THE HIGH-PITCHED WHINE OF DAN O’BANNON’S COFFIN: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Yes, that high-pitched whine you hear is Dan O’Bannon’s coffin spinning out of the grave and into low orbit. I watched the second half of the ALIEN: EARTH TV show. (From episode five on, I wrote escape capsule hit-pieces as episodes aired, just so you know.)
   In my earlier blog post on the first four episodes, I wrote that the key feature of any story featuring the ALIEN franchise is this: at some point, smart people in space must do dumb things for the story to move forward.
   Damn it. Episode five acknowledges this in the script itself. Proof of how stupid smart people can be. It’s built into the story. Too close to the alien bone?
   Now…I glossed over a whole bunch of things from the first four episodes. Take episode four, for example. In which Battle Angel Alita Wendy Darling becomes an alien snake-charmer. Or something. She can talk to the animals.
   But it is time to return to those earlier episodes in talking about smart people in space doing dumb things. In episode one, you get the idea that something goes horribly wrong on the spaceship that looks awfully like Ridley Scott’s idea of a spaceship on the inside.
   But we aren’t shown that story.
   We see glimpses of the set.
   A load of viewers believed…if you build a whole set and don’t show the story in full, then there’ll be a flashback episode later. Explaining all of that nasty stuff in gory detail. As sure as chest-bursting follows a meal, that’s what we got in episode five. Must use the set. Built it for something. Use it.
   There were hints in earlier episodes of what went down. But we really must see the whole thing. And this is the point at which Dan O’Bannon’s coffin achieves escape velocity.
   Here’s the flashback set-up. Two aliens escape their containment pods. They hug faces. One member of the crew dies in an ill-advised surgical procedure. Acid, baby. The other is placed in a cryogenic suspension pod.
   Oopsie.
   The alien bursts out of that chest and flees the pod. Glass breaks when the plot demands. Hiding in the vast ship, somewhere, the alien creates the perfect set-up for an alien jailbreak. This li’l alien can sneak through vents and ignore holes in the plot or some shit, and reaches the other aliens in their safe glass containers. Mm.
   That would be okay. Believable, if you squint hard enough. One alien slithers in, fucks shit up, and slithers out again. I’d buy that. But I’m not purchasing what actually happens. The aliens in the lab stage a jailbreak by opening their prisons from the inside.
   They’re smarter than the average bear, see.
   This is dumber than a box of moon rocks. Use the alien that already fucking escaped. Let it wreak havoc in the lab. It’s the alien, for fuck’s sake. But…no. When these other aliens aren’t solving the Times crossword or Mr Rubik’s fiendish cube, they are staging a jailbreak. By…
   Now this bit is the worst bit in the episode. Breaks all the rules. It is drummed into anyone who ever sat in a science class. And it applies to the lab. NO FOOD AND DRINK IN THE LAB. Ever. True, this is an ALIEN gig…so smart people must do dumb things in space for the story to move forward over a cliff.
   There’s a lot in earlier episodes set up to pay off in this flashback, and then advance the story by switching to the here and now. But the golden opporchancity was there, and they blew it. Let the alien, from ALIEN, do its alien thing in fucking shit up. Then the new aliens can cut loose and do their alien thing. Don’t keep sidelining the original monster.
   Instead, we see the Skullfucker Octoball try to take on the adult alien. But there aren’t any eyes to pluck out. As fucking expected. At the end of the episode, we dip back into BLADE RUNNER territory with the appearance of Lady Yutani…and, for once, she isn’t on the phone to Mr Morrow the cyborg. She’s there, in person, with a bunch of mad-looking corporate samurai dudes. Send in the clones. Don’t worry. They’re here.
   The ALIEN movie gave us an alien horror with a dose of corporate evil thrown in. Here, the corporate comedy hijinks take the main BLADE RUNNER stage. In flashback land, there’s a saboteur on board, ooh, blasting bits of the spaceship into the cosmos.
   I’m surprised the alien didn’t just turn to the camera and ask the audience what the fuck it was doing here. In Michael Caine’s accent.
   You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off.
   It’s one of those TV shows. If you can’t work out which of these characters we are meant to care for, root for the alien.
   Am I meant to care for Mark Musk Elon Zuckerberg and his obsession with Battle Angel Alita Wendy Darling? I’d have preferred a woman in the role of the trillionaire. Blonde. With a roll-neck sweater and a fixation over Steve Jobs.
   Her company, being in the ALIEN universe, has to be called Theranos Thanatos. I still wouldn’t care about the character, but there’d be far more scope for comedy. Yes, it’s true. I’ve watched these episodes, and…I only care about the original alien. Neglected. Ignored. Forgotten. Sliced up. Missing in action. And then lit brightly in a fucking fish tank.
   When we reach episode five and a flashback containing some xenomorph action, we are treated to microwaved leftovers from an earlier cinematic experience. A flurry of half-hearted positive reviews out there in the dark all mutter out of the side of the mouth when declaring…
   You know, we’ve had worse out of this franchise.
   And so on. This is, at heartless heart, The Emperor’s New Skinsuit. The only thing connecting ALIEN to BLADE RUNNER is the director who used similar production techniques and items in both films.
   So why turn this ALIEN TV show into BLADE RUNNER by another name? Yes, it has been strangely watchable. I could be at the top of a skyscraper, on the corner, looking down on a police chase on Fucked Up Street…while a petrol tanker’s brakes fail over on Beyond All Recognition Avenue.
   Strangely watchable. And there’s nothing I can do about it except look away. But I look. Would this show reach physical media? Disney releases are patchy and unpredictable, that way. Would I buy a 4K set? No. This is one…and very done.
   There are loads of ALIEN and PREDATOR films out there that I didn’t buy. I’m pretty sure I didn’t even watch a bunch of the PREDATOR ones. ALIEN should never have been a franchise. Luckily, HIGHLANDER was never a franchise. Fortunately, THE MATRIX was a one-off. And INDIANA JONES. A trilogy, thank fuck.
   BACK TO THE FUTURE stuck to the plan. No more movies after the third one. Sadly, over my dead body might apply here once Zemeckis hangs up his director’s hat for the very last time. No one is going to remake that story with the main character as Marsha McFly. The crush sub-plot was icky enough with Marty.
   (Also, technically, the main character in BACK TO THE FUTURE is the most important time traveller – the dog.)
   What of ALIEN: THE WILDERNESS YEARS as a franchise? Battle Angel Wendy. FAUX RUNNER. Do Androids Dream of Monsters Under the Bed? I should go on, but you get the point. Oh, very well. ASLAN VERSUS ALIEN VERSUS PREDATOR VERSUS CALVIN AND HOBBES: MA’AM, THIS IS A WENDY’S. Now I’m done.
   We have Wendy the snake-charmer or The Alien Whisperer. I suspect a lot of the show is going nowhere. And no more is this evident than in episode six. The Fluff. It’s an episode about padding and nothing much going on. If that.
   Once more, we question basic lab techniques. No one should be alone in the lab. And the aliens should all really have a lab each. Think the show missed a trick, there. Each alien needs its own unique lab.
   Yes, give each lab a sense of character and an alien in it. At least then the show would have some character. But no, we’ll keep these lions in one room and in glass cases. Yes, if you were paying attention in the previous episodes that didn’t lull you to sleep, then you’d know there’s this other alien. Awaiting a slow tease of an appearance.
   And we get to the goods in this episode. Not worth the wait. The central plank of creating your superhero team, those lost boys and girls, is giving the audience synthetic characters who aren’t affected by the aliens. Creating synthetic characters. There’s an idea that’s a hostage to fortune.
   Superheroes aren’t affected by the aliens. Except…this is an ALIEN franchise offshoot, and so we’ll be fucking around with that expectation more than once. Battle Angel Wendy got into a tussle with an alien and lived to tell the tale. She’s all better now.
   In this episode, we see feeding time at the zoo go horribly wrong for a synthetic character we don’t have energy to care for. Dolly the sheep just sheeps in, fucks shit up, and sheeps some more.
   The Skullfucker Octoball in charge of the sheep is biding its time, playing tenth-dimensional chess, and shit. Oh no. The CGI fly eats wobots for bweakfast. For a top secret research facility, I notice the cameras on Fantasy Island become quite useless and unwatched when the plot demands this.
   Characters stumble around in and out of various situations. The Veronica Cartwright Veronica Cartwright character was damaged but she’s all better now. They gave her a mind-wipe, but didn’t warn anyone else on the island about not telling her that. So now she knows she had a mind-wipe after being told. Would have been better off with a facecloth and some mild soap.
   Inevitably, after much padding, and more fan service out of focus in the background, we reach the hugging of a face. And when this face was hugged, I found it hard not to laugh out loud. I half-expected the actor to start moonwalking, and I just couldn’t take it seriously.
   What’s that? The guy who was fired in this episode didn’t make it off the island? Instead he was dragged into one of those standard air vents large enough to fit several plot holes through? Explain why the secure lab needs a massive ALIEN AIR VENT™ at floor level. Or, indeed, at any level. Explain. Show your working.
   There were so many other ways to build up to SOME CHARACTER WE DON’T CARE ABOUT™ being hugged in the face by an alien. I say we take off and nuke the entire show from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
   Damn.
   It’s sad seeing the alien in a well-lit glass cage doing sweet fuck-all. Not an ALIEN moment. The same is true of the actress playing Lady Yutani. She finally gets her teeth into a scene. Regrettably, it’s a scene from a BLADE RUNNER show no one asked for.
   All the padding, all the waffle, questioning what it is to be human…the fluff belongs in another type of story. Is there a place for it here? There is. In small doses. But not as padding. So much for episode six, which, in the closing seconds, attempts to make the Skullfucker Octoball the star of this show.
   IT ISN’T.
   What stays with me in this episode? Pointlessness. There’s a talk about what Wendy will do. She could be family to her brother. But there are loftier goals. She should develop travel faster than the speed of light, and explore the universe. Wendy must make the right choice.
   Except…there’s nothing to stop her eternal self being family to her brother until he dies of old age. Then she can explore the universe after. She can have it all. It isn’t EITHER/OR. The show flounders arse-deep in too many moments like that.
   And then there was episode seven.
   Two of the Very Lost Boys lead their pal the scientist dude into the jungle. Basically, Lennie is being taken to see the rabbits. (Spoiler for another story.) The Peter Pan framework should have been referenced with a light touch. Too late for that. The whole show lumbers along, top-heavy with enforced symbolism.
   You’d be better off watching The Lost Boys. That’s a movie about rebellious Kiefer Sutherland being all rebellious and shit.
   The different spaghetti strands of storytelling veer off and converge just about as messily as you’d expect. Those behind the show have certainly seen the movie Predator. So it is time to throw in a bit of that in the jungle. But not too much, lest the show be accused of turning into Predator.
   Normally I’d say Wendy’s plan comes across as one of the worst plans in the history of science fiction television. But I can’t stop there. Wendy’s plan is one of the worst plans in the history of plans.
   I’ll release my tame alien as a distraction, so we can escape Fantasy Island.
   Again, we come back to this thing of the alien in a glass cage, sidelined by the shenanigans elsewhere. Characters queue up in slow motion, waiting for death. When death comes, it arrives with CGI rapidity.
   They know, making this show, that scenes of the alien escaping and killing lab techs in bright light…well, those scenes are just not going to cut it. So we’ll switch to the security cameras, for a more obscured look at the CGI tomfoolery.
   And so it goes, again, when in the jungle. An instant problem arrives. Soldiers. An instant fix arrives. Predator. The alien. This time the fight is in broad daylight, so we have to obscure our alien by using the bushes.
   Perhaps more than any other episode, this episode feels like it is about to (chest) burst into being a musical. Soldiers with bad timing turn up to miss the main event. Characters with no planning flit in and out of sight.
   It takes a very long forty minutes for Wendy, Veronica Cartwright Veronica Cartwright, and Communist Manifesto Guy from ANDOR to reach the boat, the boat, and we don’t even have Mr Roarke or Tattoo standing by to wave them farewell.
   There’s one episode to watch. Before it airs, I wonder what it sets up. This whole show is about a mission to bring alien samples back for study. But even that mission was off the back of an earlier unseen sequence in which a whole bunch of people died. We were told this.
   So we may yet see another prequel. Where are we, by episode seven? Number of deaths so far? Don’t care. Number of characters worth caring about? Don’t care. Trillionaire-ism is bad. Corporations are bad. People are no better. Just bet on the alien for the win.
   What else didn’t I care about on the show? Screens. They flashed up with information on the aliens. We live in a TV age of visuals that are clear enough. You can pause the data dumps and read snippets of what the aliens are all about.
   And I just didn’t care. We’re told about the Skullfucker Octoball. And we’re told about the really fucking boring plant thing. I’m waiting on the base being overrun by plants when the inevitable fire/explosion sequence kicks in. And then the killer plant can really go to work. Presuming it crawls into a handy ventilation shaft where it can survive the fire/explosion.
   No, I didn’t care about the text screens. They could have flashed Surprised in the Butt by Ripley’s Xenomorph Lover: a Chuck Tingle Dinosaur Romance on one of those screens for all the difference those screens made.
   And so. To episode ate eight. The scenewy’s pwetty. Be vewy vewy quiet. I’m hunting humans wabbits humans wabbits for a story. We go a li’l bit Predator, a li’l bit country, a li’l bit rock ’n’ roll, and a bit Terminator 2.
   Two Terminator machines go at it in a lab, in a rather inconsequential fight…in an inconsequential episode. This is the last episode in the show, and I expected the deaths to mount up. Instead, we had a whole lot of nothing.
   Okay. There were deaths. Soldiers, on the island, dying under the alien’s teeth and claws. Don’t forget the tail. There’s a good story here, stumbling through the ruins of other stories. I can see what they were trying to go for. Alas…
   The entire episode does, indeed, act as set-up for the next series. I expected a whole bunch of characters to die. You have practically the whole bunch in a room. One bomb and it is done. But no.
   Yutani doesn’t even get to phone in her performance here. She’s flashed up on the screen as a reminder of her existence. There was so much noodling around, too much padding, for the late arrival of her army to make a difference.
   That army should have arrived earlier in the story, full force, with chaos the result. Chaos in which the monsters get to feed. Here’s an idea. In the future, just have jail cells that are locked the old-fashioned way. With a physical key. Don’t operate the cages by electricity.
   It’s the dumbest thing. All the creatures, and the other prisoners in this narrative, are locked in electrically-powered jails. What if the power goes? There’s a back-up. What if the back-up goes? NOTHING. The fucking doors stay locked, you cunts!
   Wait. Let me tell you how I really feel.
   Welcome to Fantasy Island. What’s the plot? THE BLACK HOLE. That’s the hole the story fell into. At least the robots on that Disney production were amusing. Welcome to Fantasy Island. But, hey. The scenewy is pwetty.
   Everyone is in a rush to be the next model, rendering the last model obsolete. That notion does a few handstands and backflips as characters manoeuvre around each other…to no great effect.
   The Peter Pan stuff sputtered out episodes ago. Boy Genius isn’t Peter Pan. He’s a symbolic coded fictional watercolour painting of Elon Musk refusing to accept an autistic trans daughter. Misunderstood. He’s misunderstood. And irritating. We don’t even get his plan out of his lips.
   He sends the minds of children into artificial bodies. They’ll have access to the whole of human learning. And they can then improve the process so that adult minds can transfer into human bodies. That’s when Elon Zuckerberg makes his move. But that isn’t even a plot here.
   There’s a movie worth watching to reach a conclusion about the handling of the Boy Genius in this show…
   The Dirty Dozen. In that film, one of the dozen is the character you love to hate. You cannot wait for Archer Maggott to die. When’s he getting shot? That’s Archer Maggot’s story right there.
   And so it should be with the Boy Genius. He serves no purpose beyond being set up as an evil doll-figure who is bitch-slapped by an alien at just the right time. Boy Genius deserves to be on the way out by episode three.
   Even that Veronica Cartwright Veronica Cartwright character, who appeared to die in episode seven, made it back for episode eight. The two mad scientists assisting the Boy Genius are still in play by the end of this show. And, spoiler, one of them is dead.
   Adrian Edmondson, as some sort of cybernetic Odd Job henchman, minus the bowler hat, is still ticking along merrily by the end as well.
   Yes, the killer plant finally makes its move, and this is as underwhelming as you’d expect. That played out like a random encounter with a Dungeons & Dragons monster in a killer dungeon.
   All dungeons are killer dungeons, whether science fiction or fantasy. In this killer dungeon, though, the usual suspects make it through. It’s almost as though there’s some evil hidden agenda. An evil corporate agenda. To produce another series.
   You had one job, television. One job. To make sure the alien would kill a whole lotta people (and synthetics) in a show that sidelined the alien in favour of letting a whole lotta people (and synthetics) live. The final episode could’ve done with being a bit more final.
   This TV show sounds a bit like an earlier spin-off. ALIEN: EARTH isn’t a comic book series. ALIENS: EARTH WAR is. I enjoyed the raw energy of those comic book stories. This TV blip has a hard task, true…
   There shouldn’t be a franchise, yet there is. So what’s the problem? Trade on the original story. Add something new. Avoid fan service. Remember when? We fucking do. Stop reminding us.
   We want the familiar, but it must be different. Advance on it. But not too different. So you won’t satisfy any audience. There are people out there in deep space, declaring there is only one ALIEN movie. There certainly shouldn’t be two television shows.
   We don’t need to see Ian Holm’s acting dug up from the vaults in some nonsensical scene. (I know I’ve seen that travesty, but I refused to believe it.) If you must give us something, give us something of substance. Evil Trillionaire Boy Genius could have experimented on the alien and realised that – if you solve the acid problem – then the alien blood might cure cancer.
   That would be a better twist than anything, everything, on this show. Was there a scrap of merit? Discovering the lost boys and girls had their own graveyard on Fantasy Island. Aaaaaand…that was about it.
   Imagine watching a TV show and then turning to Mark Verhieden’s comic books for something bright, fiery, and with its own peculiar atmosphere. Those comics had the same hard task. Give us more of the same, but not too samey. Verhieden was allowed to use the characters of Newt and Hicks…
   Until a shitty movie sequel came along and killed them off. Then the names were changed to protect the indifferent. They were changed back for the collected editions.
   So, yes, there was a bit of fan service in the comic books. But Verhieden tried to give us the atmosphere of an ALIEN story. Not a BLADE RUNNER one or a TERMINATOR one. Or Peter Pan with robots thrown in.
   The television show feels sterile. Airless. Unloved. It feels unwatched even as you watch it, and that’s no good. My view, after watching? I turned to the comic books for a better experience.
   What surprised me? That I watched every episode. Please. For fuck’s sake. Don’t make a second show.

HARDBACKS AND PAPERBACKS AND SHELVES, OH MY! A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

An author's library.
   A label attached to many a blog post. These library posts are all the same. What goes on in an author's library? The slow steady march of books. Aye, even into the digital age and beyond.
   The recent influx of 610 books, and the arrival of a big eff-off bookcase to handle the flood, raised a few questions. What to do with the volume of volumes?
   Stack, for now.
   Of the 609 books, a few are gems. One tome is already gone, headed across choppy water to feature as a prop in a photo-shoot for a book cover.
   I took possession of this year's Folio Society crop, and that small collection was in addition to the 610 books mentioned.

*

One down, 609 to go. If I read a book a week, that'll take a while. I won't, though. Duplicates are inevitable. I spotted at least a dozen stories I've read.
   Trimming the list already.
   Question. With clones and copies, do I keep the duplicates or the ones I obtained earlier? There's a flip of the coin to that. A few paperback books came in that I'd considered buying. I've headed those purchases off at the pass.
   Hell, if I battered through a book a day, I'd call that three years of poring over tomes rather than two...
   Allowing for days each year when little or no reading is possible. And for books that can't be read at a single day-long night-long sitting.

*

I asked questions of my library, paperback and hardback.

*

The cheapest books were obtained freely. Gifts in.
   And the most expensive book? Well, I know the price of that, and it was free as well. Special offer, thrown in with a bundle.
   So what was the most expensive book I paid for? I'm pretty sure that was a gift out, and I managed that at half-price.
   There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.
   J.M. Barrie looms large over me. No, really. Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, illustrated by the dread pirate Calico Jack Rackham, would fell a giant if that tome jumped from the shelves.
   The lightest book? Then you start arguing over what constitutes a book. Heaviest? Then you start arguing over what constitutes a door.
   Tallest? There are too many books on my shelves. And too many of those are over a foot tall. When the tape measures an awkward 37 cm, you know you are staring at a book it's impossible to curl up with.
   Curl under and die beneath, perhaps.

*

Calico Jack was too busy a-pirating to illustrate much, so he handed painterly duties to the ship's cook - young Arthur Rackham.

*

What can you tell about the writer, based on the author's library? I've written of that before. A slice of another person's library was recently transfused into my own.
   So you can't tell a damn thing about me based on another person's book choices now in my library.
   Except, perhaps, that the transfused books remain part of my library, and so, are to my taste. If you can tell them apart from the books I bought myself.
   Though I hold books on my shelves that are clearly not to my taste. Again, caution. I hold books on my shelf that I didn't buy at all.

*

Oh, there were all sorts of marvels in here. Tall, short, fat, thin, young...
   The youngest books in my library are always born this year, every year. But a solid wedge of old hardbacks toppled in out of the storm...
   Giving me, to my surprise, the oldest new books in my collection. As far as I can tell, the most ancient tome on the stacks is now a volume of Milton, dating to 1881.
   Making it the oldest item in the house.
   I stared at the date in disbelief, as I wouldn't have pegged the book pre-WWII.
   Along with the other ancient hardbacks, these solid volumes carried the whiff of 1955 about them. It's a special ability handed down to most hardbacks - look as though you were produced in or around a repressed decade.
   I jest. All decades contain repression.
   But no, this book was older. I started with a volume that lied to me and said it was from 1921.
   Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? That can't be. I matched titles and publishers to years and then to photos on Google. Exact print-run named and noted. Digging further into the ancient pile, I made my way back to 1881.

*

Books down the ages.
   Paperbacks existed then.
   The railway paperback was the airport novel of its day. With the railway creeping everywhere, introduction of widespread compulsory education, and a need to be elsewhere...
   Paperback books gave you something to read on endless steam-powered train journeys.
   No airports or airport novels then. Roads, yes, but only leaky steampunk contraptions, behatted humans, and bridled horses used those.
   The modern rise in paperbacks slid into view during Auden's low dishonest decade. Rain, and war in 1939, stopped play. Post-WWII, paper was everywhere.

*

Paper. And now we're in the Digital Age.
   I prefer the durability of hardback. The best-preserved book in my collection? No single tome, for there are many many well-looked-after books here.
   And the worst-preserved? Easily a movie guide by Leonard Maltin. It lies on the floor, just behind me, in three chunks.
   This book is a sorry thing. A thick paperback made of thin paper with no more durable a spine than that of a liquidiser-fresh jellyfish.
   Unsurprisingly, the shattered tome behind me dates to the recent turn of the century. The near-dead book on my carpet replaced one earlier time-shredded volume. I didn't buy again.
   This is 2015, and Leonard sadly announced the final volume in his long-running series.
   The internet does that book's job, nowadays. Maltin's series never had a good format, in terms of survivability. An annual book wasn't meant to last.
   Not at that ever-expanding size, and certainly not in an insufferable paperback format.
   If your paperback stops bullets, it won't halt a broken spine from overuse. Or from plain old regular use.
   Maltin's team put together a great reference work. In a flimsy throwaway format. Anyway, the internet tells me about movies when I ask. Sad but true but sad.

*

Solid construction. That's why I like hardbacks. Durability. Yes I'm a digital author, and yes I have a Kindle. And a Kindle app. Maybe even two, last time I checked.
   There wasn't a point to this blog post. I'm just waffling. Thinking about the nature of physical books and the physical nature of books.
   Ethereal digital books are easy to store and retrieve. But what the fuck would I put on all these shelves if I converted every single title to electrons?
   I'd need to start collecting. You can only buy so many Batman figures. I'm sure any gathering palls after the first 1,500. And that lowly figure means paring the collection down to the essentials.

*

I don't feel as though I have anything to blog about. Officially, I'm off blogging weekly. If an item comes along, I'll blog. Especially if it's book-related.
   Discovery of a pile of books dating to Victorian times. That qualifies.
   Something I haven't found in more modern hardbacks? In several of these ancient Victorian tomes, I saw a page made of tracing paper near the front of the book.
   That spoke of ancient custom and great age. One day, people will uncover dust-stained Kindle reading devices and declare...
   Look what they used in days of yore, before books downloaded to the brain.
   And they'll smile, as we smile now.

GEORGE R.R. MARTIN AND NECROPHILIA.

By necrophilia, or what the Americans quaintly call necro-feel-ya, I mean the unfortunate exploitation of an artist's work beyond that artist's lifetime.
   Those of you interested in fucking corpses will have to look elsewhere. I have no evidence that George R.R. Martin fucked corpses - though he created plenty in his fiction. So, again, for those of you misconstruing the meaning behind this blog post, seek help in other places.
   I stopped reading A Song of Ice and Fire - Martin's saga inspired by the Wars of the Roses. I'll summarise and say imagine Lancaster versus York, transplanted to a world of Martin's creation. The bloody rose of Lancaster became the golden lion of Lannister. And so on.
   Why stop reading? I'm waiting for one of three things to happen. One. My death. Two. George R.R. Martin's death. Three. The completion of his series during his lifetime.
   I decided to hold fire. Not a hard decision. I'll wait for the whole series to come out before I pick up another of those books. When George isn't off spending time hunting a great white whale, he's planning deep in the labyrinths of his mind - for his brain contains more than one labyrinth.
   Putting the books out there is taking a lot of thinking and doing. Einstein gave us an equation for turning energy into published volumes. The effort is tremendous.
   If Mr Martin dies, whole worlds die with him. And then what? Necrophilia? What are the lures allowing another to finish what the creator started? There are two major lures which spring to mind. The first is monetary.
   Copyright law allows for the financial exploitation of material after a creator's death. At the time of writing, that period is 70 years. Or for as long as the Great Ormond Street Hospital exists, in the case of receiving certain royalties delivered by young Peter Pan.
   Why does the right exist beyond death? If you want to boil the notion to its essence, the literary estate is there to care for the deceased author's destitute spouse and child. That's your story nutshell.
   The other lure is the lure of unfinished business - finishing something for the fans.
   Both lures are of interest. They may be weak or strong. I don't happen to have a term for what happens to an estate that is managed well after death. (Lucky?) When the thing's done badly, why don't we call that necrophilia...
   There are a lot of people out there who foam at the mouth when it comes to George R.R. Martin and the time it takes that man to finish writing a book. Well, a book takes as long as it takes to write. That loose description is multiplied, not added to, when tackling a saga.
   Here's a quote from Mr Martin.
   "It never would have dawned on me to write to Professor Tolkien and say, 'You better hurry up with The Silmarillion before you die, old man.' What kind of cretin does that?"
   When I read that comment, I was reminded of the things that were said of Tolkien. His readers - and those were certainly not the fans he'd pick up later - went around frowning, muttering...
   "But what if he dies before he finishes it?"
   In Professor Tolkien's case, his son Christopher would have stepped, nervously, into that gap. Christopher ended up as a Gandalf-like literary steward for the printed side of the Tolkien estate. He had far less say over movie rights, which his father parcelled off.
   "They gutted the book, making an action film for 15- to 25-year-olds."
   You'll have to read The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and sit through Peter Jackson's movies, to determine whether those films might stray under my heading of necrophilia. No one is saying you have to. I'm just saying.
   Inside knowledge. Is that a good thing? Christopher Tolkien's taste for scholarship and his insider's view of his father's work helped keep necrophilia at bay as far as the written word was concerned. He has his detractors, of course. Christopher happens to be one of them.
   I've heard wretched things said of Frank Herbert's son. Doesn't mean they are true. Frank Herbert created a story about giant worms in the sand. Or something. I'm not quite sure. Having not read the books, I thought I'd give the movie a go when it popped up on television.
   The movie is a brave effort to tell some kind of story about giant worms in the sand. Or something. The movie has its fans. One of those was Frank Herbert. I didn't take an interest in the books. Except to note that, after his death, the dunes of Dune seemed to stretch endlessly.
   Raiders of Dune. Henry and Dune. The Dune Cookbook. I may have made that last one up. Along with the first two.
   It's a dirty game, shooting at an unread target. I considered reading some Dune books to give this blog entry a veneer of respectability. But having a veneer of respectability would destroy the last shred of respectability I possess.
   When is necrophilia not necrophilia? Franz Kafka didn't want his work to see the light of day. Max Brod was meant to throw the pages on the fire. Was Max thinking of the money? Or of unfinished business?
   Brian Herbert was undoubtedly thinking of his dear old dead dad Frank when he raked around in the garage and uncovered notes for all those things of a sandy nature.
   An author dies and a movie goes into production. Unfinished business with the fans? Or the lure of cash for the destitute spouse and child?
   On a side-note, necrophilia conducted while the subject is alive is...I don't know. Cannibalism? When an author disappears up his or her own fundament.
   Accusations have been aimed at George R.R. Martin. He's lost the plot. It's very easy to say that if you've never had to plot. Martin is taking time to reach the end of his tale.
   We can only hope he reaches the story's end before his own. Then we'll see how much of the plot he lost. Or how much of a corner he managed to paint himself out of. His world is a large place, with a long history...
   I suspect one structural element to his saga bugs readers more than anything else does. Some of his characters die for no reason. Well, you see that in the news on a daily basis.
   People die for no reason. I think Mr Martin is attempting to hold a broad broad tale together without committing the ultimate crime...
   If you tie off every single loose end in a saga, you are doing something wrong.
   Why did I read the first few books? As entertainment. On the authorial side of things, I saw, immediately, that I didn't write that way myself. So it was good to have a bit of variety. Something different. Deep in my archive, I found early notes for Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords.
   And I was shocked to see I'd dated the ancient paperwork. Yes, 1991. So, old George and I set down ideas for a fantasy series in the same year. He spent half a decade getting to publication. A quarter of the time it took me to put my first volume out there.
   Why, Mr Martin. You are starting to seem speedy by comparison.
   I had many detours with which to contend. So how goes my own fantasy saga? I still see the series as ten isolated books, readable in isolation. Missed one? Not to worry. In that vein.
   Other stories claim more of my attention. But I return to Neon Gods from time to time. Book two bleeds into book three, and book three haemorrhages into book four.
   Some people sketch their worlds in coloured chalk. Others go for the bronze statue based on the oil-painting - that approach takes longer. I'm working my way up to coloured chalk, by mining it.
   Advice for writers? Try not to disappear up your own fundament - or someone else's, for they may press charges. What do writers owe readers?
   A sense of professionalism. Speed is another matter entirely. From Missy Biozarre came the worrying comment, "I rather like having credibility as a writer."
   She wasn't hinting that I have none, I hope. My head is in the clouds - and it's difficult to disappear up your own backside when the other end is far below. Yes, yes, in the gutter looking at the stars. As for death, I'm reminded of a recommendation from Kacey Vanderkarr. "Please don't die!"
   I'm not creating a broad tapestry. More a fishing-net. Yes, that was a reference to my own work. Hit that free audio on the blog for more details.
   Technique. I have a few corners I don't want to paint myself into. But looking across at George R.R. Martin, I don't have his trouble. I created a non-saga of a saga with Neon Gods - and that generates other problems on a different approach.
   Necrophilia? Mr Martin doesn't need the cash. If he makes it to his own end before finishing the story, cash will serve as the least of his worries.
   At that point, it's up to his wife - if she's still around - to say what's what. The other lure, of unfinished business, may prove contrary to George's wishes. Max Brod ignored Kafka so that Kafka would not be ignored.
   Was that a fancy way of hoping Mr Martin finishes writing the story so that we needn't worry over the literary legacy, body-snatchery, and necrophilia? Maybe. When the series is finished, I'll pick the books up again. Or more likely, I'll read the books from the start.
   Until then, other tales occupy my mind. Some of those are ones I'll have to start writing. And finish writing. Though clearly a fantasist, I am under no illusions when it comes to the heady notion of legacy...
   I can't shake the sensation that my work has no lasting merit. And I don't write with the intention of creating a legacy. So I should be spared necrophilia. In every fucking sense.