Michael G. Munz

The official website of Seattle sci-fi/fantasy author and geek Michael G. Munz

Archives for 2008

Speedily Submitting Short Stories (or something)

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One of my favorite quotes (which for the longest time I mistakenly attributed to Dan Simmons, having read it first in Hyperion–it’s actually Peter De Vries) is “I love being a writer. What I can’t stand is the paperwork.”

I bring it up in this case because actually SUBMITTING my writing for publication is something I don’t do nearly enough as I probably should. I like writing stories, I hate writing cover letters (or even the short email prefaces for electronic submissions).

However, since it’s been a little while since one of my short stories found a home (okay, not too long; “Playing with Hubris,” one of my favorites, was in NexGen Pulp a few months ago), I’ve thrust my butt into the self-booting machine ($199.95, Sharper Image catalog) and sent out a flurry of submissions.

…by which I mean about four. Here’s a quick teaser/rundown of the stories I’ve sent to various fiction magazines, otherwise known as a few children I hope to hear about finding homes for soon:

“The Atheist and the Ferryman”
Many of us have lots of things in our basement. Old clothes, washing machines, giant Olmec heads of Xtapolapocetl, etc. Marcus just happens to have a cave leading to Hades. This is one of my favorite stories that I’ve written, if not THE favorite, though I’ve not yet found a place for it. Do I like it so much that I can’t see it’s flaws, I wonder? Then again, it mixes Greek myth with modern times and a somewhat macabre sense of humor, so it IS an odd one to try to squeeze into a genre label.

“Beyond Memory”
This one’s a bit different from what I usually write and probably closest to magical realism than anything else I’ve written. If you could connect with the actual spirit of a lost loved one when you dreamed, would it be worth it if you couldn’t remember when you woke? What price would you pay to not forget your time together? I came up with this one for a PNWA contest a while back, but at the time I had to rush it and quite honestly it wasn’t ready then. After some polishing, I’m sending it out into the world once more.

“Katy’s Deal”
This is a short one that I wrote a while back and recently polished. It’s pretty short (only 975 words) and makes for an amusing diversion if you like the idea of a technophile teenager trying to both get a job as Death’s assistant and help him to get Wi-Fi access. (Yeah, I write weird ones.)

“Pen Pal”
Another short one, this time without humor and going more toward creepy. How would YOU feel if after three years of agoraphobia you started receiving death threats demanding a murdered man’s gold watch hidden in your attic?

(Hmm. Attics, basements. I should write something dealing with a scaaaaaary linen closet! The towels! The towels are scratchy! Ruuuuuuun!!)

Michael G. Munz
www.michaelgmunz.com

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Visual Geekmusement

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My week’s been pretty busy with somewhat dull stuff, so this blog entry’s just going to be a few simple (but amusing) things. Then again, life’s made up of simple (but amusing) things (e.g. Ralph Wiggum), so yes! This is a celebration of LIFE!

(What, too exuberant?)

First, under not terribly geeky but still pretty darned neat is this video from Today’s Big Thing: Slow-motion lightning! The beginning in particular is spectacular. What I want to know is how long it took them to GET that shot, and whether or not a DeLorean was involved.

(Blogger seems to be having trouble with the embed, so here’s a direct link.)

Following sight, now we go to sound…or sight and sound, I suppose, which is what makes this next video so cool. The best way I can think of to describe it is Half-Life 2 meets the iPod advertising crew:

Continuing on the Half-Life 2 trend, this is probably the funniest thing resulting from fan-fiction that I’ve ever seen. Half Life: Full Life Consequences is apparently the result of a 9 year-old’s HL2 fan-fiction and a bunch of animators with a good collective sense of humor. Sure, it’s essentially the visual equivalent of a kid playing in his backyard with his action figures, but then again so was Star Wars: Clone Wars.

And finally some non-video…sort of. Language translation in the film industry is tricky, at best; more so when it comes to pirated movies. And so it came to be that copies of Revenge of the Sith turned up in Hong Kong were translated as “Backstroke of the West.” I could say more, but frankly this blogger does it much better, so link on over to take a look at what happens when you translate “Jedi Council” into “Presbyterian Church.” Here’s the link. (You’ll have to scroll down a bit there to get to the content.)

Michael G. Munz
www.michaelgmunz.com

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Stargate Continuum DVD Review

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So Stargate Continuum, the last (for now, anyway) made-for-DVD Stargate SG-1 movie came out a couple of days ago. I originally started watching the show about midway through its ten-season run and caught up on the episodes I’d missed in reruns on Sci-Fi. Though it wasn’t the same show by the time the final season rolled around, I was still sorry to see it go, so I gladly picked up the DVD. Without further ado, here’s a brief review. (Rhyme not intended.) This ought to be as spoiler-free as any of the ads are, so feel free to read on mostly safely…

An initial summation for those of you with no patience: I’d have to say it’s above average. It’s not great, but good, and enjoyable enough for the time it asks of us. With the Goa’uld once again as the main antagonists it’s actually quite reminiscent of the earlier seasons, especially when a number of familiar faces start showing up. I won’t say just who here–and there are a number of them–except to mention that it’s good to see (spoiler-text follows) the late Don S. Davis again.

But what’s that you say? Didn’t the Replicators utterly wipe out, put in a box, and stick a fork in the Goa’uld? (Yes, I can hear you; it’s the magic of the Interwebs!) Well, let’s just say that Baal’s a jerk, and he’s got a time machine.

Yes, it’s a time travel movie, which will likely turn some of you off, but even so it’s decently done. One thing I liked was how they came at it in part from an angle that’s not seen quite so much–that of the point of view of those people who’ve lived their lives in an alternate (and screwed up, from SG-1’s point of view) timeline. To them, it’s SG-1’s timeline that’s the alternate; they like their own just fine, thank you very much, and why the hell should they bother to help and mess up THEIR billions of lives? (As an alternate-Landry put it, “The arrogance of what you’re asking us to help you do is mind-boggling!”) Who’s to say which is more correct? This question leads to a middle of the film that’s really rather poignant and interesting in terms of the characters themselves.

I’m not sure if SG-1 virgins or casual viewers would find that section quite as interesting, however, as they’re not nearly so familiar with these characters. As a fan of the show it’s hard for me to judge. I will say that the writers did do a decent job of catching up the new viewers to the Stargate setting without getting bogged down with it.

The plot as a whole is pretty well done, at least until you get to the end, but I’ll talk about that in a moment. There was one genuinely unexpected twist that I was quite happy to see. I only wish they’d had more time to develop the ramifications of it. That’s perhaps why the ending is where I had the most problem. It’s just…missing something. (Jack O’Neill maybe? He’s in much of the first half before fading away.) It all wraps up too quickly, and I found myself wondering what they could’ve done if this were a four-episode arc of the show. One thing I will say: Character death shouldn’t be milked for tragedy points when you’re operating around time machines–or at the very least, not when you’re standing IN time machines. Going to slow-mo just gives the viewer more time to realize that, oh, hey, they can fix that fairly easily right now.

One more thing I did find interesting: Baal’s a jerk, yes, but oddly he’s NOT quite up to his old tricks. He seems to have learned from his mistakes…or at least most of them, which leads into part of that twist I mentioned.

As for the DVD extras, along with the usual DVD previews there’s a commentary by the writer and director as well as three featurettes. I haven’t yet had time to listen to the commentary, but I did take a look at the featurettes.

First, The Layman’s Guide to Time Travel. Being a speculative fiction writer, I have a weakness for scientific theories like time travel, alternate dimensions and such explained in layman’s terms so those of us who don’t have the benefit of a PhD in mathematics can see the wonder in them. My only complaint here is that at nine minutes, it’s too short. It would’ve been great to see them explore the two theories of how time travel might work a little bit more, for instance. Still, what we do get is interesting and fun, at least for us geek-types.

The twenty-minute Making of Stargate Continuum featurette is fun to watch, too. (Anyone who’s seen any of the SG-1 making-of specials that have aired on the Sci-Fi Channel knows what they’re in for here, style-wise if not content-wise, so I won’t go into detail.)

The best of the three would have to be the Stargate Goes to the Arctic featurette, which documents the experience of actually traveling to the Arctic Circle to film on a sheet of ice in negative twenty-degree temperatures. With all of the to-do about the cast and crew filming on-location (seen online and on the preview for Continuum on the Ark of Truth DVD) I was expecting more of the movie to take place there than we see on-screen. Don’t get me wrong, the Arctic is certainly in the movie, but I suspect that going there was a much bigger deal for the actors and crew than it is for us viewers who sit down to watch in our warm living rooms. Indeed, the twenty-two minutes of the featurette certainly show a more interesting (real) adventure. In fact it may be my favorite part of the entire DVD, and I say that with no slight to the movie itself.

So, bottom line, if you’re a fan, it’s worth picking up. (And that means YOU, Denise.) If you’ve never seen the show, well, at least give it a rental so you can help support the show, ’cause I want another DVD, dangit! 🙂

…And I really did mean for this to be a BRIEF review when I started. Ah, well.

Michael G. Munz
www.michaelgmunz.com

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Mass Effect for PC: A Review

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A while back I mentioned that I’d be sharing my thoughts on Mass Effect. I finally got my act together and put down some of my thoughts, so, at last, I give you my “official” (ooh, ironic quotation marks!) review…

I’m not a console gamer. Since I sold my original NES back in 1991 or so to buy a VGA monitor, I’ve been reliant on the PC for my video gaming experiences. (Okay, so I owned a SuperNintento for a short time in college and I’ve got a GBA stashed somewhere, but aside from that, I’m “pure.”) That being the case, I essentially missed most of the hype about Mass Effect when it came out for the X-Box 360 last fall.

Oh, sure, I heard the media buzz about how it’s a revolution in RPG gaming, an incredible interactive story, and all that claptrap from blogger Kevin McCullough about how it’s a sodomy simulator. (I don’t know WHAT game HE’S playing, but it’s certainly not Mass Effect, which has about as much to do with sodomy and–as McCullough put it–“virtual orgasmic rape” as Monopoly has with clubbing baby seals. But hey, why bother to research what you’re talking about when you can just make up inflammatory crap that’ll get you attention, right? But I digress; time for an end parenthesis.) Even so, as I had no ability to actually play it, ME mostly passed under my radar until I heard a little while ago that there was now a PC version.

I asked a friend of mine, who seems to invariably know more about things on the Interwebs than I do, just what sort of game Mass Effect is. “It’s like Knights of the Old Republic without all the Star Wars trappings,” she said.

Like KOTOR? Well hey, that pretty much sold me right there; if I were to make a top ten best games list, KOTOR–with its immersive story, addictive gameplay, and replayability–would be on it. (To be fair, I may be combining KOTOR and KOTOR2 into one game with the strengths of each making up for the other’s weaknesses, but that’s an entirely different blog topic.) So, because I don’t have enough diversions in my life (yes, kids, that’s sarcasm!), I picked it up.

Mass Effect in fact comes from Bioware, the same developers who brought us KOTOR and the Baldur’s Gate series, and the flavor of those earlier works–more so the former–most certainly echo in Mass Effect. The story that drives the gameplay is excellently crafted both in the motion of its plot and the setting through which it weaves. The political structures, alien races, and technology of the galaxy are so developed as to be contained with a codex that the player can read (or in some instances, listen to) as they encounter the subjects in question. It’s so detailed that it’s pretty much a sourcebook for the game’s universe; you’ll certainly never need to know everything listed there, of course. Heck, I suppose you could easily play through the entire game and not open it once, but it does provide an extra bit of insight into things for those who just can’t get enough. (On a side-note, one wonders if they originally designed it that way or simply figured that putting it ALL into the actual gameplay and dialogue would make things too wordy for some players, but didn’t want to throw out all their painstakingly crafted background.) As for the story itself, it makes great use of all that setting (well, okay, not ALL of it, but it IS an entire galaxy, and there are at least two more games to come), and, while not as surprising as KOTOR’s or as philosophical as KOTOR2’s, was more than enough to keep the length of my individual gaming sessions much longer than I often planned just so I could find out what happened next.

The combat portion of the gameplay is, again, quite reminiscent of KOTOR, but with some differences. For one, rather than just queuing up an action and watching it happen, you’re controlling pretty much everything your character does in real-time, ducking behind cover, choosing when to pop out and fire, when to duck back, etc. You’re responsible for targeting exactly where you want to fire, throw a grenade, or aim a biotic power, so it’s much more reflex-based. On the other hand, if you’re controlling your own character so completely there’s no way you’ll also be able to do so for your two ever-present squad mates. They act on their own based on both simple scripts (which you partially control in that you designate how much they use their special powers) and individual commands. You can’t tell them exactly when to fire, but you can let them know when to hold, when to follow, what enemy to attack, and what powers to use. I’ve heard varying player opinions on how well this works, but for the most part (the weaker characters seem to have an alarming lack of appreciation for cover), it worked for me.

But Mass Effect isn’t without its problems. As I mentioned before, a number of reviews and forum-postings I’ve seen have declared it a revolutionary new RPG experience, tossing about hyperbole the way only the Internet (and marketing) can and calling it the RPG’s answer to the Halo series. While I believe that’s true, I also don’t consider it the high praise that it’s intended to be.

The problem with space, as Douglas Adams observed, is that it’s BIG. Give your players a spaceship that allows them to travel to a bunch of different planets as part of a sandbox and you’ve given yourself a problem. There are lots of planets in ME that you can visit that have little or nothing to do with the main quest. These planets look great when you first arrive. Sweeping rocky landscapes, anomalies to investigate, crash sites, ruins…except after a few planets, you realize that they’re all pretty much the same, differing only in the color of the rocks, the placement of the ruins (check!), anomalies (check!) and crash sites (check!). Oh, and if there’s a big flat open plain, you WILL run into a thresher maw (…check!). It’s all so cookie-cutter that it loses its wonder…though in fairness I will admit that the first thresher maw I saw had me springing out of my chair.

This problem bleeds over into the items available as well. Part of the fun of a game like this is exploring and finding some interesting little doo-dad that helps you in some way, enhances your character or just opens up an interesting story branch. In ME, you’ll either be finding a pistol, an assault rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, armor, or various exciting plug-ins like “anti-personnel ammo III,” which is just like anti-personnel ammo II, but a little better. The weapons work that way, too, as does the armor. (And why the heck are crashed space probes stuffed full of armor and weapons?)

The game tries to give you a sense of exploration by letting you find insignia of lost members of alien intelligence communities or writings of an Asari matriarch. When I first stumbled on one of these I was expecting that there was some sort of story involved, that a bigger picture of what was going on with them would form as I found more, or at least that something neat would happen when I found them all. Nope! All it gets you is a little check box in your character history saying you found them all, with no real payoff. It’s like playing Doom and running around to collect the red, blue, and yellow keys not to open doors that get you to anywhere new or interesting, but just to be able to say you’ve got them. I understand these sorts of things are called Achievements in the X-Box community, but frankly I’m the sort of gamer who cares less about a score and a LOT more about having, you know, actual fun in gameplay.

It’s like they wrote the main plot, then figured they’d better puff up the universe a bit and at least provide the illusion that there’s interesting stuff out there. (Sort of like in the last scene of Star Wars when they put a few real people lining the aisle of the award ceremony, then got cardboard cut-outs for the rest?)

Getting back to the idea that Mass Effect is the RPG answer to Halo, it is. The problem seems to be that what’s new and innovative in certain genres to console gamers is old hat to PC folk. Halo was at best a mediocre first person shooter. Fun? Yes! Engaging? Yes, but awfully repetitive in places, and nothing particularly new compared to PC titles. It just had great marketing and the benefit of (I think, correct me if I’m wrong) being new to console gamers. Likewise with Mass Effect. KOTOR/KOTOR2, Baldur’s Gate 2, Deus Ex, Oblivion…all equal or better RPGs which came before. Don’t get me wrong, Mass Effect is fun, worth picking up, and well-written. It does some things in new and refreshing ways, but much of what I’ve seen touted as “revolutionary” isn’t all that different from what’s come before.

It’s a good game. I’m looking forward to Mass Effect 2. Just don’t get lost in the hype.

Wow, this was a long one, wasn’t it? All done now…

Michael G. Munz
www.michaelgmunz.com

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The Dark Knight: A Mini-review

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Okay folks, I just got back from the theater, and here’s my review condensed into a single sentence:

The Dark Knight is decently written, well-directed, really well-acted, and lasted about half an hour beyond the point where I started to wonder just why the hell I should care.

Okay, two more things:
#1, Gotham City has, apparently, a massive security problem. (Spoiler warning! Highlight below for inviso-text:)
How the hell did the Joker manage to sneak THAT much explosive into the hospital without anyone noticing? Likewise with the ferries, and THOSE you’d figure they might’ve checked BEFORE leaving the dock.

and #2 (more inviso-text below):
So, okay, you want to save Harvey Dent’s good name and don’t want him blamed for the five or so murders he did toward the end. Fine. I get that. But hey, since we’re pinning them on someone who DIDN’T do it and therefore have no real evidence anyway, how about we pin it on, oh, say, ANYONE other than Batman? Gosh, if only there were a homocidal lunatic running around that the public would be more than willing to unquestioningly accept as a scapegoat. Ah, well.
Talk about manufactured pathos.

It was a decent movie, just…a lot more “meh” than a lot of the critics are saying. But hey, they get paid to review things, right? So what do I know? 😉

Michael
www.michaelgmunz.com

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Terminator 4: The Teaser

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The first teaser trailer for Terminator 4 (or Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins for you sticklers who like long titles) is out. Teasers in general don’t really do much more than let the public know a movie’s coming, so it’s not really fair to judge the film on it–not that it won’t stop lots of people from doing so. It doesn’t show us much, and I’m still hoping that it doesn’t turn out as bad as I’m fearing.

Anyway, here’s a link!

-Michael
www.michaelgmunz.com

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Hellboy 2 Heralds Hobbits!

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A brief geeknote on Hellboy 2:

I saw it Saturday night, and I have to say any anxiety I had about Guillermo del Toro directing the upcoming Peter Jackson-produced Hobbit film (and its bridge-to-LOTR sequel) is now completely squashed. Okay, so I didn’t have that much anxiety to start with; the man seemed pretty darned competent already, but then he DID direct Blade 2. (My problem with those movies primarily stems from the source material itself, though. The vampires in Blade’s world are laughably weak.)

There are scores of Hellboy 2 reviews all across the Net, so I won’t bother with one here other than to say that the extent to which del Toro is willing to commit himself to a fantasy world is extraordinary. This is–in spirit, at least–the faerie world of Gaelic legend, where faeries are as like to rip the flesh from your bones as they are to dance for you*. If you’ve read any reviews, you’ve heard about it before: the savage tooth faeries, the mind-blowing troll market, and the ruthlessly evil (yet somewhat sympathetic) elf prince who’ll have the geekier folk in the audience thinking “Hey, a bladesinger! …With a spear.” It’s a wonderful movie, provided there’s still a part of you that’s willing to embrace the fantastic.

~~Quick spoiler alert~~
Was anyone else pleasantly surprised that the confrontation with the tentacular forest elemental–which, again, anyone who’s seen the trailers knew was coming–happened in the middle of the movie rather than the climax? Along the same lines, was anyone rather irked at the prince for forcing it, the last wonder of its kind, into a battle rather than keeping it safe and perhaps finding a way to spawn more of its kind? This guy’s supposed to be fighting humanity to safe such things, yet he’s immediately willing to sacrifice something so rare. Slight flaw in character writing, or the writing of a flawed character?
~~End spoilers~~

So, bring on The Hobbit!
*sits, checks watch*
Is it out yet?

-Michael G. Munz
www.michaelgmunz.com

*“What, you learn about faeries from that Walt Disney guy? Want I should wear a tutu and prance around with some bloody unicorn or something? (Unicorns! Sanctimonious bastards, don’t you get me started on them!) That Disney-man has spread so many lies about us Faerie-types that I’ve ‘alf a mind to get a group of spriggans together and bite ‘is arms off!”
–-Excerpt from “Squirrel!” (by Michael G. Munz, published 2003)

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