RECONCILIATION BLOGS, MOVIES, AND TV SHOWS -- all the links you could ever want!

I never realized -- until now -- how important the subject of reconciliation is to me. Below you'll find the several POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS I've written over the years that deal with reconciliation.

Enjoy...though I'm not sure that's QUITE what this is about...

SPIDERMAN 3 AND RECONCILIATION

https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2024/01/possibly-irritating-essay-spiderman-3.html

STAR TREK, ALZHEIMERS, AND RECONCILIATION

https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2019/02/slice-of-piemaybe-alzheimers-star-trek.html

INTERSTELLAR AND RECONCILIATION

https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2014/11/possibly-irritating-essays-interstellar.html

"ONE MILLION NINE-HUNDRED THOUSAND" - a short story of mine that was not published...

https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/08/writing-advice-can-this-story-be-saved_28.html

"A QUANTUM ECHO AT TACONITE HARBOR" - another short story of mine that was not published...

https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2023/04/writing-advice-can-this-story-be-saved.html

Site and Image: https://nationaltoday.com/national-reconciliation-day/

PIE: Sentimental Flicks? Spider-Man, Men In Black, Guardians of the Galaxy, Adam Project, Free Guy

I WILL NOT use a Program Guide from a World Con to jump off, jump on, rail against, or shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTIONS. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

Do you find yourself tearing up or weeping uncontrollable whenever you watch Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Back To The Future Trilogy, AVENGERS: Infinity War, Men In Black 3, the Adam Project, or Free Guy?

No? It’s only me?

Maybe if I just explain a bit, you’ll recall the time you found yourself crying during these emotionally charged movies and you’ll agree with me!

OK, I’m starting with Spider-Man: No Way Home (herewith: NWH). First of all, we all know that Peter Parker is a young man with no real male role-model left in his life. His mom and dad were killed (mostly in a plane crash, though sometimes murdered) and he was raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. In NWH, we find three versions of Peter who show up in HIS universe via Ned creating multidimensional portals and them hopping through. Their meeting is convenient at first, until they start “sharing” and they all find out they’ve lost someone important to them. (PS: Apparently ALL the Spider-Mans in this movie are weepy, too). But the scene that gets to me is the very end when they all say “Goodbye” to each other and Peter NWH knows what’s coming. He tells Doctor Strange that he wants EVERYONE to forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and the look Strange gives him – and the understanding on Peter NWH’s face make me weep harder, until I’m using my hanky to wipe my eyes.

In Men in Black 3 (MIB3), J (Will Smith) has been bitter his entire life because he grew up without a father. Sadly, the reason I never questioned this is because I fell prey to the “Black Father” meme – that “all black men are bad fathers and leave their families”. While my personal experience KNOWS it's not true, if you ask honest White people, they’ll usually admit that they’ve subconsciously bought into the lie. It's so insidious that even J in the movie has bought into it.

MIB3 wouldn’t work if anyone watching it assumes that J’s dad is gone for a noble reason. If we're honest, few of us THINK that J’s dad, Colonel James Darrell Edwards Jr. died a hero, protecting his country. When J witnesses that, realizes that HE was the little boy that K neuralizes…I weep.

In the Back-To-the-Future Trilogy (BTTFT), Marty McFly’s dad is a spineless, fawning twerp whom NOBODY, not even Marty can respect. Instead, Marty has latched onto Doc Brown as a father figure and willingly follows him through alternate timelines and helps him fix the past, present, and future that MARTY screwed up by creating a terrified but BRAVE George (his dad) and altering the timeline. He and Doc spend the rest of the first and the next two fixing the timeline…

The place where I find myself weeping every time is when Marty tries to keep Doc Brown from being murdered by the “Libyan terrorists”…but fails, even AFTER stealing the DeLorean and working so hard to fix everything. He sees Doc gunned down and runs up to the (bloodlessly) dead Doc Brown and break down, weeping. As I do…then Doc wakes up, show Marty his Kevlar vest, and shrugs off the slight tweak to the timelines…of course, saving Doc Brown from being murdered by Mad Dog Tannen merely changes the PERSON who dies. Horrified, Doc Brown sets out to save Marty…

In Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (GG2), Quill thinks he’s found his father, and has! The problem is that Dad is a psychopathic god who only wanted a child so he could create another creature that was half himself. The purpose of that, is to get his DNA and then recreate himself forever…or something stupid like that. Yondu, the alien with the head fin, who both told him the only reason he kept Quinn around was because he “was a runt and could get into small places” and constantly kept Peter in terror by threatening to eat him”. What we eventually find out is that Yondu saved Quill from certain death when he found out about Ego siring children on every sapient life form in the known universe, then murdering the resulting, “disappointing” child when they proved they didn’t carry his “god genes”. When he realizes the truth, he honors Yondu as his true father.

Then there’s the relationship between Tony Stark and Spider-Man NWH: and this is one where BOTH of them became a true father and son team. Stark’s father, while he DID have strong feelings about Tony, was totally incapable of sharing them with his SON. He had no trouble sharing those feelings with the adult Tony when they shared a “two-men-whose-wives-were-expecting” moment in the past. Nor did he have any trouble sharing those feelings on a movie made about his “vision” of the future of humanity – but ending with “I built [Stark Expo] for you…it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions…one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is, and will always be, my greatest creation…is you.” Tony’s need to repair his relationship with his father was IMPOSSIBLE TO DO as his father was long dead by the time he found the film.

Spider-Man NWH/Peter Parker NWH was in desperate need of a strong father figure. Him and Tony were a match made in Heaven – or the Multiverse (feel free to choose according to your belief system!) And it worked. Tony Stark turned Stark Industries over to a much more caring and responsible Peter Parker NWH; and he saved the world by using the Infinity Stones he snatched from Thanos to put it back to a time BEFORE Thanos had eliminated half of all life in the UNIVERSE…

That cost him his life, but he was almost happy to pay the price. He certainly “won over the Woman”, and he certainly received a son’s adoration from Peter Parker NWH. When he dies at the end of Infinity War…I cry every time.

Two more recent movies have also come to exemplify the idea of "reconciliation" between fathers and sons, and "best PALS where one has ALWAYS been in love with the other".

The first of course, is "The Adam Project" -- and this is complicated! "Fighter pilot Adam Reed crash lands in 2022 after getting injured while stealing a time jet, and meets his 12-year-old self in the process, who had been dealing with the loss of his father Louis the year before. All-the-while, Maya Sorian, defacto "owner" of the dystopian world and head of her company Sorian, plans to monopolize time travel. After crashing his ship, he not only meets his younger self, he meets his wife and a fellow time pilot left stranded in 2018 after a failed attempt on her life." So, we have Adam's lost wife discovered; we have a Boy Adam (B-Adam) who's lost his father -- and holding on to his anger, becomes the extremely irresponsible and dysfunctional Adult Adam (A-Adam); a scientist lost in his research -- A+B Adam's father; and the Adam's terrifying possibility of losing everything. After working through several issues, the last, most important issue is resolved: BOTH Adam's learn that their father loved them more than anything else and he apologizes for losing that focus...I weep every time A-Adam, B-Adam, and Dad embrace. Reconciliation!

"Free Guy" also deals with reconciliation -- and AI, and geekdom, and scoring off a jerk who stole a pair's idea and made bazillions of dollars. Free City is a shooter game that's immensely popular -- which is to say, exactly WHAT I PERSONALLY BELIEVE is the least-common-denominator of the entirety of video gaming. While I also believe that SOME of our current world's politics and interpersonal relationships can be laid at the feet of the industry. There is absolutely NO REASON that such an experienced industry can't work positive world views into their games. Why NOT a character who...OH! how about a character who does GOOD? Sound like the plot of a MOVIE? So, the fact is that the INDUSTRY knows what the meme is -- though I suppose to admit that they could create a Blue Shirt Guy in a video game and with their advertising clout, they would also have to admit that most of the industry is made up of wimps like Mouser whose only concern is bringing home a paycheck as well as mega-bazillionaires like Antwan. Millie, the strong woman struggles against the status quo wishing Keys would join her and bring down Antwan and Soonami Studios. It takes a chat with the AI who appears as Blue Shirt Guy to see into her soul and points her to the fact that Blue Shirt Guy is a love note to Millie from Keys...reconciliation between them leads to a date for a cup of coffee -- impressing Mouser to say, "FINALLY!"

So, there you go! Everything you need to know!

“Excuse me?” I listen, then reflect the question back to the Asker, “You still don’t know why I’m the one who weeps at all of these scenes?” (and I’m sure I’ve missed many others). I nod, then reply, “I was hoping that you hadn’t noticed me dodge that bullet.” Listen, then nod sagely, “I suppose I DO owe you that.” I purse my lips, breathe in deeply through my nose, release the breath slowly, conjure up a stool, sit and say: My relationship with my own father AS SEEN BY ME was fraught. I was born when Mom and Dad didn’t have much money, and after mom quit (it WAS after all, 1957) to stay home and “raise the children”, Dad go another job. He was a general laborer, who’s someone in the construction job site hierarchy whose rank is virtually 0, with 10 being the Site Supervisor (aka The Suit In The Hard Hat). He needed another job to feed his growing family, so he worked oil changing and “whatever” at a local, NON-Chain garage (Tony’s, if you must know). He bowled in the winter, played softball in the summer, and all-in-all, put food on the table in the Best Of Times, and did scab work (non-Union carpentry) when we had to use food stamps in the Worst Of Times.

He didn’t seem to have much time for me; and as I loathed organized sports (after a DISASTROUS attempt at Little League Baseball when I was seven: I was always the right fielder (as it was the position that saw the least action). Remember the scenes in MEET THE ROBINSON’S when Goob (Michael Yagoobian) plays baseball, drops the catch in the Championship Game? That was me at 7…only our team wasn’t that great – and I was the worst of them. Even the coach was disparaging. (Which I realize as I write this on January 18, 2024 is ALSO a reconciliation movie!)

I’m pretty sure Dad was embarrassed. I have a picture of me at about two years. Mom and Dad had dressed me up in a baby-sized football helmet, shoulder pads, and put a football in my hands. Scrawled on the back in my mom’s feminine script are the words, “No interest at all!” Yep. Those words might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. My dad had played basketball and football; brother #1: football, hockey (school, traveling, college with scholarship), baseball; brother #2: (choir) football, hockey, track and field (State Record shot-putter); sister: ?, volleyball, softball, Mom: college fencing (!!!).

Me? Reading; just call me a square peg in a round hole.

Near the end, Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and because I was closest physically, much of the day-to-day contact with Mom and Dad fell to me. No problem, but by then, my feelings of animosity toward my dad was pretty much a hard shell. I find myself wishing the picture above was Dad and me reconciling...but by the end, he hardly knew me, and I was exhausted.

And then, to add insult to injury, I NEVER had a substitute Dad…no male figure ever tucked me under his wing and made certain I was being nurtured and he was genuinely interested in whatever it was I was doing. I became very bitter – and I’m quite certain some psychologist would find a goldmine of various and sundry psychological neuroses, etc. to dig up and confront me with and prescribe treatment. But, the fact is that, I’m not interested because I’ve found my own comfort.

Besides those I note above, IMDb lists some 1300 “sci-fi, father-son relationship” movies. If you drop the sci-fi, the number LEAPS to over 21,000. I’m clearly NOT the only person who has experienced and tried to reconcile this relationship. When I type in, “sci-fi, father-son reconciliation”, I get 70 hits…of which, three are sci-fi (two are actually horror), and one episode of an old TV show…and then the list repeats the 35 selections again to give a nice 70…FWIW, none of the entries are the movies above…

So, why did I write all of this? It’s all fantasy, right? I all of a sudden realized that
I’ve been looking for a reconciliation with my father most of my life. He died of complications of Alzheimer’s three-and-a-half years ago, so there’s no chance that I’ll EVER reconcile in reality, but now I understand why, when I see that happening in movies – and I react with grief.

Now that I know that, perhaps what I’ll start doing is WRITING my way into reconciliation by focusing my narrative on creating those kinds of stories. The kinds of stories I'd LIKE to see…

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Mary_Parker#:~:text=Richard%20and%20Mary%20Parker%20appear,Uncle%20Ben%20and%20Aunt%20May's.,
Image: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/two-old-men-exchange-a-brotherly-hug-picture-id156894368?s=612x612

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: SPIDERMAN 3: No Way Home and My Favorite SciFi Subject: Reconciliation

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCON 8, which I WOULD have attended in person if I had disposable income, but I retired two years ago, my work health insurance stopped, and I’m now living on Social Security and Medicare…I WILL NOT use the Programme Guide to jump off, jump on, rail against, or shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

This isn’t going to be a rant…enough people have ranted about this movie that there’s really nothing else I can say. Besides, I loved it, just…not in the way most people probably do.

The redoubtable Roger Ebert, with whom I grew up as half of the fabulous pair of movie reviewers “Siskel and Ebert” and their “four thumbs up” rating system – had this to say: “'No Way Home' is crowded, but it’s also surprisingly spry, inventive, and just purely entertaining, leading to a final act that not only earns its emotions but pays off some of the ones you may have about this character that you forgot.”

I’m sure it does, but for me, the movie was about one thing: reconciliation. It has several incidents that reconcile characters with each other, with themselves, and even, in the end, he universe.

I also has another of the themes that move me to tears: sacrificial love…I hesitate to mention this, but it’s the kind of love Jesus had for US. He surrendered to Jewish and Roman authorities not to save his friends, but to save the MULTIVERSE! (Not in those precise words, but if He had seen SM: No Way Home, I think He would understand my point.

Clearly the writers intended to say something more than just, “Spider-man fights the bad guys, converts them to Good, and then retires to his well-earned respite.” Consider the title: “No Way Home”. Spider-man gets home in the end, right? He returns to his proper universe, MJ and Ned are safe and going to MIT; Dr. Strange is safe and continues to be as sarcastic as ever; even Peter is safe from J Jonas Jameson. His identity is safe. NO ONE KNOWS THAT PETER PARKER AND SPIDERMAN are the same person.

Or was there a bigger change in the Multiverse? Did something happen where not only didn’t anyone know Peter was Spider-man…there were people who didn’t know him AT ALL – like MJ and Ned. They both knew Peter BEFORE they knew him as Spider-man. J Jonas Jameson knew Spider-man and not Peter (though in the comic books, he does know Peter as like a journalism intern or something…or not).

But because of what happened, it appears the NO ONE KNOWS PETER PARKER either, and the one person who loves him most is still dead.

Peter gave up EVERYTHING for everyone; for the people he loves. They don’t know him anymore.

Note that in his box as he’s moving into a cheesy New York apartment, there’s a GED book on top; which means that he never graduated from Midtown Smartypants School…in fact, he didn’t graduate from anywhere. Clearly, he has a job or he wouldn’t have been able to put down a security deposit and the first month’s rent to even get the place (which, you have to admit, for a New York apartment isn’t exactly a cold water, walk up, tenement. I don’t hear any gunfire in those tail-end shots, either.)

But to return to something I’m discovering is a theme I WANT to explore in my writing – reconciliation. I can’t help but weep when two individuals, separated by anger, or in fact ANYTHING that works to separate us from the people we care about. I find that I have some very…strong, angry feelings when I think about my dad. Because I was the sibling who lived closest to where he lived after Mom died. Much to his dismay, he lived two-and-a-half years longer than she did. He’d mutter about that sometimes; he was lonely and he knew he was dependent on us kids – particularly me for his everyday needs. I’d take him to the doctor, reset his television set (because he grew up with NO TV as a child, then a flip knob into adulthood…he NEVER understood how his 166 channel television worked. The staff in the Assisted Living facility he lived in were too busy to reset his channels over, and over, and over again – no bad on them! It just meant I had to return to his apartment five to ten times a week.

Nothing else made sense to him, either. He tried to get out of the building. He actually hit one of the CNAs. He hated what he ate. He just hated being alive without my mom. As his memory deteriorated, he became more and more confused. It was torture to watch him wildly vacillate every day (I was pretty much there every day). At the end, I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night…at any rate, because of his Alzheimer’s, he and I never really reconciled our relationship. There were times he’d be angry with me for coming to help him. Other times he’d be weepy. I grew to very much dislike this…person my father had become. He died without any reconciliation for me.

So, I’ve come to have strong emotional attachments to stories and movies in which ANYONE reconciles ANY relationship. I get teary-eyed at the end of “The Other Woman”; “Guardians of the Galaxy 2”; “Enchanted”; “Star Trek: Wrath of Khan”; “Free Guy”; “A Goofy Movie”; “First Wives Club”; "The Adam Project"…according to IMDb, there are 882 movies with the theme of reconciliation.

I’m not taking the time to see if it’s there, but Spider-man: No Way Home is a movie all about reconciliation. Even so, it’s on MULTIPLE levels. There’s a reconciliation of the time line that Mysterio screwed up; there’s the reconciliation between Tony Stark and Peter Parker…(or was that Spider-man: A Long Way From Home? Hmmm); there’s the chance that Peter and Ned and MJ can go to MIT – even WITHOUT SPIDER-MAN changing the time lines! He’s stunned when the MIT Administrator says she’ll reconsider all of them, I get all excited about that simple reconciliation…

But the true focus of the movie is (of course) the three Spider-mans coming together TO FIX THEIR ENEMIES! Sandman, Doc Octopus, the Green Goblin, and Electro, all were healed and reconciled with their appropriate Spider-men. Even Andrew Garfield noticed how reconciliation fit naturally into the story: “ Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man “…was interested in exploring the idea of a tortured Parker [and] how lessons from those events could be passed to Holland's character…[Garfield] was grateful for the chance to ‘tie up some loose ends’ for his incarnation…and described working with Holland and Maguire as an opportunity to have ‘deeper conversations... about our experiences with the character.’”

There was even the smaller storyline of the relationship between the Current Spider-man as he’d been dealing with the death of Tony Stark, who, I imagine, he’d seen not so much as a mentor, but as a father-figure. Even Tony Stark was drawn into that relationship – and it helped that he had a daughter who was still growing into herself. He, in fact, led the way for Spider-man/AVENGERS UNIVERSE to sacrifice his life for the good of others when Tony died restoring the AU and brining back people lost in Thanos’ demented desire to “balance the universe”.

While he didn’t lose his life and his horrific ostracism from Human society was nearly unbearable, he deemed allowing his friends to return to a life without him as the much greater good. He also reconciled his relationship with Steven Strange; perhaps his “new father-figure”…except that even Strange has had his memory wiped of Peter’s existence as Spider-man…and THAT, people, is why I weep at the end of that movie: the fact that he finally knows he’s truly not alone and that the other Spider-men are his real brothers; knowing that those he loves – Ned and MJ – can grow in the way they were meant to; and even though he misses May and will be a stranger to Happy, he can move ahead and make new friends and a new life…one that might even hold MJ, Happy, Dr. Strange and a career as a scientist…

And so, I weep time and time again. Excuse me while I set about to face my unrecognized, inadmissible love (because that would be painful to tell the BEFORE story that leads up to the thing that touches my heart): reconciliation.

Resource: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spider-man-no-way-home-movie-review-2021; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_No_Way_Home, https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=reconciliation
Image: https://www.goldderby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home.jpg?w=640

WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #33 “A Quantum Echo At Taconite Harbor” (Submitted 4 Times Since 2020; 1 Revision (3/2023))

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver. In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, Lin Oliver. In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

ANALOG Tag Line:

There are Quantum Ghosts, then there are ghost ghosts…"Weird physics" happened in northern Minnesota a long time ago. What if there were echoes of the past in the iron-rich soil of the Iron Range and Gitchigumi?

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?)

A recluse and her AI salvage boat discover echoes of the past in quantum ghost images of a girl shooting baskets in a long abandoned town on Ojibwe Gichigami 

Opening Line:

“It was a good thing Mary Croft didn’t believe in ghosts.

She and Henry, the AI half of their team, were the only certified AI-Human magnetic dredge operator on the North Shore of Lake Superior at the moment.”

Onward:

“They worked for Great Lakes Recovery: Dredge & Dock, Inc, and this tour, the company had trusted them with a publicity stunt. They’d transferred Henry into the cabin of a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old, completely refurbished ore tugboat named EDNA G. Built just after the end of the Industrial Revolution, the last steam-powered boat was retired in the late 20^th Century. Crewed by Mary and Henry, it was paraded up and down the shoreline of three of the Great Lakes, celebrating the company’s commitment to the continued recovery of the planet, and the amelioration of the climate changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution. It was a corporate bonus that her family could trace back to the Deep South and included freed slaves, military genius, and a prominent member of the team that successfully midwifed the birth of the first true Artificial Intelligence.”

OK – so THIS IS HORRIBLE! I went from an intriguing first sentence…into a dull, boring, partly unnecessary monologue! What was I thinking? Granted that I needed background. The reader needs to know where the story’s taking place, but this is what is called an “infodump”.

What if I started the story a little bit earlier? She can maybe be talking to her mom…(which she actually is avoiding until the end)…I could probably shorten the story even more, making it more marketable if she talked to her in the first place…I don’t know. I need to see how that works. It might shorten the story as well as integrate the action better; rather than having her mom make a 350 mile trip from Minneapolis up to the North Shore.

What Was I Trying To Say?

There are things we can’t understand when it comes to quantum mechanics, how it works, and what we can expect are gradually coming into focus, but for most of us – especially those of us who have SOME science background with physics, it’s almost as scary as “ghosts”. And I discovered today, that quantum mechanics has its OWN ghosts: “In the terminology of quantum field theory, a ghost, ghost field, ghost particle, or gauge ghost is an unphysical state in a gauge theory. Ghosts are necessary to keep gauge invariance in theories where the local fields exceed a number of physical degrees of freedom”. That would have been IDEAL to use in the story – as long as I can translate enough of it for me to get the gist of what a “quantum ghost” is…

The Rest of the Story:

Here’s another terrible mistake: “Mary had enjoyed the steady thrum of the ancient engine and the absence of conversation as they cut across Lake Superior to the North Shore.” Using past tense, I’ve (probably earlier even) tossed the reader out of the story. Reading it today, after a long separation from it, this phrase certainly threw me out of the story. How much farther will it throw someone who has no investment in it?

The rest of the story concerns a little reconciliation between Mary and her mom; and the possibility of reconciliation between Mary and an old friend of hers; all of which give it a “Human side”, which doesn’t really provide anything more for the story itself.

In February of 2021, I got this rejection from the editor at F&SF, Sheree Renée Thomas: “I appreciated the mining details in this futuristic tale, but I found it tough to follow your worldbuilding in the exposition, as well as Mary Croft's character development (specifically, what was she and what was she doing, what was her actual relationship to the AI since the intro says they worked together for a decade but the robot introduces himself to her later), and so I'm going to pass on it for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. But I wish you best of luck finding the right home for it, and I hope you'll keep us in mind in the future for your other new stories.”

End Analysis:

I allowed the story to wander and not “tell the story”. While details are fine – see Sheree Thomas above – inane detail is NOT. It didn’t add to the story and (from what I read). Didn’t contribute to the forward momentum of the tale. EVERY WORD HAS TO PULL THE STORY AND THE READER FORWARD! This did – in places – but not enough to sell it. I need to change it so it invites the reader in to experience the world of the story.

I’ve got to be more focused – now that I’ve done a bit of research on quantum “ghosts”, the story makes more sense. I don’t have to do lots of “sciencey stuff” IN the story (my target is ASIMOV’S or ANALOG or F&SF. I hit all of them up before, but the story’s new and different. Maybe they’ll take it this time!

Can This Story Be Saved?

Oh, FOLKS! This plays into another story I’m writing right now…

 With the advent of the AI flap launched by concerns about ChatGPT, this is all everyone in the tech and education world is talking about right now. For some reason, I also never bothered to see if there was such a thing as a quantum ghost particle…

If I can integrate these subjects into the existing story, maybe I can resub this one and stand a better chance of saving it. It’s also helped that I read a semi-recent 30^th Anniversary collection of the best stories from 1977 to 2006. I confess it was enlightening in ways…I’m not sure I LIKE entirely. But enough of the stories stood out to me as exceptional (and I REALLY disliked some of them and my opinion was that they were there for name-draw only…), it was overall a really good read. I can see why most of the stories were award winners. I learned, and once I do a revision, I think I’ll take a submit the story again. So, YES. It can be saved!

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(physics)#:~:text=In%20the%20terminology%20of%20quantum,of%20physical%20degrees%20of%20freedom. , https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65139406 (3/31/23; 10:24 am) ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns -- 2 hours ago, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-a-first-physicists-glimpse-a-quantum-ghost/ ; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/in-a-first-physicists-glimpse-a-quantum-ghost/

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_(physics)#:~:text=In%20the%20terminology%20of%20quantum,of%20physical%20degrees%20of%20freedom. , https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-65139406
(3/31/23; 10:24 am) ChatGPT banned in Italy over privacy concerns -- 2 hours ago
Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAY: SPIDERMAN 3: No Way Home – All About Reconciliation?

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCON 8, which I WOULD have attended in person if I had disposable income, but I retired two years ago, my work health insurance stopped, and I’m now living on the Social Security and Medicare…I WILL NOT use the Programme Guide to jump off, jump on, rail against, or shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

This isn’t going to be a rant…enough people have ranted about this movie that there’s really nothing else I can say. Besides, I loved it, just…not in the way most people probably do.

The redoubtable Roger Ebert, with whom I grew up as half of the fabulous pair of movie reviewers “Siskel and Ebert” and their “four thumbs up” rating system – had this to say: “No Way Home” is crowded, but it’s also surprisingly spry, inventive, and just purely entertaining, leading to a final act that not only earns its emotions but pays off some of the ones you may have about this character that you forgot.”

I’m sure it does, but for me, the movie was about one thing: reconciliation. It has several incidents that reconcile characters with each other, with themselves, and even, in the end, he universe.

I also has another of the themes that move me to tears: sacrificial love…I hesitate to  mention this, but it’s the kind of love Jesus had for US. He surrendered to Jewish and Roman authorities not to save his friends, but to save the MULTIVERSE! (Not in those precise words, but if He had seen SM: No Way Home, I think He would understand my point.

Clearly the writers intended to say something more than just, “Spider-man fights the bad guys, converts them to Good, and then retires to his well-earned respite.” Consider the title: “No Way Home”. Spider-man gets home in the end, right? He returns to his proper universe, MJ and Ned are safe and going to MIT; Dr. Strange is safe and continues to be as sarcastic as ever; even Peter is safe from J Jonas Jameson. His identity is safe. NO ONE KNOWS THAT PETER PARKER AND SPIDERMAN are the same person.

Or was there a bigger change in the Multiverse? Did something happen where not only didn’t anyone know Peter was Spider-man…there were people who didn’t know him AT ALL – like MJ and Ned. They both knew Peter BEFORE they knew him as Spider-man. J Jonas Jameson knew Spider-man and not Peter (though in the comic books, he does know Peter as like a journalism intern or something…or not).

But because of what happened, it appears the NO ONE KNOWS PETER PARKER either, and the one person who loves him most is still dead.

Peter gave up EVERYTHING for everyone; for the people he loves. They don’t know him anymore.

Note that in his box as he’s moving into a cheesy New York apartment, there’s a GED book on top; which means that he never graduated from Midtown Smartypants School…in fact, he didn’t graduate from anywhere. Clearly, he has a job or he wouldn’t have been able to put down a security deposit and the first month’s rent to even get the place (which, you have to admit, for a New York apartment isn’t exactly a cold water, walk up, tenement. I don’t hear any gunfire in those tail-end shots, either.)

But to return to something I’m discovering is a theme I WANT to explore in my writing – reconciliation. I can’t help but weep when two individuals, separated by anger, or in fact ANYTHING that works to separate us from the people we care about. I find that I have some very…strong, angry feelings when I think about my dad. Because I was the sibling who lived closest to where he lived after Mom died. Much to his dismay, he lived two-and-a-half years longer than she did. He’d mutter about that sometimes; he was lonely and he knew he was dependent on us kids – particularly me for his everyday needs. I’d take him to the doctor, reset his television set (because he grew up with NO TV as a child, then a flip knob into adulthood…he NEVER understood how his 166 channel television worked. The staff in the Assisted Living facility he lived in were too busy to reset his channels over, and over, and over again – no bad on them! It just meant I had to return to his apartment five to ten times a week.

Nothing else made sense to him, either. He tried to get out of the building. He actually hit one of the CNAs. He hated what he ate. He just hated being alive without my mom. As his memory deteriorated, he became more and more confused. It was torture to watch him wildly vacillate every day (I was pretty much there every day). At the end, I was getting phone calls in the middle of the night…at any rate, because of his Alzheimer’s, he and I never really reconciled our relationship. There were times he’d be angry with me for coming to help him. Other times he’d be weepy. I grew to very much dislike this…person my father had become. He died without any reconciliation for me.

So, I’ve come to have strong emotional attachments to stories and movies in which ANYONE reconciles ANY relationship. I get teary-eyed at the end of “The Other Woman”; “Guardians of the Galaxy 2”; “Enchanted”; “Star Trek: Wrath of Khan”; “Free Guy”; “A Goofy Movie”; “First Wives Club”…according to IMDb, there are 882 movies about it.

I’m not taking the time to see if it’s there, but Spider-man: No Way Home is a movie all about reconciliation. Even so, it’s on MULTIPLE levels. There’s a reconciliation of the time line that Mysterio screwed up; there’s the reconciliation between Tony Stark and Peter Parker…(or was that Spider-man: A Long Way From Home? Hmmm); there’s the chance that Peter and Ned and MJ can go to MIT – even WITHOUT SPIDER-MAN changing the time lines! He’s stunned when the MIT Administrator says she’ll reconsider all of them, I get all excited about that simple reconciliation…

But the true focus of the movie is (of course) the three Spider-mans coming together TO FIX THEIR ENEMIES! Sandman, Doc Octopus, the Green Goblin, and Electro, all were healed and reconciled with their appropriate Spider-men. Even Andrew Garfield noticed how reconciliation fit naturally into the story: “ Andrew Garfield as Peter Parker/Spider-Man “…was interested in exploring the idea of a tortured Parker [and] how lessons from those events could be passed to Holland's character…[Garfield] was grateful for the chance to ‘tie up some loose ends’ for his incarnation…and described working with Holland and Maguire as an opportunity to have ‘deeper conversations... about our experiences with the character.’”

There was even the smaller storyline of the relationship between the Current Spider-man as he’d been dealing with the death of Tony Stark, who, I imagine, he’d seen not so much as a mentor, but as a father-figure. Even Tony Stark was drawn into that relationship – and it helped that he had a daughter who was still growing into herself. He, in fact, led the way for Spider-man/AVENGERS UNIVERSE to sacrifice his life for the good of others when Tony died restoring the AU and brining back people lost in Thanos’ demented desire to “balance the universe”.

While he didn’t lose his life and his horrific ostracism from Human society was nearly unbearable, he deemed allowing his friends to return to a life without him as the much greater good. He also reconciled his relationship with Steven Strange; perhaps his “new father-figure”…except that even Strange has had his memory wiped of Peter’s existence as Spider-man…and THAT, people, is why I weep at the end of that movie: the fact that he finally knows he’s truly not alone and that the other Spider-men are his real brothers; knowing that those he loves – Ned and MJ – can grow in the way they were meant to; and even though he misses May and will be a stranger to Happy, he can move ahead and make new friends and a new life…one that might even hold MJ, Happy, Dr. Strange and a career as a scientist…

And so, I weep time and time again. Excuse me while I set about to face my unrecognized, inadmissible love (because that would be painful to tell the BEFORE story that leads up to the thing that touches my heart: reconciliation.

Resource: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spider-man-no-way-home-movie-review-2021; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_No_Way_Home, https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=reconciliation

Image: https://www.goldderby.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Spider-Man-No-Way-Home.jpg?w=640

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Men In Black 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 2...and Other Tear-Jerkers…

NOT using the Programme Guide of the 2022 World Science Fiction Convention, ChiCON 8, which I WOULD have attended in person if I had disposable income, but I retired two years ago, my work health insurance stopped, and I’m now living on the Social Security and Medicare…I WILL NOT use the Programme Guide to jump off, jump on, rail against, or shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

Do you find yourself tearing up or weeping uncontrollable whenever you watch Spider-Man: No Way Home, the Back To The Future Trilogy, AVENGERS: Infinity War, and Men In Black 3?

No? It’s only me?

Maybe if I just explain a bit, you’ll recall the time you found yourself crying during these emotionally charged movies and you’ll agree with me!

OK, I’m starting with Spider-Man: No Way Home (herewith: NWH) because my wife and I just finished watching it. First of all, we all know that Peter Parker is a young man with no real male role-model left in his life. His mom and dad were killed (mostly in a plane crash, though sometimes murdered) and he was raised by his Aunt May and Uncle Ben. In NWH, we find three versions of Peter who show up in HIS universe via Ned creating multidimensional portals and them hopping through. Their meeting is convenient at first, until they start “sharing” and they all find out they’ve lost someone important to them. (PS: Apparently ALL the Spider-Mans in this movie are weepy, too). But the scene that gets to me is the very end when they all say “Goodbye” to each other Peter NWH knowing what’s coming. He tells Doctor Strange that he wants EVERYONE to forget that Spider-Man is Peter Parker, and the look Strange gives him – and the understanding on Peter NWH’s face make me weep harder, until I’m using my hanky to wipe my eyes.

In Men in Black 3 (MIB3), J (Will Smith) has been bitter his entire life because he grew up without a father. Sadly, the reason I never questioned this is because I fell prey to the “Black Father” meme – that “all black men are bad fathers and leave their families”. While patently NOT true, if you ask honest White people, they’ll usually admit that they’ve subconsciously bought into the lie.

It's so insidious that even J has bought into it.

MIB3 wouldn’t work if anyone watching it assumes that J’s dad is gone for the same reason we all think we know…What none of us THINK is that J’s dad, Colonel James Darrell Edwards Jr. died a hero, protecting his country. When J witnesses that, realizes that HE was the little boy that K neuralizes…I weep.

In the Back-To-the-Future Trilogy (BTTFT), Marty McFly’s dad is a spineless, fawning twerp whom NOBODY, not even Marty can respect. Instead, Marty has latched onto Doc Brown as a father figure and willingly follows him through alternate timelines (sensing a pattern here yet?) – and helps him fix the past, present and future that MARTY screwed up by creating a terrified by BRAVE George (his dad) and altering the timeline. He and Doc spend the rest of the first and the next three fixing the timeline…

The place where I find myself weeping every time is when Marty tries to keep Doc Brown from being murdered by the “Libyan terrorists”…but fails, even AFTER stealing the De Laurean and working so hard to fix everything. He sees Doc gunned down and runs up to the (bloodlessly) dead Doc Brown and break down, weeping. As I do…then Doc wakes up, show Marty his Kevlar vest, and shrugs off the slight tweak to the timelines…of course, saving Doc Brown from being murdered by Mad Dog Tannen merely changes the PERSON who dies. Horrified, Doc Brown sets out to save Marty…

In Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (GG2), Quill thinks he’s found his father, and has!

The problem is that his father is a psychopathic god who only wanted a child so he could create another creature that was half himself. The purpose of that, is to get his DNA and then recreate himself forever…or something stupid like that. Yondu, the alien with the head fin, who both told him the only reason he kept Quinn around was because he “was a runt and could get into small places” and constantly kept Peter in terror by threatening to eat him”. What we eventually find out is that Yondu saved Quill from certain death when he found out about Ego siring children on every sapient life form in the known universe, then murdering the resulting, “disappointing” child when they proved they didn’t carry his “god genes”. When he realizes the truth, he honors Yondu as his true father.

Lastly, there’s the relationship between Tony Stark and Spider-Man H: and this is one that BOTH of them became a true father and son team. Stark’s father, while he DID have strong feelings about Tony, was totally incapable of sharing them with his SON. He had no trouble sharing those feelings with the adult Tony when they shared a “two-men-whose-wives-were-expecting” moment in the past. Nor did he have any trouble sharing those feelings on a movie made about his “vision” of the future of humanity – but ending with “I built [Stark Expo] for you…it represents a whole lot more than people's inventions…one day you'll figure this out. And when you do, you will change the world. What is, and will always be, my greatest creation…is you.” Tony’s need to repair his relationship with his father was IMPOSSIBLE TO DO as his father was long dead by the time he found the film.

Spider-Man H/Peter Parker H was in desperate need of a strong father figure. The two of them were a match made in Heaven – or the Multiverse (feel free to choose according to your belief system!) And it worked. Tony Stark turned Stark Industries over to a much more caring and responsible Peter Parker H; and he saved the world by using the Infinity Stones he snatched from Thanos to putting it back to a time BEFORE Thanos had eliminated half of all life in the UNIVERSE…

That cost him his life, but he was almost happy to pay the price. He certainly “won over the Woman”, and he certainly received a son’s adoration from Peter Parker H. When he dies at the end of Infinity War…I cry every time.

So, there you go! Everything you need to know!

“Excuse me?” I listen, then reflect the question back to the Asker, “You still don’t know why I’m the one who weeps at all of these scenes?” (and I’m sure I’ve missed many others). I nod, then reply, “I was hoping that you hadn’t noticed me dodge that bullet.” Listen, then nod sagely, “I suppose I DO owe you that.” I purse my lips, breathe in deeply through my nose, release the breath slowly, conjure up a stool, sit and say:

My relationship with my own father AS SEEN BY ME was fraught. I was born when Mom and Dad didn’t have much money, and after mom quit (it WAS after all, 1957) to stay home and “raise the children”, Dad go another job. He was a general laborer, who’s someone in the construction job site hierarchy whose rank is virtually 0, with 10 being the Site Supervisor (aka The Suit In The Hard Hat). He needed another job to feed his growing family, so he worked oil changing and “whatever” at a local, NON-Chain garage (Tony’s, if you must know). He bowled in the winter, played softball in the summer, and all-in-all, put food on the table in the Best Of Times, and did scab work (non-Union carpentry) when we had to use food stamps in the Worst Of Times.

He didn’t seem to have much time for me; and as I loathed organized sports (after a DISASTROUS attempt at Little League Baseball when I was seven: I was always the right fielder (as it was the position that saw the least action). Remember the scenes in MEET THE ROBINSON’S when Goob (Michael Yagoobian) plays baseball, drops the catch in the Championship Game? That was me at 7…only our team wasn’t that great – and I was the worst of them. Even the coach was disparaging.

I’m pretty sure Dad was embarrassed. I have a picture of me at about two years. Mom and Dad had dressed me up in a baby-sized football helmet, shoulder pads, and put a football in my hands. Scrawled on the back in my mom’s feminine script are the words, “No interest at all!” Yep. Those words might as well have been tattooed on my forehead. My dad had played basketball and football; brother #1: football, hockey (school, traveling, college with scholarship), baseball; brother #2: (choir) football, hockey, track and field (State Record shot-putter); sister: ?, volleyball, softball, Mom: college fencing (!!!).

Me? Reading; just call me a square peg in a round hole.

Near the end, Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and because I was closest physically, much of the day-to-day contact with Mom and Dad fell to me. No problem, but by then, my feelings of animosity toward my dad was pretty much a hard shell. I find myself wishing the picture above was Dad and me reconciling...but by the end, he hardly knew me, and I was exhausted.

And then, to add insult to injury, I NEVER had a substitute Dad…no male figure ever tucked me under his wing and made certain I was being nurtured and he was genuinely interested in whatever it was I was doing. I became very bitter – and I’m quite certain some psychologist would find a goldmine of various and sundry psychological neuroses, etc. to dig up and confront me with and prescribe treatment. But, the fact is that, I’m not interested because I’ve found my own comfort.

Besides those I note above, IMDb lists some 1300 “sci-fi, father-son relationship” movies. If you drop the sci-fi, the number LEAPS to over 21,000. I’m clearly NOT the only person who has experienced and tried to reconcile this relationship. When I type in, “sci-fi, father-son reconciliation”, I get 70 hits…of which, three are sci-fi (two are actually horror), and one episode of an old TV show…and then the list repeats the 35 selections again to give a nice 70…FWIW, none of the entries are the movies above…

So, why did I write all of this? It’s all fantasy, right? I all of a sudden realized that
I’ve been looking for a reconciliation with my father most of my life. He died of complications of Alzheimer’s three-and-a-half years ago, so there’s no chance that I’ll EVER reconcile in reality, but now I understand why, when I see that happening in movies – and I react with grief.

Now that I know that, perhaps what I’ll start doing is WRITING my way into reconciliation by focusing my narrative on creating those kinds of stories. The kinds of stories I'd LIKE to see…

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_and_Mary_Parker#:~:text=Richard%20and%20Mary%20Parker%20appear,Uncle%20Ben%20and%20Aunt%20May's.,
Image: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/two-old-men-exchange-a-brotherly-hug-picture-id156894368?s=612x612

Slice of PIE…Maybe…: Alzheimer’s, STAR TREK, and Reconciliation

NOT using the panel discussions of the most recent World Science Fiction Convention in San Jose, CA in August 2018 (to which I be unable to go (until I retire from education)), I would jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the pdf copy of the Program Guide. But not today. This explanation is reserved for when I dash “off topic”, sometimes reviewing movies, sometimes reviewing books, and other times taking up the spirit of a blog an old friend of mine used to keep called THE RANTING ROOM…

I’m a sucker for a movie or book that’s all about reconciliation – The Jane Austen movies are about reconciliation of broken relationships (They’re romances, too, but that’s beside the point). STAR TREK: Wrath of Khan is about reconciliation between Kirk and his son David. Dad introduced me to STAR TREK in the late 60s, and watching the shows with him, and eventually my wife and kids, was a foundational event that led me to me pursuing my writing.

Even the goofy Lego Movie has a father-son reconciliation at the end (Oddly, there are NO images of them hugging at the end...sad, that.)

The first movie mom and dad brought us to see was the original MARY POPPINS. We saw it at the Terrace Theater in Robbinsdale, the city Mom grew up in. At the very end, Mr. Banks reconciles with his kids, dumping the “bank life” for flying a kite with Jane and Michael.

I’ve been reflecting lately about WHY reconciliation movies and books are so important to me. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a sort of odd duck in the family. Dad played football and basketball (in the day when players who were 6’1” were tall, he was STILL short!). My brothers and sister played sports all through high school and beyond. Even mom was a member of the Robbinsdale Girl’s Athletic Club – tennis, badminton, and even fencing.

I didn’t do sports. I read. I wrote. I played guitar. I went to a very religious college and then went touring in Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and eventually West Africa with two different church bands. I went to Moorhead State University and worked most of my summers at Bible camps.

I wasn’t home a lot because, frankly, I didn’t feel like I belonged.

Then I got older and wiser, got married, then Josh and Mary were born, and then Alzheimer’s touched our lives. After Mom passed, it just seemed to get worse, but I started to spend more time with Dad. Oddly, I started to feel closer to him as we did more and more things together – like watching NASCAR racing, going to restaurants after doctor or dentist visits, or going to The Lookout just because. Our lives began to wind together like they never had when I was younger. We would talk, sometimes just sit together, or go to an event at SilverCreek and enjoy ourselves. In the end, I felt reconciled – I felt like Dad was part of my life again and that I was part of his. Maybe that’s why the movies like Sing, and Back To The Future – and even FINDING NEMO meant so much to me. They were always about reconciliation; about joining BACK together after a time of separation. And I cried at those movies when I first saw them; and a few days ago, I cried when I realized that me and Dad had reconciled…               

Image: https://66.media.tumblr.com/978ec6405dc64d4a8ec98381fadfbb7b/tumblr_naz7eoI5n71tch951o8_400.jpg, https://i.pinimg.com/originals/5f/6a/36/5f6a36cd34703eb8bf0d1e4d59660965.jpg, http://cinemagogue.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/1393260444000-Ferrell-lego-3.jpg

WRITING ADVICE: Can This Story Be SAVED? #3 “One Million Nine Hundred Thousand” (Submitted 8 Times Since 2008, Revised once to “A Choice of Sunrise”)

In September of 2007, I started this blog with a bit of writing advice. A little over a year later, I discovered how little I knew about writing after hearing children’s writer, In April of 2014, I figured I’d gotten enough publications that I could share some of the things I did “right”. I’ll keep that up, but I’m running out of pro-published stories. I don’t write full-time, nor do I make enough money with my writing to live off of it, but someone pays for and publishes ten percent of what I write. Hemingway’s quote above will remain unchanged as I work to increase my writing output and sales, but I’m adding this new series of posts because I want to carefully look at what I’ve done WRONG and see if I can fix it. As always, your comments are welcome!

ANALOG Tag Line: Out of death can come reconciliation even between the most bitter enemies.

Elevator Pitch (What Did I Think I Was Trying To Say?): Nothing is going to change in space, even when we genetically engineer Humans for specific environments, insist that Human means some specific percentage of DNA…even when vast empires collide and reconcile, it will all come down to basic Human interaction – love, hate, and talking things out. Even in the clouds of a gas giant some 350 light years distant among people who live on the back of hundred-kilometer-long semi-sentient blimps…

Opening Line: “Tarand Leland Karr didn’t hear the screams right away.”

Onward: The grandson and granddaughter of the woman who forged a peace between the two sides that grew out of the Fracture oh Humanity survive their grandmother’s death and must reconcile themselves in order to plan a funeral. They must also avoid making it into a media circus which it is likely to become. The granddaughter plans to have it on the premises of her own cloudwhale. Her brother doesn’t like the idea, but swallows it. In addition to their family fracture, the architect of off the Reconciliation of Humanity to forge the Confederation of the Human Genome. In this universe, there are no aliens. At least the Milky Way is a Humans only club, not by choice but by chance. The “aliens” are the genetic constructs that were counted not Human by the Empire of Man. The Confluence of Humanity took genetic engineering to new…heights or depths. This the story of the reconciliation of the grandkids and Empire and Confluence.

What Was I Trying To Say?: Exactly what I set out to say…though I hadn’t thought through how much I was trying to deal with.

The Rest of the Story: …but again, I tried to do far too much. There is SO much going on here that once I start it, it will become a novel. The first book’s going to be IN THE SKIES OF RIVER, and I have that one already thinly plotted out. This will be the second, and most likely take the name above, A CHOICE OF SUNRISE…I tried to introduce readers of a short story to a new world, then I added a brother-sister conflict, layered on an “end of empire” story, and a reconciliation between retired “major players”. That was all rolled up in everyone joining hands, swaying and singing “Kumbaya”…Hmmm…

End Analysis: This story takes place in the same universe as “Hūmbūlance” and like that story, I tried to do far too much – read about it if you want to, here: http://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/2016/07/writing-advice-can-this-story-be-saved.html

The takeaway after analyzing two stories is that my writing often lacks focus. I have a very grand idea, then add another idea, and then another, and another. The scope grows far beyond what a short story can comfortably cover. Maybe instead of lacking focus, I have focus – but it’s on too many stories and I don’t complete my thoughts. If I could pick one story then detail that story, I might be able to create powerful pieces that engage readers, and breathe real life into my characters.

Can This Story Be Saved? Simple answer: yes – by changing it into a novel. The more complex answer is that I can break this story into parts and just follow one person and do one story. In the long-run, I can START stories with focus, narrow the scope of the story, and aim at showing a single incident with a limited number of characters.

Image: https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/9f/22/3b/9f223b1e57a36e14db3eb13715fbe3f9.jpg

POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS: “INTERSTELLAR” – Bad Reviews by Science Geeks Say “WHAT???!!!”, Part I

I know that PIE isn’t supposed to be in this rotation, but I saw “Interstellar” this weekend and was wowed.

I was surprised to discover that the reviews in places that are “pro-science” were pretty harsh. Attacking everything from science to character development, they typically pointed out that while the movie was visually stunning, it was very weak on character development with logic loopholes all over the place.

Let’s start with the movie perceived to be “the best science fiction movie ever made” (as opposed to the best science fiction novel ever written – 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is the former; DUNE is the latter. I’d like to point out that the novel by Arthur C. Clarke has not been judged the “best SF novel ever written”. It won no Hugo; Nebular; British SF Award (though it hadn’t been invented at that time...); and didn’t make the New York Times Best Seller List. Conversely, DUNE has gotten all of those awards, but movies attempted from the book have been...poor substitutes at best.)

I saw “2001: A Space Odyssey” when I was young. I thought I was 13 at time, but unless they rereleased it to the theaters, I would have been 11 and I doubt that my parents would have let me go to a movie alone at that age. So...let’s say I was 13 and watching a re-release.

I didn’t get it.

I stumbled into SF by myself, though I guess my dad read it. I started with SPACESHIP UNDER THE APPLE TREE and WODERFUL FLIGHT TO THE MUSHROOM PLANET in elementary school. In 7^th grade, I discovered THE WHITE MOUNTAINS. After that, I was hooked. Around the same time, my dad started watching Star Trek (at the time, there was no appellation added to the end. It was the only Star Trek around). After seeing the hideous “Yog: Monster From Space” (1970), I eagerly anticipated seeing "A Space Odyssey".

I STILL didn’t get it.

In fact, I wasn’t the only one. Despite the implication in the reviews of “Interstellar” that “2001” was an instant critical and popular hit, the truth is somewhat less crystalline: “Upon release, 2001 polarized critical opinion, receiving both ecstatic praise and vehement derision.” As well, “Eminent historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. deemed the film ‘morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and inordinately long ... a film out of control’.” Science fiction writers Ray Bradbury, Lester Del Ray, and even Samuel R. Delany disliked the movie and thought the dialogue “banal”. Asimov liked it, and James P. Hogan liked it but didn’t understand the ending – enough so to steal the story and write a novel with a different ending.

The fifty-seven-year-old me still isn’t sure about how “2001: A Space Odyssey” ended. But I loved “Interstellar”, I understood the ending, and while there were parts I would have liked seeing strengthened (Murph’s and her dad’s relationship); the movie as a whole had a powerful effect on me.

No other review I’ve read has pointed out the metaphor of the shallow ocean on Miller’s world – all of their relationships were shallow and all of them were nearly swept away by the consequences of that shallowness. That was immensely meaningful to me at this time in my life.

I am also a sucker for the reconciliation of parents and their children. No matter how many times I see “October Sky”, I always choke up when Homer’s dad puts his arm around his shoulder during the final rocket launch. Even though “Interstellar”’s parental reconciliation is decidedly science fiction-y, it is, nevertheless powerful. Matthew McConaughey weeping uncontrollably when he views Murphy’s message twenty years after it was sent seemed either real or the result of a superior actor’s submersion in his role, and their final scene together is both humorous and touching. I found it especially poignant that Cooper’s descendants had no idea who he was. The fact that Anne Hathaway’s character does NOT get to reconcile with her father made me weep as well for personal reasons I don’t need to go into here. The fact that Cooper is estranged from his son – the one he was closest to at the beginning – is a further slice of reality that I could have done without, but realize is realistic on many levels.

I will return to my analysis of “Interstellar” in the future, but for now that’s all I have to say.

Resources: http://io9.com/interstellar-is-the-best-and-worst-space-opera-youll-ev-1654807305, http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/space_20/2014/11/interstellar_science_review_the_movie_s_black_holes_wormholes_relativity.2.html, http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968, http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/review-interstellar-is-not-quite-the-2001-a-space-odyssey-youre-looking-for-20141107, http://www.timeout.com/london/film/the-100-best-sci-fi-movies (Leading sci-fi experts, filmmakers, science fiction writers, film critics and scientists pick the best sci-fi movies ever made), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(film), http://io9.com/stop-putting-new-age-pseudoscience-in-our-science-ficti-1656432047?utm_campaign=socialflow_io9_facebook&utm_source=io9_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

Image: http://cdn.fansided.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/229/files/2014/09/Interstellar-Matthew-McConaughey-and-Anne-Hathaway.jpg