with Shannon, an outstanding writer and all around great person (just don’t tell her I said that). Alas, she also has some rather misguided opinions, so I need to be here to make sure there’s a balanced, critically acclaimed and outstandingly clever voice to counteract them.

I know she’s gotten a head start on me, like over 10 posts so far, but that’s only because she didn’t have to set up the site, configure the server, find a decent WordPress template that didn’t make me throw up, and make sure our posts got stored and backed up properly. Not to worry though. I’m a posting machine, I’ll catch up.

One thing you won’t see from me however, are post times before noon. Shannon gets up at some ungodly hour, like 5am to make her posts. Jeebus. The only time I ever see that time of day is if I’ve been up all night.

Another reason I want to write for this blog is that I have many, many, many opinions. Unlike Shannon’s opinions however, mine are correct. And you need to hear them. They matter and they will enrich your life. I say that because that’s what all bloggers think: we are the center of the universe and we know more than you do. Even if we don’t, it completely irrelevant. That’s the mindset that drives us.

Alrightly then. Let’s get this thing started.

Make it so. (God it’s so great to be a geek).

I have a regular Sunday night routine (used to be a Friday night one, but they moved Battle Star Galactica on me). I gather a beer, chips and salsa, and camp out in front of the T.V for a couple of hours of unadulterated geek out time all thanks to the Sci-fi channel.
The Sci-fi channel and I have had a few tiffs in the past. They’ve butchered some damn fine books making them into a miniseries. Ursula K. Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea comes to mind, but I digress. The thing is, I was really getting to the point where I believed everything original on the Sci-fi channel was–to be blunt–shit. But, thanks to a few cylons who look like humans, a couple of messed up fighter pilots, and a narcissistic genius I was hoping the Sci-fi channel was on it’s way to redemption.
And for the most part they are, not only is their Battlestar Galactica but the miniseries The Lost Room was good, and the new Dresiden Files is warming up a bit. I even kind of like their new series Eureka .
Okay, so all that said I still have to ask. Are the people in charge of programming fracking crazy? I’ve noticed in the last few weeks a strange thing during commercial breaks. Wrestling commercials. And not commercials for their sister network USA, honest to god wrestling on the Sci-fi Channel.
I’m going to be honest, wrestling is stupid, asinine and juvenile just to name a few adjectives. But that’s just my opinion, I know there’s millions of people out there who love wrestling, I have no problem with that necessarily. My problem lies with wrestling being aired on a channel dedicated to science fiction and fantasy.
Not that I have to stretch too far to see that wrestling and bad Sci-fi have certain things in common.

1. spandex
2. large breasted women
3. nonsensical plot lines
4. bad guys who are bad purely for the sake of being bad
5. generally appeals to a mostly teenage boy audience

All that said, I personally think the people in charge of programming at the Sci-fi Channel need a serious kick in the head, possibly even a good stoning. It’s my belief people would do less stupid things if public stoning were allowed, but that’s beside the point. The point is, if anyone agrees with me we need to start letting these morons know it. Wrestling can be found on a ton of other channels, it DOES NOT need to be on the Sci-fi Channel under any circumstances. So anyone out there listening, let’s start some mass mailing, or serious grumbling to those people in charge over there. With any luck we can be spared the commercials during Sunday night’s geek fest within months. And that would go a long way toward healing the rift in my relationship with the Sci-fi Channel.

I’m a fantasy writer for the most part, though I do occasionally venture off into more mainstream stuff, in recent years I’ve stuck pretty much to writing fantasy, or THINKING about writing fantasy anyway. I’ve learned lately though there are certain dangers to being a writer in general, and to speculative writing in particular.

I have a tendency to think up or think about my story ideas when driving. This is worse then talking on a cell phone and driving. My mind is completely absorbed by imaginary dialogues, creating descriptions, and just generally wondering willy-nilly. This means I often cut people off, run yellow lights (okay truthfully red lights, or at lest that’s what the cop who pulled me over said) and generally tend to piss off my fellow drivers. I’ve crunched garbage cans while trying to figure out my protagonists motivation, side swiped a parked car while going over the finer points of the climax of a novel, and once drove the wrong way down a one way street and ended up stuck on the median when I got this great idea for a story. Needless to say when I’m driving in “writer” mode, I’m a hazard to everyone.

I also am constantly running the risk of social ostracism. Not that I’m that much of a social person to begin with, but it would be nice to go to the local block party without people whispering behind their hands, and giving me the same kind of looks a platypus gets in a zoo. That “man god really does have a sense of humor” kind of look. See, the problem is I live in an area where people’s idea of creativity is getting out of a public intoxication rap, or seeing what kind of pretty tread marks they can leave in the local bar’s parking lot. So, while I won’t say being a writer itself makes them look at me funny, they inevitably ask what kind of writer I am, hoping to hear that I write for Hustler or something exciting. But no, I have to tell them that I generally write fantasy. This starts a conversation that goes something like this.

“Fantasy, like that Lord of Rings movie or Harry Potter?

Yeah, kind of like that, but Tolkin wrote epic, sword and sorcery fantasy, I write other stuff.”

“So you write about those pointy eared things…elves and junk.”

“No, not really.”

“Hmmm.” There’s usually an uncomfortable pause here, filled with side ways glances and that look of panic that only small talk at a party can produce.

“So…uhhh, I like romances, ever wrote one of those?” (This usually from women, most of the men around here don’t read anything unless a half dressed woman is sprawled all over the cover. Preferably sprawled on the hood of a classic car.)

“Nope,” I say, when what I’m thinking is, “Dear god no, I hate bodice rippers, and I’ve never used the words ‘throbbing member’ or ‘heaving breasts’. I’d never sully the sanctity of by brain with such drivel.”

Yes, I am a book snob, and that’s coming from an avid science fiction and fantasy reader, so I really don’t have much snobbish ground to stand on.

“So,” my forced companion will eventually ask, “You’re like a geek then, right? A Trekkie or something? Ever dressed up like a Star Wars character? You’d look hot in that outfit Princesses Leia was wearing in that last movie, you know that loin cloth thing.” That last sentence is usually (though not always) said by men, and is usually followed by the oh so subtle wink and elbow nudge into some other guy’s ribcage.

Just for reference, I would look hot in Leia’s slave outfit.

If I was to give an award for the most annoying fantasy creature elves would win hands down. I know, you’re aghast, but I have my reasons. Firstly, The Lord of The Rings. Maybe it was just Orlando Bloom as Legolas, but that was when I first noticed my estimation of elves had dropped considerably from when I was a child.

For some reason the sight of Orlando Bloom sliding down the trunk of that giant elephant (a mumakil if I recall correctly, and god how pathetic is it that I know that) shooting arrows the whole way just made me roll my eyes. It’s never a good sign when I roll my eyes. Of course this wasn’t the only moment in the trilogy that I’d rolled my eyes at the way elves are presented, and this isn’t the only movie or book that brought on such feelings toward the pointy eared little know-it-alls.

I mean what’s not to dislike. They’re smarter, stronger, faster, live longer, and are more beautiful then mere humans. They can move through a forest undetected and drop down from trees surprising any other life form that has dared enter their domain. They’re wise, that in and of itself isn’t bad I like wise, but they’re smug about it and I hate smug. And my biggest beef of all; they think they stand on some kind of moral high ground that we mere mortals could not possibly hope to obtain. I despise the moral high ground, unless of course I am firmly planted on it. Then I lord the moral high ground over everyone. In all honesty though, this happens very rarely. To quote Trent Reznor; “My moral standing is lying down”. And yes, I’ve been waiting since the early nineties to get that quote in somewhere.

I know many writers have taken the elves outside of cliché, or sometimes they’ve feed into that cliché with interesting results. Such as Jacqueline Carey’s Banewrecker and Godslayer books, which is a retelling of Tolkien’s famous series but told from the perspective of the “bad guys”. She plays quite well off the old elf clichés weaving them into her world building, which–despite what some people have said–I found an interesting take on Tolkien’s world.

I guess part of me just wants to see that illusion of perfection broken. You know, I want to see an acne prone teenage elf, or an ugly elf, or an elf that has a terrible sense of direction and has no idea where to find sacred objects or lost knowledge. A clueless elf, that’d be a refreshing change.

I have recently become a Gaiman convert, taken the vows, said the hail Neils, and swore to remain true to the god of speculative fiction.

Okay, maybe “god” is going a bit far, but demi-god surely. I first picked up a Neil Gaiman book years ago when Neverwhere was first published. I liked it, but I was in the midst of my epic fantasy phase and soon forgot all about it in favor of sweeping medieval-esque worlds inhabited by elves and large men with larger swords. Basically, I was young and wanted my stories all raw and exposed, with no subtext or subtlety to weigh me down. Pure escapism was my goal. I’m kind of sorry I missed my opportunity all those years ago to become a follower of one of the best writers on the market today. (Read more…)