Star Wars Holiday Special 1978

The Star Wars Special sucks, but it was created in the ethos of the Star Wars franchise.

This movie is terrible, nearly unwatchable even. I admit that I used YouTube's preview feature to jump ahead to the scenes with a star, and by star, I don't mean to include Jefferson Starship. Carrie Fisher once called the Star Wars special "a punishment from God." The score is played poorly and its association with this film cheapens otherwise great music. Chewbacca's family scenes are rage inducing--the Wookie kid is inexplicably playing with an X-Wing toy. Mark Hamill's makeup makes him look like a Ken doll. And the height of the conflict is Han Solo's combat with a lone stormtrooper.

To All Your Scattered Bodies Go - Philip Jose Farmer

In some cases, eternal life sounds like a bad deal. To All Your Scattered Bodies Go is one such place. There, death is a momentary affliction, followed by adulthood reincarnation. 

White Noise - Don DeLillo

Don DeLillo's White Noise isn't commonly thought of as sci-fi, but I maintain that not only does it fit in the genre, it's one of the more important science fictions. Two elements of the book merit closer attention: the Airborne Toxic Event and the influence of pop culture on identity.

Cold Storage - David Koepp

David Koepp is a proven screenwriting talent--he worked on the screenplay for Jurassic Park, for example. His 2019 novel, Cold Storage, returns to the Crichton canon, this time mining from Andromeda Strain. Foremost, the book operates as cli-fi, dealing with anxieties of changes to our ecosystem as a result of carbon emissions and other human activity, but it also deals with anxieties of nuclear proliferation and the diversifying of America.

How to Create Characters

Are you ready to learn how to create characters? Let's hope so, because otherwise you're way off track. 

Creating characters is integral to writing great fiction. Did you ever read a book that you loved that didn't have dynamic characters, likable or unlikable? Good characters stir our passions. We love them. We fear them. We hope they will make good decision. 

Readers identify with characters and make stories memorable. This article provides seven tips for writing characters that readers will enjoy reading, even if they are scumbags.