GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #490: THE SINS OF OUR FATHERS

 

I forgot to tell you all that while I was still recovering from my amputation, I read the final piece of fiction in the Expanse series. Everything that follows (including the link I'm about to post) contains spoilers. If you are interested in reading the series, skip tonight's GF.

Remember when I wrote this? I only knew there was one novella left to tell for The Expanse, and I speculated that it would tell us the ending of Filip's story. Surprise! I was right. I kinda hoped that it would reunite him with his mother so she would know that she didn't actually kill him when she killed his father. That was a bit optimistic for me and the series, anyway.

When the ring space was sealed off from humanity, Filip was working in a different solar system and got stranded there, living under his mother's last name instead of his father's. Being the son of a crazed fascist (maybe an oxymoron there) is a pretty fucked up thing to live through, especially when you realize that your father is a lunatic. He works at surviving with his team on this distant planet so far from the Belt that the Enterprise would probably take a long time getting him back even at warp nine.

So now he's helping build a new civilization because everyone has (rightfully) decided that they will never go home again. This is home now. And everything seems to be going as well as it could given the circumstances until a strong charismatic man starts taking power little by little until it's starting to look like a lot. Filip, being his father's son, is very familiar with what is about to happen if he doesn't step in and handle it. And he handles it in a big fuckin' way.

He becomes the colony's first murderer.

Had he still been in the frame of mind he'd been in when murdering thousands in the name of the Free Navy, he probably would have stepped in to fill the sudden power vacuum. He doesn't. The others don't know quite what to do with him. Should they kill him? Did they have the resources to imprison him for life? One way or the other, he doesn't care. He knows what he did and what he deserves, and he's willing to take his punishment. But he really, really had to kill that guy. That guy definitely had it coming.

They choose to exile him, and the end of The Expanse shows us Naomi Nagata's son heading out on his own in a strange new world with only the fact that he has easy access to water to comfort him. Well, that and the fact that gravity here is almost like home, so his Belter body won't go into convulsions and kill him.

Wow. There's only one thing I can say to that.

O Discordia!

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #449: GOT SHEMP?

 

So back in March of 2020, when I'd lost the plot in addition to many other things, including my job, I'd decided I wasn't going to get a haircut ever again. My lifelong barber had just died, and I didn't feel like finding a new barber. Usually I stop shaving and getting haircuts on Halloween, and I don't resume these things until late March or early April. It's mostly to have extra hair covering me during the winter.

But I changed my ways. My hair got so long I needed to tie it back in a ponytail, and my beard went down to my mid-chest. And in March 2021 I got a new job, so I figured maybe showing up looking like a crackhead might not be the best look. I trimmed the beard down so it looked reasonable (and pretty handsome, if I don't say so myself), but I had to figure out what I was going to do with my hair. Fuck it. I was 42, and I still had a full head of hair. Why not have some fun with it? I decided I was either going to get a Mohawk or get the Joe Miller from the first season of The Expanse.

Well, no middle-aged fat guy looks good in a Mohawk, so I decided to do the Miller. It didn't come out like I thought, but it turned out pretty nice. But then it kept growing and growing, and I had a new goal: I'm going to get the Shemp.

Shemp's hair doesn't look very special. In fact, it looks pretty short if you're not paying attention. But if he catches a particularly bad blow to the face, or he leans forward too far, you see that his hair is actually very long. It's because the hair at the front up top goes all the way to his neckline in the back. It's deceptive and looks pretty cool. For the past few months, I've had the Shemp, and I've been happy with it.

But now it's winter again, so I let my hair keep going. And now that I've had long hair for years, I'm getting kind of tired of it. I think when spring rolls around I'm going to get it sheared off so it's as short as I usually liked to get it.

I'm keeping the beard, though. Goddam, I look sexy with that beard.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #442: THE ENDING OF THE EXPANSE

 So the ending of The Expanse book series is still sitting in the back of my head, and I think about it often. Here there be spoilers, so if you're still reading it or plan on it, skip this one. Seriously. There are major fucking spoilers from here on out. If that didn't get your attention, maybe I should add this giant fucking SPOILERS sign.

Now we know Winston Duarte's plan on how to beat the creatures that killed the protomolecule creators. It's a crazy fucking plan, and when I first read it I felt horrified and disgusted. The idea was to create a hive mind for humanity, meaning that we would lose all concept of who we are, individually, in favor of becoming one. Not too far from Jung's Collective Unconscious. In fact, it's an extrapolation of that theory. Can you imagine no longer being you but just another tentacle in the Cthulhu of life?

But I stopped and thought about it. Honestly, it's a hell of an equalizer. If you start out as individuals and become a collective, you suddenly know everything about everyone. You know all their secrets, and they know all of yours. Not just that, but you remember their secrets like you'd lived them yourself. It really would bring peace to the human race. Even the lowliest KKK piece of shit would hesitate in an act of violence upon realizing that all are one. You'd be attacking yourself.

At the same time, there's no point to peace in a hive mind situation. When no individuality exists, then what's the point? So fuck Duarte. I'm super glad that wasn't the route the authors took to resolve everything. They did something even better. As those creatures try to press in from an alternate universe, our heroes (one in particular) simply destroy the ring space, sealing humanity into whatever ring gate they went through to escape death and destruction. Humanity is cut off from each other, millions of light years apart, and the enemy is shit out of luck. I really liked that.

The characters. I'm really glad to see Miller again. The last we saw of him was in book four, and only some of that character was him. To paraphrase a great quote, I'm sure a certain character was glad Miller was with him, here at the end of all things.

Alex Kamal. It only seems fair that he has the Roci at the very end. He leaves the family he's been with for decades to be with his son and grandson in a part of the galaxy that would ensure he would never see his crewmates again. And the fact that he got no argument from the others made perfect and beautiful sense.

Naomi Nagata. Losing the love of her life all over again, this time on a permanent basis. Going back with Elvi and Fayez and Cara and Xan and all the other Laconian scientists back home to Sol. And she has no idea that her son Filip survived the incident that ended the Free Navy all those decades ago. I like to think they eventually found each other again, and they all lived happily ever after. There's just one more piece of Expanse fiction left, a final novella. I would not be surprised if it's about the end of Filip's story.

The thing that might still be Amos Burton . . . hold off on that one.

James Holden. The man who once upon a time made a rash decision that put all of humanity at risk of annihilation once again makes a decision for the entire human race, and this one works out pretty well. He's the one who sacrifices his life to defeat the enemy by destroying the ring space. His final words to Naomi actually made me tear up. And my gut clenched when he injected himself with the protomolecule so he could make contact with Miller again. So he could enter the egg ship and help Teresa Duarte confront her father in a showdown with humanity's fate as the stakes. But there is one thing that Miller says to him before he dies. He reminds Holden of his own fate, stuck in this protomolecule Purgatory with the rest of those who died screaming on Eros. Is Holden there now? I hope not. But he probably is.

And Amos. Oh, Amos. That epilogue is fucking perfect. It takes place a thousand years later, and one of the far and distant human colonies finds its way back home to earth. And who does this emissary run into?

Do you remember earlier in the books when someone joked that no matter how ugly and brutal a fight would be, Amos would be the last man standing? It's a bit of a running joke early on, and lo! and behold! Who should be the last man standing in these books? Amos fucking Burton hisownself, that's who. And it is Amos. He might look different. He might have odd new twitches, but I firmly believe that is Amos.

The final line of the book is perfect. "Now we got that shit out of the way, follow me. We'll grab a few beers and get reacquainted." It's such an Amos thing to say, and it's actually a pretty optimistic way to end a series of books that focused so much on the negative aspects of humanity.

In short, I'm happy with how it ended. Satisfied. I hope the show can live up to it. I'll bet it can.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #437: THE EXPANSE AND THE DARK TOWER

 

There is a sensation that goes beyond melancholy and doom and the feeling of a world that has moved on. The perfect phrase comes from the final book of The Dark Tower: "O Discordia!" You've seen me use that one before, but I'm going to explore it a bit deeper now, especially how it relates to The Expanse book series.

There will be spoilers for that one ahead, so if you just started the first book or are planning to, or you're at book six, maybe skip this one.

I was reluctant to check out The Expanse TV show for one reason and one reason alone: everyone kept saying it was the Game of Thrones of space. I hate it when people describe something as "the Game of Thrones of (whatever)." It's never a good description, and nothing ever lives up to it. I usually skip everything people describe as that. But! In this case, a lot of people I respected said that it was one of the best SF TV shows ever. For the first three seasons, I agreed that it was the best SF TV series not called Stargate SG-1. By season four? I decided that they were right. It really is the best. And it is pretty much the Game of Thrones of space. There are just fewer people calling each other a cunt. (It probably helps that the authors are friends with GRRM.)

So I got into the books, and as with most shows and movies, the books are better. My favorite of them was Cibola Burn, which was season 4 of the show. It made me very happy. A space western that feels like it could actually happen. And there's no rescue from guys like Murtry and his RCE because what can you do? Report them to earth? How long will that take? The message first has to travel through the Ilus ring gate, then through the Sol ring gate, then through all the space between Uranus to earth. Then the UN has to figure out what to do about the situation before they send help. To Uranus and the Sol gate. To the Ilus gate. Yeah, we're talking months, maybe even a year. Maybe more. If you thought police arriving late for a 911 call was bad, you're not even close to the reality of the Ilus situation. So yeah, I fucking loved it.

And then came Tiamat's Wrath, which is hands down the best so far. I'm almost done with Leviathan Falls, so I can't say for sure, but Tiamat's Wrath is an absolute heartbreaker of a book, and it's the pinnacle of the feeling of O Discordia for me.

Just think. The first thing it greets us with is Avasarala's death and Laconia's hijacking of her funeral. Does her beloved earth get to host it? To even bury her body? Nope. Laconia fucks that all up, and it's hosted on Laconia, the heart of the tyrannical Laconian Empire.

James Holden, now a lot older than when we met him, has been Laconia's prisoner for years since the end of book seven. He's more or less treated like a dancing bear, like the Russians used to have bears in their court with their teeth and claws removed. Because why not hang out with a fucking bear? When I first read the back of the book, it mentions him as "Mephistophelian" which I truly didn't understand until his conversation with Elvi and Fayez. I didn't get it because I never thought Holden was capable of it. The morals he used to have before his captivity apparently changed. Not entirely, but still. Considering what he's been throughout the series, he's so moral he was reckless with it. Remember the Cant?

Meanwhile, Naomi Nagata has to survive without her beloved for years. Imagine the person you love the most in the world. Now imagine that this person was taken away from you for years. So many years that you figure that you'll never see that person again. She's given up on ever seeing Holden again, and she's grieving his loss.

Alex Kamal is bittersweet. He's now a father, and that makes him so happy that not even divorcing that kid's mom can make him feel bad. But he's just lost his best friend. Bobbie Draper died the way she probably would have preferred: a violent and victorious explosion. But she's still gone.

And then there's my favorite character, Amos Burton. When he was growing up as a criminal and child prostitute in the worst parts of Baltimore, back when he was still Timothy, I'll bet he never thought he'd wind up being a part of the biggest conflict humanity has ever faced. He certainly didn't expect to be undercover on Laconia for years, sitting on a pocket nuke, waiting for the chance to blow up the bad guys after trying to rescue Holden. He probably didn't expect to befriend the daughter of Laconia's god-emperor and her dog. And there's no way he would have expected his life to end at the hands of an authoritarian military on a planet so far from home that it hadn't even been known to the world he'd come from, and that he would be calling himself Timothy again would have blown his mind.

And even if he could have guessed any of those things, it's impossible to believe that he would have known what the "strange dogs" would do to him after his death.

It is a stark book. All you can feel is hopelessness. Despair. O Discordia!

And it's good to feel a lot of that in Leviathan Falls. I've reached a turning point where the feeling has shifted, but until that it still feels stark, especially when Tanaka faces off against Holden, Duarte's daughter and her dog and the thing that used to be Amos and might actually still be him. He has the same attitude as Amos. The same speech patterns. The same way of looking at life. But then there are his pitch black eyes, his off color skin and the way he sometimes pauses before saying something. But it's probably still him, right? Even after he's killed again by Tanaka, right?

I'm going to be sad when I read the last sentence of this one. There's going to be another novella after it, but when the main story is done? I'll miss it. It's been one of the greatest joys of the last few years for me.

And goddammit! How do Ty Franck and Daniel Abraham manage that feeling? If I could write what I call "O Discordia," I'd be a much happier writer. I feel so jealous right now. Do you know how rare that is for me?

(And yes. I took a break from the cannabis in favor of drink tonight. That's probably why this is so long, and it makes more sense than my high GF columns.)

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #381: ID4 DOES NOT LEAD TO RESURGENCE

 

OK, look. We can all agree that ID4 is a silly, possibly stupid, movie. But it's fun. And those who gave Resurgence a shot probably thought the same thing. I certainly did. Not to shit on either movie, because they both got belly laughs out of the eight-year-old who constantly lives behind my eyes, but I watched something recently that kind of changed my opinion on the second movie.

First let me tell you about one of the things I honestly enjoyed about Resurgence. In the optimistic world that ID4 left us with, the most idealistic thing ever happens. The world learns from the alien tech and we all benefit from becoming ridiculously scientifically advanced. That's just fucking cool. It also echoes something from another project the creators birthed into the world. Stargate didn't just end with that movie with Russell and Spader. It went on to become several TV shows, and the awesome thing about those series is that they learn from the alien technology and start building their own starships and replicating (no pun intended, probably) weapons, adapting to their newfound needs. That's exactly what happens between ID4 and Resurgence.

But it's bullshit because of something I should have known. Someone as misanthropic as me should really know better.

I watch Ty and That Guy, the show Ty Franck and Wes Chatham do about The Expanse. Ordinarily I don't watch that kind of thing, but these two aren't just anyone. Franck is one half of James S.A. Corey, the author of the book series the TV show is based on, and Chatham is the actor who plays Amos Burton on the show. Plus, you know, I fuckin' love The Expanse. They were discussing ID4, and Franck makes this great observation that the very instant the humans are done celebrating their victory, they would go right back to murdering each other to see who gets to have this neat new alien tech, so they can resume putting their boots on others' throats.

Goddammit, he's right. It also makes me think of Ozymandias in Watchmen. His plan to bring humanity together to face off against an evil alien force that he invented seems like a really good--but also a very psychotic--solution to most of the evils of the world. But it doesn't take into account that humanity, at its heart, is, if I may borrow from Tommy Hobbes, "poor, nasty, brutish and short." (Hey-hey! I used my degree in philosophy for something! It's not been for nothing, after all! Just, you know, next to nothing!)

So yeah. There's no way that ID4 leads to Resurgence. Very few people are Jeff Goldblum. Most are that dictator that he has to put up with to get shit done. And even that says something.

For getting this far, you have been visited by Bonus Jeff Goldblum.
You're welcome.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #376: I HAVE A CUNNING PLAN

 

Hopefully mine works out a lot better than his usually did.

I've been focusing my week of shameless self-promotion on ebooks today. There is a reason for that. Very soon I'm going to do a few more Kindle-only books, but they won't be standalones.

I have two finished books I'm sitting on right now. One of them is my splatter western, the other is my splatter SF. They're kinda making the rounds, but I'm pretty sure no one wants either one. That's fine. I have a plan for them anyway.

The splatter western is part two of a series that doesn't have a part one yet. Kind of like A Fistful of Dollars, in which the last in the series takes place first. The first part of my splatter western was written years ago, and I'm going to do a couple more drafts of it before it comes out, but the second part was meant to be read first. And then . . . hold that thought.

My splatter SF bears a lot of influences on its sleeve. The most obvious is The Expanse, and it's something I stripped out to the best of my abilities. And the first chapter is heavily influenced by Richard Matheson, and again, I stripped out as much as possible. The same for chapter two, which bears a lot in common with Robert E. Howard. It's OK to borrow from others, just so long as you strip out as much of the original influence as possible and make it your own.

But I am shamelessly ripping off the way The Expanse is published. Between each book in the series, the authors publish a Kindle-only novella. They're not technically a part of the series, but they enhance your enjoyment of the bigger story.

My splatter SF book is the first in a kinda-sorta series. The thing is, I'm bored with multi-book SF epics. The books in this series are not a continuing story. They're just about the same characters, that's all. And while there will be connections between them, they will be standalone books. Furthermore, not a single one of them will be doorstops. I'm going to try to keep them all under 60,000 words.

Yeah, there will be subtext. Everything I write has subtext if you're looking for it, even stuff like "Monster Cock." But these books will be first and foremost pulp adventures. Dark, grim, funny, fucked up pulp adventures.

And between each book there will be a Kindle-only novella. I already have a good idea what the first two will be. I'm toying with the idea of publishing one before the first volume. We'll see.

And I'm doing the same for the splatter western series, which will be a trilogy.

So there's my cunning plan. It will come to fruition probably by the end of the year, depending on when I hear back from the publishers that are probably going to say no. Naturally, I'll keep you all in the loop.