Independence Day. Resurgence. Roland Emmerich, dir. Great special effects, driving score, but sloppy screenplay. Theme: The older generation passes the baton to the younger. Jake Morrison (Liam Hemsworth) is the cocky, arrogant main character—hard to figure out whose son he is, but I’m guessing he’s the son of the alcoholic UFO nut in #1. His main squeeze, Patricia Whitmore (Maika Monroe), is the daughter of ex-Pres Whitmore (Bill Pullman), who helped save the world in #1—a repeat performance here, sort of. #1’s Will Smith character flyboy Hiller’s son has a long-standing feud with Jake. And so forth. You get the idea.

It’s 30 years after #1 (1996 to 2026 in this parallel universe), so the united people of Earth (not so united, or peaceful, considering the aggressive warlord and friends at the beginning) have combined military tech with ET military tech. They think they’re well prepared for the next invasion. Ha! The ET bad guys are a lot more visible here and see a lot more action, thanks to the progress of special effects, enough to please all the space opera fans. The ubiquitous hive concept of classic sci-fi (see Ender’s Game, for example), is used to make the ETs seem, well, more alien, but the queen reminded me too much of Sigourney Weaver’s nemesis in Alien.

There are many superfluous characters and parallel story threads: Julius Levinson (Judd Hirsch) and the kids he picks up on his way from his beached boat to Area 51; the African warlord and the nerdy white guy he ends up calling a warrior; and the whole boatload of treasure hunters. I never could figure out what the latter were doing out there watching an alien ship drill into the Earth’s mantle (where’s the EPA when you need them?)—their contribution to the defense of Earth didn’t seem worth that cool hundred million Washington offered them (“united Earth” still means the Yanks are in charge, I guess—more arrogance).

Confusing? You bet! Insanely sappy at times too. Don’t look for logic AKA reasonable scientific extrapolation in this nod to the 50’s B-movies about alien invasions, or the earlier “War of the Worlds.” I suspect later summer sci-fi extravaganzas or the new Bourne movie will be much more interesting.  And don’t forget that forgetful fish and prehistoric squirrel.  But a good time was had by all watching Independence Day #2.

***

In libris libertas….

Our nation cannot survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little.—Bernie Sanders

***

Last week! The “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” is on sale.  Some authors bundle a series or part of a series.  Here’s an alternative: from now until July 1, all three books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are on sale AT SMASHWORDS, $0.99 for each ebook, reduced from $2.99.  The clones make their appearance in Full Medical (coupon code VJ44L) as part of a complex government conspiracy, they combine forces with the mutant in Evil Agenda (coupon code LE48D) to thwart another plot, and they all save the world in No Amber Waves of Grain (coupon code PZ86X).  These aren’t comic book characters like X-Men—they’re real people who work to halt an apocalyptic future.  Use the links and go directly to Smashwords to enter the coupon codes and get hours of summer reading for only $3.  (Amazon addicts, did you know Smashwords also sells .mobi files for your Kindle? They handle all popular ebook formats.) Pass the word about this sale to your relatives and friends.

In libris libertas….

Google allows piracy. I’m hammering this home. Go to that famous search engine and search for “book piracy through Google.” You’ll get an eye-opener, so much so that you won’t even need your daily infusion of caffeine. I can’t say they encourage it, of course. It’s just that they don’t do anything about it. They want to digitize every book that’s been written. I don’t know how that relates to them allowing piracy, but I’m suspicious. Like my detectives Chen and Castilblanco, I don’t believe in coincidences. See my post last Friday for an example of how I was personally affected. Pox on their house.

Microsoft buys LinkedIn. I’ve been ignoring LinkedIn for a while. Now I have more reason to do that. Microssoft will pay $26.2 billion for this white elephant, chicken feed for Bill Gates et al. Now LinkedIn will continue screwing people like Microsoft is doing with Win 10. If you have auto-updates for your desktop or laptop computer, you’ve probably been annoyed by those notices to upgrade. If not, Microsoft might have already taken over your computer and downloaded Win 10, and you couldn’t stop them.

I worked my butt off killing all vestiges of “Tile World” (Dave Pogue’s term—I love his books) on Win 8.1. Turns out a lot of people were unhappy with Win 8.1, basically Siamese twins of two different OS’s. Win 10 is touted to be a major improvement. I suppose I’ll upgrade—when I choose to do so, not Microsoft—but I’m leery. I’m afraid I’ll spend two more weeks of frustration again, getting things to work as I like them to. I don’t want Edge (the “new” internet explorer that doesn’t allow file extensions) nor Bing (as much as I dislike Google—see above—search engine Bing is a piece of crap). If MS Word and the el cheapo MS mail package don’t work, though, I might be buying a Mac in the near future. Or not—I hate Apple too. Gee, maybe I should go back to Unix (i.e. Linux)?

A Konrath twist on the book lottery. Remember IAC? The IAC (Indie Authors Coop) banned me because they felt my saying that having a successful book is like winning the lottery disparaged their members’ hard work. I never disparage writers’ hard work! Nowadays writing is a slog because there are so many good books and good writers competing for diminishing numbers of readers. Hugh Howey (Wool) and Andy Weir (The Martian) won the lottery—plain and simple—and they might not have worked as hard as other authors! (I found a lot of things to fix—both content and copy editing.) But who wouldn’t celebrate their good fortune? It gives us all hope of winning the lottery so we can keep writing and publishing more books.

Recently Joe Konrath offered a little twist on this lottery concept, and I quote: “Landing a huge publishing contract is like winning the lottery.” There are ways to hedge that, of course—you can be one of Stephen King’s relatives; or know Big Five stallions or mares through your parents, leading to lavish (and questionable?) endorsements; or have some other not-so-obvious leverage—but the Big Five, soul source of those huge contracts, typically only bet on the sure horse. Newbies, in particular, aren’t likely to win this particular lottery. So Joe champions indie.

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Many writers have faced it. Indie writers are always fighting it because the likes of Stephen King, James Patterson, Lee Child, Douglas Preston, and many others equate indie books to the old vanity press paradigm, notwithstanding successes by Andy Weir (The Martian), Hugh Howey (Wool), and E. L. James (Fifty Shades of Grey). The old stallions from the Big Five stables I just named all write genre fiction, so that snootiness isn’t motivated by an erudite attitude of a critic’s-determined literary giant.

Of course, the latter is also a source of snootiness. “Literary giant” means a person who writes books that are considered literary fiction, as if genre fiction is somehow not up to the quality of these “masterpieces of literature.” Here’s an SAT type of question: modern classical music is to popular music as literary fiction is to X. What’s X? Answer: Genre fiction. Modern classical music is boring crap erudites, mostly academics, write for other erudites. Same for literary fiction.

Genre fiction carries on the age-old tradition of exciting and entertaining storytelling. Literary fiction supposedly tells a story, but it’s often not entertaining—just boring and ponderous. A lot of classics can be described by those two adjectives. Modern literary fiction can often be described by the same two, mostly because nowadays it’s written to impress erudites and achieve academic promotion and not to entertain. Even those old classics were written to entertain—they just became boring and ponderous because modern genre fiction has evolved so much.

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Most sci-fi readers and writers are familiar with the Fermi paradox, summarized by the question in the title, and the associated Drake equation that tried to resolve it. For those who are not, let me review that history first before going on to discuss a different take on the Drake equation that I found interesting.

The Fermi paradox first appears in my sci-fi books in the second book of the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” In Sing a Samba Galactica, Earth colonists on New Haven, an E-type planet in the 82 Eridani system, have evidence for some local ETs and try to figure out how to communicate with them. Here’s the excerpt:

***

They had an informal meeting in the bachelors’ dining area.  Takahashi watched as Malenkov, ever the showman, pinged his beer mug with a laser pointer and then stood on top of a chair.

“At Los Alamos, in 1950,” he began, in his best orator’s voice, “the great Italian physicist Enrico Fermi asked Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York, as well as other physicists working on the atomic bomb project, this provocative question:  If life is so common in the universe, where are they?”

Malenkov waited for some chuckles to subside, gulped some beer, and continued.

“Fermi noted there are plenty of stars older than our sun.  If life were so plentiful, it would have begun on planets around these stars billions of years before it began on Earth.  In that case, shouldn’t Earth have been visited or colonized by a race much older than our own?  Even with slow means of space travel like what we used to come to New Haven, a civilization with a will to homestead could settle a large fraction of the galaxy in a million years or so.”

Malenkov looked out at his audience.  Takahashi, sitting in the cafeteria’s front row, smiled at him.  So which one of us is Holmes and which one Watson?

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[I’ve decided to put these on Mondays for the rest of the summer because kids are off and even grownup moms and dads are looking to get out of the house and heat.]

Now You See Me #2. Jon Chu, Dir. Belies the adage because this sequel is much better! Still confusing (it’s about magicians, after all), and I could have done without the lady mago (Lizzy Caplan) and Woody Harrelson’s evil twin bro, but Morgan Freeman plays a more important role and shines this time, which is always good for a film. I didn’t see enough of Sanaa Lathan as the FBI agent (Mark Ruffalo’s boss); she did a far better job than Ms. Caplan. I hope to see more of her. That Harry Potter kid is OK, but it’s hard to think of him as a villain. Where’s Voldemort when you need him? Definitely preposterous, mind-bending fun, though.

Finding Dory. Andrew Stanton and Angus MacLane, Dirs. Confusing title because is looking for her parents. This annoying and forgetful fish is upstaged by the septopus (octopus who lost a leg). Nemo has a smaller role. Judging by the laugh track (kids in the audience), this is more successful than #1 too. But you have to wonder: sharks were the bad guys in #1; here a lady shark helps Dory. Maybe only guy sharks are bad? There’s some unscientific takes—a whale’s echolocation used out of water to track a truck, for example—but nothing more than you’ll find in your average Star Trek movie. The animation is fantastic and better than #1 also. But I still like Zootopia better.

***

The “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” is on sale.  Some authors bundle a series or part of a series.  Here’s an alternative: from now until July 1, all three books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are on sale AT SMASHWORDS, $0.99 for each ebook, reduced from $2.99.  The clones make their appearance in Full Medical (coupon code VJ44L) as part of a complex government conspiracy, they combine forces with the mutant in Evil Agenda (coupon code LE48D) to thwart another plot, and they all save the world in No Amber Waves of Grain (coupon code PZ86X).  These aren’t comic book characters like X-Men—they’re real people who work to halt an apocalyptic future.  Use the links and go directly to Smashwords to enter the coupon codes and get hours of summer reading for only $3.  (Amazon addicts, did you know Smashwords also sells .mobi files for your Kindle? They handle all popular ebook formats.) Pass the word about this sale to your relatives and friends.

In libris libertas….

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.—Aldous Huxley

***

“Clones and Mutants Trilogy” is on sale.  Some authors bundle a series or part of a series.  Here’s an alternative: from now until July 1, all three books in the “Clones and Mutants Trilogy” are on sale AT SMASHWORDS, $0.99 for each ebook, reduced from $2.99.  The clones make their appearance in Full Medical (coupon code VJ44L) as part of a complex government conspiracy, they combine forces with the mutant in Evil Agenda (coupon code LE48D) to thwart another plot, and they all save the world in No Amber Waves of Grain (coupon code PZ86X).  These aren’t comic book characters like X-Men—they’re real people who work to halt an apocalyptic future.  Use the links and go directly to Smashwords to enter the coupon codes and get hours of summer reading for only $3.  (Amazon addicts, did you know Smashwords also sells .mobi files for your Kindle? They handle all popular ebook formats.) Pass the word about this sale to your relatives and friends.

In libris libertas…

One of the biggest mistakes I made as a writer is not to choose a nom de plume. I don’t know if Steven M. Moore is as common as Joe or John Smith, but it’s common enough that I recognize now the error of my ways. Here’s my original reasoning: I had nothing to hide! I knew my writing and name would be public, but I wasn’t writing porn, erotica, or steamy romances…as a guy (that Jack Nicholson character did in As Good as It Gets, but that’s Hollywood—not clear whether he used a pen name, though). My blog posts wouldn’t be advocating anything illegal or sketchy either (legality depends on the historical context, as Voltaire knew). So why not use my real name?

I even had a list of possibilities, long ago discarded, some quite clever and others too cute. I even thought about using a woman’s name because I fully intended to put smart, strong female characters into my stories. I’ve known a few and had no hesitations about portraying such characters, but I thought a woman’s name might avoid snide comments about how a male author shouldn’t pretend he can get into a woman’s head. I love and understand women probably better than most men and think the world would be a better place in general if they were in control (there are a few exceptions that couldn’t qualify—see yesterday’s post). I’m gender neutral—my choice of protagonist for a novel just depends on the story I’m writing.

Stephanie d’Amour might have made a good nom de plume if I were a writer of erotica and/or steamy romances. Esteban Mora might have worked for a writer of international and interstellar mysteries, thrillers, and sci-fi (a dear friend in Colombia called me that, so why not?). They were on the list. French- German- and Spanish-sounding names and oh-so-very-English-sounding names were also on the list. My first criterion was uniqueness; my second was a name that was easy to pronounce and spell (the first two pen names I mentioned were disqualified under both these criterions.) I also considered variations on the names of famous scientists (one author friend made such a choice).

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There’s an insurance commercial where the company’s iconic spokeswoman takes on multiple roles at a family picnic. I don’t even remember the company that was advertising—that’s usually lost on me (sorry, Madison Ave wonks)—but I do remember noticing one actor took on multiple roles. Writing dialogue is a lot like that. An author with multiple characters shouldn’t speak in a unique voice that makes them sound the same. Each character must have her or his individual voice.

Newbie authors often don’t write good dialogue for that reason. An author has to adopt different personalities. Actors are trained to do that. Many creative writing programs neglect dialogue and emphasize narrative. That’s fine for literary fiction, I suppose (maybe that’s why it’s so boring for me), but not for genre fiction. Of course, the reason for a writing program’s emphasis on narrative is also due to the fact that it’s easier to teach. Indeed, unless an author is a wee bit schizoid and can assume different roles like the actor, writing good dialogue is almost impossible to teach.

But I think authors can learn to do it. More on that later. First, let me show narrative isn’t as easy as writing programs think it is. What do Moby Dick and 20,000 Leagues under the Sea have in common? Boring narrative! Melville goes into boring detail about how to turn whale blubber into lamp oil, among other boring things; Verne dwells on all the wonderful undersea flora and fauna his protagonist is seeing. I’m being repetitive because I’ve mentioned these two “classics” before, but these 19^th century books often used to teach high school students to think they hate reading (Giants in the Earth, Silas Marner, and Jane Austen tomes are other examples) are good illustrations of HOW NOT TO WRITE interesting narrative.

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This question is generated by the goings-on in New York now. The leader of the corrections workers union was just indicted. Several cops in managerial positions in the NYPD were indicted. Two state legislature VIPs, one from the Assembly and the other from the Senate, are going to jail for taking bribes. Bill de Blasio’s mayoral campaign has been accused of illegally channeling donations to candidates for that state legislature to try to ensure a Democratic legislature that is favorable to the mayor and his policies. I won’t name names, except for the mayor, who figures prominently in the discussion, because these cases haven’t been decided, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of them were partisan motivated.

The question also has a NJ motivation, Bridgegate. How much did Chris Christie, ardent Trump supporter, even of his latest racist attack on a judge born in Indiana, really know about the payback plot against a NJ mayor not supporting Christie in an re-election bid? Two Christie confidants are already indicted. Someone on the list of suspects not indicted has filed a motion not to release that list. Again, partisan motivation might be suspected, first for coming up with Bridgegate scheme, and second for going after Christie.

Tip O’Neill stated that all politics is local. I would suggest there’s a corollary: politicians train for corruption locally. Corruption can include unethical but not illegal behavior—state legislators carving out congressional districts that guarantee one party’s dominance falls into that category. Corruption can include perverse or sketchy actions by a politician in the public spotlight. Wiener and Spitzer fall into this category—again, not illegal actions, but something that makes the general public wonder about a politician’s other ethical choices. And corruption can also include numerous illegal activities, often for personal gain. The media often can’t distinguish these types of corruption and declares them all scandalous; the majority of the electorate just follows what the media says, at least that particular brand of media they read, watch, or listen to.

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