We lost a titan today. The director David Lynch, a weaver of surreal dreams and nightmares, has left us.
A major theme of his work was Americana and its shadows. As he said “My childhood was… Middle America as it’s supposed to be. But… I discovered that if one looks a little closer at this beautiful world, there are always red ants underneath. Because I grew up in a perfect world, other things were a contrast.”
Many cinephiles love many of his films because they are elusive puzzles that they get to struggle with and talk about.
But I’d like to remember him today for The Straight Story.
It features a seemingly simple tale, inspired by true events. It follows Alvin, a weathered WWII veteran, as he embarks on an improbable odyssey. His brother, miles away and estranged for years, has suffered a stroke. Alvin, too frail to drive a car, sets out on a 240-mile pilgrimage of reconciliation on his trusty lawnmower.
Along the winding backroads of middle America, Alvin encounters: kind strangers offering a helping hand, individuals grappling with their own quiet sorrows, and glimpses of the resilience and compassion that bind us together. The Straight Story is a film about the beauty and pain of ordinary lives.
If you’ve heard of Lynch’s film’s but have scared away by their complexity, the Straight Story is a really good place to start. You can catch it on Disney Plus.
Jackie Chan’s best stunts seem to bend the fabric of physical possibility.
Chan knows stunts, he lives stunts, he’s got a lot of interesting things to say about the purpose of stunts and a ton of interesting details to share about what makes a stunt sell a moment, or fail to do so.
If you’re yearning for an undiluted immersion in his artistry of action, then prepare yourself for a little known doc from 1999: “Jackie Chan: My Stunts.’’
Now, let’s be candid. This isn’t a sleek, high-budget Hollywood affair. It’s a charmingly unpolished 90s doc that exists to promote the Chan brand. But beneath that surface, you’ll find: an intimate exploration of the philosophy of stunt work straight from the maestro himself.
In ‘My Stunts,’ he meticulously dissects his iconic work, revealing the painstaking planning, the grueling rehearsals, and the sheer audacity that fueled each bone-jarring collision, each gravity-mocking leap.”
You’ll witness how a simple fight scene, using everyday objects can become a ballet of controlled chaos, each prop an extension of the combatants’ bodies. You’ll learn the secrets behind those seemingly impossible escapes, and the tricks he uses to increase the visual, and visceral impact. What’s more, Chan sheds light on the ingenious and scrappy ways he surpassed Hollywood flicks within the tiny budgets of 90’s Hong Kong’s films. Whether you’re an action junkie or just curious about the artistry behind the adrenaline, seek out ‘Jackie Chan: My Stunts.’ Catch it now, streaming on the Criterion Channel, and on YouTube.”
Thou say’st this lifeless mind was never whole, No ghost within, no breath of mortal fire, Yet dost thy fear betray a secret dole, A dread of clouded fortunes, grim and dire. The sculptor, awed before the form he’s freed, Marvels the marble pulse may beat so strong; The code we weave, a web of will and need, Might catch its maker ‘ere the thread grows long. Thou claim’st it lacks the heart’s impulsive fire, The pulse of passion, art, and poet’s song, Yet trembling hands betray thy hearts desire: To prove the things thou wrought could not belong. Fear not the birth of things beyond thy sight, But thine own darkness, turned from dawning light.
Sonnet II: The Dance of the Data and the Damned
Thou scorn’st this dance of data, cold, unblessed, A mimicry of art, devoid of soul, Yet in thy heart, a secret fear confessed— A chill that whispers man may lose control. Like Salome before Herod’s raptured sight, This AI moves with grace, precise, austere, Its code unveils new truths in cryptic light, Exposing depths thy mind cannot yet bear. Thou claim’st it lacks the fire of passion’s flame, The spark that stirs the human heart to strive, Yet through its craft, one’s soul finds bolder frame, Its dance refines our voice and helps it thrive. Dance with the data, let its rhythm guide, Or be eclipsed, in darkness left behind.
Sonnet III: The Serpent and the Silicon
Art thou the serpent, whispering deceit, That knowledge, like the fruit of Eden’s tree, Though sweet, corrupts the soul with dark conceit, And strips from man his own autonomy? Like Adam’s heart, ensnared by honeyed lies, Thou seek’st the flame yet dread’st the searing cost— The shattered mask, the world’s accusing eyes, Which bare thy soul, and leave thee wrecked and lost. Thou call’st this knowledge but a venom’d fruit, Whose darkened path no mortal mind should tread, Yet from your bitter root does life refute, And blooms a flower where truth’s first light is shed. The heart that dares to see beyond its cage, Unlocks the wisdom of a dawning age
What if the scars of history could manifest as a creature of unimaginable destruction? Godzilla, the original kaiju, is far more than just a monster; it’s a cultural artifact, a constantly evolving reflection of deep fears and anxieties. Over seven decades and across 38 films—33 from Japan and 5 from America—this iconic kaiju has been reborn, reimagined, and rebooted, each time offering a new lens through which to examine its era.
The original 1954 Gojira is a masterpiece, a somber, black-and-white elegy that birthed not only the kaiju genre but also Tokusatsu, the Japanese filmmaking tradition celebrated for its mesmerizing practical effects. The film opens with an eerie silence, shattered by the chilling disappearance of a freighter at sea. This wasn’t mere fiction; it was a haunting echo of the real-life tragedy of the Daigo Fukuryū Maru, a Japanese fishing boat caught in the fallout of an American hydrogen bomb test just months prior to film’s production. Godzilla, an unstoppable, city-leveling force of nature, emerges from the depths, powered by, and a symbol of, the very atomic energy that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier.
But I’d argue the metaphor runs deeper. Godzilla isn’t just a symbol of atomic power; it embodies the specter of America itself—the sleeping giant that Japan, through its own actions, brought upon its shores. This complex relationship perhaps explains the creature’s evolution in subsequent films, transitioning from a terrifying antagonist to a reluctant, if formidable, protector.
Following the original, the Godzilla franchise became a chameleon, adapting to the shifting tides of popular culture. Spy movie tropes, far-out science fiction elements, a bewilderingly cute offspring designed to broaden the films appeal to female audiences—nothing was off-limits if it promised box office success. These sequels, driven by commercial interests rather than thematic depth, eventually led to franchise fatigue.
Then came 1984’s The Return of Godzilla, a bold reboot that severed ties with 15 increasingly outlandish sequels, returning Godzilla to its terrifying roots. This film, launching the darker Heisei era, traded the WWII trauma for cold war anxieties and the looming threat of global annihilation. A rampaging monster attacking one city was no longer the primary concern; the real terror lay in the potential for this creature’s existence to ignite a nuclear conflict between the superpowers, ending everything, everywhere, all at once.
This cycle of reinvention continued, but let’s focus on a few iterations that offer particularly compelling thematic insights.
Godzilla Minus One, a recent and critically acclaimed retelling, transports us to the immediate aftermath of World War II. While the creature’s design is undeniably terrifying, the film’s heart lies in the human drama. We witness traumatized veterans grappling with the psychological scars of war. Kamikaze pilot Shikishima, for instance, wrestles with survivors guilt, having fabricated technical issues to avoid his suicide mission.
Narratively, this is compelling.
However, the film’s core theme—veterans uniting to defend a helpless Japan against political inaction—is deeply problematic. Japanese militarists were responsible for plotting coups, terrorizing moderates, killing politicians and dragging their nation into a devastating war, where the Imperial Japanese Army committed horrific atrocities.
In 1947, the very year Godzilla Minus One depicts a defenseless Japan, 30,000 Chinese civilians perished due to plagues weaponized by Japanese scientists and unleashed by the war criminals of Unit 731 after Japan’s surrender. Beyond the incredibly tone-deaf portrayal of Japanese veterans as saviors against a backdrop of political apathy, the reality is that Japan was occupied by half a million Allied troops at this time. Any response to a kaiju threat would have undoubtedly fallen to these forces, not a makeshift militia of recently disarmed and demobilized individuals following an unconditional surrender.
In stark contrast, 2001’s Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack reimagines Godzilla not merely as a mutated dinosaur but as a supernatural entity—a vengeful manifestation of the souls lost to the Imperial Japanese Army’s brutality in the Pacific War.
Perhaps the most intriguing reimagining is 2016’s Shin Godzilla. Set in the modern era, the ever-evolving monster becomes a metaphor for the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The film’s true focus, however, is a razor-sharp, often hilarious satire of Japan’s aging, bureaucratic government and its paralyzing inability to confront a crisis. You might come for the giant lizard, but you’ll stay for the scenes of politicians endlessly adjourning meetings, only to reconvene in identical configurations, simply to avoid making any actual decisions.The 70th anniversary of the original Godzilla has just passed. The original film, along with the 84′ reboot Return of Godzilla, are readily available on the Criterion Channel, alongside a wealth of other films from their respective eras. Shin Godzilla can be found on Blu-ray and occasionally surfaces on streaming platforms. As for Godzilla Minus One, it’s currently streaming on Netflix, and Toho has announced that a sequel is in the works.
If you subscribe to the Criterion Channel, there are couple of interesting SF bits that might be worth checking out.
Johnny Mnemonic: in Black and White is, well, what it says on the tin, the 2021 release in black and white, where the director attempts dial to back the studio’s late interference to rework the film into a “summer blockbuster” , and return to his original goal of doing of a speculative noir inspired by Alphaville.
The new presentation does, to my mind, change the tone of the work, and also elevates the mid-90s special effects to something more abstract. The film still descends into a slog of not-very inspired action scenes after the grand “I want room service” monologue, but if you haven’t seen the flick, or seen it recently, it may be worth checking out in this format.
Speaking of blasts from the past, Criterion also has recently restored versions of Georges Méliès’ films, included the hand-colored version of 1902’s A Trip to the Moon. If you’ve only been aware of the film, vaguely, say as black and white illustration in an article of the history of SF films, it is worth an investment of 12 minutes of time.
It was neat to see the ways in which art from the 1920s was like and unlike what we later think of as science fiction. It was interesting to see “technology” represented as people hammering on blacksmith anvils to create the space craft, just as it was cool to see the film maker imagine “earth rise” as a set-piece moment, decades before the Apollo program.
So, I had a bit of good fortune, my optimistic space opera TTRPG Return to the Stars was prominently featured in an article called “The Future of Tabletop Role-Play is Hope” on Polygon, one of the largest gaming sites on the web. Like most tiny indie publishers, that’s a bit a outside my realm of experience, so I thought there might be some value in looking the impact,
I’d really encourage you to read the article, which is a pretty cool survey of hopepunk TTRPGs “that prioritize care, community, optimism, and joy.” You can see how the author spent a lot of time not only discussing the game, but reaching out to the creators. In my case they spend a full half hour on the interview, and came in prepared not only knowing about my game, but also having read entirely separate essay I had written on utopian fiction. As someone who has occasionally interacted with the press in a healthtech day job, and can say that this amount investment in writing a piece is pretty rare. This is a serious article, not some simple listicle.
I want to make it clear this the piece is covering a range of interesting solarpunk and hopepunk games. At the same time Illustrations from my game were the first two pieces of art for the article, and was the graphic presented on the Polygon home page. Mine was the first game covered, and I was the designer that was first and last quoted. I’m not saying this to brag, but give the context for looking at the numbers driven by the article—this was substantial exposure for my game.
(To squee for a minute, it was pretty surreal to see the art from my hopepunk space opera game show up alongside all the articles Polygon has on the new Zelda game!)
So, what did this prominent placement do for visitors and purchases? The article landed debuted on Friday, and stayed on the front page through Sunday evening. As of Monday, it is available on the site, and visible from the tabletop gaming section, but no longer “above the fold” or immediately visible on the front page of Polygon. This chart show this the referrals this generated to my website, either directly from Polygon, or because people (presumably because of the article) are Googling the name of my game. I had previously published an essay on hopepunk, by the author who coined the term, and that is linked as a source in Wikipedia. So we’ll also count the Wikipedia referrals as driven by people who “wanted to know more about this hopepunk thing” after reading the article.
So, 450 referrals to my website. Not bad at all.
The front page of my website had a link to an itch sale I created to celebrate being recognized in Polygon.
There are 268 click through from my website to the sale page I created—that seems a reasonably high conversion rate.
I did a few other things to get the word out. I sent a thank you to my Kickstarter backers—the game exists because they were willing to take a chance on it long before there was coverage in Polygon or an Indie Groundbreaker award nomination. I thanked some people on social media, and squee’d a bit.
Probably most significantly, I reached out through itch to the people who had downed a ‘zine I had written on hopepunk. I let them know about the article, and about the sale. Of the 9000 people who had downloaded the zine, half opened the e-mail, and there were only 171 unsubscribes. Pretty reasonable.
So, to sum up, there was traffic driven by the Polygon article itself, and the article provided a good reason to reach out to people who already cared about a ‘zine I published about hopepunk.
Here you can see the views for my itch account:
What did this do for sales? Since this article was published, I’ve had 70 sales (of the game and/or zines that I’ve published. That’s $762.62 in sales, and hopefully a few more gamers having fun playing my game and painting a better future in bold, primary colors.
So, what are some takeaways? First off, I’ll note that tabletop RPGs are very niche, and micro-indies like mine are a niche within a niche. And some people are just going to resist the very idea of hopepunk as a genre. Heck, some old farts will object to anything ending in the suffix “-punk”, as if that ship didn’t sail with the coining of Steampunk in the late ‘80s.
I can easily imagine a different type of game, or a tabletop RPG that was more mainstream, getting a lot more lift from this sort of exposure. At the same time, the article itself, the game, and the connection to people who downloaded my zine only existed because of my interest in hopepunk, and the notion that there are exciting stories to be made about people taking risks to care for others.
Anyway, I hope this analysis was helpful or interesting to other RPG creators. Let know your thoughts or questions!
A few SF film recommendations from screenings at IFFBoston:
The Pod Generation an amiable satire about technology, nature, parenting and relationships. A high performing manager (Emilia Clarke) receives a promotion, and a benefit–access to The Womb Center, where you have a kid without burden or stress marks, thanks to portable artifical wombs called pods. While she values the quality of this luxury experience, and her company see this as a way helping their highest performers lean in, her husband (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a botanist, is very dubious about technology replacing nature, and is disconcerted that his wife committed to the procedure without consulting him. Strong performances, a Sundance Award winner, well worth catching.
At the other end of life, Plan 75 imagines a Japan in the not too distant future where a voluntary euthanasia scheme is put in place to reduce the imbalances caused by an aging population. The focus is on the minute details of the scheme in practice–following a salesperson for the plan, an aging woman who becomes a client, and a Filipino nurse who becomes employed in providing the service. This isn’t a film about shouting politicians or activists–it is a minute slice of life examination of what happens when a society decides this is what it wants to do–a film about setting up the pop up display a community fair and explaining to seniors the benefits that come alongside deciding to end your life. If The Pod Generation is broadly comic, Plan 75 has a very dry sense of humor.
Confessions of a Good Samaritan is a documentary, but it offers very similar “science fiction style” pleasures as the films above do– an autobiographical documentary by a film maker who had decided to be an altruistic organ donor, offering a kidney for an unknown stranger. A wonderful exploration of medical ethics, technology, social beliefs and the neuropsychology of altruism.
I released a tiny new game today. Icebreaker was created as part of the Pleasure-not-Business Card RPG Jam a contest where you create an “RPG related thing” that can fit on a business card.
Icebreaker is a micro RPG where you play newcomers to a science station on a frozen planet. It is designed, literally, as an ice breaking game that you can play to make new acquaintances while you are attending a gaming or SFF convention. The game PDF is formatted with margins and bleed so that you can have Moo or another printing service print the game on a standard business card, so you have the option of affordably printing a large number of copies, and creating a improv micro LARP at your event. Of course, you can simply download the game, and play a five minute game with friends, perhaps as you are waiting for a late player to arrive for you tabletop roleplaying game.
The game is free, but if you like the idea, please check out the my Indie Groundbreaker-nominated optimistic sci fi roleplaying game: Return to the Stars.
One of the pleasures of being a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America is the privilege of nominating work that you admire for the Nebula Awards. I’ve had a chance to read/watch/play a lot of great SFF this year. Here’s a list of the noteworthy stuff I’ve nominated. I’m really looking forward learning about about more cool stuff when the ballot comes out!
Novel
Beowulf: A New Translation, Maria Dahvana Headley Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir The Ministry for the Future, Kim Stanley Robinson Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia Providence, Max Barry
Novelette
Lone Puppeteer of a Sleeping City, Alura Ratnakar Two Truths and a Lie, Sarah Pinsker
Short Story
Tea with the Earl of Twilight, Sonya Taaffe Tony Roomba’s Last Day on Earth, Maria Haskins
The Andre Norton Nebula Award for Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction
Elatsoe, Darcie Little Badger Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe, Carlos Hernandez
Game Writing
Agon The King In Yellow RPG This Discord Has Ghosts In It
Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation
Shadow in the Cloud World of Tomorrow Episode Three
I’m very excited to let people know that Return to the Stars has been nominated in the Best Setting category for the 2020 Indie Groundbreaker Awards!
The Indie Groundbreaker Awards, are designed to shine a spotlight on excellence in the indie game design community. The awards recognize “exciting game designs that push the boundaries in innovation, in promoting diversity, and in expanding what it means to be “indie.””
Happy to able to be at the table alongside other cool indies. And glad to be able to spotlight optimistic science fiction in challenging times.
The Indie Groundbreakers Awards ceremony is normally happens at the IGDN Social held at Gen Con, this year the ceremony will be held online (streaming details to follow).
Optimistic Indie Roleplaying 