It?s the 50th anniversary of Star Trek, and the fans had been hoping for a grand celebration. With no new Star Trek on TV this year, and with much of the original core fanbase not happy with JJ Abram?s 2009 rebooting of the franchise, this might be the most depressing birthday party you ever attend (or more likely, don?t even hear about).

Gene Roddenberry?s estate has been posting new Trek memorabilia on Facebook. But that valiant effort has gone largely unnoticed.

At the time of this writing, it?s almost May, and still there?s no real sign of Star Trek Beyond marketing, not even a poster. The third film in the JJ Trek reboot seems to be hiding behind a cloaking device. Months ago, there was a trailer, but it was widely trashed by the fanbase. After that, marketing went silent, while the director started filming new scenes with new characters (http://moviepilot.com/posts/3825432) for reasons unknown.

Paramount, the film?s studio, hasn?t shown any clips of the movie, not even at CinemaCon in Las Vegas in April. CinemaCon is where theatre owners go to learn about upcoming movies and learn how the studios will support the films? releases. Star Trek Beyond wasn?t mentioned, even as the studio was hyping films with much later release dates.

After the questions arose about Star Trek Beyond?s absence from CinemaCon, Paramount announced a ?Special Fan Event? for May 20. This special event is said to include a new trailer and a Q&A with the director and stars. Also, posters bor the movie have appeared at the Cannes film festival. That still seems underwhelming.

There?s just a little whiff of the Titanic sinking to all this. Should I mention that JJ left the franchise, his hand-picked successor quit/was fired, and a new script was rushed through in six months? Oh, and the new, studio-approved director is best known for The Fast and Furious.

Somehow, Star Trek went into it?s 50th with no momentum. Some blame Paramount/CBS for aggressively suing once tolerated fan films. Others blame JJ Abrams for ruining the Star Trek universe with a reboot that has made this distinct entity into yet another action franchise.

I?ve spoken elsewhere about the Paramount/CBS fight, so let?s look at the other part of the equation.

Where did the JJ ?verse go wrong? The point of bifurcation between the original universe and JJ Trek seems blurred, as some changes must have occurred before the inciting events of the 2009 movie could possibly have impacted the timeline.

In the original series we learn that the Enterprise was built in Earth orbit. In JJ Trek, the Enterprise is built in Earth?s full gravity, exposed to the elements as the delicate machinery is assembled. Better still, JJ?s Enterprise can not only enter atmosphere, it can submerge (Yes, both subs and spaceships have to be airtight, but the pressure runs in the opposite direction – in a sub, the pressure is greater outside, in space, the pressure is greater inside. Building a spaceship to withstand being submerged is a hell of a design criteria, structurally, and with added mass and all that implies about fuel consumption and maneouverability. How often would designers have to expect submersion to happen so that it made it through budget proposals?).

The age of the Enterprise has changed. In the original universe, Captain April commanded the Enterprise from new, then Captain Pike commanded her for 10 years. Finally, Kirk became captain for a 5 year mission. The Enterprise is a decade or more old by the time Kirk takes command. In JJ Trek, the Enterprise is a just-commissioned vessel.

In the original universe, cybernetics is occasionally encountered, and often pass for human for a short while at least. It?s not until Commander Data appears in The Next Generation, that Starfleet is shown containing androids. In JJ Trek, there?s an android on the bridge of the Enterprise, decades earlier than it should be. Oddly, it is not a plot point, nor particularly useful.

Exhibit A

Distances don?t align between the two Trek universes. i?m not sure how that could have changed. Travel time to Vulcan is at least a day and a half from Earth in the orginal series episode Amok Time (In the story, it?s a three day diversion to go to Vulcan en route to Earth. Depending upon alignment, the closest they could be is a day and a half away). In JJ Trek, it takes 7 minutes to get to Vulcan.

In the original series and onwards into the next generation, transporters can be used to send someone down to a planet from orbit, or between ships in close proximity. In JJ Trek, they can be used to send someone from Earth to Qo?nos, the capital of the Klingon Empire. Why even use expensive space ships if you can transport that far?

There are probably other points, but these seem most egregious and aren?t of the ?why was Khan played by a white man?? variety. The question for diehard fans is why is history different, why is the spacing of the cosmos different, if not because of Nero?s appearance? When did it change?

It’s an odd nitpick, perhaps, but i think it’s the root of the problem that old-school Trek fans have had with the JJ verse version of Trek, and this new film, shrouded in secrecy, is just feeding those feelings of abandonment.

So the buzz this morning is that a number of people are leaving theatres after seeing The Martian, believing that what they?ve just seen was ?based on a true story?. Why are people coming to that conclusion?

For The Martian to have been based a true story, we would have had to have put people on Mars three times (The doomed expedition was the third mission to Mars). We would have to have a cool spaceship like the Hermes to ferry people between planets. None of which is true.

So why do so many people believe that it is a true story?

Probably partially because science fiction stories (and movie special effects) have blurred the line between reality and fantasy, leaving people confused about what humanity actually has accomplished. Also, possibly as wish fulfillment. We should be on Mars, dammit.

My generation grew up with Apollo, with the freaking Moon baby! People (welll, white American men anyway) were walking on the Moon! My generation grew up with 2001: A Space Odyssey and it’s commercialized space flight, and very plausible space station. People lived on the Moon. That was our future. Now let’s look at what we got…

What have we accomplished in space?
Not very much, all things considered, and less and less every decade: In the 1950s-1960s, Earth orbits and first steps to the Moon; Early 1970s, the Moon – living the dream, but the future was already getting cloudy; 1980s the space shuttle and eventually an Earth-orbiting space station for it to visit. The Moon might still have been reachable, but no budget for it; 1990s more the same with less budget – a larger space station, but no more potential for Moon trips; 2000s still more of the same, with a few neat telescopes added in (Hubble et al); 2010s, even the space shuttle is gone. Less of the same.

Have humans been to Mars?
No. We have sent robots to Mars, but no human has come anywhere near close to the planet. We have sent other unmanned probes to the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and poor little Pluto). And one such probe, Voyager 1, is on the verge of leaving our solar system – but it doesn?t have people on it, none of the probes do.

Have humans been to the Moon?
Yes, twelve white American men have stepped foot on the Moon. The last did so in 1972. That’s 43 years ago! No, we haven?t been back since. The Moon, which orbits the Earth, is the furthest that humanity has ever been from Earth. It isn?t far, not really.

I?m sure more people have been to the Moon!
As a teacher of students from many countries, I?ve had this argument repeatedly. Malaysian, Chinese, Indian, and Japanese students have all insisted that their country has sent men to the Moon. A quick search of their own most trusted news engine (because ?Google lies for Americans?) invariably reveals that they?ve been to low Earth orbit – the International Space Station or some such – but no further. N one has been to the Moon since 1972.

But the space shuttle flew to the Moon all the time!
No, it did not. It flew low Earth orbit missions, with the Hubble telescope being the highest altitude that it ever reached (approximately 550 kilometres above the Earth. The Moon is 384,400 km away). In an attempt to clear confusion about this very issue, NASA started calling the shuttle an orbiter because it was designed only to orbit Earth.

But I saw a TV commercial where there was a shuttle on the Moon.
Yes, I saw that ad too. It was fiction. It lied – most advertisements do, so why is this shocking? (I had this conversation with a doctor, by the way.).

What if we had kept building on our successes in the 1970s instead of turning our backs on space exploration? Where would we be today? The only thing stopping us from living on the Moon is the commitment to spend the money. The US alone has spent an estimated between $4-6 trillion dollars on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. That kind of money can be found, when the political will is there. Somehow it can’t be found to extend Humanity’s living space.

Popular Science has an infographic about living on Mars if we used today’s technologies and had no economies of scale involved (each person travels in their own rocket,  has their own sustainable housing – no sharing of costs or resources). It comes out to $42 billion per person – mostly in travel expenses. THe US military could (but not realistically) afford to set up 15 people a year on Mars. A NASA study, reported in Popular Science, states that a permanent presence on the Moon could be had for a total investment of $10 billion. Now we’re getting down to Elon Musk levels of wealth, Bill Gates levels of wealth, not national commitments that defund other government services. There was a song when I was growing up – The Future’s So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades. Where did that future go?

BUT The Martian is a great movie, based on a great (fictional) book. You should either go see it or go read it (or both!).

I?m at a bit of a crossroads with the novel I?m writing (hereafter referred to as WiP – short for ?Work in Progress?). I had an idea for an alien race that I thought would be different. I built a plot point around that difference. Then I saw something similar in a movie ? and I thought it was stupid.

What to do? What to do? Do I re-write the WiP to eliminate that plot point? Do I remove it entirely? Or is it OK?

Anyone who knows a writer knows that we?re very insecure about our writing, fragile, even. So what do we do when a plot point appears ridiculous? Panic. Stop writing. Have long breaks while we try to understand how we got into this terrible dilemma.

Or maybe we ask for help.

For comparison, let?s look at both what I had envisioned and what I saw that worried me.

In my WiP, there?s an antagonistic species that is very militaristic. Each member of the species has its own theme music indicating family, military rank, and seniority in each. Whenever two or more are together, the more powerful one?s music plays, indicating dominance.

After an initial confrontation that goes fatally wrong for our humans, the second confrontation includes a scene where we are able to play our music over theirs, insulting their commander, and basically declaring war (at least letting them know that we haven?t surrendered to our fate). Note that this closes out the first act (first third) of the novel, it?s not the end.

What I saw that makes me hesitant to use this idea is Star Trek Beyond in which the crew of the Franklin uses a Beastie Boys song to destroy an enemy fleet. I may have even shouted ?what a load of crap!? when I saw that. But later, at night, I couldn?t sleep because I fear that my reaction to that inane plot point would be other?s reaction to my plot point. Its it silly?

I?ve tried a few other scenarios to get the same resulting action, but basically the music is too baked into the story now to easily be removed, and the consequences of the human?s actions drive the second act — removing the use of music is not just a minor edit. I?m slowly coming around to believe that I have to go forward with this, even if it isn?t ideal.

There?s a conversation going on in my writer?s group about science fiction that I wanted to pull out and discuss with a larger, different audience.

In a nutshell, there?s a large contingence of up-and-coming or as-yet-unpublished writers who believe that the golden age of science fiction was in the 1980s or beyond, and that modern sci-fi isn?t as good.

It?s a conclusion that is hard to argue with, partially because the goalposts can be moved at any time. Still I feel compelled to make a case against this perspective, and I need more space to do so than would be allowed in that group.

So here we go.

There are a number of arguments raised, each that seem on the surface to be valid, and may in fact have some merit.

First, there?s the argument that it?s all been done before. No, it hasn?t. Read The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi, Read Three Body Problem by Cixin Liu.

Then there?s the argument about quality. It goes something like this: Scalzi, they say, is the highest paid sci-fi writer and therefore the best, and yet his work is mediocre, derivative.

So… that was a bundle of assumptions.

Is he the highest paid? I don?t know. I know he signed a very big book deal for ten books a few yesrs ago. So, maybe, and it makes a better claim if he is. Is his work derivative? People point to Red Shirts, which drew heavily on the Star Trek mythos. That?s true, but it offered an interesting take on the mythos without rebooting the franchise into the Kelvin timeline (I’m looking at you J.J.!). Is Scalzi the best scifi writer out there? He?s entertaining, if disposable, much like James Patterson, the undisputed king of paperback novels.

Do people insist that Patterson is the best writer, or just the most successful? THe latter, not the former. So Scalzi?s our Patterson, not our Hemingway. Let?s move on.

Next argument: No one today is as good as (fill in the name you want here – Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Herbert). But we only remember the best that these authors wrote. I am a huge Frank Herbert fan, have read many of his books, not just the mandatory Dune books. Some of his works sucked. Sorry, they did. Some of them were very good, but none of them approached his first novel, Dune (God Emporer of Dune stands on Dune’s shoulders. It wouldn’t be as great in isolation).

Even though it?s his first novel, I would hold Andy Weir?s The Martian up to anything by Clarke*. I think they make good comparisons. And once Weir has written a dozen or so books, then we?ll see if he?s a one-hit wonder or a new legend.

Anne Leckie is an amazing new generation author. She has four books out, a trilogy and a new novel. They may not all be as good as Asimov?s best, or as Bradbury?s best, but then you?re comparing her four book output with the cherry-picked best of the approximately 450 books that Asimov wrote or edited. That?s one hundred choices for every one of Leckie?s. How can she compare? Give her a full career, and then run a bell curve on everyone?s work and see where she averages. I bet it?ll be high.

Also, nostalgia affects our memories.

I?ve been looking for a book for years. I was sure it was written by Heinlein. It was what we?d now call an MG or YA book, but back then was probably considered a ?Boy?s Own Adventure? story. In the story, a teenage boy wins a trip to space station, then he has some adventures. I remembered it quite fondly. Last week, I finally found it. It?s not by Heinlein, it?s by Arthur C. Clarke, and it doesn?t live up to my memory of it at all. It?s boring. It?s simple, it has a naivete that fits the time, but fails in the modern era. It lacks nuance. But if Leckie is going to be compared to Clarke, it won?t be this story that people will drag out. It?ll be Rendezvous with Rama, or 2001: A Space Oddity.

Well, how can anyone compare to those?

Ah, the other side, leaps. That?s our point. Nothing today can compare to those books, because nothing today is that good.

I disagree.

The Wind Up Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi will stand up against anything from the golden age. He is our John Wyndham equivalent. Vernor Vinge?s works will stand the test of time also. As will Kim Stanley Robinson, Peter Hamilton, and yes, John Scalzi. George R. R. Martin is probably our generation’s Frank Herbert (He?s not our Tolkien, that?s Guy Gavriel Kay, or Stephen R. Donaldson).

Beyond simply finding equivalencies, there are areas where writers today are far superior to those of the golden era. Philip Jose Farmer and Spider Robinson may have been seen as humorists writing scifi and fantasy in their day, but neither of them could hold a candle to Terry Pratchett. Douglas Adams’ works, are, in my opinion, not ageing well. Again, the humour is from a more naive time. it doesn’t fit the modern zeitgiest.

Then again we get back to the question of when to categorize certain authors. The late Terry Pratchett was a contemporary of Farmer, Robinson, and Adams, however he was at the beginning of his career, and published up until 2015. So should he count as the golden age group or modern? Good writers come and go, and they overlap each other. They don?t start and end in batches.

I don?t care what the answer to that question is, I care more about the question, because it highlights a weakness in the argument. There was no fixed ?Golden Age.? In the 1950s, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were the golden age. Now, we have this amorphous term that embraces the 1950s-1980s. That’s four decades’ worth of the best stories, with the crap filtered out. Talk about confirmation bias!

The point is that a good writer has a long career, and it takes even longer for good writing to age (much like wine, and like wine, it can become vinegar if aged too long. See Adams, above). We don?t know that the writing today is worse than some mythical golden age.

We won?t know for decades. And that’s fine.

——-

* And here I go, doing exactly what I warned you not to, comparing current writers to the Golden Age ones. Damn (click to return).

After years of training and in some cases as little as days in space, astronauts need to decide what to do next with their lives. Many will get a second chance to go to space, with all the training that that new mission will entail. But eventually, you?ve done your last space flight. Being an astronaut is, still, a very high profile position. Do you use that position as a platform to champion a cause or to move yourself into a longer-term career?

I want to look at some of the astronauts who have decided to champion causes, and what they?ve done.

Buzz Aldrin
One of the most famous astronauts (Aldrin was the second man to walk on the Moon, right behind his commander and shipmate Neil Armstrong), Aldrin has resurfaced in the past few years, working hard to promote one cause, ?Get Your Ass to Mars!?

Buzz Aldrin is a firm believer that humanity needs a second village to live in, and Mars is it. He?s guest editor of a special ?Welcome to Mars? edition of National Geographic Kids. He?s doing a speaking tour around the world (The closest he comes to me is Sydney, Australia in November).

Bernard Harris
The first black man to walk untethered in outer space, Dr. Harris has gone on to create and manage a foundation geared toward promoting STEM career paths to underprivileged students as well as giving them financial literacy. (Disclaimer, I met Dr. Harris while working at African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa. He visited as part of the ?Dream Tour? in 2011 to promote STEM to young African students).

Sally Ride
Sally Ride wasn?t just the first American woman in space, she was, at 32, the youngest astronaut ever and may have been the first LBGT person to travel in space (we don?t know if there were any before her). Sally created a small publishing empire, Sally Ride Science. The books that she created promoted a love for science and all STEM fields, and were mostly geared towards middle-school students, but especially girls, who are under-represented in STEM.

I could actually use your help in filling this out. When I started researching this I was surprised at how few former astronauts I found that had gone directly into philanthropic work instead of industrial/military/space complex work.

 

Station 11 is a book with a bit of a buzz around it: written by a Canadian expat living in New York, it won the British-based Arthur C. Clarke Award for best science fiction novel of 2014, but has been slow to find an audience in the US. I?ve just finally gotten to read it, and have some thoughts.

First and foremost, as others have said, don?t mistake this for a science fiction story. If you expect science fiction with all the tropes that implies, you?ll be disappointed. If you’re avoiding it because you’re worried it might be too science fiction-y, take a chance on this book. It does take place before and after a plague wipes out 99.999% of the world population, but it?s not a book about science fiction ideals, utopian or dystopian society. If anything it?s about malaise and learning to forget the good old days.

Is it a good story? Yes. Is it without its problems? No.

From here on, there are spoilers.

In many ways, I felt like I was re-reading The Stand, Stephen King?s end-of-the-world story where people walk and walk and walk, and along the way meet other people.

I was frustrated by the way that the survivors just accepted their lot and became scavengers unwilling to try to make sustainable lives anywhere. Why don?t they stop walking and camp in one of the many houses? Why does every house have broken windows? If the sheets from the hotels are still good, why aren’t the mattresses? Why the complete abandonment of electricity? Doesn?t anyone have a solar recharger? Wind, ever heard of it?

One thing that The Stand had that this story lacks is tension. There was a good and a bad presence, and the two sides were recruiting for a showdown. There?s none of that in this story, which is fine, but the author hints that it might go there, then doesn’t deliver. 

There?s also a lot of story that occurs off page.

How does the devout Christian boy Tyler become The Prophet? One day he wonders off with his mother, then ten or more years later he returns with an entourage and a commitment to violence and sexual slavery. His transformation might have been interesting. Why do they call him The Prophet? Why mention that his followers are heavily armed then have them so easily defeated? The other characters never really seemed in fear of him, nor did he come across as anything more than yet another in a series of threats to be overcome (most happening off page). Why was he so easily defeated if he?s the story?s ?big bad?? (Don’t tell me there was symbolism in the murder-suicide. It didn’t feel earned. One of my stories has a similar scenario and I’m working hard to make sure that it’s earned so the readers both embrace and are repelled by the event.)

If we?re going to spend a third of the book following someone who lives in a travelling symphony, wouldn?t it be nice if it was one of the important people? Maybe we could learn how this marvel came into being, maybe we could discover the trials and tribulations of being responsible for the well-being of the troupe. Or even why it keeps traveling. How does this traveling symphony survive winter? Are there towns with enough excess food as to be able to take them in (they certainly aren’t farming/harvesting their own food)?

Near the end of the book, we learn that a town south of the airport has rediscovered electricity. Now that might be an interesting story! Industrious people working to not just survive but rebuild! Does the book ever go there? No, even though in all probability The Prophet came through there on his way north and if we?d followed his story, we?d know part of that one too. By the end of the book, someone’s left to investigate it, but again, that’s story happening off-page.

Also, the symbolism was a bit heavy. The Undersea is limbo is the airport. We get it. The cloudy paperweight always went to people with uncertain futures. Yay. Shakespeare lived through a plague, now the plague survivors perform Shakespeare. Got it. The Prophet carves airplanes on people he’s kicked out of his paradise, like the quarantined “ghosts” on the Air Gradia flight. I get it, it just doesn’t resonate.

So what was good about this story?

• The sense of loss. The author does a great job of showing people realizing just how much they have lost and coming to terms with it.
• The sense of place. She describes Toronto vividly. The post-plague environment is usually written in very evocative prose although was oddly lacking in wolves, coyotes, bears, raccoons, and wild dogs (we are told that deer are plentiful, so their predators should be too. It’s human pressure that keeps those populations down).
• The interlinked character studies – there are a handful of main characters (Kirsten, Clark, Arthur, and Miranda with, to a lessor extent, Jeevan and Tyler) who all crossed paths before the plague and who all cross paths or influence each other?s lives after the plague.
• If you like stories where you don’t get all the answers (because that’s life), you’ll appreciate this one.

Final analysis: The book was enjoyable, if frustrating. I?m glad I’ve read it but I wouldn?t read it again. The author is a great observer and writer, I?m just not sure she?s a great storyteller. If you ever need an example of a writer who tells instead of shows, then you should point at this book. She made me care enough about the world she built to be annoyed at the stories she didn’t show within it.

I?ve had one of those realizations, one of those realizations^{(updated below)}.

I?ve parted ways with pop culture in all its forms. My opinions and ideas used to align with pop culture (or counter-culture) or at least be informed takes on pop culture. Then 2016 happened. It’s not just that my cultural icons started passing away en mass. It’s what’s risen to replace them.

It’s not just that my cultural icons started passing away en mass. It’s what’s risen to replace them.

I don?t understand a culture that could elect Donald Trump. Hell, I don?t understand a culture that would even consider voting for him.

I don?t understand how the gamergate/rabid puppies look at themselves in the mirror. I couldn?t be that shamelessly malevolent towards anyone for simply holding a different opinion from mine. This is hyperbullying, accentuated by the internet. Right and wrong don?t matter, politeness doesn?t matter, only volume and vitriol matter now.

Yet these people are the new mainstream, the Trumpsters, the generation defining the culture that we live in.

Pop culture and I have divorced. It?s official. Maybe that?s a good thing.

There are other signs. I?ve noticed a few things on Reddit. First, when it comes to discussing trends and preferences in science fiction, I?m definitely in the old school, deep enough to be a useful resource reference for others, but not one who?s opinion matters going forward. Decades of knowledge and experience given no value because experience now is equated with being ?too old?.

In another Reddit thread, a question was asked – what?s the most over the top performance you?ve seen in a film. I suggested Tim Curry in the Rocky Horror Picture Show. No one knows what I mean. Worse, the answers that are getting the most up-votes are names I don?t know.

Recently, I had some kid (25? 30? years old) tell me that I obviously didn?t know Star Wars very well(!) because when he asked me which ship was the coolest, I replied the Falcon. Wrong! I was told. The coolest ships are the TIE fighters – the mass-produced, not very sturdy ships flown by the Empire. Why were they obviously the coolest? Because they represented power and violence.

Pop culture and I have divorced. It?s official. Maybe that?s a good thing. Maybe we?ll both be happier for it.

Here’s Tim being over the top:

UPDATE:

No, not giving up the flame. Fuck ’em. They’re idiots. Time to take it back…

SPOILER & SPECULATION Heavy – Read at your own risk.

As most people know by now, the third act of Rogue One was extensively reshot. The earliest trailers for the film have loads of shots that not only aren?t in the final version, but contradict what we all saw on the big screen.

Putting together what could have been, and may once have been is purely to speculate with very few clues. And that?s what the rest of this article is going to do, without attribution.

Sorry.

Accept it or stop reading.

IO9 kind of missed the point in their article ?The First Script for Rogue One Had A Completely Different Ending? As a statement, that?s fine, but then the article starts with ?you probably noticed that much of what?s in the trailers is not in the movie.? IO9 makes the mistake (or wants you to) of thinking that that first draft was the version that was filmed and then reshot to make the ending darker.

From the sources that I?ve spoken with, the opposite is true. The final edit, after the third act reshoot, was not as dark as director Gareth Edward?s edit. Neither was based on the first draft that IO9 is referring to in this article.

On screen, we see the fates of each crew member. But in the trailers, at least one, K-2SO, is alive later in the story, in a place that we now never visit.

In the first version of the film, Vader doesn?t appear until near the very end. The earlier appearance of Vader in the final cut is really shoe-horned into the plot. I don’t know if that was a reshoot sequence or not, but as others have noted, the planet (Mustafar) lacks the titled name that all other worlds get, an odd editorial decision, but possibly an oversight due to time limitations caused by the reshoots. The story works perfectly well with the whole Mustafar sequence edited out*.

On screen, Jyn and Cassian die on a beach, embracing each other, knowing that they?ve succeeded, but that they can?t escape their fate. It?s an oddly peaceful death-scene. It?s also not how they died before the reshoots.

The heroes have beaten their enemy, Krennic, and appear to be on the verge of surviving. Jyn, Cassian and K-2SO escape from the primary building, using a train/subway. Krennic chases them. There we see him outdoors, purposely stalking them. Jyn and Cassian join the rebel fighters.

Somehow, K2 dies, Krennic dies, and Jyn and Cassian board a ship and pilot it off the surface of Scarif and join the rebel fleet.

Note Jyn in K-2SO’s seat.

Their sense of safety (and the audience?s) is shattered by the appearance of Vader. He is the enemy beyond their abilities, unstoppable malevolence, the Vader we have yet to really see on screen. Vader kills both Jyn and Cassian, quite possibly the rebel who gets Vader’s lightsaber run through him and the hatch was originally Jyn.

Yet the plans for the Death Star escape, leading to the events in A New Hope**.

It?s the absence of Vader murdering of our heroes that has infuriated people that I’ve spoken with. It also explains why Disney felt the need to ?Lighten the mood? from Edwards’ first cut towards what we see now on screen. Yes, Vader killing Jyn even as she hands the plans over would have been cool, but it’s a level of darkness that Disney decided they didn’t want their name on.

Thoughts?

——————————————-

* Just as The Force Awakens would work better if we hadn’t had that whole Han and Chewie on another ship sequence mid-film – a sequence that was there solely to appease Chinese financiers and audiences.

** I hate that name.

Let’s talk about Martin Caidin

Martin who?

You know, Michael Crichton’s contemporary, the other big name writer of adventure stories grounded in science in the 1970s and 80s.

Martin who?

Have you never heard of The Six Million Dollar Man?

Oh, yeah. OK. Martin who?

The man who wrote over 50 books including a couple of Indiana Jones books in the 1990s, and the novelization of the movie The Final Countdown. But if you know him at all, it’s probably because of his most famous character, Steve Austin, and the TV show The Six Million Dollar Man. The show was loosely based on Caidin’s book, Cyborg (1972).

The basic scenario was the same for both the TV show and the novel: An astronaut survives what should have been a fatal crash, and is enhanced with bionic parts to allow him to not only live, but excel as a secret agent of the US government.

But the book was more political (it involved Isrealis and Arabs, and you can guess which side our cyborg was on), violent, and didn’t shy away from discussing sex. It should be noted that this wasn’t so unusual back then. Books were often much more randy than their filmed counterparts. Want proof? Read Peter Benchley’s Jaws. Sheriff Brody’s wife is having an affair. She fantasizes about getting into a car crash and her husband’s co-workers discovering that she’s driving panty-less to her lover’s nest. That definitely didn’t make it into the movie.

I’ve read Cyborg and enjoyed it. Cyborg had three sequels, and I thought I’d read one of them, although their descriptions on Wikipedia don’t ring any bells.

Cyborg really does read like a Michael Crichton book. And it’s made me wonder why Crichton went on to such a successful career, where Caidin’s career was successful, but less stellar.

Crichton’s first break out book was The Andromeda Strain (1969), about a virus coming to Earth and causing havoc. Coincidentally, a year earlier, Caidin published Four Came Back about astronauts unintentionally bringing a new virus back to Earth.

I’m not suggesting that Crichton borrowed from Caidin – when an idea is ripe to be exploited, like-minded people will find it and use it, and in the late 1960s near Earth space travel was a very hot topic. For whatever reason — marketing, quality of storytelling, fickle Gods — The Andromeda Strain caught the public’s attention.

The Six Million Dollar Man wasn’t Caidin’s only shot at fame. It wasn’t even his first. I remember seeing a movie on TV when I was a kid. It was called Marooned, and it was about an astronaut stuck in Earth orbit with no way home. It turns out that was one of Caidin’s stories too, and it was released as a movie in 1969, with some big names – Gregory Peck, Gene Hackman – and some staple actors of the genre – Richard Crenna, David Janssen. It showed up on TV some time later.

This doesn’t being to touch on Caidin?s life – he was a professional pilot (who flew with the Thunderbirds aerobatic team); he restored vintage aircraft, he wrote flight manuals approved by the FA; he was a TV talk show host who challenged far-right hate group leaders to debate him on air; and later in his life, he claimed psychic abilities, but refused to let them be tested.

All in all an interesting man. You really should read his wikipedia entry at least, and maybe one of his books (if you ever find them in a second-hand book store. They’re not in print as far as I can tell).