Rob Lopez's Blog

 

I watched Sorcerer yesterday. I'd never heard of the movie, but I read a commentary suggesting that this was an overlooked masterpiece. It was released the same month as Star Wars, back in 1977, and pushed to the sidelines by George Lucas's blockbuster and quickly forgotten.

Roy Scheider was in it. He was the star of Jaws two years prior. I liked Jaws, so I watched Sorcerer. What follows is a writer's view of a movie. It contains my opinions on what makes a story work, with insights into structure, characterization and even marketing.

It also contains spoilers.

First off, I'd just like to say how awesome the movie poster is. That image is taken directly from a scene in the movie. More on that later. But it's a beautiful image.

The movie is about four men from different backgrounds who are stuck in poverty in a small village in Colombia. The four men need money to get out, so they volunteer to transport a load of unstable dynamite through jungle and rough terrain to a mine where the explosives are needed.

Not that compelling a premise, to be honest, but there have been many movies about average characters from comfortable backgrounds who are forced to work together to survive in some harsh wilderness setting. From that era I can remember The Flight of The Phoenix and Deliverance. These kinds of movies work best when highlighting the interactions and conflicts between the characters and how they cope with being tested by their environment. Get that right and you've got a good story.

Sorcerer doesn't get it right. Here's why.

Prologues

Amateur writers love prologues. Professional writers discourage their use. Why? Because prologues are hard to get right and often unnecessary.

Why use a prologue? Well, some stories start slow and take a while to build, so a prologue can be inserted with, say, an action scene, to spice things up prior to the actual story. That way they serve as teasers, promising readers, or an audience, that things will get exciting later on if they stick with it.

The question to be asked is: why not make the story more interesting from the get-go and hook the reader with that instead? You don't need a prologue then.

A prologue that exists simply to provide backstory is the kiss of death. Readers will just skim past that.

What does this have to do with the movie Sorcerer? Well, Sorcerer has four prologues.

Yes, you read that right. The first three prologues are not even in English. This caused moviegoers to walk out of theaters, thinking they'd accidentally walked into a foreign movie without subtitles.

Very avant-garde.

The film makers had to display a disclaimer in theaters to clarify the confusion. When you have to explain something to an audience that isn't readily obvious with mere viewing, you know you've done something wrong.

The prologues take up the first twenty minutes of the movie.

How essential are they? Not very. They exist to explain why the four characters are in Colombia to begin with. You don't need prologues for that. A skilled writer or director can extract that information from the characters themselves. Bring it out in dialogue and let the actors act. Removing the prologues would allow for more screen time to actually explore this and develop the characters better.

Characters, what characters?

For this kind of story, the interaction between actors is key, and for that you need complex and fully fleshed out characters.

Sorcerer gives you question marks instead.

First, we have the Assassin. He shoots a man. Why? We have no idea. He flies to Colombia, stopping by in the village where the story takes place. He's only in transit, but he decides to stay instead. Why? No idea. When the call comes for volunteers to drive the trucks, he puts his hand up. Why? No idea.

There could be some compelling reason for why he does these things, but we never find out what they are. He dies and takes his secrets with him. He didn't need to be in the movie.

Then we have the Terrorist. A radical young Arab who plants a bomb in Jerusalem. His friends are killed by Israeli security forces while he alone escapes. Why did he choose to go to Colombia when he had a dozen Muslim countries to hide himself in? No idea. He works at the mine. He volunteers to drive one of the trucks. Why? No idea. Later, he gets to use his unique knowledge of explosives to clear an obstacle that prevents the trucks from reaching the mine. That's his one contribution. He has a potential humanizing moment when one of the other characters talks about a wife in Paris. Does this make the terrorist wonder about his own relatives back home? The friends he lost? The innocents he killed with his bombs? We'll never know because he dies abruptly the following minute.

So how do the other characters feel about having a terrorist in their midst? They don't know and we don't know, because the characters barely talk to each other the entire movie. Almost no conversations. The characters just don't matter to each other. And they won't matter to you either.

The Frenchman is the only person we ever understand. In his prologue we see him with his wife. They share moments in their rich life. Their relationship is strong. But he's a businessman and his business is in trouble. A prosecutor is on his case for something illegal that happened regarding finances, and the Frenchman is forced to leave the country. In Colombia we see him working as an engineer at the mine and fixing truck engines. Does he have a background in engineering? No idea. Maybe sipping champagne in Paris gave him that insight. He remains the most likable character. He never killed anyone that we know of. He could be the main character of the group. The leader. Alas, he dies abruptly and that's the end of him.

The Gangster is the main character. He's played by Roy Scheider, the only recognizable name on the billing. His gang raids a stash in New Jersey that belongs to a more powerful gang. The gangster has to flee the country to avoid the hitmen. He lives in the Colombian village next to the mine. What does he do for a living there? No idea. We never see him work.

The arrival of the assassin could have been interesting. Maybe he was a hitman sent to kill the gangster. That would have been worth exploring, and added something to the story. Or something to keep us guessing with.

Nope. It's never used. Another opportunity missed.

The director described Roy Scheider as an 'everyman' type of character. He was also described as that in Jaws. What that really means is that Scheider is a bland actor. He's supposed to be a hard-bitten gangster, but he's no De Niro and he doesn't really convince. His leadership is not pivotal to the success of the mission, he doesn't show any special skills that make him indispensable, and he remains gruff and unlikable.

At the end of the movie, when the gangster receives his reward from the mining company, two obvious American hitmen step out of a taxi and walk into the bar where the gangster is. It looks like the Mafia found him after all, and there's no happy ending.

That's a neat twist. Unfortunately, we don't really get enough from the character to care about him, so his end doesn't matter. The movie ends with a shrug.

The bones

The problem with the movie's plot is that it's a skeleton with no flesh on it. This is what a first draft looks like. Great potential, but in need of more to fill in the gaps and strengthen the story.

It's weak and watered down. Conflicts between the characters? Wasted. Motivations? Not explored. Development? Doesn't happen. Exploration of the local situation? Only hinted at.

The entire movie is a teaser trailer for a movie that never got made.

The details

It's not a lazy movie. There really is attention to detail. Like the scene in Jerusalem. And the angry revolt near the mine. Setting the valve clearances on an engine while it's running (how many writers would know that?). The nitroglycerin leaking from the dynamite. The ingenious method used to improvise a trigger for the explosives. There's a ton of details such as these that imply serious research.

And the crossing of the rope bridge with the vehicles is easily the most amazing scene in the movie. It may be worth the price of admission alone.

But details and scenes of suspense don't make a great story. They are what you hang the story off. On their own they are just the framework. But where's the story?

The characters are the story. They always are. Nobody, for instance, creates a story about rocks. Not unless they make the rocks talk. In which case, they are no longer rocks.

What's with the title?

Titles are important. They are the first thing you market. The Shawshank Redemption was a box-office flop. It grew via word-of-mouth to become a much-loved classic. But it was a box-office flop. Because nobody could tell from the title what it was about.

A title should give you some information about what you are going to get.

My first ever novel was titled Even The Dead Dance To Live. Cool sounding title, right? Can you guess what kind of novel it was? What genre? Whom the intended audience was? I'll give you a moment to figure it out.

Got it yet? That's right, it was a science fiction space opera. Did you get it?

No. Who would? It was a terrible title. Cool doesn't mean good, not in this game.

So the movie is called Sorcerer. Have you read anything in my review so far to indicate why it was called that? No. The director/producer called the movie that because one of the trucks in the story bears that name. Is it obvious in the movie? No. Is it referenced within the movie? No. Is that particular truck - the one in the poster actually - pivotal to the plot or a character in its own right? No. The truck doesn't make it to the end of the movie. Nor does the star of the movie even drive it. He drives the other truck.

It's an arbitrary name that makes no sense. The movie was based on the book called The Wages Of Fear. That's a better title. But they chose Sorcerer. Like The Shawshank Redemption, the movie was D.O.A.

Responsibility

The movie bombed in 1977 and lost a ton of money. Many people weren't aware of its existence. Most people forgot about it. Nowadays, critics are trying to revive its reputation. It was misunderstood. It was experimental. The audience were too stupid to appreciate it. The movie was shot in a French New Wave style similar to The Battle of Algiers.

When I watched it I too was reminded of The Battle of Algiers. But The Battle of Algiers was a dramatization of actual events, with many key players, none of whom can be stars, because that's real life. Sorcerer was fiction, much smaller in scale and ambition. The nouveau style didn't suit it, and made it look silly instead.

The director defended the movie, claiming it was a metaphor. He referenced a single line by the Frenchman's wife as justifying the entire plot. It doesn't, because it was easily forgotten, and he hadn't added enough elements to truly frame the metaphor. Simply saying it afterwards doesn't make it so.

He said he wanted to make a movie without melodrama, sentiment or heroes to root for. He succeeded and produced something bland, pointless and not worth getting out of bed for.

Critics like to laud experimental flops as being brave and therefore deserving of praise merely for existing. In this case they forget that Sorcerer was beaten by another experimental movie. That movie was Star Wars. It's hard to understand these days the risks that George Lucas took with that movie. Sci-fi movies were meant to be B-movies at that time. No one was supposed to take them seriously. George Lucas took his B-movie seriously. He was also lucky that he had a wife who was an excellent editor. She at least had the basic elements that she could work with.

It's unlikely she would have been able to save Sorcerer.

Lessons for writers

Sorcerer was a movie. Movies aren't books. But stories are stories and lessons can still be learned. Especially when it comes to trying to sell those stories.

Look at the image in the movie poster. Now look at the title. Do they fit with each other?

Titles and book covers draw attention and lead a reader to the description. Together, these things create expectations. Will those expectations be met once the reader begins reading the story? If not, how willing are you to test a reader's patience?

How necessary for a story is a scene? If it's not really that necessary, consider scrapping it. The same goes for characters. Either make them more necessary or get rid of them. You can always give their lines or actions to another character instead.

Love a character or hate a character. Just don't make them indifferent. Characters need weight. Flimsy and weightless characters float away, never to be remembered again. Leading characters need more weight.

Don't get caught up in research at the expense of the story. Cool details are secondary, not primary.

Breaking accepted story rules takes skill. Following accepted rules is easier. Check your ambitions. Experimental stories or techniques crash and burn with only the slightest of mistakes. Standard stories are more resilient. Understand what you're doing.

Everyone makes mistakes. Just don't blame your readers.

 The Operator has been out for about a month now, and while it hasn't broken any records, it's doing better than I expected considering this is my debut in the Thriller genre. I've been busy with deliveries at work as orders ramp up for the Christmas season, but I've been sketching out and outlining the next book in the series, with a couple of scenes being drafted already. Matt Beach's next adventure will be more of a spy thriller, and will thus be a little more complicated and subtle. Up to a point. But I'm tossing ideas around and setting things up ready to begin writing properly in January. In the meantime I still need to figure out a few more ideas for the plot.

Before that happens, however, I need to get the paperback of The Operator out. Fortunately I've booked a week off next month to sort out the formatting and the cover for the size I need, then I'll order a proof copy. If it is to my liking, then I'll publish the paperback on Amazon by late November of early December.

The eagle-eyed among you will notice that my Science Fiction Space books have been removed from my Amazon catalog. Shakespeare's Requiem wasn't doing so well - nobody was reading it - so I've retired it to focus on expanding my Thriller catalog. Hell's Gate, which wasn't doing so badly, has been suspended from publication while I figure out what to do with it. It was Book 1 of a series, but Book 2 fell apart in the making. Unfortunately, the way Hell's Gate ended made it clear there would be a follow-on. I may change the ending to make it more a stand-alone book and republish it. I'd like to continue the series, but I'm focused on Matt Beach for the moment, and will be for a couple of years I think, so it may be a while before I produce a sequel to Hell's Gate. Or it may not happen. It's hard to tell.

October felt like a long month. Let's see how November pans out. And no, I'm not thinking of Christmas yet. That still feels far off, even though people are saying it's just around the corner. It's not.

And I've just realized that I'm writing this on Halloween, which is fairly significant across the pond. It's growing in significance here in the UK too. But I don't give a crap about it, and never did. It wasn't part of my childhood. If it was part of yours, I'd like to hear it.

 

I'm pleased to announce that my new novel, The Operator, is now out on pre-order at Amazon. It goes live on September 8th, 2023.

FormerNavy SEAL Matt Beach runs a bar in the Bahamas. He’s living thelife. Then a stranger comes into his bar and offers to recruit himfor some shady purpose, saying he was sent by an old buddy of Matt’s.When that same buddy winds up dead, south of the border, Matt setsout to find out why.

Pursuedby mysterious assailants and stonewalled by corrupt officials, Matt’sinvestigation takes him from the swamps of Florida to the jungles ofGuatemala. What he uncovers gets more sinister the deeper he goes.

Asthe danger grows and the stakes rise, Matt will need to use all hisskills just to survive.

99c on pre-order, $2.99 once it goes live.

 

There's a new hero in town, and his name's Matt Beach. Coming to a book near you.

Eventually.
Remember when I said I'd be writing when I can, sometimes in the van during work breaks? I did that. And the results were ... not quite what I hoped.
I finished the first draft in March this year, and I hoped that the draft could be polished into a final book, ready for release by Easter. Yeah, no. Turns out the first draft was pretty bad, and needed more than just polishing. It needed a complete rewrite.
So that's what I've been doing, and I'm about 75% of the way through it. It's a lot tighter and more professional now, but these things take time. It's looking more like a summer release now. Maybe even fall.
What can you expect from this offering? Well, it's definitely a thriller. You can call it a spy or action thriller. Or action mystery. I'm up in the air about that, as I am about the title. But it is an old-school thriller, set in modern times. Inspired by the likes of Alistair Maclean, Len Deighton, Martin Cruz Smith and Jack Carr, to name just a few. It will follow the adventures of an ex-Navy SEAL investigating the death of a friend, and will journey from the swamps of Florida to the jungles of Guatemala.
Fast paced? Action packed? Very much so. It will also be the beginning of a series. Possibly a long one. I think this character can carry it. I'm already sketching ideas for the sequel.
I'll post again when I have a definite release date.

 

I'm beached. I was sailing merrily along after publishing Solar Storm, and things looked good. The sea was flat calm and life was almost easy. Then Covid hit. Clouds had already been gathering before then, for no sea remains calm for long, but after that it was a full-on storm. The sequel to the Solar Storm series, Into Darkness (an apt title if ever there was one), didn't do so well. In music-industry parlance, it failed to chart. Loneliness and depression were already lashing at me, and financially things were looking grim. With no demand (seemingly) for any more of my post-apocalypse books, I tried a science fiction book, writing a story that had been with me for some time. It was actually the last of the stories that had been in my head for years.

It flopped. I thought it was a great story, with possibly the best cover I've ever done, but nobody cared. By then I'd reached the end of my tether, and I'd also run out of money. I got a job delivering groceries for a well-known UK supermarket chain. I'm still there.

It's given me a lot of time to think. There's an unmistakable beauty to driving a delivery van to villages in South Shropshire and the Welsh hills. I see the dawn mist in the valleys, and sunsets over distant mountains. It's been very therapeutic, which is pretty rare for a job. I get to see great places and I get paid for it. I cannot complain.

The science fiction sequel I've been writing this year kind of sputtered out and died of apathy. I used to put my heart and soul into my books. I have neither now. I used to be a seat-of-the-pants type of writer, what we in the trade call a pantser, and it's an approach that involves me getting lost in the story to the point of actually living it.  I would start with a vague idea, maybe something for an ending, then I would wing it, wandering through the story and seeing where it would take me. It's a very undisciplined way of writing a novel, but it also creates more of an experience - almost like a drug trip - which enters the story itself.

Unfortunately, pantsing requires a lot of time getting into the role - a bit like being a method actor. And writing when I'm not in the mood it produces writer's block. Or some forced drivel that later gets deleted. Now that I don't have so much time - and being easily distracted by my various troubles - it's a style of writing I can no longer sustain. So I'm left with a choice: find another way to write, or quit.

The opposite of pantsing is plotting. Plotting is logical - you write out the plot beforehand, so that when you start the story, you know exactly what to write next, because you know the plot. I could never get this method to work for me, however. I get my story ideas when I'm in the story. In the zone, so to speak. Out of the zone, I'd stare at the page, just not feeling it, and the page would stay bare, the ideas failing to materialize. But as I said, I'd reached a dead end with my normal style of writing, and while it had a good run, it couldn't continue. So last month I set about constructing a plot for an action thriller, scene by scene.

Perhaps I hadn't persevered enough in trying to write plots before, but this time I managed to create a full scene-by-scene synopsis. Does it have the same soul as my past works? Possibly not, but those stories are written now, and my bank is dry, so I need to make new stuff up. That is a writer's job after all - to make stuff up. A bit like journalism, but without the immorality (and no, I don't buy that crap about journalists writing The Truth. I read their stuff and, as a writer, I see right through that crap. I see the manipulation of emotions and the attempt to lead the reader, because that's exactly how it works in fiction too. Just for different reasons).

And why an action thriller? For the money. I'd been watching Amazon's The Terminal List, and found it to be better than I expected (seeing what streaming services had been putting out recently kept my expectations in the basement). And I used to read thrillers. Plus I always like to include action in my stories, and military or ex-military characters. So I thought it would be a good test for me.

It's a nakedly commercial enterprise, written by hand on paper, often during breaks in my van as I watch sunsets over the hills. I can't say where this is going to go, or whether it will come to anything, but I'm giving it a shot.

 

When I first released Hell's Gate not long ago, it was to be the first book in a series known as Gene War. That's bugged me since, because that's a dumb name for a series. In fact, it was a last minute change, as it was meant to be Ezra's war. So I changed it back to what it always should have been. This suits the series better, as it really does revolve around the title character.

One reviewer has already described Ezra as mentally ill. That's not correct, but clearly Ezra's not going to everyone's cup of tea. As an author, that's a risk, but anybody who's read my books should know that I'm not really into vanilla characters. Or vanilla stories, for that matter. Well, each to their own.

Circumstances in my personal life have also changed, leaving me less time to write than before. I already wrote slow, so this pushes any timelines out into the weeds. I could even have a George R.R. Martin moment.

I do my best with what I've been given, but I am working on Book 2. It'll just take time. But Ezra's War promises to be as intriguing as the character himself. With a whole galaxy to play with, I hope this will be as exciting to read as it is to write. It should be worth the wait.

 

In Isaac Asimov's book, Foundation, a character named Salvor Hardin says the following:

"We're receding and forgetting, don't you see? Here in the Periphery they've lost atomic power. In Gamma Andromeda, a power plant has blown up because of poor repairs, and the Chancellor of the Empire complains that atomic technicians are scarce. And the solution? To train new ones? Never! Instead they're to restrict atomic power ... Don't you see? It's Galaxy-wide. It's a worship of the past. It's a deterioration - a stagnation!"

Asimov's Foundation chronicles the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire. If that sounds familiar to you as a Star Wars plot, it's because it is. George Lucas stole the idea wholesale, as have many others. And Asimov himself stole it from the historian Edward Gibbons, who wrote the famous The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, first published in 1776.

Curiosity at what makes a great civilization decline and fall has only recently interested Western thinkers. Before the 17th Century, the Roman ruins that lay scattered and crumbling throughout Europe didn't really concern many people. Peasants broke them down for stone to build their houses and wells, and Lords showed scant regard for their preservation. Nobody cared. In Britain folk were either focused on day-to-day survival or making war on the French.

It was only in the 17th and 18th Centuries, when Britain found itself creating the largest empire that had yet been amassed, that certain thinkers began to wonder what exactly happened to the Romans. After all, if the mighty Roman Empire could fall, maybe the British Empire could too.

As unthinkable as that was at the time, serious intellects began to look into it. This was a time when Roman ruins became quite faddish. Rich nobles built ruined follies on their estates, and young gentlemen and their ladies traveled to Italy to marvel at the decrepit ruins that local Italians had never given much thought to. Theories abounded on the symptoms and causes of the rise and fall of civilizations, and it was sobering to think that every civilization that had existed before ours had fallen. Not just a few. All of them. It seemed clear that every civilization had an expiry date, and after the disaster of WW1, thinkers like Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee gained prominence as they delved deeper into the subject.

After WW2 the fad faded. The United States was the new superpower, the new empire of sorts, and a period of hope prevailed that took us eventually to the moon. Asimov, however, had not forgotten his pre-war influences, and the thinking that went before. The passage he wrote above illustrates the dying phase (the decadent phase) of a civilization, where the optimism has faded and civilizations get buyer's remorse.

They stop thinking outside the box and instead retreat to more familiar territory, both figuratively and literally. They play safe and circle the wagons. Religion becomes mysticism and critical thinking becomes pessimism.

Hardin's quote illustrates perfectly, during the different phases of rise and fall, how a civilization solves its problems. Because there are always problems to solve, even when one has become dominant. A failing civilization, however, having sat on its laurels for too long, is unwilling to expend the same amount of effort to solve a problem as they had done when they were a rising, hungry star. In Foundation, the galactic empire is more willing to silence warnings than to heed them, because solving problems is hard. The elites prefer to focus on keeping their power and their wealth, even as they are being warned by the doomsayer Hari Seldon that they will lose both.

We are not short of doomsayers here at the beginning of the 21st Century, and it's tempting to think that Hari Seldon, if he was real, would be one of them, with Climate Change being uppermost in his mind. If it were turned into a very simple contemporary movie, it would have the politicians and business elites all disbelieving the scientist and his young and ardent followers, thus bringing calamity down upon humanity. In fact, I've just described the plot of the new Netflix movie, Don't Look Up (watched it last night, very funny).

But Hardin's quote reminds us that it's not simply a matter of believing in the science and getting the message out, as some in the climate-change movement believe, and I'll give you an example of why, and what it means for the rise or decline of our own society.

Full Disclaimer: I believe Climate Change is real. Despite the subject having been heavily politicized here in the west, with a lot of media and social-media hype, there is, for me, a clear sign that it's not all hype, and that is the fact that Russia and China are spending millions to begin exploring and exploiting the melting Arctic regions, with plans to protect their investments by military means. They see the Arctic as an important geopolitical region of the future, and these are not the type of governments to be swayed by Greta Thunberg throwing a tantrum at the United Nations, or climate activists gluing themselves to the pavement as they block roads or runways to protest government inaction. In Russia or China, that kind of action would see them thrown into a dark prison, with little chance of getting out again. No, these governments have compelling reasons to do what they do, and they have their own scientists. If they believe Climate Change is real, then my guess is that it is.

It's possible you don't believe Climate Change is real, and that's fine, but for this particular example, let's just accept that the climate activists and their supporters claim that they believe in Climate Change, and follow that claim to its natural conclusion to see where it takes us.

And this wasn't originally intended to be a long post, but bear with me on this.

So climate activists, and their media and political supporters, are saying that our industrial societies, with our carbon emissions, our deforestation, consumerism and meat-eating habits are harming the planet, which will lead to global temperatures getting high enough to cause us real harm, and possibly even extinction-level catastrophe.

Fair enough. So what are their solutions? Cut back on industrialization, consume less, eat less meat, fly less and recycle more. And build more wind farms and solar panels.

That's about it. There might be slightly more complex engineering solutions around the edges, like clean-hydrogen engines and the like, but those proposals don't get shouted as much, nor funded much. Now if you look at the above paragraph, do you see how closely it resembles Hardin's quote at the beginning of this article? "Do less and return to the windmills of the past." It's not really a solution. Wind farms and solar panels don't provide enough base load to run a civilization, and are less efficient than the fossil-fuel powered stations they are supposed to replace. Recycling won't cut down on carbon in the atmosphere, because recycling requires energy itself. And cutting back on energy consumption in our societies means willingly adopting austerity, like monks entering a holy order. It should be obvious that people won't do that, no matter what they might say to pollsters. Many societies have had their ascetic types who lived on sand and locusts and practiced soulful meditation. Many still have those who live a simpler life off the grid, returning to traditional methods of living. But these people have always been a minority. Even when called upon by a powerful church to give up worldly pleasures, people rarely do. The Catholic Church could not even get its young men to cease masturbation. Just because someone asks people to do something, doesn't mean they will.

The alternative to asking, of course, is simply to coerce people. Police them. Tax the hell out of them. Make them poor. They'll consume less, then. One doesn't need to be a historian to know how that ends. Remember when I mentioned earlier about the regrowth of mysticism in declining civilizations? Most of the loudest climate activists, including Ms. Thunberg, are gripped by some mystical vision of a very unreal society that, enmasse, willingly chooses eco-piety, and doesn't need to be forced.

And the politicians who now tow the ecological line? How realistic are they? Let me give you an example from my own country of Britain: Our Prime Minister has announced that all new cars after 2030 will be electric. Thereafter the number of polluting internal-combustion engines on our roads will be phased out (helped no doubt by punitive tax tariffs). On the face of it, this could be a good thing. Less pollution, better air quality, less reliance on volatile petroleum markets in geopolitical hot spots, less reliance on fuel that we know will run out someday anyway, and quieter traffic flows. It sounds like the future, right?

Well, it's kind of a lop-sided future, because while the Prime Minister announced these measures over a number of years, I don't recall a speech where he would authorize the mass building of nuclear power stations to cope with the massive ramp up in power use. I also don't recall green activists criticizing him for that. Their only complaint, indeed, is that they don't think Boris is moving quickly enough. They want mandatory electric cars a lot sooner. And electric public transit systems.

It's almost like everyone thinks that electricity is magic, and doesn't need to be produced by industrial means. This is why I sometimes think that activists who claim to be worried about climate change and its effect on people, can't actually be that worried. Because if they were, they would be more serious about solving the problem, rather than just offering faddish lifestyle choices.

Ah, but that's because they are not worried, and it's all just really a conspiracy to deprive people of their freedoms, and ... give power to elites, who can ... do stuff that they can't already do ... for some reason.

No, it's not a conspiracy. It's exactly the kind of thinking that Asimov's character outlined in the book, and it fits with the inadequate problem-solving metrics present in declining societies.

To be sure, nuclear power is only a limited answer. Make no mistake, we are a fossil-fuel civilization. One only needs to look at 17th Century life to see what fossil fuels lifted us out of. More will be needed to move on to the next phase of energy production if we are not to slide backward to being at the mercy of mother nature. Without the fossil-fueled industrial revolution, we would not have the longer lives, education, healthcare, information technology, food production or government systems we enjoy now. Or the individual rights and freedoms that are simply not possible in harsher times or places. So there's a lot at stake.

But if we're not looking at radically new and scalable forms of energy production, then we're not serious about avoiding catastrophe. Largely because people, including college-educated activists, don't understand the sheer amount of effort needed to keep a civilization going. Because our ancestors made it all look so easy. It will take more than windmills and personal guilt-trips to keep civilization going in the face of continuous challenges.

In China, they recently tested a full-sized Thorium reactor. Thorium reactors are safer than nuclear, with more fuel available for them in the world, and produce much less radioactive waste. Why China? We've actually known about Thorium reactors and their benefits for over sixty years now, and programs to test and develop them existed in the US. But they were closed down. We should be building a ton of them now. We have the knowledge, and we were ahead of China in the science. But we gave up.

Now that would have been a serious solution. Another would be Fusion power. Again, the Chinese are ahead in developing this. It requires ridiculous amounts of money in research, but we haven't been willing to commit, and so Fusion power remains science fiction, at least here in the West. Again, another serious solution left hanging.

Do you see what I mean about us not really being serious about solving that which we claim to be afraid of? Instead we make performative gestures, promote lifestyle choices and complain about a lack of piety among the masses. If those don't sound like the actions of some out-of-touch, decadent, self-satisfied aristocracy, then I don't know what does. This is how societies fail.

Hari Seldon would not have been fooled by the climate treaties, play-acting, crocodile tears, messianic rhetoric and mystical movements. He would still have recognized an empire that, whatever it might say, did not really want to survive. And he would have moved his Foundation to China.

 

I like it.

I watched the first five episodes of the Anime version a while back. It was okay but it didn't grab me and I never went back to watch the rest. So when I heard Netflix were releasing a live-action version, I got interested. Seeing all the negative reviews by fanboys of the original interested me more. I'm weird like that.

So far, about ten episodes in, I'm finding this live-action version more accessible. It's gorgeous to look at, tightly scripted and the actors do a really good job. The show's got a lot of heart, I love the chemistry between the main characters and even the side characters do a great job. The world it's set in is a strange blend of sci-fi and old world tech, and the retro elements add to the charm. I'm getting strong Firefly vibes from the characters and story so far, and that can only be a good thing. It's a lot of fun to watch.

Unlike Joss Whedon's Firefly, I hope it gets a second season. And I hope I haven't jinxed it with the comparison. It's obvious that a lot of money and work has gone into making this new version of Cowboy Bebop, and I, for one, want to see it rewarded. It's one of the few things released this year that's actually worth watching.

 

My new book, Hell's Gate, is out. It marks my return to Space fiction since Shakespeare's Requiem . It's very different. In a way, it needs to be, considering Shakespeare's Requiem's relative lack of popularity. That was my first novel, and I've written about its problems recently on this blog, so I won't rehash the details, but Hell's Gate is a more traditional space opera with a much wider scope.
Space opera or military sci-fi?
I struggle to tell the difference, sometimes. Certainly, Hell's Gate is about a singular battle on a distant world, and aficionados of history will detect the references to a certain battle in our own history that I won't give away. In fact, I was going to reference another battle, further back in ancient history, but that was lost in the edits. But it's certainly a military story, and all the key characters bar one are military personnel in the midst of doing their duty.
But there's a wider sweep that will travel through the stars in the rest of the series, and an obvious subplot of genetic enhancement that frames the story. It's also the tale of particular individuals; their loves, lives and tragedies. And science, politics and ideals. There will be new worlds for readers to discover. And more battles to fight.
Call it Military Space Opera. Or Space Military Fi. I don't mind. In the end, as with all my stories, it's about people. It's the only thing I really care about.
Space Fiction. It's fiction set in space. It's about the characters.
Oh, but Science Fiction is a genre of ideas.
No, it's not. It's a genre that rips off ideas, and there's nothing wrong with that, but when it's packaged as being somehow original and more important than the idea's source, then it just becomes pompous and deluded. And it attracts the pompous and deluded. Some people like to grab hold of something to make themselves feel more important. They call themselves enlightened. Psychologists call that insecurity.
But I'm insecure too. The thing I'm most insecure about is my writing speed. I write slow. My competitors fellow Indie writers seem able to crank out a novel every month. The successful ones, at any rate. Their success makes them more visible, obviously. The ones that write like me are probably also invisible to me, as I am to them. In the Indie publishing world, speed equals success. Not always, but mostly. In this new age of social media, it's about catching attention (a difficult thing in itself) and then holding attention. I imagine that if the average Instagramer stopped posting for a few days, weeks or months, their readership would lose interest and they would slide down the algorithms until they no longer feature near the top of people's feed, thus rendering them invisible. Less likes and shares makes them more invisible still, and so it goes. Indie publishing is the same. Without a publisher to promote us, a book store to feature us or reviewers in mainstream media to recommend us, the Indie writing world adapted by adopting the social media model. It was the only one available. The sheer number of writers out there makes it difficult for a single book to get noticed by a casual browser, or even a more determined browser sometimes. So tactics are required. I'm not complaining. It's just something I've had to learn about the mass digital age. We're working in a crowd. It's natural.
It's not a tactic I can use. I tried, once. There's numerous posts and videos out there about how to write quickly: Outlining, formulas, writing routines. The trouble was, when I attempted the same, trying to just let my fingers flow over the keyboard, injecting the first thing on my mind, the result was, well, formulaic and routine. Vanilla characters in a vanilla plot, walking and talking through a vanilla world. It was boring. Because it's hard to come up with something nuanced and thoughtful when you're typing as fast as you can. Especially if you're planning to publish it the moment it's finished, rather than going back and rewriting it. Write several books like that, and they'll essentially be copies of the previous book and formula with the names changed.
Maybe I'm just not a genius. Because of that, the next book in The Gene War series won't be published until next year, so if you're new to my writing and you're hoping to see the next book out by Christmas, then I'm sorry. There's a lot of ideas to unpack from Hell's Gate - and so many directions for the new series to take - that I have a lot to think about. I think a lot while I'm writing, which is why I'm slow. I very much explore the story while I'm still in it, and I'm not above going back and rewriting whole sections if I've had a better idea later on.
And this new series isn't planned. It's as much an exploration for me as it will be for you. I don't know quite where it will go. That doesn't mean that it will be a bunch of random shit that doesn't really fit together when you get to the end. I'm too professional for that, and I've learned a lot about the craft of writing since I started all those years ago. I mean, the Survival EMP series that I did - my one successful series - wasn't planned at all. Neither the series, nor the individual books, were outlined in advance. All I had were a few basic ideas and the odd scene. But what I produced was a tight narrative with the perfect ending - if I say so myself. So I don't write wild, disjointed crap. I like it to be worth everyone's time, including my own.
So it will be with The Gene War. Average lead time for one of my books, if I'm honest, will be about eight months. Some people don't want to wait that long. That's okay. But that's my speed. It just takes me time to come up with new ideas (or rip them off). But I promise you that this series will cover a dynamic, far-reaching and varied story. It will be - what's the word? - Epic. And if you read Hell's Gate, you may catch a glimpse of the wealth to come.
Just don't expect the next one in a month. Patience.

 

A new and exciting Military Science Fiction series is about to begin:

The fightback begins. But who is the real enemy?

The alien Ravagers have devastated the outer colonies, driving humanity from the fringes of space. Earth appears passive in the face of such a threat, deaf to the pleas of the colonists. A new discovery, however, could turn the tide of the war. The Ravagers are searching for an ancient artifact, located on a distant planet. It might be a weapon that, in the right hands, could swing the odds in humanity’s favor. Banding together to build a fleet, the Outer Systems Alliance hatches an audacious plan to snatch the artifact from the Ravagers with a full-on Marine assault on the planet. Time is of the essence and everyone is expected to contribute to what could be a last-gasp effort.

Ezra, Kiera and Jaden are three friends who have been pulled apart by the war. Each carry scars that may never heal, and secrets that have broken the bonds they once had. Given key tasks in the invasion, they are each vital to the success of the operation, but this mission is not all it seems and only one of them knows the truth.

A dark conspiracy threatens not only the outer colonies, but humanity's place in the galaxy itself.

Book 1, Hell's Gate is available to pre-order at Amazon. It goes live on Tuesday 9th November, 2021.

You can read the first sample chapter right here:

Hell's Gate - Sample Chapter 1

A starship is never silent. When the main drive has been shut down, a vessel continues to breathe, just like its occupants. Pumps and recyclers throb from the bowels. Pipes carry water and cryogenic fluids through the decks and passageways. Vents hum on the bulkheads, an audible whisper that you can hear when you’re trying to sleep, and a sound that you want to hear when your section’s been sealed off behind airlocks. Field generators buzz, point-defense turrets whirr and maintenance bots clank as they make their way on magnetic caterpillar tracks through ducts filled with fiber-optic looms and laser reflectors.

On really old ships, the entire hull creaks as the cold exterior vies with the warm interior, frosted armor plates twisting over heat diffusers on the vessel’s skin. Even newer ships groaned after a hyperspace jump, the compressed length stretching itself like someone getting out of bed. Whether it was a star cruiser or a small frigate, every ship had its own unique sound and feel. Until it died.

Silence was a ship’s enemy, and it didn’t sneak up like some shadow in the night. It pounded the hull with missile strikes and ripped open plating with laser fingers. When the air was sucked out with the debris, there was still the sound of the comm system in your ear if you had your suit and helmet on, as regulations demanded during an action, but that was little consolation as the only thing communicated at that point were conflicting orders, the screams of the dying and the cries of those cut off from the escape pods. When the power went completely and the lights snuffed out, there was only the total blackness of the tomb and silence’s clammy embrace.

And if you didn’t have your suit on, you couldn’t even hear your own scream.

Michael Ezra needed some of that silence right now. It meant he wouldn’t have been able to hear the cries of his crew as they perished.

But the battle was long over, and the sounds were in his head, where even the vacuum of space couldn’t touch them.

The bunk creaked as he turned over, facing the bulkhead again. The light glowed persistently in his cell. He thought about the final moments of the USS Emilia Jane: his last command. And if his superiors had anything to say about it — and they did — it would certainly be his last command.

He’d been on patrol along the edge of the Shaenua Nebula, and had detected the leaking radiation from the damaged engine of a Ravager Butterfly-Class ship. Ordering a pursuit, he’d caught up with the warship, his optical sensors confirming a visual sighting as it reflected the glowing fluorescence of protostars lighting up the gases of the nebula cloud.

He shouldn’t have engaged. The Emilia Jane was a Dagger-Class destroyer, an old patrol and interdiction vessel, but it was outclassed by the similar sized Ravager ship. Ravager technology was somewhat superior to that of the Outer Systems Alliance, and their ships had proven deadly in numerous encounters. Ezra’s orders were to signal his contact to the fleet and await reinforcements before commencing his attack. The Ravager ship, however, angled toward the nebula, looking to hide in the ionized gases and the gamma beams of a pulsar. Within the chaotic radiation emissions, it would likely elude alliance sensors and eventually get away.

Ezra wasn’t about to let that happen. The Ravager ship was running at half speed, and he judged that its combat capabilities had been reduced by whatever had struck the vessel.

He judged wrong. Closing to ten thousand klicks, with the Ravager ship just a mote of light against the stars, he unleashed his hex-grid laser batteries and missile swarms. The Ravager ship took damage and its shields went down. What happened next perplexed him even as he floated in the dark afterward, his crew dying around him.

The background nebula glow dimmed briefly around the Ravager ship. In the next instant a beam more powerful than should have been possible for such a small vessel slammed into the Emilia Jane, tore down its shields and ripped through its armor. Ravager missiles arrived soon after.

Only the arrival of Alliance reinforcements hours later prevented the survivors of the Emilia Jane from breathing their last, but by then the Ravager vessel was long gone.

That last reading from his sensors however, before the screens went dark, stayed with Ezra. Rescued, taken into custody and charged with negligence and insubordination, he nevertheless remained hooked by that moment. His career was over, his reputation destroyed along with his ship, but that sensor reading continued to bug him.

Because it shouldn’t have been possible.

The cell door clanked and rolled back. A man in the black uniform of the Intelligence Corps stood outside. “Mind if I come in?” he said.

Ezra wasn’t aware he had the right to refuse entry to anyone.

“If you want,” he said.

The intelligence officer gave him a brief smile and stepped forward. The door slammed shut behind him. “May I?” he said, gesturing to a chair.

Considering how he’d been treated since he’d been rescued, Ezra found the intelligence officer’s manner oddly polite.

“And if I said no?” he asked.

“I’d stand,” said the intelligence officer, as if it were obvious.

“Take a seat,” said Ezra.

The officer did so, and Ezra noticed something strange. There were no unit or fleet designations on the man’s uniform.

“I trust you’re being treated well,” said the man.

“I suppose.”

“And you are Commander Michael Ezra.”

“I was.”

“Of course. Mr. Ezra, what led you to attack in the way you did?”

Ezra said nothing.

“The cameras and microphones have been turned off for this interview,” said the intelligence officer. “You can speak freely.”

Ezra doubted that and maintained his silence.

“I read your report.”

Ezra gazed quietly at him.

“It was interesting.”

Ezra ignored his cue to speak and studied the intelligence officer. He was older than most Alliance intelligence officers. Probably late thirties or early forties. Intelligence officers straight out of the academy served on frigates and worked their way up the fleet, depending on how good they were. The best got jobs at Alliance headquarters. The worst got stuck on ships like this one, an aging squadron flagship tasked with coordinating the patrols of obsolete destroyers like the Emilia Jane in interstellar backwaters where nobody expected to see action — until they unexpectedly did.

“Why did you disobey orders?” asked the intelligence officer. It looked as if he genuinely wanted to know.

Ezra kept his mouth shut.

“You’ve had an interesting career,” said the officer. “Three disciplinary hearings, demoted twice for insubordination, six different posts in three years.”

The intelligence officer scratched his chin as he weighed Ezra up.

“Yet in spite of all that, you still managed to get your own command, helped no doubt by our current shortage of qualified captains. And you were warned in no uncertain terms to keep your nose clean. But you still went after that Ravager ship alone. Did your XO protest about that at all?”

The Emilia Jane’s XO was dead and Ezra didn’t feel it appropriate to answer that question. The intelligence officer’s eyes gleamed, however, as if he knew what Ezra wasn’t willing to tell.

“What made you so certain you would win that encounter?” asked the officer.

“Everything is in my report,” said Ezra.

“Not everything,” said the officer absently.

For a moment he looked off into the distance, and Ezra realized he was reading off a retinal screen. That meant the conversation was definitely being recorded. It also meant something wasn’t right.

Retinal screens were not standard issue to lowly intelligence officers.

“Who are you?” asked Ezra.

“That doesn’t matter right now,” said the officer, still reading. He was probably digesting the report.

“I don’t have anything else to say,” said Ezra.

The officer focused back on him. “Actually, I think there’s a few things you’d like to say, but that’s none of my concern. I’m more interested in your state of mind. Was it a desire for vengeance that caused you to attack?”

Ezra knew better than to answer that.

“Was it because of what happened on Regis Prime?” persisted the officer.

Ezra weighed up whether to reply, trying to work out what the officer was looking for. Something to incriminate him with? Evidence for the court martial? They already had enough to throw him out of the Outer Systems Navy if they wanted, and more besides.

“No,” he said.

“So losing your homeworld didn’t affect you emotionally?”

“No.”

The officer pondered the answer for a moment.

“Did you know what the odds were when you went after that Ravager ship?”

“Yes, I calculated the odds.”

“Every other captain in the navy would have hesitated to do what you did, and with good reason. Were you afraid?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been afraid?”

“No. Are you recording this?”

The officer gave him a sly smile. “Not officially.”

“So you are.”

The officer didn’t acknowledge that, and simply moved on. “How do you feel you were treated in the orphanage?” he asked.

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”

“The orphanage on Regis Prime,” pressed the officer.

“Still not relevant,” replied Ezra.

“Your scores in science and math were outstanding. Best in the system. Several systems, in fact.”

This was definitely a test, but Ezra was not sure what he was trying to provoke.

“So what?” he said.

“How did it feel to be a prodigy?”

“I didn’t.”

The officer glanced across the cell, reading something else on his retina. “You’re on record as saying that we should be more aggressive in this war. You told your last CO that we were being too defensive.”

“We should be taking the fight to them.”

“Are you speaking rationally or emotionally?”

“Rationally. It should be obvious.”

“Not to everyone. What about the losses?”

Ezra didn’t answer and the intelligence officer leaned forward in his chair.

“What motivates you?” he said quietly.

Ezra stayed silent.

“I’m curious. Aren’t you?”

“No.”

The officer sat back, seemingly satisfied. “I think that’s the first lie you’ve given me,” he said. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Ezra.” He got up to leave. “One more question,” he added.

“What?”

“Do you remember Dr. Quinlan?”

“No.”

The officer gave him that same satisfied look, then turned away.

“Who are you?” asked Ezra again.

The officer passed his hand over the wall pad and the cell door rolled open.

“You can call me Rosebud,” he said with a smile.

He stepped out and the door clanked shut behind him. In the upper corner of the cell, a green light blinked on in its dark glass casing to indicate the camera was back on again.

End of Sample

To read more of this tale of war, loyalties and deception, head on over to Amazon and get a pre-ordered copy for just 99c. A new adventure is about to begin.