Check out Alexander Veer’s writeup about how the movie The Day After changed everything in a powerful wave of activist science fiction.

Frankly, Lucas Films has made it an organizational mess.  It took me a few hours of IMDB, Wikipedia, and Google research to figure out what there was to watch and in what order to watch them.  Here is my rescription for catching up in four steps.

Step 1, watch the live action movies

The first two movies are the setup for the cartoons. Their names are: Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith.  If you are a very orderly person, you may opt to not watch episode 3 until you do steps 2-4.  But I’m not very orderly so I recommend  watching the live action movies first, and because sometimes it’s nice to know where a character is headed, and then watch that character at an earlier time and see how he struggles along that path.

Step 2, Go for an Adult Swim

Lucas wanted you to have something to do after watching Episode 2 Attack of the Clones in 2002, until he released Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith. So he gave you cartoon shorts. They were released in 2003, 2004, 2005 as teasers (sometimes on TV, sometimes in the theater).  Notice the “Adult Swim” rough and minimal style of animation on the front cover.  This series of shorts (also called the “micro” series) was later combined to make a large narrative about what Anni had been up to between Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones, and Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. I enjoyed watching it very much. It’s an example of doing narrative with sparse dialog and lots of showing.
 

Step 3, Star Wars: Clone Wars movie

Notice the distinctive difference in animation on the movie poster versus the “Adult Swim” style.  This movie was used to kick off the TV series in Step 4.

Step 4, Star Wars: The Clone Wars TV series

This TV series ran immediately after the animated movie and is still running today (crica 2010). The animation style is the same as that of the movie.  As of now, only two seasons are out in blu-ray.

Now go to Amazon or NetFlicks and find ways to enjoy the Star Wars experience! (Sorry, JarJar Binks is still included.)

The Singularity, a theory that says that since technological advancement has been doubling for the past centuries, we’ll reach a point where the change will become so rapid, that society will become wildly unpredictable. This point is called The Singularity.

Once The Singularity hits, your favorite TV show will finish its entire season BEFORE you’ve seen the first episode. This is upsetting because the last episode will be in a new HD format of a 1080googleP, and although it was amazing, it’ll be a commercial disaster because no one knew about it in time to watch its ten second season. (It jumped the shark in the ninth second.)

So before the disaster that is The Singularity, enjoy your leisurely Internet age of daily magazines such as Daily Science Fiction. Visit their website and subscribe, for free, and receive science fiction short stories. The eZine has just started up and will be releasing stories to their subscribers late this Summer/Fall.

One of the stories they’ll send you is a story I wrote called Bit Storm, which received honorable mention in The Writers of the Future contest. Diff makes a living setting up and maintaining an AI for a financial company. He makes the acquaintance of a greifer who goes by Slick Devil who challenges Diff to prove him wrong, that war is a natural and necessary in society and the skilled survive to prey on the weak. Although Diff tries to steer clear, Slick Devil involves him in a disastrous Halloween stunt that risks people’s lives.

As I’m sure there will be stories about life during and post Singularity, it would be irresponsible not to subscribe to Daily Science Fiction. You owe it to yourself to learn as much as possible before The Singularity is upon us. (People addicted to iPhones and PvZ is just a coming herald.)

Subscribe soon, before Daily Science Fiction becomes Hourly Science Fiction or, shudder, Quantum Science Fiction.

Dear reader, unlike my usual ’speculative posts,’ Will really is my pal, and he really did get nominated for these very cool awards.  Yes! Really!  I’ve got pictures!  William McIntosh and I worked with each other at the Clarion Writer’s Workshop in 2003.

Editorial: Will forgot to send me a new photo for the interview.  The only photos I have of him are from our Clarion 2003 class.

Sean Melican, William McIntosh, Ben Kuo, Lister, Jamie Kress

REDACTED due to witness protection program, Matt Fitz, Tammy Inman, Jonathan Laden

Douglas Texter, Cathy Morrison, Tom Doyle, Joel Schnack, Lancer Kind

Jamie Kress, Robert Canipe, Ryan Butkus, Douglas Texter, Cathy Morrison

And yes, we occasionaly fed Mr. Waldrop for a job well done.

I couldn’t find a picture of Kyle Phegley, the man behind the camera, so I did a Bing image search for Kyle and found this.  Bing says it’s him:

Kyle Phegley?

But pictures of tired writers who have been writing and critiquing into the wee hours of the night, and then forced to get up early to give critiques (thank you Mr. Waldrop, Nalo Hopkinson, Richard Paul Russo, Scott Edelman, Kelly Link, James Patrick Kelly, Maureen F. McHugh) don’t make good interview pictures.  But Bing’s image search does!

Here’s what searching for McIntosh comes up with:

Which I can only assume are: Will’s cousins, the next two are Will after he uploaded himself into some hardware (a sacrifice necessary to reach the level of story research needed to get a Hugo and Nebula nomination for his short story Bridesicle, about a woman who was stored in a Cyro-freezer).  The beefcake is a photo of Will before he uploaded himself into hardware.  And the last photo, I guess, is Will’s kid sister.

Hey Will!  This is your pal, Lancer Kind.

Lancer?  Lancer?  What a strange name.  I think I remember some unfortunate person going by that once.  I think it was a workshop…

Yes!  You’ve got it bosom buddy!

Will, what gives?  You’re an award hog!  You have not only been nominated for a Hugo,but also a Nebula!

Yes, can you believe that?  I got the call two months ago (Feb 2010) from the Nebulas, for work published in 2009.  And now the Hugo!

To how many of the major publications have you sold short stories?

Bridesicle is the fourth and all of them to Asimov’s.  There are about seven short story markets I’d call majors now: Asimov’s, F&SF, Analog, Realms of Fantasy, Clarkesworld, Tor, and Strange Horizons.

I feel loyalty to Sheila since she was the first of the majors to buy something.  I always send anything new to her first.  I’ll meet her for the first time at the Nebulas.

This year, the World Science Fiction (World Con) convention is in Melbourne, Australia, September 2-6.  Per Word Con tradition, it has local name given by the holders of the convention.  It’s name is AussieCon4.  Since the award ceremony happens during the convention, are you attending AussieCon4 to sit in the audience, wringing your hands, to see if you win?

At first I wasn’t sure, but then how many chances do you get to go to World Science Fiction Convention as a Hugo nominee?  The answer for me may be only one.  So I feel I have to go.  I just can’t miss out on going to the Hugo awards.  But the travel (from Georgia, USA) is brutal and I can’t linger there when my wife is home with our young twins.

Will you hire someone to warm your seat, like the VIPs do at the Oscars?

(laughs, you can tell by the VUE meter.)  Well it really is our Oscars.  You dream about being nominated.  I still can’t believe it’s happened.

How can I skip it?  I just have to go. I hope I know people there.  Scott Edelman will probably be there.

(discussion ensues about how Mr. Edelman seems to be at all the World SF Cons)  Hopefully this blog will help you meet more people.  Especially if I use your pre-uploaded photo:

Are you going to talk on some panels?

The people at World SF Con have asked and I’ll make a final decision if I’ll be there this week.  If so, I’ll likely do what ever Hugo nominees do.

Talking to important people in the bar. 

(laughs) I still feel like I’m someone who should be sitting in the audience listening to the writers.

You’re too modest!  STOP IT!    You need a panel to talk about your fascination with frozen people.   How many votes did you get for the Nebulas?

I got nineteen in the Nebulas.  The top vote getter was 22.  They haven’t reported the Hugo votes yet.

How many people did you have to sleep with to get those votes?

Heh.  I’ll tell you, that’s why it’s so surprising.  With the kids coming, I was too busy to send out many stories in ‘09.  One day, someone on the Codex site said to me, ‘Hey you’ve got a lot of votes’  When there was only a day left, I was emailing my friends–’Hey I’m close!  I’m right there!’

It never even occurred to me that could happen.  With the kids coming, I didn’t get to work much and I only published two stories that year.  I never even dreamed it until someone on Codex mentioned that I was on the voting.

Since we went to Clarion together, I’ve always used used you as a yardstick for my own career.  In 2006 you had accumulated a number of sales and I hadn’t sold much.  So I talked with you about what you were doing and then compared that to what I was doing.  The biggest difference was that you maintained discipline about keeping your stories circulating through the markets.  I’d forget to do that because, at the time, I had only two hours a day to write, so I was a loath to spend any of that time on marketing.  After our conversation, I had the realization why what I was doing wasn’t working.  I made it my New Year’s resolution to write less and that really helped.

So now I have to ask myself the question: How the hell do I get a Neb. or Hugo?  It sounds like one needs to publish in a big distribution magazine and get some buzz as you did.

Yes.  The nominees tend to come from the magazines with the largest readerships whether they are in print or online.  People can’t vote for you unless they’ve read it.  Any of the big ones.  The big four, though I think it’s safe to say the big seven or eight.

Rachel Swirsky had blogged what she was voting and she had picked Bridesicle for best short story.  I think that created a lot of buzz.  She was on the ballot for best Novelette.

How’s your cover letter going to look now?  How about you open with: I’m a Hugo nominee, so you bitches better publish my story.

(Laughs) Some publications just aren’t a good fit for me, even if the story is a great story.  Gorden Van Gelder probably saw my first fifty stories and didn’t buy any of them, though I certainly don’t hold any ill will against him.

My feeling is that F&SF and Gordon really values style–people who are great with words and images–and that’s not me.  Sheila really values a good story and focuses less on the turn of a phrase.  That’s my feeling and that’s how I’ve always distinguished those the two magazines.

Who do you write like?

I write like other people who are very straight forward.  I just tell the story.  I don’t consciously try to create clever ways of saying things.  Perhaps I write like Robert Reed.  He’s always in the ‘Years Best’ anthology because he always creates such great stories.

What was your inspiration for Bridesicle?

I usually just get ideas and they show up as as ideas will, and I just jot them down.  I first wrote the whole story from the perspective a guy who is visiting this cryogenic dating site.  He’s a loser and doesn’t have the money to help any of them, but he wants the attention of a woman, but can’t get it other than from these frozen women.  I wrote the whole thing and then put it out for some of my writing friends to read.  Mary Robinette Kowal said, ‘I think your missing it.  I think you need to write this from the point of view of the woman.’

And you do what you always do when you get feedback that says, throw out the six thousand words you’ve written and start over.  And of course, you go: I don’t want to do that!  I want THIS story to be good.

And you let a little of time pass, and then go back and look at it while going through the stages of grief: death, denial, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance, realizing she’s right.  So I re-wrote the story from the beginning and that was Bridesicle.

What other stories have you done major re-writes to and had them turn out to be so successful?

I’m trying tor think about other stories where I have several versions on my hard drive.  I don’t know if other people make file versions.  I always feel if I’m going to re-write, I’m going to screw it up so I make a copy of the file.  The other three I published in Asimov, I did revisions but none were major.  One story, Midnight Blue, I wrote in two days and did ten minutes of revisions.  I wished they were all like that!

I sold one to Interzone called A Clown Escapes from Circus Town and that one had a version number of seven.  That one I kept doing over and over again.  I think every writer has a few of these where you think the idea is good, and you keep trying to write the story, but it’s bad every time.

I have one, about multiple personality disorder where it’s possible to induce the condition without trauma, and do it voluntarily.  A cult is started around this activity.  I’ve completely rewritten this story at least four times, and it’s still no good.  I remember the first time I did it, Joseph Murphy critiqued it and said, ‘you’ve taken an interesting idea and told it in the dullest, driest way possible.’  There are a few writers on Codex where if they tell me it’s no good, it’s no good.  Like Ian Creasy.

He’s like the best critiquer.  Just unbelievable good.  When he tells me it’s not any good, it’s not any good.  When I send him something, I just wait, hoping.  And when he’s finished I just ask, “Is it any good?  Am I going to be able to sell this?”

“Sadly, this didn’t work for me.”

I just say, “Dammit!”  He’s so perceptive.  I know he’s going to be right.  I can pretend he’s not going to be right, but he’s going to be right.

Are you working on any novels?

I’ve got two novels I finished last fall.  And right now, I’m working on a third.  I recently got an agent, Seth Fishmen, and he’s is shopping my novel Soft Apocalypse.  He’s a great guy and I’m excited to work with him.  I discovered him through Ted Cosmaka, a shooting star who just got a nomination in the Nebulas and signed a great contract with Del Rey.  Ted put in a good word with Seth.  I sent Seth Soft Apocalypse and he called me back in five days.

You got the phone call!  It actually does happen!

The other novel is a slipstream baseball novel.  It’s funny, this thing about baseball genre novels.  There are very few of them, but the ones that get out there are all successful.  So I decided to write one.  Like Shoeless Joe,  the Iowa Baseball Confederacy, and Bishop’s Brittle Innings.

We’ve talked about your completed novels, do you have something that’s unfinished and in progress?

I’ve got a few short stories, but they are just sitting right now.  I’m spending a lot of time on a new novel about a terrorist attack in New York.  So many people die, it pokes a hole between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and the dead come back and posses the living.  So you have much of New York fighting with a dead person for control of their body.  It’s about this cartoonist who draws a comic strip and he’s possessed by his grandfather who invented the strip and did not give him permission to continue it.  And Grandpa is seeking his dead wife who is possessing the body of another woman.

Oh dear!  Grandpa is going to ruin his grandson’s life, not to mention that New York is going to be in a bit of a mess.

Will, congratulations on the nomination!  You’re an elitist now!  Congratulations on crossing that divide!

Let’s wish him luck in the voting for Bridesicle and hope he brings home a nice Hugo and a Nebula!

2007 Hugo

Nebula

http://openhomelandsecurity.ideascale.com/a/dtd/31748-7043

My dad is a newly retired member of DHS.  Dad, I’ll work on you directly.

This older cover is my favorite.

Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother is a call to those that are keeping quiet and just waiting for things to blow over.  It’s a clarion to those waiting for our freedoms to come back.  And it’s an instruction book  for how to fight back rather than sit at home and complain about warrantless wiretapping.

Little Brother is about how authority without limit turns into state sponsored terrorism.  It’s post 911 San Francisco and the Bay Bridge is blown up.  Homeland Security reacts by apprehending anyone they feel is a terrorist.  Without any due process, these people become victims of state sponsored oppression: interrogation, torture, and some shipped to other countries (rendition) where there is even less of a chance of rescue by people who value freedom and human life.

This is one of those books that every American near the voting age and of the voting age should read.  Anyone with an interest in computer science and surveillance will love this book.

When I was at my hometown of Fairfield, Montana,
a mother told me about her son Mike, who was a friend of mine.  Mike had gone to Iraq as a sergeant in the army and had recently returned home.  She sensed he had a lot to get off his chest but the only things he would talk of were the weather and family news.  But this wall around him was always disturbed by the information form the outside world: TV news, and newspapers.  Finally he summarized to mom his feelings about the war as this: he was ordered to do some bad things, things he couldn’t talk about.  And that was as far as he would go.

When I was in Redmond, Washington,
a woman who I used to work with was telling me about her Tyler who I hadn’t seen in years.  When I asked if he was going to be a computer guy like his dad, she said, her tone ringing with pride: ‘Oh no.  He only uses the computer to play games.  He enjoys playing the sniper game the most, and says he wants to kill terrorists when he grows up.’  Everyone else in the office went quite.  You see, the problem is that the government had been labeling too many people terrorists for the liberal Puget Sound Area’s taste.  American’s have been declared terrorists during the Bush administration, and they have been held without due process, and as the case with most all the prisoners held as enemy combatants, they were freed once the justice system decide to step in.  So when someone’s son says, “I want to kill terrorists,” we all wonder what kind of terrorist will be in that kid’s cross hairs–the ones that were unjustly held for years or the ones that actually did anything wrong.

I really hope people like Mike from Fairfield will get a chance to tell their story to the youth like Tyler who see the world through sniper sights of black and white.

As a work of activist science fiction, Little Brother meets the criteria I’ve developed through study of this area:

• it’s a story of fiction whose vision clearly portrays a problem in real life
• the characters take action in a way that any reader can understand, identify with, and execute
• it poses possible solutions to the problem
• it contains elements of science and its a story of fiction

That this is a work of activist science fiction from the ground up shouldn’t be a surprise as Cory Doctorow worked with other activists at the Electronic Freedom Foundation.

I’m buying a few copies of this book for my high school’s library and hometown public library.

Little Brother is an important story for people to hear, and the more stories like this we share as a society, the more we can develop a group intelligence about such issues in society.  (An example of group intelligence: most everyone in America knows you should wear a seat belt, that smoking causes lung cancer, that you should drive on the right-hand side of the road.  How they act upon that information is another thing.)  And having a group intelligence increases the odds that as a culture, we develop superior mechanisms (the first ones will suck, but society evolves) for handling the problem, and the problem gets handled quickly.

So Mike, I hope you get this message.  I hope you will share your stories and experiences with others that go deeper than a sniper game.  I also ask you, the audience to post your stories somehow: write editorials, write blogs, post comments on this blog.  I invite you to tell me your post 911 story of activism or what you feel are important post 911 readings using the comment field below.

But now I understand: spinning any improvement as “new” (like a new feature), or anything that is New has to be an Improvement (like Vista over XP–er… OK.  Maybe an exception.) just makes me feel like I’ve spent a bunch of money on R&D and got twice as much Bang!

OK, now back to what is “New AND Improved!”  (Wow, I really love saying that!)

I’ve always felt that it’s important to have a good education and I’ve relied on YOU to ‘learn me a thing or two.’

I’ve made some adjustment to my website to make it more satisfying to tell me how I could be so wrong.  No more hiding your pearls of wisdom beneath a tiny ‘comments’ link.  Comments are now in the front row and in full font size, beneath each posting.

(But wait, there’s more: you’ll be associated with a cool Avatar.  Yes, that has been an existing feature, but that small detail can’t stop this marketing machine.)

Now you can REALLY let me have it!  Enjoy!

==>Lancer—

The movie touches on real issues:

• capitalism without morals (do anything to make the stockholders happy) oil companies, mining companies, or any company that places it’s products and profits above a sustainable and safe earth
• destruction of the natives (Na’vi) by corporate interests are similar to what happens to Nigerian’s in the face of today’s oil companies in Nigeria.
• a disregard for Pandora’s health is like our current disregard for Gaia in the face of global warming (Planetary health and global warming isn’t a focus in the movie.  For Pandora the connection is even stronger in that the planet houses the memories of the ancestors.)
• mercenary army (more capitalism without morals) and Blackwater in Iraq/Afghanistan

Of course I’m biased by own readings and political leanings.  A way of validating this would be to poll neoconservatives, free market anti-environmental policy types, and pro military industrial complex types.  Since I don’t have any of these people nearby to consult with, so let me imagine their responses:

• neoconservatives– “the company’s approach was all wrong.  First you get them TVs and light bulbs, and then tell them they need to build damns and infrastructure to keep the lights and TV going, and then you give them loans for those things, and once that happens, you have them by the balls.  (See Confessions of an Economic Hit Man for step by step instructions.)
• worshipers of the free market — “Those tree huggers are living together in communes, shackling their GDP to “green-only” technology and that will never work.  Still, it’s too bad about the blowing up the giant tree.  That would have been good for the tourism industry.  The company should have tried a littler harder at getting the Na’vi on board by giving them good jobs to mine their own planet.  Then everyone would have been happy.  You say Pandora is sentient?  Hmm… I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.  Try explaining free market theory to a planet…”
• ‘the best military to rule them all’ guys–”The company tried to do it on the cheap.  They needed more guns, gunships, mercs.  Nothing like a good surge to show everyone what end of the rifle is the business end.  And the mercs…. why don’t they have nukes?  They could have just nuked the planet from orbit and solved the problem quickly.  Anyhow, this movie just goes to show that only the best industrial complex wins.  The Na’vi won round one.  But the Na’vi will eventually lose unless they find a way to build up their military.”

Is this movie a work of activist science fiction?  Here is what the movie showed us:

1. The Plight of Natives against overwhelming military might and the solution of resisting with everything you have.
2. It portrayed how corporations use Shareholder Profit as God as an excuse to violate human rights.
3. The movie created a wonderment about Nature and its Mysteries and contrasted that by mentioning that Earth’s nature is ruined.

Does the movie show how the viewer could take action (take action == become active == activist)?

The plight of the natives showed us that without doing something about it, the planet would be lost.  The movie didn’t acknowledge (or I don’t recall) what the cost was back home for not getting the Unobtainium, where in reality, we enjoy running about in our cars and polluting and often wish that eating Salmon wasn’t so expensive.  So this movie doesn’t give us the conversation about giving something up in order to keep the world we love.  If the viewer is able to make the connection between today’s energy corporations and the one in the film, and then realize that there is a lot of funny business going on to give them the ability to refuel their tank, then maybe this would cause some people to become active.

The movie’s solution to Plight of the Natives is to organize resistance.  This is a tough road in that most of the viewing audience will never be in the position to do this.  The movie does show us the mercenary pilot and scientists becoming active members of the resistance.  This is something that more of the viewers can relate to as many of them will become part of the “machine” that is doing these things and could, like the characters in the movie, organize change within.

The movie does accurately depict Shareholder Profit as God but it’s not clear to me that many people actually understand that this is the reality of how many corporations govern themselves, and the movie doesn’t try to make this connection to reality.

The movie does a phenomenal job of creating awe of Nature and its Mysteries which I hope will translate into caring about today’s environment.  But I fear that the most action this movie will create is to get people hungry to play the MMOG so they can enjoy living on virtual Pandor.

There isn’t clarity of how the problems in the movie reflect what is happening today, which is critical to cause a call to action among viewers.  But it doesn’t have to be activist science fiction to be a great science fiction movie.  Go pay some money to see this wonderful 3-D film in the theater and enjoy.

Oh, on another note, apparently the Chinese Government disagrees with me and feels that Avatar IS effective activist SF.  This Saturday, Jan 23, they are discontinuing the the 2D screenings of Avatar to make way for a biographical film called Confucius, starring Chow-Yun Fat.

I don’t plan on seeing Confucius in the theater.  Sorry Chow-Yun, but I don’t like to encourage government interference any more than corporate malfeasance.

Or at a minimum, I’m sore about being disagreed with.

You see, the organizers of the mainstream (editors, producers, etc.) are doing their best to sell and sometimes that closes them to something that is really out there which may also sell.  It’s OK.  It’s a business.  Everyone is doing their best.  But if you’re tired of reading their vision of what is a great short story, try my favorite source of alternative science fiction: New Genre, a zine that comes out every so often, maybe twice a year, maybe less.  Either way, the editor Adam Golaski looks for the most interesting stories in science fiction and horror that he can find, and like the magazine’s title hints, his taste runs to stories that focus on story and less on genre.

Issue Six recently came out and like every New Genre I’ve read, I read some fiction that I wouldn’t naturally seek out and find.  It’s alternative.  Like the bands They Might Be Giants, or Eels, I have to “hear” the tune before I realize it’s something I want.

“Jack the Satellite Jockey” by Michael Filimowicz reads like a hard science fiction story filled with stats on satellites and rocketry but swerves into the realm of techno-shamanism.  How the story subtly bridges these two ideas is very cool.  The story takes place in orbit above Earth with Jack doing his job–repairing a satellite and we find out one of Jack’s hobbies is sometimes making “adjustments” to the data being beamed back to Earth.

“The Sparrow Mumbler” by Eric Schaller is in a fantasy setting and is about a man named John who has a really difficult job–he is supposed to try and swallow an angry sparrow whose leg is tied by a string to the top button of John’s shirt, and John’s hands are tied behind his back.  And let me tell you, that sparrow is mean enough to John that PETA might be more concerned about the abuse to John’s face than to the indignity the sparrow feels.

If you think that science fiction short stories end with what you can find on you newsstand (Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimovs, and Analog) visit the websites and buy a copy of other purveyors of science fiction stories such as New Genre.  And by the way, those anthologies sitting on the right-side of this website contain a smorgasbord of fiction writers and literary styles too.

This travesty is becoming more common. Star Wars is over 30 years old which is twice the age of the teens and pre-teens in love with Twilight.

It’s been suggested by another member of the old guard that I perform the civic duty of booting them to the head, and when they hit the ground, I stomp on them till their brains seep out their ears. (My friend Bill is a member of the violent arm of the ‘old guard.’ So watch out for him.)

Is this fair?  Can Twilight even be considered science fiction? I wouldn’t argue that you would understand the genre if you’ve only seen Star Wars, but I’d certainly feel better about that than Twilight.  But then, I’m a member of the old guard.  Twilight is speculative fiction, not science fiction.  The same goes for Harry Potter, and we know that more of the world is familiar with Harry Potter than Star Wars (people in China bring it up all the time.)  So back to Star Wars versus Twilight.

Star Wars carries itself on imaginative eye candy and has not-well-motivated dialogue in nearly all the movies. To be great, Lucas Films needs someone who actually is a good writer work on the dialog part.

I probably would never have seen Twilight except my girlfriend wanted to watch it. I enjoyed it though I would never admit this in the presence of an ‘old guardsperson.’  The writers/author of Twilight knows how to write dialogue, but it doesn’t have any of the impact of Star Wars because any discussion of Star Wars has to be taken in context of when the original movie came out.
Star Wars was innovative to the extreme for a 1977 film. It did everything that Star Trek did 11 years before Star Wars (1966), but it took the use of special effects to a new (and expensive) level by doing it all over the place. But no 22 year-old is going to have that context without a patient discussion, which I couldn’t supply because I was in shock with what I was hearing.

Twilight is just a good movie. I’m looking forward to the sequel. It didn’t break new ground in the speculative fiction movie industry.

I’m a regular viewer of Attack of the Clones episodes on Cartoon Net (well, really digital download), and I’m enjoying that for the most part though there are moments I feel like it is insensitive to clones and glorifies war too much.

So the changing of the guard will take place whether or not the old guardsperson dressed up in spiffy white armor wants to allow it.  And let’s face it, the chicks dig Edward as much as the boys of the old guard dug Princess Leia.

Why is it that I hate myself now?

There, there Leia, Lancer didn’t really mean it.