How To Improve WILD WILD WEST (1999)

For the 200th episode of Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, our mighty host decided we ought to do Wild Wild West, the Will Smith and Kevin Kline vehicle based on the 1960s TV series). I'd only seen some bits of the movie on HBO at my parents' house long ago and I'm an aficionado of steampunk, so this was something I wanted to see. Here's the podcast. Although I found much of the film hilarious--the only member of the crew to do so--I admit there were some areas that needed improvement.

So here's how I would have improved Wild Wild West while keeping as much of the film intact as possible. Here there be spoilers for a movie that's 20-odd years old, so be ye warned...

*Instead of the prologue with the scientist being killed by the flying blade pursuing the magnetized collar around his neck, have a flashback to the end of the Civil War in which Confederate General "Bloodbath" McGrath (Ted Levine) and Dr. Arliss Loveless (Kenneth Branagh) attack the free black town of New Liberty with their steampunk war machines. Fortunately a nearby detachment of black cavalry including Jim West (Will Smith) is nearby and is able to relieve the town. In the process Loveless loses the lower half of his body and this can be played for laughs. I'm thinking some kind of explosion triggered by West blows Loveless in half, with body parts flying through the air.

(Given how the podcast group objected to the mood whiplash between silliness and serious James Bond-type spycraft, combining a massacre of civilians by evil racists with said racists getting hurt in hilarious ways would be tricky to pull off. Still it's probably doable.)

*Trim down the opening credits. They're more entertaining than the over-long opening credits of Spawn, but they go on and on and on...

*The first chunk or so of the film is generally good, with a lot of goofy humor, fight scenes, and the introduction of steampunk techie Artemis Gordon (Kevin Kline) but it reveals one of the film's major flaws. Many of the jokes in the film are funny, but they go on too long. We're talking Family Guy level of jokes going on too long here. The scene where West is having sex with a woman in a town's water tower is amusing, but the joke about him pretending to kiss her when he's really kissing empty air and she's getting progressively more annoyed goes on much longer than it needs to. The point has been made; let's get to the gunfight in the bar.

*In general, more practical effects. A lot of the CGI in the film is simply bad.

*Nixing the opening with the fleeing scientist losing his head means we lose the "that's a man's head" scene between Gordon and West, but perhaps someone else can lose their head instead. Somebody at the bar at the beginning, perhaps? McGrath is there and he's intent on running nitroglycerin to Loveless in New Orleans, so perhaps one of his minions' corpses is captured? That scene was pretty funny and it would be a shame to lose it.

*Considering how one of the guards on Loveless's estate accosts West and berates him using racist language (calling him "boy") when he sees him skulking around outside, I would expect him to have a much more hostile reception inside. Instead none of the Confederate die-hards attending his ball seem to care that a black man (and a member of the current U.S. Army no less) is roaming about armed and talking to white people as an equal rather than a servant, at least until he gropes a white woman he thinks is Gordon in disguise. Given how he absolutely refused to go as Gordon's manservant--his explanation allows for both humor and to show how incredibly degrading that would be. Perhaps instead he could have gone in disguise as some kind of African prince, Coming To America style? Ex-Confederates would disdain former slaves but might think somewhat better of a wealthy foreigner.

*When we first meet Rita Escobar (Salma Hayek) she's being held prisoner by some scantily-clad entertainers. The vibe I was getting was that Loveless had hired prostitutes to keep his captive scientists entertained, with Rita pretending to be a more respectable actress or singer who refused to participate. The idea that Loveless is using the carrot as well as the stick to control the scientists--and especially the particular nature of the carrot--could be played for more comedy.

*Although most of the group objected to the scenes where Loveless needles West about being black and West in turn needles Loveless about being disabled, a lot of that I actually found pretty funny. Not only does it appeal to my sense of humor, which relies heavily on wordplay and tasteless, shocking comments, but it would be realistic for its time. Loveless, being a Confederate die-hard, would be incredibly racist, while West would retaliate using the most obvious avenue, especially given how sensitive a subject this is for Loveless.

*The way they talk to each other implies they've interacted in the past, although there's really no reason for them to have. Perhaps they fight, or at least talk to each other, in the new prologue?

*That said, the attempted lynching of West that's played for comedy (!) doesn't go well at all. Gordon deliberately set it up (!!) to distract the guests from his searching Loveless's estate to find the captive scientists and it does allow for some amusing Will Smith jokes, but they're not going to be letting a man they intend to murder talk for so long like that. I would have made it so Gordon just needs to distract the party guests long enough to rescue Rita and then the two of them quickly intervene to keep West from being killed. Searching the estate would take hours and West would be long dead by then, but springing Rita from Loveless's sex-dungeon bedroom and then saving West is much less risky. Later in the film, West can in turn put Gordon at gross risk of bodily harm that's both funny and makes the point that what nearly happens to West is serious Dude Not Funny territory. Given how West absolutely refuses to pretend to be Gordon's servant we know that enslavement left a mark on him even though he escaped as a child, and lynching would be a much more fearful possibility for him than for a white man like Gordon.

*West references having been raised by Indians after escaping slavery as a child, but nothing about Native Americans happens at all even though they're in the Old West. His revealing how he was separated from his parents and how they were killed by McGrath at New Liberty was necessary plot-wise to get Gordon to stop feuding with him, but there was no need for the Indian back-story unless it was relevant--say if his adoptive Indian tribe showed up to help fight Loveless or something. I'd just nix that completely because bringing in an Indian war party on top of everything else would make the whole thing needlessly complicated.

(Unless of course West sets up Gordon to be scalped or undergo something like the "sun vow" scene from A Man Called Horse in revenge for Gordon trying to get him lynched earlier. That might actually be funny.)

And that turn ties in with my next point...

*Loveless's plan to divide up the United States between various former colonial powers makes things needlessly complicated and raises some awkward questions--namely an alliance of Mexico and various European powers supporting a terrorist to break up the United States would be grounds for immediate war if it went wrong. And given how President Grant knows the various European countries are involved, that's the obvious sequel and people would be wondering. I'd have just stuck with him trying to kidnap and/or kill President Grant, perhaps using McGrath and his Confederate die-hards as cannon fodder to punish them for losing the war. After all, I did like that Loveless hated the Confederates for losing the war and making his crippling ultimately pointless as much as he hated the Union for crippling him--it shows how much of a narcissist he is. Loveless's betrayal of McGrath and the murder of his men could be here instead of much earlier at the estate.

*Given how much West needles Gordon about dressing in drag for his missions, West having to dress in drag to rescue Grant and Gordon is an amusing ironic punishment. However, like many of the film's jokes, the scene goes for way too long. Yes, Will Smith pretending to be a sassy belly dancer in a veil to secretly unchain some people is funny, but get to the point already.

*The big reveal at the end that Rita's "father" isn't really her father but her husband would've been a lot funnier if the actor was someone younger and better-looking than Gary Cervantes. As someone pointed out on the podcast, perhaps Antonio Banderas? Given how West and Gordon are competing for Rita's affections the entire time, I get they were going for the shocking reveal she was married, but it would have been funnier if it was to a man widely-regarded as a sex symbol in a way Kevin Kline is not. And as they leave at the end, perhaps Mr. Escobar can wink at them? That would be pretty funny, plus it shows he's perceptive enough to know that his wife had been playing them the entire time and he's gloating that at the end of the day, it's him she's going home with. Maybe that'd make him a bit of an Ungrateful Bastard, but it'd be funny.

Hopefully all these suggestions would tighten the film up and fix some plot holes all while preserving the good bits.

A Victorious Comunero Alternate Timeline

Once upon a time as an undergraduate at the University of Georgia, I took a class entitled "Spain of Cervantes," which was about Spanish history and culture in the early modern period. One thing that stuck out to me was the revolt of the comuneros, in which a bunch of cities rebelled against the increasingly overbearing Spanish monarchy and like "every other early modern revolt" got crushed. However, during the lead up to the decisive battle, the Comuneros made poor decisions and the battle itself could have gone differently.

So what might have happened if the Comuneros defeated the royalists? Here's one possibility, "La Republica Comunera de Castilla." I'm not totally sure where the divergence from actual history is, but the end result is the kingdom of Castile becomes an alliance of self-governing cities, some of which have issues with each other--some communities are tolerant of Lutherans and Erasmians, for example, while others are stringently not. There's also a sort of folk democracy emerging in the rural areas, especially those whose nobility were killed or chased out during the revolt. Finally, the old notions of dishonor del trabajo (the idea that working with one's hands is degrading) fade and the more liberal (in the classical sense) ideas of several Spanish philosophers and economists that were ignored or suppressed in real history get implemented.

Spain's European wars go rather differently--for starters, the new Castilian (not Spanish) republic is allied with the old enemy France against Aragon and the Imperial possessions in Italy and Germany who want Spain back. And most of Spain and Spain's empire in the Americas (at this point just the Caribbean and greater Mexico) lost, the Hapsburgs are going to pay more attention to and be more respectful (at least in matters of economics and at least for awhile) to what would become the Netherlands, forestalling our history's Dutch Revolt. England ends up getting incorporated into the Hapsburg domains through marriages and the convenient deaths of male heirs. Meanwhile, the conquest of the Inca goes rather differently and more piecemeal, since the republic cannot support or control the conquistadors to the degree the Spanish kingdom did.

At the current point in the timeline there's a shift back toward monarchism in Spain with this one politician becoming a Caesar-figure, although it's not clear if he's going to end up an unofficial monarch like the Medici in Italy, formally claim kingship, or overreach and get killed like Caesar. We'll see how it goes. I would like to see a sustained republican system in Spain, but the culture in this time period was very monarchical. And the history of England, the Americas, Portugal (repeatedly beaten by the Castilian republic), etc. is going to be very different regardless.

The Maya Colonize The Caribbean?

Still self-banned from the alternate-history forum, but I found a cool discussion thread leading into a new timeline. Behold "Maya Colonization of the Caribbean"!

The gist of it is that the Maya develop outrigger canoes in the late pre-classic/early classic period. The Maya spread out into the Caribbean islands, with the technology spreading ahead of them and getting adopted by the Taino people, the tribes that in real history greeted Columbus and suffered greatly for it. The end result is a Mayan thalassocracy controlling the Caribbean basin, including major islands like Cuba, Hispaniola, etc. as well as the mouth of the Mississippi River in what will become the United States. Although there's a good bit of preliminary discussion, the actual alternate timeline starts here.

In real history, the Maya urban civilization (the Maya people are still there) collapsed due to overpopulation and resource exhaustion, but with the improved sailing capability and the trade routes existing this time around that didn't in real history, the surplus population moves out into the Caribbean islands. Eventually expansion becomes more land-based as the mainland stabilizes and the Maya civilization (they were decentralized city-states, like Greece, so it's not one giant empire) spreads further down into Central America and even onto the Pacific coastline.

By the time Columbus's ships arrive (nothing that changes in the Western Hemisphere is realistically going to affect the East unless the Maya manage to contact the Vikings, who would have to travel much farther south than they did in our history), civilization in the region has advanced well beyond the Taino chiefdoms Columbus encountered.

Not sure if the writer plans to depict what happens after Columbus's ships arrive (it ends with their arrival), but what's there is pretty cool.

Some Good Books From Graduate School...

I will soon hand in my last assignment for a class on global social movements, completing the coursework for a master's degree in history (major world, minor U.S.) at Georgia State University in Atlanta. All that remains is the oral and written exams I'll be taking this June and I'll have my M.A.

As part of earning a master's degree, one has to read a lot of books. I chose the non-thesis option, so I had to take ten classes instead of nine. And that means even more books. Luckily this is a subject I'm strongly interested in, so reading wasn't a chore at all.

Below are some of my favorite graduate-school books and the reasons why I enjoyed them.

Mao's Little Red Book: A Global History-Editor Alexander Cook oversaw an anthology of articles by different historians focusing on different situations using Mao's Little Red Book as the lens. And it's really interesting--you have the student left in 1960s and 1970s Germany, you have the Shining Path in Peru, you have the Maoist-ish regime in Tanzania, and China during the Cultural Revolution. Plus it's provided me with some choice dystopian bits like every village having a loudspeaker providing the population with the regime's guidance--and in some cases loudspeakers inside people's houses they can't turn off.

Before European Hegemony-This book describes the world system from the 13th Century until the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean with armed warships. The bare bones of this world system are wool from England is made into textiles in the Low Countries, traded by Italians into the Middle East, and eventually from there goes to India, the East Indies, and China. But that's a massive oversimplification. My main problem with the book is that it understates the role of Islamic piracy in the Mediterranean in the Dark Ages (something the Pelican History of Medieval Europe points out), but that's a pretty small nitpick.

Killing for Coal-This book is about the big 1914 coal strike in Colorado. It's generally remembered for the Ludlow Massacre, but not for the fact that the miners proceeded to spend the week after the massacre beating the crap out of the Colorado state militia. Seriously, if things hadn't been headed off, there could've been some kind of statewide U.S. version of the Paris Commune. The book is a really interesting exploration of the coal industry at the time, the labor struggles wracking it, and just how darn important coal was for the U.S. at the time. This book played a major role in my decision to add more class-labor elements to the Wastelands series I'm working on, plus it was a source of really interesting information on what coal was used for. Fortunately most of Battle for the Wastelands (the first book, which is already written) takes place in a more rural area among soldiers scrabbling to maintain a limited technological base; it's the second novel, Battle for the Wastelands: Escape (formerly titled Escape from the Wastelands) where this influence will be felt.

Before Columbus-This book examines the Mediterranean antecedents of the Spanish settlement of the New World. There's a very interesting historical analogy involving the Reconquista. Parts of Spain the Christians conquered from the Muslims were like the British Empire in India, with a large number of Muslims ruled by a Christian/collaborator ruling class, while others were like the American West with a relatively small Muslim population and a much more arid landscape. I remember reading somewhere that Spanish kids play "Moros y Christianos" instead of "Cowboys and Indians" and that might be the inspiration for it. The Colombian Exchange, one of the books I'm reading for my exams this June, definitely compares the cowboy culture of the Spanish New World with Spain before the Muslims were expelled.

The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II-I first learned about this from an excerpt in the historiography book The Houses of History and ordered an abridged one-volume work for a paper on the influence of author Braudel. It's a good example of the "longue duree" type of history with a strong dose of environmental determinism. Very interesting.

White Flight-Although I question the argument that modern American conservatism emerged from specific policies intended to stymie integration (there are non-racist reasons to oppose expansion of mass transit, after all), this is still a very interesting history of Atlanta, the city supposedly "too busy to hate" during the Civil Rights era in the U.S. Lots of interesting stuff, including what happened to an American Neo-Nazi trying to keep blacks from moving into a particular neighborhood in the late 1940s. Seriously, antagonizing a prosecutor who's a WWII Marine veteran is a really, really bad idea. Also provides an interesting political history of Atlanta and the surrounding communities before, during, and after the civil rights era.

Birth of the Modern World-Another book I'm reading for exams this June. This is book is notable for introducing me to the "industrious revolution" paradigm that predates the Industrial Revolution and puts the American Indian wars in the context of Australian wars against Aborigines and the wars of the British and their Indian clients against tribal peoples in India. Growing industrial states finally suppressing tribal/nomadic peoples, basically.

Britons-A very interesting book about the origins of the British national identity. Some of the material early on really de-romanticizes the Jacobites (apparently they weren't even that popular in Scotland) and uses patterns of landownership and intermarriage to describe the growth of a collective "British" identity incorporating English, Welsh, Scots, etc.

American Babylon-I met the author while selling books at a conference and he was very pleased to know that I liked this book, which is about the growth and decay of Oakland, better than Origins of the Urban Crisis, which is about the growth and decay of Detroit. The latter is considered one of the best books in the field, but I thought American Babylon was written better and more detailed.

Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures-Chocolate and tobacco were used in sacred and political ceremonies by the indigenous populations of the Spanish New World. So how exactly did they become popular foods/products in Europe? This book explains how. It's also got some interesting stuff about how the Indians adapted to Spanish rule and how the Spanish colonists picked up a lot of indigenous culture in Mexico.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Hook (1991)

What if Peter Pan grew up? That's the tag-line of the movie Hook, which I watched for my friend Nick's movie-review podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood yesterday afternoon. Here's the actual recording. The gist is that during one of his visits to our world, Peter Pan decides to stay, grows up to become Robin Williams, marries Wendy's granddaughter Moira, and becomes an attorney. An attorney who neglects his family and to be perfectly blunt is a massive jerk.

Then while Peter, Wendy, and Moira are attending a benefit in London, a mysterious intruder invades Wendy's home in London and abducts Peter's children. A note stuck to the door with a dagger demands Peter return to Neverland a note--signed by none other than Captain James Hook.

Uh oh. Now an out-of-shape and cranky Peter has to get his children back with the help of Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts) and the skeptical Lost Boys now led by Rufio, a 1980s punk complete with a mohawk. Let the games begin.

(Image courtesy of Wikipedia)

The Good

*Although Peter Pan was never my favorite Disney movie, I did like the concept. The film is very meta--it starts with the Peter seeing his daughter Maggie acting as Wendy in a school play production of Peter Pan. To quote TVTropes they go with the Literary Agent Hypothesis--Wendy and her brothers told their neighbor J.M. Barrie about their adventures and he wrote them into a book. The whole Peter Pan phenomenon (including the Great Ormond Street Hospital) exists alongside a real Peter Pan and Neverland. Given how the Lost Boys apparently arrive in Neverland on their own in the greater Peter Pan mythology, I liked the depiction of Lost Boys wearing old-fashioned Boy Scout uniforms, a Victorian-esque "Artful Dodger" outfit, and 1980s punk gear (Rufio) and playing basketball and using what looks like a hybrid skateboard/windsurfing board to get around.

*The film had some amusing moments. I particularly liked the non-rap rap battle between Rufio and the adult Peter that has some pretty creative (and generally kid-friendly) insults. The cadences the Lost Boys sing when they get Peter back into shape for the duel with Hook are amusing as well.

*It does pull on the heartstrings a fair bit, in particular Peter's estrangement from and ultimate reconciliation with his children. This isn't something I generally enjoy, but many people do like that and it shows the people involved in making this movie (the writers, directors, and actors) did a good job.

*Robin Williams does a good job as the adult Peter, both in his early depiction as a jerk who repeatedly breaks promises to his children and as he mellows and becomes Peter Pan again. One of the other people watching the movie said when Robin Williams isn't being a goofy funny guy he can actually be pretty scary. Although I haven't seen either film, One Hour Photo and Death to Smoochy can testify to this. We chose Hook as a memorial to Williams (as well as to Bob Hoskins, who played Smee died this year as well), so RIP Mr. Williams.

*I liked the concept of the bored Captain Hook having a straight-up death wish. This is pretty obvious in a suicide-attempt scene (that's played for laughs), but Captain Hook's threats against not only Peter's children but their children and their children and so on come off as basically "KILL ME!"

*I also liked the characterization of Tinkerbell. She's traditionally been depicted as jealous (to the point of attempted murder) of any other female in Peter's life, but in Hook she gets to actually talk about her feelings for Peter. She's even tempted to try to get him to stay with her in Neverland (and shows she can become a full-sized person if she wants), but ultimately reminds him when he's on the verge of forgetting his own family. This struggle with temptation is pretty interesting even though it doesn't take up too terribly much time.

*The pirates have their very own city complete with women and children and have organized the menfolk into a militia to be called out at need. This makes a lot of sense--the pirates when Peter was a child/teen leading the Lost Boys would have been recent arrivals, but now they've been there for (to them) many years and put down roots.

*I like how they included a back-story for Peter. I'm not going to go into detail in order to avoid spoilers, but Peter lives through various historical areas before he makes the decision to stay in our world.

The Bad

*A lot of people liked Captain Hook's introduction in which Hook's titular prosthesis is sharpened by the village blacksmith and carried to him in a gigantic procession in which the pirates all chant "Where's the Hook?" That doesn't really make a lot of sense. The pirates have been there so long they've established a functioning civilization. They know who Hook is. Unless Hook has gotten so bored with life that he's instituted these ludicrous parades every so often to liven things up, there's no reason for this scene at all.

*In one scene, Maggie sings a lullaby her mother sang to her. She has a beautiful voice, but there's no real reason for the scene to be there. I read online Hook was originally supposed to be a musical, which would explain this scene and "Where's the Hook?"--they're leftovers from the earlier version of the film. However, given how the film is not a musical, they should have just cut those out. The hook-sharpening before the parade is cool so that could be kept and if they absolutely had to have Maggie sing, she could be singing to herself in the hold or wherever Hook is keeping her and Peter could overhear it somehow.

*This movie is long and slow. I'm sorry, but it is. That's the single biggest problem with the movie and why my review is ultimately not going to be very good. If Spielberg had cut or at least truncated those two scenes and maybe trimmed a little bit here and a little bit there, it would have been a much tighter film and could have allowed more interesting material to be included, like Neverland's Indians (I'll get to them later).

*Here we're getting into spoilery territory, but the ending was rather flawed. Basically Peter defeats Hook in a duel but refuses to kill him. Instead, he orders him to leave Neverland and never return. Hook attacks him when his back is turned, but Tinkerbell intervenes to keep him from hooking Peter's face. Then the crocodile Hook had killed, stuffed, and made into the town clock tower falls on him mouth-first and basically eats him. I imagine Spielberg didn't want to have Peter actually kill Hook, but there's never any indication the crocodile is somehow still alive or is in any way magical. The Wikipedia article suggests Tinkerbell had zapped it briefly back to life somehow, but if that was Spielberg's intention, it should've been more obvious--we could see lightning racing through the crocodile and a Frankenstein-style reanimation.

And it's not like the good guys haven't killed in the movie before--even though most of the Lost Boys fight with non-lethal and rather childish weapons like egg-shooters, Peter and Rufio both stab pirates with knives and swords on-screen. The wounds might not be immediately lethal (they're to the torso rather than head or throat), but in this type of environment (i.e. no modern surgery or antibiotics), gut wounds will kill and they will kill very painfully. What measure is a Mook?

Here's how I would have done it: Keep the final duel all the way to Hook's treacherous attack after Peter has shown him mercy--but instead of being caught unaware, Peter spins around and stabs Hook with his sword. This would show he's gotten his childhood reflexes and speed back. Furthermore, if Peter stabs Hook in the gut, we could hear the blow but not see blood and so the rating wouldn't be unduly affected. And the dying Hook thanks Peter, which would further establish the death-wish characterization. To avoid overly-glorifying killing in a children's film, I'd depict Peter being saddened by having to kill his old enemy.

*Neverland's Indian population is referred to (apparently the pirates have killed some of them and Smee suggests to a bored Hook they do this some more) but never seen. The movie was already so long that including a scene where Peter visits the Indians and secures their alliance with the Lost Boys against the pirates (perhaps including an adult Tiger Lily or her children?) would have been a problem, but if they tightened the film up, it could have been really interesting.

*At the very end, when the senile former Lost Boy Tootles finds his lost marbles (sprinkled with fairy dust) and flies off to Neverland, Moira should be more shocked. Wendy, Peter, and the kids all know this sort of thing can really happen, but Moira only knows this as stories.

The Verdict

*It's a good concept and has a lot of potential, but the film is so long I wouldn't really recommend it. 5.5 out of 10.

Search Called Off For Missing Dolbeau-Mistassini Family

DOLBEAU-MISTASSINI--The Royal Canadian Mounted Police have called off the search for a missing Dolbeau-Mistassini man, his wife, and son.

Jacques Plante, 35, his wife Hettie, 25, and their newborn son Achille were first reported missing Jan. 12, but heavy snow and storms prevented the search from beginning until Jan. 15. Searchers in snowmobiles, helicopters, and even on horseback searched the countryside surrounding Dolbeau-Mistassini all the way to Normandin. Bloodhounds found a trace of his scent at one point, but it was soon lost. The RCMP combed the countryside for two weeks before another winter storm forced them to pull back.

"Mr. Plante and his wife trapped animals in the countryside, but during the winter came in to work at the ski resort," said Corporal Andrew Johansson, who oversaw the search. "The Plante family cabin was empty when we found it."

The only evidence of recent habitation, however, was the fire ring out front. There had been a fire there during the last week or so, but not evidence of cooked food.

In response to questions about whether the family had been stranded in the countryside without food during the winter, Johansson reiterated the need to keep adequate supplies as well as emergency radios to call for help. In the event of an emergency, it's always best to stick together. Oftentimes when a person strikes out alone seeking help, they run into trouble and cannot help themselves.

So what happened to this Canadian family? Find out by reading "I am the Wendigo," available on Amazon.com.

If You Support More Inclusiveness In Speculative Fiction...

Over the last few months, there has been a big kerfluffle in the world of science fiction, fantasy, and horror about inclusiveness. Most of that pertains to gender, but there has been some controversy about race/ethnicity as well.

Well, if you want to support inclusiveness in speculative fiction, I would like to recommend to you some of my independently-published short stories:

Ten Davids, Two Goliaths-Set in Lindsay Buroker's Fallen Empire science fiction universe, the lead character Geun Choi is a Korean Buddhist fighter pilot in the distant future. The other POV character Tamara Watson is a female fighter pilot who is recovering from drug addiction and is a practicing polytheist to boot. Five reviews, all pretty good.

Discovery and Flight-Also set in Buroker's Fallen Empire universe, this continues Choi and Watson's adventures in the rebellion's early days, and brings them into contact with Buroker's canonical characters.

Übermensch-This came from a "Southern superheroes" anthology my writing group attempted that didn't go anywhere. The protagonist is an irreligious half-Indian biomedical engineer who lives by the creed of Nietzsche and provides cybernetics services for Atlanta gangs in the vein of David Duchovny's character in the film Playing God. Superhero stories are pretty common--how about a supervillain story instead?

The Beast of the Bosporus-I started writing this story when I was in college after I realized that most of Lovecraft's fiction takes place in rural New England in the early 20th Century. I decided I was going to be a bit different and write a Lovecraftian horror tale set during the glory days of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th Century. Although the protagonist Sokollu Mehmed Pasha is a white man (he was a Serb by birth), he is a Muslim and the setting is distinctly non-Western. One of my writing friends Matthew Stienberg gave it a very good review.

Illegal Alien-Protagonist Patrido Guzman is a Mexican who seeks a better life in the United States and employs the services of a coyote--an immigrant smuggler--to get him there. Guzman himself is mestizo (I don't really get into racial politics in the story--this is Word of God) and another major Mexican character is more distinctly Indian. And never is the word "illegal" used in a pejorative fashion. Stienberg reviewed it on Amazon and gave it high marks too.

I am the Wendigo-Although the Wendigo is a monster, I drop some hints that when he was a human being, he had at least some Native American ancestry. For starters, he knows that the Algonquin language is more properly called Abenaki.

Although I am a straight, white Protestant male (and therefore get a lot less crap from society than those who aren't), most of my independently-published short fiction has protagonists who are minorities, at least in my own country. Ironic, isn't it.

And I've already had a cover made for a second Andrew Patel story, "Needs Must." I will keep you posted.

Research and the Changes It Can Bring

I first sent my novel Battle for the Wastelands to a publisher last September and when I didn't hear back within six months, I was told I could resubmit (since I'd made changes) and due to the delay, could submit to another publisher too. I sent out the then-current draft to the two publishers and to a few agents as well, one of whom wanted the first three chapters and a detailed synopsis. Back to waiting.

In the meantime, I'd found a couple library books that were interesting and could be useful to my writing. The first book is Empire of the Summer Moon, which is a history of the Comanche Indians, while the second is City of Fortune, a history of the city of Venice during its heyday as a maritime republic.

In the Wastelands world, the surviving armies of the Merrill dynasty and various civilian refugees eke out a precarious existence on the fringes of the Northlands, periodically raiding the villainous Flesh-Eaters for supplies and living in refugee camps. Their existence resembles the Comanche, except their reliance on agriculture reduces their mobility. This makes them more vulnerable to being run down and killed, plus their enemies possess squadrons of airships that make it easier to spot them.

However, Empire references how one of the defenses the Comanche enjoyed against Spanish/Mexican and American imperialism was the Llano Estacado. The vastness and hostility of this terrain made gave the Comanche a refuge that wasn't even penetrated by their (non-Indian) enemies until the later 19th Century.

This necessitated a revision of the world's geography--there's a new region called "the high plains" southwest of protagonist Andrew Sutter's hometown of Carroll Town where due to the hostile geography, the Merrill remnant is safe and even has a base for raiding. I'm going to need to sit down with a pencil and piece of copy paper to map out the geography again. I already had the river valley of Carroll Town transition to badlands to the Iron Desert itself realistically; now I need to make sure the badlands (north) and desert (south) transition into the high plains further west as well. I'll also need to explain why the high plains are located where they are. Right now, I'm thinking some kind of tectonic or volcanic action forced the land upward into slightly cooler altitudes and produced an occasional spring to allow for more vegetation than the badlands or the desert.

Meanwhile, City of Fortune provided an explanation for why even though centuries have passed since the end of the Old World, there has been so little contact between the Northlands and the peoples below the Iron Desert, to the point many people believe the Iron Desert goes on forever. There is a western ocean and that would allow for ships to bypass the desert. I handwaved that in the earlier drafts by saying that warfare before Grendel united the lands between the mountains and the deserts and the seas consumed resources that could be spent on trade and exploration. However, even during the Dark Ages, sea trade and travel in the former lands of the Western Roman Empire never stopped.

So I added a new polity south of the desert, the city of Everett. They're a mercantile republic like Venice and other Italian cities used to be and they have (and enforce) a monopoly on trade between north and south. The Northlands, so recently united, does not have a large fleet and breaking Everett's monopoly will take a long war in a field that Grendel and friends have little experience. However, the trickle of trade across the Iron Desert shows it can be crossed, so Grendel's plan to expand his empire south of the desert, in addition to providing his warlords something to do, also serves to break Everett's monopoly on large-scale trade. It can even force them into an alliance--having lost their monopoly, they'll need to join Grendel in expansion in the south to avoid falling into irrelevance.

That research didn't require many changes to the first novel, but required more changes to later books that cover Grendel's war in the south and the eventual return to the Northlands. There will be an entirely new military campaign that Andrew and Grendel will not be involved in that could be the domain of spinoff novellas and even additional novels. Think the Ender's Shadow series that follows the side-character Bean from Ender's Game. Had Tolkien been inclined, he could have written additional novels dealing with the other theaters of the War of the Ring--the books primarily cover the war between Sauron and Gondor in the south, but additional material references Sauron's armies sacking Dale and besieging the Dwarven kingdom of the Lonely Mountain and battling the Elves as well. The latter could have been a novel centering on Galadriel and her kin much like how the canonical novels centered on the Fellowship of the Ring.

These changes might be a surprise for the editors if they accept the book and send me a list of rewrites that ignore these issues. However, nothing is canon until it's printed. Better that I deal with these issues now rather than realize them after the first book is available. And the introduction of Everett has provided a massive opportunity for spinoffs and even licensed fiction.

Just got to sell the first one. Just got to sell the first one.