A very clever and energetic science-fiction magazine called Bewildering Stories will be publishing a flash fiction story of mine titled “A Rupture in Ragnarok,” an ironic take on the post-nuclear wasteland genre. I’ll link here when it’s available and discuss its genesis.

Also, I’ve seen the magazine art for my upcoming pulp piece “Dragon of the Veil” in Astonishing Adventures, and it looks really great. The issue should be out next month; three illustrated pieces will highlight my adventure tale of the 1930s.

Today, my friend Gary let me know that my interview with the Infidel Guy Show has been posted and is available on YouTube. Feel free to drop by and give it a listen.

Speaking of vampires, here’s my brother, actor David Michaels, in his true form:

First the good news. Last week two different magazines, and two highly prestigious contests, honored my writing. For starters, my story “Everywhere After All” won Honorable Mention in the L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest. This is the premiere science-fiction competition in the world, the Wimbledon of the genre. I am deeply honored.

A day later, two poems of mine were published in The Eclectic Muse. They never sent me an acceptance letter or email, but rather shipped several copies of the magazine to me with my poems already included. While unused to this breach of etiquette, I was nonetheless delighted by the surprise.

Another one of my pulp adventure stories was accepted in Astonishing Adventures, and a very talented artist is illustrating it for their next issue. Set in the early ‘30s in Shanghai, it combines several adventurous elements including Triad gangs, Near East assassins, treasure maps, a dangerous artifact, and an uncharted island of mystery in a tribute to the bygone serial pulps. It is titled “Dragon of the Veil.”

Two of my screenplays placed fourth in the Writer’s Digest annual competition. The first was a screenplay of my novel “Never Grow Old,” and the second was of my unpublished novel “Starspeaker.” They actually tied each other for fourth place.

One more piece of good news before the bad. I have become one of the top columnists with Examiner.com. It’s a job I love, giving me both the freedom and responsibility to analyze national politics and cultural issues that are defining our age. My most recent column is “5 Things to do with $10 Billion a Month,” and is both an admonishment and a challenge to our government.

Okay, on to the bad.

My girlfriend and I were in a car accident last week. Dark, rainy night, leaves on the street making bad conditions worse. My car traveling uphill, about to follow the bend in the road, when another vehicle flies around the corner at high speeds into my lane.

Our ancestors, having survived a scrape with a mammoth, must have seen those terrible tusks for several nights afterwards. I see golden headlights.

Yanking my wheel to the right, I avoided a head-on collision by about a half-second. The impact came midway along the driver’s side of my vehicle. The combined momentum sent my car careening across the road towards a telephone pole. I pulled the wheel farther, and we avoided the pole and came to a stop by a wooden fence. In the enveloping silence which followed, one plank of the fence popped out at plunked against the ground.

It happened so fast there was no time to feel anything. I found myself calling the police. Then I went to find the other driver, who had continued down the road across someone yard and into a parked vehicle.

No alcohol, no drugs. Just the reckless driving of the young.

“Remember tonight,” I told him after finally wrangling my anger. “We all could have been killed tonight. Mark it down on your calendar and remember it.”

No one was seriously hurt, and local residents were concerned and helpful. Cars are totaled, but the humans inside them are alive.

*

The above incident is about a near-death.

This final part is about a real death.

As a sentient entity, I resent the very idea of mortality. I eagerly look forward to the completion of the Blue Brain project, which has the very real promise of one day being able to store a human mind in perfect replica – neural synapses with all their memories, thoughts, and dreams. And why not? Future mausoleums would be waiting rooms, wherein a disc containing all your data would wait for the technology to regrow bodies and then download your loved ones. No one would die, ever again.

But in this future world, maybe we’ll have better ways of treating the abusive, the terrible, and the poisonous among us.

The day before Thanksgiving, someone I knew died. This wasn’t someone I was close to, but she had connections to someone I care about very deeply.

I don’t believe in lionizing everyone who dies. I don’t believe in refusing to speak ill of the dead.

I do believe in honesty.

This person of whom I speak was a monster. She was a parasite of the lowest order, and she brought misery to everyone around her. Emotionally abusive to her family, a thief and liar to those she worked with, and a toxin to her environment. These kinds of people are rare, but some families can point to an example somewhere among them. These kinds of people are destructive cancers who fester, feeding their engines of self-destruction at the expense of those around them. The clinical word is sociopath.

We don’t like to admit that there are people like this in the world. And when forced to, we might blame the things they drink or the pills they took.

Drink and pills are merely the outward habits of an inner problem. No amount of pills made this woman the monster she was. She tormented her family, and shattered a good many lives. While others may choose to “pretty up” the deceased, I refuse such dishonesty.

Not all deaths are a travesty.

For those who don’t know, I’m a James Bond fanatic. I grew up reading the original Ian Fleming paperback novels, devoured every film, and brandished Playstation controllers to cruise video game contributions to the 007 universe. I find the mythos fascinating, the franchise dependable. It’s not Shakespeare and was never supposed to be; Bond is pure entertainment with a trusty edge of class.

The series has had its high points (Goldfinger, Goldeneye, Thunderball) and low points (Moonraker, Die Another Day) but Quantum of Solace is almost absent from the list entirely. The producers have misstepped, and they have Bond 23 to make things right.

It’s not that Quantum of Solace is a bad film. As an action flick, it’s enjoyable… though not great. One major problem is today’s penchant for disorienting quick-cuts and frenetic editing, which nearly derailed the later Bourne films for me. When I watch a movie, I want to see what’s going on; the new fetish for jerky cameras makes me want to clobber someone and then force a diazepam down their throat. The Bourne Identity didn’t suffer from this problem. Neither did earlier Bond films. Lots of action, and I always knew who was fighting.

But another problem is the way the fun and color have been bleached out of the proceedings. Bond is a killer, sure, yet he dwells in a brighter universe than ours and his adventures — even when they concern death — are never morose for long.

QOS is morose, from beginning to end. The only time it channels its roots is when the classic Bond music starts playing towards the film’s final fifteen minutes… and that served to remind me of another gripe: Where was that music all along?

It’s not by accident that I’m bringing up the Jason Bourne films in the same sentence as James Bond. Aside from the above-mentioned gripe, I quite like the Bourne films. They are gritty, edgy, and cynical. They exist in our world, cloaked in shadows and ugliness of human nature. Matt Damon is excellent in the titular role. I sincerely hope the upcoming fourth installment is as good. (I would encourage fans to mail mild tranquilizers to the camera-operators, just to be safe.)

The Bond films are not the Bourne films, however. Bourne is an everyman; Bond is larger-than-life. Bourne is almost nihilistic; Bond is fundamentally optimistic. Bourne exists in our world; Bond is a resident of a loftier dimension.

Most James Bond scholars will tell you the intrepid double-O agent was created by Ian Fleming in 1953; from his writing cabin in Jamaica, Fleming penned a Cold War hero who has far outlasted his political genesis. Yet the collapse of the Iron Curtain found James Bond still standing, sometimes shaken, often stirred, and always ready for another act.

Why this incredible, universal appeal? Because Bond was not really created in 1953; he is, instead, the modern hero-myth, and while this hero may have traded in his toga or suit-of-armor for the white tuxedo, he has remains as ageless as ever.

In the rich tapestry of global mythologies, Bond is not the first hero who went after villainous rogues, traveled to exotic locales, and had narrow escapes from certain death. He’s not even the first who used gadgets; Thor had his magical hammer Mjolner, and various Greek heroes were given special swords, invisible cloaks, and winged horses in the absence of an Aston Martin. Where Theseus and Hercules went after monsters, Bond pursues wicked dictators and megalomaniacs in their fortresses of stone, glass, and steel. The gods are on his side… extricating him from Goldfinger’s laser beam or Alec Trevelyan’s secret base in the phenomenal Goldeneye.

The Name's Gilgamesh. King Gilgamesh.

Our unique place in history is, if nothing else, a merciless typhoon of transformation. Yet Bond pulls off something quite rare; he remains immortal. The agendas of his enemies alter; Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me aspires to start a war that will wipe out Earth’s existing civilizations, while Tomorrow Never Dies finds a Rupert Murdoch-style villain desiring war for the sake of ratings. And consider the ever-changing title songs which date each film… in a paradoxically endearing way. From the incomparable Shirley Bassey (if ever there was a voice for 007, hers is it!) to Shirley Manson to Chris Cornell, the Bond songs themselves provide an irresistible panorama of cultural metamorphoses; an auditory document complementing the cars, bikinis, and gadgetry. Yet while the singers change, the classic Bond theme introduced in Dr. No continues thumping, rising, and trumpeting to his every cool step.

We love our heroes. Legend says that Alexander the Great used to sleep with a copy of The Iliad under his pillow, because its star Achilles was his hero; I can easily envision future military leaders napping with the 007 series resting on a nightstand shelf. The Bond films have seen 22 official installments with six different actors (or avatars) stepping into 007’s finely-polished shoes. Classic Connery, undersung Lazenby, lighthearted Moore, cold Dalton, smooth Brosnan… and now Daniel Craig, who brings his own brand of point-blank brutal efficiency to the role and may, just may, achieve the closest incarnation to Fleming’s original creation.

The problem with the new Bond isn’t Daniel Craig. The problem is that the producers are yanking the Bond train off the tracks. Gone are the gadgets, the stylish gun barrel opening, Moneypenny and Q. Without these ingredients, the franchise falters.

I thought Casino Royale was a great installment to the series, and though I found myself missing some of the traditional elements, I was willing to grant the benefit of the doubt. This was a new Bond, in a clever reboot, and could be forgiven for trying something new. Besides, Craig managed to deliver a Bond performance; witty, magnetic, cold, brutal. He balanced all the elements masterfully, and was aided by a top-notch production and script.

Now, the benefit of the doubt is gone. It’s time to get back on track and give us the Bond who has lasted.

I don’t like to listen to what other people say about a candidate. Rather, I like to watch the candidate, examine his track record, and read his speeches. For this reason I never bought into the rampant attacks on Sarah Palin; I watched her performance myself, investigated her history myself, and came to the conclusion that she was one of the most unqualified and dangerous VP candidates in many years.

In this same way, I concluded that regardless of platitudes, Obama is a highly intelligent man with a keen understanding of the Constitution. He is a supporter of the arts, the sciences, and liberty. I believe that when history sees the side-by-side comparison of the W administration with Obama’s, it will be provide a stunning yin-yang — of accomplishment and integrity. And since this blog is primarily about literature, let me say that Obama’s acceptance speech was spectacular. Rank it up there with Patrick Henry and Abraham Lincoln. I exaggerate not.

The day before the election, Obama lost his grandmother to cancer. The day after the election, we lost the bestselling author Michael Crichton to cancer as well.

Crichton was an author I deeply admired. Growing up, I had seen The Great Train Robbery and The Andromeda Strain films, both of them excellent. But it was in a Boston drugstore when I first decided to pick up my first Crichton novel. The cover had attracted me, almost Zen in its simplicity. White background, black dinosaur bones, blue title, red author.

Jurassic Park proved a rollicking novel whose action was visceral (velociraptor attack) and intellectual (the chilling scene when the computer discovers there are way more dinosaurs in the park than they realized.)

I went on to enjoy many of his other novels, and especially the way he brought science to the public in an enjoyable, engaging way. He was like Jules Verne of modern times, and his stories reflected this interest in scientific extrapolation. Congo, Sphere, and The Andromeda Strain were also standouts for me, though the novel of The Great Train Robbery was a delightful departure of subjects from him.

Now, Mr. Crichton is dead. Despite all his money and connections, cancer defeated him.

Few people are discussing the fateful bookend of cancer deaths around Obama’s historic election. I would challenge Obama and the rest of America to say “Yes we can” to the question of whether or not cancer can be eliminated from this Earth.

To use a historical perspective, the human race managed to claw its way to the top of the food chain despite all odds. Without natural armor, poison sacs, or terrible fangs, we used our social skills and intellect to devise ways of driving back the dangers of the prehistoric world and coming out victorious. Transitioning from villages to cities, we devised ways of dealing with the scarcity of water and food. We irrigated the land, domesticated livestock, and perfected out tool-making. We pioneered surgical techniques, and can now repair paralysis in lab rats. We have mapped the human genome, landed on the moon, split the atom, and sent probes into deep space.

Is anyone still willing to say that we can’t defeat cancer?

The bubonic plague decimated Europe and Asia and can be cured with a pill today. In 1665, a renewed outbreak of the plague led London’s newspapers to declare it was divine punishment. Being divine, all one could do was pray for deliverance. Yet a millennium earlier, the Greek physician Heraclitus addressed the subject of epilepsy (also considered a heavenly curse) and wrote,

“People think epilepsy is divine because they don’t understand it. But I propose that one day we will understand what causes it, and in that moment it will cease being divine.”

Cancer is a breakdown of cellular division, resulting in out-of-control replication. New discoveries have linked viruses like HPV to certain cancers, while others owe to environmental contagions and genetic factors. There are numerous types of cancers, and it is doubtful that a single approach (barring some nanotechnological miracle) that will work for all. Yet whatever else cancer may be, it is a physical process. And humans are masters of manipulating our physical universe. That is why we can defeat it.

There is nothing spectral, magical, or otherworldly about. It. There is a mechanism to why cancer happens, and if the resources of the species were put to the task, that mechanism would be uncovered. Imagine if the monthly $10 billion Iraq War tab was used to defeat disease like this. On the scale of enemies, cave-dwelling terrorists hardly compare to the specter of cancer.

It is too late to help Obama’s grandmother, Michael Crichton, or those in our own families who have died from this disease. But it needn’t be too late for ourselves, our children, and our tomorrow.

In the spirit of Halloween, my girlfriend and I have been watching some horror classics of the ’80s this week. Not only were they both remakes of older films, but they represent the precious few instances where remakes are actually better than the originals. This happens so rarely that it is practically a non-event.

The first film is a longtime favorite of mine – John Carpenter’s The Thing. Not only is it better than the Howard Hawkes’ original, it is far closer to John Campbell’s excellent short story “Who Goes There” (which may in part account for its superiority.) Fantastic special effects from Rob Bottin; no uber-sleek, fake-looking CGI here. When the Thing changes form, it does so by messily breaking into its dark menu of shapes. A head rips off its neck, sprouts legs, and scuttles away for safety. Bones break and reform, giving the monster a sense of dimension and reality… and something we can only hope doesn’t exist in some hellish corner of the galaxy.

But the film’s excellence is not rooted in its special effects wizardry. Here is John Carpenter at his absolute finest direction. He paints a picture of true isolation and paranoia; here is a morality-play on mistrust taken to its most demented extreme. Here also is a fiendish examination of biological life and its raw hunger for survival. Carpenter brings out the best in a superb cast led by Kurt Russell and Keith David, and juggles all film elements perfectly. He must have been truly inspired during the making of this movie — everything works, from the instant the title opens like a blister popping from your TV.

Favorite quote:“I’d rather not spend the rest of this winter TIED TO THIS *@$#! COUCH!”

The second film we watched is also typical of 80’s horror; grisly with dripping special effects in splatter-based full-color. But it is nonetheless a truly excellent movie: David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and like Carpenter’s The Thing is one of the few remakes superior to the original. Before he settled on playing nerdy caricatures, Jeff Goldblum gave cinema a chilling and credible performance of a brilliant man being ravaged by mutation and madness.

It’s too easy to dwell on the stomach-churning effects. Goldblum’s acting makes every moment so very credible. The script-writing is smart, chillingly effective. The scene where he talks about “insect politics” is, I believe, the most horrifying moment in the film… his awareness of the disintegration of everything that makes him a human being left a cold chill in my spine. It’s all straight-up Cronenberg, too, whose obsession about physical permutations is his signature style (existenz, Videodrome) and even finds its way into the dialogue (look for the scene where Geena Davis and Goldblum discuss flesh and how it even makes old women crazy.)

Favorite quote: “I’m saying… I’ll hurt you if you stay.”

*

This week I was notified that two of my screenplays — Never Grow Old and Starspeaker — won Honorable Mention in the writer’s Digest Annual Competition. They are historical-based films, both based on my novels, but since neither one deals with Halloween I’ll say no more about them right now!

If you’re going to come to New England to appreciate the autumn foliage, now’s the time. Along Route 8 and throughout Litchfield County especially, the trees are ablaze in golds, reds, and oranges.

Two works of mine were accepted for publication this week, in two widely different genres. Boston Literary Magazine is publishing my flash fiction piece “Curtain,” a deviously dark metaphoric tale for fear-mongering around election season. I’ll link to it as soon as it appears. I suppose it would fall into the horror genre, and yet is not as divorced from reality as you might suppose.

And one of my poems, “Night Hunt,” was accepted for publication yesterday by Illumen, a high-profile poetry magazine. This poem, which I will link to once it appears, is one of my favorites that I’ve written. It presents a touch of the surreal in relation to cold reality… the lonely night wanderer who sees so much more when the blurring sun has gone to rest. The night, it seems, can be wider and more full of possibilities than the day.

In other news, I am now a full-time Independent columnist for Examiner.com. This has everything to do with that resume I talked about in earlier posts, in which I decided to be totally honest about what I was looking for from an employer. In one of life’s stranger ironies, it landed me this gig. If you like, you can check out my columns, but if politics isn’t your thing then fear not. Literature is more important anyway.

This week, I finished writing an alternate history tale, about how different history would have been if Alexander the Great had lived to a ripe old age. I had such fun writing it; in my estimation, the world today would be almost unrecognizable… and in a good way. The story is titled “The Empire Never Ended,” and I’m sending it forth to some interested parties.

*

Today is Oscar Wilde’s birthday, as well! Pretentious though he was, Wilde is one of the most talented men to ever set ink to page. The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of my all-time favorites.

And as a final note, a word on weekends. They should always be three days, and I use a Viking argument to make my case:

Tuesday through Friday are named after Nordic deities (Tiu, Wodin, Thor, and Freya.) These were hard-working Viking gods. But Saturday is named for Saturn, the Roman God of Time. And Sunday is named for the Sun, while Monday stands for the Moon. In other words, what Saturday through Monday are essentially saying is: “take Time off to enjoy the Sun and Moon.”

Your Honor, the defense rests! Enjoy your weekends, wherever you may be, and whether they be one, two or three days!

Quote of the Day:

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.”

Plato

Blazing! Adventures Magazine has just published my story “The Empire Crown” in their September 2008 issue.

An unabashed tribute to the 1930s-era pulp adventure stories, Blazing! Adventures Magazine covers the full spectrum of noir detective thrillers, Westerns, space opera, action, “spicy” pulp, femme fatales and strong-jawed heroism. It is a gleeful throwback to a unique period — complete with its dependable style of presentation and writing.

As many of you know, I am a pulp-era aficionado. There’s little to compare it to today — perhaps The Rocketeer, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and maybe the upcoming The Spirit (which is based on one of the earliest pulps.) The Indiana Jones series is the best example of pseudo-pulp, too. Otherwise it’s sort of a forgotten thing… a footnote in literature. So I was naturally delighted when Blazing! Adventures recently came to my attention. How recently? Well, that ties into the story behind the story I wrote…

A reader friend of mine, aware of my fondness for the 1920s-1930s, suggested I check out the magazine. This suggestion came on Thursday of last week, which happened to be my birthday. The following morning, I decided to read through several of their stories, and noticed that their current reading period was closing on Saturday. If I wanted to submit anything, I had less than two days to write it.

Yes, write it. Because although I am writing a screenplay set in that genre, I had no short story set there. My fiction writing is chiefly historical and science-fiction. Pulp writing is a different animal. It is, above anything else, fun. High adventure, sharply-drawn morality, and action.

If I lived in the Pulp Era...

I wrote at white-heat for the next six hours. The idea, characters, setting, and plot all emerged as I wrote — and not all at once. I wanted to open with a chase, and the Parisian catacombs seemed an exotic and ghastly enough place to set it in. But I had no idea why there was a chase happening, or what was at stake. I started thinking about the catacombs as I wrote; they date back to Roman times when they were used for limestone quarries. I took a break for dinner, and began constructing the full story as I ate. Then I returned to the computer with a better idea of what was going to happen and what dastardly plot had descended on Paris. Seven more hours of writing. I broke for sleep. Woke early, made coffee, and spent the rest of the day pounding away at the keys, writing, revising, and polishing. Then, exhausted and flushed, I put it all into an email and hit SEND!

The response was swift: The story was accepted. And it is now committed to their September issue. My tribute to the pulp era… Rylan Matthis and the adventures of the The Empire Crown!

Today is my birthday. The Earth has flung itself around the sun once more and I’m here to enjoy it. I’ve gotten some wonderful birthday messages from my good friends, including a stellar voice message from my friend Maria Orsini who, as an actress/singer would, sang my birthday song in a Broadway-style extravaganza. Her voice is wonderful.

Human beings used to live only 20 or 30 years. Now we’re pushing a hundred. Aging and death is a mechanical process, and the words of Archimedes resonate:

“Give me a lever and a place to stand, and I shall move the Earth.”

If I reach 100 years, the Green Wall of China is scheduled to be completed around then.

The Earth may have up to 9 billion people.

If Ray Kurzweil is correct with his estimations, the technological Singularity will be achieved by then.

Of course (and this does tie into that last point) I want to live forever. As I wrote in my article “The Future of Immortality,” human beings are always improving ourselves if at times it seems the opposite is true. Death is natural, but not everything natural is good. I am a humanist progressive, believing firmly in the power of human imagination and ingenuity, even if we have to remain vigilant every step of the way against the throwback maniac primitives in our midst:

*

Two more quick notes:

In the last seventy-two hours I’ve set a new record for myself: I wrote three stories — two of them from scratch and the third adapted from an earlier story of mine — all within that narrow time-frame for the sake of some last-minute contests coming up this weekend. One is a fantasy story, the second is alternative history, and the third is straight-up historical. At work between job responsibilities, I would sit down at my computer and furiously type, crafting scenes and bridges and characters, then emailing it to myself. Later that night, at home, I pull the material out and start crafting it into stories.

The second note is absolutely great news, which I just received via phone twenty minutes ago. Can’t say much yet about it. Need to digest it… and have my birthday cake.

Quote of the Day:

“Upwards and onwards to immortality”

– from the tomb of Jules Verne

Today is Patriot Day, declared by President George W. Bush and intended to be distinguished from Patriots’ Day, which is celebrated to commemorate the American Revolution. You see, we once fought against oppression for the cause of freedom… delivering the ideals of the great Enlightenment to great reality. It was one thing to scribble such notions down on paper. But when the redcoats scoffed, we gave them a demonstration of our commitment straight from our muskets.

Patriot Day. Patriots’ Day.

Either way, I celebrate being a patriot… but not by the Bush definition of blind subservience, fear, and slavery. 9-11-01 was a tragedy in which we should have stood firm and courageous. Instead, too many of us allowed this tragedy to be exploited by power-mongers in our own government. We let ourselves be raped. We handed over rights of habeas corpus with a whimper and a plea. We barked when the government told us to, we cowered in Pavlovian fright each time a new Terror Threat Level was flashed across our television screens.

I am not afraid of terrorists.

My country defeated the tyranny of another King George — this one belonging to the British Empire –  when we were but scattered colonies in the wilderness. We defeated Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. We can defeat today’s threats without devolving into a police state, without becoming the very antithesis to freedom and civil liberty that we were founded upon. For it is these notions that form the spine of our founding document - the Constitution.

America can only be destroyed from within, not without. It isn’t gay marriage or pluralism that destroys us. It is the fear-addicts who tell us to surrender our rights to dissent, our rights to question, our demands for governmental accountability. It is these people who shame the memory of their proud ancestors by working hard to destroy America from within… systematically whittling away our protected rights. It is these cowards who will fork over their souls to a nanny-state self-perpetuating White House regime without hesitation.

Hypocrites. Cowards. Traitors.

Make no mistake that those in power are keenly aware of how easy we are to manipulate. They bang the drums and we squeal, “Protect us! Protect us!” They feed us a steady diet of feel-good platitudes because they know the real meal - reading the Constitution - is something we don’t bother to stomach.

Shame.

When we’re attacked again, we need to stand strong and firm and fight, against those barbarians who hurt us and against those opportunistic politicians who will try to exploit the tragedy.

Don’t let others tell you what the Founding Fathers wrote. Read it for yourself, brush up on your history, and rediscover the bravery of your progenitors.

Before it’s too late, and the “land of the free/home of the brave” becomes a footnote filed under irony.

Happy Patriot and Patriots Day.

Quote of the day:

“If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” - George Washington