The always-entertaining IO9.com has a tidbit about Philip Roth declaring that the novel will be dead within 25 years. Which kind of sucks since, you know, I write novels. On the one hand, I toss this into the Decline of Western Civilization Since Year One category, because people have been bitching and moaning about how everything is going to hell since we invented culture, and every subsequent generation produces a few twits who like to prance about declaring that this time it really is going to the dogs. It’s either The Kids Don’t Read or Today’s Music Sounds Like Robots Fucking or We Had Something Called An Attention Span Back in My Day or similar; yet somehow society continues and some of the things decried as crap in the past becomes recognized as art with worth by future historians. And life goes on.

Generally I ignore this stuff. For one, these folks are universally wrong. Sure, it’s possible that someday the novel will be abandoned. Maybe it’s even likely. But people who think they have seen the future clearly are nuts: You cannot see the future, and history will confound you. Television was supposed to kill the movies, video games were supposed to make kids into violent sociopaths, and no one was supposed to get excited about a book ever again. Somehow, books still sell in the millions, and some folks think teh kids today are actually better readers because of all this newfangled technology. It’s always easier to declare the world doomed, and it gets you more press.

On the other hand, there is always a possibility that a watershed moment is coming, and I know for sure that I will be the last person in the universe aware of it. The point is not that I know Mr. Roth is wrong – I don’t. He may well be right, though I am suspicious that he conveniently chooses a time in history when he will most likely not be here any more to defend his statement. No, my point is that I don’t worry about such things because there is nothing I can do about them. If the novel is going to be replaced by, say, Twitter Plays or holographic machinima in my lifetime and I am left as The Sad Lonely Man with Books No One Wants to Read, well, I doubt any bloviating I do in the meantime will make any difference. And trying to be out ahead on these things is just silly, because you end up chasing trends that burn out. People are buying and reading novels right now, so I’ll keep writing them. Trying to figure out what they might be reading or experiencing instead 25 years from now so I can get on that train before the rush is a waste of time.

Of course, I’m always wrong about everything. Ask people about my sad Fantasy Baseball draft picks, or my geopolitical predictions. So if the novel disappears and I am left on the street corner wearing a WILL WRESTLE YOU FOR FOOD sign, please don’t laugh and point. Just wrestle me, like a Good Samaritan.

Friends, let me make one thing absolutely clear: If I die and a series of books remains incomplete, do not – I repeat, do not – hire someone else to finish it. Let my works o’ genius remain mysterious and unfinished.

I haven’t read any of the recent examples of this phenomena. I spent plenty of hours reading The Wheel of Time series (ohmyfrickingod so much time slogging through those middle books) and I was saddened when Robert Jordan passed away, but I probably won’t bother reading the final volumes in that series. I have nothing against the guy who’s completing them, and I’ll probably seek out a synopsis somewhere so I can at least find out where the story was headed (since they are being written, as I understand it, from Jordan’s notes, so the plot should be more or less what he intended). But I don’t want to read the books.

The same thing goes for the ‘new’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy book. It may be brilliant. It may perfectly mimic Douglas Adams’ peculiar brand of brilliance. I probably won’t read it, though.

The reason for this reluctance is simple: The reason I read these books to begin with was because of the wit, talent, and heart of their authors. Hiring someone to finish the series’ after that author has passed away transforms it into simply a brick of product in the machine’s supply lines. If we imagine that anyone can write these books, then we’re that much closer to just writing a frickin’ computer program to create our books, and have done with it. Not only would that put me out of a job (and daddy needs his medicine), but it would be pretty goddamn depressing.

As a reader, sure, I want some closure to these stories. On the other hand, I like to imagine these stories are not just created via a combination of Magic 8 Ball, twenty-sided dice, and a thesaurus, that there’s some soul in there. That part of the appeal is the special sauce of the author themselves. If you decide that the story can be completed by someone else just as easily, then screw it: Every book series can be outlined by committee and then freelanced out. And that would suck.

Then again, my special sauce tends to be drunken, belligerent, and whiny, so maybe we’d be better off hiring someone to finish up the Cates series. AVAST! Over my dead body. Oh, wait. . .maybe I should stop drinking so much, let the liver swelling subside a little.

Saw Zombieland this weekend with venerable Inner Swine Security Chief Ken West, who asked me not to publicly associate with him but screw it, if you have dinner with me you’re in the blog, just the way it is. It’s a fun movie, and definitely seems to represent the complete deconstruction of zombie movies, so I’m not sure we’ll be seeing too many zombie-oriented horror movies for a while. I really enjoyed it, but I was really, really impressed with the opening titles.

I’m something of an opening titles whore; sometimes I like them a lot more than the movie itself, and I’m always annoyed when films just put words on a blank screen. I mean, here’s a few minutes of dead space for your movie – do something with them! Every now and then a movie does something really interesting with those opening moments, and I am filled with joy. For Zombieland, it was a stylish sequence, using Metallica’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, some nifty slow motion, fun superimposed titles that were treated as physical parts of the world (a’la Watchmen, in a way), and some increasingly ridiculous zombie apocalypse scenarios (for hilarious example, I would give you the Father-Son Three-Legged race, with 3 sets of zombie fathers and sons chasing one screaming uninfected father-son team).

This opening sequence got me so jazzed the rest of the movie both benefitted from my exhilarated state of mind, and suffered – on the one hand the goodwill the credits bought made me love the movie more, on the other the rest of the movie couldn’t live up to the fun of the first two minutes no matter what. It got me thinking about my love of credits sequences, and of course I did a bit of Googling and naturally millions of folks have thought about this way before me – there’s even this nifty blog, Art of the Title Sequence.

Some of my faves that stick with me are:
Se7en, of course, now a classic example that I still get shivers from.

Dawn of the Dead 2004, the first movie that made me think of title sequences as separate from the movie, because I think the opening and closing titles of this film are so far superior ot the mediocre remake they enclose it’s ridiculous. The opening/closing credits are genius. They could have made a middle sequence of the same length and sensibility that told the mall story and this would have been the perfect fifteen-minute horror movie, of which there are far too few.

Watchmen, of course. I hadn’t read the comic before seeing the movie, and these credits are so wonderfully explanatory and stylish, and the choice of Dylan’s music so inspired, I can still watch these and be incredibly entertained.

There are probably others I’m just not thinking of. These sequences are like prologues and epilogues to a book, if you think about it – an opportunity to flesh out the backstory and add some nonlinear elements to the story. They can set a tone for the film before the film even starts, and when handled well can improve the entire experience. Unlike standard credit sequences, which might inform but definitely do not entertain.

Ah, the stench of missed opportunities. I was on my own last night, with no Duchess in sight, and thus was not forced to watch Grey’s Anatomy. So I decided to take in Flash Forward on ABC, on the premise that a) it at least wasn’t yet another medical/lawyer/cop drama, and b) it’s at least somewhat SF-ish.

Now, I’ve never read the source material, so I can’t comment on that. From what I understand, the TV series is quite different from it, which is probably a good thing. Because the premiere episode of Flash Forward was kinda disappointing. As in, dull to the extreme.

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Friends, it probably isn’t a well known fact that my gorgeous wife, The Duchess, who secretly (or not so secretly) runs this household forces me to watch the MTV Video Music Awards show every year. The reasons for this are tied up in obscure traditions established during our courtship, when apparently I was willing to do a lot of things in order to impress her that I now regret, once of which was volunteering to watch the VMAs with her one night. One thing all young men have to realize is that when you’re dating, the most ridiculous things can become bronzed as Special Moments that will come back to ruin you later in life. The VMAs is one such moment. So was promising her that someday I’d be a rich author and she’d be a Woman of Leisure; take my advice and never promise anything like that to your partner. You will regret it.

So, I sat through most of the VMAs this week. Which means I got to stare blankly at the screen in perplexity every time Russell Brand prosecuted some of his ‘comedy’, I got to be mildly impressed with Janet Jackson huffing and puffing her way through her old Scream dance routine (and almost pull it off perfectly, which in itself was pretty impressive), and yes, I got to see Kanye West finally turn the tide of jackass opinion against himself. Although, you know, Taylor Swift should maybe man up a little. It’s not like she was stabbed.

Anyway, I also got to see the extended New Moon trailer. I’ve never read the Twilight books and I did not see the first film. I’ve got nothing against them. I’m told they are not great books, but then I guess your mileage will vary on books, especially books that come with a built-in backlash like Twilight. So I only took two things from the New Moon trailer:

• Kristen Stewart must have studied every episode of ER in order to approximate the George Clooney Circa 1999 Acting Style of looking at your shoes and frowning when you speak every line of dialog, and
• Elder Vampires?!? Sweet baby Jebus, Anne Rice has struck again.

Why is it that every Vampire story has to have ancient, vaguely rotten-looking vampires in ridiculous outfits, lounging about in ridiculously luxurious and/or old settings like Eurotrash on smack? Now, this was a pretty fun idea 40 years ago. And it can, of course, be a fun idea again and again if handled well. But it does seem like it’s the go-to trope whenever you’ve got vampires. Somewhere, there must be a 1000-year-old debauched rich dude with long fingernails who THE MOST POWERFUL VAMPIRE IN THE WOOORRRLLDDD.

Again, not having read the book or seen the movies, I am basing this on the trailer alone. Which is how I roll: Ignorant and fearless. So maybe I’ve got New Moon all wrong and it averts or subverts this trope. It’s still a pretty common feature in vampire tales, as far as I can tell. And again: It’s not a bad idea in and of itself, though I can’t help but wonder if I’m the only one who rolls his eyes whenever someone in a vaguely 17th-century suit shows up looking dapper and menacing, dropping gradeschool historical references – gasp! – as if he was there witnessing them at the time!!

Obviously, vampires are immortal – or at least, traditionally they are; we are dealing with the imagination, after all. We can has mortal vampires if we wants ’em. But okay, so say your vamps are immortal – fine. One can imagine they might play the stock markets well, steal priceless art and fence it, profit from wars and such. If I knew I’d still be here 400 years from now, I could just tuck my savings account into a slow but steady investment and wait for it to top a trillion or so, patient as a spider. So okay, having rich, ancient vampires who have great power and influence isn’t a crazy idea at all. But must they always be collected into some sort of Vampire Council? Jebus, vamps suck blood and murder humans who used to be their fellow houseapes. A VC just seems a bit. . .civilized.

Then again, most of the body horror dread has been sucked out of Vampires, to the point where they are now acceptable crushes for pre-teen girls. So maybe they form clubs and scrapbook together – why not a council?

Well, I downloaded OpenShot for Linux the other day, and it’s a pretty nifty MovieMaker-type app. Naturally, with a new video application I had to actually make another video. So, I hereby present the new ridiculousness: Everything Sucks, a rumination on how no matter how wonderful your book is, someone somewhere hates it:

Enjoy! Although, based on what I just said, some of you probably won’t. You bastards.

Let’s discuss my Origin Story.

Okay, I start off as a mild-mannered kid. I grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey, which is a small city outside of Manhattan, pretty urban. I spend my days running around in the street playing games and dodging traffic (yes, this was before folks considered kids too delicate to leave unattended on busy streets). Then one year there was an odd confluence: Every summer the Fire Department would give out special wrenches to various community leaders which would allow them to open up the hydrants and create a fountain of cool water for kids to play in, and I was running around out there in my bathing suit when this absolutely HUGE kid smacked into me, knocking me down, and I hit my head on the curb, causing a concussion.

Around the same time, I saw on television the animated version of “The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe” by C.S. Lewis and really, really enjoyed it. At school a little while later we were herded into the library for a forced-reading excursion, and I saw the Narnia books, and had this sudden epiphany that there were these things called books which were often the basis for the things on TV and in the movies. So I read all 7 books over and over again, taking them out of the library repeatedly, and then moved on to other books in the same general category, and not long after that I wrote my first story: A 90 page fantasy book based on (and largely plagiarized from) Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

Now, wasn’t that stirring? Fascinating? Don’t you know my one, singular motivation behind everything I do?

Damn it: Origin stories suck.

Yet the Origin Story continues to plague us. Every damn superhero movie made has to start off with the Origin Story – often, the Origin Story is the plot of a film. Hours spent on explaining exactly how the hero became the hero, usually with a simple, easy-to-understand motivation behind their subsequent superheroish behavior: Batman has his murdered parents, Spider Man has his murdered uncle, Iron Man has his life spent populating the world with weapons of mass destruction. Unlike actual people, whose motivations for doing things are usually layered and complex – and sometimes contradictory, these single events usually serve for the character’s motivations forever.

Origin Stories suck.

This is a generalization, of course. I would actually admit that they are sometimes handled well: Iron Man, for example, managed to make the titular hero’s OS fun and interesting, mainly through Robert Downey Jr’s charm and by treating it as part of the whole story, instead of an extended explanatory flashback. Overall, though, Origin Stories suck the Big Suck for a variety of reasons, and I’d beg Hollywood to stop forcing us to sit through them if only anyone ever listened to me.

First of all, Origin Stories are dull. In today’s day and age we’re all more or less familiar with comic book heroes and villains. I mean, do I really need to see Batman’s parents murdered again? Batman’s character has been around for 70 years. I think we’ve all heard about it by now. You can argue, of course, that movies are each their own individual piece of art and you shouldn’t just assume that audiences know all about it – except that movies do this all the time, throwing in pop culture jokes, nods to previous versions or obvious tropes. Why not just assume we’re familiar with the OS and move on? Or at the very least wave your hand at the OS and just give us the one-line summary.

Origin Stories are dull because they require a lot of set up and exploration to be effective at all. There will be characters you never see again, the main character as a child, and a whole storyline that has little to do with the main plot, thus crowding the rest of the film simply to dramatize something most of us have already seen or read or at the very least heard about. This is because the producers want their movies to be as General Audience as possible. If there’s some mope out there who hasn’t heard Batman’s Origin Story, then dammit the Producers do not want to make that person confused when they watch the movie.

Second of all, Origin Stories have been done. We’re entering in the Golden Age of the Reboot, where filmmakers are starting franchises fresh before they’re even in the grave. The first Fantastic Four movie came out in 2005 (I’m purposefully ignoring Roger Corman’s version) and its sequel in 2007, but they’re already contemplating a reboot. Sweet jebus, it’s been less than five years, and already they want to subject me to Yet Another Depiction of the Fantastic Four’s Origin.

Even if it’s the first film version, there’s the actual source material. Now, I know that the majority of people who might see a movie have never read the source material, and they might need to know exactly how the superhero came to be, except. . .

Third of all, Origin Stories are unnecessary. Seriously – you’re asking me to suspend my disbelief to accept, say, a fey rich kid growing up to become an asskicking machine in a bat costume, single-handedly ridding a large city of crime through expensive, advanced technology and his ripped abs, but assume I can only accomplish this by explaining in excruciating detail how he came to this decision and how he trained himself? I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to accept Batman as Batshit Crazy Asskicker and if his backstory stays a bit murky, I’m fine with that. I actually prefer it that way, because. . .

Finally, Origin Stories detract from the glorious mystery. There’s far too much explaining in most stories. Details are like the Monster: When they’re in the shadows, making menacing noises and leaving only a bloody trail behind their passing, they can seem huge, terrifying, epic. Then the light gets turned on and it’s a guy in a rubber suit, and you are never, ever, impressed by it again. Sometimes details should be left vague, because a mysterious hero or villain is always better than one whose psychiatrist’s notes are available for inspection.

Of course, your mileage may vary, and I’ve already admitted there are exceptions to this rule. But I’d rather sacrifice the first half of Iron Man if it meant I don’t have to watch Bruce Banner evolving into The Hulk again. Ever.

I live a life of intrigue and adventure, but occasionally I like to pretend to be boring and just sit around my house drinking booze and watching TV – you know, so I don’t lose touch with the common man. You can’t write noir-SF novels if you’re Indiana Jones all the time. Sometimes you gotta stay home, have a few belts, and watch a couple of episodes of Project Runway, because that’s what the common folk watch. And also too my wife, The Duchess, totally makes me.

Anyway, while working on my fourth bourbon (Project Runway is a four-drink show; America’s Got Talent, which my wife also insists I watch, is a whole-bottle show, and I frequently have to be carried to bed after an episode) I saw a car commercial which involved people debating whether to buy a new car, and then being visited by themselves from the future and told that buying the car would be the best decision of their lives. Then the salesman says something along the lines of, “You should buy it! But not that one from the future. It’s a time/space continuum thing.”

Now, on the one hand this commercial and I are totally Fail together because I can’t recall what frickin’ car it’s supposed to be selling. My brother once told me that they’ve done studies and found that interesting, creative commercials didn’t work because people remembered the interesting, but not the product, whereas bad, annoying commercials worked because people totally remembered the product. I’m not sure where I was going with that, since this commercial was annoying and I couldn’t remember the product, but let that drift. The other hand I was working towards is the fact that this pretty much proves Science Fiction is no longer really a genre. For god’s sake, we have time travel and temporal paradoxes in car commercials.

Consider also: Inglorious Basterds, the new Tarantino movie. It is ultimately an alternate history story, as I’m sure it’s no spoiler to mention that Hitler gets machine-gunned in the face at the end of the movie. Granted, no effort is made to explore the possible timeline such an action would have resulted in, but there you have it: alternate history right there on the big screen. Science Fiction is the new Western: It will be everywhere for a while as mainstream audiences who sneered at Star Trek and Doctor Who lap up this exotic new flavor (watered down by mainstreaminess) and then it will be forgotten for a bit until its eventual discovery by post-post modernists.

But, believe it or not, I digress.

It’s fascinating how  many authors despise genre and don’t like to be painted with its coarse brush; IO9 just did a little piece about this phenomenon and I think the title says it all: “It Causes Me Pain To Classify My Post-Apocalyptic YA Romance As Science Fiction” Uh, really? Of course, maybe this is cold hard business sense, because YA Romance is a better-selling category, but there is, I think, a real wish by a lot of authors to be considered “magical realism” or some other ‘literary’ category, anything but SF or Fantasy or Horror.  And while some of it may have to do with the nuts and bolts of marketing and promotion and advances, all of which are a bit healthier on the ‘literary’ side of the yard, some of it certainly has to do with the lingering stench of geekdom and cat-piss that envelopes the words science fiction and fantasy for many.

Even as SF/F leeches into the mainstream (eventually becoming the mainstream as it devours healthy cells and replaces them) it remains, for the moment, the comic-relief. Mainstream movies now have characters that are geeks, who quote Star Wars and speak Klingon – heck, there’s a situation comedy on CBS that centers on a group of adorable genius nerds – but the geekiness is there for amusement, and the characters are always sort of embarrassed and self-deprecating about their nerddom. The point being, even as geekery eats the universe it remains sort of disreputable, and thus the genre anxiety of writers who wish to be taken “seriously” instead of lumped into the category of SF/F or Horror or what have you.

The term “magical realism” was invented for these folks. It basically means: Fantastic fiction that ought to be taken seriously. Unlike that fantastic fiction over there.

Oh well. I’m hungover this morning, and thus cranky. I have to get back to my fourth cup of coffee and listening to one of my cats howl every three seconds for no good reason that I can determine, as he runs away from me every time I go to demand an explanation. This is a game we play sometimes. I hate this game.