TV Series Book Adaptations

The new season of the current TV series ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL has just begun on PBS. When this remake was first announced, my initial reaction was, "Why?!" The original multi-season series, covering all James Herriot's fictionalized memoirs, was as nearly pefect as a book-to-film adaptation could possibly be. It struck me somewhat the way proposals to remake GONE WITH THE WIND have. In fact, there seems slightly more justification for the latter. A miniseries could include details from the novel that couldn't fit into even the epic-length 1939 movie, such as the subplots concerning Scarlett's sisters; also, Scarlett's two older children could appear, or at least her son, whose birth makes her ability to deliver Melanie's baby alone more plausible.

Well, we're enjoying the revamped ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL anyway, and it does have fresh elements that appeal to me. James is appropriately portrayed as distinctly Scottish, and we meet his parents. The housekeeper, Mrs. Hall, gets a larger role and a backstory, involving a strained relationship with her grown son. Mrs. Pumphrey, while still doting on Tricki-Woo, has more depth as a character, although at the cost of some of the humor in the original. On the other hand, I'm not altogether happy with this portrayal of Siegfried. Why make him a morose, rather antisocial widower instead of a cheerful bachelor? Mrs. Hall's situation injects plenty of family drama already. Moreover, at the beginning of the series this Siegfried strikes me as too harsh on James and especially Tristan. He has only reluctantly hired an assistant and initially seems to be looking for an excuse to get rid of James, another example of unnecessary drama with no basis in the books. More importantly, I feel the balance between animal-centered plotlines and human-centered material tilts too far toward the latter, compared to the books and the original series.

Still, the on-location Yorkshire setting is beautiful, the characters are engagingly acted, and the stories are heartwarming, so on balance I'd recommend it to fans of the books.

Maybe the creators of the show believed there would have been little point in producing another adaptation strictly faithful to the books when the earlier series did that so well it could hardly be improved upon. Similarly, after the superb Sherlock Holmes series starring Jeremy Brett in the 1980s and early 90s -- deliberately kept as true to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's works as feasible -- subsequent TV adaptations of the Great Detective have explored alternate interpretations of the character in new settings rather than trying to improve on Brett's definitive performance. I can grudgingly accept this rationale as justifying violation of my principle that the main purpose of a film adaptation of a book is to render the source text as faithfully as possible. Otherwise, why bother? -- just write your own story.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Grumbling About Adaptations

The second season of the current INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE series has begun. I'm ambivalent about this project. It has lots to admire. The series format allows far more delving into and expansion on the novel than the movie did. The TV version restores the subplot of Louis's religiously devout brother, replaced in the movie by a simplistic premise of "my wife died young, so I have nothing to live for." Presenting the interviewer, hardly more than a boy in the book, as an aging, sickly, cynical veteran journalist revisiting his youthful conversations with Louis to set the record straight impresses me as a stroke of genius. Among other things, this technique cleverly justifies discrepancies between the novel and the new adaptation.

I dislike two major changes made by the series, however: First and less critical, the aging-up of Claudia from a little girl to a 14-year-old. Of course, the metafictional reason is obvious. A child actress would outgrow the role too fast, whereas Claudia is supposed to be frozen at the age when she was turned. But making her old enough to pass for late teens or even early twenties (though we haven't seen her do the latter) loses both the horrifying and tragic dimensions of an adult mind potentially stuck for centuries in a child's body. The preview of next week's episode, though, does show her exploiting that frightfully perverse situation as an actress in the Theatre des Vampires. She wears a frilly baby-doll costume and introduces herself as a murderous vampire trapped in the shape of a little girl.

More importantly, I was disappointed by the time shift. Sure, early 20th-century New Orleans has exciting possibilities as a setting, but so does antebellum New Orleans from the original source. Although the producers claim they didn't think audiences would find the early 19th century interesting or relatable, I suspect them of being too lazy or stingy to recreate the period. What, TV audiences didn't embrace GAME OF THRONES (medieval-style fantasy world) or OUTLANDER (mid- to late-18th century Scotland and America)? Antebellum New Orleans had a thriving "free colored" population (as richly portrayed in Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January historical mystery series). I would have loved to see Louis as a free Black businessman in that era. A fantastic opportunity wasted, in my opinion.

I recently read FRANKLY, MY DEAR, a film scholar's in-depth analysis of GONE WITH THE WIND, mostly the movie but with cogent comparisons to the novel as well. As epic movies go, this one mostly sticks about as close to the source material as could reasonably be expected in the allotted running time. A miniseries version, which would allow inclusion of the subplots left out of the movie, would be highly desirable -- except that it's hard to imagine a convincing new Scarlett with Vivian Leigh lingering in the audience's mind's eye. Not to mention Rhett Butler. (I didn't mind the replacement actress in the sequel, SCARLETT, because she's older there than in most of the novel, so it's believable that she would have changed some. Rhett, though -- to me, Rhett IS Clark Gable.) The censoring of language, required by the film code of that era, is more amusing than annoying. It's not as if we don't know what they really mean, and the director doubtless had to make concessions to earn Rhett's final "damn." For instance, Prissy can't say she'd be skinned alive for entering a "ho house"; she has to say something like "Miz Watling's place." The prudishness rises to a level of absurdity, though, when Scarlett banishes Rhett from her bedroom. In the book, he tells her, "Keep your chaste bed." In the film it's, "Keep your sanctity." A mention of chastity was considered obscene? LOL.

The one major change I disapprove of is the omission of Scarlett's first child, the boy fathered by ill-fated Charles Hamilton. We don't miss her daughter by Frank Kennedy, who's little more than a cipher in the novel anyway. But Scarlett's first pregnancy helps to explain how she could get through Melanie's rough delivery with only the dubious help of Prissy, who notoriously doesn't know anything about birthin' babies. In the real 19th century, well-to-do women often provided aid to poor families during occasions of sickness or childbirth, as Scarlett's mother does in GONE WITH THE WIND. Unlike Marmee in LITTLE WOMEN, however, Ellen O'Hara apparently shelters her daughters from such activities. So Scarlett's first pregnancy serves a plot purpose in the book, and its omission in the movie leaves her relative competence in the Atlanta childbirth sequence unexplained.

While I reluctantly realize that fiction and film are two different media and no movie or TV adaptation can capture everything in its source material, for me the book is always primary. When viewing a film version of a book, I want as faithful a rendition of the original as possible. For example, ROSEMARY'S BABY is practically perfect in that respect, and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS comes close. The miniseries versions of WINDS OF WAR and WAR AND REMEMBRANCE (available on DVD) do an impressively good job, not surprising with a script written by the author of the novels, Herman Wouk. If the producers and directors of an adaptation don't really like the story as it comes to them, why do they bother making a movie or series of it? (Such as the travesty of STARSHIP TROOPERS, which lifts the title and superficial plot elements from Heinlein's novel to construct a script that leaves out the most important scenes of his book -- the flashbacks to the high-school ethics course, one fragment of which is included but twisted to convey the opposite of what's meant in the novel -- and directly contradicts its core message.) So the first thing I look for in a book-to-film transformation is respect for and maximum feasible fidelity to the author's story. After that, one hopes for all the other elements to be good, too.

Margaret L. Carter

Please explore love among the monsters at Carter's Crypt.

Karen Wiesner: Fiction Series So Big, They Cross Multimedia Platforms: The Witcher Series

Fiction Series So Big, They Cross Multimedia Platforms:

The Witcher Series, created by Andrzej Sapkowski

by Karen Wiesner

In this article series I'm calling "Fiction Series So Big, They Cross Multimedia Platforms", I plan to explore supernatural fiction series that sometimes had their beginnings as books but branched out into other types of mediums, like videogames, movies/TV series, board/card/role-playing games, and music. In each individual article that I hope will introduce entertainment connoisseurs to some incredible fiction or components of similar themed stories they might have otherwise missed, I'll discuss the origins of the series elements as well as my individual experience with the various types of media, which will be presented as a kind of review of the series. Let's start with a particular favorite of mine: Polish bestselling author Andrzej Sapkowski's The Witcher Series.

In Poland, The Witcher Series has a cult following and is so popular, a garden square in the author's hometown was renamed Witcher Square and a mural (the largest in Poland!) of the main character, Geralt, was painted on a local skyscraper. Americans didn't get translations of the book series for 17 years after the first story was published in Poland (and a couple of them still remain untranslated). The popularity of the videogames no doubt gave rise to interest in the books, which in turn incited the TV series that's become a favorite among fans of the supernatural.

Which Came First?

Sapkowski's The Witcher book series has everything a lover of the supernatural could want with the cool twist of a "genetically engineered" hero designed to hunt monsters of lore using melee combat, alchemical potions and decoctions that would be poison to anyone without the witcher mutagen, and some magical abilities called signs. Geralt of Rivia is one of several other Witchers. In the past, the word "witcher" translated from the Polish was "hexer" or "spellmaker". Witchers are a dying breed, to be sure, in this series, and they're frequently aided by sorceresses like Yennefer of Vengerberg and Triss Merigold (male witches also exist in this world). Bards are popular in this world as well, whether a help or hindrance, especially Geralt's best friend, Dandelion (or Jaskier in Polish, which is what he's called in the Netflix series to much confusion for those who have read the English translated books or played the games).

The series is set on an unnamed continent settled thousands of years earlier by elves who came from overseas. War broke out between the elves and the dwarves who dwelled on the continent. Other beings existing at that time are gnomes, halflings, and dryads. Humans arrived after this time (500 years before the events of the series) and dominated all other races. Humans war amongst themselves as well. Like the author, the main character despises politics and tries to remain neutral, not always successfully. After a magical event called the Conjunction of the Spheres, werewolves, vampires, and a whole host of mystical creatures (taken from existing lore as well as unique creatures invented by the author, or hybrids thereof) spilled onto the continent.

Previously a traveling fur salesman with a degree in economics and a lover of fantasy, the Polish author wrote a short story called "The Witcher" that he entered in a competition held by a Polish sci-fi and fantasy magazine his son liked. Though he waited a year for the results (taking the 3rd place prize), readers of the magazine spurred the author to write more short stories with their approval. Positive reception quickly led him to undertaking a fantasy saga complete with novels. The Witcher Series was published in Poland between 1990 and 2013 while the first wasn't released until 2007 in the USA. Spin-offs include stories (written by other writers) set in the world of The Witcher featuring its characters. Comic books of The Witcher were published from 1993 to 2014. 

Early screen adaptations were an overseas 2001 film and a 2002 TV series (titled The Hexer). Netflix adapted the series to television in 2019 along with an animated film in 2021 and a live-action prequel series is also in the works.

The first Witcher videogame was released in 2007, the second in 2011; and the third and final of the trilogy, in 2015. The games, particularly the latter, are bestsellers and have received countless awards. A remake of the first game is in the works, along with a second trilogy.

In 2001, a tabletop role-playing game based on the books was published. Another was released in 2018 based on the videogames. Board games, available in physical and digital forms, are currently available. Additionally, card games based on the videogames are in circulation.

Soundtracks for the videogames contain breathtakingly beautiful music. A rock opera and a musical based on the series were produced by a Russian symphonic rock band between 2009 and 2012.

A Review of the Various Medium Components Available

I became intrigued with the Witcher Series when I watched my son playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. I bought myself a copy, and my fascination with the series became absolute. I've played it countless times, many times a year, and the Blood and Wine DLC is some of the best bonus game material I've ever encountered. Every award this game won was well-deserved. This game is open-world and non-linear (you can do the quests in any order, for the most part), and much of the outcome is directly based on choices the player makes throughout, which is my favorite kind. As a gamer, I'm also a completionist, so I tend to do nearly every quest available (at least the first time), giving me a good two hundred hours of gameplay with this one. For the similarly obsessive type, I have an alphabetized, complete quest checklist uploaded here:  https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/5/5/23554234/witcher3questskarenwiesner.pdf.

After I played The Witcher 3 (and prior to playing The Witcher 2, which I'll talk about soon), I bought all Sapkowski's Witcher books and read them compulsively, more than once. They're phenomenal. Truly, some of the best books I've ever read. Below, you'll see the titles available in The Witcher Series (presented in chronological order--as they should be read--rather than in publication order):

1)    The Last Wish

2)    Sword of Destiny

3)    Season of Storms

4)    Blood of Elves

5)    The Time of Contempt

6)    Baptism of Fire

7)    The Tower of Swallows

8)    Lady of the Lake

9)    The Lady of the Lake

Next, I played The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. The gameplay is a bit trickier than 3, requiring the player to be prepared and anticipate monster attacks in advance with oils for the sword and potions designed to aid defense and attack (death otherwise, meaning multiple saves are necessary in case you die and need to reload to a previous save state). I'm so glad they changed this in the third game! Witcher 2 also has the unfortunate annoyance of forcing the player to (somehow) know the exact order each quest must be played in order to avoid missing out on anything. I designed my own "ideal order of quests" checklist to ensure I don't miss anything important in the 25 hours plus of gameplay this installment boasts. Gamer completionists can find my fairly thorough console version walkthrough here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/uploads/2/3/5/5/23554234/witcher2walkthroughkarenwiesner.pdf.

I enjoy this game immensely, though not quite as much as The Witcher 3, in part because it's a hybrid between a linear and a non-linear game. You're forced to complete certain of the quests (i.e., main quests) at a certain time, usually advancing you to another location in the game. Once those major quests are completed in the order they're required, you can settle in for a bit and complete location questions in a more non-linear manner. Again, the player's ongoing decisions affect the outcome of the storyline.

I do own the videogame The Witcher 1 on Steam and computer disk. Though it was supposed to be released on console back in the day, it ended up available only on PC. I find it much harder to play anything but point and click games, like Nancy Drew, on PC. A complicated combat game like The Witcher works so much better, in my opinion, using a game controller instead of a keyboard. In any case, I'm hopeful I will get to play the remake of The Witcher 1 in the coming years, if the promise of it comes to fruition--and that it's available on PC and consoles at the time of release.

Another media component of the videogames for this series are game soundtracks. I fell in love with the incredible soundtracks from each of the games, particularly the one for The Witcher 2. The gorgeous compositions created for the games have carried me through endless hours of writing sessions. Check them out here:

The Witcher 1 Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFIbVqHOOIU

The Witcher 2 Soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=witcher+2+soundtrack

The Witcher 3 Soundtrack:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=witcher+3+soundtrack

As if all this wasn't enough to embrace concerning a series with so many multimedia components, I love the mini-games that are played within each of the videogames. Specifically, Gwent in The Witcher 3 is a favorite card game of mine. I own all the physical decks along with an authentic game mat. I also enjoy Kings Dice from The Witcher 2. I've heard that in The Witcher 1, the player has the option of collecting "naughty" playing cards that are somehow related to Geralt's many sexual conquests. He must have a huge deck, if it's based on that, lol. This is one amorous hero, and the ladies (regardless of their race) love him.

I was thrilled when I heard about the Netflix adaptation of The Witcher Series, but I've found the results mixed, thus far. First, I strongly question the choices for some of the actors in the show, though they're growing on me, despite my qualms, a bit more after two seasons. Also, the first season whipsaws through time shifts so even a veteran reader of the books could easily become confused. The second season changes the series radically from the books with a new vision. I do admit, though, if I didn't consider the books canon, I might like the series more than I currently do. Those unhindered by the books will probably love the TV series. 

Whether you're a supernatural book reader, gamer, lover of TV and movies and music, I highly recommend The Witcher Series in all its multimedia facets. They're worth whatever time and monetary investments made on their behalf.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150+ titles and 16 series. Visit her here:

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Books to Films (Again)

The premiere of the AMC miniseries of Anne Rice's INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE set me thinking, again, about film adaptations of print fiction. Is it an unpardonable sin if a movie or TV series doesn't attempt to follow its book source as closely as possible (taking into account the different media and the limitations of the dramatic art as opposed to print fiction)? When I watch a movie or series based on a novel, I'm looking for the visual equivalent of the book. I want to see a faithful rendition of the story I enjoyed reading. With this new vampire series, I hoped for a more accurate translation of the novel to the screen than the original movie offered. Well, we don't get that. Louis's story in Rice's book begins in the late 18th century, but in 1910 in the TV series. Moreover, Louis becomes a mixed-race (therefore, by law black) owner of several brothels in the Storyville district of New Orleans. The declining fortunes of his well-to-do family depend on his business to prop them up. The retold story does retain Louis's mentally and physically fragile, fanatically religious brother, whose death drives Louis to accept Lestat's "dark gift." So far, the setting of early 20th-century New Orleans has an undeniable fascination, and the atmosphere is darkly enthralling, with a tinge of twisted eroticism. On its own terms, this series looks like a compelling tale of dark fantasy. But it diverges significantly from Rice's narrative.

The fidelity of adaptations to their sources ranges from almost complete to appropriating a title and little else. THE LAWNMOWER MAN exemplifies the latter, having nothing in common with the Stephen King short story it's ostensibly based on other than including a lawn mower. On the opposite end of the spectrum, ROSEMARY'S BABY follows its original as faithfully as can be expected in the time span of a feature film, and GONE WITH THE WIND comes almost as close as feasible without turning it into a miniseries. The typical movie version of a book, though, has to select elements from the original to translate the highlights of the story to the screen, since there wouldn't be time to incorporate every scene and dialogue passage. That's why the ideal film medium for a full-length novel is a miniseries, not a cinematic feature. Then there are movies that hijack title, characters, and basic plot points, then drive the resulting product off into the tall weeds with little or no respect for the plundered original. STARSHIP TROOPERS comes to mind.

It's often pointed out, quite reasonably, that because print and film are two different media, most print narratives can't be translated to film intact. Movies even have advantages over books in some respects such as showing scenes in a few minutes that would take many paragraphs to describe on the page. Physical action, particularly, works better in a visual medium. On the other hand, books have the advantage when it comes to conveying what goes on in the minds of characters. Some novels that have been assumed unfilmable, however, have been made into successful movies. For instance, GERALD'S GAME, the Stephen King work focusing almost entirely on a solitary woman handcuffed to a bed, became a very effective streaming program.

Although I strongly prefer an adaptation that maintains complete fidelity to its source, or nearly so as possible, I can enjoy almost anything that's well made and shows sincere respect for the original.

Carter's Crypt

The Value of Friendship

Here's a guest post in LOCUS by Mike Chen, discussing the undervaluation of friendship in contemporary culture, particularly in fiction:

Like a Friend

He praises friendship as "one of the cornerstones of our lives," especially in the past year of unprecedented isolation, and mourns the frequent neglect of its importance. As he puts it, in stories friendship is "often presented as a lower-tier relationship, something given to a secondary character to help the main character achieve their goal of family connections or romance." He deplores this attitude and offers examples of a few strong friendships in popular media, expressing the wish that such fictional relationships were more common. He also celebrates friendship as a relationship of choice, different in that way from familial bonds and the swept-away emotions of erotic love. The concept of friendship and its portrayal in storytelling "should show the power of choice over the given defaults of blood family, the power of steadiness over the intensity of romance, the power of consistency over flings that come and go."

This essay reminds me of the friendship chapter in C. S. Lewis's THE FOUR LOVES. Lewis would agree with that remark about choice. He begins by stating that any discussion of friendship in modern times must start with a "rehabilitation," because nowadays most people don't think of it as a love equal to affection or eros (romantic attraction), or even a love at all. For Lewis, friendship (as opposed to affection, such as parent-child or other family ties or any attachment that simply grows out of long, comfortable association) arises from mutual interests and deeply shared values. Sometimes it's situational, as between classmates who grow close by bonding over schoolwork, sports, or hobbies, and sometimes it lasts a lifetime regardless of outward circumstances. Lewis had a lifelong friend of that type in a boyhood neighbor with whom he maintained ties until death severed them.

Chen's article discusses whether men and women can be true friends without romance. Lewis takes the rather traditional view that, unless one or both of the friends is/are otherwise committed, male-female friendship is likely to develop into eros. His own life took that direction after he united with one of his best friends, Joy Davidman Gresham, in a civil marriage-in-name-only to allow her and her sons to remain in England legally. He later fell deeply and passionately in love with her. "Friends to lovers" is a favorite trope in contemporary romance novels, understandably, since a solid friendship makes a firm foundation for a lasting union.

In my life, friendship has tended to be situational. I've had church friends, writing friends, convention-attending friends, and, when I worked at a day job, office friends, and during my husband's military career, Navy friends. For the most part, I didn't keep up with the latter two types (aside from occasional Christmas cards) after the respective situations changed. If challenged by Mike Chen, I would have to admit that in my own fiction—mostly paranormal romance in recent years—friends usually play the role of secondary characters there to act as confidants for the protagonists (as Chen mentions in his essay). As for books and other media, on THE X-FILES Mulder and Scully remained loyal friends for many years, but eventually they became lovers; how much that shift was driven by pressure from fans, I don't know. One of the most memorable friendships in popular culture, of course, is the trio of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. Similar non-romantic friendships developed on STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION. Currently, we can find friendship separate from romance in ensemble-cast TV shows such as NCIS, where the core investigative team displays strong bonds among its members. As for novels, in the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, Jamie and Claire have a devoted friend in Lord John Grey, who was originally hopelessly in love with Jamie but now accepts the platonic friendship with no indication that he regards it as second-best.

So celebrations of friendship are not quite so rare in modern storytelling as Chen pessimistically suggests.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes Part 1 - Star Trek Fan Fiction

Worldbuilding For Multiple Alternate Universes

Part 1

Star Trek Fan Fiction 

In August 2020, the creator of the Sahaj Series of Star Trek fan novels asked if she could have a scene where Sahaj tours across universes, comes to the Kraith alternate universe, and wants to Affirm the Continuity with his father, Spock, but the Kraith Spock.

I said, YES!

The Affirmation of the Continuity is a ceremony I invented for my Kraith Vulcans while writing my Kraith Star Trek fanfic series.

In the early 1970's I wrote STAR TREK LIVES!

at the same time I was writing Kraith stories (and managing the gaggle of Kraith Creators who wanted to write in my alternate-Star Trek Universe),

http://www.simegen.com/fandom/startrek/kraith/





 and on alternating days I was also writing my Sime~Gen Universe novels.

I sold my first story, the first Sime~Gen story professionally published, in 1968 for the January 1969 issue of Worlds of If Magazine (edited by Fred Pohl, who later bought STAR TREK LIVES! when he became editor at Bantam Books).

That is OPERATION HIGH TIME - set at the threshold of the Sime~Gen Space Age.  You can find the issue here:
https://archive.org/details/1969-01_IF

The Kraith Universe and the Sime~Gen Universe have both attracted writers who contributed their own ideas to the Universe that I built, but both have also inspired writers to create ALTERNATE universes to mine, just as Star Trek inspired people to create alternate universes to aired-Trek's universe.

Sime~Gen is my own, original creation, but Kraith is built from aired-Star Trek and Kraith is an alternate Star Trek universe that has spawned alternate universes.

Later, I also contributed stories to other established novel-universes by famous authors I grew up being inspired by, Andre Norton and Marion Zimmer Bradley when they did anthologies of other writers creating in their universes, just as we are now doing anthologies of Sime~Gen stories by many other writers.

Writing in other people's universes, is complicated and all-absorbing. Writing in their Universe with the intention of adhering entirely to canon as defined by that original author is just like Worldbuilding From Reality -- there are things you have to learn and then account for if you violate them.

Here's the index to Worldbuilding From Reality:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/05/index-to-worldbuilding-from-reality.html

Your job, as a writer of fiction, is to create a whole "Reality" where it seems inevitable, and self-evident, that "LOVE CONQUERS ALL" and the HEA are inevitable, real, tangible, unavoidable -- but there are obstacles to overcome.

That is a "meme" floating around in various versions of conspiracy theory commentary, which I found on Facebook having been posted by Donald Brinegar ( https://www.facebook.com/dlbrinegar ) who apparently searched for the earliest form of this image.

As I see it, the point isn't what image you see among the dots on the final panel, but rather the point is that the human brain FILLS IN LINES that are not there.

Presumably, imagination is a survival trait.

If imagination is a survival trait, imbibing fiction in whatever medium is handy (from Shaman tales to  Streaming TV) is the way to train the imagination to see the underlying patterns behind the data-dots.

You imagine correctly, you survive longer than if you imagine incorrectly. 

OTH erring on the side of "here be monster" is likely a survival edge. 

We all imagine. Train your imagination - train your kids' imagination - and get closer to surviving real threats. It doesn't take a "conspiracy" to survive.  It only takes individuals with well trained, honed, imagination, and the ability to know WHEN imagination is engaged, and when it's just data, information, and maybe knowledge.

The panel labeled "Data" is a good representation of the "reality" your reader lives in.

This is the reality you share with your reader, and it is the bedrock of all the alternate universes (or imagined Time-Travel settings, such as ancient Scotland) you create for your Characters to visit.

Readers who've grown up on fanfic, online or in 'zines, will have trained their imagination to take their perception of the aired-TV (or novel) Universe as "Data" -- and ride with you as you re-transform all their data into "Information."

Maybe after a few Seasons, or novels, you show them "knowledge" about their favorite Characters that they never guessed existed.

From watching and analyzing the Source Material (Reality, a TV show, a Novel Series), your readers have a set of lines connecting their colored-in Information-dots that is entirely their own.  Finding a writer who fills in the connecting lines the same way is a thrill.

Some readers, especially fans of science fiction, will be even more thrilled to find a writer who connects the dots in a different way than they do - they're open to a good alternate universe.

Using the tricks of the writing trade, you can lure them into a story and convince them of the solid, plausible reality of the universe with which your Characters must cope.

If you "plant" a foreshadowing dot in the first Episode, or novel, in your series, then you color in the texture of each dot in subsequent episodes, then you connect the dots with lines just the way they would, (show don't tell is the craft skill for doing lines), then you can trigger "INSIGHT" -- the connections among apparently unconnected data-dots.

Somewhere between book 20 and maybe 25, the bits of insight, the resonances, become "WISDOM " -- the understanding of your complex bundle of universes.

The reader lives in one universe, you live in another, but they have patterns in common.  Show don't tell, illustrate, use symbols.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2018/02/index-to-theme-symbolism-integration.html

And use unique vocabulary, to hint at resonances among your Characters' universes.  Show how the vastly different settings and cultures construct imaginary lattice works of lines between the data-dots - but we all live among the same data-dots.

Fanfic uses a fictional-reality (TV, film, books) as if it were "reality" while your original Science Fiction Romance uses the reader's reality.

To create your Aliens - you use the same data-dots as your reader but color and connect them differently to make information.

Show the reader that even with all the additional decorative color and lines, the Alien civilization, culture, and peoples have something in common with humans.  Science fiction writers generally rely on physics and math -- assuming Aliens have to cope with the same laws of physics that we do.

That might not be entirely true in some of your Alternate Universes or historical realities.  The physics might be the same (or a bit altered with a different speed-of-light, for example), but the interpretation might be different, and there might be concrete evidence to support your Aliens' interpretation.  Humans who ignore the Aliens' "Wisdom" about their world will not survive long.

So square the human and Alien off against each other, and watch them argue about what "THEORY" picture is "real" when all the dots are connected.

Flip your characters between Universes, where the rules differ, then flip them into a Universe neither knows.  See if they team up to survive, or fight to the death and create a Legend for that unknown universe.

What is true? What is real?  What "all" might Love not conquer?  Would the lovers have to reincarnate and have another go at it if they failed to summon the power of Love?

As writers, we think about point of view.

Do you need knowledge before you can have insight or wisdom?  Or can you start with Wisdom and back-figure to knowledge?

Can an Alien brain avoid imagining a recognizable image superimposed on data-dots like the Unicorn here?

Do different people have to draw different parts of the Unicorn, and argue over where the lines go?  Argue over each others' imaginary lines?

Or does each person sketch their own reality out of the scattered bits of data that they perceive around them?  And not everyone sees all the data that's there.  How much of what's there do you let the reader see?  How much do you demand the reader just imagine on their own?

There are numerous neurological studies showing how the human brain fills in the gaps in personal reality with imaginary "lines" that, after a while, become solid truth, an inescapable reality, common knowledge.  This tendency is so well known, it is used when comparing "Eye Witness Accounts" of an Event.  No two people will report it the same way.

Today the popular example is phone videos of people doing (or not-doing) things -- and the added complexity of what is termed "deep fakes" (videos cleverly altered to make it seem some celebrity said something they actually never said).  It isn't just editing with cut-and-paste tools, but actual altering of the digital recording.

Your reader's "Reality" has become malleable and a matter of opinion.

Given the familiarity of imposing imaginary order on natural chaos as the human brain is hardwired to do, how difficult can it be for you to convince a reader that your bundle of alternate universes are plausible?

Maybe your Aliens have a more accurate interpretation of our reality than we do?  Or maybe they can change it at will?  How can Love conquer that?

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Catastrophes and Fiction Writing

The annual ChessieCon was held virtually this past weekend. One session explored how catastrophic events influence literature. The panelists mentioned works of fiction inspired by real-life disasters, whether sudden and traumatic or longer-term "slow catastrophes," and discussed the ramifications of choosing to compose stories about such events. Authors may write about characters caught up in the real-world event itself, a science-fiction scenario that transforms the actual situation into speculative terms, or a near-future society that reflects the ongoing effects of the catastrophe.

They considered some advantages and disadvantages of making art out of contemporary catastrophes. Pro: It's a way to form a deep emotional connection with the audience. A story that mirrors the trauma and anxieties of the present time can feel immediate and believable. Moreover, SF and fantasy can, of course, offer a fresh perspective on events that may seem overwhelming if faced straight-on. Con: Authors may find themselves writing the same kinds of stories as everybody else inspired by the same event. A story about a pandemic, for instance, may get lost among hundreds flooding the market at the same time. Another potential pitfall is the accusation of exploiting a grave crisis for personal gain by writing fiction about it.

Literature, of course, has always reflected the catastrophes and traumas of its time. C. S. Lewis, in an essay about the impact of the King James Bible on English literature, points out the difference between influences and sources. One can hardly understand many of the great English classics without knowing the biblical stories they mine for sources. The influence of biblical prose on the style of later writers, on the other hand, isn't nearly so widespread, if only because "Bible language" stands out so obviously. Likewise, disasters, whether natural or human-caused, supply fiction with endless sources of material. "Influence," as I conceive it, refers to a more subtle, indirect effect that pervades the cultural atmosphere even when not explicitly mentioned. Many early twentieth-century authors were influenced by World War I in both senses of the term, whether they wrote war fiction or not. Hemingway wrote war stories, but he also wrote about characters living with the social and psychological aftereffects of the war. Those effects show up in genres where you might not expect them, such as Lord Peter Wimsey's posttraumatic stress (as we'd call it now) in Dorothy Sayers's detective novels. The recent Great War shadows the background of the literature of the period.

In the 1950s and 60s, many science fiction works explored nuclear war and its aftermath, such as ALAS BABYLON, ON THE BEACH, and Heinlein's FARNHAM'S FREEHOLD. A bit later, pollution became a dominant theme. For instance, I own an old paperback about which I've forgotten everything except the title, THE SEA IS BOILING HOT. Nowadays, numerous authors confront the potential short-term and long-term effects of climate change. After the 9-11 attacks, most TV series continued their story arcs (if any) in an alternate present wherein the attacks were never mentioned. A few, though, incorporated the aftereffects of the catastrophe into their plotlines, such as NCIS and a series about firefighters and police officers in New York City. NCIS and its spinoffs continue to inhabit a world where terrorism remains an ever-present concern. As far as "influence" is concerned, most fiction set in the present day or near future takes for granted an environment of security checks at airports and our country's perpetual involvement in anti-terrorism campaigns.

A striking example of the long-term cultural influence of a "slow catastrophe" appears in "Thoughts and Prayers," by Ken Liu, reprinted in THE BEST AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2020, edited by Diana Gabaldon. This story combines our society's free-floating anxiety about mass murder rampages with the total devastation of privacy made possible by the internet, in the harrowing experience of a family whose teenage daughter has been killed in a school shooting. Aside from some near-future computer technology that doesn't yet exist but can easily be imagined as realistic, there's nothing in this story that couldn't happen right now.

One downside (in my opinion) of including acute catastrophic current events in fiction wasn't mentioned by the panel. If a writer incorporates such material into a story while the disaster is either ongoing or fresh in memory, it almost has to dominate the work. That's fine if the story is "about" the crisis itself or the protagonist's confrontation with an aspect of it. What if you're writing about some other dimension of a character's life with the disaster looming in the background, though? After the disaster recedes from current events into recent history, the story becomes dated. That's why I haven't mentioned the pandemic or its societal effects in my recent fiction. The three pieces I've had published last year and this year, as well as the novella I'm finishing at the moment, fall into the light paranormal romance subgenre. Allusion to the present crisis would throw those stories completely off balance. Also, it would "date" them in a way I don't want. Assuming our current plight won't last forever, I chose to set my stories in an alternate present where the pandemic doesn't exist, so that if anyone happens to read them (let's say) two years from now, they'll still feel contemporary.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reviews 52 Life and Limb by Jennifer Roberson

Reviews 52

Life and Limb

by

Jennifer Roberson 

Previous reviews have not been indexed.

But I have discussed Jennifer Roberson's previous work. She is one of my favorite writers.

I discussed Roberson's Sword-Dancer Saga in the first book review post I did for this blog.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2013/10/reviews-1-by-jacqueline-lichtenberg.html

The Tiger and Del, Sword Dancer series went to 7 books, and I loved every one of them.

https://amazon.com/dp/B074CJYQLN





Roberson's Cheysuli Series - 8 Books - is very much worth your while.
https://amazon.com/dp/B078MRRYYV

And now we come to a new series, also Fantasy, but with a contemporary setting.  Call it modern Urban Fantasy.

https://www.amazon.com/Life-Limb-Blood-Bone-Book-ebook/dp/B07NV3DFF1/


You may remember the 15 Season TV Series, Supernatural, about two brothers who fight for right in a world of demons, possessions, Angels (fallen or maybe otherwise).  They travel the modern world saving the day from threats most people don't know exist.

It's a marvelous TV Series, but seemed to me to be flawed, possibly because there was more Horror Genre than Romance - more relationships that go nowhere than Happily Ever After trajectories.

I discussed the TV show twice:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/04/puzzle-of-romance.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/05/urban-fantasy-job-hunting.html

And on this blog, Margaret Carter also discussed the show:

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2016/11/incarnations-of-lucifer.html

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/11/worlds-with-depth.html

We talk about this paradigm of "reality" because it is a fascinating backdrop for Romance, one that is not sufficiently explored.

Now, Jennifer Roberson (that is RoBERson -- not Robson) has brought her Relationship plotting talents to explore this basic concept.

In her afterword, she points out that her first impulse was to create the two lead characters as male and female and play the game as she has in previous series.  But she decided on two brothers to lead this series, brothers who are not physically related but are spiritually related in a way they (at first) don't exactly understand.

They are tutored by a man who seems to be an Angel (actual sort, with wings) working on Earth to gather forces to oppose Evil at an Armageddon.

This man tries to explain their nature to them as he trains them to conquer the evil forces, and supernatural creatures, demons that possess people.

This kind of Fantasy worldbuilding is Jennifer Roberson's strongest talent, and it shows in the first book in this new series, the Blood and Bone series.

This opening chapter focuses on introducing the two young men (who don't like each other - one who just got out of Prison because he killed someone, and the other who is a college educated Cowboy hick), detailing some of the tutorial assignments they are given, so there is a lot of exposition to absorb.  I liked them both.

The thing is, in this introductory novel, the exposition disguised as dialogue or even action, is not annoying.  The story unfolds at a good, solid pace, and the various oddball characters introduced show vast potential for Relationship.

I feel this Roberson series would have made a much better TV Series than Supernatural.

LIFE AND LIMB is not a "copy" of the TV Series in any way.

The world Roberson's characters inhabit is entirely different.  But if you study the 15 seasons of SUPERNATURAL along with this new Roberson series, do a deep contrast/compare analysis, you could learn why I keep harping on the worldbuilding from theme techniques.

The special difference between the TV Series, Supernatural, and the novel series, Blood and Bone, is theme -- and that difference generates the Characters, Plot, and Story that are so different.

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

Adaptation Weirdness

Has anyone else here watched the new DRACULA miniseries streaming on Netflix? This post includes spoilers on the assumption that by now anyone interested in the show will have either seen it or read reviews. Like most DRACULA adaptations, the program begins with a more-or-less (sometimes less) faithful rendition of Jonathan Harker's stay at Castle Dracula, but with the clever addition of framing scenes in which Jonathan narrates his ordeal to a nun in the nursing convent where he was taken after his escape from the castle. After the Castle Dracula sequences, like many other film treatments, the story, shall we say, veers. Sister Agatha reveals herself as Agatha Van Helsing, a Dutch nun residing at the Hungarian convent and a scholar of superstitions such as vampirism. Jonathan himself has been more radically changed by his experience than his book counterpart. The final scenes of the episode portray Dracula's attack on the convent while Sister Agatha strives to hold him at bay. The second installment of the three follows the voyage of the doomed ship Demeter to England. Unlike in the novel, where the Demeter is a cargo ship and Dracula remains hidden except from his victims, in this program the Demeter is a passenger vessel on which the Count travels openly. This change allows fascinating interactions between Dracula and his mostly unsuspecting fellow passengers. I admire the way this series restores the visceral horror of Dracula as a powerful, demonic vampire. (And I speak as a devoted fan of "good guy vampires" and a champion of Fred Saberhagen's THE DRACULA TAPE, with the Count as narrator and hero, as one of the best vampire novels ever published.) It's also interesting that Dracula can absorb memories and skills from the victims whose blood he drinks, a gift he uses with planning and discretion. The final episode, however, departs completely from the novel to skip from 1897 to the present. Count Dracula comes ashore at Whitby having remained dormant underwater, after the wreck of the Demeter, for 123 years. He's met by an armed security force led by the modern Dr. Van Helsing, a woman scientist who heads the Jonathan Harker Foundation for study of arcane medical conditions, including vampirism. I enjoyed the "fish out of water" dimension of Dracula's adjustment to the twenty-first century, while he remains both charismatic and terrifying. Aside from several familiar characters with the same names and similar narrative functions as those in Stoker's original, though, this third episode has no connection to the novel and, as some reviewers have noted, might as well be an entirely different story.

Since I'm more familiar with DRACULA than any other novel, I take intense interest in the various, often strange ways it has been filmed. Granted, the original is a long, complicated story that only a miniseries, not a standard-length feature film, could hope to render with any degree of fidelity. The 1977 BBC miniseries starring Louis Jourdan comes closest. Aside from combining Quincey Morris and Arthur Holmwood into one character and making Mina and Lucy sisters (a change I like because it reduces the element of wild coincidence in Dracula's first English victim just happening to be a friend of his solicitor's fiancee), this version follows the novel pretty faithfully. The classic Bela Lugosi movie, however, is derived not from the novel but from the stage play (in which Lugosi also starred), which takes place entirely in England. The Lugosi film restores the opening scenes set in Transylvania but otherwise limits itself to the general outline of the play. This version, oddly, has Renfield rather than Jonathan Harker traveling to Transylvania to finalize the Count's real estate purchase.

One of my favorite movies, although it follows the play and the Lugosi version more than the book, is the 1979 film starring Frank Langella, mainly because Langella makes such an alluring, sensual Dracula. A major weirdness of this adaptation comprises the reversal of names between Lucy and Mina. "Lucy," for all practical purposes, is actually Mina. The Lucy character, now called Mina, has also become the daughter of Van Helsing. A TV adaptation that starts by following the novel but eventually veers, the 1973 Dan Curtis production starring Jack Palance (in my opinion, one of the least suitable Draculas ever cast), draws upon the history of Vlad the Impaler, a cinematic innovation at that time. In addition, it introduces the trope of Dracula's obsession with a woman whom he considers the reincarnation of his wife, in this case Lucy. Coppola's not quite accurately titled BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA (1992) adopts this motif, with Mina as Dracula's long-lost beloved, an element detested by many fans. This one also identifies the Count with the historical Impaler. Otherwise, this production does fulfill its claim to incorporate all the major characters and the general plotline of the novel, including the heroes' pursuit of the Count back to his Transylvanian lair.

The 2013 DRACULA TV series, while set in England in the 1890s and featuring several characters from the novel, otherwise strays so far from the original that I gave up on it after a couple of episodes. In this re-imagining, Count Dracula poses as an American entrepreneur who invests in scientific and technological innovation. His true agenda, however, is revenge on his nemesis, the Order of the Dragon—??!!—the medieval knightly order of which the real-life Vlad Dracula and his father were proud members. This character impressed me as so unlike any Dracula I could recognize that I quickly lost interest in him.

How far can a film adaptation of a book depart from its source before it becomes effectively a different story? Mostly, I have a low tolerance for movies and TV programs that claim to translate books to films but have little resemblance to their alleged originals. Other readers and viewers may happily accept more radical transformations.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Dark Matter TV Series

Dark Matter

TV Series

Just a quick heads-up about an old bit of entertainment making the streaming rounds.

Before they disappear it forever, do watch some of the episodes of Dark Matter.

Just a quick Google tells you:

Dark Matter (TV series) - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Matter_(TV_series)
Dark Matter is a Canadian science fiction series created by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, based on their comic book of the same name and developed by ...
No. of seasons‎: ‎3 Original release‎: ‎June 12, 2015 – August 25, 2017
No. of episodes‎: ‎39 (‎list of episodes‎) Based on‎: ‎Dark Matter series of comics

Yes, and the TV Series availability on various delivery systems, (Netflix, iTunes, Amazon Prime, YouTube etc. ) tells you more than you want to know about it.  They are still charging money for this series, so it should be around a while m
ore.  When it becomes free, it will be about to disappear. 

It is made from a comic, and the TV Series is mostly by the same people who created the Comic.  As a result, the fabrication is what I would term "thin" -- or screenwriters call "on the nose."

The Characters are formulated from a formula  -- not a hint of the USA channel's "Characters Welcome" quirkiness.  The quirks that are included (an android, a woman subconsciously imprinted with everyone else's missing memories, a tough guy, a martial arts guy, a boss woman) are formulaic.

So why should you look into it?  Because it seems to be aimed at early-teen or pre-teen boys -- the classic audience for science fiction.  If you are writing Science Fiction Romance, you have to shift the target audience, or broaden it.

The lack of dimensionality and nuance is what sells to that pre-teen boy audience.

But this TV series went 3 seasons and was cancelled.  Yes, it had fans, but not enough for the actually cheap production to cover costs.

Writers looking to create stories for an adult audience that is at least 50% female (if not more) can learn a lot about how to do that by studying this TV Series.

The signature of a genre resides in what must be LEFT OUT, much more than it does in what must be INCLUDED.

Consider last week's post on Theme-Conflict Integration and what that has to do with Character and Genre.

https://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2019/03/theme-conflict-integration-part-6.html

Dark Matter has one, tentative, embarrassing kiss in the first 3 episodes.  It has males and females confined in a space ship.  All the characters are portrayed as amnesiacs who were wanted for horrible crimes.

They have innate, trained skills -- but no existing Relationships among them.

Does Relationship depend on memory?

Is Character a function of memory? 

Is morality a function of memory? 

How important is memory?

Amnesia/Romance novels are not usually my favorite fare, but I've read a lot that were deep, revealing, thought-provoking and even funny and heart-warming.

Dark Matter is not a Romance in any sense.  It is way too thin for that. 

Watch some of it -- if not all -- and consider how to fundamentally change the story into a Romance.  You can use a similar plot (though it would morph if you shift the story-line), and tell the Love Conquers All story.

What has to be conquered?  A lifetime as a crook, mercenary, killer, kidnapper, felon.  How do you conquer that?  Amnesia wipes it out?  Or is there Soul level karma to be addressed first?

Can Love ignite and burn away sin? 

Does Love really Conquer All?

How can there ever be an ever-after, never mind a Happily Ever After? 

Dark Matter, as a TV Series, is what screenwriters (SAVE THE CAT!) call a "Bottle Show" (the setting is inside the bottle of the ship), and a "Monster In The House" story line, as the crew doesn't know if whoever swiped their memories is still onboard.

To me, the scripts seem like a class writing exercise rather than production drafts.

But that makes it like fanfic, something so transparent you can learn from it, learn to see yourself making the same errors, learn to avoid those errors.

With all those flaws, I have to add that I like Dark Matter better than I thought I would.  The flaws I see now would not have seemed like flaws to me when I was twelve.  Going off to find clues to who you really are is a teen thing. 

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com

The Orville

Do you watch THE ORVILLE? Now that I've caught up with all the episodes to date, I'm still not sure how successful it is at what it tries to do. It begins as an affectionate parody of STAR TREK and gradually becomes more serious, grappling with some delicate issues, exploring character development, and going to a very dark place in the double episode of the past two weeks. As much as I like the show, I wonder whether its funny and serious sides fit together or clash. (Note: There will be spoilers here.)

The jokes sometimes verge on slapstick. For instance, the advanced sentient artificial life-form, Isaac (the Spock or Data character in the cast), gets into the spirit of learning about practical jokes by cutting off a human character's leg (painlessly, in sleep). This incident barely escapes being horrific by the fact that the medical technology of that century is so advanced that the character will have a new leg within days. The pop culture references come almost exclusively from the twentieth century, a detail that doesn't bear scrutiny. Wouldn't the characters show more interest in and awareness of such things from their own era? Most glaring is the Krill (the Klingon equivalent in this universe) deity's name—Avis, the subject of many jokes. Would the average person four hundred years from now have even heard of a twentieth- to twenty-first-century car rental company? Likewise, the incident when Bortus has a change of heart about his female offspring after watching RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER is cute and rather touching, but it takes generous suspension of disbelief to accept that RUDOLPH would become a classic still popular with general audiences four centuries in the future.

Several features of the show similarly seem to follow the "Rule of Funny" with little or no concern for plausibility. For instance, Bortus allegedly belongs to an all-male species (with rare, taboo exceptions) that urinates only once a year and lays eggs. With no indication that the writers thought out the implications of these traits in advance, I can only conclude Bortus's kind must be desert-dwelling reptiles. The brief glimpse of his planet, when he returns home for his annual urination ceremony—obviously inspired by Spock's return to Vulcan in "Amok Time"—shows a desert-like landscape. In the incisive, timely episode about a planet ruled by positive and negative social media votes, a senior crew member gets the landing party in trouble by fooling around with a statue of a cultural heroine. As his own superiors point out, he should have known better, yet the audience has to accept that an experienced officer with a record good enough to justify his assignment to a delicate mission would behave so irresponsibly. Even in the more serious moments, dedicated SF fans may notice weaknesses. In one episode, two members of a first-contact party get sentenced to an internment camp because they were born under the wrong astrological sign. Wouldn't it be obvious to a society advanced enough to attempt communication with interstellar life that constellations look different from different planets, so it's meaningless to assign their astrological signs to inhabitants of a distant solar system? And even if their taboos prevented their accepting the stigmatized visitors, wouldn't it make more sense simply to ban them from the planet? As for the dark, emotionally wrenching double episode about Isaac's world, didn't the builders of the AIs consider the probable consequences of creating potentially sentient robots? If the builders had no qualms about trying to enslave the robots once sentience emerged, why weren't the artificial life forms programmed with the equivalent of the Three Laws to begin with?

I'm very taken with this series, but in my opinion it would be even better if it didn't look as if the writers were making up things as they go along, tossing in anything that seems entertaining at the moment. That said, the balance between silly and plausible appears to be shifting in a favorable direction, and after the final two episodes of the second season, I'll be eagerly waiting for the third.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Alternative Christmases

When is Christmas not Christmas? When its equivalent appears under another name in a holiday episode of a TV series or movie franchise. TV Tropes has a page on this phenomenon:

You Mean Xmas

It's not unusual for TV series to have "Christmas" episodes even if they're set in a time or place where Christmas doesn't exist. An episode of XENA, WARRIOR PRINCESS featured "A Solstice Carol." MY LITTLE PONY: FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC has "A Hearth's Warming Tale," set on the holiday celebrating the occasion when the three types of ponies worked together to save the fledgling realm of Equestria from the terrible Windigos. (This story combines elements of A CHRISTMAS CAROL and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE.) Then there's the infamous STAR WARS holiday special, set on the Wookie home planet at the season of Life Day. (I've never seen this film, so all I know is what's summarized on TV Tropes; it has never been re-aired, because it's so abysmal that Lucas himself loathes it.) The inhabitants of Fraggle Rock celebrate the Festival of the Bell in "The Bells of Fraggle Rock," at the time of year when the Rock slows down and would freeze forever if the Fraggles didn't ring their bells to awaken the Great Bell. The characters in DINOSAURS have Refrigerator Day, appropriately commemorated by lavish feasting. Although BEAUTY AND THE BEAST takes place in the world as we know it, members of the secret underground community where Vincent (the Beast) dwells celebrate "Winterfest" instead of Christmas. Print fiction features a similar phenomenon. There's a Midwinter Festival in Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar universe. The people of Discworld have Hogswatchnight, as portrayed in detail in Terry Pratchett's HOGFATHER. The world of Steven Universe is an exception to this pattern. Its canon establishes that the invasion of the alien Gems thousands of years ago altered Earth so radically that Christianity doesn't exist, so there's no Christmas, Easter, Valentine's Day, etc. However, virtually every temperate-zone culture in the world has a winter solstice celebration with such elements as feasting, lights, greenery, and bells, so it seems likely that the people in this series would have one, too. If they do, apparently the producers and writers simply haven't considered it necessary to mention.

In the animated special ARTHUR'S PERFECT CHRISTMAS, Arthur's bunny friend gets so stressed out by his divorced mother's frantic attempt to make Christmas perfect that he wants to invent their own family holiday instead, "Baxter Day." An episode of SEINFELD popularized the anti-Christmas holiday of Festivus, which includes the Airing of Grievances (when everybody complains to everybody else about offenses committed through the year) and an aluminum pole instead of a tree. In short, the human spirit seems to crave festivity at the dark of the year.

A satirical essay by C. S. Lewis imagines what the ancient Greek historian Herodotus would have made of the modern British Christmas. Herodotus concludes that Exmas and Crissmas can't possibly be the same holiday, because even barbarians wouldn't go through all that expense and bother for a god they don't believe in:

Xmas and Christmas

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Acceptable Breaks from Reality?

The TV Tropes site has a page called "Acceptable Breaks from Reality," about the "unrealistic" things regularly allowed to happen in fiction and film in order to move the story along, even though the elements aren't true to life:

Acceptable Breaks

This trope came to mind when I watched last week's episode of NCIS, a favorite series I've faithfully followed since its inception (even though I didn't completely like the star, Gibbs, at first and could hardly stand Agent Tony DiNozzo for the first season or two). Despite my fondness for the show, I'm often distracted or outright exasperated by some of their routine plot devices. One of the most "acceptable," which bugs me anyway if I stop to think about it, falls under the TV Tropes category "The Main Characters Do Everything." They seem to have only one medical examiner, Dr. Mallard, and one assistant, Dr. Palmer, doing all the autopsies. This large, busy organization has only one forensic technician, who literally does everything, including conducting DNA tests instead of sending them out to a specialized lab. In one episode, while the forensic tech was absent for some reason, two of the regular agents temporarily took over her lab and analyzed evidence. With no training or certification in that field? Yikes. Yes, I realize programs want to keep the focus on the stars and don't want to pay a lot of actors to play minor characters just to make the staff look realistically large. How much would it cost, though, to have a group of extras in the background or walking in and out of the picture so that the spaces devoted to autopsy and forensics would appear to be populated in a lifelike way? The program does that for the main NCIS office. In those scenes, the stars are far from the only people on the set.

Most of the time, I don't think about this issue while watching the show. Nor do I gripe too much about the "murder of the week" template, despite the fact that real NCIS agents (as far as I know from having been a Navy wife for thirty years) work more on such crimes as burglaries and assaults in Navy housing than on murders and terrorist conspiracies. The former types of investigations, admittedly, wouldn't be very exciting unless a body turned up before the first commercial. Some other "breaks from reality," however, actively grate on me. For instance,the agents frequently travel to other countries in the course of investigations, although they're based in the Washington, D.C. area, their presumed jurisdiction and operational purview. And they often go to other cities for brief interviews with potential informants instead of calling on the phone. That office must have a lavish travel budget! Last week's episode included several of my "pet peeves." Usually, the number of days covered by an episode isn't specified, so the audience may assume, with a little indulgence, that enough time has elapsed for lab tests to get done. This one, however, explicitly begins and ends on Christmas Eve. The forensic tech uses her superhuman skills to determine whether an unidentified baby is the child of a dead murder suspect. In real life, DNA analysis takes between 24 and 72 hours to complete. (I looked it up.) Yet she gets a result from the DNA paternity test in only an hour or two, judging from how much story time the rest of the episode spans.

Throughout the series, the agents constantly delve into official records that they shouldn't be allowed to access without warrants. Maybe that issue can be overlooked in the interests of streamlining the action. Entering private dwellings without warrants, however, is a more glaring violation. In the referenced episode, two agents talk the suspect into letting them into his apartment, even though they don't have a search warrant. So far, okay. But then they force their way into a closed room he has forbidden them to enter. No warrant, no permission from the occupant, no probable cause. In an actual case, any evidence they found would be tainted. At some point the suspect produces a gun, and one of the agents shoots him dead. We never hear a word about her being suspended pending investigation, as she would be, or even a passing comment about that possibility. For that matter, throughout the series the agents are continually involved in car chases and shootouts with no apparent repercussions.

Then there are the often unintentionally humorous "flyover country" slip-ups in occasional episodes. I know that in many movies and TV series, southern California stands in for almost everywhere. But couldn't film technology have deleted the mountains from the background of a scene allegedly set in Norfolk, Virginia (on the Atlantic coast, a half-day's drive from the nearest mountain range)? As a resident of Maryland, I was especially amused as well as mildly annoyed by an incident when the agents visited the Carroll County sheriff. (Why, I don't remember; that seemed like another interaction that could have been handled by phone.) According to its website, that department is "a full service law enforcement agency" with a staff of 260 employees. To the writers of NCIS, the word "sheriff" must have been free-associated with "Mayberry." They have the sheriff claiming he can't leave the office because there's nobody on the premises except himself and one deputy.

Minor "breaks from reality" to avoid slowing down the story are one thing, but critical research failures or the appearance of just not caring are another. What unrealistic details in movies and TV programs can you overlook for the sake of plot streamlining, and which ones make your teeth grind in exasperation?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Reboots and Remakes

You've probably heard about the projected "reboot" of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER. I'd call it a "remake" instead, since the intent seems to be to start the series over with Buffy in high school, but in a 21st-century setting and played by a black actress. Judging from the few online comments I've read, I'm not the only fan whose first reaction to this proposal was, "Why?" A remake isn't likely to surpass the excellence of the original. While I'd be thrilled with a return to the Buffyverse, a far better approach (as has been suggested by others) would be a "next generation" series, spun off from the original story with new characters. If we want to see another black Slayer, introduce a new one instead of calling her Buffy. Because the series finale created hundreds of Slayers throughout the world in place of a single Chosen One, the potential exists for a rich variety of stories, taking the mythos in a different direction from the comic-book continuation that followed the end of the TV series.

I've come across speculations about remakes of CASABLANCA and GONE WITH THE WIND. In the former case, a resounding "Good grief, why?!" seems the most appropriate response. The original is as nearly perfect as humanly possible; tinkering with the plot and characters to produce a new version could only go downhill. As for GONE WITH THE WIND, the only thing "wrong" with the classic movie is that, even at its great length, many details from the book had to be omitted, including two of Scarlett's three children. A miniseries instead of a feature film could remedy those omissions, but could it ever be as good as the existing movie otherwise? Furthermore, present-day technology doesn't allow the resurrection of Clark Gable to play Rhett, and the role wouldn't be the same without him. (When the sequel, SCARLETT, appeared on TV, I had a very difficult time accepting Timothy Dalton as Rhett.)

One remake that I thought worked well was the prime-time DARK SHADOWS with Ben Cross as Barnabas. The production values, naturally, were superior to those of the vintage soap opera, and the story moved along more briskly. It also focused on the plot thread of greatest interest to fans, the arrival and possible redemption of Barnabas. It was disappointing that the series didn't last long.

The new STAR TREK films qualify as a true "reboot," an alternate-universe iteration of the original setting and characters. Although I'm lukewarm toward this movie sequence, at least it began with a believable SF rationale for the new version.

The futuristic anime series NEON GENESIS EVANGELION may hold some kind of record for remakes, reboots, and alternate-universe story lines produced by the original creators. The plot of the series was condensed into a movie version. Another movie expanded upon the confusing ending of the TV series. Several different manga (graphic novel) variants exist, featuring the characters in different settings and situations from the one established in the original.

The most pointless remake I've ever heard of was the filming of PSYCHO with not only the same script as Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation but shot almost frame-by-frame identically to the earlier version. Couldn't they have made a brand new adaptation, returning to Robert Bloch's novel for a fresh take on the story?

In general, remaking films based on books is a different matter. If it wasn't done "right" the first time, a fresh attempt could be worthwhile. GONE WITH THE WIND as it stands adheres as closely to the novel as can reasonably be expected of a feature film. Lots of other book-to-film transformations, though, haven't been done "right" and could benefit from another try. (My concept of a "good" film adaptation means one that follows the book as closely as the film medium allows. When I watch a movie based on a novel, I want to see the novel brought to life, not some director's personal "vision.") No perfect adaptation of DRACULA has ever been filmed. The BBC TV miniseries with Louis Jourdain comes closest. Coppola's so-called "definitive" DRACULA, however, does include more of the book's characters and plot points than any other, including the Louis Jourdain version. Unfortunately, Coppola adds a love story between the Count and Mina that has no basis in the book. If he wanted to do that, he should have adapted Fred Saberhagen's excellent reinterpretation of the story, THE DRACULA TAPE. In one of my favorite series, the Narnia books, PRINCE CASPIAN has suffered most in the adaptations filmed so far. The BBC version, aside from its dated special effects, renders the book with more fidelity and respect than the dazzling feature film; even the former, however, leaves out an important sequence toward the end that's also omitted from the big-screen movie.

What movies or TV series would you like to see remade? What do you think should never be remade?

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt