This week, we went from hot, humid and uncomfortable to cold and windy.  We got the very edges of Hurricane Michael, which meant lots of rain.  I was in my car, waiting for the light to change.  Rain started to come down so hard that I thought it was hailing!

We didn’t get any damage, though we always have a problem with flooding.  There are a lot of streams in the area, including one that marks the boundary of George Washington’s property.  I might take a short hop over to that one and see how bad it is.  But it really is cold enough to be uncomfortable, and my heat is not yet turned on.

But I did manage a trip to the county library sale this week.

I like looking for research books rather than fiction.  I also try for writing craft books, but I appear to have exhausted the supply (I suspect the ones I got two years ago have been waiting for a home for a long time).  I look for:

• Hollywood (TV and 1940s)
• Space
• Ocean

The last two are generally hard to find.  There are books, but not necessarily ones that will be useful for me.

In no particular order, this is what I got:

• The Andy Griffith Show by Richard Kelly (I can’t seem to help it after going to Nostalgia Con. I just want to find out more).
• Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife by Mary Roach (an interesting find in the science section)
• Glued to the Set: The 60 Television Series and Events that Made Us Who We Were, by Steven D. Stark (and somewhat dated by current events; Cosby Show is listed, but it’s likely the show will never been seen again).
• Ethel Merman by Brian Kellow
• The Star Trek Compendium by Allan Asherman
• Red Star Over Hollywood: The Film Colony’s Long Romance with the Left by Ronald Radosh and Allis Radosh
• Warner Presents: The Most Exciting Years–From The Jazz Singer to White Heat, by Ted Sennett

And some other news.  I mentioned that I was appearing as a panelist at Chessiecon.  I now have the panel names!

• How Not to Get Published
• Real Life Military vs SF/F
• The Effect of Catastrophic Events on Literature
• Time Management for the Overachieving Creator
• Put a Pretty Face on It – Cover Design in the Age of Digital Art
• From Wesley to Wheaton: Celebrities Who Broke Type
• How and Why People Create Self-Publishing Communities
• When did Sci Fi Become so Political?

I’m not a fan of these shows where they do a reboot and change the gender of the character (usually a woman).  Like the suggestion here to do James Bond as a woman.

(Shudder.)

But first things first: I’m all for having great roles for women characters in films, TV, and books–and a range of ages.  The Wonder Woman movie was huge because it was an iconic character and they did it right.  Some TV shows on now that work:

1.  The Orville.  Huge cast with a lot of women.  They’ve dressed all the women in the same uniform as the men (Star Trek: The Next Generation, I’m looking at you!).  And the roles are good for all the actors.
2. The Good Place.  I don’t want to say too much about this one because if you haven’t seen it, it’s way too easy to give the story away.  Again, the whole cast–men and women–have good roles.

Onto my issues with the gender-swapping…

Characters are not interchangeable. 

If a reboot switches out a character with another type of character, it’s going to change the story in fundamental ways and, likely break something that people liked about the original.

Some roles don’t fit the opposite gender

And I know there’s a group of writers out there who think the genders are interchangeable.  But there are some roles where if they were flipped, it would not look good on that gender.  I’d like to do a story about a woman lone gun like Jack Reacher, and I’m having to really think about how to do it properly so people enjoy the story, not hate the character.

It disrespects the old show or movie. 

It’s like saying, “It wasn’t good enough because it didn’t have this type of character.”  There’s been a lot of that conceit from all these reboots, where it’s obvious the studios only saw the title as a moneymaker and made no effort to understand why audiences liked the original.  I still remember discussion about the Fantasy Island reboot where the studios said they wanted to “improve” it by making it darker.  They entirely missed the point of the original show, and it got cancelled pretty fast.

Finally…

Why can’t they create new original works?!! 

Seriously.  We don’t need gender swapping in reboots or ongoing franchises.  Create new stories with the characters they want and make new films and shows that might be one day be loved the same way.

 

During the filming of Star Trek, the special effects people used miniatures for the spaceships.  This is a photo I took of the miniature on display at the Air and Space Museum.

With the new technology, a lot of science fiction shows and movies went to digital instead of building miniatures because there were so expensive.  And you can generally tell the difference.  There’s a flatness to the images that the miniatures don’t have.

Now there’s talk that movies might be headed for filming in a studio against a blue screen and adding the location in:

I watched a TV show recently where they added rain via special effects.  It didn’t look real…it was kind of like it was raining in front of the actors, not on the actors.

Yes, you can build an island paradise with computers, but it’s not the same as going to the real place and shooting there.  There are some things you can’t and shouldn’t create out of thin air.