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Friday
Feb 03, 2006

Re:[2] Reading List: Alfred Bester posted by Martin

I am shocked that nobody has ever made these books that Shockah lent me into movies. But then again, neither was Neuromancer which always seemed like a shoe-in to me. The difference here is that Gibson wrote 20 years ago, and Bester was writing 60 years ago. Neuromancer, as prescient, important and influential as it was, will probably never be made now. The reality of the Internet trumps some of the concepts that were so mind blowing in the 1980s. By the same token, I suspect that books like Snow Crash will never be made for similar reasons (of technologies to come). But Bester’s work is much less about specific technologies, and more about human conditions. Or, when there are technologies, they are either natural extensions of reasonable ’50s technologies, or they are fantastical human technologies, such as teleportation (the conceit of this book), or telepathy (the conceit of The Demolished Man, and this book as well). Whether by plan or luck, Bester picked items that age gracefully.

He inhabits his characters with one track minds. The death of a rival, revenge. They are human emotions, set amongst supposedly grander times. But the times in The Stars My Destination are hardly utopian, unlike Demolished Man. It takes place during a war time, although it’s not about the war. It is a time of oppression of religion, and fanatical privacy, due to the fact that anybody can “jaunt” (teleport) nearly anywhere instantaneously.

Of the two books, I think I actually liked this one more. It’s richer, more complex and deeper into the characters than The Demolished Man. It feels more carefully drawn to me—less frenetic, but more measured. The ending is less gotcha, and more of a natural extension of the character.

Especially noteworthy are the worlds created—the Scientists cult that lives on resurrected space ships and have fierce tattoos (including gender symbols) on their faces.

And of course, our bully Gully—a driven, divisive and cruel lead character. Driven by a singular desire, and only briefly having passions beyond it, his actions and disregard for anything but his goal are maddening and, often, shocking.

Anybody out there know if this was partial inspiration for Burning Man?

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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.