3 Green Fish

I saw 300 when it was in theaters, but I’ve held off on a review until now. I’ve actually been unsure exactly what I think about it. On the one hand, it’s a solid action movie and a stirring epic. The visuals are amazing, the cinematography is brilliant, and for a movie that had all of its backgrounds added via computer, it works in a way I never expected possible.

It’s a story that has become, in essence, as much of an epic tale of heroism as the Illiad. The premise is straight out of Herodotus (often called the father of history, at least in the western world): the Persian army, numbering between 300,00 and 2,000,000 men, under the command of King Xerxes, has come to crush the city-states of Greece. A small group of 300 Spartan warriors decides to hold them at the pass of Thermopylae, where their numerical disadvantage will not be so great. It’s a great story at its heart, and there’s much that the movie gets right. It even includes some famous lines of dialogue from Herodotus, and doesn’t entirely gloss over the 700 Acadians who died with the Spartans.

And yet, as much as the movie is faithful to the story to a degree, it is nevertheless filtered through the lens of Frank Miller. The film is based on Miller’s graphic novel by the same name, and thus there are certain issues of historical inaccuracy that come along with it. For one, the film’s spartans wear no armor, instead opting for anachronistic speedo-type shorts. There are gigantic monster/mutant people in the Persian army. Most of these changes are to lend the tale a more heroic edge. There are also justifiable accusations of racism inherent to the portrayal of the factions in the movie: the Spartans are all white and incredibly manly, while the Persians are dark-skinned, deformed, and effeminate. Even Xerxes, towering over the Spartan King Leonidas, is feminized. I’m no scholar in such matters, but I can see a valid argument being made for racism and sexism in the film.

300 (2007), starring Gerard Butler. Directed by Zack Snyder. Available on DVD now. Amazon link.

I wrote most of chapter 4, which means I added a good chunk of a conversation between Bandolor and Iggsle, as well as some other stuff. I think I’ll need to go back to it tomorrow and force the language to be slightly more medieval, as well as expand the narrative portions of it. I need more Iggsle!

Still, I made progress. I’m hoping to average at least 2 pages a day for the entire month of August . . . and I’m just barely there so far.

Iggsle is so domestic. Finkerner isn’t:

There was mud on the table. Iggsle had grown accustomed to Fink’s lack of manners, but it still irked him to see it. The man spent his day elbow deep in dirt, and thought nothing of tracking it in at suppertime. Iggsle wasn’t a man of royal cleanliness by any standard, but Fink’s dirt and mud always seemed to have seed in it, and if Iggsle didn’t clean up after dinner he could expect to see weeds growing in his kitchen floor, or worse, on the table.

Yesterday I had an off-day. That’s fine, I don’t mind. I wrote the better part of a page, but it was a little awkward. Between that and today’s work, I added three full single-spaced pages to my total, for a sum of thirteen. I think chapter 3 is finished, or close to being so (and it’s a solid 4.5 pages, at that). That’s good, because it means I can move things along, storywise.

My goal is still to finish part 1 by the end of August. I think I’m making good progress towards that. There’s a lot of important stuff that needs to happen linearly here before I get to the hard part — in parts 2 and 3, I’ve got several subplots planned that need to overlap through the rest of the book. That’ll be interesting! It might involve some shifting around of events and stuff after I write them. Argh.

For now, though, I’m moving on at a decent pace, although I hope to pick up speed soon.

I’m glad my brain doesn’t feel like this:

Bandolor reached over and smeared the ink with his thumb, and while the ink was still wet upon his print, he drove the thumb deep into her forehead, as if to pierce through her skull. He could almost feel his finger probing the recesses of the meat behind her brow, that strange structure that seemed to house the soul.

Frederik Pohl is one of the greats of Science Fiction, his work going back at least to the 1940’s. The man has a body of work so large that the mere list is probably as long as some aspiring authors’ portfolios. While I’ve yet to read some of his more famous works, I’ve greatly enjoyed The World at the End of Time and the first two books of the Eschaton Sequence (now that I think about it, there’s something of a theme in these titles). In light of his other works, Black Star Rising is something of an oddity.

Published in 1985, and thus written during the final years of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, Black Star Rising is clearly a product of its time. Inasmuch as science fiction supposedly attempts to predict the future, it is usually irrevocably bound to the concerns and ideals of the present, and this book is a perfect example. The set-up: The United States and the U.S.S.R. have essentially wiped each other off the map, leaving China to come in and pick up the pieces. There are survivors, but no government to answer when, about a century later, an alien ship blows up an island and demands to speak to the President of the United States of America.

It’s a decent plot, and there are a number of interesting pieces that go into the mix, but the result isn’t as strong as some of Pohl’s other works. The end is a bit abrupt, I was a little muddled by the distinction between the aliens and the humans on the alien world when it first appears, and it lacks some of the strong narrative arcs that I’ve seen in Pohl’s other books.

Today I finished integrating the separate parts of chapters 1 and 2, finished chapter 2, and started on chapter three. The first two chapters are still kind of short, but that’s okay for now. I might combine them into one chapter or something later, and they’ll probably expand with revision.

I added two whole pages of content today, bringing my total up to 10 pages, single-spaced. Not bad, especially when you consider that 10 full pages includes all that integration, which actually reduces the page count. It’s probably closer to three and a half new pages. Whoo!

The antiquated language is giving me a headache, but it’s getting slightly easier.

No quote today. Nothing makes any sense out of context, and that lowers the amusement value.

Okay, this is one reason why I haven’t been posted reviews seven days a week. I’m working on a novel, as you probably know. It’s been slow going, but I’ve been doing lots of research and prep work, so hopefully it’ll pick up. I’m planning on posting regular updates on my progress and perhaps an occasional snippet as I attempt to get my first draft done. I have three parts to the novel planned, then editing, and I’ve got until the end of December to finish everything up.

Current plan for August: finish rough draft of part 1
Progress: slow.

Today I rewrote the first chapter for about the seventh time. It might have been more than that, I don’t know. I’ve struggled a lot with my protagonist and her character and personality, and finally decided that I needed her to have some pre-existing tragedy. So, there you go, I actually think the first chapter, though short, is okay for a first draft now. I’m starting to get a handle on the character, too, which is good. Tragedy and pain are wonderful!

Next up, I need to reintegrate a few random pieces, including the end of the first chapter, which is from a previous draft. Also, I need to shift my original chapter 2 opening into a later part of chapter 2 and change the perspective to fit the character that is the focus of the new chapter 2.

It’s now late into the morning. I have a whopping 7.5 singlespaced pages (that includes a 2-page prologue). I’m rounding up to 8 pages, ’cause it’s 2 to the power of 3, and I need to power through some pages in the near future.

Wish me luck.

Completely confusing snippet (crazy guy on the bus):

“Did you ever get a ham license?”

Wait, you say, don’t you mean Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, the infamous book of the early 1990’s that tried to catalogue the differences between the sexes according to the archetypes of the classical gods of war and love, respectively? To that question I have only one answer: no, of course not, as I haven’t read it, and neither have you. This book actually uses science to bolster its argument, and it moves beyond pop psychology into the realm of biology.

Admittedly, Quirk’s credentials are slim. Make that, technically, none, as he himself points out in his book. He’s the author of a single novel, a San Francisco-based thriller by the title of The Ultimate Rush. Not exactly an authority, sure, but he has done his research, and his lack of a PhD in Evolutionary Biology means that he writes at the level of the common reader, not the uncommon doctoral candidate.

It’s an interesting book, and it places all those odd behaviors of the opposite sex you might have noticed into the context of genes, natural selection, and various strategies for procreating. It’s entertaining and enlightening, and a worthy read if you’re looking to understand why men or women are the way they are. My only major complaint is that the author seems to repeat himself a bit too much, as there were times where I thought “haven’t I read that assertion twelve times already?”

Bread comes in so many shapes and sizes: sliced, not sliced, crunchy, soft, so puffy you can squeeze a whole loaf into a ball the size of your fist, or filled with seeds. Some of my favorite store-bought bread is the kind that you bake in the oven for a few minutes before serving, and Trader Joe’s Organic White Cheddar & Roasted Garlic Filone is a great example of that.

Sure, it’s a little inconvenient to have to put it in the oven, but when it comes out and you’ve got crispy cheesy goodness on top and chunks of steaming garlic in the middle, you forget that you had to preheat the oven and sit around for five minutes. A little butter makes it even better.

Also, bonus points for being organic. Being unsliced helps as well, since it means the bread heats more evenly and you can cut your slices to your own preference of size.