Geek Interest – Page 24 – The Designer Monologues

July 18, 2011July 30, 2011

What’s Up, Gareth?

Seriously need to kick myself into regular updates of this thing. Easier, I think, once I finish the redesign.

So what’s been going on in my world recently? First of all, The Far West Kickstarter proceeds apace. We’re about 30 minutes shy of our first full week, and we’re over 200% funded. $10.3K, with another 5 weeks to go. We’ve passed our second goal (10K), which means that all backers are now getting the LEGENDS OF THE FAR WEST supplement (which will be exclusive to the Kickstarter — never to appear for sale in any other venue).

We’ve also set the next goal ($13.5K), and if we hit that, all backers will receive the first in the FAR WEST fiction line as an ebook, Kindle edition, or PDF. The line will launch in December with TALES OF THE FAR WEST, an anthology featuring folks like Tessa Gratton, Aaron Rosenberg, Chuck Wendig, Will Hindmarch, Dave Gross, and more. If you’re a writer, and I know you or your work, feel free to drop me a line — we’re always looking for a good penslinger.

Made the big announcement over at the Adamant site just now: We’re doing the Buckaroo Banzai Adventure Game, coming in Spring of 2012. Another one of my dream projects, crossed off the list. 15-year-old me is ecstatic. If I can eventually work on JAMES BOND or STAR WARS, I’ll have no worlds left to conquer.

We’ve got a gorgeous cover by the massively brilliant sci-fi/fantasy illustrator Dave Dorman, which you can see in its mock-up form over there at the right.

Semi-related (at least in the sense of late-period pulp), I stumbled across a gem during a visit to Half Price books this weekend. Dovetails with last year’s post that I did on ePulp — my idea that the adventure “trash paperback” could make a comeback in ebooks — something I plan to move towards once Adamant gets its Kindle legs under it a bit more firmly. Sure enough, I found one of the books whose image appeared as an example in that story (reproduced at left): BLACK SAMURAI #6: THE WARLOCK!

Seriously, folks — this thing is like a Greatest Hits package of early-to-mid-70s pop cultural crazes: Blaxploitaton, Martial Arts and Satanic Horror. Listen to the back-cover copy:

EXORCISM: SAMURAI STYLE
The Warlock ruled an occult empire that stretched around the world. This evil genius giant of a man with his slavelike army of hideous killer dwarfs, gorgeous women, sadistic perverts, and all the other devotees of his devil-worshipping religion now reached out to grasp ultimate power over all the nations of the earth. Satan was in the saddle and was riding mankind to doom — and only Robert Sand, Black Samurai, could hope to exorcise this monstrous threat, or else himself be thrown screaming into the bottomless put of soul-destroying pain and body-mangling death….

The Black Samurai tangles with a human Satan in a hellish den of torrid sex and deadly violence!

HOLY CRAP. How could I not get it?

Plus, it’s got that disintegrating-pulp-paper smell, which is like crack to me. Sweet, sweet crack.

So that’s what’s going on my world. I live an interesting life.

June 16, 2011June 16, 2011

Bondage

Long-time readers will know that I’m a huge fan of James Bond. As I mentioned in my Tour de Bond series from last Summer and Fall, I’ve been a fan since about age 10. Bond is essentially responsible for my career — I got into role-playing games when a friend gave me a copy of TSR’s Top Secret, because of my Bond-fandom. That led to D&D, which led to Star Frontiers… which, following down a VERY long path, eventually led to my career. I named my son after Ian Fleming.

I am pleased to note that I am currently steeped in Bond — the new novel, Carte Blanche, by Jeffery Deaver arrived on my doorstop this week (the day after my birthday, in fact), and I’m currently reading (and really enjoying) it.

Deaver, a NY Times bestselling author of dozens of thrillers, was tasked with the job of rebooting Bond for the modern day, and I’m pleased to report that he’s pulled it off brilliantly. He presents Bond in his early thirties, a veteran of Afghanistan, and recruited into a new secret organization, independent of MI5 and MI6 — essentially a post-9/11 version of the WWII-era Special Operations Executive (SOE). This neatly circumvents the fact that Bond’s adventures don’t meld well with the increased knowledge we have of how the British intelligence services actually operate, and gives us a fictional (but believable) organization with clear historical precedent that is tasked with “defense of the Realm by any means necessary” — which fits perfectly with Fleming’s original view of Bond as a “blunt instrument” of Her Majesty’s Government.

I’m also listening to a (*gasp!*) bootleg score recording from the recent original Bond videogame from Activision, 007 Blood Stone, which was composed by Richard Jacques — and which includes a brilliant original Bond theme written by Joss Stone and Dave Stewart (yes, of The Eurythmics), which is as good as any that have been done for film. The track, “I’ll Take It All”, will be featured in tomorrow’s Friday Music blog entry, but in the meantime, you can watch the video of the 2-minute title sequence from the video game below, which uses an edited version of the full theme:

I’ll also share with you with the promotional photo that Ms. Stone did for the game…. for reasons which are self-evident:

I have to admit that a Holy Grail of mine, writing-wise, has been the creation of an “American James Bond” — that’s always been something that I’ve pursued, but it has remained a tough nut to crack. Americans seem to like their spies as either ideologically-pure technocrats like Jack Ryan from Tom Clancy’s books, or macho extremist fantasies like Jack Bauer from 24 — neither of which really appeal to me. It’s hard to get the right level of Bondian sophistication in there — generally speaking, Americans don’t really “do” sophistication, or rather, I should say that sophistication is often viewed as suspect (the trappings of “elites”, etc.) — but I think that it’s important as a counter-balance to the required violence.

And, of course, the trick is to avoid making the whole thing just a fan-fiction pastiche.

So, yeah — still beating my brain against that goal, as I have done for years. Just haven’t had my “aha!” moment yet.

May 4, 2011May 4, 2011

Dear Star Wars: It’s Not You, It’s Me.

Dear Star Wars;

“May the 4th Be With You” — my various social media feeds today are filled with my fellow geeks marking the occasion of “Star Wars Day,” and so I find you in my thoughts again.

It’s not a new feeling, of course. Upon our first meeting — the occasion of my eighth birthday in June of 1977 — the course of my life was irrevocably altered. For the next 6 years, you filled my every waking moment, and a fair few of my dreams as well. My imagination was filled with thoughts of a Galaxy Far, Far Away. You shaped my tastes, and even what I wanted to do with my life. I’m not alone in this, of course — my whole generation was deeply affected.

Through my adolescence, my college years — we never entirely drifted apart. Even as my attentions were drawn to other things — other geek interests or the concerns of an adult life — you were never really far from heart. There were always new ways for us to connect: the RPG from West End Games, the Thrawn trilogy, the NPR radio show, etc.

The relationship, however, soured in the late 1990s. The story is well-known at this point — it’s been echoed by others in my generation many, many times, to the point where it’s bordering on cliché: It starts with Shadows of the Empire — new Star Wars material, inserted into the narrative of the original trilogy. Originally, I was excited by this possibility. Unfortunately, it was disappointing.

This was followed by the Special Edition releases. Initially, I was thrilled by this prospect as well, and, to be honest, the memory of taking my eight-year-old daughter to the re-release of Star Wars (repeating the trip made by my father and I) is wonderful. But the experience was tempered by the changes that George Lucas had made to what many (myself included) had considered an inviolate part of the fabric of their childhood. Honestly, I hadn’t considered that, going in, but it ended up bothering me far more than I ever expected.

The final break-up, of course, came with the release of the prequel trilogy — another set of disappointments so constantly repeated at this point that I won’t bother enumerating them here. A generation came to the position that Star Wars had become a marketing machine devoid of any soul — a tool for Lucas to sell another generation of kids a never-ending stream of product — which, of course, made us also question whether or not that was true of our Star Wars as well. Whether we were dupes because the Star Wars that existed in our imaginations was deeper and richer than Lucas’ own ideas.

I have a confession, Star Wars.

It’s not you, it’s me. (Or us, collectively — the Star Wars generation.)

Your effect was undeniable. But my disappointment? I think it’s a textbook case of transference. I think I’m really disappointed in myself, and my generation in general.

You’d think that a generation that was literally shaped by the release of Star Wars would’ve been inspired… to do more than just consume more of it. Where is our Star Wars? With as many creative professionals that were given their initial impetus from the original films (myself included), you’d think that somebody would’ve made an effort to create a successor… but instead we’ve been seemingly content to sit back and consume more of the previous generations’ work, long into our own adulthood.

My disappointment in the the later efforts is my disappointment in myself. Disappointment that I never did what I swore to myself I would do, sitting in that theatre as an 8-year-old. Overwhelmed by the spectacle on the screen, I told myself “I’m going to do THAT.”

…and I haven’t.

Yet.