Ramblings of Jeff Somers, author
Nice to see reviews of the first Avery Cates book still coming out 4 years after it published! Found this today over at the IGN blogs, a very thoughtful review that touches on a lot of aspects of the book:
“It reads like a mixture of Blade Runner, Ocean’s Eleven, and Atlas Shrugged. If you are a fan of alternate realities, cyber-punk, and dystopian futures, you will love this book as I have.”
Yeah!
This is what happens when you have an idea just before the weekend: That’s right, a trailer for a trailer!
Come on, people. Get cussin’.
Yesterday on Twitter while rambling on pointlessly as usual (my tweets can be boiled down to <joke about pants> + <joke about liquor> + <random comment on what I’m writing> + <link to something vaguely interesting on the Internet> = hilarity) I thought about creating a book trailer where a bunch of people read one line from a passage in The Final Evolution or something, and I spliced them together into a trailer (inspired by this.)
Then Bill Cameron said “If my passage doesn’t have a lot of f-bombs, I’m not doing it. Hahahaha.” And I thought, yes. Let’s create a trailer of people reading just lines with the word fuck in them. I mean, I counted 593 of them in The Final Evolution alone.
Then, I thought, why not make that into a trailer for the whole series? Boom.
So, here’s the deal: Got Avery Cates books? A video camera of some sort? Film yourself reading any line, from any of the books, as long as that line contains an F-Bomb. Send it to me. Everything else is up to you: How you do, where you do it, what line you read, what you’re wearing, how many of you are involved – go nuts. Have fun. All I ask is that when you send me the clip, you identify exactly what line you’re reading by book, page, and line (just to spare me from having to search for each instance). Email everything to mreditor@innerswine.com
I’ll need a bunch of these to make it workable, so I won’t be doing any work on it until I have critical mass. So encourage everyone you know to send me a clip!
After a lengthy hiatus, I once again found myself awake and offered the opportunity to watch a presumably terrible SF movie late one night. I’ve been able to avoid temptation for a while, but there it was: Predators, the latest in what has suddenly become the long-running franchise (this is the fifth goddamn movie, a fact that makes you sit and contemplate the universe, which is indeed mysterious).
The fact that they are still making Predator movies is amazing, considering the path this franchise has taken: Start with a surprisingly well-done but decidedly low-rent Schwarzenegger movie made back in Arnold’s heyday, before he was so huge a star he could make terrible role decisions but after he’d learned how to move more than one facial muscle. Then make a batshit insane sequel starring Danny Glover. Then pause for a few years while you marvel at the batshit insane you have created, weaponized, and spread over the world. Then combine your franchise with another equally batshitted franchise and make two curiously dull movies about horrifying and deadly aliens fighting each other.
Then, hire an Oscar winner, Morpheus, and fucking Topher Grace and make one. more. damn. movie.
I’m going to assume we’re all basically familiar with the Predator backstory: Predators are somehow simultaneously technologically advanced and behaviorally primitive. They will shoot you with an energy-based weapon that turns you inside-out, then howl like a fucking ape as they stomp around. They flit about the universe seeking things to hunt and kill, and they’re extraordinarily good at that. They keep coming back to hunt humans, either because we’re a challenge, or because we’re tasty.
Anyways, Predators. Here’s the basic plot outline: The most badassed of badass humans are plucked involuntarily from Earth and dead-dropped onto a mysterious planet that is one huge game preserve for the predators. There’s a Mexican drug cartel enforcer, a Russian soldier, an Israel Defense Forces sniper, an RUF officer, a death row inmate, a Yakuza enforcer, and … a meek doctor.
The meek doctor is played by Topher Grace. This clearly telegraphed that the doctor was More Than He Seems. If the doctor had been even slightly physically intimidating, it might have been a mystery, but when you have one unarmed, untrained man played by Topher Grace in your group of badasses, I immediately think the good doctor must be some sort of mass murderer.
Anyways, these folks have all been chosen because, they assume, they will be a challenge for their new friends the Predators. They are not. This because in movies like this, you have to first establish that the villains are, in fact, the ultimate badasses, otherwise you just assume the protagonists are gonna kill everything within fifteen minutes and you change the channel. So, you know the Predators are going to kill almost everyone. Okay, fine, the movie’s called Predators, not Badass Humans. Still, the opportunity to make something clever is passed over.
The way everyone just drops from the sky, waking up in mid free fall with just seconds to realize they have a parachute strapped to them is kind of cool. When the characters started to assemble I thought for a second that they would form a perfect military unit: A sniper, a heavy gunner, a captain, a doctor. That sort of thing. In a sense I suppose they did do that, but then you have the Cartel enforcer who’s just a dumb guy with some assault rifles, and the Yakuza fellow, who shows up in a nice suit, expensive shoes, and a handgun, and the prisoner, who only has a shiv. I kind of like the idea of an actual unit formed from desperate strangers who all have military training, and watching them either form a chain of command or get killed standing around. This didn’t happen.
Adrien Brody is good. I think Brody has some acting chops, but his choice in films indicates a man who’s stoned out of his gourd more often than not. I imagine Brody waking up in a blood-splattered Vegas hotel room with a contract clutched in one hand and a hooker’s severed hand in the other, and he starts to cry because he knows he’s blacked out and signed on to do another terrible movie. Or beer commercial. So he sells his character, a gruff mercenary who ruthlessly uses the others as resources for his own survival.
The other actors are fine. Laurence Fishburne shows up for a demented couple of minutes as a traitorous man who’s gone insane surviving a few years on the preserve, and he’s fun. The problem is the death-march plot. You are given a handful of characters, you expect them to die in horrific ways, and they do. The basic premise is not a bad one to make a story out of, but they just don’t do anything here. The same events could have happened if the victims had elected to make a camp and cook up some RTE rations, then been slaughtered in their sleep. And the movie would have been 5 minutes long. Win-win!
Still, Brody’s fun, the plot is fast-paced, and it’s basically well made. If you drunk and pantsless in your living room one night while a blank word processor screen mocks you, pour yourself a dram of something inebriating and punch Predators up. Why not?
Yup, it’s that time again! This time, the question has to do with the creative names SF/F writers come up with for their characters, which reader Erik Jodko describes as “batshit insane”:
Bork! Bork!
This is a short story I wrote back in the early 1990s. It appeared in The Whirligig #3 in 2001.
I first failed to meet Martin Landawer my freshman year of college.
When he died, I sat immobilized by stunned disbelief for a full day. It seemed impossible that I should outlive Martin. Forty-five is too young for anybody to die, but I’d been certain that Martin would last at least as long as I did, and the news left me feeling directionless, and lost. Tammy phoned me late at night, tearfully informing friends and family of his demise.
“David,” she said, her voice shaking. But resolute, pushing onward. That was Tammy. I had loved her too, at one time. “We’d like you to give the eulogy.”
I thought I’d run out of my supply of terrified shock, after a lifetime of association with Martin. “What?” I managed to croak.
“You knew Martin best. You were his best friend, David. He’d want you to do it.”
I stared at the phone in disbelief. Did she know who she was talking to? Did she know who I was?
“Tammy, I – ”
“Please, David. Martin wanted it.”
I laughed hollowly. “Then he gets it, eh? Nothing’s changed, even now.”
“What do you mean?”
I thought of that first day at school.
A few months ago I managed to get my collective shit together enough to put my little zine, The Inner Swine, up on Amazon for the Kindle. I was pretty proud of myself. The Inner Swine has remained largely unchanged since its inception in 1995; the same basic layout, format, trim size, and style. You could hold a 2011 issue up to a 1995 issue and see no difference.
Hopefully the writing inside has changed (for the better), but that’s a different matter.
So, getting the zine into the Kindle was pretty big for me. Immediately upon announcing it, of course, I was inundated with emails from folks wondering when the Nook version was coming. Soon, soon, I swore to them, taking a deep pull from my unmarked bottle of ‘shine and typing with one hand. Soon.
Well, soon apparently = 6 months or so, but the glorious day has arrived! The last two issues of TIS are now available for the Nook:
The Inner Swine Volume 16, Issue 3/4, Winter 2010
The Inner Swine Volume 17, Issue 1/2, Summer 2011
Both priced at $0.99, both sloppily formatted and barely proofread, because this is a zine, man, and both DRM-free, because this is not Communist China. Go buy some!
I’ll be crawling out of my lair for a few hours in September to discuss the Avery Cates books, beg piteously for money, and possibly humiliate myself when someone offers me a dollar to “shake my money-maker” and I accept, gyrating as tears stream down my face, certain that despite my efforts I will never get that dollar.
WHAT: The SFSNNJ Face the Fiction series.
WHERE: Well Read Books, 425 Lafayette Avenue, Hawthorne, NJ 07506; 973-949-3440
WHEN: Saturday, September 10, 2011, 8PM
I hung out with these folks a few years ago and had a really great time – these are book lovers and SF lovers. They also let me talk and talk and talk, which warms my black little heart. So come on out and watch me attempt to be coherent. And possibly dance for your dollars.
Oh boy, life is kicking my ass this week. Busy busy busy, sweating constantly, mostly sober. It’s hellish. Luckily, the universe has dished out two nifty things for me to soften the pain:
1. A really intense review of my zine The Inner Swine over at De Profundus Clamavi:
“I wish I had discovered this several years ago, thereby freeing me from all the boring bullshit I was reading on the net, at home, on the toilet, at night in bed, etc. Instead of reading American Scholar, Poetry, Skeptic (all worthy reads, by the way) and all the other highbrow lit and glossy, massively produced, and financially backed mags I packed around, I could’ve been reading The Inner Swine—and been laughing while doing it.”
The zine’s been out for so long I’m amazed some folks still discover it as new, but there you have it. Rock on.
2. Pete Dulin wrote up a nice piece on Avery Cates # 5 The Final Evolution over at his web site:
“Somers has perfected a steady pace in his storytelling where chapters end on a strong beat and encourage page turning to find out what happens next. Plenty of twists and turns abound that work for and against Cates. Unlike other series that depend on a character’s predictable actions and a few tweaks to formulaic plots, Avery Cates wraps up a few loose ends and attempts to settle a long-standing score with his nemesis in The Final Evolution.”
Rock on again. Go subscribe to my zine and buy my books. Now.
LET’s FACE IT, piggies, politics is just a fancy-pants way of channeling aggression. People opposed to each other in a system instinctively hate each other, and back in our blood-splattered glory days as a race any time two Chiefs went against each other on policy, they generally killed thousands in a war between their tribes, or at the very least engaged in man-to-man combat, gouging out eyes and ripping open abdomens until one ‘policy’ had triumphed over the other. In today’s more civilized society this sort of thing is frowned upon—the man-to-man combat thing; war, thank goodness, remains a socially acceptable way of killing thousands in order to determine policy. You won’t see John Kerry and George Bush wrestling at the base of the Washington Monument to see who gets to order the next few thousand men and women to their deaths, no sir. We’ve invented politics to take the place of violence.
Of course, you can invent all sorts of rules and procedures designed to keep the Monkeys we all live side-by-side with under control, and while it may work on a macro-scale, when you get down to the nitty-gritty life remains a struggle between violent personalities for control of their immediate airspace. Political candidates can’t fight each other for the job, but I’ll bet they wouldn’t mind. People remain pretty much primitive in their desires and the manner in which they pursue them.
For proof, I offer you the third-floor restroom at my job.
Someone in my building wishes to be King of the Third Floor Restroom. Someone else opposes his candidacy. I know this because there is a war going on in there, one which I know too much about already. In a more evolved society, the question of who will be King of the Third Floor Restroom would be addressed through a civilized and organized procedure: Nomination of candidates, presentation of views and policies regarding the restroom, and, finally, an election of some sort, probably conducted using urinal cakes. Since society remains woefully un-evolved, what we have instead is a classic battle between signage and someone with what appears to be Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Some background and geographic detail, then: I started a new job back in April, and the offices are located on the third floor of a large Manhattan office building. The floor has several offices being rented, and sports one large restroom for each gender, used in common by all the offices (it’s possible some of the fancier offices sport private bathrooms, and if I ever discover this to be so you can bet we’ll take that office by force, kill its men and enslave its women, and enjoy the facilities). A perfectly acceptable situation, especially since I personally frown on anything aside from urination being performed in semi-public restrooms like that. Shared restroom toilets just weren’t meant to be used except under dire emergency situations, you ask me. If everyone would just use the urinals (a wonderful invention—I’d have a urinal in my home if I could) and get the hell out, we’d have a lot fewer problems in this world. There are two urinals and three stalls in the men’s restroom, along with two sinks, of course, so we can fool ourselves into thinking we’ve washed away the microbes, and a towel-dispenser and trashcan. Standard stuff.
So, I stay away from the stalls if I can. I’m not one of those people who thinks he’s going to get the Andromeda Strain if my skin comes in contact with a public toilet; I don’t have to get into a Virus Suit in order to take a shit in a public restroom. I also believe firmly that human beings have been dealing with germs and microbes and all sorts of nasty shit for thousands of years, and while you can argue that some of those microbes are pretty nasty (Black Death, for example) I still doubt anyone is going to become the new Typhoid Mary by using a public restroom. That said, I see no reason to expose myself to nasty public toilets any more than necessary, chum. So that’s my policy on toilets: Avoid if possible, but use when necessary and don’t lose sleep over it.
I first became aware that a campaign to be King of the Third Floor Restroom when I entered the restroom one day and discovered a neat, laser-printed sign had been taped on the rear wall of stall #3:
PLEASE
DON’T
URINATE ON
THE
SEAT
Poetic, in a way; hauntingly beautiful. This seemed like common sense to me, and one thing I’ve learned over the years is that you can’t teach people anything common: Sense, decency, or knowledge. They get violent and huffy, is my experience, and I wasn’t disappointed. After the first candidate for kingship threw his hat into the ring with this bit of pithy signage, our second candidate responded the next day by detonating an ass explosion reminiscent of Hiroshima in stall #3. It looked like an infinite number of monkeys had suffered an infinite number of bowel spasms in there. He’d painted the damn place with his feces. And there, sitting above it like an ironic caption was the Signage.
I would have thought this to be just a merry moment of societal collapse, like many I witness on a daily basis, except that it wasn’t an isolated event. Over the next few weeks, these ass detonations became common, always in stall #3. Candidate #1 for King of the Third Floor Restroom, whom we’ll call IBS, was obviously passionately dedicated to fouling stall #3 and keeping it fouled.
Candidate #2, who we’ll call Mr. Placard, laid low for a few days while this assault on the senses went on. Mr. Placard obviously believes that what the world needs is more signage, that everything could be perfect if only we had the proper signs and a population that slavishly, unquestioningly obeyed the signs. A few days after the first ass detonation, Mr. Placard crept in one afternoon and pasted a new sign on the radioactive door of stall #3:
OUT
OF
ORDER
I’ve rarely witnessed such a powerful message packed into three little words; I may have wept. This took balls, if you ask me: I wouldn’t have touched anything near that stall for anything in the known universe. I didn’t even like the idea of breathing that funk. So the sight of that flimsy, delicate piece of paper with the hopeful call for civilized discourse (behind the safety of anonymous notes) moved me. Both these men were uncompromising heroes, in their way. The campaign escalated immediately. The next time I found myself in the bathroom, the Out of Order sign had been ripped off the stall door and tossed to the floor, and the stall door thrown open so that the Beta Males of the floor could see the power of IBS, and cower before it. I cowered all right. I cowered to think this motherfucker might be touching the same things I did in the building, that he might be standing next to me in the elevator one day, that he might be someone I’d someday shake hands with.
For a few weeks, the debates continued: A new sign, a new ass detonation. I came to admire IBS for his physical prowess in the ass detonation department, even as I wondered what in the fucking world was wrong with him. I mean, to continuously generate that sort of ammunition, you have to have one hell of a bad diet, or one hell of a physical condition. Mr. Placard, on the other hand, was clearly one of those frightening men who spend their lives complaining about their neighbors and co-workers, and finally kill all of them in an orgy of justice. I imagined he’d adorn each of his victims with a crisp Post-It note, listing the crimes he’d just avenged. This was a battle for the ages, and whoever won, I was sure, deserved the awesome power invested in the King of the Third Floor Bathroom.
It ended as you might expect: IBS, with his awesome physical abilities, was victorious. I knew that Mr. Placard had conceded when IBS invaded and conquered stall #2 in addition to stall #3 without suffering any signage at all. IBS was obviously free to do as he wished in the bathroom. I was apparently not invited to the coronation ceremony. And thank goodness.
This is politics in its purest form, if you think about it: One man believes the restroom should be a sort of Thunderdome, a land without rules, where men are free to behave in any way they wish. Another believes otherwise: That even restrooms should be governed by the Rule of Polite Society, with said rules enforced via the written word. The rest of us, the citizens, are ostensibly involved in the process of voting—we could speak up at any time, if we wished, join in the desecration of stalls or put up our own notes in support of one side or another—but in reality we’re just underfoot, just like voters in this country. We exist merely as an audience, really. The shit-flinging begins, and after a brief struggle one policy is adopted—if that ain’t government on a micro-scale, I don’t know what is. Of course some might say that my stunted comprehension of the world around me is one good reason why I am not in politics. I’d say I’m not in politics because I’m too smart to waste my time. Time rubs everything blank in the end, mi amigos.
As for IBS, there haven’t been any ass detonations recently, and I wonder if he’s finally died of some sort of internal rot.