Author Archives: Steven Howell Wilson

Who Are the Ugly Americans?

Posted on by
2

So today I want to talk about bigotry.

Google “North Korea 15” and the first article under “In the news” will be this one. I saw it last night on Facebook, and I saw a lot of people cheering its author on. They used phrases like “ugly American” in their cheers.

There’s a problem with this article, though.

Its author is a bigot.

The author claims that the government of North Korea, one of the most evil regimes on Earth, has taught us all a valuable lesson about white, male, cis-gendered privilege.

Continue reading →

A Visit to Monticello

Posted on by
1

More pictures than words this week. After the craziness of snows and floods and Farpoint over these past many weeks, we were so overwhelmed that we felt the need to just get away. We’d visited Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home, sometime before 2008, and had always intended to go back.

Monitcello from the South LawnOur first visit was a day trip, which was a bit hectic. Monticello is almost four hours away. This time, we decided to do two nights in nearby Charlottesville, giving us time to relax and reflect alongside visiting the home of one of the only two U.S. presidents whose name I can utter with affection, much less without being riddled by disturbing facial tics.

Continue reading →

Review – The Gospel of Loki

Posted on by
Reply

Cover of The Gospel of LokiI’m a huge fan of mythology, and have myself written some humorous, modern spins on classical myths. As far as stories go, I’ve always preferred the focused narrative of the Prose Edda, the source for what we know of Norse mythology, to the more dense accounts of Homer, or the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles, which recount the Greek myths. The Prose Edda is a story you can sit down and read. The Greek sources… well, not so much. I’ve watched Greek drama because my English teacher forced me to, or as a favor to a dear friend who still owes me big time. A ripping evening of entertainment these things are not, but I’ve never found a boring retelling of the Norse myths.

And, of course, the Marvel movies’ portrayal of Loki by the talented Tom Hiddleston has made the trickster god something more of a celebrity these last few years. A young, sympathetic Loki has even starred in several of his own Marvel comic book adventures, ably scripted by Keiron Gillen and Al Ewing. I really enjoyed those.

So when I found The Gospel of Loki on the shelf and read the first few pages, I was hooked. What could be more refreshing than to hear the tales of Odin and Thor from the perspective of Loki, the villain of so many of the myths? I remember thinking, “If she (Joanne Harris) can keep up this tone for the whole book, she’s got a winner.”

Continue reading →

Not the Golden Age

Posted on by
Reply

I recently watched a fun little documentary called “The Trek Not Taken,” about Star Trek spinoffs that were discussed, developed, in some cases written and even taken to the point where sets and costumes were built, but not released to an audience.I really enjoyed it, and thought it was nicely done. There was a point I took exception to, however. I bring it up here, not to criticize the producer of this video in any way, but more to examine how I, as an aging fan, tend to see things a little differently.

The makers of this video posited that, in fifty years of existence, Star Trek has gone through several “dark ages” and one “golden age.” These ages aligned with the times that a Trek TV series was or was not in production, so the first two dark ages were 1969-1973 and 1975-1987.

Interestingly, although four Trek films were released during that second interval, it’s the opinion of the documentarian that only televised Trek saves fans from a dark age.

Continue reading →

Exactly How Does Deadpool Change the Game?

Posted on by
1

This movie was billed as “a game-changer” by its star, Ryan Reynolds. The game is changing, he advances, because the recent spate of super-hero movies have been “serious and… gritty and dark,” and Deadpool is not.

deadpool_ver8Ummmm…

Continue reading →

No Claws, No Bamfs, No Shatterstar – Marvel Masterworks X-Men Volume 4

Posted on by
1

This volume includes issues 32 – 42 of the original run of X-Men, published between July, 1967 and March, 1968. This span marks a transition from the X-Men as they were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby—Students in matching yellow and black (or was it blue? It’s hard to tell in comics of that era) uniforms—to the four-color team made famous on down the line by Roy Thomas, Neal Adams and Tom Palmer.

X-Men 32 Cover showing original costumes

Continue reading →

Announcing Sacrifice Play – An Arbiter Chronicles Novel

Posted on by
Reply

Sacrifice Play - A Tale from the Arbiter Chronicles - Promotional Art

Sacrifice Play is the third novel in The Mark Time and Parsec Award-winning Arbiter Chronicles series, picking up where Unfriendly Persuasion left off.

Imagine a technology so dangerous that you could be killed just for knowing it exists…

Lieutenant Terrence Metcalfe and his team combat a starship captain so driven to complete his mission that he sets his ship to self-destruct and kill everyone on board.

Sacrifice Play – A Tale from the Arbiter Chronicles premieres at Shore Leave 38, and will be the eighth book released by Firebringer Press. It’s also one of two Firebringer Books slated to premiere at Shore Leave, alongside Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity.

Sacrifice Play will be released simultaneously in trade paperback and audiobook, and will be the focus of the first-ever crowdfunding effort by Prometheus Radio Theatre and Firebringer Press. Details will be announced soon. Stay tuned to this link!

Arbiter ship design by Ponch Fenwick.

Alan Dean Foster’s The Force Awakens – Part Two – The REAL Review this time

Posted on by
Reply

The Force Awakens Novelization CoverI explained last week why I’m so excited that Alan Dean Foster is back to novelize a new Star Wars film. The Force Awakens comes at a time when film novelizations aren’t as much of a thing as they used to be. In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, we weren’t a culture that went to see a movie multiple times, and there was no such thing as Blu-Ray, or its older brethren DVD, VHS or Beta. From the time a film went out of the theater, until it was bought for lots of money (and shown heavily edited) by a TV network, there was no way to enjoy the story and characters from your favorite film, other than by buying the novelization. Back in the day, even comedy films got novelizations. Now, it’s pretty much confined to SF films, and that’s pretty much because fans of those films tend to be both collectors and readers.

I still like novelizations because, if I really get into a film’s story, it’s a way to go back and enjoy that story in detail and at a slower pace. And a really good author can enrich a film as he adapts the screenplay. (Or she adapts it–Vonda N. McIntyre, D.C. Fontana and Joan D. Vinge have all written enjoyable film adaptations.)

Foster steps into the world of Star Wars as if it hadn’t been almost 40 years since his first novel in this universe was published. He fleshes out the new characters and makes them feel completely real. Under his hand, these are not merely retreads of Luke, Leia and Han; but meeting Rey, Fin and Poe does rekindle the feelings I had the first time I met Luke Skywalker in the pages of The Washington Star. (See last week’s entry for an explanation of that.)

Continue reading →

Review – Alan Dean Foster’s Star Wars – The Force Awakens – Part One – Why this book matters to me

Posted on by
3

Force Awakens novelization coverSo, before talking about The Force Awakens, let me tell you a little bit about my introduction to Star Wars. A lot of fans my age will tell you they saw it on opening day, or at the advance world premiere. They camped out in line, or they stood that morning for hours, or they snuck in the side door with their friend, who was the adopted child of a great, forgotten film director, because they couldn’t pay, because they were orphans who lived in train stations…

Wait, that’s another movie, isn’t it?

Anyway, I didn’t see the film under any of those circumstances. I saw it, oh, sometime after it premiered in regular release. It might have been the first Saturday. But my first exposure to Star Wars was not the film.

You see, in 1977, none of us knew the word “spoiler” other than as it referred to something that went on the front end of a car. Studios were not paranoid about plot leaks, and no special measures were being taken to keep audiences from finding out in advance what happened in a film. That’s because, until 1977, there had never been a film like Star Wars. Indeed, except for the James Bond series, and things like Tarzan, Bulldog Drummond or the Thin Man, there hadn’t really been–well, damn. There really had been a lot of movie series, hadn’t there? I just named a bunch. But those series were all pretty episodic. No film really left you hanging on the edge of your seat, waiting to find out if Tarzan would find a son, or if Drummond would get married, or if Asta would chew off William Powell’s mustache.

Continue reading →

Podcast Interview on DoddleTalks TECH – Fans and Copyright

Posted on by
Reply
The Doddle logo

http://news.doddleme.com/top-featured-4/doddletalks-tech-stephen-wilson-and-the-axanar-copyright-debate/

I sat down with James DeRuvo this week to talk about copyright issues, the Axanar lawsuit, and the general world of fan-produced works. James’s intro to the show:

“If you raise over $1.2 million through crowdfunding to create a professional-grade film for the Internet, you’re going to grab headlines. But, if you do it to make a fan film based on someone else’s copyright and trademark, you’re going to get sued. That’s the subject of this episode of doddleTALKS TECH. Join me and sci-fi author and podcaster Steven Wilson as we discuss the Star Trek: Axanar copyright debate.”

Listen here.