NO JOHN CARTER - NO STAR WARS, NO FLASH GORDEN, NO FIREFLY

THE LAST DAY TO GET YOUR FREE BOOK!!

http://www.amazon.com/LET-WIND-BLOW-THROUGH-ebook/dp/B004ZZT0XE Before STAR WARS, before STAR TREK, before FLASH GORDON,

before SUPERMAN

there was

JOHN CARTER OF MARS

written by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

100 years ago, science fiction was still in its infancy, and a hero named John Carter enjoyed the sort of popularity that characters like Luke Skywalker and Captain Kirk do today.

Love knows no bounds for science fiction heroes, even across the cold depths of space. A major focus of the first Barsoom novel, A Princess of Mars (and the upcoming movie adaptation), is the growing bond between Earthman John Carter and Martian princess Dejah Thoris.


John Carter/Dejah Thoris relationship most reminds me of the romance in James Cameron's Avatar. As in Avatar, it's a relationship that builds from two strangers

(one of them a soldier from another world)

attempting to understand one another, and it grows during the looming threat of war. Various physical and existential divides threaten to keep the two apart, but in the end, love prevails.

Decades earlier, Burroughs wrote of an Earthling who found himself an alien on another world, gaining strength from the lower gravity.

Even as Burroughs was doing his part to build the science fiction genre, he was also becoming the first author to merge science fiction and Western elements.

John Carter is a hero who wouldn't be out of place in a Wild West movie. He's an ex-Confederate soldier who headed west after the Civil War to seek his fortune as a gold prospector. He even battles a tribe of Apache warriors before his fateful journey to Barsoom.

A number of popular films and TV series have sought to blend science fiction with Westerns. Joss Whedon's short-lived Firefly features a crew of space-faring heroes who live in a very grungy, lawless galaxy. The popular anime series Cowboy Bebop follows a similar crew of rugged bounty hunters who seek fortune and adventure as humanity slowly begins expanding throughout the solar system. They'd have found a kindred spirit in the rough and tumble John Carter.

It wasn't long before John Carter began to inspire similar sci-fi adventures.

Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon were two heroes who debuted in the pulp era and who were direct results of Carter's popularity. Both men hailed from Earth, with Buck even being a war veteran like Carter.

In the case of Buck Rogers, exposure to a gas caused him to fall into suspended animation for almost 500 years and awaken to a very different sort of civilization. Flash Gordon, meanwhile, travels by rocket ship to the planet Mongo and battles the evil emperor Ming the Merciless.

So keep all this in mind when you go to see John Carter on March 9th the debt we owe Burroughs' creation for the sci-fi we all enjoy today.

For more see :

http://movies.ign.com/articles/121/1219006p1.html

If Neil Gaiman ever wrote this about me or about you, we could die happy writers :

http://www.jonathancarroll.com/about/introduction.html
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HOLLYWOOD HAS FORGOTTEN HOW TO TELL A STORY

Take the new STAR TREK. The beginning made me root for and like Kirk's father. He cared about his crew, loved his wife, and died so that she and his son could live. I wanted to watch a movie about him. What happens? We get a scene of kid-Kirk being a jerk and nearly getting killed. We get another of punk-Kirk getting rightly trashed by cadets in a bar. I didn't like Kirk. And that's how you tell a bad story, making the hero one you don't like.

They wanted Kirk with authority issues and attitude from being fatherless. Fine. Kid-Kirk sees his younger half-brother being roughed up by his step-father for touching his antique car. Kirk steps in for the boy, gets slapped, makes a smart remark {"What? You working your way up to old ladies and cripples?"} Step-Dad leaves. Kid-Kirk cocks an eyebrow at his brother and goes, "You want to go for a spin?" Now, you have the attitude, neurosis, plus a kid who you care about and like. And the neat car chase.

Punk-Kirk in bar. Hits on Uhura. She fluffs him off. "Your loss, babe," he shrugs. Up struts an oaf of a cadet who paws Uhura. She protests. Oaf grabs her arm. Uhura winces in pain, just about to hand the guy his head on her own. But Kirk steps in and says, "The lady said no, bruno." Fights insues. Kirk gets lecture that turns his life around. But now you care about Kirk and like him. You want him to win, not just because you know his legend, but because of who he is at the moment, flaws and all. That's good story-telling -- making the audience care and root for your hero right at the start.

Hollywood has confused "cool" with character.

You care about Neo from the start of THE MATRIX. Any daydreaming shift worker identifies with Arnold right from the start of TOTAL RECALL. Inside most Sci-Fi men you will find a Walter Mitty or a Chuck from the TV series of the same name.

Hollywood loves its pre-sold franchises. Sometimes they work. Most times they don't. I shudder to think what the movie A-TEAM will be on the screen. But the studio executives know that people reading their computer headlines will know the answer to that most important question : "What is it about?"

Franchises gives the reader of the movie ad a clear mental image of what the movie promises. If the story is lousy or the film veers too far off the historical image. Low traffic. Sink hole where ticket sales should be.

Domestic ticket sales used to account for 60% of a movie's overall profits. Now, it's down to 40%. Worldwide ticket sales are now the make or break aspect of a movie. The movie must be readily understood universally. Franchises are ideal for that. Also killer titles : Legally Blonde, Crazies, 4 Christmases, and FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE {the title for my book -- hey, I can dream, can't I?}

Hollywood is not about art or about quality. It is about profits. showBUSINESS it is called for a reason. Hollywood has its beloved "4-quadrant" pictures {in essence both sexes under & over 25 are drawn to watch the film.} If on top of that it is medium-budget, filmed entirely in one location, and you are the screen writer, you may have to run out of the exec's office to keep him from giving you a wet kiss.

Well, that's it for my thoughts on Hollywood's deficiencies. It's easier than looking at my own! And for all of us dreamers out there who refuse to quit, here's Diana Krall :

WHAT IS MORE REAL THAN REAL?

How does a writer make science fiction {or fantasy for that matter} real? This does not preclude movies or TV, for without the script all you would have are good-looking actors gazing at one another -- or into mirrors. More likely the last.

Well, for one thing, you have to make the science plausible. And let's face it, some writers are better sellers of the impossible than others. It's why we have gotten the presidents we have in the past. Let's nail those dastardly speech-writers with rotten tomatoes, shall we?

But all joking aside, the science in the tales has to be internally consistent, not change from page to page. Still more importantly, life must be seen taking its toll. Heads must rock back by the thrust of the rockets. Nausea must make stomachs feel like high-tide in zero gravity spins.

Life must hurt. It does for all of us. It must for the characters we watch or we will not believe in them.

We will not buy a story where there is cause without effect. That is why STAR WARS seems more real {despite its space opera elements} than STAR TREK. The blast doors have scorch marks. The Millenium Falcon has dings and dents. Solo must whallop the door facing of the cockpit to jar the tangled wiring loose enough to fire up the engines. The good guys lose, die, and the survivors feel it in their guts. A father cuts off the right hand of his son. Children, a whole school of them, are cut down by one evil man with a light saber. The evil emperor wipes out the Jedi and rules the galaxy for a generation of terror and oppression.

In life, the bad guys sometimes win. If science fiction or fantasy is to be experienced as "real," then night must fall as it does in the day of each of us. Isn't the true thrill of the dawn based on the depth of darkness to the night preceeding it?

That is why, in a strange way, science fiction can be more "real" than literary fiction. Gene Roddenberry tackled subjects like prejudice, duplicity in war with its betrayed trust of innocents, pacifism in the face of threat, and religious intolerance at a time in the sixties that no other TV show could have done. And because Gene tackled those subjects that were all too real to his audience, the crew of the Enterprise became real to the viewers as well.

VOYAGER lost sight of that fact. One episode whole shuttles would be destroyed, the ship itself broadsided by raking lasers. And the next week, the ship would be spotless and a new shuttle would be gleaming in the bay. BATTLESTAR GALATICA showed us wires hanging from the ceiling of the battered starship episode after episode. Mistakes of crewmen would hound them from show to show. Just like our own mistakes follow at our heels for years. Even more, it showed Mankind's arrogance and callousness coming back in the form of his children, the Cylons, to teach humanity that payback is a terrible thing to waste.

Each of us are heading to that last great Exit. Some of us are closer than we realize. As we walk, are we awake or asleep? THE MATRIX and TOTAL RECALL, to mention two Sci-Fi movies, ask that question of us. It is a question that only we can answer. Good science fiction can broaden our perspective to answer it more truthfully.

Again, I am musing in preparation for my two talks at the CON DU LAC Sci-Fi convention here in Lake Charles in June. Come check out its website, will you? http://www.condulac.net/.

And there was one excellent fantasy movie that connected to viewers because it paid attention to the details of life : its losses, its loves, and its enduring hope that the next dawn would be brighter if only you would not give up.




And readers, never give up. Never. Your dream may be waiting for you just around the corner if you will only take those next few steps. Keep walking. Keep trying. I'll be pulling for you that your dream clasps your hand in the darkness, pulling you into the light, Roland