Needs just a little touch of humanity

My last blog mentioned the types of Sci Fi that I have enjoyed over the years. To recap, I cant get into all of that CGI heavy stuff, as much as it helps, and as realistic as it can sometimes appear, Just pouring tons of that stuff into a film doesnt do it for me.

I mentioned why I liked District 9 more than James Cameron's Avatar. Both of them had stories to tell at its core, but Avatar was more like cotton candy to me. It was all fluff and flash, courtesy of all the damn CGI involved. District 9 at least relied on a more grittier, realistic feel. The special effects when used where more of a service to the film than a hinderence. And that's the thing about CGI, if used correctly, it can compliment a film. I look at it as ketchup. Ketchup is meant to compliment and add an extra zing to the fries. It's not supposed to overwhelm and drown the damn things.

But there are other aspects to a good Sci Fi franchise, and this applies to both film and novels. I'm a two sided man now. As a teen (and I spoke of this in an earlier blog) I sat through just about any action or sci fi film that crawled out of the creepy darkness that was the 1970s and 80s and although there were some good ones, whoo boy there was tons of crap. I sat through all of them, cuz I wasn't exactly looking to have my mind stimulated back then. I needed a decent plot, kick ass characters, tons of explosions and gun fire, and every once in a while, character development.

Now that I am older, I can do with more of the plot and interesting characters. I can sit through a film or go through a book that doesnt have tons of action per page or chapter, or minute after minute of big screen gunfire. I can work with a decent mix.

I would choose films like the original Star Wars franchise, E.T., the first Poltergeist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, classics all, over the present day color and sound orgies that we deal with presently. I could not sit through Cloverfield or Independence Day because I felt that there were things missing there.

(Cloverfield had no characters for me to cheer for. I was somehow hoping they'd all get stepped on. Independence Day was a flat movie for me because it was one sided. I felt no awe or interest in the alien invaders. They could have been coming to our planet for pizza or a concert or something. Their motivations were muddled and boring at best)

If you look at all of the classic films that I have chosen you see that they have one thing in common; simply interesting human characters. A little humanity interspersed with explosions and chase scenes make any fictional work highly interesting.

I could have kept the entire first tale of A Distant Battlefield on the home planet of Garian, but i felt that it was important that I bring the conflict to the familiar territory of our world. I carefully crafted every Earth character that i introduce to have their own set of interests conflicts and suspicions. I bounce these characters off each other and then see if they can eventually merge into a singular organism that can survive and cooperate for simple survival.

A Distant Battlefield Is a Sci-fi based story which basically asks whether people of different ethnic, religious and economic backgrounds can come together, put aside their general every day suspicions and hatreds of each other and survive as a group?

Simple.

My Kind of Sci-Fi

So what have I learned from being exposed to popular culture for the roughly 4 decades that I have been on this planet?

Most specifically, what have I been impacted by from all of the Sci-Fi and fantasy culture that I happily exposed mself to?

To start, I believe that any form of popular culture should always have some sort of impact. Doesnt matter if it's music, the written word, even television and film can and have provided examples of impactful content. Throughout human history, the most classic examples of popular culture stood out from everything else by being able to say something or prove itself relevant to the human condition in some way.

As I stated in an earlier blog, I am a product of 70s and 80s film and televsion culture. My stepfather took us to the movies in the 70s when movies were actually inovative and sincere. They were also widely varied. You could have chosen a film from any genre back then and could have come across something that was wildly original and unlike the flash over substance films of today, actually managed to stay with you.

I can still remember watching the original Star Wars film in a jam packed theatre in downtown Brooklyn NY, I fondly recalled the restless days and nights for me afterward, as although i was rudely instructed to return to reality, the days immediately following that viewing were still jammed with those images of fantastic characters, far away worlds (that were so amazingly rendered) and climatic personal struggles.

It took me a good month or so for me to even get over the fact that it was a damn movie, as if though my mind had taken just that long to absorb all of the utter awesomeness that my little 7 year old mind had been exposed to.

After that, (and this never took place on a consicious level) I knew that i wanted to somehow, someway contribute to that genre. I just didnt know how. (actually at that age I didnt have to know how, not yet, I still had comic books to read, and little girls to bother and tons of running around the school yard with my friends before I even geared my little mind toward such significant thinking)

As my school and formative years shot by, my mind began to (dare i say it..) mature. I was learning the ins and outs about true writing and again, whether it was a pre meditated thing or not, I was practicing and honing my craft. Character creation, dramatic conflict and resolution, the intricacies of dialogue, all of these things made their way into my brain box in one way or another.

I began to look back at the films of my so often fondly remembered youth with something I had not used before or didnt even know i had..a critical eye. It wasnt even something I realized I was doing. I just did it. I was now looking at faults, and wears and seams within the works that my youth had originally regarded as so perfect.

Have you ever sat down to watch a movie you absolutely loved in your youth as an adult and it turned out to be a peice of crap? (that is what happened to me)

I recently purchased a collectors edition dvd of Escape from New York
I sat in front of the 46 inch Samsung Flatscreen in the living room, rustled up some junk food, and prepared to drink in the nectar that John Carpenter had offered me and i eagerly drank in the early 1980s (in a semi darkened theater somewhere in Brooklyn)

and I sat there for 90 mins watching this film which had yes, made a contribution to my Sci-fi up bringing, sat through the deleted scenes that were included on the disc and when I turned it off I said to myself what a peice of crap!!

I was sitting there for about 15 minutes, arguing with my brain and asking it exactly what did i see in this film in the first place that made me cherish it so, and where the hell was it now?

And i suppose that is the problem and we have all gone through it at one time or another. the mind matures. It seeks meaning now and is better trained to cut through the flash to seek that substance. This is true whether you are thumbing through a book you once read so many years back or listening to an album you enjoyed in your youth or etc.

When I began writing A Distant Battlefield, I began to craft it in a way that appealed to both sides of my brain. I wanted the slam bang action that I enjoyed as a child but also wanted to put some brain matter into it. I need it, I like seeing it in other forms of popular culture and I want others to have that brain matter as well.

A Distant Battlefield then, is a concotion comprised of many elements that I enjoyed from books and films; the intelligence and imagining of Larry Niven's Dreampark as well as the character structure and set up of Niven's Lucifer's Hammer, (both of which are excellent novels in regards to how they present set up, concept and characters.)

I was also influenced by a pair of my all time favorite cheesy disaster films from the 70s namely Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. Again the presentation and buildup of the concept as well as the introduction of the varied characters made an indelible impression on me.

I will close by talking briefly about two present day examples. I recently saw both Avatar and District 9 on cable recently.

I never bothered going to see Avatar in the theaters. I know James Cameron is an excellent visionary, and with all of the CGI technology available that i knew he would use to bring the concept to life, maybe that was the problem. I saw the trailer as well as the extended trailers for the film and although the concept and story was excellent, it was drowned out by the absolute CGI orgy that took away from the film's thinly veiled environmental message. I was more comfortable with the scenes of the military characters within their base than i was with the Skittles rainbow forest world of Pandora. (it was just too damn obvious that it was all fabricated and I guess that just took the enjoyment away from me.)

I am absolutely planning on getting the Distant Battlefield franchise into a theater near you one day..and I am hoping that i have crafted an intelligent story that relies more on people than on green screens to convey itself...and that is why I enjoyed District 9 more than I did Avatar.

District 9 told a gritty sci fi story, and it was more my taste. The aliens are practically sequestered in a Warsaw Ghetto like environment on the outskirts of Johannesberg South Africa. They are dirty, gritty and more believable and in my opinion had more of a personality than James Cameron's blue people. The story was impactful and could be easily understood and although CGI was obviously involved it was more of a compliment to the story than a distraction.

I suppose I'm just not the type of person who likes to drown his french fries with ketchup. I believe that the ketchup should compliment the fries and not overshadow them. (does that make any sense?)

Spiral Notebooks, Pens and other Advanced Technologies

I'm a self taught writer. Actually, does anyone go to any sort of school to learn the creative part of writing, or do they go to learn the technical aspects? I never thought a person could be taught creativity. A screenplay writing course can teach you spacing, formatting and things of that nature, but it can't do anything for your creativity.

I had an art teacher tell me a long time ago, that you learn how to draw by following and understanding a certain set of rules but that you actually become an artist by breaking those same rules. (Does that make sense to anybody?)

Anyway, in my opinion, I believed that the self taught route was the best. Not that it was a conscious decision or anything, that's just the way it turned out.

As a young comic book fan, I absolutely loved the far out stories and concepts that was presented to me on those color splashed pages. I was so inspired that I began drawing my own damn books. This mostly took place in school when I was supposed to be learning things. Drawing paper was never an issue, no, damn that, I had notebook paper!! Every test paper, every note given to us by the school to take home, every single solitary paper surface where a little Puerto Rican kid could draw balloon people wearing masks, was quickly taken over and scrawled on. (For some reason I was somehow civilized enough not to draw all over the text books we were given..still can't figure that one out)

Anyway, that's pretty much the way it went. From elementary school all the way through High School, I drew all over every damn thing. A typical comic book for me was to grab eight to ten pages of loose leaf notebook paper, fold it in half, and there was my book. I drew a cover, interior pages and even did little ads on the inside front and back covers.

By high school of course, the writing was starting to mature, the artwork however was not catching up. So by the time I was in my 20s, I concentrated soley on the written word. But I was still sticking to my primitive guns; I was not using word processors, typewriters or even computers.

My tools were quite simple; I had sprial notebooks and pens. Although I am quite computer savvy now, I just cannot create using a damn computer!! That huge white screen, staring at me, waiting for me to begin something of importance, scowling at me, as if though I were wasting its time...

A Distant Battlefield took about four spiral notebooks to write. I had no problem with that at all. I am comfortable there. I can do a chapter, or a half chapter, lose interest or doodle on an upper corner of a page. It's strictly a comfort level thing and there is of course the obvious connection to my youth.

Any visitor to my apt in Brooklyn would easily testify to the closet in the spare bedroom which is jam packed with notebooks, notepads, finished scripts, story ideas and tons of character sketches; an entire universe in pulp form waiting for me to unleash it on the world.

From there, once I have gone through several drafts and rewrites, I can then take the sprial notebooks to the laptop for the final iteration. Then and only then do I sit in front of the computer and put some work in.

It's probabaly not unusual. I doubt I'm the only writer who feels this way, and I look forward to meeting some of them one day. We will compare notes, swap stories, talk about technique and creativity and other sorts of stuff.

I'll bring my spiral notebooks and my balloon people.

Influences and External contributions (AKA look it up yourself)

I never met my father. I know of him. I was told he was a minister who drank and yelled and was an absolute brute of a man. He took off after the birth of my youngest sister. (apparently he thought creating a family was like a drawing on a piece of paper. If you didn't like what you drew, you could just discard it and start over.)

And so he did. He left me and my two sisters and my mom and took off for parts I'm not concerned about. I have no memories of him nor do I have any concerns or passions.

My earliest memories are of my step father. They involve the five of us living in a terrible two bedroom apartment in a rat infested tenement in East New York Brooklyn.
My stepfather was not much of a prize himself. He fixed air conditioners and refrigerators, He smoked weed, drank beer, but he shaped me. Indirectly, mind you, but he shaped me.

He took us to the movies alot in the 1970s, and saw some of the most iconic films of the decade not on TV, but in a large theater. Shaft, Superfly, Jaws, Earthquake, Towering Inferno, The Exorcist, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, King Kong (1976) Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind..(should i continue?)

He also indirectly contributed to my imaginary universe by starting me off with comic books. He was so sick and tired of me finding his stash that he just gave up and got me my own.

They were all Marvel books, Micronauts, Spider-Man, Shogun Warriors, Captain America, it was a small stash, but it grew. I tried to show my appreciation for what he did by trying to strike up comic book conversations with him. But he was an adult, and i was just his step son, and I was more of an annoyance to him than anything else.

The idiot.

I would always begin the conversation the same way; I would approach with a copy of the Fantastic Four, its group's leader Reed Richards had just used some complicated word that I had no hope of understand on my own, and I would innocently go up to the man and ask what the word meant, and the answer was always the same..Look it up yourself!!

and i did, figuring that I was doing what he wanted like a faithful little step son, and not seeing it as the brush off that it was...As time passed and i grew into a teenager, (my stepfather was kicked out of our house and our lives in 1981) I realized what it was he did to me....

and appreciated it.

It's a self reliance thing, you see. But there was more to it than that. It wasn't that he had indirectly taught me a lesson, it was that he indirectly shaped me in a way. The thinking went like this...Comic Books with complicated words forced me to go to a dictionary, and improved my English. Comic books with scientific concepts compelled me to learn about science, and history, and philosophy and all those other wonderful things.

My comic book collection kept me off the streets, away from drugs and gangs. I learned respect and appreciation for my mom and for the strength and resolve she showed in raising 3 kids successfully in 1980s Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, all the influences of crack and crime and bullshit, and this tiny, frail woman managed to keep us away from all of it..It wasn't easy, (then again, I don't think any life trial or tribulation is supposed to be) But it got done. She steered us clear, kept us safe, and showed more heart than any fictional character i had ever read about.

And so all of those things, My father, step father, comic books, films, crime and drugs, my mom, all of them someway in some aspect contributed to who I eventually became..and i have placed all of those aspects onto my pages.

As a writer, I am a chef. My kitchen is anywhere with a surface for writing or typing. My ingredients are my imagination, and a good pen, and a spiral notebook and a good laptop. And i stir, and I craft, and I bake and broil and I add a little sci-fi, and some fantasy, and some urban flavor and some politics and a host of other things, and eventually what comes out is....

Well, we'll all see together very soon.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a few words to look up.

Keeping busy, being patient.

I hate being patient. I hate being told to be patient. I hate having somebody tell me that good things come to those who wait. I want to kick those people in the groin. (Actually, I would like to spend an entire day just wandering the streets of New York City, walking up to absolutely random strangers and kicking them really hard in the groin.)

There might be some sort of law somewhere which prohibits me from doing that, so I guess I wont.

I've been writing for about a decade and change now, actually even further back than that. Anybody who knew me in Bushwick High School, any of my family members and closest friends, anyone of them could tell you that I always enjoyed writing and drawing. (I wasnt all that good at the drawing, but I did get better with the writing)

I think the first story I ever wrote was on one of my older sister's spiral notebooks. (that full story will come later) I used my notebook stories to practice my craft and eventually began to learn all i could about screenplay writing.

I learned the format real easy. I all ready had the creativity so i figured it would just be a matter of time before that first screenplay sale.

It never happened.

I learned how to write laters to agents, and i sent them respectfully with the self addressed stamped envelope so their lazy asses didnt have to spend money on a stamp when they passed on my screenplays and wished me good luck in my future endeavors..

In the meantime you practice your craft and you the people and go to the places and you're encouraged to just stick with it and....show patience..(sigh)

Show patience/just wait/ it will eventually happen/blah blah blah..

but they're right. Every family member, friend, enemy and associate who said those words to me were correct. I sort of figured it out now.

Even as you pursue what you want to be in life and even as you practice your craft, you will realize that there is always something more you can learn. One little trick, one additonal method...and as you develop patience and skill in your chosen field you also gain wisdom and the ability to honestly look at what you have done, are doing and what you hope to accomplish.

I have always believed in the story that I wish to tell with A Distant Battlefield. I know what I wish to say, I know how I wish to say it, and I know where I wish to take my audience. It is not just another Sci-fi movie with big explosions and bugs and lizards and robots..All those things are present, but I also wanted to say something about us as well.

I think I have the formula figured out. I think you will be pleased and interested, and entertained with what I will present you.

I have written and re-written the story on a number of occassions until I got the blend just right. I shopped it around and I got my share of praise and rejections and now Wheatmark Publishing has agreed to help me bring it to the public. As they go through the process of getting the book ready for the public, they have told me to relax, and..just show some patience.

I say the same to you as well. (sigh)
I just wanna kick someone in the groin right now..

So What's it about???

A Distant Battlefield is a sci-fi/action novel which initially centers around a coup attempt on the planet Garian. A renegade officer by the name of Jerrah has amassed a fleet of warships and hundreds of thousands of loyal officers in an attempt to oust the government of Garian which is the seat of the United Planetary Alliance; a body of planets dedicated toward peace, commerce and understanding.

At the defense of the planet Garian, is a fleet of star cruisers led by the veteran Admiral Levin and thousands of loyal followers. Their fleet is stationed just above Garian's orbit and are prepared to defend the planet from the usurper.

What they are not aware of is that Admiral Jerrah has a unique weapon at his disposal; a Time Displacement Cannon, which is capable of beaming its chosen target anywhere through time or space. Expecting a quick victory, Jerrah activates the weapon on Levin's fleet of ships.

The cannon malfunctions and its time-rending energies burst outward in all directions, engulfing Levin's entire fleet, but also exposing Jerrah and his warships to the blast. A monstrous worm hole is created, and both fleets of craft are drawn into its swirling mass.

They are tossed trillions of miles across the length of the galaxy and abruptly appear in the skies over present day Midtown Manhattan.

It is a warm, sunny October morning as the citizens of New York prepare for their usual day..which never gets started. A terrific thunderclap of light and sound explodes in the skies above the Eastern Seaboard. A whirling mass of thick black clouds suddenly spring up out of nowhere, and as terrified millions of people look on, the cloud mass suddenly parts, revealing a clear sky full of bizarre skycraft.

Without any warning or ceremony, the massive ships begin firing on each other. Simultaniously, dozens of fighter ships stream outward to swoop and dive and do battle with each other over the heads of terrified running citizens.....

and so it begins.

This novel is one part Science fantasy, and one part social experiment. I introduce a number of survivors from various walks of life, A Wall Street type, a Lawyer, two paramedics, four inner city vigilantes, as well as a Middle Eastern cab driver and a Jewish Diamond Dealer and throw them all into a situation together. Can these diverse personalities put aside their differences, suspicions and perceptions in order to achieve the common goal of survival?

We shall soon find out.

My first blog!!

Ok, so, I have a blog. Have no idea what to do with it, but I'm a creative sort so I'll think of something. What should I do..uh (aha!!) I shall introduce myself.

My name is George L. Lopez. I am the creator and writer of A Distant Battlefield, the new sci-fi series of novels and franchise which will soon be in your bookstore soon. I am a Puerto Rican male born and bred in Brooklyn, NY and have been fortunate enough to have had many amazing experiences as well as having met a number of ethincally diverse and interesting people.

I am a single male living in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, have no kids of my own, but i do have three neices and a nephew which i look upon as if though they were mine. Have two wonderful sisters, and a crazy wonderful and loving mom.

I am an avid Sci-fi fan and writer, a student of history, world politics, science and just about everything else within the human endeavor.

Within this space I shall of course tell you all about my novel which the good folks at Wheatmark Publishing are going to help me bring to the public. The story that I plan on telling you will encompass a number of social issues while at the same time introduce you to far off worlds and bizarre characters, while also introducing characters that will all at once feel quite familiar.

This is my foray into the genre that I have always loved and respected, and I truly hope you all will go on this journey with me.

Please make yourselves comfortable by the campfire I have started. Sit and relax. Gather round closely. I have a story to tell.