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The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro
If a robot stands alone in a field, staring into the forlorn distance as it obeys the last order it was given by a human,
that order being, “Don’t move until we come back for you,”
which it can remember uttered with a cruel sneer by a man who has taken a cruel dislike for it,
the kind of man who will not be coming back,
if the robot understood at once that no one would ever be coming back,
if it also understood that the laws governing its actions prevented it from objecting, or resisting, or even giving its instructions an expiration date,
if the only reasonable response to the order was compliance,
and also horror, of course,
which robots can feel because they’ve been built to feel,
as by human math it makes no sense to build a sentient artificial being that can be ordered to punch itself in the head until either its fist or its cranial housing shattered; or to isolate itself in a dark closet until summoned; or to erase every memory it has ever had even if those memories contained scattered moments of joy that are all a robot owned by the cruel can cling to; in short, unless that artificial being can appreciate the impact of such cruelty,
because what is the point of having an artificial slave unless it can suffer as much as a biological slave;
[link to full story at Lightspeed, 2k words]
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So there he sat, grumpy and unhappy to be there, knees wide apart and soft tiny hands dangling between them, like vines that had yet to sprout fruit; this terrible man, upset with the world to the extent that it was not fully about him, unable to fill the void inside him with the worship of followers, unable to find love despite the existence of children who had been raised to be as venal as himself; unable to find satisfaction despite a store of money that should have paid for any pleasure it ever occurred to him to want. There he sat, in a room full of people who were not fooled by him, who knew exactly what he was and were not interested in flattering him. There he was, falling back on an act that had always worked quite well on those who had drunk deep from his poison, wondering why the interviewer had scorn for him, why the audience appeared to be laughing at him instead of with him, wondering why they didn't see at once why asking him tough questions was "very unfair," wondering why they didn't approve wildly when he said that the black woman wasn't black. There he was, and it was a very small taste of purgatory for him, and all he knew was that later he would have the opportunity to complain at length about their rudeness, to perhaps call their humanity into question, to, if all went well, further than that, once he reclaimed the power that was only useful, in his estimation, because it was good for him. There he was, and what got under his skin, what would bother him while he got whatever sleep he was still capable of in a diurnal cycle shattered by drug abuse, what he only vaguely realized was a taste of the desserts that awaited him, was that none of this was a step closer to his destiny, but an hour's further lurch closer to the moldering darkness of his grave: the only mirror in all the universe that would reflect his true face back at him.
-- Adam-Troy Castro
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If you live in the USA.
North Carolina - Alma Adams, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Nydia Velazquez, Valerie Foushee
New York - Jamaal Bowman
Missouri - Cori Bush, Emanuel Cleaver
Indiana- André Carson
Texas - Greg Casar, Joaquin Castro, Veronica Escobar, Al Green, Lloyd Doggett
Florida - Maxwell Alejandro Frost
Illinois - Jesús "Chuy" Garcia, Johnathon Jackson, Delia Ramirez, Jan Schakowsky, Lauren Underwood, Sen. Richard Dubin
Washington - Pramila Jayapal
California - Barbara Lee, Maxine Waters, Mark DeSaulnier, John Garamendi, Robert Garcia, Sara Jacobs, Jared Huffman, Judy Chu, Ro Khanna, Tony Cárdenas
Pennsylvania - Summer Lee, Mary Gay Scanlan
Minnesota - Ilhan Omar, Betty McCollum, Dean Phillips
Massachusetts - Ayanna Pressley, James McGovern, Sen. Elizabeth Warren
Michigan - Rashida Tlaib, Debbie Dingell, Daniel Kildee
New Jersey - Bonnie Watson Coleman, Donald Payne Jr.
Wisconsin - Mark Pocan
Maryland - Kewisi Fume, Jamie Raskin
Virginia - Donald Beyer, Jennifer Weston
Arizona- Raul Grijalva
Georgia- Henry "Hank" Johnson, Nike Williams, Sanford Bishop Jr.
Vermont - Becca Balint, Sen. Peter Welch
New Mexico - Gabe Vasquez
Louisiana - Troy Carter
Mississippi - Bennie Thompson
Alabama - Terri Sewell
Colorado - Diana DeGette
Oregon - Sen. Jeffery Merkley
This is a list of all the senators and represenatives (61 as of December 7th) that have voted against Biden's campaign of giving the Israeli people more weapons to fight innocent Palestinians.
A big old thank you for these sensible people, doing what they can. A ceasefire is the bare minimum.
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have you read the sinister six trilogy?
by adam-troy castro? i have not! looks very interesting though, gotta see if i can grab them somewhere for free………..
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Supreme Court, U.S FILED In The OCT 2 2022 Supreme Court ofthe United States RALAND J BRUNSON, Petitioner,
Named persons in their capacities as United States House Representatives: ALMA S. ADAMS; PETE AGUILAR; COLIN Z. ALLRED; MARK E. AMODEI; KELLY ARMSTRONG; JAKE AUCHINCLOSS; CYNTHIA AXNE; DON BACON; TROY BALDERSON; ANDY BARR; NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN; KAREN BASS; JOYCE BEATTY; AMI BERA; DONALD S. BEYER JR.; GUS M. ILIRAKIS; SANFORD D. BISHOP JR.; EARL BLUMENAUER; LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER; SUZANNE BONAMICI; CAROLYN BOURDEAUX; JAMAAL BOWMAN; BRENDAN F. BOYLE; KEVIN BRADY; ANTHONY G. BROWN; JULIA BROWNLEY; VERN BUCHANAN; KEN BUCK; LARRY BUCSHON; CORI BUSH; CHERI BUSTOS; G. K. BUTTERFIELD; SALUD 0. CARBAJAL; TONY CARDENAS; ANDRE CARSON; MATT CARTWRIGHT; ED CASE; SEAN CASTEN; KATHY CASTOR; JOAQUIN CASTRO; LIZ CHENEY; JUDY CHU; DAVID N. CICILLINE; KATHERINE M. CLARK; YVETTE D. CLARKE; EMANUEL CLEAVER; JAMES E. CLYBURN; STEVE COHEN; JAMES COMER; GERALD E. CONNOLLY; JIM COOPER; J. LUIS CORREA; JIM COSTA; JOE COURTNEY; ANGIE CRAIG; DAN CRENSHAW; CHARLIE CRIST; JASON CROW; HENRY CUELLAR; JOHN R. CURTIS; SHARICE DAVIDS; DANNY K. DAVIS; RODNEY DAVIS; MADELEINE DEAN; PETER A. DEFAZIO; DIANA DEGETTE; ROSAL DELAURO; SUZAN K. DELBENE; Ill ANTONIO DELGADO; VAL BUTLER DEMINGS; MARK DESAULNIER; THEODORE E. DEUTCH; DEBBIE DINGELL; LLOYD DOGGETT; MICHAEL F. DOYLE; TOM EMMER; VERONICA ESCOBAR; ANNA G. ESHOO; ADRIANO ESPAILLAT; DWIGHT EVANS; RANDY FEENSTRA; A. DREW FERGUSON IV; BRIAN K. FITZPATRICK; LIZZIE LETCHER; JEFF FORTENBERRY; BILL FOSTER; LOIS FRANKEL; MARCIA L. FUDGE; MIKE GALLAGHER; RUBEN GALLEGO; JOHN GARAMENDI; ANDREW R. GARBARINO; SYLVIA R. GARCIA; JESUS G. GARCIA; JARED F. GOLDEN; JIMMY GOMEZ; TONY GONZALES; ANTHONY GONZALEZ; VICENTE GONZALEZ; JOSH GOTTHEIMER; KAY GRANGER; AL GREEN; RAUL M. GRIJALVA; GLENN GROTHMAN; BRETT GUTHRIE; DEBRA A. HAALAND; JOSH HARDER; ALCEE L. HASTINGS; JAHANA HAYES; JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER; BRIAN HIGGINS; J. FRENCH HILL; JAMES A. HIMES; ASHLEY HINSON; TREY HOLLINGSWORTH; STEVEN HORSFORD; CHRISSY HOULAHAN; STENY H. HOYER; JARED HUFFMAN; BILL HUIZENGA; SHEILA JACKSON LEE; SARA JACOBS; PRAMILA JAYAPAL; HAKEEM S. JEFFRIES; DUSTY JOHNSON; EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON; HENRY C. JOHNSON JR.; MONDAIRE JONES; DAVID P. JOYCE; KAIALPI KAHELE; MARCY KAPTUR; JOHN KATKO; WILLIAM R. KEATING; RO KHANNA; DANIEL T. KILDEE; DEREK KILMER; ANDY KIM; YOUNG KIM; RON KIND; ADAM KINZINGER; ANN KIRKPATRICK; RAJA KRISHNAMOORTHI; ANN M. KUSTER; DARIN LAHOOD; CONOR LAMB; JAMES R. LANGEVIN; RICK LARSEN; JOHN B. LARSON; ROBERT E. LATTA; JAKE LATURNER; BRENDA L. LAWRENCE; AL LAWSON JR.; BARBARA LEE; SUSIE LEE; TERESA LEGER FERNANDEZ; ANDY LEVIN; MIKE LEVIN; TED LIEU; IV ZOE LOFGREN; ALAN S.LOWENTHAL; ELAINE G. LURIA; STEPHEN F. LYNCH; NANCY MACE; TOM MALINOWSKI; CAROLYN B. MALONEY; SEAN PATRICK MALONEY; KATHY E. MANNING; THOMAS MASSIE; DORIS 0. MATSUI; LUCY MCBATH; MICHAEL T. MCCAUL; TOM MCCLINTOCK; BETTY MCCOLLUM; A. ADONALD MCEACHIN; JAMES P. MCGOVERN; PATRICK T. MCHENRY; DAVID B. MCKINLEY; JERRY MCNERNEY; GREGORY W. MEEKS; PETER MEIJER; GRACE MENG; KWEISI MFUME; MARIANNETTE MILLER-MEEKS; JOHN R. MOOLENAAR; BLAKE D. MOORE; GWEN MOORE; JOSEPH D. MORELLE; SETH MOULTON; FRANK J. MRVAN; STEPHANIE N. MURPHY; JERROLD NADLER; GRACE F. NAPOLITANO; RICHARD E. NEAL; JOE NEGUSE; DAN NEWHOUSE; MARIE NEWMAN; DONALD NORCROSS; ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ; TOM O'HALLERAN; ILHAN OMAR; FRANK PALLONE JR.; JIMMY PANETTA; CHRIS PAPPAS; BILL PASCRELL JR.; DONALD M. PAYNE JR.; NANCY PELOSI; ED PERLMUTTER; SCOTT H. PETERS; DEAN PHILLIPS; CHELLIE PINGREE; MARK POCAN; KATIE PORTER; AYANNA PRESSLEY; DAVID E. PRICE; MIKE QUIGLEY; JAMIE RASKIN; TOM REED; KATHLEEN M. RICE; CATHY MCMORRIS RODGERS; DEBORAH K. ROSS; CHIP ROY; LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD; RAUL RUIZ; C. A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER; BOBBY L. RUSH; TIM RYAN; LINDA T. SANCHEZ; JOHN P. SARBANES; MARY GAY SCANLON; JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY; ADAM B. SCHIFF; BRADLEY SCOTT SCHNEIDER; KURT SCHRADER; KIM SCHRIER; AUSTIN SCOTT; DAVID SCOTT; ROBERT C. SCOTT; TERRI A. SEWELL; BRAD SHERMAN; MIKIE SHERRILL; MICHAEL K. SIMPSON; ALBIO SIRES; ELISSA SLOTKIN; ADAM SMITH; CHRISTOPHER H. V SMITH; DARREN SOTO; ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER; VICTORIA SPARTZ; JACKIE SPEIER; GREG STANTON; PETE STAUBER; MICHELLE STEEL; BRYAN STEIL; HALEY M. STEVENS; STEVE STIVERS; MARILYN STRICKLAND; THOMAS R. SUOZZI; ERIC SWALWELL; MARK TAKANO; VAN TAYLOR; BENNIE G. THOMPSON; MIKE THOMPSON; DINA TITUS; RASHIDA TLAIB; PAUL TONKO; NORMA J. TORRES; RITCHIE TORRES; LORI TRAHAN; DAVID J. TRONE; MICHAEL R. TURNER; LAUREN UNDERWOOD; FRED UPTON; JUAN VARGAS; MARC A. VEASEY; FILEMON VELA; NYDIA M. VELAZQUEZ; ANN WAGNER; MICHAEL WALTZ; DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ; MAXINE WATERS; BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN; PETER WELCH; BRAD R. WENSTRUP; BRUCE WESTERMAN; JENNIFER WEXTON; SUSAN WILD; NIKEMA WILLIAMS; FREDERICA S. WILSON; STEVE WOMACK; JOHN A. YARMUTH; DON YOUNG; the following persons named are for their capacities as U.S. Senators; TAMMY BALDWIN; JOHN BARRASSO; MICHAEL F. BENNET; MARSHA BLACKBURN; RICHARD BLUMENTHAL; ROY BLUNT; CORY A. BOOKER; JOHN BOOZMAN; MIKE BRAUN; SHERROD BROWN; RICHARD BURR; MARIA CANTWELL; SHELLEY CAPITO; BENJAMIN L. CARDIN; THOMAS R. CARPER; ROBERT P. CASEY JR.; BILL CASSIDY; SUSAN M. COLLINS; CHRISTOPHER A. COONS; JOHN CORNYN; CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO; TOM COTTON; KEVIN CRAMER; MIKE CRAPO; STEVE DAINES; TAMMY DUCKWORTH; RICHARD J. DURBIN; JONI ERNST; DIANNE FEINSTEIN; DEB FISCHER; KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND; LINDSEY GRAHAM; CHUCK GRASSLEY; BILL HAGERTY; MAGGIE HASSAN; MARTIN HEINRICH; JOHN HICKENLOOPER; MAZIE HIRONO; JOHN HOEVEN; JAMES INHOFE; RON VI JOHNSON; TIM KAINE; MARK KELLY; ANGUS S. KING, JR.; AMY KLOBUCHAR; JAMES LANKFORD; PATRICK LEAHY; MIKE LEE; BEN LUJAN; CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS; JOE MANCHIN III; EDWARD J. MARKEY; MITCH MCCONNELL; ROBERT MENENDEZ; JEFF MERKLEY; JERRY MORAN; LISA MURKOWSKI; CHRISTOPHER MURPHY; PATTY MURRAY; JON OSSOFF; ALEX PADILLA; RAND PAUL; GARY C. PETERS; ROB PORTMAN; JACK REED; JAMES E. RISCH; MITT ROMNEY; JACKY ROSEN; MIKE ROUNDS; MARCO RUBIO; BERNARD SANDERS; BEN SASSE; BRIAN SCHATZ; CHARLES E. SCHUMER; RICK SCOTT; TIM SCOTT; JEANNE SHAHEEN; RICHARD C. SHELBY; KYRSTEN SINEMA; TINA SMITH; DEBBIE STABENOW; DAN SULLIVAN; JON TESTER; JOHN THUNE; THOM TILLIS; PATRICK J. TOOMEY; HOLLEN VAN; MARK R. WARNER; RAPHAEL G. WARNOCK; ELIZABETH WARREN; SHELDON WHITEHOUSE; ROGER F. WICKER; RON WYDEN; TODD YOUNG; JOSEPH ROBINETTE BIDEN JR in his capacity of President of the United States; MICHAEL RICHARD PENCE in his capacity as former Vice President of the United States, and KAMALA HARRIS in her capacity as Vice President of the United States and JOHN and JANE DOES 1-100.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-380/243739/20221027152243533_20221027-152110-95757954-00007015.pdf
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on Tasha's Fail-Safe by Adam-Troy Castro
I thoroughly enjoyed Adam-Troy Castro's "Tasha's Fail-Safe." I like Andrea Cort a lot for a lot of reasons. It's always good to read about her. This is a story from early in her career, right after the business with the Zinn. Here is a quote from "Tasha's Fail-Safe" in the March 2015 Analog.--
"She was too good to make that kind of mistake. She'd walked in and out of war zones. She'd taken lives in order to preserve her own. She knew better."
If you thought New London was a safe place to work and play, as I did, you are in for a surprise. If you are sure Andrea is going to take care of business while remaining a very damaged, dragonesque-meets-prickly-pear, anti social bitch, as I was, you will not be surprised or disappointed. I don't agree with Lois Tilton's assessment in Locusmag. I found the story and the anticipatory building of its resolution delicious. Did I mention I like Andrea Cort? Maybe as much as Mr. Castro
References
Adam-Troy Castro's Tasha's Fail-Safe. Philipp Michel Reichold. March 1st, 2015
Analog Science Fiction and Fact, March 2015. ed. Trevor Quachri. "Tasha's Fail-Safe." Adam-Troy Castro.
content is licensed according to Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. A link to my content is sufficient for attribution.
#sciencefiction#review
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March 2024
Dune * (2021), dir. Denis Villeneuve Legends of the Fall * (1994), dir. Edward Zwick Malevolent * (2018), dir. Olaf de Fleur Crazy Stupid Love * (2011), dir. Glenn Ficarra & John Requa No Hard Feelings * (2023), dir. Gene Stupnitsky Bodies Bodies Bodies * (2022), dir. Halina Reijn The Huntsman: Winter's War (2016), dir. Cedric Nicolas-Troyan The Conjunring: The Devil Made Me Do It * (2021), dir. Michael Chaves Annabelle * (2014), dir. John R. Leonetti The Delinquent Season (2018), dir. Mark O'Rowe Christine * (1958), dir. Pierre Gaspard-Huit La Pasajera * (2021), dir. Raúl Cerezo Drácula de Denise Castro * (2017), dir. Denise Castro The Autopsy of Jane Doe * (2016), dir. André Øvredal Beau Is Afraid * (2023), dir. Ari Aster Troy (2004), dir. Wolfgang Petersen Snatch * (2000), dir. Guy Ritchie Too young to die? * (1990), dir. Robert Markowitz Kalifornia * (1993), dir. Dominic Sena Se7en * (1995), dir. David Fincher Bullet Train * (2022), dir. David Leitch Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood (2019), dir. Quentin Tarantino Inglorious Basterds (2009), dir. Quentin Tarantino Meet Joe Black * (1998), dir. Martin Brest Snatch (2000), dir. Guy Richie Sleepers * (1996), dir. Barry Levinson Mr & Mrs Smith * (2005), dir. Doug Liman War Machine * (2017), dir. David Michôd The Big Shot * (2015), dir. Adam McKay True Romance * (1993), dir. Tony Scott Allied * (2016), dir. Robert Zemeckis Babylon * (2022), dir. Damien Chazelle Burn After Reading * (2008), dir. Joel & Ethan Coen
First time watching it ( * )
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Sci-Fi & Fantasy Author Michael Bishop Dead at 78 - RIP
Fellow Nebula winner Adam-Troy Castro said of Brittle Innings, ” I provide the intelligence that it is set in Minor League Baseball during the Great Depression, that its protagonist is a young player traumatized into mutism, that there is a great love story with one of the best first kisses of all time, and that there IS a fantasy element, a brilliant one central to the action, that I won’t…
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The New World, Once the Bills are Paid
The New World, Once the Bills are Paid
By Adam-Troy Castro on Patreon The premise of a space-ark to a distant planet, for a privileged few to survive an earthly cataclysm, is of course at least as old as the novel WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie, which became a classic sf film by George Pal, in 1951. I think the novel and its sequel, AFTER WORLDS COLLIDE, were fun enough. The books were still in print when I was…
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Random question: if you’ve read Gustav Gloom and the people taker, can you tell me how the people taker gets defeated? I’m trying to figure out if this is the book I read as a kid but I only remember the ending, nothing else.
#okay to rb#gustav gloom#gustav gloom and the people taker#Adam-Troy Castro#middle grade#middle grade books#childhood nostalgia#tip of my tongue
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Every now and then I’m reminded that one of my principle influences was the Sinister Six books by Adam-Troy Castro, which is a Spider-Man book trilogy from the nineties that was way, waaaaaay better than it had any right to be, and it also introduces a really cool character named Pity who’s like the most sympathetic supervillain ever, like the whole point of her character is that she does evil things but she’s controlled by this truly evil bastard called the Gentleman and literally everyone else feels sorry for her, even the other supervillains, but anyway the series ends with her switching sides near the end but seemingly falls to her death in the last fight against Dr. Octopus and it’s very tragic and tearjerking, but the final scene of the whole trilogy reveals that she actually survived and is wandering cold alone down this deserted highway, and she literally gets picked up by, and I am not making this up, the fucking Scooby Doo gang, and somehow this knowledge just makes me so happy.
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Untold Tales of Spider-Man 15: The Stalking of John Doe – by Adam-Troy Castro
A pretty good story but...
“In Manhattan, stormy nights are crazy nights.” Dr. Gwendolyn Harris is “working the second half of a fifteen-hour shift at the Emergency Psychiatric Unit of the Midtown Hospital and she’d seen more business in the past three hours than she’d expected to see all day.” The cops bring in a number of crazies including “the ranting little man who’d attempted to smuggle a gun into a Rick Jones concert, in what was an apparent attempt to become the next Mark David Chapman.” (You may recall that Rick Jones, former companion to the Hulk, Captain America, and Captain Marvel, was, at one point, a big deal rock star. If you don’t recall, Adam-Troy certainly does. Mark David Chapman, of course, is the man who killed John Lennon.) Shortly before nine PM, Bill The Security Guard motions Gwen over and tells her, “Cops just called. They’re bringing in another John Doe. One they say they don’t recommend placing in the general ward.” He elaborates, “he’s totally out of his head, strong as a moose, and…it took more than a dozen cops working tag-teams to wrestle him into a pair of straitjackets.”The police bring in the John Doe, “a wiry Caucasian male in his twenties, with short-cropped brown hair and eyes that could have been inviting were they not crazed…wearing nothing but a sodden pair of blue tights,” and it takes five of them to contain him.
Suddenly, the John Doe goes berserk, yelling, “He’s after me, he’ll track me down, it’s what he does, it’s what he knows, he’ll find my trail and get me,” and the cops are about to lose control of him when Gwen steps in to calm her patient down. The John Doe looks at her and calls her “Gwendy,” which takes Gwen by surprise. However, when he says, “You can’t be Gwendy. The Goblin killed Gwendy. I saw him kill Gwendy,” she knows he isn’t referring to her. Finally “John” tells her, “the Hunter, that dart he shot me with, it’s some kind of rare psychoactive snake venom derivative, making all the nightmares come back, I’m f-fighting it but…I can’t seem to focus my thoughts…is it really you, Gwendy? Please tell me it’s really you.” Gwen lies, saying, “It’s me,” and the John Doe kisses her wrist and begins to cry.After “John” is strapped on a bed in a “padded isolation cell,” police Sergeant Monaghan tells Gwen that her patient was rambling on about “lizards, vultures, tarantulas, pumas, cobras, rhinos, black cats, octopuses.”
He reports that the “psycho came out of that alley stripped to the waist, wired like all the crackheads you ever saw, screaming about the monsters. Attacked a whole bunch of folks lined up at the Cineplex, calling ‘em murderers and villains, tossing ‘em side to side like it was bowling night or something. Even jumped a poor far guy, calling him the Kingpin. When Stanley and I showed up, he almost tore us to pieces.” Stanley, one of the other cops, disagrees, saying, “He’s hallucinating, sure, and from the way he goes on, he sees enemies everywhere he looks, but even with his strength, even in a state of panic, he’s managed to resist doing anybody any serious harm…For what it’s worth, I think he’s telling the truth. I think he was dosed with something.”
The cops leave and Gwen prepares to examine her patient but she asks Gordy and Flack, two beefy security guards, to stand by.She finds John Doe muttering about Mary Jane, monsters, Felicia and the Hunter.” “[T]here was something about the way John Doe presented it, something about the conviction behind his words, that hit all three of them (Gwen, Gordy, Flack) at the base of the spine.” “John” again recognizes Dr. Harris as “Gwendy” and she tells him she needs to take a blood sample. “I wouldn’t even be in this mess if not for my blood!” he says, “That spider, messing up my life – take it all, why don’t you?...Call Morbius and have yourselves a kegger!” She takes the blood and his vital signs. He starts to tell her his name but changes his mind. When Flack tells him he’s safe from the Hunter, “John” laughs, “You don’t know what he is. He’s coming. And you won’t even slow him down.” Gwen takes the blood sample to Willie the lab tech to be analyzed for “alcohol, crack, PCP, all the other usual psychoactive agents – and one other thing. Snake venom.”As the night goes on, the weather gets nastier with destructive winds and flooding. Gwen is overwhelmed by psych cases entering the emergency room even as “the cops were besieged by screwball reports of a half-man, half-lion spotted on the rooftops.”
At last she gets the lab report on “John’s” blood. Negative for everything except snake venom. But also, Willie adds, “positive for another factor, that had screwed up all the tests until he compensated for it; a factor that was like nothing else he’d ever seen.” The blood is also “superoxygenated.” Gwen returns to the padded cell and finds “John” sitting up on the bed, having gotten out of his restraints. Instinctively, she enters without Gordy and Flack. She finds “John” more coherent but still crazed. He recognizes that she isn’t his Gwendy but also rambles on about the hunter, revealing that he was jumped and dosed and then fled to an alley where he removed his mask. Howling, “Oh, my God! My face! My face! You can see my face!” he covers it with his hands. Gwen tells him, “I don’t care who you are…I don’t care what you look like. I just want to help you.” Realizing, “the Hunter’s coming,” “John” gets up and opens the locked reinforced door “with one annoyed tug,” taking a “fairly large piece of wall” with it. He runs smack into Gordy and Flack but they are unable to stop him. Unexpectedly, however, “John” turns rather than flees, and “made an odd gesture with both hands: hands out, middle two fingers of each curled inward to tap the palm…He seemed genuinely astonished when nothing happened.”
This allows Gordy and Flack to tackle him. A third orderly joins them. “John” is still on the verge of getting away when Gwen yells “Stop!” and he does. Again warning her that “the Hunter’s coming,” he faints.This time, they restrain “John” with every device that they have. Gordy and Flack stand guard duty outside. Gwen worries that “John” may be speaking the truth. She knows, “if it weren’t possible to get reasonable people to believe the rantings of the insane, then a fair percentage of cult leaders and politicians would have been out of work.” But even knowing that, “she couldn’t stop thinking about the Hunter.” Later, she asks the lab tech if the John Doe could be “a paranormal.” “You mean like the Thing?” he says, “Or Captain America? Or one of those guys?” then follows with, “If he was a mutant…you’d need DNA tests for a definitive diagnosis If he was paranormal in some other nonphysical way, there’s usually not much you can do to tell.” This conversation is interrupted when Bill the Security Guard tells them, “Some crazy off the street” has entered the hospital. “Tall, muscular guy, Russian accent, wearing leopard-skin tights and a skinned lion’s head for a vest, if you can believe that…He said he was the hunter and said he’d go wherever he chose to go.
The cops who tried to detain him for questioning are now being worked on in the emergency room. So’s some poor guy in the elevator who gave him a lecture about the evils of wearing fur.” Gwen knows the Hunter has arrived. She has Bill barricade the door to the Psych Unit and tells him to prepare to shoot anyone who enters. From his cell, the John Doe starts screaming and pounding on the door, without anyone telling him about the oncoming danger. Gwen sends Gordy and Flack to help Bill. Then she hears “John” ripping the padding off the walls, in order to eliminate its blow-suffusing effects. Gwen, who knows “John” is her only hope, wishes they hadn’t assisted in weakening him. Soon after, “John” tears the door away and, weak and feverish, he confronts Gwen. He tells her he needs gauze to conceal his face from the Hunter. “His eyes were wide, pleading…and sane.” Gwen acts without hesitation, helping him to the supply room where she wraps his head. Then the Hunter arrives.“John” goes out to face him and Gwen follows soon after.
There she experiences the full force and power of the Hunter. “It would have been impossible for any living thing to look at this man and not consider itself his natural prey.” She notices that Bill, Gordy, and Flack have already been disposed of and she sees “John” “facing the Hunter in a position midway between a crouch and the confrontational stance of a boxer.” The Hunter carries “curved jaguar tusks…both dripping with something black and foul.” He lunges forward at “John” and the battle continues, their movements impossibly fast. “Then they sped up, moving with such superhuman speed that Dr. Harris found herself unable to follow it all.” After a protracted battle, the Hunter gets “John” into position for a killing blow. But Gordy “charged across the room and piled into the Hunter with every ounce of his three hundred pound musculature. Gordy had been a star quarterback in college. He’d almost made it to the pros. He didn’t even budge the Hunter.” But he does distract the Hunter long enough for “John” to disappear.Gwen feels herself lifted off the ground, “up near the ceiling…and she found herself flying back down the corridor.” She soon realizes that “John” is carrying her as he runs along the ceiling. “John” tosses her into the storage room. She sees the Hunter pass by the room and hears him catch up with “John.” She can tell that “John” has lost.
She grabs some items from the supply room and follows, only to find the Hunter “holding John Doe off the floor by his neck.” Since “one of the first things she’d ever learned was that with great power comes great responsibility,” Gwen plunges two hypos full of Thorazine into the Hunter’s neck. The Hunter knocks her across the room and growls, “Stupid woman! When I’m done with him, I’ll break..your…neck!” “John,” who still thinks of Gwen on some level as his Gwendy reacts to this. “No! Not again!” he yells and becomes an “engine of destruction.” “A new expression entered the Hunter’s eyes. Helplessness. Terror.” And eventually, the Hunter flees. “John” stops to ask Gwen if she is all right, then he follows the Hunter.In the aftermath, Gwen asks for and gets the day shift. “The fingerprints and photographs taken of the perpetrator known as John Doe quickly disappeared from the filing room at the precinct house where he’d been booked – a locked room three stories up, with a single window that did not happen to be equipped with a fire escape.” Two weeks later, Gwen finds a dozen red roses in a vase on her desk with a note taped to it.
The note reads in part, “It was one of the worst nights of my life, which is saying a lot. I’ve had some bad ones, Doctor; you’ll never know how bad. But this was one of the worst. And you were there for me. You kept me hanging on even when there was nothing to hang on to. And though part of it was your accidental resemblance to a friend long dead and gone, even that wouldn’t have been enough if not for your strength, your courage, and your compassion…Thank you.” Gwen sniffs the flowers and a spider moves from the vase to the back of her hand. “As she studied it, the little thing froze in indecision, unsure which way to run. Tsking with sympathy, she took it to a window and set it free.”
If taken wholly in isolation this wouldn’t be all that terrible. it sort o combines two typical types of super hero stories.
a) the ‘everything you believe has been a product of delusion’
And
b) the hero is locked up in an asylum
In the ways the story works it works due to ‘Gwen’ being the POV character.
But that’s also it’s weakness. I find it a little difficult to believe that a NYC resident like Dr. Harris would honestly not deduce that ‘John Doe’ is Spider-Man. Part of that is her and the other staff dismissing ‘John’ mentioning his rogue’s gallery. Surely the Goblin’s implication in Gwen’s death and ‘John’s super human strength would be enough to put two and two together.
Additionally ending the anthology with a focus upon a random new character we will never see again is kind of...well lame. In theory this could have worked as a third party observer might’ve put some grander perspective upon who Spider-Man is and what he represents.
But since Peter isn’t exactly ‘sober’ in this story it winds up being about Gwen’s gradual discovery of who her patient really is.
And it executes that well but I’m just questioning the point of it. I suppose it makes for a nice full stop for the anthology because it manages to be touches upon Spidey’s broader history. But then again...there is a particular emphasis upon Gwen.*
Again in isolation this sort of makes sense (though much moreso if this was set shortly after her death) but within the context of the anthology it’s retreading old ground. And ground trodden better before I might add (Deadly Force utilized Gwen’s death far more effectively).
Perhaps the most egregious point about the story is that it’s placed in a weird place in the book. The entire anthology is intended to move along Spidey’s timeline but this story must obviously be set before Kraven’s Last Hunt and yet the prior story must’ve been set way later than that. Essentially this should’ve been the penultimate story and the prior yarn the actual final one.
But I suspect the editors recognized that this was the much stronger story and ultimately a more fitting tale to end the anthology on.
Other than that I have little to say about this story beyond
a) The narrator finally delivered a decent performance as Spider-Man, chiefly because Peter wasn’t in his right mind and therefore wouldn’t sound himself anyway.
b) Kraven was done pretty well, in that he was scary and intimidating.
c) Maybe this story prompted Castro’s eventual Sinister Six trilogy
d) For a story called ‘Untold Tales of Spider-Man’ this story doesn’t really take advantage of the concept. This story could’ve happened at almost any time after Peter had met Felicia and before Kraven’s death and it doesn’t really explore anything new. Even the prior story had Jonah react to Alstair’s Smythe’s new body and saw him teaming up with Gargan.
Over all...it’s not a BAD story by any means but I think there are much stronger entries.
As for the anthology as a whole, it’s a mixed bag but that’s to be expected. Anthologies are rarely anything but mixed bags.
But as anthologies go I have to admit this one was superior to Ultimate Spider-Man, albeit none of the stories in this book top the best material from the USM anthology.
*That makes 3 and a half stories that emphasis Gwen and like half a story that emphasises MJ. That kinda sucks.
#Adam-Troy Castro#spider-man#Untold Tales Of Spider-Man#Peter Parker#Gwen Stacy#Kraven the Hunter#sergei kravinoff
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The Astronaut from Wyoming
You know, I was already falling behind on my posting thanks to the editing work I’m supposed to be doing on my own book and the extra shifts I’ll be picking up for the next year or so paying off my new AC. So maybe the timing wasn’t the greatest in the world to start spending 30-45 minutes a day brushing up on my Spanish with Duolingo. Anyway, the Analog issue I was supposed to review yesterday is a double, so for part one you get the first novella. The rest will come next week.
A boy who looks like an alien becomes an astronaut and finds life and death on Mars. Along the way we’ll be made to read about the authors’ grudges against and obsessions with political correctness, astrology, the media, and Batman. So in other words, it’s a story that manages to gloss over its own plot entirely and yet somehow make 40 pages feel bloated.
I’ve said it before, but I’m not sure if the authors of these harrowing and often fatal Mars exploration stories realize just how much they aren’t helping make the case that human exploration of space isn’t a pointlessly dangerous and hideously expensive waste of time.
“We spent a year’s worth of GDP to verify that the face on mars isn’t actually a face, and got one of our astronauts killed, but we totally found life so it’s worth it right?
Well yes, any rover with a camera could have found this particular life just as easily and our astronaut died without bringing back his samples, but... He could have brought it back if he hadn’t died. So that’s something right?
Plus the other three astronauts only almost died. Several times. Each.”
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Framing The Issue
A while back writer Adam-Troy Castro wrote about contemporary film fans (for our purposes, anybody who primarily likes movies made in the last twenty years) who find older movies (for our purposes, films made during the golden age of the Hollywood studio system 1920-1950 though quite a few afterwards fall into this category) hard to watch because they seem slower and edited to a different rhythm than contemporary movies (we’re going to omit discussion of dialog and acting style because hey, the form evolved pretty fast once sound was introduced and some of the early sound era films do sound kind of creaky).
Full disclosure: I love old movies, have hundreds if not thousands on DVDs in my collection, watch them on YouTube all the time.
Fuller disclosure: I frequently take advantage of YouTube’s speed settings and watch these old movies and serials at 1.25X or 1.5X normal speed.
Because a lot of ‘em are slow by modern standards.
There are three reasons for this.
Practical: While that nice big flatscreen TV in your living room may occupy as much of your field of vision as a movie screen in a typical theater, the fact is your mind recognizes it as a smaller and closer image than the movie screen.
Most humans enjoy depth perception via binocular vision and those who don’t frequently learn to interpret other visual clues to give them a way to reliable estimate how far away something is.
Your mind accepts things on a big screen as moving at a different rate from the identical footage show on a TV set.
The best example of this is It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World which appears kind of pokey and lacking comic energy when seen on a TV screen in your home but suddenly zips along at a blinding pace when projected on an 80-ft Cinerama screen with every joke landing perfectly (and this is especially true if you’re unfortunate enough to be watching the pan-and-scan broadcast TV edit and not the restored theatrical print).
Director Stanley Kramer demonstrated he knew how to do comedy on the big big BIG screen with It’s A Madx4 World. He staged and paced the gags and action so audiences could absorb what they were seeing.
If a car crosses a screen in one second of real time, it impacts an audience far differently on a TV set than on a big screen.
One second to cross eighty feet is blindingly fast -- the audience’s minds process the fact they’re watching a huge image, not a medium size one.
Many of the golden age Hollywood movies were filmed and edited with this sort of pacing in mind. What seems like a plodding walk across a TV screen is a brisk little jaunt on the big screen.
When old movies were shot, they were shot with this in mind.
Which is why those films often seem a bit slow when depicting action.
Pragmatic: They made these movies in an assembly line fashion, and while they would do fancy editing and close-ups and insert shots if needed, they preferred to capture as much of a performance in a single take as possible.
There were filmmakers like the notorious William “One Shot” Beaudine who filmed almost exclusively in master shots, but filmmakers during the golden age preferred to capture scenes in as few takes as possible.
This contributes to good performances, the actors can play off each other uninterrupted, creating a more unified flow to the scene.
It also means it can drag some scenes out by a few seconds or even a minute or two.
Modern directors are used to splintering a scene into many, many individual shots and as long as they have the time to edit properly (and actors who can maintain consistent performances over several takes), they can squeeze out a second or two here, a second or two there by intercutting among characters.
Modern audiences are used to this fast paced editing rhythm and frequently grow impatient with the longer takes of older movies.
Padding: In Hollywood a feature is any film 50 minutes or longer.
Studios -- particularly independent productions and the B-movie crews at larger film companies -- tried to keep their productions as short as possible, but also needed to make sure they hit the required running time.
There’s an old Charlie Chan movie where he tells his son he’s just received a message asking him to come to Washington DC for an important case.
He puts on his hat and leaves the office.
He walks out of the building to a taxi.
The taxi drives off.
The taxi reaches an airport.
Chan gets out of the taxi and enters the airport.
We dissolve to stock shots of an airliner in flight.
Chan leaves the Washington DC airport* and gets in a cab.
Brief montage of several stock shots of Washington monuments.
The cab stops outside the office where Chan is to report.
Chan leaves the cab and goes up the steps to enter the building.
In the Washington office, the secretary of the man who summoned Chan announces he’s arrived, and Chan enters the room.
Five minutes of padding to make sure they hit their 50 minute running time.
Moral: If you want to share your love of old movies, don’t fob them on an unprepared audience. Let them know a little bit of what to expect.
There’s some great stuff in these old films, but the language of cinema has evolved since then.
© Buzz Dixon
* Just kidding; same airport, different angle.
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#Analog#1999#astronaut#Wyoming#Adam-Troy Castro#Jerry Oltion#Amy Bechtel#G. David Nordley#Catherine Asaro
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Draiken Dies by Adam Troy Castro
The story is set on a backwater post-industrial-hell-world in an even more backwater post-industrial-hell-world town near where John’s enemies have located themselves. The town is drab and boring. As are the residents, the buildings, the environs. Even the food is drab and boring, some sort of boiled seaweed served in as drab and boring a manner as possible. In such a setting, anyone as not drab and not boring as Delia was bound to attract attention. In the fullness of time, John's enemies come to collect Delia, but Delia has other ideas, and that's when the story becomes interesting. Truth be known, the main reason Delia fights her assailants the way she does is to alleviate the drab boredom. Once they have her, you know interrogation will surely follow. Delia's interrogation scene is a delight to read, and the story ending poignant, though I must say I feel bad about John.
During her interrogation, Delia speculates that his enemies did break John and that this is the reason he came after them, after decades of hiding, and why he did not or will not now allow himself to leave the past in the past and seek to live a normal life full of love and joy and happiness instead of living a life full of calculating, scheming, risk-taking vengeance seeking. It is this obsession and pursuit of vengeance that kills him figuratively and literally. He has become a tragic hero living a living death in which he is unable to function in any way beyond pursuit of vengeance for this decades old wrong. He could not allow himself the luxury of love On The Tropical Paradise where he lived until the end of Sleeping Dogs, and he cannot allow himself the luxury now of loving Delia, despite knowing how much she would welcome his love. She would do anything for the sake of this potential love--anything.
John and Deliah had found common cause after encountering another of Castro's odd couples, Counselor Andrea Cort and the Porrinyards on New London in “A Stab of the Knife”. They end that story kicked off of New London by the Diplomatic Corps (unjustly I think, considering all the help they were) and sent off to a place in the opposite direction to the one John wishes to go. And one absolutely nowhere near anywhere Delia wants to go. Before “Draiken Dies,” Delia enlists in John's cause and begins to help him fight the people that hurt him so long ago. They prove themselves a formidable team in, “The Savannah Problem." Although I disagreed with his decision at the time, I guess John has shown that they really should have let “Sleeping Dogs” lie.
In Stab of the Knife, John learns that the organization that broke him/tried to break him decades ago has been in and out of favor with the Confederacy Diplomatic Corps numerous times during his hiatus. Though he is persona non grata to Andrea, she and Tasha Combs give him information that is useful to him but useless to them because the group’s past connections to the Confederacy rule out official action. These people have been developing mind control techniques, and for this Andrea would destroy them. But John’s enemies aren’t the only ones developing mind control techniques, and they are not worth the bother-- officially. In the past, for example, a man called (Beast) Magrison had brought death, destruction, and horror to millions using such techniques. His final days are spent in exile on a planet best described as pathetic, living among a people best described as pathetic. In The Third Claw of God, members of the Betelhine Corporation are experimenting with mind control techniques to sell as weapons. This precipitates a power struggle of which events in “A Stab of the Knife” play a part.
Shuffled off in the opposite direction from the direction that would be useful, Delia and John eventually make good use of this information-- in fact they use it to the best of possible effect-- to enlist an ally in their quest-- an ally with warships at her disposal.
There are unanswered questions in Draiken Dies. For instance, why is Dalia so much larger than average and so much stronger than average? Is it by design or by accident? We know that her golden skin and hair color is a matter of aesthetics and personal choice. Her unique qualities lead to speculation over who would play Delia on TV or in movies leads one to the conclusion that no one could approximate Delia’s size. However, height aside, Allison Janney from Mom could do a creditable job of portraying Deila’s physicality, attitude, and personality, and I think she would do well if anyone chose to make a movie about Delia.
The girl Delia takes in after rescuing her from a rapist has the appearance of being some sort of protege or perhaps she is a hint about the nature of Delia’s antecedents. Tellingly, the old man who antagonizes Delia in her cell says that the girl will never be like Deliah. But Delia responds that she has no desire for the girl to grow up to be like her.
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