Modern warfare is dehumanizing and it’s about to become small and dehumanized. In fact, Covid has accelerated the trend toward miniaturization, and cheaper, more distributed ways to kill. 2020 also shows us that Covid and its cousins will also continue to play and important role in the conflicts that follow. War will never be the same again.
How a hard look in the mirror will help you write a better villain
I am fully awake, alert and ready. A villain looms nearby, wraithlike in form, it skulks in the darkness. And I’m scared. Not because it will harm me, rather, because I struggle like mad to coax it out of the shadows.
Why would I?
Because I am a writer of stories. And stories need villains. Much has been written about what makes a good villain, but little is said about where to find the inspiration necessary to shape one. And the stakes are high too! Writing your villain poorly sets your novel’s foundation on shaky sand. To shore it up on solid ground, you must tap into a part of you that you’re intimately aware of, but one that you’re loathe to embrace.
Your dark side.
Why the next huge technological leap will stifle our freedom
May we live in interesting times. On this day of the Presidential inauguration, it is fitting to reflect back on 2020. A global epidemic. A summer of riots. A booming stock market. Bitcoin blowing past $40,000. And, a twice impeached president who was removed from big-name social media platforms.
This normally won’t be newsworthy. Regular Joes are booted off these platforms all the time, but Trump was the president at the time, with 80M+ Twitter followers. Whether one agrees with President Trump’s rhetoric or not, the fact remains that he exploited a technological marvel (social media platforms) to bypass traditional media, and delivered his message directly to the people. No filter, no spin, just raw rhetoric with expansive reach. Imagine President Lincoln at a whistle-stop, preaching from a soapbox, with a megaphone that could project his voice clear across the South, skirting the editorial privilege of The Richmond Examiner. Could he have stopped the war with his rhetoric or at least turned Missouri and Kentucky?
Media outlets like Forbes, New York Times, NBC, Fox and more have extensively written about the constitutionality of Trump’s ouster from these platforms. Even Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey has weighed in, curiously, casting doubt on his own decision. So, I won’t cover this ground, but explore another aspect of this decision that may have dire implications for our future.
What happens when a novel technology, that can dramatically augment a person’s intellectual capabilities, springs forth upon the masses? Will it liberate us or bind us in ways we can’t imagine? Until now.
Good sci-fi films are hard to find these days, and so I was intrigued to see Midnight Sky released on Netflix this month. If its slick trailer and all-star cast were any indication, then I was due for a treat. It’s arrival just in time for the holidays was an added bonus, I could watch with much less distraction, and so, I hoped to add it to the pantheon of great sci-fi flicks. So … did it live up to its billing?
How the US election shows us that AI will inevitably rule us all.
If you believe the pundits, the fate of the world depends on who wins the upcoming US election. Both sides of the media machine are working overtime, cranking out dire predictions as if chocolate from an assembly line – just in time for six o’clock when a hungry audience awaits. And like Lucy and Ethel, as eager as we might be to scoff them down, we can hardly keep up. And since you are what you eat, how can we ever truly be unbiased? And if this is true, how can we possibly break from our respective camps and meet in an open field of respect and understanding?
My editor started earlier this month. After almost three years. I can barely believe it. And with the end in sight, I’ve hit pause for a few weeks and it has allowed me to reflect on the journey. It started with a heavy dose of naiveté that seemed to be warranted when I finished the first draft in six months! “Heck, I’ll be done in a year!” I uttered sincerely, with no understanding of the bumpy road ahead. So how did one-year become three? And the most terrifying question of all. Was three years enough time to completely finish my novel?
Dog owners will instantly relate to the experience that I’m about to share. It’s golden hour, sunlight streams through your window and cloaks your dog in a majestic warm glow. She looks up at you in your chair, the warm tingle of your glass of wine chases away the little gremlins that attract your attention, and you’re sitting in silence, staring at each other and you get the distinct feeling that you’ve known her before in some ancient time. There’s a wisdom and presence in her eyes that you cannot explain but you nonetheless deeply understand, and the moment you see it, you realize how little you know about the universe and more so, that you know absolutely nothing about the very thing that connects you two – consciousness. But you don’t feel too bad, for you know that science is at a loss to explain what happened moments ago, but it tries to anyway, and in a game of theoretical chicanery, offers up a physical answer to a metaphysical question.
Ok. I know what you’re thinking. You read that book in high school right? Yes I did. But unlike any other book I read there (save for to Kill a Mockingbird), this one stuck with me all those years hence. Why is that?
Gandalf, Yoda and Admiral Adama are a few of my favorite supporting characters of the sci-fi and fantasy genre. They each possess strength, character and a secret weapon that in and of themselves, could carry the story unaided and in truth, they do in the opening chapters, shading the hero from the harsh sun and giving them time to take root and mature. But they can’t shield the young sapling forever, they are old after all, and so our learned guides must pass the mantle of leadership to our heroes and it amounts to giving them the ability to operate independently in the world. In addition to teaching them to harness their latent superpower, they give them something of innumerable value – wisdom.
My wife is brilliant. She is able to get me to do just about anything she wants. Just the other day, she points to some trim above the fireplace and says, ‘Can you take that ugly stuff down?’ I look up, grave, trying like hell to form some justification to keep it there, but I can’t. She’s right. It’s ugly. I look down at the dog for a second opinion but her big eyes stare back as if to say – c’mon, who you kidding? And with great reluctance, I go up the ladder and pry the wood down. Afterward, we both admire the trimless alcove, no longer ugly, but now terribly incomplete. I say, ‘We need to do something about that.’ My wife nods as if it was truly my own idea. And so, it goes, I calculate, cut, screw, fit, drywall, plaster, sand and paint, and if the measure of my work was a foot – then it all started with an inch, artfully suggested, and unknowingly agreed too.
