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Welcome to the July 2022 edition of author David Claiborne’s newsletter, a monthly publication about when science writes science fiction, and precocious child syndrome.

When Science Writes the Science Fiction for You

A couple months ago, our phones finally reached that point where they could no longer meet the demands of the world’s internet bandwidth requirements, ever advancing, always hungry, never satisfied. So, my wife and I at last gave in and got new phones. Seriously, my adblocker reports that literally hundreds of ads are being blocked at a time on certain websites. Like Darth Vader who became more machine than man, websites are more ad than content these days. I sometimes cannot even read an article for the popups. That was not really relevant, but I mention it because our new phones came with three free months of AppleTV+. It always has a “plus” after it, doesn’t it?

This was nice and well-timed, because we apparently also received three free months of Disney+ (there it is again) and had access to ESPN+ (it’s really unavoidable) just in time to watch the Colorado Avalanche win their third Lord Stanley’s Cup. Go Avs! This free subscription time let me catch up on some movies I was curious about but would rather not pay for and see others I wanted to see but couldn’t justify buying a subscription to watch. I’ve always been a fan of dinosaurs, so among these was the series Prehistoric Planet on AppleTV+.

Prehistoric Planet, narrated by he-who-must-narrate-nature-documentaries David Attenborough, is the latest show about dinosaurs. Our understanding of dinosaurs has certainly expanded in imagination. By which I mean, the boundaries of what we conceive dinosaurs could have been has become less limited. We no longer see giant lizards stomping around swamps. We see flesh and bone creatures as biodiverse and varied as life in our own times.

 Prehistoric Planet utilizes some of the best CGI I’ve seen, with stunning creatures digitally added to live environments. It opens with a feathered T-rex swimming with its pups to an island pursued by an unseen mosasaur. The show immediately requires you to see this as the most authentic piece of dinosaur entertainment yet, both in terms of production value and scientific content, and it has a decent claim to that title.

Despite its excellent quality (aside from a noticeable drop in the last episode; perhaps they did not expect people to make it that far?) and being based on the most up-to-date paleontological research, labeling it a documentary series is charitable. Instead, Prehistoric Planet probably belongs filed in the science fiction section alongside the likes of Jurassic Park (which is to say, it’s in good company).

I make no complaint about the series itself which I enjoyed. Rather, I take issue with its marketing as true to science. I say this because while we can learn a lot from fossils, and have become much better at deciphering the possibilities, anyone who claims certainty about how an animal that has been extinct for millions of years behaved or looked should be passed by on the opposite side of the road. Prehistoric Planet is principally a work of speculation. Science and scientists were involved, yet it remains a work of fiction. Perhaps the male carnotaurus did flail hilarious tiny blue arms to attract mates. Perhaps feathered dromaeosaurs did hunt polar landscapes. Perhaps titanosaurs did have inflatable neck sacks. These ideas are interesting, entertaining, and cool. But they are still fiction in so far as they are unverifiable. And remember, kids, if it isn’t verifiable, it isn’t science. (Wikipedia links added because no one should assume universal knowledge of what all dinosaurs looked like, especially the less popular species.)

I should clarify that this is not a process that is devoid of critical thinking or education, even creativity. Often these kind of hypothesis result from comparing dinosaurs to animals that live in similar modern-day environments to form plausible conclusions about the dinosaurs’ potential behaviors. It remains speculation even so.

This is creative writing more than it is science.

There’s a reason science fiction is sometimes called speculative fiction. Only this time, the speculation appears to be working backwards in history rather than forwards.

Precocious Child Syndrome

With my free Disney+ subscription I also got to see the new Star Wars series: Obi-Wan Kenobi. It contains a trend, or trope, that I call precocious child syndrome because I am unaware whether someone else has already called it something else. In this syndrome, a child behaves badly or irrationally, sometimes with disastrous consequences, but the adult characters around her act as if she has done nothing wrong and may even be quite clever for acting as she did.

In Obi-Wan, the title character is sent to the crime planet Daiyu in pursuit of the kidnapped ten-year-old Princess Leia. This happens in the first episode and is the impetus for nearly all the action that follows in the series, so don’t pretend that I’m spoiling anything here. Kenobi finds himself searching an underworld marketplace for Leia surrounded by bounty hunters, and pursued by the Empire’s Inquisitors, who are tasked with rooting out all the surviving Jedi, Kenobi in particular. To protect himself, he must maintain a low profile, and therefore he avoids using the Force.

Leia, however, in her precociousness, decides that she must not trust the man once Kenobi does rescue her from her kidnappers and demands that he prove who he is with a display of the Force. When she flees and forces his hand (no pun intended, but I’ll still lay claim to it this time), predictable disaster follows, trebling the difficulty of their escape from the planet.

Is she ever confronted or scolded by an actual adult for her foolish behavior and irrational demands, which by the way led to her being kidnapped in the first place?

Of course not.

Do any of the adults in the series act as if perhaps this child should be treated as a child and not given such extreme leeway and sway over their decisions?

Of course not.

Does Obi Wan Kenobi, Master Jedi, General of the Republic, vanquisher of Darth Maul, General Grievous, and Darth Vader make the choices that drive the plot?

No, a ten-year-old does that.

And it is frustrating to watch.

Such is precocious child syndrome: when the writers believe they are giving you an interesting and likeable little angel, but instead create an obnoxious urchin who far from being endearing, mostly makes the adult characters look like buffoons for their constant deference to the wisdom of a toddler and refusal to send the kid to a well-deserved timeout.

Various

My friend Ethan’s new book, Shaken & Stirred is out, to my surprise. Give it a look. I haven’t read it yet, because, well, I was surprised by its launch as I said.  

I predicted there would not be much to say about my own book’s progress last newsletter, and it appears I’ll be keeping my status as prophet for at least one more month. All I’ll say is that recording an audiobook is terribly difficult when you have small children.  

The full audiobook for Planet Mission: Part One is up on YouTube now. Go give it a listen. You can subscribe to my channel for free here. 

You can find my Amazon page here.

Follow me on Facebook here.

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You can subscribe to my newsletter here. You get a free short story as a bonus for signing up.

In Closing

I am forty-two as of this newsletter. As opposed to two-forty. Which is why Irish two-hundred thirty-nine bean soup has only two-hundred thirty-nine beans: because otherwise it would be two forty. (Say it out loud; it will make more sense.)

Happy Fourth of July to my home country! Have a fantastic time celebrating the U.S.A. by blowing up a small chunk of it.

David

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Welcome to the June 2022 edition of author David Claiborne’s newsletter, a monthly publication about vandalizing churches and vamping.

Hung On the Inverted Cross

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, go ahead and put it down. You can come back to it later; it will still be there when you’re ready. If you’ve read some of my past newsletters, you may recall that I am something of a Kevin D. Williamson fan. May 2022 was quite a doozy of a month for these United States between leaked Supreme Court documents and back-to-back mass shootings. While I don’t intend to evolve this into a political newsletter despite my own hobby as a political junky, Williamson is in rare form for his own May 10 newsletter, which is about pro-abortionists deciding that desecrating Catholic churches is the thing to do now. Give it a read if you find time. (Sorry if the link doesn’t work; it may be behind a paywall.) We Christians tend to fight like a castrated doubles team (the balls just aren’t there), but sometimes a little spit and vinegar does a body good. Teaser quote: “The inverted cross is still the cross, and the underside of Christian civilization is still Christian civilization…we don’t have scary movies about liberal humanism or yoga.”

Now that I’ve eaten up 132 words padding my newsletter by talking about someone else’s, let’s get on with it.

For my part, upon observing all the hair tearing and gnashing of teeth that went on during the news cycle following the release of the draft Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade that lasted until some human dreg decided to shoot up a supermarket, I could not help but think of my own children. For one, my children are precious to me, and I cannot imagine a world without them. The thought of others willingly aborting their own children causes me to shiver. For two, the behavior on display was not the behavior of adults, but the lashing out of infantile minds, complete with tantrums. It recalled to me the bad behavior of children I have known, including my own, and I treat it as such in my own consideration. Which is to say it bore no weight on my conscience nor cost me any sleep, nor had any hope of persuading me. I know and believe that those who know and believe with me, together we are in the right. The adults are wholly on one side of this issue.

Which reminds me not coincidentally of a woman who wrote a review for Part One. She gave the book 2/5 stars, which is her prerogative, and I certainly do not begrudge her her tastes and preferences or the low star rating; she even had some good criticism to offer which I have taken to heart. A little internet sleuthing, or stalking if you prefer, led me to her personal blog and webpage where it became clear she was very much not the type of person who would have picked up any piece of Christian literature, let alone my piece of little known Christian literature, and sat down with a jolly smile on her face to binge read. I presume the review service I was using begged and/or cajoled her into reviewing my book since I was threatening them with issuing me a refund for their non-services. At that point, apparently anyone would do.

What struck me is that she was a self-described God-seeker in the bio on her blog.

Permit me a small detour. If there’s one thing that makes a religion, any religion, worthwhile, it is that it will not allow you to remain yourself as you are and continue as an adherent. Not for very long at least. You must change. Christ’s teaching is pregnant with such language (…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies… (John 12:24 ESV)).

But reading this woman’s bio, a veritable checklist of secular bona fides and causes du jour, it was clear she was not really seeking God, but seeking herself as god, unwilling to change, and seeking the one religion that would tell her she was already fine just the way she was.

Lady, I’m here to tell you: you’re already a part of it.

I’ll close out this section by plagiarizing Mr. Williamson just once more: “…there is a reason they end up standing there, bereft, confused, fearful, lonely, screaming themselves hoarse, full of dread, outside the church. Some advice: the door is always open if you decide you want to come inside.”

Yes, even you pro-aborts, you are welcome to come to Christ. So come to Him and be well.

Various

I finished (mostly) the revisions for Part Two a couple weeks ago, which is a relief because I feel like for the last few months I’ve been vamping in the updates section of this newsletter. Sometimes tasks just take a while, so there’s not much to say until it’s done, you know?

At any rate, look forward to not much else to say for a while in this section again. Next step is to record the audiobook, which for me doubles as a kind of a last editorial pass to double-check the spelling, grammar, and phraseology before I sign off on the final print version. There’s something about reading aloud that highlights mistakes and demi-mistakes. That step’s essential not just because it makes sure the manuscript is clean, but because it tells me how large the manuscript is, which is information I need before I can tell the illustrator the cover dimensions.

I’m also working on something else, but that’s going to have to remain a tease for now. [Smiley face.]

My wife and I are just coming off sort of a week’s staycation. We were going to travel somewhere local, as in within a couple hours’ driving distance, but when you take your young kids on vacation you just end up taking care of them somewhere else where it’s more difficult instead of at home. We both managed to not do too much work, however, so it counts as a vacation.

The full audiobook for Planet Mission: Part One is up on YouTube now. Go give it a listen. You can subscribe to my channel for free here. 

You can find my Amazon page here.

Follow me on Facebook here.

Follow me on Instagram here.

You can subscribe to my newsletter here. You get a free short story as a bonus for signing up.

In Closing

Congratulations to all the graduates, and happy Father’s Day to all the dads! If you ever get the opportunity, don’t hesitate to let yourself be one.

David

May 2022 Newsletter

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Welcome to the May 2022 edition of author David Claiborne’s newsletter, a monthly publication about stakes and hell month.

Last month I wrote about one of Pixar’s latest movies, Turning Red. Specifically about how it failed to establish the stakes required to invest an audience fully in the conflict. It turns out that red pandas are relatively harmless, so they don’t make great adversarial plot devices. Try this evidence on if you don’t believe me.

Continuing my trend of being a writer who writes about writing, and lest someone think I only write about bad writing, or even writing that merely needs to stay in the oven a few more minutes, this time I want to write about the latest Spider-man movie: No Way Home. By the way, if someone can explain to me why “Spider-man” is hyphenated, but “Superman” is one word, I would be grateful. Also, this is more a rhetorical request, meaning I don’t really want someone to explain it to me.

Spider Men

I implied that the latest Spider-man movie has some good writing, which you might interpret as an endorsement of the movie. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, the existence of the internet had spoiled all the cool surprises by the time I got around to watching it, which probably decreased my enjoyment factor. (Seriously, when did it stop being gauche to post spoiler headlines and photos from a movie that’s still in theaters in your news feed?) As one of the characters says, lower your expectations and you’ll never be disappointed, advice I failed to heed. I didn’t come away thinking it was as good as I was led to believe. I thought it was better than the second Tom Holland-led pic, and probably about as good as the first one led by the same guy. (Tobey Maguire movies one and two remain my favorites.) It has at least one specific moment of good writing which I want to touch on, but I wouldn’t call it great.

Anyway, on with the show. As one who eschews all things gauche, consider this your warning that I’ll be spoiling this movie like milk that expired last year.

What was so great about the writing? In contrast to Turning Red, No Way Home gives the title character a meaningful choice to make with significant consequences.

Peter Parker enlists Dr. Strange to help make the world forget that he’s Spider-man after the villain Mysterio tells the world his secret identity. Peter botches the attempt and ends up summoning everyone who knows he’s Spider-man into his reality, including the most recent living Spider-men along with their villains. By the end of the movie, Dr. Strange must use all his power to hold reality together and prevent an entire universe of Spider-men and villains from invading. To stop the influx, Peter proposes the solution of making the entire world forget who he is altogether, not just that he’s Spider-man. Dr. Strange informs him that no one at all will remember him if he goes through with it. Not his best friend, not his girlfriend MJ, not the Avengers, not the people at MIT where’s he’s applying for college. No one. (His aunt May is out of the picture at this point.) Peter must choose between protecting his world’s reality and being an absolute nobody. At least no one will remember that he’s Spider-man. Indeed, by the end no one remembers him at all.

Those are powerful stakes. That’s something to get an audience invested in what happens to the character. My only gripe is that they should have introduced this option earlier in the movie rather than at the end. That would have given Peter the additional burden of fighting against inevitability, and the idea wouldn’t seem to be coming out of nowhere from the audience’s perspective.

It’s also something of a neat little cheat since it allows the studio, Sony Pictures in this case, who still owns the Spider-man character even if Disney seems to own everything else in the world, to cut ties with the larger Marvel Universe if it so desires. Cynically, Sony now has a narrative-driven reason to pries its most popular comic book character back from the House of Mouse and make movies on its own without needing to make a deal first with the most powerful entertainment company on the globe. The post-credit scene which features Tom Hardy’s Venom indicates they intend to do just that. But I’ll give them a pass since the story works.

Various

As I said last month, my editor delivered Part Two’s manuscript to me on March 24^th (did I mention he’s a professional?), meaning that all the work has been squarely back in my lap since then. By way of a tangent, at my old job April used to be the busiest month of the year bar none. October was a close second, but still didn’t compare. I thought when I got out of that line of work that April would return to something resembling normalcy. Much like the post-pandemic society that wants to but has not quite arrived yet, April continues to be hell month; that is, an extremely difficult month of the year as opposed to a month devoted to the Lake of Fire. My wife’s work has always been at its busiest in April, and this year was no different for her. Her busyness becomes my busyness, which is a long way of saying that I haven’t made much progress on editing. However, all the tiny students at the university no longer have to call her “doctor” and may address her by her first name now, which means I hope to have my evenings back to work on all things book. We’re still on schedule for a summer release, however.

The full audiobook for Planet Mission: Part One is up on YouTube now. Go give it a listen. You can subscribe to my channel for free here. 

You can find my Amazon page here.

Follow me on Facebook here.

Follow me on Instagram here.

You can subscribe to my newsletter here. You get a free short story as a bonus for signing up.

In Closing

Remember, the stakes are important. Let them be known at the beginning if you can, but by all means make sure they’re present. Mothers are also important, so make sure to tell yours happy Mothers Day!

David

This chapter marks the end of Part One. The conclusion to the story in Part Two should be coming out this summer. Thank you to every one who’s supported the book!