Starship Castle

I’m not a big fan of jargon. That’s when a small group decides that they’re going to use certain words in a different way from the rest of society, or that only certain words are acceptable in a specific situation.

Sometimes jargon just causes a breakdown in communication.  When I described a building as “modern,” my friend who was majoring in architecture thought I was an idiot.  To her, “modern architecture” implied a very specific type of building.  To me, it meant that the building had been constructed in relatively recent history.  Similarly, on a recent episode of The Office a employee was confused by his boss’s request for a “work up,” a phrase he wasn’t familiar with.

Other times jargon is used to deliberately exclude people who aren’t “part of the club.”  I’ve seen this in churches, in athletic groups, in music and art and theatre.  When someone judges your worth based on the exact words you use or don’t use instead of the meaning of what you say, they’re evaluating you based on jargon.

What does this have to do with science fiction?  In some circles, there’s a tendency to judge science fiction stories based on whether or not it’s “hard science fiction” (whether the story is based solely on science that is accurate to the best of our knowledge).  In my experience, this phrase is thrown around without any explanation for people unfamiliar with the term, and with the implication that if the work isn’t hard SF then it’s of lesser value.

This is jargoneering at its worst.  Is a science fiction story less valuable because it includes elements of fantasy?  Does an author’s message really only matter if he or she brings it across in one specific way, determined by an elitest group of audience members?  

I don’t think so.  Look at Star Wars.  In the original trilogy, the Force was more or less a mystical energy that was never explained, while the movies focused on the characters and their story.  In the prequel trilogy, I think there’s a decent chance that “midi-chlorians” were introduced to reach out to hard SF fanatics.  Did that bit of ’science’ really help anyone?

I’m not saying that hard science fiction is bad.  I think it can be pretty good.  If you prefer hard SF, I’m glad you’ve found what you like.  But in the end, it’s just another type of story, and it’s no better or worse of a genre than any other.  We’re all part of the science fiction & fantasy community.  Can’t we be friends?

On the outskirts of our solar system, there is a small chunk of rock and ice that is not referred to as a planet.

It is not Pluto.

This chunk of rock and ice was never noticed by ancient astronomers, and was never named after a Greek or Roman god, but its inhabitants call it The Pebble.  They call small stones pebbles, too, but when the T and P are capitalized it’s referring to the chunk of ice and rock itself.

The inhabitants of The Pebble aren’t colonists from Earth (which is another confusing name), and they aren’t terrifying space monsters.  They don’t have acid for blood, they aren’t telepathic, and they aren’t a mind-wiped military outpost that will one day destroy Earth.  They have no spaceships (but they do have other forms of space travel), and they certainly don’t have nuclear power.  On the whole, they live far more simply than most other intelligent species.

The inhabitants of The Pebble are penguins.

Lenny swam through the inky blackness around The Pebble, looking for fish.  There seemed to be less recently than he remembered from a few years ago, but the rookery’s leaders insisted that nothing was amiss.  ”Part of the natural order,” they squawked.  ”Some years more fish, some years less fish.”

Despite their assurances, Lenny was worried.  He was having to swim further and further to catch a meal.  He was afraid that something was causing the fish to leave The Pebble.  Last week he’d spoken to a passing whale said he’d noticed the decrease in the food supply but hadn’t given it much thought.  Since whales migrated in-and-out of the system regularly, the availability of kelp was constantly changing.

Lost in thought, Lenny didn’t notice a black shadowy object hovering above and behind him.  He did notice when a glowing orange beam surrounded him.  ”That’s funny,” he thought.  ”There’s sort of an orange circle on the ground, and I think that’s my shadow in the center.”  As he began drifting towards something that looked like a giant clamshell, he wondered if there were fish inside, and whether it would share with him.

Over the past decade or so, there’s been a fair amount of fanboy outrage about Star Wars Episodes I-III.  While I’m not as angry or as upset as some people are (in fact, I’d say you could make a strong case that all three were better than Spider-Man 3), I have from time to time ranted about ways the prequels could’ve been better.  Here’s ten:

10.  Anakin starts out as a Jedi.  A good storytelling principle is to start the story as late as p9ossible, skip all the boring stuff leading up to that point.  For Star Wars, this would mean start with Anakin as a padawan, kicking ass and taking names.

9.  Darth Maul doesn’t die until Episode III.  You remember how awesome the lightsaber fight in Episode I was? Remember the chills you got the first time you saw Darth Maul?  Dooku’s fights were never as cool.  Keep Darth Maul around until the beginning of Episode III when Anakin kill him in a fight that will only be surpassed by the Anakin/Obi-Wan showdown.

8.  C-3PO isn’t punny.  In the original series, C-3PO was funny because he took everything so seriously.  In the prequels, he made stupid, stupid puns.

7.  Less George Lucas.  I don’t think George Lucas is an idiot, or the devil, or anything like that.  I think he’s actually very, very good a coming up with stories.  But I do think that it’s better when other people are involved.  He wrote and directed A New Hope, but for Empire and Jedi Lucas just did the story while other people wrote the script and directed.  Ditto for the Indiana Jones movies.  Imagine if Ridley Scott, Peter Jackson, Doug Liman or the Wachowskis had worked been involved in the prequels.

6.  Yoda isn’t Bugs Bunny.  As awesome as it is seeing Yoda in all his epic badassery, they went a little overboard with the CG effects.  When he shut down his lightsaber and started flipping around, just barely being missed by Dooku, I felt like I was watching an old Looney Tunes cartoon.  By all means, Yoda should kick ass.  He just shouldn’t be silly about it.

5.  More Clone Wars.  One of my favorite parts of prequel related media was “Star Wars: Clone Wars” – the animated series from 2003-2005, not the computer animated series from this past year.  If more Clone Wars adventures had made it into the movies proper, instead of angsty whining, I wouldn’t have complained. 

4.  A pregnancy and birth that make sense.  The fact that, somehow, nobody else realized Padme was pregnant especially bothered me, but not much else about this storyline worked.  A little bit of work would’ve gone a long way towards improving the continuity (remember what Leia said in Jedi?) and crafting a stronger story.

3.  Not so shiny.  Scenery and ships in the original trilogy looked like they had been used, like the world was actually lived in.  In the prequels, everything looked like it was fresh off of the assembly line.  For comparison, look at the design of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.  One world looks authentic; the other looks like a brand new toy set.

2.  Build a freaking set.  Lucas famously the set of Gangs of New York and told Martin Scorsese that the whole set could’ve been done with computers.  Gangs was nominated for an Oscar for set decoration.  When I saw Attack of the Clones, I thought the scene in Dex’s Diner didn’t look any better than Dot’s Diner from Reboot - a TV show from 1994.  While I think computer graphics can be a great tool in creating fantastic set pieces (it worked in Lord of the Rings), it’s a tool that has to be used in addition to traditional set building.  Not as a replacement.

1.  Let the actors act.  Stories about the various stars problems with Lucas’s direction are pretty much a matter of public knowledge.  So are stories about how Lucas wouldn’t give the actors scripts until the day they were shooting a particular set of lines.  This means that the actors weren’t able to prepare at all – they were basically doing a cold reading.  Good storytelling has good characters.  In a movie, your characters are only as good as your actors.  You can’t make a good movie if you start by crippling the actors.  So don’t.

What changes would you make to the Star Wars prequels?  Let us know in the comments.

Hollywoodreporter.com is reporting that Will Smith’s production company, Overbrook Entertainment, will be making a two-hour movie for Sci Fi. “Unfinished Business” will be a crime drama “about an ex-cop who starts seeing flashes of memories from the recently deceased.”  

If successful, the movie could serve as a backdoor pilot for a series, similar to the Battlestar Galactica mini-series a few years ago.  Sci Fi has a couple other projects taking this approach – “The Phantom” and “Riverworld.”

“Unfinished Business” will also be Sci Fi’s first crime procedural since “The Dresden Files,” a show I wish had been around longer.  If we’re lucky, this will be a solid reunion of the science-fiction and procedural genres.

Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

You remember the showdown between Gandalf and the Balrog in Fellowship of the Ring? You remember when the Balrog fell into blackness? What would go through someone’s mind during an endless plummet like that? Dave Kellett has the answer, in a poster he’ll be selling at the LA Festival of Books.

Sheldon is one of my favorite comics. It has the unique capacity for awesome geek humor combined with “something for the whole family.” If you aren’t reading it already, go spend some time with the archives. You’ll thank me.

At his site, George R.R. Martin has announced that a pilot for A Game of Thrones (the first book of his A Song of Ice and Fire series) will begin filming in October. Production will take place in Northern Ireland.

I loved A Game of Thrones, but the rest of the series is still in my list of shame. Hopefully the pilot will be well received, and lead to adaptations of all the books.

I’m getting up painfully early tomorrow to hop on a plane and fly across the country for a wedding. I’ll be gone through the weekend, and don’t know if I’ll be updating during that time. Next Monday, though, Starship Castle will begin updating in earnest.

Ursula K. Le Guin and others were honored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) this weekend at the Nebula Awards. Le Guin won for her novel Powers, and Joss Whedon received the Ray Bradbury Award. Because Whedon wasn’t able to attend personally, he accepted with a brilliant video available here.

A full list of the winners can be found at the SFWA website.