Burn the land and boil the sea

Well, kids. Have watched the entire "Firefly series." And rewatched it. And re-re-rewatched it. I'm in awe. Joss Whedon has, single-handedly, set the standard. You wanna write SF for TV that isn't shit? This is what it looks like.

That being said, I should keep my mouth shut.

But I can't.

I'm working on an SF novel dealing with similar themes. From a vastly different direction, with vastly different implications. This is not to be presumptuous. I'm not on Whedon's level. Yet. But our paths cross.

I.e. ...

My fictional universe deals with an evil corporation that hatches a conspiracy to destroy the earth's ecosystem and force humanity to flee to another star system just to benefit their bottom line. My twist is ... THEY SUCCEED. They have an evil plot ... and it WORKS. Nobody stops them. The bad guys win. I thought I was pretty freaking original here.

Then...

I noticed something.

If the five year arc had gone as planned for the Firefly TV series, Whedon had obviously planned to expose the Reaver cover-up sometime in the third season. In the fourth and fifth season ...

And, gorramit, he's played his cards pretty close to his chest.

But ...

Mal was going to discover and disclose the Blue Sun conspiracy to destroy the earth's ecosystem and force humanity into space. Earth-That-Was didn't die a natural death. She was murdered. The ultimate fucking crime.

It's right there in the theme song. Whedon hid it in plain sight:

Burn the land and boil the sea.

I should shut up about it until I see print. But I can't. Like that peasant whispering "Midas has asses ears" to the reeds, I gotta say it.

The Blue Sun Corporation killed Earth-That-Was.

That nasty revelation. That ugly scandal dwarfing the Reavers/Miranda scandal.

That was the final rabbit ...

Whedon planned to pull out of his hat.

Go west, young man. Go 7 light years west.

To recap. Joss Whedon got me to watch a cowboys-in-space movie. Name of Serenity. And make me like it. I watched his cowboys-in-space TV series. Name of Firefly. Liked that, too. I even bought the damn thing. And I don't regret it.

Getting back to the original question: How the hell did he do it?

Let's start with the premise.

Assume humanity turns the earth into a dead fish tank. We have the tech to go to a nearby star system with shitloads of planets and moons, terraform those babies, and resettle there. So we do.

It's your pioneer situation. I.e.: it ain't fun.

Chances are, the pioneers would speak some garbled, rough-and-ready lingo.

M'luv, obaachan wen bungie jump dis ohio. Wat!?! Azfoo!

A mash-up of tongues a la Gaff's "Cityspeak" in Blade Runner.

Of course, nobody in the 21st century would understand a solitary slovo.

So, substituting some screenwriterish approximation of cowpie-kicking oldwesternese and Chinese stand for the future slang is the next best thing. That's what the man did.

OK, Joss. I'll buy it.

He gets away with it because -- making allowances for the fudge factor substituting comprehensible movie-type Old West talk for incomprehensible future space frontier jibberish -- his premise is believeable and self-consistent. Within that premise, he created gripping, universal human stories. The mofo's funny. Smart, too. You think he's going one way -- Pow! Zoom! He goes a different way. One surprise after another. And he can write dialog like a sumbitch.

All the clever writing in the world won't save you if your premise is shit.
The mother of all premises won't save you if your writing is shit.
His premise was golden. His writing was golden.
That's how he did it, OK.

But the rest of you.

For the love of God ... Joss Whedon is a freaking genius. Don't try to follow his example.

No more cowboys-in-space movies.

Please.

Rufus T. Firefly

OK. Have purchased aborted first season of Joss Whedon's Firefly after falling in love with Serenity a few weeks ago.

Just to be clear ...

When I saw the movie, I didn't know the movie was picking up where a dead TV series had left off. I hadn't watched the gorram series. I knew it was a cowboys in space show. Thus, I knew it would suck intergalatic donkey dong. In advance. So didn't watch it.

See, here's the deal.

I hate "cowboys in space" on a basic conceptual level.

Science fiction (SF) should be science fiction. I.e.: SOMETHING OTHER. Something outside human experience. Not the same everyday crap blown up against the hurricane fence of our everyday, shitty lives, only projected into space or other dimensions.

Which is basically all Lost in Space did ...

Department stores in space! Hippies in space! Juvenile delinquents in space! Pirates in space! Cowboys in space!

Fuck that shit. You want another shitty example of cowboys in space? Do we need another fucking Outland? The abomination of desolation itself?

Gee, High Noon was a great western movie. Here's an original fucking idea. Let's adapt it as a shitty science fiction movie! Yeah! Howzabout we set it in SPACE? With bounty hunters running around with six-shooters blasting holes in pressurized glass with an asteroid -- AND PURE VACUUM -- on the other side.

Outland Peter Hyams says "Behold, nothing up my sleeve. I will now pull a science fiction movie -- out of my ass!"

The audience gasps ...

It's High Noon in Space! Wow! How did he do that?

Eaagghhhhhhhhh!

There is nothing, nothing that could possibly EVER get me to watch a cowboys in space movie or TV show without projectile vomiting.

But Joss Whedon did. He created a fucking WESTERN IN SPACE. And I actually liked the bloody thing. How the hell did he do it?

I don't know you. So far, I've just seen the movie. I'll get back to you on that one.

After I watch the gorram TV series.

Tesla

Is it me, or does Nikola Tesla resemble Frank Zappa?

Gahan Wilson

Gahan Wilson is my favorite cartoonist of all time. He transcends the realms of SF and fantasy.

Rough as a Cobb

Giving credit where credit is due, Ron Cobb is my second favorite SF artist/cartoonist.

A few samples ...

I hope nobody's stolen them.

Missing in Prague

H.R. Giger is, to say it up front, is one of my favorite artists. Yesterday, some mofos in Prague stole two of his paintings that were the basis for Emerson Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery album cover.

Here's the direct quote from Giger's website:

Missing in Prague,
$10,000 REWARD


Work # 217 and #218, ELP I and II, 1973, the cover designs for 'Brain Salad Surgery' by Emerson Lake & Palmer.
A reward of $10,000 is being offered for information leading to the recovery of these two world famous HR Giger paintings. They were last seen during the artist's 2005 retrospective at the National Technical Museum of Prague. Each painting measures 34 x 34 cm. without the frame. Despite claims to the contraryby the organizers of the exhibition, PP Productions of Prague, the paintings were NOT returned to HR Giger after the closing of the show on August 31, 2005. It is believed they are still in the Czech Republic. A reward of $5,000 for each painting, plus an all expenses paid weekend at the HR Giger Museum, Chateau St. Germain, in Gruyeres, Switzerland will be awarded to the individual supplying the information leading to their successful recovery.

Contact Les Barany, HR Giger's agent at: les@HRGiger.com or publishing@wizard.ch

I mean. Goddamn people. I'm not 1/100th the artist he is but I treasure every sketch I've ever made. This must hurt like a stab wound to the heart.

Giger is a bridge. Through his character designs for Alien -- and, yeah, even his album cover art for ELP -- his disturbing visuals linked the cyberpunk writers of the 80s back to the New Wave writers of the 1960s. Giger was also a bridge to the perfervid visual dreamers of Metal Hurlant (Moebius and friends), repackaged as Heavy Metal in the states. I.e.: a handful of die-hard fans lived and died for that magazine. But everybody saw Alien. And the look and feel of all our dreams changed forever after we saw it.

I'm not just blowing smoke here, goddamnit. The sick yet sexy fusion of human and machine was exactly what Thomas Pynchon, Harlan Ellison were getting at. Sterling and Gibson picked up the ball and ran with it. The reason the ball was in play?

Giger showed you exactly what this perversely attractive future looked like.

In literary terms, Gibson and Sterling's skulls burst open with the viral, infested contagion of cyberpunk. Wordwise. But the image of what they were trying to say -- the fusion of humanity and machine -- had come before them in Giger's visual art. He supplied the illustrations and the visual concepts. They supplied the razor's edge fairy tales.

If Giger had never existed, cyberpunk as we know it wouldn't exist either.

It's a damn shame the gutless wonders who heisted his art don't exist.