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I don’t go to “cons,” but I am going to the Worldcon this year, the annual convention of the World Science Fiction Society. I don’t even know why, exactly. One of the features of a con is the opportunity to meet celebrities, but I can’t say that I’m particularly excited about that. My interest in […]
I was in a corner bookstore, back when such places still existed, looking for something new to read. I had recently read The Far Kingdoms, which I enjoyed, and I was searching for something similar. I stumbled on a stack of paperbacks by Robert Jordan. The cover art was possibly half the reason I was […]
The thing that the Daniel Craig series of James Bond movies did, apart from casting an actor who is not naturally suave, was to make James Bond a tragic figure. It was long overdue, really. Prior to the 2006 “Casino Royale“, 007 movies have defied the standard storytelling ingredients of character flaws and character growth […]
I love “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” for many reasons, but it occurs to me to consider the story structure. There’s a lot going on, actually. The premise, of course, is that Scott must fight Ramona’s seven evil exes (in a live action portrayal of video game combat). The inciting incident doesn’t reveal that immediately, […]
I read The Time Traveler’s Wife some years ago. Not really my thing, but I enjoyed it well enough. [No matter how it may be categorized in your book store, The Time Traveler’s Wife is not science-fiction. Yes, there is time travel, but there’s no science involved. Yes, toward the end, there is some business […]
I have generally enjoyed all of the James Bond films I have watched, and I have really loved many of them. However, they break many of the rules of story telling, and this makes me wonder why they work so well. I’ve read a couple of the Ian Fleming stories. They are very different from […]
In the old days, the dimensions of a television series was dictated by the scheduling of broadcast television. 21 or 42 minutes per episode, padded with commercials to make 30 or 60 minute broadcast slots. American television contained 13 or 26 weekly episodes per season. Generally speaking, a single episode was a designed as a […]
If I ever put out a successful piece of fiction that includes a strong female character or highlights the oppression of women, I sure hope that the world doesn’t place me on a pedestal and then tear me down when they discover I haven’t lived a perfect life.
I’ve been experimenting with grow lights. I have been growing peppers for several years, and each year is an improvement over the way I had done things previously. This year, I decided to start the pepper species that are not capsicum annuum very early, since they seem to need a longer growing season. Then, almost […]
[I have evidently written about this topic before.] So says William Goldman about what makes a film successful. The same is evidently true about film marketing. Yet, I wonder how hard people have tried, because when I see a film, it’s usually quite obvious to me whether it is good or not. And as for […]
