Women's books are for women

In an information age, you should filter new information by asking these two questions:

1. So what?
2. Is it true?

"So what?" usually should come first, because it filters out more crap than a simple fact-check does. Instead of 2), some will ask "Is it problematic?" Avoid these people like they have COVID-19.

We all know women dominate the fiction book market. Up to 80% of fiction readers are women. So what? Well, knowing the audience is the first step to writing what the audience wants. Knowing more about those women, and the men who comprise the other 20%, is important to the writer and the publisher.

I know this is obvious. Bear with me.

What if I told you these women readers were fairly uniform in terms of age, race, education, economic status, and social attitudes? It would matter yet more. But is it true?

That's the question Lucy Scholes keeps avoiding in this review for the Times Literary Supplement. Her subject is a book by Helen Taylor, a writer who wanted to know more about her audience, and so did some research. Scholes did not like her findings.

The image of Taylor’s composite woman reader really couldn’t be more stereotypical if one tried. We could look to the New York Times book critic Parul Sehgal, for example, whose reading habits can’t be mapped onto Lee’s binaries.

An aggregate of 428 women readers aren't like the New York Times book critic? Gee, what are the odds?

This wasn’t the only occasion I found myself wondering about the undeclared age range of Taylor’s interviewees; the thinking of many of them seems to be rigidly bound up in rather outdated gender norms.

Don't these sheep women know how much happier they could be if they were liberated?

Taylor veers from a Stepford stereotype to this: “Once a month I wake up with booze on my breath, guacamole in my hair and an ill-defined sense of shame”, one of her interviewees writes. “If I were 21, this might indicate a cracking night out. As I’m 43, it means I got drunk again discussing Jodi Picoult on a near-stranger’s couch. Because like 99.9 per cent of middle-class, middle-aged women, I belong to a book club.” On one hand, this is rather funny, but on the other, the cliché is pretty damning, and maybe untrue; Taylor seems all too willing to accept the often not particularly complimentary feminization of all things bookish.

"Maybe untrue"? What verbal sorcery is this? That's an awful big criticism of a nonfiction book to hang on a "maybe." Maybe Scholes merely wants Taylor's observations to be false because they conflict with her social and political interests. Maybe the Times Literary Supplement's lawyers put that phrase in there in case Taylor sued for libel.

Scholes wraps it up:

We like to think we live in a progressive world in which traditional gender stereotypes are slowly loosening their hold, but if the picture painted in Why Women Read Fiction is anything to go by, there is still a long way to go. What we see here is a literary culture that has been feminized to the point of strangulation, which is both demeaning to many women readers and could explain, at least in part, why women readers, when it comes to fiction, remain in the majority. Is it any wonder that more men don’t feel that there is a place for them in it?

If I had a nickel for every time I heard "there's still a long way to go," I'd be rich. At last Scholes reveals her true intent for this book review: to agitate for a new woman reader, a woman uprooted from family, home, and God so she can throw herself into the god of this age, Self.

What I'm curious about is how making fiction books more "progressive" attracts more male readers. As a male reader myself, I like my male characters masculine and my female characters feminine. I've found most people in the real world are hardwired that way. That's who I write for as well.

You can judge for yourself whether I've succeeded by reading the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

For a free digital copy of my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here.

And as always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply as soon as I can.

Dead movie marketing

The marketing primer for the upcoming Dune adaptation was a wee bit triggering. Via Vanity Fair:

For Villeneuve, this 55-year-old story about a planet being mined to death was not merely a space adventure, but a prophecy. “No matter what you believe, Earth is changing, and we will have to adapt,” he says. “That’s why I think that Dune, this book, was written in the 20th century. It was a distant portrait of the reality of the oil and the capitalism and the exploitation—the overexploitation—of Earth. Today, things are just worse. It’s a coming-of-age story, but also a call for action for the youth.”

In an intriguing change to the source material, Villeneuve has also updated Dr. Liet Kynes, the leading ecologist on Arrakis and an independent power broker amid the various warring factions. Although always depicted as a white man, the character is now played by Sharon Duncan-Brewster (Rogue One), a black woman. “What Denis had stated to me was there was a lack of female characters in his cast, and he had always been very feminist, pro-women, and wanted to write the role for a woman,” Duncan-Brewster says. “This human being manages to basically keep the peace amongst many people. Women are very good at that, so why can’t Kynes be a woman? Why shouldn’t Kynes be a woman?”

I'm conflicted. On the one hand, I don't think they could have picked anyone better to helm a Dune adaptation than Denis Villeneuve, who directed Arrival and Blade Runner 2049. On the other hand, changing a minor character's age, gender, and race for no good reason, and relating the plot to youth activism are mischievious liberties to take with the source material.

Then again, maybe Warner Brothers knows something I don't. The great YouTube channel Midnight's Edge posted a video about this. They posit WB is marketing this movie for favorable press coverage, and that the red flags in the Vanity Fair piece are tactical virtue signals to the entertainment media.

The logic behind this strategy is sound, if it works. Fans of the book(s) might help this movie lose WB $50-100 million. Normies could help make it a modest success. To put meat in the seats, you need the media on your side to create positive impressions among the public. That includes pandering to SJW-run industry rags like Vanity Fair. So the argument goes.

The last time I heard this theory floated about a movie's woke marketing was last spring, with Terminator: Dark Fate. The marketing for that movie was cartoonish, and made me wonder whether I was living in a simulation. By all accounts the new Terminator sucked, and it lost a ton of money to boot. The latter result you can blame on the marketing more than on the movie itself.

Is the probability WB settled on a disproven marketing strategy higher or lower than the probability Villeneuve sprayed SJW graffiti all over his movie? I'd say higher. Villeneuve's fealty to the aesthetics and worldbuilding of the original Blade Runner has earned him the benefit of the doubt.

It's Dune and it's Villeneuve, so I'll probably see it no matter what turn the marketing takes. Usually I couldn't care less about the box office, but this is a two-movie proposition, contingent on the first movie turning a profit.

Even if it's a good and faithful adaptation, I don't see a sequel happening. Normies are attracted to fun, upbeat movies. The production stills from Dune look dark and gloomy, which may match the tone of the book, but limit audience appeal. The aesthetics are an improvement on the ugly 1984 adaptation, but that's not enough to put meat in the seats.

Are you tired of Hollywood mistreating your favorite IPs? Why not enjoy something they'll never adapt! You can start with my space adventure book, Seeds of Calamity. I've made the first 4 chapters available for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

How does B&N survive?

The last time I bought a book at Barnes & Noble was 2012. I paid $16.99 and immediately regretted it. I could have gotten the same book on Amazon for $10.99, and qualified for free shipping if I threw in some other items. I didn't read the book until 3 years later, so it's not like I was chomping at the bit to start it right away. Lesson learned.

Barnes & Noble stores are too big and too spread out. They're impersonal and pretentious. There are too many titles in too many categories, yet not enough titles in the category that I'm shopping for. And they're expensive.

If you like browsing for books, it's a fine place to go and see what's available. But if you're looking for something specific, something that isn't/wasn't a bestseller, forget it. Sure, each Barnes & Noble store has a ton of inventory, but it's only a fraction of what's out there. The competition, Amazon, has a vastly superior inventory thanks to third-party sellers. Price- and selection-wise, you can't beat Amazon.

It seems to me there are two retail market models for physical books. One is to sell oodles of the Big 5's darlings. This is what Costco and Wal-Mart do. You can capture half of the 690 million physical book sales in America per year with fewer than a thousand titles. You don't need a big store for this to work. The other retail market model is to sell everything, which is what Amazon and its third-party sellers do. Barnes & Noble is flailing about in no man's land.

I was stunned to learn Barnes & Noble is responsible for a fifth of online book sales. I thought it would be lower. What's holding them back is ebooks. Nothing against the Nook, but I just couldn't get behind it. Barnes & Noble and the Nook is an unnatural marriage. Reading differences aside, the physical and digital marketplaces are completely different consumer experiences. Since Amazon's marketplace is digital, I'm more comfortable buying an ebook from them.

They chose the platform name Nook because it calls to mind a cozy corner. Plus it rhymes with book! Walk into a Barnes & Noble, though, and there's nothing cozy about it. The Kindle is better branded and arrived 2 years ahead of the Nook. Despite getting a late start, Barnes & Noble could have marketed themselves as the go-to ebook platform for self-published authors, but they missed the boat. When I offer my ebooks for sale on the Barnes & Noble website, it takes them months to approve it. Amazon takes a day or two.

It's a post-coronavirus world now. For the time being, Barnes & Noble is exclusively an online operation, where they lag behind Amazon in physical book sales and ebook sales. And they have a massive overhead, with 600 retail locations sitting empty. Hello Sears and Toys 'R' Us.

The future looked grim for Barnes & Noble even before the coronavirus. Their revenue has fallen over 10% in the last 4 years, and they were recently acquired by a hedge fund. The new CEO James Daunt is famous for opening profitable book stores in Britain. But what about turning around flagging stores that struggle to fill bloated retail space?

A dramatic restructuring of the market is overdue. Readers want books fast and cheap, and they put a premium on personal interaction. The conditions are ripe for an indie renaissance. If you want to join me on this journey, sign up for my mailing list. As a thank you for signing up, you'll get a free digital copy of my space colonization book, Tendrils to the Moon . I have also made available the first 4 chapters of my space adventure book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

Sources:

• Barnes & Noble’s New Plan Is to Act Like an Indie Bookseller
• Barnes & Noble Could Succumb to the Retail Apocalypse
• B&N is Having Money Problems

Hooked by the first chapter: Dune

Every sci-fi writer dreams of reaching the heights Frank Herbert reached with Dune. It comes as close to universally praised as any book in any genre. When I read it as a young teenager, a little younger than the hero Paul, it gave me more than diversion and joy. I wanted to be Paul: skilled in combat, truth discerning, and hyper-conscious of my world. The worldbuilding may be Dune's greatest achievement, but I think Herbert's brilliance was to take a character trait, self-awareness, and bring it to the level of plot and setting.

Somehow I talked my wife into reading Dune. Inspired by her, I reread the first chapter to see what Herbert does to hook the reader. These things stood out to me:

• Head-hopping. "They" say don't head-hop, and 99% of the time they're right. Dune belongs in the 1%. We hear the inner thoughts of all three characters in a scene. Here's why it works. Paul, Lady Jessica, and the Reverend Mother all share the same super power: observation. They're all carefully watching each other. It's said Paul can detect whether someone believes what he is saying. The gom jabbar test shows how he has been trained to put mind before body. The effect of Herbert showing the thoughts of the other characters is to elevate the reader to Paul's level. Without being explicitly told so, we assume naturally that Paul knows what we know.
  
  
• Loads of exposition. For the bulk of the first scene, Paul is lying in bed thinking. The stream of consciousness flows between Paul's mother, his family's new fief, the planet Arrakis, and his capacity for self-control. In the gom jabbar scene, we get more exposition about the Bene Gesserit breeding program, and hints that Paul may be the Kwisatz Haderach, setting up the hero's journey. We also get some rather obscure exposition about the Butlerian Jihad. My point in noting all this is that the exposition dump works because it's intent isn't to help the reader understand everything. It hints at the breadth of the world these characters occupy. It's also expertly woven in with the tense mood of the prose.
  
  
• Focused details. As explained above, observation is basically Paul's super power. What does he observe, though? What does Herbert draw our attention to? The first chapter takes place in an ancient castle surrounded on three sides by a river of Caladan. Many writers would be tempted to awe the reader with a description of the castle and the landscape. Herbert doesn't do that. The castle is ancient, having served the Atreides family for 26 generations, but it is not tall with so many towers. The castle is simply a castle. Moat or wall, drawbridge or portcullis, it doesn't matter. So what does matter? For a book this long, I was surprised at Herbert's economy of descriptive words. The setting is something the characters move through. Descriptions come when detail changes, like at the break of dawn or when someone enters a room. The most important details are the characters' moods and inner thoughts. Details of the setting are secondary.
  
  
• Paul is only 15. This is more noticeable now that I'm an adult. Let's be real. Pubescent man-children do not make good heroes. However, making Paul so young facilitates several story elements. It pairs his maturation and coming of age with the hero's journey. It gives him a meek body that a keen mind compensates for. His ability and prescience in contrast to his tender age reinforces the book's heavy tone. And finally, his youth allows Lady Jessica, at 36, to be stronger than an otherwise middle-aged woman. Also, it's more believable that she could conceive Paul's sister at 36 than at 46.
  
  
• Ominousness. You knew this already. The first chapter--nay, all of Dune--drips with foreboding because of the gom jabbar test. Dangers await on Arrakis, and dangers await Paul as heir to a duke and possibly as the Kwisatz Haderach. The excerpt from Princess Irulan's hagiography of Paul hints at the great man he will become. How will he become great? That's the hook. We know a little more than Paul does about his future, but we want to know more. "It's the journey, not the destination" is a trite cliché. It's better to say "The destination known, the journey becomes interesting."
  
  

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

If you've read Dune and you're looking for something new to read, give my second book, Seeds of Calamity, a try. It's set in the future and features an alien parasite that gives its host clairvoyance! If that piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

In situ resource utilization

Somehow this executive order from 2 weeks ago flew under my radar. The emphasis is mine.

Section 1. Policy. Space Policy Directive-1 of December 11, 2017 (Reinvigorating America’s Human Space Exploration Program), provides that commercial partners will participate in an “innovative and sustainable program” headed by the United States to “lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.” Successful long-term exploration and scientific discovery of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies will require partnership with commercial entities to recover and use resources, including water and certain minerals, in outer space.

Uncertainty regarding the right to recover and use space resources, including the extension of the right to commercial recovery and use of lunar resources, however, has discouraged some commercial entities from participating in this enterprise. Questions as to whether the 1979 Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies (the “Moon Agreement”) establishes the legal framework for nation states concerning the recovery and use of space resources have deepened this uncertainty, particularly because the United States has neither signed nor ratified the Moon Agreement. In fact, only 18 countries have ratified the Moon Agreement, including just 17 of the 95 Member States of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. Moreover, differences between the Moon Agreement and the 1967 Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies — which the United States and 108 other countries have joined — also contribute to uncertainty regarding the right to recover and use space resources.

Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law.

The timing of this announcement in the midst of an epidemic could be a coincidence. Or it could be that there's no more effective quarantine than thousands of miles of space.

Regardless, it's good to know the civil authorities are at least thinking about these things. That's about as much you can hope for. I have no confidence in NASA's manned spaceflight proposals. They're the ones who abandoned the Moon, abandoned Skylab, and still haven't developed an American rocket to send American astronauts into space on since they retired the Space Shuttle.

What NASA is very good at is talking about lofty goals just over the horizon, but the horizon never gets any closer. They're a play-it-safe bureaucracy, and manned spacelight out of low Earth orbit entails big risk. I'm no Elon Musk fan, but his kind of crazy is what it takes to push people past the envelope.

Let's look back to a time when this wasn't the case. When NASA had some balls.

From July 1969 to December 1972, the Apollo program sent seven missions to land on the Moon. Six succeeded. The Apollo spacecraft weighed 100,000 pounds. Getting it to the Moon took a single-use Saturn V rocket, the most powerful machine ever built. It burned 6 million pounds of fuel and oxidizer, and cost $1.23 billion per launch in 2019 dollars. That comes out to 60 pounds of fuel and oxidizer and $12,300 per pound of payload.

The less you take into space, the more affordable space travel is. That's why in situ resource utilization (ISRU) is key to the future of space travel. ISRU represents the biggest opportunity to save costs and establish viable communities beyond Earth's atmosphere. What you can make, grow, or mine at your destination is one less thing that has to be sent up from Earth.

As I was researching for my first book, Tendrils to the Moon, I learned some fascinating things. I had long assumed the lunar regolith, or dirt, is useless. It's not. You can use it as a growth medium for crops. You can use it to mix concrete. You can cook it to separate oxygen from the silicates that make up the dirt.

The technology for the latter process exists today. When I found out about it, I knew I had to include it in the book. I went so far as to base the description of the technology on the Lunar Volatile Extractor's (LVE) actual schematic.

It's those details that give hard sci-fi tangibility and grit. People have told me they liked Tendrils for that reason.

You're welcome to see for yourself. I've made the first three chapters of Tendrils to the Moon available for free. If it piques your interest, you can read the rest for only a buck, or by signing up for my mailing list. I appreciate the support!

Is Inception overrated?

Short answer: Yes.

When you see an accomplished storyteller come down so far from his creative peak, you're forced to come to terms with where the cracks first started to show. Despite the merits of that piece, it's tainted by the artist's faults which would become more obvious in subsequent pieces, like a pretty woman who loses her mystique the more you get to know her.

For Christopher Nolan, that slide began with Inception.

Ten years ago you may have left the theater blown away by the thrilling visuals, the intertwining dream sequences, the booming Hans Zimmer score, and the subjectivism of reality (that Total Recall and The Matrix executed better). You may have thought it was one of the best movies you'd ever seen. I thought so.

We know now the emperor has no clothes. Nolan's first movie after Inception was The Dark Knight Rises, bloated, poorly paced, and scatterbrained. Then came Interstellar, whose plot in service of a theme of love completely falls apart in the second half. The final straw was Dunkirk, barely thrilling, deliberately confusing, and painful to the ears.

(Temper your expectations for Tenet accordingly.)

Nolan is a talented filmmaker, but his lack of restraint is his undoing. Inception tries to do too much. It's a bildungsroman set in an action movie set in a heist movie set in a sci-fi movie. Even if you execute all the individual elements perfectly, the balancing act is impossible. You risk giving the audience whiplash with all the abrupt narrative shifts. It's how a 2.5-hour movie can feel rushed. When the credits roll, I'm not sure what to feel. I'm just overwhelmed.

My biggest beef with Inception is the incessant expositional dialogue. Nolan said the decision to hit the heist movie tropes helped justify the large amount of exposition. The problem is there's more exposition needed to tell this story. It's not just that Cobb is trying to get home to see his kids. It's that he can't get home because his wife killed herself and framed him for her murder because he incepted the idea in her mind that her world isn't real. This exposition is needlessly drawn out over three scenes, two of which are momentum killers.

Another problem with Inception's exposition relates to the rules of shared dreaming: They keep being rewritten. One rule very clear from the start is that you wake up when you die in a dream. Not so in the Robert Fischer job because of the sedative they use. Useful information that Cobb should have shared with the team, yes? When Fischer dies, Cobb assumes the mission failed, but someone has the bright idea of recovering Fischer from limbo. Wait, you can just go into limbo and revive a dead guy one dream level up? This on-the-fly rule bending feels more like a convenience to the script than a natural outgrowth of the setting.

The fights in Inception are poorly shot and poorly choreographed. Let's take a scene in the beginning of the movie. Arthur is crouched next to a sleeping Saito while Nash is trying to wake Cobb who is in a chair on the edge of a bathtub. Arthur tells Nash to dunk Cobb in the tub. At the same time Saito wakes up and pulls a gun on Arthur. (Why is there a gun under Saito's pillow? Never mind.) Cobb falls in the water and wakes up. Saito walks past Arthur, takes Nash hostage, and points the gun at Arthur. Cobb knocks Saito down from behind. Nash elbows Saito in the face and knocks him out. The sequence is unrealistic and makes Arthur look feckless. It's unclear why this needed to happen and why it had to happen this way. A lot of the fight scenes are like this, the spinning hallway fight being a notable exception.

There are countless little oversights in Inception that bug me. Something as simple as how Cobb can't see his kids' faces resounds thematically for his tortured soul, but think about it. The kids' nanny can't email him a picture? Projections of Cobb's subconscious repeatedly interfere with the job, but no one else's projections interfere. Why not? Cobb, not the stewardess, slips the sedative in Fischer's drink on the plane. Why? I could go on.

All that being said, I don't dislike Inception. I like it for what it does well, namely its score in service of the tempo of different dream levels, stunning visual design, and how it shows the invasion of someone's mind and the planting of an idea.

The latter is of particular interest to me as a writer. Cobb's simple, well-meaning deception drove his wife to kill herself, an unrivaled setup for a tragic hero that should be front and center in the narrative, not diminished to a revelation after the 2-hour mark. Just as poignant is Fischer's reconciliation with the memory of his father. The finale in the vault just feels right as the culmination of the plot and character progression. My eyes still water when Fischer sees the pinwheel in the safe.

So, in all a good movie, but far from Nolan's best, and farther still from the best. Here's my ranking of his movies. (I haven't seen Following.)

1. Memento
2. The Dark Knight
3. The Prestige
4. Batman Begins
5. Inception
6. The Dark Knight Rises
7. Insomnia
8. Interstellar
9. Dunkirk

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

If you're looking for something to read, you can read the first 4 chapters of my second book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Over the hump

I'm 14,000 words into drafting The Water Siege, the first book of my as yet unnamed epic fantasy trilogy. It will really be one long book that I intend to release in three ~50,000-word installments. The Water Siege will be the hook, and I'll give it away for free while charging for the second and third installments. I've seen other authors try selling books this way, with varying level of success.

It's taken me awhile to get this far. I took up this new project in January, took a long break in February (during which I vacationed in Chile), and resumed writing with gusto in March. This past weekend put me over the hump and gave me the confidence I need.

Having written two books in 2 years, I have a feel for the process of writing a book. For me there's usually a point of crisis as I'm bringing the first act to a close. The idea that motivated me to write is depleted, and I'm forced to reckon with a lack of narrative momentum. Without momentum to propel the rising action, exposition and climax are all there is, which is to say not enough.

Getting over this hump is the difference between merely having an idea for a book and writing a book.

Here's how I know when I've gotten over the hump: When I've fully realized the setting and characters, and there's enough promising stuff to keep the reader's attention while I execute the plot.

There's a lot of risk in writing this part of the book. As I throw in various elements, seeing what sticks and what doesn't, it can get long and messy. Editing these "early middle" chapters will be important when I finish drafting.

Here's a rough sample from the start of chapter 6, which I drafted this morning:

After serving dinner, Gwen went onto the roof of inn, took the linens off the clothesline, and made up the beds in the attic and second story apartments. Her father liked to spread the guests out even if it meant having to clean the inn top to bottom every day, and tonight was no exception. He had even made Gwen move into Xavier’s old room so he could convert her room into additional guest space.

Xavier hadn’t liked it when she came in and touched his things, but that never stopped her. She often would find him stooped over his child-sized drafting table he used even as a young man, looking out the window at the buildings for inspiration. Like her, he was keen on their uncle’s trade, more so on the design side than on stonecutting. Still, his interest had given Gwen a plausible cover story for why there was an old set of stonemason tools in his room.

Now that he was gone and the room was hers, she tried to keep everything as he’d left it when he was pressed into the king’s service. The drafting table still stood before the window curtain. The chest of drawers still held his clothes, neatly folded. And his books, which she’d read through twice, still lined the shelf above the bed.

All her things she kept in a trunk by the door. She lifted a heavy satchel out of the trunk and touched the tools to ensure each one was in its proper place.

Quiet as a mouse she returned to the attic. Thomas’s bed was the farthest from door. She ducked under the gabled roof and spread the satchel under the top sheet next to the headboard. Satisfied no one would see it but him, she returned downstairs.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

I have made available the first 4 chapters of my second book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Die Hard and heroism

I like Die Hard a lot. Mostly because, like The Abyss, it leverages its setting to create unique and thrilling set pieces. Instead of 2,000 feet under the ocean surface, we're 30 stories up in a skyscraper. The setting is heavily involved in shaping the plot, and I find that aspect of action movies to be very satisfying. (As do most people, I suspect. The "Die Hard in X" action sub-genre is a testament to this.)

Die Hard has more things going for it, though, like the buildup to the action. This sets the movie apart in my opinion. It takes its time setting up John McClane as a stuffy jerk. People don't remember this, but the first 20 minutes show you a man who's easy to dislike. He has a wandering eye. He curses under his breath when he finds out his wife is using her maiden name. He makes an ugly comment about Japan not celebrating Christmas. He starts an argument with his wife soon after they meet. Bruce Willis fills McClane's shoes so comfortably that you buy in to who he is and why he's at Nakatomi Plaza. Then the action starts.

The action in Die Hard has gravitas. There's a scene early on that shows McClane stopping an elevator so he can get on its roof. It's a short and simple scene, easy to execute, but does so much to ground the action in the setting and show McClane's cunning. After seeing that, you readily suspend your disbelief when he stops his freefall by catching the edge of an air duct.

I wrote a year-and-a-half ago that McClane is not an archetype. I was wrong. He is many archetypes. He's the reluctant hero. He's the fish out of water. He's the scrappy underdog. He's the red-blooded American working class. His wife is the strong independent woman, then the damsel in distress. Hans Gruber is the suave criminal mastermind and the cold-blooded executioner. Whoever says you shouldn't use archetypes doesn't know how to use archetypes.

The two biggest roles after McClane, his wife, and Gruber belong to Al Powell and Dwayne Robinson. Good cop and bad cop, respectively. Or so I thought until this video by David V Stewart made me rethink it.

Powell is the true believer, the man who processes what his senses and instincts tell him and reaches the correct, although improbable, conclusion. Robinson is the skeptic, the one who's mind is made up and won't let something unexpected push him off what he's staked his career on knowing.

We love Powell and hate Robinson because we want to see McClane redeem himself as a heroic man, a protector of the innocent. There's a mini-metanarrative at work here. Powell represents our hope in great, self-sacrificing men, while Robinson represents our cynicism about selfish human nature. When McClane and Powell hug at the end, the validation of hope resounds.

Roger Ebert famously hated the Powell-Robinson dynamic. I admit it's a little lowbrow, but it's effective in raising the movie's stakes beyond the lives of the hostages at Nakatomi Plaza. Can modern man be virtuous and strong? Do American heroes live on in these times? Die Hard shouts yes.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

I have made available the first 4 chapters of my second book, Seeds of Calamity, for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. I appreciate the support!

Craft vs titillation

When I was 14 I thought cursing was cool. I thought movies with a lot of profanity and explicit content were cool for that very reason. Pulp Fiction was my favorite movie.

I grew out of this fad by the time I struck out on my own at 21. I suppose that makes me lucky. Rian Johnson is 46, and he still hasn't grown out of it.

Although it’s primarily a whodunnit murder mystery, Knives Out looks like it will have its fair share of amusing moments, including one shown off in the first trailer where Chris Evans’ Ransom Drysdale-Thrombey points out members of his family and tells them to “eat shit.” One person even gets a “definitely eat shit.”

As it turns out, this Knives Out scene could have been a lot more profane, as Rian Johnson, the writer and director, originally had Chris Evans’ character drop f-bombs instead. But he ultimately reversed course in order to avoid his movie getting stamped with an R rating.

Because eat "s**t" is appropriate for 13 year-olds, whereas "f**k you" isn't? Sound logic. But I don't blame Johnson for working with the MPAA's weird standards so he can pollute the minds of as many theater-goers as possible.

Still, isn't there an artful way to show a character's contempt? Take this monologue from Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov for instance:

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.

Or how about this scene from There Will Be Blood?

You don't have to be one of the greats like Dostoevsky or Daniel Day-Lewis to show a character's misanthropy. Going back to Knives Out, Chris Evans's playboy character could scowl in silence while suffering his relatives' inanities. Perhaps that wouldn't jive with what Johnson wanted. He wanted to show a family at each other's throats. I can see how that would be cathartic for people who have hard feelings towards their family members. But if your movie doesn't show the family reconciling, what are you saying about family? Nothing good.

I too limit the amount of profanity, sex, and violence in my writing to appeal to a broad audience, but also because I don't want to titillate readers and give them over to sinful thoughts. It's also a craft thing for me. If I can achieve a high level drama without resorting to cheap profanity, I feel I've proven something about my craft that I wouldn't have otherwise.

I rate my debut book, Tendrils to the Moon, PG-13 based on language and violence. My second book, Seeds of Calamity, I also rate PG-13, but only for violence. There were nine curse words in Tendrils, but only one in Seeds, and it's a mild one. The violence in Seeds, however, is more pervasive and more intense. The sexual content in Tendrils is mild. It's practically nonexistent in Seeds.

I doubt I'll ever remove violence completely from my writing. My stories feature characters in conflict, and conflict erupts into violence. That's not necessarily a problem. Violence can be done for just ends.

There is the matter of presentation, though. You don't want the reader to revel in crushed skulls and disemboweled torsos. How much blood and gore do you want to show? As much to convey the action, is what I've come up with so far.

As always, let me know what you think in the comments. I'll reply to you as soon as I can.

I have made available the first 4 chapters of Seeds of Calamity for free. If it piques your interest, get yourself a copy at Amazon. For a free digital copy of Tendrils to the Moon, sign up for the mailing list on the right side of the blog page. Or, if you're viewing this on the mobile site, click here. I appreciate the support!

The war on book borrowing

Well, that didn't last long.

Only a week after Macmillan called off their ebook license embargo, tradpub opened a new front in the war on book borrowing: the Internet Archive.

The Internet Archive, which hosts public domain books and loans licensed ebooks like a library, suspended borrowing limits during the coronavirus epidemic. This brought the ire of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, whose dues-paying members lose royalties but gain new readers from every book they don't sell.

They justify their actions better than I can:

On March 17, the American Library Association Executive Board took the extraordinary step to recommend that the nation’s libraries close in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. In doing so, for the first time in history, the entirety of the nation’s print collection housed in libraries is now unavailable, locked away indefinitely behind closed doors.

This is a tremendous and historic outage. According to IMLS FY17 Public Libraries survey (the last fiscal year for which data is publicly available), in FY17 there were more than 716 million physical books in US public libraries.  Using the same data, which shows a 2-3% decline in collection holdings per year, we can estimate that public libraries have approximately 650 million books on their shelves in 2020. Right now, today, there are 650 million books that tax-paying citizens have paid to access that are sitting on shelves in closed libraries, inaccessible to them. And that’s just in public libraries.

And so, to meet this unprecedented need at a scale never before seen, we suspended waitlists on our lending collection. As we anticipated, critics including the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers have released statements (here and here) condemning the National Emergency Library and the Internet Archive. Both statements contain falsehoods that are being spread widely online. To counter the misinformation, we are addressing the most egregious points here and have also updated our FAQs.

One of the statements suggests you’ve acquired your books illegally. Is that true?
No. The books in the National Emergency Library have been acquired through purchase or donation, just like a traditional library. The Internet Archive preserves and digitizes the books it owns and makes those scans available for users to borrow online, normally one at a time. That borrowing threshold has been suspended through June 30, 2020, or the end of the US national emergency.

Interestingly, you could flip the argument back on these writers. Libraries bought their overpriced hardcovers, which are sitting on shelves not being read due to bans on public gatherings. Libraries aren't asking for refunds, so why are they quibbling over ebook licenses?

I hope they keep this up because libraries represent a huge growth market for indie authors. By all means, Chuck Wendig et al., if you think libraries are violating licensing agreements by suspending borrowing limits for 3 months, take back your licenses and make your embargo universal and permanent.

From the @AuthorsGuild statement on the Internet Archive's most recent move. "Publishers, authors, bookstore owners, and readers have been coming together in magnificent ways these last few weeks to support this fragile industry, so much of which relies on razor-thin margins."

— Alexander Chee (@alexanderchee) March 27, 2020

Know who doesn't live on razor-thin margins? Independent authors and small presses. That's because ebook supply chain costs are basically zero, which puts traditional publishing with its leviathan infrastructure at a big disadvantage. You commonly see Big 5 books sell on Kindle for $10. The price point for indie authors is $5 and often less.

Both my books are available for a buck apiece. For hard sci-fi fans, Tendrils to the Moon tells the story of the first commercial expedition to colonize the Moon. Seeds of Calamity, my second book, is an action-adventure story set in space, featuring zero-gee acrobatics, evil corporations, and alien parasites.

As always, leave a comment below. I'll respond to you as soon as I can.