Over two years late, I finally saw Alien vs. Predator: Requiem. And, I can't decide if it was a case of the creators loving their franchises too much or too little.
Let me put it this way - the biggest surprise I had with the movie was finding out that I'd already seen it. AVPR (I saw the unrated version) is around 90 minutes of alien kill scenes reproduced (complete with music) from the other, better Alien movies, with about five minutes of collective plot development on the front and back ends. If you've seen Alien 1-4, you've seen AVPR.
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Two posts in one day...what a sight, at least on this blog...
John-Allen Price has turned in the first half of his upcoming book, The War that Changed the World, and it is spectacular so far. I can't wait to publish it in the next few months. John has a talent for bringing history to life, presenting it not as history, with that gravitas that all-too-often makes it lofty and unapproachable, but instead as current events, but from over a hundred years ago. When John tells the story of how the Franco-Prussian War came to be, he casts his net across the world, dealing with the interactions of international diplomacy with domestic events - and in a way that reminds you more of reading today's newspapers than a lofty history book.
In short, it is brilliant. It's the sort of book that will make people interested not just in what John is talking about, but in history in general. It's that kind of book.
Which brings me to one of the ongoing questions in publishing, and for that matter, any creative field - how do you know what will work?
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I recently read Watchmen over the course of a day. It lived up to its reputation as one of the best books out there - but it was nothing compared to a book I read a few months ago, which blew me away and which I still consider the best book I've read in at least a year, if not two or three.
World War Z.
Considering the place that zombies have is mostly on the campy side - my friends and I, who spent a bit of time on a zombie kick after Left 4 Dead came out, still occasionally greet each other with a call of "braaaiiinnnsss" - you wouldn't think that a zombie book would end up being one of the best books to come out in its year. But it was. It was the kind of book that you devour in a day or two, and then sticks with you, unforgettable.
It was also a book where zombies were the catalyst to talk about people, and how human beings face wars, plagues, and crises. While the massive herd of zombies over Asia visible from space is a remarkable image, it is matched by the numerous tales of the survivors, which contain the scope of what it is to be human - the things that define us, damn us, and redeem us. In only 342 pages, it is a war epic of the highest order - it just happens to involve zombies.
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If Blurred Edge Magazine had gotten off the ground back in 2006, this would have been one of the key feature articles in its opening issue. Blurred Edge was one of those amazing ideas for a magazine that would have changed the way we look at video games. It was all about how the edge is blurring between conventional media and the video game, and how once there were definite lines in storytelling and art between the two, now there are only shades of gray.
Unfortunately, a couple of bad decisions were made, and after most of the first issue, including this article, was published by accident on the internet as a sample, I realized that things were in a bad way. When I pointed out the problem to the editor, I was handed a pink slip, and the first publication rights to all but this article were returned to me - I took the money and ran, and considered myself lucky to be able to get away relatively unscathed. Two years later, Blurred Edge now lingers as some forums, but no sign of the first issue can be found. It's a pity - that one really did have the potential to do great things.
What's interesting is that it was a version of this article that got me my very first professional writing sale. I sent it to Johnny Wilson at Computer Gaming World in 1997, with the hopes that he would use it as a feature in CGW. He didn't want it, but he thought I had a lot of talent, so he handed me a feature review to write. It was a review of Myth II, and I earned quite a lot for it. I also ended up with three copies of Myth II, two of which could wipe out a computer, but that's another story for another time.
The Computer Game’s Place in the New Mythology
Copyright 1997, 2006 Robert B. Marks, all rights reserved
Once upon a time, there were two great heroes. The first hero lived long ago, when monsters roamed the Earth. To cleanse the land of a great evil, he ventured into a pool deep underground, fighting off the monster’s wardens, and finally coming up in a cave. The monster saw him and attacked, but the hero fought valiantly. However, the hero’s sword could not dispatch the creature, leaving him almost helpless, until he spotted a giant magical sword hanging on one of the walls. The blade was an ancient and powerful one, and the hero grabbed it, and with it struck the monster’s head off, finally cleansing the land.
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Well, I'm just killing some time here, so why not put up the next Garwulf's Corner a bit early?
For the record, I know a lot more about the history of fantasy fiction now than I did when I wrote this – it’s almost embarrassing to read this today. Fantasy actually goes back about four to five hundred years, and Cervantes was spoofing the genre when he wrote Don Quixote. Our modern fantasy begins at the turn of the 20th century, and is legitimized by The Lord of the Rings in the 1950s. For more information, I’d recommend reading Michael Moorcock’s wonderful book, Wizardry and Wild Romance.
I would also add, for Canadian readers, that Roar can be found on Space on Sundays at 6:00 PM. I wish I could say that televised fantasy has gotten better, but, well, it can't. It's still some rare gems (shameless plug for fellow Canadian author Tanya Huff's Blood Ties series here), but most of it is relentless crap. Science Fiction, on the other hand, seems to have a different problem. You get some really wonderful, innovative shows, and then the network kills them after a dozen episodes. Sigh.
Garwulf’s Corner — Millennial Thoughts
Copyright 2000 Robert B. Marks, all rights reserved
What a remarkable year this has been. It is quite literally the last year in the millennium, and not only are we seeing the return of mythical fantasy to the screen (in the form of the recently released Dungeons and Dragons movie), but we can also gaze at the maturity of fantasy in the computer game market, with Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate II, and Diablo II. (Note for the trivia buffs: yes, this is the last year of the millennium. 2000 was simply the year that all of our computers threatened to explode, and watched us run around like ants while laughing their electronic heads off. Computers, 1; human race, zilch.) Next issue: Walking with the Dead, in which the author sees dead people.
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This was an important installment for a couple of reasons, both involving formatting. It was the first installment that I gave a title (in the prior issues my editor asked me for titles after submission), and it was also the first installment to have a teaser for the next issue.
Perhaps as a bit of irony, the teaser, which is included this time for your reading pleasure, never made it into this issue when it was published, and for good reason. The original installment number five was going to be a holiday special with this clueless paladin wandering through the Diablo world on his vacation, and accidentally saving it, all while remaining blissfully unaware of anything that was going on. I ended up scrapping it when I decided that it was a bit too close to fanfiction for comfort (having made the leap to professional Diablo fiction, my editor at Pocket Books would have done horrible nasty things to me with toothpicks if I’d written unauthorized Diablo fiction again).
And, as far as this list goes, I would add a few new movies now: Beowulf & Grendel, starring Gerard Butler as Beowulf, and the new CGI Beowulf, with Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, and Angelina Jolie. And I would probably take Dungeons & Dragons off the list. The trailer was better than the movie when it came to that one...
Garwulf’s Corner — Films for the Diablo Fan
Copyright 2000 Robert B. Marks, all rights reserved
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Garwulf’s Corner — Revelations from the Exorcist
Copyright 2000 Robert B. Marks, all rights reserved
Although it will be an event that occurred a couple of months ago by the time you read this, recently I did something fairly stupid. You see, my little brother was in for a brief break from his incredibly exciting life at the University of Waterloo (a life that I am sure contains lots of fast cars, fast women, and machine guns, although he assures me that mostly he studies), and I decided to take him out to a movie. The Exorcist, to be exact. And, using every brain cell available at the time, I brought us to the theater to catch a late show. Now, for those who haven’t seen this particular film, let me assure you: The Exorcist has very good claim to being the scariest movie ever made. Through a combination of eerie events, painful moments, and absolute shocks (Linda Blair’s spiderwalk down a flight of stairs is forever burned into my memory), the film manages to completely disturb and terrify the viewer. It is a movie that actually can spook somebody out for hours at a time, one of only two that have done it to me (the second is The Sixth Sense). As you can guess, catching a late show of this film is not the brightest idea.
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