Almost always it seems.  Part of the problem is that Hollywood destroys book plots when they attempt to transfer them to the silver screen.  I, Robot and the Bourne series of films are examples.  The first turned Asimov’s cerebral study of human-robot relations, carried to its pinnacle in Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, into a futuristic action film and vehicle for Will Smith that had nothing to do with the original stories.  Same for the Bourne trilogy, where all the memory lapses were resolved in the first book, leaving the only thing common between movies 2-3 and books 2-3 the titles.  I could only enjoy the films by trying to dispel all memory of the books.

Want some non-sci-fi examples?  Consider all the Bond films.  The first films tried to follow the Ian Fleming originals; later ones, even in the Sean Connery era, not so much.  One film that seemed to follow the book well (I’d read the book ages ago and didn’t reread it before the film) was Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; that was probably what killed it at the box office.  It’s not uncommon for a movie based on a book to do badly.

Reason 1: The visual and psychological.  The first is clear.  Movies are visual media, books are written.  You might finish a book and say, “That would make a good X movie,” where X doesn’t stand for X-rating but sci-fi, thriller, romance, mystery, adventure, etc, but if the book doesn’t translate word experience to visual experience well, it can be disastrous.  The psychological aspect is more subtle.  While a great actor like Patrick Stewart or Jack Nicholson can express thoughts and emotions with tone of voice, facial expressions, and other mannerisms, and a great score can add to that, it’s hard to get into the head of a movie character and easy to do in a book.

Reason 2: Action.  Nowadays this has become something where movies excel and books not so much.  Even if you’re a minimalist author like I am, describing characters and what they do in action scenes just enough so the reader can participate in the creative process by filling in details in his mind (many writers don’t realize how powerful this is—the imaginative power of the human mind is virtually infinite), you won’t grab many people’s attention nowadays because action movies, video games, and TV shows have made many people passive.  Some people only react to the visual.  Some people never learn to read creatively.  But turning that around, the action on the written page, especially for minimalist writing, becomes so distorted and amplified in the movie version that all fidelity to the book is lost.  Ludlum never had a scene with Bourne jumping to cover a gap between two buildings.  In fact, Ludlum’s Bourne was more the cerebral spy than action hero.

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[Note from Steve: The first two sections of this story are based on real events.  The rest is, of course, speculative fiction: sometimes brain drain is more than the Third World’s loss.  Enjoy.]

The Universal Language

Copyright 2015, Steven M. Moore

                Max Gorman accepted refreshments from his graduate student with a smile.  She asked if he needed anything else, he said no, and so she went to mingle with the other PhD hopefuls.

“She hasn’t picked a thesis topic yet,” he said to the chairperson after a bite of stale cookie and sip of weak coffee.  “She’s interested in everything.”

“You’re interested in everything,” said the chairperson.  “What do you think of the candidate so far?”

Max glanced at the man who was going to end his interview day by presenting at the last weekly seminar of the spring semester.

“Nervous hands, and the red pants are a distraction.  He seems affable enough, but not as strong as some of the others.  But my opinion doesn’t matter anymore, so don’t make conversation by asking for it.”

The chairperson smiled.  Their professor emeritus was the most intelligent person he’d  ever known.  He was also old school, a mathematician who had contributed to many subfields of mathematics.

“Want me to wheel you in?  I need to chat with our candidate a bit before the seminar starts.  You can join us.”

Max took the cup of coffee out of the holder in the arm of his wheelchair and handed it and the remains of the cookie to the tall man who had been his best student.

“Get rid of this swill and hockey puck and I’m your man.”

***

                The chairperson noted that Max was dozing during the seminar.  The candidate was presenting the definition of a new class of Banach space operators and drawing all sorts of interesting conclusions about their properties.  When he finished forty minutes later, he asked for questions.  Max raised his head and lifted his hand.

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Item. The Mockingbird sequel.  It turns out that the “discovery” of the Harper Lee’s old MS (written before Mockingbird but still a sequel) occurred in 2011 and not just recently.  Why Harper Collins didn’t own up to that originally can be analyzed by the pundits, but do we care?  I find it all a wee bit disappointing because it detracts from Lee’s famous and still unique novel, but who knows what big publishers will do to sell a book?

Item. Goodreads and LinkedIn mean good people.  Now that I’ve phased out my social media activity on Facebook (yes, I still have an author’s page there) and phased in more activity on Goodreads, I have found many new online friends.  Between Goodreads and LinkedIn, I have a rich experience with discussions about reading, writing, and the publishing business.  I value all my old FB friends too, but there’s too much “look at my cute pics,” grandstanding, and soapbox preaching going on there for my taste, not to mention that FB programmers are often tinkering, something which led to my not being able to share blog posts anymore.  Pox on Zuckerberg and his staff, not my FB friends.

Item. Goodreads ads v. Facebook ads.  If anyone’s interested, I now also have an A/B comparison between ads on these two social media giants.  I advertised Kindle Countdown Deals for Angels Need Not Apply and Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, the first on FB and the second on GR.  There were many more clicks on FB but no sales.  There were fewer clicks on GR—only one!—and fewer views (10,808), but still no sales.  Of course, this is a very small sampling—your results may vary, as they say—but the books are similar, so I consider my stats a learning experience.

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I don’t know about you, but my love for animals, tame or wild, stops with worms in my apple.  Hence the title; it describes two cases where the tech giant Apple was stopped cold.  Both these are wins for indie artists and negative publicity for this monster of the corporate world.

The little company that started in the garage was never one of my favorites.  In the beginning, Apple computers were just toys.  We taught high school teachers from the Colombian provinces about computing using early Apples with mixed results (the course was based on our book, La Revolucion Informatica en la Educacion—not available in the U.S.)—they learned, though, in spite of the machines’ limitations.  If you wanted to do any real computing work back then, you used a DEC, Cray, or CDC machine.  Even the early MS DOS PCs were more powerful.

The old toasters, still toys, had some success because Apple “borrowed” a GUI from Xerox; the little boxes practically created point-and-click and user friendly, albeit limited, computing experience compared to the command line-based interfaces of the other computers I mentioned.  One paid dearly for that ease of use, though, and not until Apple put that GUI on top of UNIX did you get anything close to a powerful computer (the success of the various versions of LINUX with their own GUIs might have had something to do with that change).

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Terminator Genisys.  Alan Taylor, dir.  This series is as tired as Schwarzenegger looks.  We have had a rash of series “extensions,” from Bourne to Ice Age and minions.  It’s all a wee bit tiring and shows that very little originality is left in Hollywood.  (With all the good books out there, is it just laziness or a shared myopia with traditional publishers, only betting on the “sure horses” even when they’re ready for the glue factory.)  That Damon-less Bourne flop should have been a lesson to the Hollywood moguls.  I guess Mr. S is in a midlife crisis and needs something to do beyond counting his millions—or his philandering costs a lot more than it should.  At least he’s not running for president—the GOP doesn’t need another clown (and he can’t run anyway—too bad California didn’t have a citizenship req to run for governor).

OK, I did have fun.  My tactic of viewing the original Terminator beforehand was smart.  There’s a lot more reference to that original in this new flick than in Jurassic World (see below).  Like that Star Trek movie, we’re now in a parallel universe—rather, timeline.  The changing timelines can be a bit confusing, though, but I’d have to watch it again to detect inconsistencies.  I suspect they’re there, but I was distracted by all the pyrotechnics.  There’s a hint at The Many Worlds Theory of Quantum Mechanics (not mentioned per se).  If you want a good time travel plot, read Hogan’s The Proteus Operation.  There’s a lot of action in that one too.

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For all readers who love conspiracies, here’s a real-life one for you: Nearly fourteen years after 9/11, all the report about that horrific day has been released except for twenty-eight pages classified as Top Secret.  It turns out that these missing pages focus on the involvement of the Saudi government’s role in the attack.  If what’s written there isn’t damaging to the Saudis, why are these pages Top Secret?  Looks like the media might be dancing to the same conspiracy band too—the media roosters certainly aren’t squawking much about it.

In this blog I’ve often referred to the duplicitous Saudis.  Most 9/11 terrorists were Saudis.  We can’t determine the Saudi government’s guilt by association, but I don’t base my claim of duplicity on the nationality of the 9/11 terrorists.  There are other facts that justify my claim.  Maybe the nationality of the terrorists is all just a coincidence—wink, wink—just like it’s a coincidence that bin Laden came from a rich Saudi family.

First duplicity fact: the Saudi royal family has always walked a tightrope by pretending to be friends with the U.S. while supporting oppressive, Sixth Century Islamic rules and sponsoring religious schools where jihad is taught.  Those schools give rise to terrorists in general and the 9/11 terrorists in particular.  Poor saps are educated AKA brainwashed by “religious leaders” who completely distort the teachings of the Koran at best and read into it violence and murder at worst.  They don’t teach; they indoctrinate.  And the Saudi government encourages this by supporting them.

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What a way to celebrate Independence Day!  Congrats to the U.S. women’s team in winning the World Cup over Japan, 5-2, with three goals by Carli Lloyd in the first sixteen minutes.  I expected it to be a lot closer.  Congrats to the Japanese team too for hanging in there the whole game after that initial onslaught.  Everyone showed class, greatness, and awesome sportsmanship.  On to Rio!

I wish for all a safe and enjoyable July 4th weekend!  Please drive safely and drink in moderation as you celebrate the country’s Independence Day.

Item. More than Human: The Mensa Contagion.  We’re about to hit the publish button for my new sci-fi novel.  It offers a twist on an alien invasion story as well as exploring our final frontier.  Here’s the blurb: “People of Earth!  You’ve just won a complete makeover of your society that brings peace and prosperity.  What will you do next?”  “Why, go to Mars, of course!”  This epic sci-fi tale relates how an invading ET virus affects Earth’s social structures and subsequent space exploration.  I had fun writing it.  I hope you have fun reading it.

Item. Countdown to countdown.  Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, book #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” will be a Kindle Countdown Deal from July 1 through July 7.  It will be on sale for $0.99 during that period, reduced from $2.99.  Chen is accused of murder, but proving her innocent leads to a lot more than just a crime of passion.  This is a mystery first, thriller second, in contrast to other C & C ebooks.  These books can stand alone and be read in any order, so this is an opportunity to meet these detectives.  They play on their home turf too, the Big Apple.

Item. Free writing contests.  I usually don’t support or enter contests because there are fees.  The ones mentioned here are free.  The first is a general short story contest sponsored by the Creative Writing Institute–there are some rules so read them.  The second is a sci-fi writing contest sponsored by a German site, Inkitt.  Their site also supports other genres. Try them out and let me know.

Item. Kindle Unlimited.  Many of my ebooks are exclusive to Amazon via KDP Select.  That means readers participating in the Kindle Unlimited program can download these ebooks for free.  On the book’s Amazon page, you will see the current price and the price for Kindle Unlimited, $0!  Take advantage of this and don’t feel bad about it. I’ll still count you as a valued reader.  Readers rule, and I value every one of you.

Item. My love affair with anthropology and archaeology.  Like many baby boomers, the public library was my refuge for reading when I was a kid.  I finished all the sci-fi books there by the time I entered high school.  I also read most of the books on anthropology and archaeology, focusing on primitive cultures and the prehistory of human beings.  I thought I wanted to go into those fields, but decided the human animal was just too complicated, so I opted for math and science to prep for a day-job, knowing that writing was a hard way to put dinner on the table.  My father influenced that decision, choosing to feed his family over many years over painting still-lifes and landscapes.

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I read more than I write.  Maybe some authors don’t do that.  There’s some justification.  They want to ensure they develop their own voice, for example.  They don’t want to be confused with other writers.  They want to avoid the critique that they write like so-and-so.  There can be many reasons, some good, some bad, and some a wee bit silly.  But I read a lot and have always noted that some writers become predictable.  I’ve noticed that so much that I’m constantly questioning whether I’m committing the same sin.

Let’s take an example from my early youth.  Anyone remember the Hardy Boys series?  They were to boys what Nancy Drew was to girls.  By the time I was ten, I stopped reading that series.  Even at that age, I’d discovered predictability.  Maybe that was a good thing.  I started reading sci-fi, first from my brother’s collection and then from the public library, which was probably a good thing, because I later had a steady day-job as a scientist, knowing that writing probably wouldn’t put bread on the table, unless I was lucky enough to be a smashing success.  Back to the point: Joe and Frank were nice guys, old friends by the time I’d read a few books, but their adventures became too predictable.

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[In keeping with my new policy of posting reviews of some of the ebooks I casually read here instead of on Amazon, these are reviews of two interesting mystery novels from across the pond.  How I love them, from the local settings of England, Ireland, and Scotland, to the unusual characters and great mystery tradition of Agatha Christie, P. D. James, Ian Rankin, and many others.  You’ll find great writers over there; their success explains why it’s so difficult for Yankees like me to get a toehold in that market!]

The Verge Practice.  Barry Maitland, author.  (2003, 2013, Arcade Publishing, NY)  This one is set in London with side trips to Barcelona.  Parts seem an echo of recent news items, but it was obviously written years ago.  The theme is artistic ego and inner turmoil, but old Agatha would be shocked by the depth of the treatment here.

Famous architect Charles Verge has disappeared.  They find his second wife murdered, so the coppers automatically suspect he did it and set out to find him.  One task force from the Yard has no success.  Another one is formed to put the case to rest.

This is fantastic mystery writing, so much so that I didn’t miss the grand tour of London.  It’s so good I’ll excuse what follows: The protagonist, Kathy Kolla, is a bit too needy and bumbling, and there remain formatting and editing errors that can be distracting.  Some of the latter are comical—“…arrived promptly in separate ears,” for example.

This mystery is filled with more than the usual share of twists and misdirects.  You’ll not only be wondering who did it but why.  Great fun.

Taboo.  Casey Hill, author.  (2011, Simon and Shuster?, GB)  I loved my course with Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday back in the day, but his TA was too malleable—all I had to do was mention Freud in a paper and my grade would go up.  What’s this have to do with this book?  Read it and find out.

I downloaded it because it’s about a CSI in Dublin starting out on the job by matching wits with a serial killer.  She’s not a newbie though.  That was my second problem: Why did the author need to jerk a forensics expert out of the FBI and transplant her in Ireland?  I’m sure the Garda has fine CSIs, but the author makes them seem prehistoric.

I liked remembering places in Dublin, and the book was greatly entertaining, but I didn’t like the author putting all the clues in verbose flashbacks and skimping on misdirects, making the plot too predictable.  Spoiler alert and my first problem: The preface was the only clue I needed!

The protagonist’s old instructor is also the most interesting character (again, why is the FBI needed?).  I also never found out what mysterious disease ailed the cop friend and surfing buddy.  Sometimes it’s better to put the first novel in the desk drawer and write the second?  You can always come back to that first one later (it was the chosen route for me and Harper Lee).  This one just misses.

[Kindle Countdown Deal: Teeter-Totter between Lust and Murder, #3 in the “Detectives Chen and Castilblanco Series,” will go on sale July 1 through July 7, reduced from $2.99 to $0.99 for this period.  Does Chen commit murder? The long answer is surprising.]

In elibris libertas….