The other night, while browsing through our streaming services, looking for a movie to watch—our criteria were that it had to be “something different” from the norm, and “something good” (another very relative qualification), we stumbled upon a flick called “Vesper”. Now, whatever streaming service it was on had categorized it as “fantasy”—and to be fair, there are fantastical elements about it, in a broad sense—but after having seen it, I have to disagree; this movie was very solidly in the sci-fi genre. Why do I say so? Well, just about everything in it was based on science—biological sciences, to be exact. Especially genetic engineering, botany, and mycology. Was the science in it far-fetched enough to call it “fantasy”? I don’t think so, but you might disagree.
I haven’t given anything significant away yet. If you’d like to watch this movie and don’t want to read any spoilers, then stop here, and go watch it, because the gist of my blog post is that Yes, this is a movie worth seeing, especially if you are a fan of hard science fiction. Fair warning: The pace is a bit on the slow side, but if that doesn’t bother you too much, then you can be reassured that it’s well-made; the acting ranges from not bad at all to superb, and the writing is refreshing.
But the world-building…! Goodness. So refreshingly original! I get sooo tired of seeing the same old cookie cutter crap iterated over and over (How many times can you re-make some version of elves and dragons? Ok, fine, I can’t knock those things, as they are classics… but do you know what I mean?). Sometimes you just want to see something new; something original. Something that is NOT the same old bug-eyed aliens, the same alien invasion plot, the same “protagonist goes to space; protagonist encounters alien on ship” stuff. Those plots can work, and have many times, but now and then it’s time for fresh blood in the whole imagination pool of speculative literature, movies, shows, etc. Well, in my opinion, “Vesper”’s world-building is quite original and intriguing.
According to Vocabulary.com, “a vesper is an evening song. It also refers to evening prayers, and then it’s usually plural as vespers. Whether it’s a church service or a jazz band at sunset, if it’s in the evening, it’s a vesper.” I wasn’t thinking about any of that while watching the movie, but now it’s interesting to reflect on. I’ll have to mull it over while I write this. Already a few things about the ending come to mind. I don’t doubt they were intentional on the part of the moviemakers.
This movie may or may not be your cup of tea. There has, admittedly, been quite a dearth of **good** sci-fi movies lately, so my excitement over this one could in part be a result of hunger being the spice of life. But the uniqueness of this flick, its originality and pure creativity, make it stand out from the cookie-cutter rest, in my mind at least. Give it a go and let me know what you think in the discussion forum (link below) :-)
Well, if a US president is now legally allowed to commit any action he wants while in the office of the president without any risk of a court being able to question the motives (needing only to intertwine said action with an "official" action to meet the criteria of immunity), then I think it's time for Joe Biden to order the Justice Department to put certain supreme court justices on trial for corruption. And sexual assault, in the case of one of them (kavanaugh).
It’s a very black day for America, and for democracy in general. The supreme court’s decision (notice I’m not capitalizing that court’s name anymore, out of utter disrespect) will further embolden the likes of putin et al to cosy up with and manipulate powerful Americans who care more about personal gain than the good of the country (*clears throat* donald trump! tucker carlson! elon musk! to name a few examples).
There’s also all this extreme christian nationalism bullshit that's been happening. Books being banned by the score, various states forcing public school teachers to teach the bible (in a country where church and state have been separated for centuries), the continued onslaught against women’s rights, the persecution and prosecution of homeless people, etc etc etc. This fucking “supreme” court. It’s become a corrupt joke. It needs to be dissolved and rebuilt. I could vent more, but I should stop now, for my mental health.
Still not giving up hope, but wow. The country of my birth is looking more and more like the Taliban than anything else. Or, perhaps Gilead would be a better analogy.
Wow! I am in the middle of quite the learning curve. Last week I began recording the audiobook for my new novel, Of Time-Cracked Granite, and let me tell you, it’s proving to be significantly more challenging than I expected!
I’d always considered myself to be at least halfway decent at reading out loud, but goodness... the amount of times I’m having to repeat sentences because I’ve stumbled over my tongue or gotten the tone wrong is doing my head in!
Thankfully (in this case, anyway), I’m pretty stubborn, so have pushed through. That first day was brutal though!
It took me a few hours to set up my “recording studio” (rather ghetto-style, I realize; see the image below). This mainly involved covering as many reflective, hard surfaces as I could with blankets and pillows, so as to deaden the sound. The room has a hardwood floor, so I dropped a big fluffy one on top of it straight away.
Another (the main?) problem is the sound from the computer’s fans. I have done everything I can to isolate the microphone and separate it from that contraption, but there’s bound to be some ambient noise from it. Thank goodness for the noise reduction function, or whatever it’s called :-)
There are a couple of things I’ve been unable to do anything about: 1) the cats (hey, when they are hungry, they are hungry; Arya will even start head-butting the door if I ignore her for too long, and they both make a godawful racket when they are using the litter, which is just down the hall from my study); and 2) the fricking (ok, pardon my French, but I’m going to re-spell that -- f u c k i n g) birds. Don’t get me wrong... I love the birds. LOVE them. They are gorgeous and wonderful and endlessly fascinating. But ugh! The sulphur-crested cockatoos are loudest and most aggro, of course, but even the wattle birds are constantly carrying on in the trees and bushes just outside the window. So so so many times, I’ve been about to start narrating a sentence, and then all of the sudden, rrraawwwwwwwwwrrrrk!!! or chirrtleuput! chirrtleuput!!, and I have to wait until the bird shuts up so I can try again. And then there are the planes passing overhead. (Incidentally, this is a national park, and there used to be a law that keeps planes etc from flying through this airspace. Whatever happened to that?! Billionaire companies convinced the government that their profits were more important, no doubt... but I digress, sorry!)
Once I had the study converted to a sound studio, I got to work testing the mic. I’d already done some research in advance, so putting the microphone and Audacity (the recording program I’m using) to the right settings did not take very long. I then double-checked Audible’s and Spotify’s policies and guidelines (just in case I decide to distribute through them), and started recording the first chapter.
Zoiks. What a mammoth project I’ve undertaken! After four hours of recording, I had barely made it through half of Chapter 1, and I ended up scrapping most of that. This shit is hard!!!! Lol.
Any of you with narration experience might be laughing at me right now. Fair enough lol. I now have so much respect for people who can do it smoothly and consistently!
It has gotten easier as I’ve gone alone, and I am no longer panicking about being behind schedule. I should just make it in time, fortunately. Of course that could all go out the window if the nextdoor neighbours decide to start a massive construction project, but hey... fingers crossed they don’t.
It probably sounds like I’m whinging my arse off, but I’m not, really. I’m actually having a great time doing this. It’s some pretty cool new stuff to learn, and I am getting better at it as I go.
The main lesson I’ve learned is that audiobook narration is much more about acting than it is about reading out loud. I'm having to dig deep to make it sound halfway believable. What I find myself doing is, I close my eyes, try to imagine the scene and put myself right in the speaking character’s shoes, and go from there. Usually that helps me read more naturally.
Hopefully, I’ll be finished with the raw narration in another few days, and then I can get to work editing (which I imagine is going to be a whole ‘nother learning curve in and of itself!) Wish me luck!
So what about you? Do you have any experience with narration? With voice acting? With reading out loud? Any or all of the above? I’d love to hear about it :-) Feel free to click on the “comment / discuss” button below, which will lead you to the Otherspect Discord server where you can join the conversation. Thanks for reading! I promise I’ll get back to writing blog posts more regularly soon; I’m finally getting close to finished with all I have to do on the book.
Have a wonderful week :-)
A Javan Rhino and an Amur Leopard sat next to each other atop a steep grassy bank, gazing out over the vast muddy river as it slid inexorably from left to right. Dead though the grass was, it felt soft beneath Leopard’s bum. He stretched and flexed his claws, taking pleasure in the anchoring sensation as they pierced down into the dirt.
The sky overhead had gotten nearly as yellow as the grass; the few faint wisps of cloud were almost indistinguishable from the daily parade of smoke and fumes and soot. From far beyond the horizon, just at the edge of earshot, Leopard more felt than heard a series of chest-deep thumps followed by what he thought might have been many dozens of howls, perhaps screams.
He flattened his ears back. “Rhinoceros, my friend, something has been bugging me of late.”
“Something has been bugging me, too,” Rino yawned, ears flicking in annoyance at the relentless flies that were buzzing around her head. “And I told you, call me ‘Rhino’. We are beyond formalities, now. Everyone is.”
The yawn was contagious, and felt good to Leopard. When his relatively youthful fangs and pink palate were again hidden from view, he growled a growl that was not half as serious as the worried look in his eyes. “Fine. Rhino.”
The water oozed past, appearing almost as lifeless as the grass.
“Well? Speak, child.”
“I’m not a child anymore, remember? I’m an adult.”
“Speak, adult,” the rhinoceros corrected herself.
Leopard balked, suddenly unsure of how to word what had been on his mind over the past hours, days, weeks, months, slowly building, slowly accumulating like piles or ash or plaque.
Rhino, all wise eyes and wrinkles, glanced sideways at the young leopard, but said nothing. After a while, she returned her attention to trying to land the perfect ear-flick in the hope that it might drive off at least one of her insectile aggressors for good.
“I guess….” Leopard trailed off, then began again. “See, okay. So, what’s been on my mind is this: If the world’s ending, then… well, then what’s the point, right?”
“What’s the point in what?” Rhino turned to stare into the young feline’s eyes.
“In anything. In doing anything, I mean.”
“You mean if the world’s ending, then nothing we do will be completed, so what is the point in even trying. Right?”
Leopard nodded, feeling a mixture of relief and moroseness at having finally given voice to the angst that had been plaguing him for so many sleepless nights.
Rhino nodded and returned her gaze to the far horizon. “Well, I guess it comes down to what you are.”
“What I am?”
“Yes. What you are. We are what we do, are we not?”
Leopard shook his head. “Sure. So they say.”
“And therefore, if you do nothing, you are nothing. So why not continue to be something for as long as you possibly can?”
“So you’re saying I should keep working? Keep on doing stuff? Even though everything is so absolutely fucked?” Leopard growled. Some of his irritation stemmed from the growing ache of hunger in his belly, but only some of it.
“Indeed, Daniel Jackson. We are what we do. And so the best we can do is to keep doing and therefore being the things we love. To keep on striving forward, keep on hoping, keep on working toward a better future. A better world.”
Leopard contemplated this for a long minute. During that time, at least two bodies floated past, and possibly a third, though he couldn’t be sure; the limbs, if limbs they were, were horribly scorched. “Okay, but then what about when the end comes? Because it’s coming. I can feel it. I can smell it.” He supressed what would have been a much too kitten-like whimper.
“Well, child… adult, I mean… if the end does come, then we die falling forward rather than backward. We die doing what we do; we die as we have lived: We die ourselves. We die in hope; we die in love. And in so doing, we are that. And that, in the end, is better than the alternative of not having tried at all. See?”
“Okay,” Leopard nodded, lifting his eyes again from the oily river to the distant horizon. “So, you’re saying I shouldn’t give up. I should just keep on going, regardless of what is coming.”
“What might be coming, yes,” she soothed.
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Anytime, friend.”
Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve learned a few things.
I finally learned what it’s like to be sick with Covid. I also experienced first-hand, again, just how difficult it is to get a doctor’s appointment these days.
I learned that there actually are limits to the imagination, and that they can be felt most keenly while staring blankly at a computer screen after having been up all night racked by wave after debilitating wave of coughing fits.
I learned that “Comfortably Numb” can be introduced with a minor jig and sung in 6/8.
I learned that a trumpet can be played through a flashlight.
I learned that dolls have stories, and that “blythe” is not just a word from a Robert Burns poem.
I learned that the pick-up in my guitar is a piece of crap. But then I always suspected that.
I learned that Indo-Pacific corals are more resilient to climate change than Atlantic corals.
I learned that gravity is still gravity, but wounded pride can heal.
I learned that some people are greedy, selfish, and brazen.
I learned that some people are generous, kind, and considerate.
I learned that hot toddies taste best when you get the balance right between honey, lemon, whiskey, and cloves.
I learned that a bit of soy can take homemade egg-drop soup to the next level.
I learned that people do care, after all.
I learned that chocolate is at least as yummy today as it was yesterday.
I learned that the world is still turning, and that life goes on.
I learned that tomorrow is a new day.
What have you learned recently? :-)
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