The Making of Star Wars by J.W. Rinzler / review by Jacob Edwards

A mile-long star ship, an alien cantina and a dogfight in space. Everything else is detail.

Anybody who by 1977 had been associated with SF being made for either the small or the big screen would attest that Star Wars (later subtitled: A New Hope) changed everything. It is perhaps difficult to appreciate the enormity of Star Wars’ impact in retrospect of all the flashy SF and CGI-driven fluff that has come after – one would have to judge the movie only in the context of filmmaking to that point in time; which, like requiring a jury to disregard evidence, is asking the impossible – but even those who were born too late to experience Star Wars upon its original cinematic release perhaps will have found themselves drawn into watching it on DVD (often several times) or habitually whensoever it is shown on television, commercials and all. The franchise nowadays is taken for granted, as are the visual effects for which Star Wars was the forerunner, yet in its day the movie was an unprecedented phenomenon – as suddenly huge as it was unexpected – and weighing in at 362 large, glossy pages (28cm x 26cm), the majority of which are resplendent with production photographs, artwork and designs, J.W. Rinzler’s The Making of Star Wars (Aurum Press, 362pp; 2013; first published: Ebury Press, 2007) both establishes the cinematic milieu in which George Lucas’s film was made and goes a long way towards fostering an appreciation of its significance. Drawing for the most part on rediscovered interviews that Lucasfilm vice-president Charles Lippincott had conducted between 1975 and 1978 for a “making of…” book that went unwritten, Rinzler promises his readers a host of contemporaneous recollections and thence the definitive account of Star Wars both as it unfolded and as it was perceived shortly after completion, before the effects of its trailblazing became fully evident: in other words, the inside story of a history that was still very much in the making.

Lucy / review by Stephen Theaker

Sorry to say it, but Lucy would be a better film if Morgan Freeman’s scenes were cut. It’s no fault of the actor: his character’s lecture on accessing the full potential of the human brain is so daft that if I’d been watching on TV I’d have changed the channel. In the cinema, I got through it by deciding that this film takes place on an Earth where animals really do use only a few percentage points of their brains – though why would evolution encourage them to do so? – and human brains are similarly wasted.

Infidel by Kameron Hurley / review by Tim Atkinson

There’s nothing this reviewer better enjoys than returning to an author and finding that they’ve upped their game. Compared to God’s War, Kameron Hurley’s still striking debut, its sequel Infidel is better in every respect.

While the former foundered a little under the weight of its baroque world-building, Infidel returns to the same setting to tell a story. And by revisiting much the same cast, building on what has gone before, Hurley shows that she can invest these characters with depth and moral complexity.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 / review by Douglas J. Ogurek

Games shift from arena to conference room as heroine juggles public persona with personal quandary

Director Francis Lawrence had his work cut out for him with The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, the first of the two-part conclusion to The Hunger Games series. He had to adapt the first (and more subdued) half of the final novel in Suzanne Collins’s trilogy into a film that maintains the viewer’s attention and builds tension without stealing the show from the finale.

Daredevil by Mark Waid, Vol. 1 / review by Stephen Theaker

Mark Waid applies a soft reboot to the Man Without Fear, referencing the dark stories of previous years but permitting Matt Murdock to make a conscious decision to let it go and make a fresh start. Yes, his secret identity made the news, but who believes what they see on the news any more? Taking new cases when there’s a media brouhaha is tricky, but Matt and loyal legal partner Foggy Nelson decide to work behind the scenes, coaching litigants in person, and that leads Daredevil into encounters with new enemies. To someone who has read the headline Daredevil stories – like those by Frank Miller, Kevin Smith and Brian Michael Bendis – without digging deep into the back catalogue, this felt like a novel take on the character. Less grubby than usual, with a bright colour palette and a good deal of humour; Daredevil’s a supersniffer, so he wants Foggy eating fresh food instead of Wotsits. With its acrobatic and cheerful but still-damaged hero, strong design sense, and science adventure elements, Waid’s Daredevil is reminiscent of Mike Allred’s Madman, though it’s a bit less poppy and zany. The writing and art are clever and imaginative, the stories showing the many uses to which the blind superhero can put his supersensory powers, and the artists, Marcos Martin and Paolo Rivera, finding many clever ways to show how those powers work – the cover being a good example. It’s nice to see Daredevil dragged out of the doldrums and having some fun.  ***

Ten reasons I failed at Nanowrimo this year…

Disappointingly, I didn’t finish my November novel this year. Never mind, I wrote about a third of it and got nine chapters done, so it’ll run for two years as a serial in TQF before I have to decide what happens next! Why did I fail? Let’s investigate. I write this mainly for my own reference next year, so I don’t make the same mistakes again.

1. I just didn’t spend long enough working on it. That’s always the main reason. Everything else is just detail. Was it really wise to buy Grand Theft Auto V in the middle of the month? Could I not have gone a month without watching Two and a Half Men or The Big Bang Theory? Did I need to read sixteen books and graphic novels?

2. My structure was too bitty. My novel was to be made up of thirty self-contained episodes, one to be written a day. Making them so self-contained will be great for when they run in the magazine, but it meant each chapter needed much more thought than my daft novels usually do.

3. I tried writing a novel in the present tense. For the first time. I was trying to create a sense of excitement and immediacy (inspired in part by reading Lavie Tidhar’s The Violent Century). But I kept forgetting and slipped into the past tense over and over, and had to go back through what I’d just written to change the tense.

4. The writing never became routine. All month I was trying to carve out space for writing my new novel instead of it being set aside from the beginning. I never developed any good habits. In the run-up to the 2013 event I had written at least 250 words a day for the previous 73 days, and it wasn’t hard to ramp that up a bit for November.

5. I didn’t do enough in October to clear my (hobby) desk. I didn’t get TQF49 finished till November, and out of some daft sense of duty I took on issue thirteen of the perpetually accident-prone BFS Journal instead of putting my own project first. I’m going to be a bit more selfish about my time in 2015.

6. I let my writing muscles go cold. After the first week, I decided to work extremely hard on everything else I do so that I could take the last week off to write my novel, but that meant that by the time I reached the last week I was worn out from working so hard and hadn’t done any writing of any kind, not even reviews or blog posts, for weeks.

7. I faffed about too much deciding where to write and what to write on. I love writing in Daedalus Touch on my iPad, but my series one iPad doesn’t get many updates any more and the app is unreliable. I got into a terrible mess when it synced to Dropbox and added duplicate versions of my chapters. Next year it’s Scrivener all the way, except when I’m out and about. If I feel like a change I can always use Word to edit the Scrivener files.

8. My idea was almost too good (by my standards). I liked it so much that I didn’t want to spoil it, and spent ages thinking about how to fulfill its potential instead of just getting on with it and writing the usual gubbins.

9. I’ve let my typing get rusty and lazy. I need to find my copy of Mavis Beacon, or buy a new one, because I’ve developed some bad habits. One of my little fingers isn’t pulling its weight.

10. My sleeping patterns were all wrong. At the moment I get up early and go to bed early, but a couple of lonely hours last thing at night are better for writing than a couple of hours in the morning with the children.

But never mind! I’ll do better next year. Because I’ll read this blog post. (Hi Stephen of 2015! Don’t make the mistakes I did. Regards, Stephen of 2014. xoxo)

If you finished your own novel last month, well done! If you didn't, don't be downhearted. Buy a new notebook and leave it on your desk. Won't be long before you start thinking of new ideas to put in it.

Wednesday is occasionally list day on the blog, and this is list #18.

Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe / review by Stephen Theaker

Not to be confused with the book of critical writings by the same name about the same author, Shadows of the New Sun (Tor, hb, 416pp) is an anthology of fiction celebrating the work of Gene Wolfe. Two of his own stories bookend the collection. In “Frostfree” Roy Tabak gets home to find a new refrigerator with unusual capabilities has been delivered. The story develops in interesting directions, but in itself isn’t quite enough to demonstrate why Wolfe is the kind of writer to deserve a tribute. Closing story “Sea of Memory” is more reminiscent of the work for which he is lauded. Adele is helping to build a colony, but memories are foggy and time seems strangely confused. The conclusion disappoints, but the disorientation is convincing.