Author Archives
Tom Weiss
Murmurations, Part 1
A New Weekly Fiction Serial Begins
This is the start of a new weekly sci-fi serial running on Wednesdays
Discover A New Sci-Fi Novel in Ten Parts: Murmurations
Serial novels have a long and distinguished history.
Charles Dickens is often credited with popularizing the form, beginning with The Pickwick Papers in 1836, and many other notable authors followed in his footsteps. The Count of Monte Cristo was serialized. So was Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Heart of Darkness. Dostoyevsky wrote a serial novel. So did Tolstoy, Verne, Joyce, Hemingway, Wolfe, and King.
And now, courtesy of Liberty Island, you can add my name to the list.
Why Is Liberty Island ‘Ideological’?
ide·ol·o·gy | \ ˌī-dē-ˈä-lə-jē: a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture.
All stories are, on some level, ideological. Countless assumptions about how people should act are hard-wired into every narrative. They have to be, otherwise the story would fail to resonate.
To illustrate the concept, picture an emaciated cat, helpless and stranded on a tree limb high above the ground. Our radiant heroine hears plaintive yowling outside her house, flies out of the front door and, suppressing her innate fear of heights, climbs the tree and saves the cat. You feel good about our heroine, right?
Now reset the scene. This time, our annoyed heroine stomps into the living room, plucks her trusty shotgun from its prominent position above the fireplace, strolls outside, and unloads both barrels into the animal, which drops to the ground with a wet, sickening thud.
How do you feel about her now?
A Bonfire of Reason
A third of the way into Tom Wolfe’s classic novel of the 1980’s, The Bonfire of the Vanities, a darkly comedic scene unfolds around Assistant District Attorney Larry Kramer shortly after he starts investigating the case of Henry Lamb, a teenager who was the apparent victim of a hit-and-run.
What Remains of The Remains of the Day?
I can see myself, standing in a local video rental store, circa 1995, holding a hard plastic covered copy of and thinking, “How badly do I want to see this movie?”
Real Coffee with Scott Adams: A Review
Nothing about Scott Adams’ daily news and analysis show, Real Coffee with Scott Adams, should work.
Not especially telegenic (said the pot to the kettle), Adams would blend right in at an Upper Midwest accountant’s convention. His lilting voice – something he lost for a number of years – isn’t remarkable, and he is incapable of pronouncing some names. His show features no production value or set design to speak of. Bare wooden home office shelves adorned only with copies of his books form his backdrop.
And yet, once you start listening, it’s hard to stop.
Book Review: Disarmingly Great
According to Publishers Weekly, somewhere between 1.5 million and 18 quadrillion books are self-published every year. Technology (read: Amazon) has so lowered the publishing bar that anyone with some spare time and a Pinot-fueled hallucination can see their book listed for sale within a day or two. I’ve sampled my fair share. My Kindle library is littered with self-published stories sold at a steep discount – or free – as authors fight for eyeballs and struggle to make a name for themselves.
The overwhelming majority of these are either awful (but not in a satisfying Showgirls way) or forgettable (but not in a compelling Clive Cussler way). If I finish one, it’s out of curiosity and not the result of a compelling narrative. And I never, ever find myself thinking about one of these novels over a year later.
Enter Disarming.
Why Bridgerton Is the Most Subversive Show on Television
This review contains spoilers for Bridgerton Season 1
I wasn’t looking forward to watching Bridgerton, a new Netflix series which debuted on Christmas Day last year. I hadn’t read the novels – the show is based on Julia Quinn’s eponymous series – and was not familiar with Executive Producer Shonda Rhimes, who signed a $100 million contract with Netflix in 2017, even though everybody on the planet knows her work.
However, even if I had I been exposed to either of those things, I still wouldn’t have cared. There is no shortage of stories about priviledged British royals and their straphangers, and after a while the characters and plot lines all tend to blend together in my head. For me to want to be invested, I have to know I’m going to see something unique.
Downton Abbey accomplished this by focusing on the straphangers as much as the royals. That was interesting, and the entire series held my attention.
Bridgerton held my attention in perhaps the most subversive way possible in this day and age.
Mountain Dew Energized Doritos: Only in Australia. You Don’t Want Them Anywhere Else.
Every time I stroll through the soft drink aisle and see the brand names Coke and Pepsi lining the shelves on either side – even now, nearing the end of my fifth decade on the planet – I think about my parents. Coke, when I was a child (and still, to some degree, today) was an adult beverage. “You can’t have it,” I hear my mother’s voice echo in my head. “It has caffeine.”
Back then, I didn’t know what caffeine was. But, I knew I wanted it. So much of my youth was consumed by a longing to be older, to do what grown-ups did, to drink what they drank. And, as a result, I was primed to fall for the marketing strategy Mountain Dew employed in the 1980s.
A Podcast Review: Raven 23: Preparing for a Pardon
There has been an attempt, of sorts, in recent years to rehabilitate the reputation of four men: Evan Liberty, Dustin Heard, Nicolas Slatten, and Paul Slough. Even if you don’t know their names, you may recall the company they worked for – Blackwater Worldwide – and their connection to the 2007 deaths of fourteen Iraqis at Nisour Square in Baghdad. In 2014, after a drawn-out legal proceeding, the four were convicted and sentenced to prison.
Defenders of the foursome have, since their conviction, appeared in media outlets like Fox News or The Daily Mail, along with other, more conservative leaning media outlets like The Blaze Radio Network, The Cato Institute, and the website of former Representative Allen West. They’ve even received support from David French in the pages of National Review. This rehabilitation effort has branched out in recent months in the form of a podcast called Raven 23: A Presumption of Guilt.
