I'm nostalgic for the future Mario here:

Last week I posted a video of Prometheus, the prequel to the Alien franchise. In that trailer, it's 2023, on the eve of the alien encounter. Meaning a deep space mission is in the offing.


Not to be a spoil-sport, but that's only 11 years in the future and we're nowhere close to building a spacecraft capable of practical interplanetary travel. In fact, we're not even going to Mars. For missions beyond our solar system, we'll need a technological leap similar to the discovery of fire. You know, like the bending of gravity and time. Which only happens around here at Happy Hour and afterwards, we've yet to get farther than the street corner. Not to mention the risks if you spend too much time in space.


In an earlier post I had discussed how we're in the 21st century, the Future!
What happened to our spaceships, anti-gravity boots, and clean fusion energy? This is how we were supposed to dress when tomorrow got here:

The best we seem to have is an iPhone, which really, had Mr. Spock have seen one, I doubt he would've said, "Interesting." I think his reaction would've been, "Holy shit, that freakin' rocks. Where can I get one?"

Here's another look at the future from the British TV Show UFO. At 45 seconds, check out the mesh uniforms; the men were looking exceptionally stylish.




Blatant Self Promotion! It's about The Good, the Bad, and the Weird. I'm teaching a class on Speculative Fiction with The Writing School. The first class is free! March 26. The four week bookend workshop (One live class, two online classes, & a final live class) starts April 11. For details, go here --> The Writing School. It's a great way to channel those voices in your head.

Labels: Alien, The Future, The Writing School

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 1:11 PM  2 comments

  My private chills Mario here:

Last week at GalaxyFest, I was on a panel discussing writing horror and what scared us. I offered my definition of horror, which is based on what Tom Monteleone had once said at a Bram Stoker Award's dinner. "Horror is meant to creep you out. Give you the chills. Raise the hair on the back of your neck."

The other panelists recited what scared them. Such as the inevitable zombie outbreak. Or vampires--not that they believed in undead bloodsuckers, just the idea of such monsters.

When it was my turn, I said that supernatural creatures didn't scare me because I don't put stock in any of them. Revenants. Or werewolves. Demons. Dragons.

What does terrify me belongs firmly in the ordinary world. For example, not having the scratch to pay the rent. I've never seen a zombie but I have seen an eviction or two. Down the street, a neighbor was evicted. A deputy sheriff taped the obligatory notice on the door. A few days later, the deputies returned and supervised the ransacking of the home. All the belongings were piled on the front lawn and sidewalk. Though a lot of homeless pass by, no one ever picked through the piles of discards, as if the stuff was jinxed. The most poignant articles left behind were the photo albums, a visual record of better times and misplaced hope, now abandoned to ruin.

Kids. If you have children--and even after they've grown--there's that twitch of worry when they're out and the phone rings at 2AM.

Our friend, the A-Bomb. What frightened me most as a kid was the specter of nuclear war. Freddie Krueger. Dracula. The Wolfman. Movie monsters. Bah! But my dad brought home Civil Defense pamphlets advising what to do in case of atomic attack. That was our own government saying: "Get ready to get radiated and obliterated." When the local CD alarms went off--for nothing it turned out--I felt terror jerking through me.


The Horrific. Last year, I was listening to Jazz 24, from KPLU Olympia, WA, when the Emergency Broadcast alert was sent, warning of a tsunami in the northern Pacific. Since I live in Denver, I thought little of it. The next day I learned it was The Tsumani, which had demolished Tohuko, Japan. We've seen videos of the turgid waters crashing over the seawall and rampaging the coast worse than Godzilla. I read where Jin Sato, the mayor of Minamisanriku, and his fellow city workers climbed an antenna atop their office building to escape the tsunami. The water surged higher and higher, inundating the more unfortunate. The ordeal lasted all night. I can imagine Sato hanging on, his co-workers crying out as the swirling black waters smothered and tore them away one by one. Sato couldn't do anything but helplessly watch and hope for his own survival.

Is there something from Speculative Fiction that scares me? You bet.

Aliens.
I really want to believe that we humans are not alone in this universe. I hope that before I die, we will make extraterrestrial contact and that it will be a good thing.

But it might not be. That's why I enjoyed the Alien and Aliens movies so much. And to amplify the horror, we learn that the real villains in those encounters are the corporate minions from Weyland Industries, who conceal warnings of the alien threat when they sacrifice the crews of the Nostromo and the Sulaco, and the inhabitants of LV-426, to capture the exotic and dangerous specimens.

We've seen government and corporate malfeasance run amok. The convenient finger-pointing during the aftermath of the Horizon oil platform fire. The Bhopal India disaster. So I'm willing to buy into an arrogant corporate honcho more interested in profit than decency.

Which brings me to Prometheus--the Alien prequel.

Here we have the tycoon Peter Weyland, the man who will unwittingly pit human greed and hubris against the cunning of remorseless monsters from another planet.



And what to expect. June 2012.



So what scares you?

Labels: Alien, Prometheus, Tom Monteleone

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 2:45 PM  6 comments

  Halloween's chills Mario here:

First of all, last week at MileHiCon I had the pleasure of meeting Gardner Dozois, the award-winning editor and author of science fiction in short stories and novels. The Arapahoe Library District interviewed Dozois, and other presenters at the con, and you can listen to the podcasts for free on iTunes. Gardner's interview gives you a good idea of his wit and deep roots in the publishing biz. Of particular interest are his musings on the future of books and bookstores.

You'll also find chats with Jeanne and me, though I should caution you that she wasn't anywhere near as erudite and thoughtful as I was.

Now, on to Monsters.

It's Halloween and we love our creepy-crawlies. Most of our modern stories come from the movies. I'll admit that growing up, I wasn't a fan of supernatural monster movies or TV shows. Many of my friends, especially their sisters, were keen on Dark Shadows. Try as hard as I could, I couldn't get into Barnabas Collins. Or Dracula? Yawn. Zombies? Snooze.


Science fiction was a different story. Maybe because I lived in New Mexico and grew up on UFO sightings instead of ghost stories.

I was willing to overlook the cheesy special effects and suspend disbelief for movies like:






Them! (1954) What else could be the byproduct of nuclear weapons testing except for giant mutated ants? (The movie is better than the poster.)


Tarantula. (1955) A favorite because the monster is killed with a weapon that never fails--napalm! This movie includes one of the first big screen appearances of a young Clint Eastwood (as a pilot who drops said napalm.)




Back then, in the prehistoric days before the Internet and YouTube--in fact, even before cable-- catching monsters on TV was an iffy thing for me. There was one forgotten movie where a rocket ship lands on a Mars-like planet. The astronauts were stalked by a monster snake that burrowed through the sand and was killed with a bazooka (super cool idea to a pre-teen).

The monster movies that gave me the most chills were:

Alien. Even though the monster was played by a man in a suit (Bolaji Badejo), because of its convincing movements and details like the goo dripping from the jaws (genius!), this was at last a monster that really gave me the willies. The sequel Aliens ramped up the action and the terror.



The Thing (1982) The original movie (1951) was more of an intellectual exercise, but this remake didn't give you any chance to doubt the horror. The recent Norwegian prequel did a good job dovetailing into the story and is recommended for you monster fans.





Predator. A different kind of monster and one of the few cinema aliens smart enough to be worthy of the terror he brings.








Cape Fear. Okay, not your typical monster, but Robert De Niro played an ex-con villain who truly creeped me out.





The Day After. Again, no movie monsters but the terror came from thermonuclear war unleashed. The scene of the ICBMs shooting from their silos raised goose-bumps.



What about monster movies that disappointed? The blue ribbon for those turkeys must go to Starship Troopers. A great story premise ruined by bad casting, bad scripting, and really stupid, stupid soldiers. The movie got so bad that by the middle, my sons and I were cheering for the alien insects.

Labels: Alien, Clint Eastwood, Gardner Dozois, Preadator

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 1:36 PM  7 comments