A speculative mind

  I just finished reading Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles series. It is a series marketed for teenage girls where all the main characters are teenage girls, and I don’t care. I ate the series up. There are six books in the Lunar Chronicles. Theoretically, each of the four main narrative books of the series is a science fiction retelling of a fairy tale: Cinderella , Little Red Riding Hood , Rapunzel , and Snow White . I know what you are saying out there, all you middle-aged men like me. Sounds terrible. Who would want to read that? Well, I would. I did, and I make no apologies. The reason these books are called the Lunar Chronicle series is because the society (or country) that has developed on the Moon is critical to the series. Earth and Moon societies have a tenuous relationship and have apparently fought wars before. The queen of Luna is ruthless, and there is never any doubt who the villain is. The point about these being retelling of fairy tales is a bit misleading. Ci

  People like to have simple answers. That is why we categorize things. It makes it easier to fit into our minds. We give magnitude numbers to things like earthquakes hurricanes, and tornados.   It is easy to do. Measuring wind speed or the magnitude of vibrations is easy. The problem is that how destructive an earthquake or a tornado is may not necessarily increase with the numerical index. A magnitude 6 earthquake might be 100 times more destructive than a magnitude 7. The magnitude 7 might be deeper underground, or be of shorter duration. The magnitude 6 might be under a populated area with lax building codes. There are a lot of factors that determine how destructive something is, not the least of which is the amount of human suffering. Quantifying the human suffering of an event is a job more suited to an artist that a bean counter. But people want simple answers. Why did the Titanic sink? The captain must have been an idiot. There is a simple answer for you. It is all the answer

  This is my list of what I consider to be the best adaptations of science fiction/fantasy books to screen. These are in no particular order because if I tried to rank them, my rankings would change with my moods or what I had last seen or other unimportant motivators. Also, this is my list. It is not your list. Your list is going to be different than mine, and that’s okay. This is not a list of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy films (though some of them are on this list). It is not a list of my favorite sci-fi/fantasy books that have been made into films. This list is all about how good the adaptation was. As excellent as it is, you won’t find 2001: A Space Odyssey on the list because the film and the book were a joint project. The film was not an adaptation of the book. In order for it to be on my list I had to have both read the book and seen the movie or series. So, much as I loved the movie The Martian , I can’t put it on my list because I haven’t read Andy Weir’s book (note to self: re

  Writing can change the world, but it is not easy. The hardest part of writing (for me) is getting started. So many times, I have tried to get motivated to write and the mojo just isn’t flowing. Or, I will have an idea, but be uncertain what to do with it. Do I proceed down path A, or path B, or path C? Or is there another even better path that I haven’t considered yet? There is a certain amount of fear of wasting my time, writing 10,000 words that wind up not going anywhere. Writer’s block is not always about difficulty in coming up with ideas. Sometimes it is about what to do with those ideas. The thing is, once I get started, I usually can keep the fingers flying. It is just getting over that initial hurdle that’s the problem. I know this about myself. You would think that would make it easy to push through the uncertainty blockage, and just launch into my next project. But no. Knowing about it does not make it easier. It’s not just me. Many writers have this problem or some va