is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Jan 12, 2006

Reading List: Alfred Bester posted by kza


“Reading List” is a new feature I just made up because I need to get my Spitball! quota out of the way. Whether or not it’s a continuing feature is up to time and tide. Also, the link to the forum will take you to the “Books” section of the forum, because, well, that makes sense.

Alfred Bester (1913 - 1987) was a SF writer, best known for two seminal novels, The Demolished Man and The Stars, My Destination. Check out the Wikipedia entry for more info cuz the Shockah aint about no biographical sketches. Instead, Reading List is about how these books might inform The Screenplay.

The Demolished Man takes place in a world where the police force is made up mainly of telepaths, and they’re powerful enough that they can tell when someone’s going to commit a crime, and can stop them before they do it. (Yeah, it’s kinda like Minority Report but with telepathy instead of precognition.) Anyway, the plot is about a billionaire businessman who decides to murder his closest rival, and the steps he takes to get away with it and not get caught by the lead telepathic detective. (Supposedly the guy who did Chopper was going to do a film version; I don’t know what happened to it, but I saw it in my head with Michael Douglas and Denzel Washington in the leads. Of course, that would be hideous typecasting.)

The Stars, My Destination is about Gully Foyle, a grunt on a spaceship who survives the destruction of the ship when everyone else dies, and vows revenge on the passing spaceship that neglects to pick him up. Like everyone says, it’s basically a riff on The Count of Monte Cristo, as this illiterate, violent man remakes himself into faux-royalty in order to get closer to his object of revenge. (It’d be perfect for Ving Rhames or that guy who played Kingpin in Daredevil. Or even the Rock, come to think of it. But not Vin; he’s played out. Sorry, Vin.) Oh, did I mention that, along the way, he ends up on a Prison Planet?

Well, I don’t recall the whole planet being a prison, but it’s an interesting idea for one: it’s a huge cavern network without any lights whatsoever, so the prisoners are functionally blind. And naked, as well. (Wait, maybe that’s why Vin would’t be such a great choice — too much like that Riddick guy.) I don’t remember how he gets out (I remember he has help from a woman prisoner — it’s coed), but that’s kinda what both these Bester books are like — impossible situations that could only exist in their SF worlds, and the remarkably clever solutions the protagonists devise to solve them. (How do you keep a telepath from learning you want to murder someone? Does “Peanut Butter Jelly Time” mean anything to you?)

So now I’m realizing that it’s pretty damn hard to talk about these books in any detail without spoiling them, and they’re too good to spoil. One thing, tho, that might be worth stealing being inspired by: Bester’s visual imagination. Well, thing is, I don’t remember a whole lot of expository description in his books, but I’m left with a definite look in my head. It’s kinda Gilliamish, like maybe if Gilliam did Dune. Slightly comic-booky, with vibrant primary colors and basic geometric shapes — ah! I just realized the look it makes me think of: Moebius. Anyway, for the time being, that’s the visual sensibility I think I’ll be bringing to Prison Planet. No doubt it will evolve into something else, but that’s what I’m starting with. Oh, another thing possibly worth stealing borrowing: The style of his names. Some examples: Gully Foyle. @kins. Peter Y’ang-Yeovil. Presteign of Presteign. Robin Wednesbury. Keno Quizzard. It’s like a cross between Dickens and Vonnegut.

Anyway, that’s my Public Service Reading Announcement for the day, from a guy who reads like maybe five books a year. Look for my next Reading List installment in about a month — it’ll probably be Alistair Horne’s book about the Paris Commune. That could provide a lot of interesting inspiration!

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What is Spitball!?

Spitball! is two guys collaborating to write about writing and collaboration. We're writing partners who have worked together since 2000, and placed in the top 100 in the last Project Greenlight for our script YELLOW.

Currently, we are both working on multiple screenplay, short story, and novel ideas independently and together, and collaborate on this blog.

What Spitball! used to be

Spitball! started as an attempt to collaborate on a screenplay online in real time. From January 2006 to July 2007 we worked on an interactive process to decide the story we were going to make. A full postmortem is coming, but you can find the find all the posts by looking in the category Original Version.

During this period, we affected the personalities of two of the most famous spitball pitchers from the early 20th Century. Look at our brief bios for more info about this, and so as not to be confused as to who is talking when.

We rebooted the franchise in early 2009 in its current form.


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Kent M. Beeson

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Kent M. Beeson (aka Urban Shockah) is a stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home writer, living in Seattle, WA with his wife, 2 year old daughter and an insane cat. In 2007, he was a contributor to the film blog ScreenGrab, where he presciently suggested Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, and in 2008, he wrote a film column for the comic-book site ComiXology called The Watchman. (He's a big fan of the book, if you couldn't tell.) In 2009, he gave up the thrill of freelance writing to focus on screenplays and novels, although he sometimes posts to his blog This Can't End Well, which a continuation of his first blog, he loved him some movies. He's a Pisces, and his favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Coincidence? I think not.

Martin McClellan

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Martin (aka Burley Grymz) is a designer and writer. He occasionally blogs at his beloved Hellbox, and keeps a longer ostensibly more interesting bio over here at his eponymous website. You can also find him on Twitter.