Overcast 134

Please allow me to direct you over to The Overcast, where you'll find that episode 134 is my story, a heart-warming tale of sexual convenience and robotic ponies, 'The Button at the Base of his Spine':

And, after you've listened, feel free (well, not free, but for about the same price as a coffee) to read it and twenty-three others here:

Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Published by William Holly and available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.   

Enjoy

Double tap

Delighted that Black Beacon Books have taken my story, 'Driverless', for their 'Murder and Machinery' anthology next year.  A story rejected thirteen times, albeit held for consideration by Apex, before I gave it a fairly fundamental polish informed by my 'credo', cutting it down by a fifth compared to its original length whilst adding a more satisfying ending.  After that, it was accepted on only its second foray into the market.  Proof if proof were needed...

Meanwhile, Daily Science Fiction have taken my flash 'Three Wishes' for my fourth appearance in it's (web)pages.  And, if I'm noting the number of times it's been sent in to fight its rivals in the slush pile, this was just it's fourth sortie.  Equally delighted.

Can I say delighted again?

#

Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Published by William Holly and available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.  

Enjoy

Al Gorithm: Britain’s least wanted

There’s been trouble at'mill, recently.

For those of you who live outside these shores, our young bright things have in recent weeks been receiving academic qualifications that, in any other year, would reflect exams they would have sat in the early summer.  Covid-19, of course, carried off our exam season alongside our elderly, but the whippersnappers still deserve an envelope of letters.

So what those who know best did was put teachers' assessments through an algorithm (a word many, many more Britons now know than they did in July) that took into account factors such as teachers maybe wanting their charges to do their best and being a bit too glass half full.

Quite why baffles me, but those powers decided to then publish both the teachers' assessments and the revised (or, if you read the press, 'downgraded') markings.  Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth, followed by embarrassed back-tracking so that teachers' grades prevailed.  (It's actually worse than that - kids get the higher of the processed grading or whatever Mister Chips thought of first).  We’ve even had the brilliant life-imitates-art-imitates-life story of a girl who wrote a story about academic grades being decided by an algorithm being upgraded after being initially downgraded by the algorithm.  

This has particularly piqued my interest, as it straddles both my professional life in human resources, where bringing consistency to performance assessment within one company, let alone one nation, is an unwinnable war, and science fiction.  I was even briefly a ministerial speechwriter during the Blair years focused on performance management in the teaching profession.

Teachers are brilliant at teaching.  If I say anything different, I'm liable to be chased by a mob and strung up from a lamppost ("The NHS is crap!  How could I possibly be making it worse?!").  But what teachers are not in a good position to judge is how their assessments compare nationally, let alone to the school down the road.  There needs to be some calibration, some standard setting, some way of adjusting for the schools who consistently over- or under-estimate.

Of course, the powers that be got the algorithm wrong.  I'm not about to defend how they did it, but it needed to be done.  Relying on teachers' assessments alone has had the effect of devaluing the nation's academic qualifications (pass rates at 16 have jumped from 70% to 79%; A-grade equivalents by a quarter), and completely shafting the higher education sector, who are obliged to take in everyone who successfully achieved the bar set for them, a bar set when pass rates were expected to be 'normal'.

I also sympathise with teachers.  If this happens again, would I want to know that little Johnny Flick-knife's grades are solely down to me rather than me being one of several arbiters in this?  Probably not.  We separate teachers and examiners for the same reason we separate out judges and juries.

But what fascinates me is how the country has reacted to the idea of an algorithm.  We may as well have called it Jimmy Saville.  And that's where the sci-fi comes in.  Because an algorithm is a sci-fi thing, a dark, malevolent, invisible force that can never mean good news.  It's Orwellian, Big Brother-y.  It's decisions being made about us, things being done to us, without us even being in the room.  It not just us not having a say, it's us not even being aware that we're being talked about.

But we shouldn't be scared of algorithms (and, if you are, you're gonna simply shit yourself inside out when you meet the T-1000-meets-Alien-meets-Freddy Krueger bitch that is the heuristic).  An algorithm is simply a set of rules.  If then.  That's all.  Yes, it can be used for ill, but it's a tool, and like any tool, you can use it to bang a nail into a wall or a nun into a coma (not sure why I grabbed hold of that image, but anyway).  

Heuristics save lives.  Take the Goldman Index.  It's an algorithm to decide on the small matter of whether you're dying.  Or you could get a doctor's opinion.  Put your money on the former if you want to maximise the chances of living.  Why?  Because doctors bring a whole lot of baggage that's inevitable with messy human thinking.  It's this messiness that we mistake for sophistication, that makes us believe that 'everything has been taken into consideration' and that can only be a good thing.  To quote Malcolm Gladwill's 'Blink', which is where I first read about it, “Extra information is more than useless; it’s harmful; it confuses the issues. What screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account.”

You want another?  Heuristics are better at making trades on the markets than humans.  The linked article concludes, humans will be overseeing and validating what the machine is doing, but perhaps the lesson from the Goldman Index is that humans shouldn't have the right to veto if only the algorithm sees what truly matters and filters out the noise.  But would the masters of the universe allow that?  Aren't we humans made in the image of God?  We create the machines, so how could they be more powerful than us?  Go figure.

We need a bedding in period to accept the machines, even when screwed to the floor, even as equals - a deeply unsettling idea - which is what my Wall Street story 'The Thirteenth Floor' is about, published in Third Flatiron's 'Gotta Wear Eclipse Glasses'.  Go and support a small press by buying it.

And, when you've read that, here's another two dozen.

Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Published by William Holly and available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.  

Enjoy

It was a dark and stormy knight

This year, I'm not just trying to write more, but write better.  I have a sense that my skills have plateaued.  It's been over three years since I was a Writers of the Future finalist; I've had a smattering of professional short story sales, but without any sense that I've tuned in to the editors' wavelength.  The Submissions Grinder tells me I've an acceptance rate of 2.5%.  One in forty overall - one in fifty this year - even if that is skewed by a shotgun approach to submissions, spurred on by sci-fi being a broad church and many editors explicitly saying they'll know it when they see it.

In striving to improve my craft, I've absorbed the various 'Over the Transom' editorials on AEscifi, which is, after all, exactly where I'm trying to pitch my submissions.  Using that, and the T Gene Davis pieces cited earlier, I've distilled a set of structural criteria that a story should (normally) have.  These are the marks that editors say a story should hit - or be very clear why it doesn't.

(I've said structural criteria, so I'm not including the old threesome of a great title, opening line, and paragraph, as they're not really structural.  You could have a story that fails miserably on all three and, with a few dozen very bon mots, tick them off.  Like 'It was a Dark and Stormy Knight' as a title.  You can have that one for free).

So, let me share them with you, together with an as-objective-as-I-can-be assessment of my shorts, thirty published and thirty-eight still homeless. 

Low passives & reading age

One from T Gene Davis, and the only one that can be objectively measured, in that Word spits out a variety of analytics.  For this, I've simply multiplied reading grade by the percentage of passive sentences.  So, a piece at fifth grade level, with five percent passive sentences will score a decent 25.  Looking at thirty published stories, they score 29.7; thirty-eight unpublished ones, most edited since reading that T Gene Davis piece, score 24.3.  It looks like I'm on top of that one, albeit with potential to make my writing more active and accessible.

Stakes - something to win or lose

This is one that I’ve already said I have an issue with.  On the one hand, I can see the point entirely.  If your hero doesn’t have skin in the game, then neither will your audience.  But I’m British, a nation that prefers a life of quiet desperation, hence I’m more likely to write about the frustration of lending your newspaper to a fellow traveller, hearing the snapping, rustling and tearing, and wondering about the state it’ll be returned in, than saving a planet from a black hole.   But look at Nineteen Eighty-Four: within a dystopian world, the story itself is about small personal victories and defeats, not saving the universe.  Stakes don’t need to be big to be meaningful.

For that reason, I’ve tried to be generous in deciding whether my characters have something to win or lose, with that being true for 83% of my published and 92% of my unpublished tales.  Perhaps the surprising thing is not that more than nine in ten of those searching for a home qualify - I have been writing and rewriting with this rule in mind for some months now - but that 17% of stories editors like enough to pay for don’t have much if anything at stake.

Main character has a real choice to make

In looking at my stories through this lens, I found myself making the same notation over and over: helter-skelter cliff-hanger.  Characters are tipped out of equilibrium, only to suffer a series of indignities before finally discovering their fate.  At no point in their descent into their personal hells do they get to make plans, engage in counter-strategies, or even spot a tuft of grass to hang on to.  Only at the end, when I leave them dumped on their arses, are they in a position to start their fight back.

About half of my published, and a quarter of my unpublished stories suffer from this failing, although many of my published stories are really flashes, where a lack of agency is less surprising.  In many cases, what's missing is to bring the choice front and centre, or give the story some travel time as the decision is made.  Some of them need more fundamental work, of course.

Main character changes

Another one I struggle with, and, arguably, another symptom of a single syndrome.  Fifty-seven percent of my published stories see the character or world change; only about two-thirds of the tales doing the rounds tick the box.  Again, if all I do is throw my characters in a mixer and see what happens, they haven't been given a chance to put their lives back together and emerge triumphant.

Main character has a setback

Even when I do write a three act story, all too often there's something a bit too linear about it all, a lack of twists on the road.  Problem, plan, implementation, pat on back or, more typically, banging from the inside of a coffin that's already been nailed shut.  Or else they end on the setback, needing one last rise from the ropes to knock the monster down.  Or possibly an entire third act - yes, I've spotted at least one story which qualifies as two acts in search of a third.  I've left it just when that last switchback is needed.  Maybe I don't see life as being about rising from the ropes?  Where's Freud when you need his opinion?

Even so, about four in five of my stories have something that could be described as a setback, however lame.  A decent analysis, but I do have a worry about the quality of the setbacks.  Note to self: be more cruel.

Is this a complete story?

This to me is the big one.  I recently received a very nice rejection email from Jeff Georgeson at Penumbric Speculative Fiction where he concluded, "I wanted ... more, somehow."  And that's the thing.  Essentially, I have a habit of writing act ones.  I turn characters' lives upside down, and leave them on the ceiling, without ever bothering how to get them back on the floor.  I have four 1000 to 1500 word vignettes, each of which I now see need another two acts and 3000 to 5000 words to make proper stories.  I should be pleased.  A handful of strong openings, foundations to build on.

I've scored myself 77% for published and 68% for unpublished stories.  Despite all their strengths, I think this explains why they don't fly.

Put through that mill, of my thirty-eight stories, only twenty are fit to be set loose, of which two or three are only being allowed to roam on the basis that they've been rejected by so many editors that it's only the penny-a-word merchants left, and I'd rather prioritise my time elsewhere.  Of the rest, it's mainly polishing, emphasising choices or decision points.  But there are four which require an additional two acts, one that needs a third, several where the third act needs to be rethought to make it emotionally satisfying.  A few with 'total rewrite' next to them.

Get it all right and who knows when I'll have a second one of these available?

Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Published by William Holly and available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.  

Enjoy

Reboot your pony

Delighted to say that The Overcast, who podcast 'The Trouble with Vacations' back in 2017, have picked up 'The Button at the Base of his Spine'.  Date of podcast tbc, but when it comes out, you can read along here or, indeed, here...

Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.  

Enjoy

The thin end of the Orwellian wedge

We live in the information age.  If that's news to anyone reading this, then they may also want to make a note that there's a bug going around at the moment.  It's kind of significant.

We are so overwhelmed by information, that sometimes we don't notice the weird shaped holes in the data, the stuff that should be there but isn't.  And isn't for reasons that aren't immediately apparent.  It's the thin end of the Orwellian wedge.

I stumbled over (into?) just such a hole a couple of weeks ago, when I spent an hour or so on Netflix surfing the lists.  Tiring of the echo chamber nature of Netflix's recommendation algorithms that don't understand a desire to sample something that's the polar opposite of what your eyes have been consuming recently, I went looking for a comprehensive A to Z list of what's on offer.

And, do you know what?  It doesn't exist.

I expected it to be long and slightly tedious to spot diamonds in the rough.  I expected it to be little more than title and year of release, whether it's a film, number of episodes if it's not.  Maybe a hint at genre, but possibly not as Netflix's genres get as granular as 'Spanish language films with left-handed protagonist who smokes' (I just made that up, but who knows?).

But I expected it to exist.

So, I did what any right-minded person would do: I went to customer services to have an argument.  Not a five-minute argument, the full half-hour.

Netflix Sofia:  Hey! This is Sofia:, thank you for contacting Netflix.  Do you already have an account with us?

You:  No

Netflix Sofia:  I am afraid that then it is not possible to see all the content we offer, if you want you can ask me for specific titles and I can check here if we have them available in UK

Netflix Sofia:  Or, if you have a friend or a family member that has an account with us you can always check there all the available titles

You:  My wife has an account, so I know how Netflix recommends content and how I can search for it. What I want is an A to Z list.

Netflix Sofia:  Okay, if she has an account then you can look for all the content. We do not have lists like that I am sorry.  The only way to look for the content we have is through the account

You:  Okay, but is there a complete A to Z list there? Could you confirm how to get to it because all I can find is supposedly helpful categorised lists, without even seeing a complete list of categories. Do you have a single comprehensive list anywhere? Thanks

Netflix Sofia:  No, we do not have a complete list with all the titles we offer from A to Z, I really see your point but we do not have a list with all the movies and shows we offer so the only way to look for titles is typing them or going through the genre section

You:  Could you explain the thinking behind that? I’ve never been to a restaurant that’s asked me to guess what they might have on the menu. Why not just show me a list of everything?

Netflix Sofia:  I am a customer service agent so I do not know what is the thought behind it, But I believe that for a lot of people it is handy to get the suggestions of the titles they stream on the screen, so the genre that they do not enjoy or the type of titles that they do not like won't appear for them as a suggestion.  

Netflix Sofia:  I am going to write a feedback for you so the appropriate team can take into consideration your opinion

You:  I appreciate that you’re not able to explain policy. Could you give me an email of a senior person who may be able to explain this baffling approach?

You:  I’m not sure what ‘writing a feedback’ means, but it sounds a lot like ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you’. What I would like is an email I can contact to ask why customers are refused sight of the whole menu. Thanks.

Netflix Sofia:  I am sorry but we do not have an email where to contact or speak with a manager, what we offer is our Help center. All that I can do for you is send your feedback to the appropriate team

Netflix Sofia:  I understand what you mean but these are the tools we have, a manager won't be capable to offer you a A-Z list either because we do not have those

You:  I appreciate that. I’d like a CEO or similar email so that he or she can explain why Netflix refuses to show customers the whole menu.

Netflix Sofia:  I do know how the recommendation system works, I am going to send it to you so you can check it as well with me Click Here

Netflix Sofia:  We do not have that information I am sorry, I encourage you to check our Help Center

You:  Could you give me a CEO or similar email. Thanks

You:  What’s the most senior email address you can give me so that I can take a policy question to the right place and let you get on with helping customers? Thanks

Netflix Sofia:  I do not have the email of the CEO, the tools we have here to handle recommendations and feedback is writing a report

Netflix Sofia:  I do not possess that information, I only have emails if I have to address privacy issues with accounts, that is the only email I have

Netflix Sofia:  If I had them I would have given them to you, believe me

You:  Do you have a complaints email? I’ll go through that

Netflix Sofia:  No we do not have them, but I can write a report about your issue, it is the only way it can arrive to the appropriate team so they can be aware of the customer needs

You:  So how do I make a complaint in writing? Only through you? If I wanted to complain about you (which I don’t) are you saying I would have to complain through you? They seem to have given you a crazy system to work within.

Netflix Sofia:  Yes, it would be through me as well, so you make the writing and I copy it here in a form and I have to send it to the appropriate team so they can be aware of the customer concerns

Netflix Sofia:  yes I do believe it will be easier to offer more options but unfortunately this is the only one we have at the moment

You:  Okay. I can see Netflix have provided you with a corporate stonewall here. Stay safe and thanks for the help the system allowed you to give me.

Netflix Sofia:  You too! thank you for your time and patience, have a great day ahead

Is it me, or is that a bit weird?  Just as I put it to Sofia, what restaurant won't tell you what it offers, but asks you to make suggestions before offering, 'we can do that, but with courgette instead'?  There's a reason for this, and it's not customer convenience.  Various ideas began to coalesce in my minds, mainly around Netflix's desire to increase revenue and decrease outgoings, whilst maintaining a perfectly plausible front of giving the customer whatever they desire.  

Rather than write out my rather cynical thinking here, here's the email I sent to Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings:

Mr Hastings,

I wonder if you would be able to help me or, at the very least, direct my email to somebody better able to answer my query.

I recently had a pleasant online chat with one of your customer services representatives called Sofia.  I wanted to know how to access a complete list of Netflix films and shows.  Whilst personalised recommendations are all well and good, sometimes you just want to see a list of everything that’s available.  These were the facts that I managed to establish:

·         Netflix does not publish a complete A to Z list of content

·         Sofia did not know why Netflix is unable or unwilling to do so

·         She was not able to provide me with any email address for me to find out why this is Netflix policy

·         She was unable to provide me with any email to make a complaint to (not that I wanted to; I just wanted to find out how to put something in writing with more gravity than a simple live chat, and I thought you’d have a complaints handling procedure outside live chat as a bare minimum)

·         If I wanted to complain about Sofia (which I didn’t and don’t, I hasten to add), I would have to make it through live chat… with Sofia.

(I’d also like to put on record that the option for me to be emailed a transcript of the conversation mysteriously disappeared when I selected ‘no’ to the question of whether the live chat had answered my question.  As a customer, I’d like you to fix this bug, although I appreciate you may not be so keen.)*

I find the refusal (surely not inability?) to publish a complete list of content perplexing.  I’ve never been to a restaurant where I’ve only been allowed to see selections of the menu dependent on what I like or have eaten before.  The reasons I’ve thought of are:

·         You think it’s too much information for us to cope with (I don’t think you’re than patronising)

·         You think we won’t make it very far into the list and will all be streaming things from the start of the alphabet (surely no technical issues here? plus, I’m not asking you to replace your useful personalised lists, which most people will stick with)

·         There are things on Netflix you don’t want us to find.

The sceptic in me has settled on the last of these; I assume for monetary reasons, attracting us with the sheer weight of content, but steering us towards Netflix-produced content and away from independently produced material which, I assume, you may typically pay for on a per-view basis.  However, I would be fascinated to find out the real reason (happy for you to throw in the official reason, too) as to why I am unable to access a complete A to Z list of Netflix content.  (Or did Sofia get it wrong and it is there?).

I look forward to your reply,

Regards,

Robert Bagnall

(* - in case you're wondering, being naturally paranoid, I took screenshots before the Netflix machine blanked the option of sending me a nice neat transcript)

If and when Reed (are there really people called 'Reed'? who knew!) gets back to me, I'll let you know.  I suspect that may never happen...

###

Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.  

Enjoy

Working through things - like vermin through a woodchipper

Recent times have seen a lot of us working through things.  The future of humanity, what really matters to us individually, how we can make the world a better place.  Me, I’ve been working my way through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, chronologically in story-terms, rather than release date.

The MCU falls, for me, at the overly silly, Mary Sue-heavy end of science fiction, but I’m more than happy to concede that the movies are great fun with some standout ideas and moments.  Hell, I'd probably put any of them on before Tarkovsky's Solaris.

With the exception of Guardians of the Galaxy.  Which I really can't stand, with a passion.

I watched volume 1 circa 2017, and felt an intense antipathy from the off.  I could have watched volume 2 on a plane shortly after, but elected for Get Out and Logan, so have only just caught up with it.  I think I made a couple of wise decisions, both at the time and in retrospect.

This is a personal view; I’m well aware of there being a lot of love for these movies, so the issue is me, not you.  Please don't write that I'm wrong.  I'm not wrong - but I'm not right, either.  It isn't a right or wrong thing.  It just is.

But, I thought it would be useful for my own therapy to try to work through (see what I did there?) my issues with these films, see if I can find an objective basis for the hairs standing up on the back of my neck.

That I had my tongue over both terminals of a nine volt battery, cinematically-speaking, was apparent in the first five minutes of volume 1.  So you'd think I shouldn't need to look much further than that.  It's the first paragraph and a bit on IMDB's synopsis:

On planet Earth in 1988, young Peter Quill (Wyatt Oleff) sits in the waiting room of a hospital, listening with headphones to "Awesome Mix Tape no. 1" on his Walkman. His grandpa (Gregg Henry) comes out and gets him so he can say goodbye to his mom, who is dying of cancer. His mom gives him a present and tells him his father was an angel and that Peter is just like him. She asks for his hand, but he's too scared to take it. Just then, she dies. The distraught Peter runs outside and is abducted by a spaceship.

Twenty-six years later on the planet Morag, an adult Peter Quill, a.k.a. Star-lord (Chris Pratt), is searching for a mysterious Orb whilst listening to Awesome Mix Tape no. 1. He finds the Orb and takes it out of a laser enclosure.

Where to start?  I have no issue with opening on a bit of character-informing backstory.  But the kid needs a slap.  Self-absorbed little scroat, more interested in his Walkman than anything going on around him.  First impressions count - disproportionately so - and I've taken an instant dislike to him.

Yes, you could say that he's too cut up to face the reality of his mother dying, but the cognitive bias is too strong.  Oliver refusing to support his girlfriend in similar circumstances in Richard Ayoade's 'Submarine' is, arguably, even less forgivable, but it's not the first thing you find out about him, so you judge him with some context.  Here, self-absorption is the context, and it's all I have to go on.  Sorry.

Twenty-six years later he still has the Walkman and the tape (remember when the quality of blank tape you bought mattered, I mean, really mattered, whether it was the red label Maxell or the black and gold one?  That’s up there with white dog shit as a source of nostalgia) - and it still works.  Perfectly.  Really?  It hasn't stretched or broken?  It looks mint, although we surmise that it's been his trusty companion through thick and thin.

I'm not sure there's a technical term for it (there must be - probably something German) but you can shovel the most implausible hokum into the faces of an audience, but give them something real world that can't be so, and you've lost them in a heartbeat.  Show an alien invasion force travelling faster than light to get here - that's okay.  Show them taking the Northern Line to get to Heathrow and you'll have them throwing things at the screen.

And then there's the music and the dancing.  The music just screams naff.  Music for people who don't like music.  Putting the hoover around in the 1970s music.  The bits of Radio 2 that weren't Barbara Dickson or Leo Sayer in the 1970s music.  And the dancing...  Words fail me.  It's like the film just wants to hammer home that Peter Quill is an arrested adolescent.  And I do not feel like spending some hours in the company of an arrested adolescent, not to mention vermin, a talking tree and a big feller... actually, I'll leave the big feller out of it.  He looks like he'll not take well to my views.  Oh, and the various meanings of "I'm Groot" is actually quite funny...

Maybe, if I was really rooting for Star-lord (really? with a straight face? no, I'm laughing at you, not with you), then I wouldn't care that I singularly don't care about the story.  You've found an orb.  So what?  Why's it so important to you?  What is it?  Why do you have to risk your life to get it?  A macguffin only works if you care about it because characters you care about care about it.  I don't care about the orb (hence don't really care when it turns out to be much more than your common-or-garden, orb-on-the-Clapham-omnibus orb), and you've singularly failed to make me care about Star-lord.  Hence I find myself watching two hours of explosions and action with absolutely no skin in the game whatsoever.  It's just stuff happening.  I think I had more sympathy with the people who wanted to kill him: I could see their point.

Undeserved misfortune is a classic way to ground a story.  Had Star-lord had the orb planted on him, forced him into doing something with it, I'd sympathise.  If there had been an act 1 explaining why he had to get it (not realising what 'it' actually is), I might be rooting for him.  Either way is a route out of this mess.  But if a guy tries to climb over the fence to dance with the tigers in the zoo, you'll probably be laughing as they tear his face off.  That's not too much of a stretch, analogy-wise.  Honest.

Maybe I could have warmed to these two films if Star-lord (can I stop calling him that now? it's just silly) had grown up.  But I think there's one line that perfectly encapsulates his lack of character growth and that arrested adolescent is the apogee of his development across these two films: "You shouldn't have killed me Mom and squished my Walkman."  Pathos or pathetic?  The jury's not out; they came straight back and then went home.

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Twenty-four sci-fi, slipstream and new weird stories.

Frequently absurd, often minimifidian, occasionally heroic.

Available now on amazon.com, .co.uk, .de, .fr, .es, .it, .nl, .jp, .com.br, .ca, .mx, .au, and .in.  

Enjoy