Books Make Good Miniseries: S.M. Stirling's DRAKA

Once upon a time at DragonCon, author S.M. Stirling said that books typically make good miniseries and short stories make good movies. I'm an administrator of a Facebook group dedicated to his works and recently the possibility of films or TV series based on his notorious Draka series from the late 1980s and early 1990s came up. This set the wheels spinning--I'm inclined to think that each of the three main books would make for a good three-hour TV miniseries.

Marching Through Georgia-This would be based on the first novel and depict the Draka's entrance into this timeline's World War II. While the Draka armies surge into the southern entrances of the Caucasus mountain passes, paratroopers under the command of young officer Eric von Shrakenberg land in the northern entrances to trap the German defenders, accompanied by American reporter William Dreiser. Although Dreiser doesn't like the Draka's practice of large-scale slavery, he is intent on convincing his American audiences to cooperate with them to stop Germany, which has conquered European Russia and is currently enslaving and killing Jews, Russians, and Poles by the millions. Here we can see all the consequences of Generalplan Ost in their horror. 

However, throw in enough about the Draka as the story goes along that we get the creeping realization their winning might be even worse. Through Eric's memories and Dreiser's heavily-regulated visit we see just how horrible life in the Domination is. On leave Eric has to stop two Janissaries (soldiers drawn from the slave population) from raping his driver, millions of slaves are worked to exhaustion in military factories to prepare for the coming war, Dreiser is threatened by a Security Directorate minder who thinks he's going to try to spread sedition among the slaves, and Eric's father Karl tells Dreiser it's in the US's interest to help the Draka stop Germany and Japan from becoming great powers because the alternative to their dividing the world between them (and the Draka enslaving everybody under their control) is Germany, Japan, and the Domination allying against the United States. Draka small-talk reveals even more horrors. For example, Eric's fighter-pilot sister thinks buying a female Russian guerrilla as essentially a concubine would be doing her a favor (the master-slave sexual dynamic encourages a lot of situational lesbianism among Citizen women), other soldiers talk about how "it's a long way to the Atlantic" as though they've planned to conquer their ostensible French allies from the get-go, Dreiser thinks that the Draka view the rump Soviet state in Siberia as a "caretaker" before they take over themselves, and even the "distressingly liberal" Eric advocates the Domination merely "regulate and tax" occupied Europe rather than enslave the entire population and casually discusses sterilizing alcoholics and "retards." 

Ultimately, even though the Nazis are defeated, the Security Directorate assassins sent after Eric for his liberal-minded ways are dealt with, and Dreiser makes arrangements for Russian guerrillas who helped the Draka to be evacuated to the United States, we have a more ominous ending than a happy one. It's been a long time since I've read this book, but the first half could be the everything leading up to a large-scale last-ditch Nazi attack that threatens to destroy Eric and company and relieve the trapped Germans and the second half could be the Nazi attack itself and the aftermath.

Under The Yoke-This one is based on the second book and would be a straight-up horror show, albeit with a slightly happy ending. All the stuff the Germans were doing in Russia and Poland? The victorious Draka are doing it on a somewhat more subtle level from the English Channel to the Pacific Ocean. American secret agent Frederick Kustaa, pretending to be a brain-damaged Draka veteran (i.e. so he doesn't have to imitate their very distinctive accent, spar, dance, etc), is sent in to facilitate the defection of a European nuclear scientist who'd been given Citizenship but soon found he could no longer bear working for the absolutely worst people ever. However, while trying to smuggle the scientist out of Draka-occupied France, he gets involved in the internal politics of a newly-established Draka plantation, including rebellious young Communist Chantal LeFarge who has attracted the attentions (ahem) of both the master and the mistress and Polish nun Marya Sokolowska, a Resistance agent. 

The first half would be everything leading up to Frederick's arrival at the plantation. Frederick's insertion into Finland and helping Finnish rebels fight Draka occupation forces while bachelor Draka officer Andrew von Shrakenberg is unknowingly hunting for him would be a big part; meanwhile you have Marya and Chantal arriving at the plantation and becoming part of the household staff. The second half would be everything that happens after Frederick arrives. The ending features a pregnant Chantal escaping with the American extraction team while Frederick, Marya, and Andrew give their lives to stop a dirty bomb from detonating--for Chantal at least it ends somewhat happily and the other three essentially become martyrs saving thousands of people from death by radiation poisoning.

The Stone Dogs-This one, based on the third book, would be a generational saga like something out of James Mitchener. To tighten it up, I'd start right before the 1970s secession of India from the anti-Draka Alliance for Democracy and the consequent Draka invasion to keep the focus on Frederick and Marya LeFarge (the twin children of Chantal, fathered by a Draka rapist but born free in America who become secret agents), the young Draka officer Yolande Ingolfsson, and the returning Eric as a reformist Draka politician. To tighten it still further, the miniseries could focus on the race for a stalemate-breaking superweapon. The Draka have the titular "Stone Dogs," a bioengineered virus intended to drive the Alliance military insane, while the Alliance has a computer virus that causes Draka military assets to self-destruct when the Domination goes to war footing (and an almost-afterthought sleeper ship The New America in the event of a Draka victory). The first half of the miniseries can end with the cornered Eric forced to launch a nuclear attack on the Alliance when the spiteful Yolande engineers the escape of the enslaved Marya, whom she'd deliberately told about the Stone Dogs. The second half can cover the resulting nuclear war and the peace treaty in which the Draka grant Citizenship to the Alliance survivors on the Moon and beyond (but not on Earth, for more horror) and allow the New America to leave the solar system and establish a colony at Alpha Centauri. It'd be a combination of 2001 (or 2010 since that involves a US-Soviet confrontation) and The Day After.

Drakon-Per Stirling himself, this fourth book would be the one that would work best as an actual movie--I think he compared it to Predator. Only the very beginning and a couple minor scenes take place in the world of the victorious Domination and most of it in modern-day New York City. Basically an accident with wormholes deposits female Homo drakensis (the Draka genetically-engineered themselves into a superhuman master race) Gwendolyn Ingolfsson in our world and she begins building a personal empire with the ultimate goal of bringing in a conquering Draka army. A naval vessel from Samothrace (the colony established by the Alliance exiles) sends cyborg secret agent Kenneth LeFarge through a wormhole after her and the battle is on. Given how the book was written in the late 1990s, maybe make it a 1990s period piece? In an age of smart phones and online videos, concealing the events of the climax would be very difficult, but in the Domination frame-story, it seems only a few people are aware of what really went down.

Hmm...make a Drakon movie first, with the victory of the Domination depicted in flashbacks or something Gwen or Kenneth tell their respective servants/allies? If it does well enough, then go whole-hog on the original trilogy.

NIGHTMARES IN DIXIE, Or Short Stories That Make Good Movies

On the recommendation of T.S. Dann, a fellow member of the Atlanta chapter of the Horror Writers Association, I read Nightmares In Dixie, a collection of horror stories set in different states in the American South. Some were by authors I already knew about like Manly Wade Wellman or Karl Edward Wagner, but others were new to me, like Henry S. Whitehead.

(Whitehead as a person was particularly interesting to me, since not only he was he a horror and fantasy writer who corresponded with H.P. Lovecraft, but he was also an Episcopalian pastor. He served as Archdeacon of the Virgin Islands, where he learned about voodoo and through his fiction brought it into American popular culture.)

This reminded me of something S.M. Stirling once said at DragonCon--books make good miniseries and short stories make good movies. Some of the stories in the collection are too short to justify making an actual film out of them, but they could be put together in an anthology film in the vein of Creepshow or V/H/S. Here's how I'd break it down...

Full Films

"Coven" by Manly Wade Wellman-You could have a prologue set during the Civil War, with the main thrust of the story set in the 1880s. A young Confederate soldier, who'd been captured by a Union sergeant at (I think) the Battle of Shiloh, comes across the sergeant working as a preacher somewhere out west decades later. And said sergeant is fighting a group of Satanists.

"Ooze" By Anthony M. Rud-A man who's the legal guardian of the young daughter of a close friend after the death of said friend and his wife decides to investigate just how they died. He ends up running into some mad science down in the Delta. This is very stylistically like Lovecraft.

"Dark Melody of Madness" By Cornell Woolrich-A New Orleans band leader follows a bandmate whom he suspects has black ancestry into the black part of town and ends up involved in voodoo. He tries to incorporate voodoo rituals into his music and trouble ensues. Given how trendy it is to complain about "cultural appropriation," this might be timely.

"Where The Summer Ends" By Karl Edward Wagner-This is probably one of if not my absolute favorite story in the collection. Who or what is living under the kudzu that's slowly overgrowing a decaying part of Knoxville? You could make this a 1970s period piece, which would explain things like an old-but-not-too-old WWII veteran, the lack of cell phones to call for help, etc. Some stuff that's told could be shown to ensure it's the proper length. Also here's an audio version of the story.

"Beyond The Cleft" by Tom Reamy-In a small mountain town, the children start attacking other children and their parents. It's like a pint-sized zombie apocalypse.

"Night of the Piasa" by J.C. Green and George W. Proctor-A young Native American woman who thanks to a Spanish ancestor can pass for white has adopted a European-style name and has been doing her level best to conceal her heritage. However, she finds out she has a downright supernatural link to her past. Owing to increased awareness of sexual abuse of Native American women this could be a timely movie.

Parts of An Anthology

"The Fireplace" by Henry S. Whitehead-This is a ghost story involving a man murdered in a hotel.

"Fast-Train Ike" by Jesse Stuart-I couldn't even really understand what was going on here. I'm only including this for completeness' sake.

"The Legend of Joe Lee" by John D. MacDonald-This could conceivably be stretched into a film, but it would work much better as a short in a collection.

"The Wait" by Kit Reed-A young woman and her overbearing mother are stranded in a small town in rural Georgia where weird stuff happens.

"Cry Havoc" By Davis Grubb-This was not one of the stronger stories in the collection to say the least. Think the "Chief Wooden-Head" sequence of Creepshow 2, but with toy soldiers. Maybe work in some wartime PTSD for the father's character? With the prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq leading to a whole new generation of veterans suffering from it, that could be timely.

The Politics of BATTLE FOR THE WASTELANDS, Or Putting "Punk" In Steampunk

As most of my regular readers know, I officially became a steampunk writer with my novel Battle for the Wastelands and its companion novella "Son of Grendel." Although those two books came out relatively recently, I'd been tinkering with them and pitching them for years (I completed the first Battle draft sometime in 2012) and I'd attended the Atlanta steampunk convention AnachroCon in 2014. One common concern I've heard re: steampunk over the years was that it was becoming too focused on aesthetics of parasols and dirigibles, with the "punk" angle (subversion of norms, challenges to authority, etc) neglected. In particular, the late 19th Century on which steampunk is based involved a lot of labor/class unrest that was supposed getting ignored in favor of fashion.

Between those comments I'd seen around and reading Killing For Coal in graduate school, I decided to make labor issues part of the worldbuilding in the Wastelands world. If you haven't read Killing For Coal, it's a fascinating look at the 1913-14 "Colorado Coalfield War" and its aftermath. Although it's mostly remembered for the Ludlow Massacre, in the aftermath of the massacre the striking miners proceeded to hammer the state militia (what would soon become the National Guard) for several days and workers in other trades began holding military drills and the like. That and the Battle of Blair Mountain were the closest incidents to outright socialist revolution in the United States I can think of. This is referenced in Battle when, in a meeting with his warlords, the villain Grendel talks about putting down strikes and the various commanders keeping forces at war footing--despite the vast expense--to avoid dumping hundreds of thousands of young men who know how to use weapons into the labor market. One reason the striking Colorado miners were such effective fighters is that many were veterans of wars in Europe. Although the first lord of the Northlands doesn't know about the coalfield war (I'm keeping it very vague as to whether this is our future, the future of a similar world, or something else entirely--think Stephen King's Dark Tower), he doesn't want similar incidents breaking out across his empire.

(Not only are Grendel and his cronies afraid of strikers being effectively able to resist the local police, the armies of lesser lords, or even Grendel's elite Obsidian Guard, but they're also concerned about their own soldiers following orders in the event they're sent against former comrades. The first Russian Revolution broke out when the soldiers refused to suppress food riots in St. Petersburg, after all. The film In Pursuit of Honor begins with a group of cavalrymen refusing to attack the Bonus Army outside of Washington D.C. because they'd served with those men in France, although I'm not entirely sure if that incident actually happened.)

Another plot plot in Battle is a small-scale war between two of Grendel's warlords that starts out over a labor dispute. One of Grendel's warlords is a straight-up mutant cyborg who breeds armies of mutants in the shadow of an "Old World" nuclear reactor. As part of a trade deal, he'd offered another warlord some to work in mines alongside more "normal" workers. The other workers went on strike and took to the hills with guns rather than work alongside "freaks," much like how racial violence accompanied labor disputes when black workers were brought in to replace striking white ones. The film Matawan covers one such incident, while I remember reading about a number of such instances in Making A New Deal. This ultimately escalated into a war between the two that sets Grendel looking for an outside enemy to keep everybody busy, something that will have consequences throughout the entire series.

Another "punk" element that's worked into the Wastelands world is the Jim Crow practice of convict leasing, chronicled in Slavery By Another Name. When Grendel united his homeland of Sejera through a dynastic marriage (and jackbooting those who objected), he made a very big deal about formally ending chattel slavery. But what dictator doesn't have forced labor? In addition to the usual labor camps and mines for political troublemakers and common criminals, both Grendel's overarching regime and private companies also lease convicts from lesser governments for forced labor. Convict leasing began after Reconstruction and continued all the way through World War II, a nice bit of period-appropriate dystopia. And considering how convicts under Jim Crow were viewed as more expendable than slaves (and in-universe there are references to convict laborers dying at high rates on certain projects), I imagine there'll be rebellions and the like should the opportunity arise.

Finally, part of the backstory for the defeat of the Merrill family--the last major independent power in the Northlands--was labor disputes. James Merrill, who was leader at the time, was preoccupied with mediating the concerns of business owners and workers and paid little heed to Grendel's growing military threat until it was too late. It's an underground labor movement that keeps his son Alonzo and his rebels supplied with equipment and trying to find a way to fairly deal with both capital and labor will become a problem for the son as much as the father in the second book.

The historical steampunk era was not just known for labor and class problems, but also an increasing push for women's rights. The first country to allow women to vote nationwide was New Zealand in 1893, while women won voting rights state by state throughout the 19th Century in the U.S. until the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920 guaranteed the right nationwide. This is touched on a bit when our oblivious hero Andrew Sutter, son of a prior mayor in his hometown, wonders why nobody asks his twin sister Sarah's opinion on anything the way they ask him and Sarah points out this should be rather obvious. 

(Although I didn't go into a lot of detail about how government in Andrew's town works, there aren't any women attending the town meeting on how to deal with the coming assault on the town by the extortionate Flesh-Eating Legion. This would strongly suggest women were either legally not allowed to participate in formal politics or it was Simply Not Done, since the town has been broadly self-governing since the Merrill dynasty fell but must provide tribute and conscripts to the Flesh-Eaters when asked. This might not be universal, since the surviving Merrill armies do field female soldiers and nobody seems to view that as particularly remarkable. To cite Eowyn's conversation with Aragorn in The Two Towers, those without swords can still die upon them.)

However, the main feminist plot point (so far) is the deconstruction of "it's good to be the king" in regards to the harem Grendel started up after the death of his wife. One of his concubines is Catalina Merrill, daughter of James and sister of Alonzo, who really, really doesn't like it. She exhibits some fairly overt symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder from Grendel's attentions. Meanwhile, there's constant catfighting between the women and rival sons of different mothers plotting against each other, something that polygamous societies like the Ottoman Empire or ancient Israel were known for. This will only get worse later in the series. Although none of Grendel's women could be credibly described as 19th Century feminists, this does show how incredibly destructive this situation is. King Conan and his "luscious concubines" this is NOT.

Another Alternate Draka Timeline for AH Enthusiasts

One of the founding texts of the modern alternate-history subgenre is S.M. Stirling's Draka series--three novels assembled into the omnibus The Domination, the distant sequel Drakon (which provides the frame story for The Domination), and the anthology Drakas! that tells stories from different points in the timeline. One of the more common criticisms of the world is how implausible the timeline is (the proto-Domination's white overlords expand rapidly in an area that was a lethal disease zone for Europeans, the British tolerate a dominion practicing slavery-in-bad-disguise after formal abolition, etc), which has led to a lot of alternate versions of the Draka timeline. Most of them feature the Draka not expanding as much or getting straight-up squashed, which they eminently deserve for combining the imperialism and murderous behavior of Nazi Germany with the cruelty of Atlantic slavery and much more brains than either.

(Here's one I created--there are some updates I didn't post on fanfiction.net and I'm not going to petition to be unbanned to copy them, so this is not likely to ever be fully finished.)

Now the premiere alternate history discussion forum online is hosting a new one, "Separated At Birth: America and Drakia." So far only a couple chapters in, but it's got some interesting features, including:

*The early death of George Washington and a different founding of the United States, which as a result is much more hostile toward slavery and also has much wider suffrage for (white) men from the beginning.

*A rebellion by free blacks and white allies against an attempt to disenfranchise black voters leads to a black-governed Georgia within the United States, which undermines much of the intellectual-cultural rationale for racism.

*A much uglier War of 1812 and surviving Republican France.

*In-universe writings that explain the rationale of the different political systems, including a very Draka take on the line of Cain in the Bible.

I'm definitely looking forward to more. The timeline's author has earned awards from the site's membership for his timelines, so hopefully this will keep going and stay interesting.

Movie Review: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

The first PG-13 movie I ever saw was the original Jurassic Park back in 1993. I've been a fan of the franchise ever since--I saw the first sequel Lost World in middle school, Jurassic Park III in high school, and Jurassic World when it came out. I reviewed it and even participated in a podcast dedicated to the film. So even though the advance buzz wasn't so hot, I definitely made plans to see Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

The Plot

In the aftermath of the events of Jurassic World and the massive payouts the company had to make to those harmed, Isla Nublar has been abandoned again. However, it's not a paradise where once-extinct beasts can roam around freely--at least not for much longer. The island's dormant volcano has came to life and the US government, which based on Jurassic Park III seems to have been doing the lion's share of keeping the islands quarantined, has been listening to Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) and is inclined to let the volcano destroy the dinosaurs.

This doesn't sit well with Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), who is now running the Dinosaur Protection Group dedicated to protecting the dinosaurs like they're an ordinary endangered species. She allies with the late John Hammond's former partner Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell) to transport the dinosaurs to a new sanctuary, with her former boyfriend Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) along for the ride to help find his velociraptor pet/surrogate child Blue.

Unfortunately they--and the timid computer geek Franklin Webb (Justice Smith) and the take-no-shit "paleo-veterinarian" Dr. Zia Rodriguez (Daniella Pineda) from Claire's organization--find that the sinister plots to weaponize the dinosaurs (one of Jurassic World's weaker points) are still in play and drastic action might need to be taken to save them...

The Good

*I will give the film credit for taking creative risks. The island gets blown up halfway through the movie and the rest of it takes place in California, with the climax occurring at Lockwood's mansion way out in the woods. No more formulaic "how can we get people to these quarantined dangerous islands" films now. The film also gets pretty dark--there's deliberate murder (or attempted) murder of humans by other humans. Even when Malcolm and his crew sabotage InGen's attempt to capture Isla Sorna's dinosaurs in The Lost World, InGen's mercenaries rescue them from the falling trailers and include them in their attempts to get off the island rather than abandoning them to die or deliberately killing them.

*The visuals are stunning, including the dinosaur effects.

*The last quarter of the film, however ridiculous it often seems, comes off like a Gothic haunted-house horror movie, just with dinosaurs.

*Like before, Howard and Pratt are quite amusing together. And Claire has become quite the bad-ass since then. No more running around the jungle in heels for her. :)

*In general there's a lot of nice laugh-out-loud moments.

*There's a scene with a brachiosaurus that's legitimately sad, just like in the last movie. I think the last movie did it better in terms of eliciting an emotional reaction from me, but a whole lot of people found what happened poignant.

*A new type of dinosaur actually seems to have a personality and almost demonic cleverness.

The Bad

*How is the mosasaurus (really a kronosaurus due to its size) still alive if the park has been abandoned for three years? It doesn't seem like it's capable of climbing out of its pool. It would have long since starved to death trapped in its enclosure unless the pool was already stocked with fish, animals keep conveniently getting close enough for it to snag, or somebody's been feeding it.

*Apparently a tie-in in-world website of the Dinosaur Protection Group that provides a lot of the back-story, but I didn't know it existed. Consequently, I was wondering for much of the movie about Isla Sorna, which should be unaffected by the impending destruction of Isla Nublar. This is a problem--if it's that much of a plot hole, it should be explained in the movie. All they'd need is a throwaway line about how after "the spinosaurus incident" Isla Sorna's ecology collapsed and the surviving dinosaurs had to be relocated to Isla Nublar for the new park.

*There's some needless political commentary, like one of the mercenaries (a villain, unlike the awesome Roland Tembo from the second film) referring to Dr. Rodriguez as a "nasty woman." Where have I heard that before?

*There's a scene involving transfusing blood from one species of dinosaur to another. That's...not going to work. You can't transfuse from one human to another if the blood types are different and humans are all one species. The almighty TVTropes said this was like using rabbit blood in humans.

*Ian Malcolm is even more of an annoying pantheist than he was before. It's my understanding that his worries about chaos theory from the first movie had to do with the overconfidence of Hammond and his entourage that they could control these wild and dangerous animals so easily, but there was still the "nature SELECTED them for extinction" stuff. He's still on that kick in this one, even though he explicitly tells the Congressional committee that God isn't involved here. News-flash: In a purely naturalistic world (Malcolm is not a religious man, something made quite clear in the novel The Lost World), there is no "meant to be" or "wrong side of history. Things happen and people have to deal with them.

*It would have been better if the "rescue the dinosaurs" plot had taken up the entire movie--one last return to the park, rounding up the dinosaurs, some close encounters of the worst kind with big carnivores, etc. could have taken up quite a lot of time. One of the more creative features of The Lost World was the depiction of the carnotaurs as having chameleon-like camouflage, which they could have included in this one. The betrayals that take place halfway through could be a cliffhanger ending to set up the events of a third Jurassic World film, which would cover the events of the second half of the film and the consequences of those.

*Things got kind of draggy after they get off the island all the way to the dinosaur auction going badly.

*They hype up the possibilities of the dinosaurs getting loose as some kind of apocalyptic event when they're really not. Most if not all of the dinosaurs are female and there are so few dinosaurs period they wouldn't be able to create a viable breeding population even if they became established somewhere. And if the lysine contingency is still in the genes of the new batch (it's certainly still there with old-school dinosaurs like the T-Rex), many of them will die unless they can find the proper foods. The only ones I anticipate being a real problem are the kronosaurus, since it has the whole ocean to hide in, or the pterodactyls due to their ability to fly and the fact enough of them escaped Isla Nublar (and Isla Sorna earlier) that they could establish a viable breeding pool. The big carnosaurs in particular will be in zoos or trophy racks within a month or two.

*Weaponizing the dinosaurs is still a dumb idea. Unless they could teach raptors to use guns (or engineer them into creatures similar to the wolf-baboon-human chimera ghouloons from S.M. Stirling's Draka novels), it seems pretty pointless. They need too much food, the fixed costs of creating them are huge, etc. A "war raptor" might be able to do more damage on the battlefield than a "war dog" (more physically destructive, more intimidating) but it doesn't seem like it's worth the effort.

The Verdict

Worth seeing once. It's not a bad movie, but it could have been done better. 7.5 out of 10.

Great Minds Think Alike: The Dutch East India Company Finds Gold and My Afrikaner Timeline

Although I'm still self-banned from the alternate history forum to avoid Internet political drama and save time for my writing projects, I do drop in unlogged-in from time to time to see if there's anything cool in the public sections.

Well, here's a new timeline entitled "The Dutch Strike Gold: A Timeline of VOC Exploits in Southern Africa." In our history it's my understanding that the Dutch East India Company (whose Dutch acronym is VOC) restricted Dutch settlement to the coastal regions of what was then their Cape Colony, preventing further expansion into the rural areas. The movement of the Dutch into the interior, the Great Trek, came much later on, after the British seized the Cape during the Napoleonic Wars and many Dutch didn't want to live under their rule.

In this timeline, however, a VOC expedition into the interior discovers gold, prompting mass emigration to the colony from the Netherlands, France, and other parts of Europe. The Dutch begin moving into the interior well ahead of schedule, eventually putting them right in the crosshairs of the nascent Zulu Empire under the rule of the charismatic and highly dangerous Shaka Zulu. Shaka's conquests triggered the Mfecane, a period of widespread warfare and conquest in southern Africa that led to the formation of many new states and killed between one and two million people. Things get...interesting, although one positive consequence might be better relations between the Boers and neighboring African peoples, including possible intermarriage rather than what ultimately became apartheid.

This reminded me quite a bit of my own alternate timeline, "Apartheid Superpower," in which my space-war short story "Coil Gun" (included in Digital Science Fiction: Pressure Suite) and espionage novelette "Picking Up Plans in Palma" (available as part of the collection Digital Science Fiction: Cosmic Hooey as well) are set. My timeline is rather spotty in the early days, but it features a similar situation in that the Dutch settle southern Africa much earlier and in larger numbers, ultimately expanding all the way to the Sahara Desert and Ethiopia by land and into Arabia and India by sea.

(In case that sounds familiar, the world is both a homage to and critique of S.M. Stirling's Draka novels, the first three of which are combined in The Domination and the fourth novel Drakon. I elaborate a bit on that in this post here.)

Given how hostile the disease environment is toward Europeans and their livestock once one gets sufficiently north into Africa, that took some...creativity. For starters, the Afrikaner Confederation is founded independently of the Netherlands and VOC, allowing for more flexibility. What ends up developing is more akin to the Massachusetts Bay Colony than an outpost focused on providing way stations for the trade with India and nothing else. Secondly, a Spanish attack on Cape Town (complete with several leading citizens being burned at the stake for refusing to abandon Protestantism) traumatizes the Afrikaners and prompts them to greatly militarization. Thirdly, having the VOC side with Cape Town instead of Amsterdam when Revolutionary France seizes control of the Netherlands (in TongaTui's timeline the VOC and its African colonies side with France) allows the nascent Afrikaner Confederation to pretty much inherit all the VOC's assets throughout Asia and lots and lots of money, allowing for the Confederation to dominate southern Asia by the time of World War III.

However, dealing with malaria, the tsetse fly, etc. with pre-19th Century medical knowledge proved a tougher hurdle. I had the Afrikaners transplant cinchona trees to their lands in Africa and Asia (the anti-malarial quinine is made from the bark), something someone commenting on the timeline pointed out would be that era's equivalent of the Moon Landing. TongaTui's timeline is probably much more realistic than mine; it's certainly more conservative and better-researched.

So if you're interested in alternate history set in Africa, check out TongaTui's timeline and my timeline, as well as the published works linked to above.

Adapting Mercedes Lackey's "Werehunter" for Film

A few years back I attended a panel at DragonCon featuring author S.M. Stirling in which he said that short stories make good movies, while books make good miniseries or TV shows. Although I don't watch nearly as much television as I used to, The Stand and Moby Dick are good examples of books adapted to 3-4 hour miniseries and Game of Thrones and The Expanse are excellent of examples of making each book in a series a season for a television show. I even plotted out a nine episode adaptation of my novel The Thing in the Woods as a short TV series in the vein of British shows.

At my various day jobs I typically run YouTube videos to have a soundtrack while I work. The other day I found the song "Golden Eyes" by Heather Alexander, which is an adaptation of Mercedes Lackey's short short "Werehunter." Here's the music video for your entertainment:



I remembered what Stirling said about short stories making good movies when I read the story. "Werehunter" tells the tale of Glenda, an impoverished and friendless young woman who, pursued by some young men with bad intentions, ends up at a creepy old house presided over by a "crazy" woman. Said woman offers her the chance to go to a different world if there's nothing for her here, an offer that she obviously accepts.

Soon after arriving in this new world she learns that thanks to a ring passed down to her by a mother she never knew (she was raised by an unpleasant aunt who didn't like her brother's choice of a wife) she can change her form into a leopard. She finds life as a leopard a lot better than living as a human, but the villagers whose livestock she preys on soon hire a hunter with secrets of his own.

"Werehunter" could be adapted as a film. From the beginning of the story (her getting turned down for welfare from a clerk who clearly has better things to do) to her arriving in another world and her first transformation into a leopard could take fifteen to thirty minutes. There could be a montage of her learning the ropes of living as a predator and how to outwit the villagers and their dogs by using her shape-shifting ability to confuse her tracks and scents.

(That could make adapting it in a movie tricky, as until the very end whenever she appears as a human she'd be naked. The nudity wouldn't be sexual in nature, but that would still jack up the rating for a movie that could otherwise probably be PG. Unless, of course, it was shot at clever angles.)

However, in terms of material resources needed to adapt the film, you wouldn't need that much. Glenda and the hunter are the most distinctly described--Glenda is brunette and plain with odd yellow-brown eyes (and given the nature of the role, the actress would need to be rather...adventurous) and the hunter is a brunette man and strikingly handsome. The welfare clerk, the "crazy" woman, some thug types, her unpleasant aunt for flashbacks, and some peasant-villager types get much less description, so there's more flexibility in casting them. The beginning would take place in the student ghetto in what sounds to me like the Pacific Northwest, but most of the book would take place in the forests and plains of a fantasy world. There're references to a war being fought in the past with "strange" technology that could imply a Dark Tower-like situation that could make flashbacks more expensive if the creators decide to "show" and not "tell" the hunter's back-story. However, if the money's not available or if it's too distracting, that could be elided over or left out completely.

The movie could also be very timely--Glenda ends up the situation in the first place due to predatory men and chooses to spend almost all of her time as a leopard because as a woman alone in a strange world she's vulnerable, but as a leopard she's a fearsome predator. It's a #MeToo fantasy movie, but it wouldn't beat the viewer over the head with a message and thus possibly alienate people.

What do you think?

Music Inspired By Other Faiths I Enjoy

As most of you know, I am a Christian. I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), although given the theological liberalism of much of the PC-USA, ECO is looking more and more interesting. However, that doesn't mean I don't enjoy listening to music inspired by other faiths. Here are some examples:



Given how this is based on Miriam's "Song of the Sea" from the Book of Exodus and Christianity has no validity except as the successor of Judaism, this isn't really "another faith" per se. It's still in Hebrew--"mi chomocha" means "who is like you, Lord?" according to a Jewish friend. The artist is Debbie Friedman, who seems like the Jewish equivalent of a contemporary Christian artist.



This one invokes the Horned God of Wicca, the lord of the hunt, and this one is actually a bit raunchy. The notion of the gods coming down and having their way with mortals is alien to the Abrahamic tradition (before anyone starts, the conception of Jesus was a non-sexual supernatural act--we don't worship Zeus here), but many polytheistic cultures have plenty of demigods. One wonders what it's like to be part of a religious tradition where getting knocked up by a god is a distinct possibility. This song is by S.J. Tucker, who has liked some of my comments on Twitter.



The Norse story of Ragnarok has always been interesting to me, especially since I read the story of Thor and his Mutual Kill with the serpent Jormundgand in James Byron Huggins' novel Leviathan. A pity iTunes doesn't have this, because I'd love to buy it. For the record, this is a Sabaton cover of a song by Amon Amarth, but since Sabaton actually enunciates, it sounds a lot better. There are Christian songs celebrating Jesus's return like Nicole Sponberg's "Hallelujah" or the various versions of "Days of Elijah," so a song celebrating Thor's self-sacrifice in destroying a monstrous world-devouring snake would work too.



This is about ritual magic I think, and given the reference to "so mote it be," perhaps it refers to Wicca. In S.M. Stirling's The Protector's War (I think), a Wiccan priestess thinks to herself "I will have him. So mote be it" or something to that effect upon meeting the man who will eventually become her husband. This is also by S.J. Tucker. Let the record state that the Bible condemns all forms of occultism, not just "black magic," so listen to the song if you wish but don't go doing what's described.

(Also let the record state that the magic in Harry Potter isn't the type of magic the Bible condemns with the exception of divination, which is generally depicted as fraudulent.)



This one is by Manowar. If I were an Asatruar (a practitioner of the Norse religion), I'd be interested in licensing "Loki God of Fire" for religious purposes. It gets the character of Loki right--in most of the Norse myths, he was a trickster but was still a friend of the gods. I suspect the influence of Christianity made him into a more overtly demonic entity, although I'm not sure. Evidence for the worship of Loki in ancient times is scant but it's not nonexistent, but there are some modern Asatruar who worship him. Given my propensity for shocking people, I could imagine going for Loki-ism as a means of seeking attention. :)



Sometimes it's hard to understand what exactly they're saying, but they're invoking the names of various mythological goddesses like Astarte (Semitic), Inanna (Mesopotamian), Kali (Hinduism), Isis (Egyptian), Hecate (Greek), Demeter (Greek), and Diana (Roman). It's my understanding that Wiccans believe that all the gods are aspects of the Horned God and all goddesses are aspects of the Goddess (in one of S.M. Stirling's books the Hebrew God is referred to as the "jealous" aspect), which would allow for deities to be invoked willy-nilly despite being members of different pantheons.

Although I've got a friend who really loves Muslim nasheeds (which might have contributed to his conversion to Sufism), I haven't got any here. I've never listened to them. Perhaps I'll check them out.

Many of these songs are produced by actual musicians. If these are songs you're interested in listening to, I would recommend you purchase them on iTunes. Even though I found most of these on YouTube, I ultimately purchased them so the artist could be paid for their work.

Thoughts on a THING IN THE WOODS Television Series

Once upon a time at DragonCon 2011, I heard from author S.M. Stirling that short stories make good movies and books make good miniseries or television shows. Although many movies have been made from books (think Shawshank Redemption or Jurassic Park), many short stories like "Who Goes There," which became the film The Thing, provide plenty of material to work with. However, many books would need to be cut down to fit a 1.5 to 2 hour film (in Jurassic Park, for example, the staff briefly regain control of the park before everything collapses into even more dino-violence, while Congo lost multiple sequences, including an entire rival expedition). Making a book into a miniseries like The Stand or Roots or a full-blown television show like The Expanse, The Man in the High Castle, and Game of Thrones allows for much deeper exploration of characters, settings, etc.

More recently, I listened to an episode of The Creative Penn podcast that references the increasing demand for intellectual property by entities like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, etc. For example, The Man in the High Castle is an Amazon Prime streaming show, and Amazon Studios has a whole lot of movies listed here. Amazon's submissions system is pretty interesting--it's like a crowd-judged contest.

With that in mind, I've put some thought into how my teen horror novel The Thing in the Woods would look as a television series. Spoilers below.

Episode #1: The episode would open with belligerent homeless Panama veteran Leroy Tolliver getting arrested by a couple of renegade sheriff's deputies in the small town of Edington, GA. Instead of being taken to the local jail, he's taken to place of sacrifice, where he's offered up to a tentacle monster worshiped by a local cult. Cut to protagonist James Daly working at the Edington Best Buy, where he meets Sam Dixon, a local man who is also a film enthusiast. Having purchased a movie, Sam goes to a nearby barbecue restaurant, where it's revealed he's a member of the cult and Phil Davidson, the owner, is the high priest. Sam argues with Phil over the death of Tolliver, who's a fellow veteran. Phil puts Sam in his place and it's revealed Sam's wife is Phil's cousin's stepdaughter and she has recently miscarried. James returns home and we meet his family--James Sr., an Atlanta attorney whom the Great Recession has left underemployed, his mother Andrea, and his younger sister Karen. We'll also meet Karen's friend Amber, a local theater enthusiast who has a crush on James. James "doesn't like liking" her back, thinking he can do better once he goes to college.

Episode #2: James and several fellow ex-Atlantans (Edington is rapidly becoming a bedroom community) have dinner at a local Zaxbys and get into a confrontation with some redneck kids. They're challenged to an ATV race. The following Saturday they meet up at a half-finished neighborhood and have their race...perilously close to the tree farm owned by the cult where Tolliver was sacrificed. The episode will end with James' rival Bill injuring himself, James' attempt to help him, and the tentacle monster attacking them both.

Episode #3: It begins with the appearance of the monster, the death of Bill, and James' escape on an ATV during which he gets slashed across the face. The other kids rush him to the hospital, where Deputy Bowie, a cult member, attempts to bully him into claiming Bill had knifed him and James had shoved him into the pond in self-defense. James' father intervenes, citing several holes in Bowie's story, and takes James home, where he's grounded. Meanwhile the cult gathers in the woods, where Phil is challenged by a relative of Bill's. Phil orders Sam, Bowie, belligerent racist cultist Jeffrey Reed, and another cultist off on a mission to kidnap Maad, an Indian friend of James who is an interracial relationship with a white girl, and his family to be sacrificed.

Episode #4: The cultists arrive at Maad's house and Bowie attempts to use his authority as a policeman to get Maad's family to come outside to be arrested. Reed reveals himself and his gun too early and all of them end up in a gunfight with Maad's father. Edington police arrive--Phil had forgotten the area had been annexed by the city government, whose police force is less infiltrated--and the cultists are forced to flee. Phil spins the failure as their god's judgement on the cult for various failings and persuades them to sacrifice Bill's angry relative instead. He begins plotting to kill the Atlanta teens...starting with James.

Episode #5: James is at work at the Best Buy when Amber comes to see him, ostensibly about some speakers for her television. Instead she interrogates him about what happened at the ATV race, hinting that she knows something. James agrees to meet her for ice cream to discuss it. Amber has to defend this decision to her prejudiced friends, who are convinced James murdered Bill. Soon afterward Sam arrives and reveals his role in the attempted abduction of Maad's family. He tells James to go to the library and check out a book about mysteries from the Civil War. James does so and learns about a Union detachment wiped out near Edington, with the sole survivor raving about "the thing in the woods." He encounters Karen, who is greatly amused that he's meeting up with Amber, but blackmails him into doing her chores.

Episode #6: James learns from Maad at school about what happened at his home. Later that day, he and Amber have their date and Amber reveals that her uncle had been killed by the cult in the 1960s for helping a civil rights activist escape being murdered. Furthermore, she's distantly related to both Sam and Phil. She advises James and his family to get out of town immediately. James and Amber are spotted by James' mother, who calls him and orders further punishment for violating his grounding. Meanwhile, Sam argues with Phil again at the restaurant and soon after a mysterious man in a suit with dark glasses arrives and hints that he knows what happened. Phil orders the cult to go into action against James and his family immediately and orders Reed to attack Sam to keep him from interfering.

Episode #7: James is chewed out by his parents for violating his grounding while Reed attacks Sam and his wife. He's about to kill Sam (against Phil's orders) when Amber arrives and beats him into unconsciousness with a brass lamp. Sam's wife hogties him while Sam and Amber rush to James' house. The cultists have already invaded, chasing away James' mother and sister and kidnapping James' father. Sam discovers James hiding in a closet and, pretending to be a loyal cultist, takes him to his car. James briefly overpowers Sam, only to be restrained by Amber, who reveals they're going to rescue James' father and end the cult's reign of terror. They return to Sam's house where they collect various guns and some Claymore mines Sam stole from the local National Guard armory. Sam renounces the cult and dramatically re-embraces Christianity and they're off.

Episode #8: Sam drives his truck into the tree farm with James and Amber hidden in the back. James and Amber agree to go on a date and get a bit affectionate, interrupted by an amused Sam. James and Sam set up a Claymore mine, ordering the cultists assembled for the sacrifice of James' father to disperse, but one of the cultists draws a gun on them and James sets off the mine, killing most of the cultists. James rushes to free his father, only to be set upon by the surviving Phil. Sam distracts Phil, who shoots and wounds him but is in turn shot and killed by James. They untie James' father, but the nearby pond is roiling. The Thing in the Woods is coming.

Episode #9: The final confrontation with the Thing. It seizes Sam, who is wounded when James sets off the second Claymore mine. The monster is hurt, but it's able to kill and eat Sam before continuing after James, who's joined by Amber. The two retreat to the car with James' father, doing battle with surviving cultists who had been guarding the gate, while the monster pursues. James plants the third and last Claymore mine and finally kills the Thing, only for the Edington police and the mysterious man from the restaurant to arrive and arrest everybody. In the hospital (he received minor injuries that will become very important in the planned second book), James is forced to sign off on a statement that his father had been kidnapped by meth dealers who had a pet Kodiak bear and is promised a brand-new car (confiscated from drug dealers) to ensure his silence. The episode ends with James coming to collect said car from the police department before meeting up with Amber. As he drives toward her house, he grimly wonders what else strange might be out there in the world.

Thing could be a miniseries if I squeeze the above story into two or three longer episodes (as plotted out the above episodes wouldn't be very long), or perhaps one of those British TV series where it's a single, often rather short, season to tell a complete story and then it's done. Some material could be expanded to fill out a full season (or at least make ten episodes)--the novel strongly implies the civil-rights activists had been murdered and Amber's uncle captured and sacrificed by a much-younger Phil, which can be depicted in flashback. However, it doesn't have to end with just one season, I am working on a sequel, The Atlanta Incursion, that could serve as the basis for a the second season. I do have a third novel planned--there's a time-skip and it mostly takes place in Afghanistan--that could serve as a third season.

So moving back to that bit about Amazon crowd-judging television scripts. Maybe I should write one and send it over to one of my television-writer friends to take a look?

A Fan-Fic Idea That Made Me Tear Up...

I have very little interest in watching the show Life After People because it's my understanding that the early episode(s) devote a great deal of time to the grim fate of pets left trapped in houses after all humans mysteriously disappear. Like, "Let's look at a hungry dog trying to tear through plastic into a loaf of bread" or "let's watch this cat try to open a door" level of detail. Seriously people, it's supposed to be educational, not a freaking tear-jerker.

However, I came across the LAP Wiki and found this article about U.S. Marine Corps German Shepherds. Basically they'd leave Camp Pendleton and form a dog pack called "The Last Marines" and survive for years, out-competing the local coyotes.

I'm a member (and technically an admin of) the S.M. Stirling Appreciation Society Facebook group, which is dedicated to the works of S.M. Stirling. Stirling himself is a regular participant, offering his fans behind-the-scenes details of his works. His most successful series is known as the Emberverse and begins with the novel Dies the Fire. Basically one day in 1998 all technology fails--no electricity, no internal combustion, no firearms. Within a year, 90% of the human race is dead. Most of California ends up a Death Zone where nobody lives except bands of cannibal savages.

This inspired me to write up the following proposal for a fan-fic, since many members of the group write semi-canonical fan-fic in this world. I don't have time to write it myself and I don't have the technical knowledge, but if anybody wants it they can have it.

Me: The story follows a pack of military K-9s (with or without their human handler) who survive the collapse of civilization and live in the wild. Heck, tell the story from their POV (xeno-fiction) and call it "The Last Marines." Heck, if you want a heartwarming ending, I'm imagining years later a descendant of one of those dogs raised in military K-9 ways by previous generations of dogs encountering surviving (human) descendants of US Marines from elsewhere (say a training detachment in an isolated area hooks up with/protects a group of survivors) and recognizes them as kin.

Another person, who is familiar with German Shepherd dogs, wrote the following:

This is cool. I have had GSDs for a few years. They would probably go looking for humans - they like the companionship. It would be interesting if a few were intact - then they could breed with coyotes. My GSD has a prey drive - he has, and would, eat a prey he can hunt. So far, rabbit was the largest one he caught and ate. But if they team up - the sky is the limit.

My response:

If they're naturally inclined to look for humans, perhaps "The Last Marines" wander California during the die-off, helping, say, catch runaway livestock or wild animals for a starving group of refugees under a bridge, ambushing and massacring a group of Eaters about to attack a "clean" survivor band, etc.

They could become the subject of legend among the survivors, as a sort of group of canine knights-errant. Perhaps that's how they come into contact, years later, with a group of human Marines (or their children raised in that culture)--the human Marines recognize obvious Marine stuff (do K-9s have "dog vests" or a particular habit or quirk they're trained into?) and seek them out.

For a heartwarming moment, set the contact with the human Marines in a years-later epilogue in which the oldest dog in the pack, the last of the original K-9s, lives just long enough to encounter the human Marines before going off to a long-deserved rest.

I'm not crying, you're crying.

Yes, that story brought tears to my eyes. I don't want to own a pet because I recognize the awesome (in the awe-inspiring sense, not the "AWESOME!" Ninja Turtles sense) responsibility it involves, but I do rather like dogs.

Going Back to DragonCon...

This time last year, I was starting a new job and needed to focus on learning how to do that properly. The year before that, I was a graduate student at Georgia State paying for my M.A. by working as a graduate research assistant and didn't want to spend the money.

Things are a little different this year, so I'm going back to DragonCon! For those of you who aren't in the know, DragonCon is the big science fiction, fantasy, horror, comics, etc. convention in Atlanta every Labor Day weekend.

In 2008 I went to DragonCon and met representatives of the company holding the rights to the BattleTech science-fiction franchise. I spent the next year (I probably could have finished it faster) writing "Skirmish at the Vale's Edge," which tells the tale of the Clan Wolf invasion of the Oberon Confederation, and told them in person in 2009 that I'd submitted it.

(I also got a good reference from established BattleTech writer Loren Coleman, who vouched for me that unlike some other fan-fic writers, I wasn't insane and actually did believe in the rights of copyright holders.)

They ultimately accepted the story and it's now considered part of the BattleTech canon alongside books written by established authors like Michael Stackpole, Mr. Coleman, Blaine Lee Pardoe, etc.

This time around, I've got two completed novels--the post-apocalyptic steampunk Western Battle for the Wastelands and the Lovecraftian science-fiction/horror The Thing in the Woods--to pitch. I've got got two more incomplete projects, the horror/dark comedy/bizarro Little People, Big Guns (which I've blogged about under its original title Badgers vs. Midgets) and the science fiction Bloody Talons: An Oral History of the Avian War, that I can pitch as well. Even if they're not done now, I can get permission to submit them once they're done.

(Bloody Talons is the secret project I've been referencing in posts tagged with "aliens" and "alien invasion." It can be described as a cross between World War Z and Independence Day. I'm still going to keep the details close to the chest though, since it's maybe 1/3 finished.)

When I was at DragonCon in 2011 and 2012, I made contacts with publishers and pitched Battle. Although neither pitch panned out (I did get a "this is good" rejection from one publisher though), meeting representatives of publishers at conventions is a good way to get around the "no unsolicited submissions" bar. If you get permission, it's not an unsolicited submission anymore. Just be sure to reference that in the e-mail to be safe.

Furthermore, even if I don't sell anything as a result of my visit, it's a good way to network and learn. I've interacted with Michael Stackpole and Stephen Michael Stirling, both of whom are really cool guys, and learned about the craft of writing. I might acquire some interesting new books (which I could get signed, considering how many authors are there) and collectibles. And I just learned from my friend James R. Tuck that the Fire of Brazil near the hotel has a $10-12 lunch. Considering how those Brazilian steakhouses are typically $50+ I think I'll hit that up pronto.

It's going to be a fun weekend. :)