Writing Moment

This morning, I had a remarkable dream, and I was inspired, not to write it down, but to use a clue given in the dream to write a scene that I had been struggling with in my novel. I try to aim for regular scenes that genuinely have an emotional impact on the reader, and so I try to find things that have a genuine impact on me as a writer. I think that reading a book should be an experience that offers more than just a "that was cool" reaction: it should strike the reader on a deep emotional level and offer him the opportunity to change his way of seeing the world, as though he himself had experienced the events of the book. In that way, I think reading a book can be as moving as real life. But I've heard this before, and it's true: if the writer doesn't feel anything while writing it, the reader doesn't feel anything when reading it.

And so I made the change to the scene in my head, and it felt right, so I got up, turned my computer on, and wrote it. And as I was typing the final words, I was overcome with emotion, I sobbed aloud, and tears ran down my face. It was the first time I had driven myself to the point of tears in a story.

I don't know if I'll even use the scene in the final draft of the novel, since it's still a while before I connect where the novel is now to that point, so things might be different by then. I do have the feeling that it will still be there in some way; I was genuinely heartbroken by characters that exist only in my imagination.

And that was remarkable.

Oh Shit

Sony has lost more than three billion dollars on the PS3.

Seriously, that sucks.

Sorry for the language to everyone below 18 and/or living in Utah.

I know it's fairly common for games companies to lose money on their consoles, and we've known the PS3 is being sold well below cost ever since it first came out, but considering how badly the PS3 is being WTF PWNED in the console wars by the Wii, this isn't good news.

McCain Lets It Slip

Most of the blind puppets of the coporate and government-controlled media meekly swallow what they are fed: that there is no Illuminati. They think the world is not run by powerful individuals and clandestine groups who control trillions of dollars in assets and guide the course of countries. But John McCain is getting on in years, and he has, I'm afraid, let it slip that Vladimir Putin also rules Germany:




Some people would call this evidence that John McCain is a senile old coot. I call it evidence that John McCain knows much more about who really runs the world than he's letting on.

Because he IS the Mother Fucking MAN

http://williamgibsonboard.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/2866012481/m/5401073773?r=4531033383#4531033383

Just... bask, minions. Bask.

Cyberpunk Radio

"Disregard the mainstream: media distorted." Not exactly original, but a pretty good line from a reggae/rap thing that was also in the podcast.

When I first checked out the Cyberpunk Radio SF podcast on iTunes, I wasn't very impressed. The first one that it played was episode 104, which started with a mashup of Obama's speeches counterpointed against the ravings of his minister. On that note, I have only to loosely quote Socrates when I say that I disapprove of his warmongering and his discontent. That was followed by some shitty pseudo-noise that I suppose was supposed to sound unreal and cool, followed by crappy rap. Overall, the radio seems to be a mix of music, soundbyte mashups, and dystopian-slanted rants about modern news and changes.

I tried episode 103, which set off with an absolutely awesome "story" about the cyborg insects that the military is building for remote control. It was ... well, it was cyberpunk. The voice was mildly distorted to make it more cyberpunky, and it used expressions like, "Do you know what this really means, meat-puppets?" and "this is the data-stream." But it followed that with a music choice with a genre I couldn't even begin to explain, a pseudo-blues, pseudo-punk piece of shit with some theme about beer and a deadbeat dad. Talk about a buzzkill. Next came a soundbite mashup about Bush's warmongering and nanobots. THEN another bit of awesome: mixing in Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" with cyberpunk messages advertising this radio, topped off with some weird techno. It was fucking cool.

Final word? No final word yet. But final link: http://www.mental-escher.net/cyberpunkradio/

Enjoy the data-stream, chipheads.

Also, where credit is due: a comment on a post on Kawaika's blog. A comment from one of the guys involved, apparently. When I said your music was sometimes shit, bro... well, actually, it was. Them's the breaks.

Something completely different: Maybe there's some truth to the dire warnings about a future of computer uprisings. It looks like laser printers are illegally downloading Iron Man (but not really; the university just rigged their IPs to make it look that way). Big Brother is watching you. And he's also watching your printer.

George Carlin is dead

Yep. I reckon.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080623/ap_on_en_tv/obit_george_carlin

Train Man (Densha Otoko)

Yatta!

Everyone knows that I'm not a huge otaku (the Japanese word for nerd). Most anime are more or less passe for me, and I don't read manga or fantasize about catgirls. That being said, I have a movie recommendation for you that I'm putting out there with my absolute stamp of approval. It's been a long time since I saw a movie that wasn't recommended to me by anyone (unless you count Netflix) and truly enjoyed it, but this one really grabbed my heart and held it tightly in its two little hands. In a good way.

The movie's premise is that a complete otaku is smitten with a beautiful woman on the train. When a drunk starts bothering her, our hero stands up for her (although very awkwardly) and she asks for his address. Having gone his entire 22 years without having a girlfriend (and, one can only assume, hardly talking to girls at all), our hero turns to the best source of information he can get: 2chan (yes, although it's not named in the movie, the special features explain that it was indeed 2chan, the famous Japanese mega-internet forum). A colorful gang of internet misfits start giving him advice, including a married couple who have grown apart, a teenage shut-in, a nurse holding on to a long-lost love, and (most importantly) a scene-stealing trio of uber-otaku who practically live in a manga cafe. Guided by this questionable bunch of love 'experts,' can our young hero pursue the love of his life? Or is she out of his reach?

This movie's characters are endearing, the story is fun yet poignant, and ... well, I really can't gush about it enough. As a super-nerd, I couldn't help but pull for our awkward young hero as he takes his brave steps into the world of love. It's in Japanese with English subtitles, of course, although those of you with an allergy to reading while watching a movie should still bear through it, because this movie is a treat!

What are you waiting for? Here I am, your friendly blogging geek, telling you to go out there and get a movie about a geek! So go do it!

There's also a commentary track by an American and two Japanese experts on otaku culture. I haven't listened to it, but I look forward to doing so soon!

*****POSSIBLE SPOILER BELOW*****
You have been warned. You may return to reading after the sirens stop.

Final word: The last scene of the movie might confuse some viewers, because it seems to suggest (or did to me) that the whole movie might have just been a fantasy. Don't worry; if you watch to the end of the credits, you'll see another scene which makes it clear that the movie did happen; the last scene was just a flashback showing you that the two characters were always closer than they thought.

And don't worry; I'll be back to writing other things than just film reviews soon. This movie really fit in so well with my themes and interests that I just had to share it with you!

eXistenZ

What happens when you get a video gamer to write a screenplay? Although I can hardly be sure that this movie was written by a video gamer, it certainly feels like it. The dialogue is awful, the characters are flat, and the premise is a combination of thought-provoking and silly.

First, the bad: the props are ridiculous. The special effects are weak. The science behind it all is nonexistent. Don't even try to figure out the logic behind it all; trying to match real world logic to this movie is like trying to hook up an American toaster to a European electrical socket.

Now, the good. Yes, it does have Jude Law in it, although he doesn't really have much to do. It also kept me thinking. I did have to be quite generous with my interpretation and extrapolation, but all in all, this film can be an excellent way to get an interesting conversation going among a good bunch of people, and for that alone I'd suggest it.

The basic plot, such as there is, involves a video-game designer and the man who ends up having to protect her from an anti-video game conspiracy. You see, video games are so real in this movie that some people want to destroy them outright, before they destroy real life with their simulated reality. You'll be able to guess most of the plot twists long before they happen, but that's fine if it makes you feel clever, as it did me. Although that's a little like feeling uber after beating an 8 year old in CounterStrike. I constantly had the feeling that the movie was written by a kid who was 15, tops. You'll know what I mean when you watch a particularly awkward love scene between the two main characters in which the game compels them to kiss! Saucy!

At the end of the movie, my reaction was, "Yeah, yeah, all right. I get it already." There are echoes of The Matrix here, but also a few original ideas, and some of the scenes are downright thought-inducing. Watch for Ian Holm speaking Hungarian badly, and the Hungarian word "isten" in the title of the film, relates to one of the film's themes: that technology allows us to be gods of our own worlds. Wikipedia agrees with me.

Renaissance: Sci-Fi Computer Animation

You can tell it's France and it's gritty because it's raining and it's black and white.

I just got done watching a French film called Renaissance, so I thought I'd give you the skinny. Verdict: it's good enough, if you can forgive it a few flaws.

The skinny: The plot follows a French cop named Karas as he searches for a kidnapped researcher working for the corporation Avalon, which sells products offering "Health, Beauty, Longevity." He also runs across the kidnapped woman's older sister, who is something of a spitfire and, inevitably, the love interest, although her character really is very interesting. As Karas digs deeper, he uncovers conspiracy and corruption on all sides. And by the end... but why spoil it?

The film is rendered in black and white: pure-black and pure-white, with no grays. Think Sin City, but much harder on the eyes. Some of the shots are wonderful, but most of the time I was wishing I could just see the film without the effect, which hurt my head and had me confused some of the time about who exactly was doing what. The stunning visuals of the sprawling dystopian city of future Paris were also marred by this; some of the shots were great, but in many shots, I just couldn't figure out just what I was looking at. It created a very dreamlike, surreal atmosphere that I felt clashed with the film's gritty realism.

That being said, the characters were great. They were complex, serious individuals, but the film still allowed itself enough humor (although usually gallows humor) to make it work. Since the film was shot in CGI using motion-capture, the movements were photo-realistic (for the most part) and some of the subtleties of movement and expression looked great in the black-and-white style of the film. The faces of the main characters were well done. One of the advantages of CGI is that the emotions can be done so finely. Note the poster: that's the black/white animation when it's at its best. It really is beautiful, even hyper-realistic when it precisely highlights faces, bodies, and backgrounds. But a lot of the time, since it's all done digitally, the computer chose a black/white configuration that doesn't quite work. But again, when it does, hold onto your butts.

On the flip side, some of the characters looked rather poor, considering this was 2006 and therefore post-Final Fantasy: Advent Children, which in this humble reviewer's opinion is the best full-CGI film to date visually. The faces of the old characters, of which there are many, were particularly weird.

I should also warn you that the film's tag-line, "Live forever or die trying," doesn't apply to the protagonist's viewpoint. In fact, his is the opposite opinion. I found that mildly confusing.

THAT BEING SAID, (seriously, there were good points), the film's setting is beautiful. The science fiction stuff is something a little unrealistic, but it never takes away from the tone or plot. The plot itself is a little hackneyed, but the film pulls it off with style. I'd recommend seeing the film just for the visuals and some of the themes. When the film is working right, the tone is so right I could just drop myself right into it.

One last note: the very last bit of the film is highly confusing, and I have a feeling some studio bigshot added it because he wanted to adjust the ending a bit to suit his tastes. Without spoiling too much, hit the stop button when you see two characters talking against a white background after the movie has reached its conclusion. The film is effectively over: you can now finish your popcorn and leave the theater without being confused by that one last bit. The film ends perfectly if you end it there, with that ending being one of the best endings in science fiction I can think of.

I sincerely hope they make more movies like this. Adjust the color technique a bit, improve the character modeling, and kneecap whoever pinned on that ending bit, and you'll have a beautiful thing. Even flawed, this is definitely worth checking out.

Very last word, and then I promise I'm done: Fun game! Count how many shots of the Eiffel Tower this movie has. You can almost imagine someone jumping up and down shouting, "Hey! This is PARIS!"

Watch out for that ICE...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7456216.stm

A hacker calling himself Solo got into 97 American military and NASA computers and is now facing extradition to the US. Solo is a pretty awesome hacker name.

"His lawyers told London's High Court last year that he was subject to improper threats...." A hacker being threatened by shadowy government forces? ^____^ How unexpected!

"A US embassy legal official quoted New Jersey authorities saying they wanted to see him 'fry'." Maybe, but are they willing to hire dour ex-Special Forces assassins to make sure that the job is done properly?

"He said he was motivated by curiosity and only managed to get into the networks because of lax security. " He also added that their ice were no match for his '1337 skizz-wizzles,' because he got his icebreaker from an ex-KGB dealer with a little basement shop on fourth street.

Anyway, check it out. To everyone who thinks that hackers are a thing of the past, that cyberpunk has come and gone, take note.

Side-note: I doubt he hacked anything like the computer here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7458479.stm Check out the video halfway down the page. Only twenty-five minutes to do the calculation? Only a week to set up the operation? Unheard-of!

Leonardo diCaprio as... Nolan Bushnell?!

According to a story I found on www.scifi.com/sfw/news/, Leonardo diCapretty will be playing Nolan Bushy-nell in a movie about the founder of Atari. Here's their news story:

"DiCaprio To Play Atari Founder: Leonardo DiCaprio is attached produce and star in an upcoming biopic based on Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Variety reported. Written by Brian Hecker and Craig Sherman, Atari centers on the life of Bushnell, one of the founding fathers of the video-game industry.Bushnell and Ted Dabney founded Atari in 1972 and were instrumental in bringing arcade games, home vidgame consoles and home computers to the masses. Among the company’s contributions were Pong and the Atari 2600.Although Bushnell's life rights had long been pursued by various suitors, Hecker and Craig Sherman persuaded the gaming pioneer that they could do his unique story justice."



Leonardo:


Nolan:











Any questions?

That's no moon...

Remember the room with walls made of televisions in Fahrenheit 451? Well, I think you could make a wall out of this thing:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertainment/sharp-rolls-out-gigantic-108inch-lcd-226761.php

Now to find a 108-inch space somewhere in your home to put this monster. To be frank, I really don't know how I'd deal with having something like this in my home. I feel like I'd wake up one morning to find that it had organized the lesser machines under its iron control, and the living room and kitchen had seceded to form Techopia.

The other question: how the hell do you install it? Does it come with the Russian Olympic weightlifting team to carry it into your house? Will you have to knock a hole in your wall to get it in, or do you just stick it on the floor and built up the walls around it?

If every 10 inches of screen is another 2 feet back of viewing distance, as they told me when I bought my TV, then you'll have to watch this thing from 20 feet away: in other words, you'll be watching from the next room.

Wow. Now that is high-tech.

Hell... it's about time.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080615/ts_afp/lifestylenetherlandstechnologylovesexrobots_080615055138

That news story had two immediate reactions from me. The first was that it's about damn time that we had sexbots. Of course, this story isn't about sexbots: it's about lovebots, something capable of creating a meaningful relationship with its owner. And that's even better. That's something many humans, I'd venture, can't even enjoy with other humans, let alone something with a harddrive. The second reaction was that forty years is much too long. If I expect my robotic body to be ready to receive my brain before my fleshy body rots all around me, technology should advance a lot faster in that forty years. I'll be in my sixties by then, which means I'll either be happily married or have probably spent my life in miserable bachelorhood.

The story does say that we'll have sexbots in five years, but to be frank, judging by the kind of thing we're looking at in our robotic progress when we try to give them realistic expressions, it's not particularly the kind of thing I'd want to get cozy with in front of the fireplace over a nice bottle of the red, red vino.

I'm not saying that I'm holding out my hope for the robotic lover as my only means of ever touching something female-shaped (although sometimes that seems to be a possibility!). No, my friends, it's just that a robot is something that, I believe, is better suited to the disposition of a human than another human is. A human has things like needs and feelings. A human is irrational and asks things that have no good answer, like, 'Does this make me look fat?' The worst: you have to settle with humans. Although I still hope there is such a thing as a perfect match, the One True Love, the cynic in me doubts it and whispers that one day I'll have to choose someone that I know isn't exactly right, and I'll have to grin and bear the things that she does that I don't like, and I'll have to endure her reactions to the things I love that she doesn't. And that, my friends, is something my robotic lover and I will never have to suffer. I could sit on the balcony with my computer, writing away, and she would massage my shoulders or just sit with me, one arm wrapped around my leg like a babe in a fantasy painting, never complaining or thinking of herself.

Damnit, it makes me want to get into computer engineering just to help make it a reality faster.

Cyberpunk Music

As I draw my cyberpunk-inspired pictures or write my cyberpunk novel, I like to listen to music. Unfortunately, I don't have a great number of songs that put me in the right feel to slip into some techno-bar, have a drink, and talk about cybernetic implants with a big Russian named Shadow. Here is the list I have for my cyberpunk playlist in iTunes: any suggestions for what to add? Bonus if the song is available to buy on iTunes. Some aren't quite cyberpunk; feel free to point those out, too.

Blue Oyster Cult - Veteran of the Psychic Wars
Bodies - Drowning Pool
Coma White - Marilyn Manson
Personal Jesus - Marilyn Manson
Angel - Massive Attack
Teardrop - Massive Attack
Freiflug - Megaherz
Adios - Rammstein
Feel So Numb - Rob Zombie
Orchestra - The Servant
Zero - The Smashing Pumpkins
Lithium Flower - Ghost in the Shell SAC Soundtrack
One (Always Hardcore) - Scooter

The Madness!

Madness? THIS IS SPARTA!

Yes, I'm still looking for a good look/feel to my blog. I want it to be something that I can just naturally pick up off the ground, dust off, and say, "Yep, that's my blog right there." So it will continue to change and mutate, probably until it turns into a misshapen mutant just begging to be put out of its misery.

Wow, that conjures a scene. Some horrible, twisted deformity just brought down by the heavy guns of the group of plucky misfits deep in a disused experimental lab. It kicks, uttering a horrible roar of pain, as the leader of the group, his face hidden behind a tactical mask with glowing green goggles, steps forward and raises his high-caliber handgun....

Ahem.

Cyberpunk

Yes, I know what I said. But I just wanted to say that my interest in cyberpunk has been rekindled by drawing a sketch of a pair of cyberpunk characters. Look forward to more. I'm considering linking to it from here, but I'm not sure my crappy-ass sketches are worth the association with this blog. And yes, talking about it is. Because now, in your mind, my artwork looks like something from Christopher Shy.
Suck on that.

Do not be alarmed!

As you may have noticed, this blog's style has changed significantly. I decided that I simply don't have enough to post regularly about cyberpunk, and my thoughts aren't interesting/coherent enough to reach a wide audience just being pulled in pell-mell. Therefore, I have decided to rededicate this blog to literature and my experience both reading and writing it. Up, up, and away!

Your good friend,
Bluefish

PS Yes, I will keep the name. I haven't explained it yet, but it is cyberpunk. I promise. Nevertheless, since cyberpunk remains one of the areas of literature I'm very interested in (it's an extensive list), it will continue to serve me well.

... it deepens like a coastal shelf

It shames me, as the writer of a pseudo-cyberpunk blog, that I bought my computer five years ago and haven't upgraded it physically since. It suits my purpose, though. Although I'm a video gamer, it's been more of a pursuit than a study recently, and there really aren't any new games that I desperately want to play that my computer can't handle--at least, none that aren't also available for my Playstation 3, which cranks out amazing graphics onto my brand-new 40" LCD widescreen HD television, rather than the piddly 17" Dell monitor that my computer is attached to. That was a long sentence saying, "My computer sucks, but my PS3 doesn't." But my computer is fine for what I use it for, and I don't play enough modern video games to warrant buying a new one.

That being said, I can't help but being rather disturbed by my computer's gradual descent into decrepitude. When I first got it, it started up, from power-on to finished loading all the system tray crap, in less than forty seconds (because I timed it). Today, I didn't have the heart to measure it, but I turned it on and ate breakfast, and it was still loading when I got back. It used to be doing the 100 meter in under twelve seconds: nothing astonishing, but respectable. Now, it moves like an old person getting up to take a crap in the middle of the night. If I wanted to wax poetical, I'd say it has qualities akin to something primordial, even pre-Cambrian, just dragging its lumpy, slimy bulk out of some quagmire the world forgot, rearing its misshapen head, and deciding maybe it's best not to come out onto dry land after all.

I can think of three possible reasons for this gradual descent into senility: the build-up of dust, the accrual of pointless applications and bad registry entries, and the slow grinding away of all the moving parts of any machine into fine powder. I feel like I'm watching a loved one slowly slip away to a wasting disease: it still greets me with a smile and tries to play those games we used to love for me, but every day I see it grow a little slower, and the old games come a little harder.

I actually got a bit misty-eyed writing that. I love you, too, computer. I love you, too.