The story begins with Gene Starwind and his friend and business partner Jim Hawking. Jim is a child but don't think for a second that gene is Jim's father figure at all, Jim is the mature and responsible one who has to keep Gene in line. They run Starwind-Hawking Enterprises, a very loosely defined fix-it company, by which they mean they'll fix any problem you can pay them for. Gene mostly gets work as a bounty hunter, but he takes any job, especially if it's from a pretty girl, a fact which sets everything in motion. A pretty woman appraoches Gene to escort her back to her spaceship and he agrees. What Gene doesn't know is that she is Hilda the Outlaw and her ship is the XGP15A-II and Hilda needs an escort because she stole it and an android named Melfina from the Kei Pirates who want their stuff back and will kill her to get it. Unfortunately for Gene, despite his best efforts to protect Hilda, she is killed before she can explain anything. The good news is the spaceship has an AI named Gilliam, the bad news is both Gilliam and Melfina lack any memory of what exactly they are or why they were created and now the only person who knew is dead and Gene is now in possession of the two most powerful pieces of technology in the universe and he has no idea what to do with either of them except to travel around space in what he has dubbed the "Outlaw Star" and expand Starwind-Hawking Enterprises. Did I mention Gene has a phobia about space so this is the worst possible situation? And it gets worse, first he meets Aisha Clan-Clan of the Ctarl-Ctarl(a race of cat people who we learn can shapeshift into tigers and are also super strong in humanoid form) who wants to claim the spaceship for her empire, but fortunately isn't quite bright enough to actually succeed in stealing the ship.It doesn't help that Gilliam has imprinted Gene as the captain and refuses to permit anyone on board without captain's approval, so Aisha can't get on board until she gets accepted into the crew. Still, in typical feline fashion, she claims she succeeded in getting the ship and allows the others to stay on as crew, and anyone who shares their home with a cat totally gets what that's about, I know I do. Then there's Twilight Assassin Suzuka, who the crew first meets when Gene takes a job as bodyguard for Fred Luo, a flamboyant(read: super gay, particularly for Gene) and wealthy man who has access to the technology to maintain the Outlaw Star and trades it for favors, always hoping for something Gene won't give because he's in love with Melfina. Suzuka looks like a geisha samurai and wields a wooden sword and Fred is the first target she ever fails to kill and Gene is the only opponent who survives combat with her. They cross paths several times before Suzuka realizes the Kei Pirates are after him and she has her own score to settle with them and also joins the crew. So, with the crew assembled, we discover the truth is that the XGP15A-II was created by a govenment scientist named Nguyen(pronounced "Gwen") Khan in cooperation with the Kei Pirates, which means he can't just report the theft because it was never supposed to exist in the first place. So now we find out the truth, the ship was designed to find the Galactic Ley Line and Melfina is the navigator that can locate it. For most of the series, we're not sure what this means, but it's very important, enough that everyone is fighting over it. As Khan and the Kei Pirates fight over the fate of the universe, Gene and his crew are caught in the middle and end up going after the line just to see what the big deal is. For once I won't ruin the ending, but I highly recommend watching. It was released on DVD last year and advertised on Toonami. I leave you now with the ending theme, which is hauntingly beautiful, even more when you see the episode where Melfina sings it.
7th Moon
Friday, April 25, 2014
Outlaw Star
OMG! how did I forget to cover this one before? Okay, Outlaw Star was an awesome anime, though very underappreciated. It premiered on Toonami in the Golden Age of Dragon Ball Z and aired right after it. It was the anime that most inspired 7th Moon because it showed that sci-fi and fantasy could exist side by side. It is a universe where samurai, ninja, and taoist sorcerors exist alongside aliens, mutants and cyborgs, and nobody seems to think it's wierd at all. In fact, the story kind of revolves around an overlap between the magic and technology, which brigns us to my synopsis/review.
The story begins with Gene Starwind and his friend and business partner Jim Hawking. Jim is a child but don't think for a second that gene is Jim's father figure at all, Jim is the mature and responsible one who has to keep Gene in line. They run Starwind-Hawking Enterprises, a very loosely defined fix-it company, by which they mean they'll fix any problem you can pay them for. Gene mostly gets work as a bounty hunter, but he takes any job, especially if it's from a pretty girl, a fact which sets everything in motion. A pretty woman appraoches Gene to escort her back to her spaceship and he agrees. What Gene doesn't know is that she is Hilda the Outlaw and her ship is the XGP15A-II and Hilda needs an escort because she stole it and an android named Melfina from the Kei Pirates who want their stuff back and will kill her to get it. Unfortunately for Gene, despite his best efforts to protect Hilda, she is killed before she can explain anything. The good news is the spaceship has an AI named Gilliam, the bad news is both Gilliam and Melfina lack any memory of what exactly they are or why they were created and now the only person who knew is dead and Gene is now in possession of the two most powerful pieces of technology in the universe and he has no idea what to do with either of them except to travel around space in what he has dubbed the "Outlaw Star" and expand Starwind-Hawking Enterprises. Did I mention Gene has a phobia about space so this is the worst possible situation? And it gets worse, first he meets Aisha Clan-Clan of the Ctarl-Ctarl(a race of cat people who we learn can shapeshift into tigers and are also super strong in humanoid form) who wants to claim the spaceship for her empire, but fortunately isn't quite bright enough to actually succeed in stealing the ship.It doesn't help that Gilliam has imprinted Gene as the captain and refuses to permit anyone on board without captain's approval, so Aisha can't get on board until she gets accepted into the crew. Still, in typical feline fashion, she claims she succeeded in getting the ship and allows the others to stay on as crew, and anyone who shares their home with a cat totally gets what that's about, I know I do. Then there's Twilight Assassin Suzuka, who the crew first meets when Gene takes a job as bodyguard for Fred Luo, a flamboyant(read: super gay, particularly for Gene) and wealthy man who has access to the technology to maintain the Outlaw Star and trades it for favors, always hoping for something Gene won't give because he's in love with Melfina. Suzuka looks like a geisha samurai and wields a wooden sword and Fred is the first target she ever fails to kill and Gene is the only opponent who survives combat with her. They cross paths several times before Suzuka realizes the Kei Pirates are after him and she has her own score to settle with them and also joins the crew. So, with the crew assembled, we discover the truth is that the XGP15A-II was created by a govenment scientist named Nguyen(pronounced "Gwen") Khan in cooperation with the Kei Pirates, which means he can't just report the theft because it was never supposed to exist in the first place. So now we find out the truth, the ship was designed to find the Galactic Ley Line and Melfina is the navigator that can locate it. For most of the series, we're not sure what this means, but it's very important, enough that everyone is fighting over it. As Khan and the Kei Pirates fight over the fate of the universe, Gene and his crew are caught in the middle and end up going after the line just to see what the big deal is. For once I won't ruin the ending, but I highly recommend watching. It was released on DVD last year and advertised on Toonami. I leave you now with the ending theme, which is hauntingly beautiful, even more when you see the episode where Melfina sings it.
The story begins with Gene Starwind and his friend and business partner Jim Hawking. Jim is a child but don't think for a second that gene is Jim's father figure at all, Jim is the mature and responsible one who has to keep Gene in line. They run Starwind-Hawking Enterprises, a very loosely defined fix-it company, by which they mean they'll fix any problem you can pay them for. Gene mostly gets work as a bounty hunter, but he takes any job, especially if it's from a pretty girl, a fact which sets everything in motion. A pretty woman appraoches Gene to escort her back to her spaceship and he agrees. What Gene doesn't know is that she is Hilda the Outlaw and her ship is the XGP15A-II and Hilda needs an escort because she stole it and an android named Melfina from the Kei Pirates who want their stuff back and will kill her to get it. Unfortunately for Gene, despite his best efforts to protect Hilda, she is killed before she can explain anything. The good news is the spaceship has an AI named Gilliam, the bad news is both Gilliam and Melfina lack any memory of what exactly they are or why they were created and now the only person who knew is dead and Gene is now in possession of the two most powerful pieces of technology in the universe and he has no idea what to do with either of them except to travel around space in what he has dubbed the "Outlaw Star" and expand Starwind-Hawking Enterprises. Did I mention Gene has a phobia about space so this is the worst possible situation? And it gets worse, first he meets Aisha Clan-Clan of the Ctarl-Ctarl(a race of cat people who we learn can shapeshift into tigers and are also super strong in humanoid form) who wants to claim the spaceship for her empire, but fortunately isn't quite bright enough to actually succeed in stealing the ship.It doesn't help that Gilliam has imprinted Gene as the captain and refuses to permit anyone on board without captain's approval, so Aisha can't get on board until she gets accepted into the crew. Still, in typical feline fashion, she claims she succeeded in getting the ship and allows the others to stay on as crew, and anyone who shares their home with a cat totally gets what that's about, I know I do. Then there's Twilight Assassin Suzuka, who the crew first meets when Gene takes a job as bodyguard for Fred Luo, a flamboyant(read: super gay, particularly for Gene) and wealthy man who has access to the technology to maintain the Outlaw Star and trades it for favors, always hoping for something Gene won't give because he's in love with Melfina. Suzuka looks like a geisha samurai and wields a wooden sword and Fred is the first target she ever fails to kill and Gene is the only opponent who survives combat with her. They cross paths several times before Suzuka realizes the Kei Pirates are after him and she has her own score to settle with them and also joins the crew. So, with the crew assembled, we discover the truth is that the XGP15A-II was created by a govenment scientist named Nguyen(pronounced "Gwen") Khan in cooperation with the Kei Pirates, which means he can't just report the theft because it was never supposed to exist in the first place. So now we find out the truth, the ship was designed to find the Galactic Ley Line and Melfina is the navigator that can locate it. For most of the series, we're not sure what this means, but it's very important, enough that everyone is fighting over it. As Khan and the Kei Pirates fight over the fate of the universe, Gene and his crew are caught in the middle and end up going after the line just to see what the big deal is. For once I won't ruin the ending, but I highly recommend watching. It was released on DVD last year and advertised on Toonami. I leave you now with the ending theme, which is hauntingly beautiful, even more when you see the episode where Melfina sings it.
Friday, April 18, 2014
Blue Exorcist, "I'm gonna kick Satan's ass!"
Blue Exorcist is my new favorite anime on Toonami. It feels like a throwback to classic bishonen that I haven't seen in a while. I mean, the big three started that way, but they've kind of strayed, and it's refreshing to see someone get back to basics, at least for now until they go silly too. But Blue Exorcist has something the others don't, RPG character classes! But I'm getting ahead of myself, let's start at the beginning, by which I mean the first four episodes, because the first two episodes don't really really give you a good feel and episode three is all transition, so it's not until episode four that we really have any idea what's going on.
Blue Exorcist focuses on the brothers Okumara, Rin and Yukio. They are orphans raised in a monastery, twins as different as can be, total opposites, Goofus and Gallant. Yukio is preparing to attend a prestigious private school while Rin is looking to hold the same part time job for more than one day. Rin gets a job at a grocery store and struggles, failing at everything until he gives a hand with the free samples and finds his one skill seems to be cooking and he can prepare samples that keep customers happy. His boss tells him he can come back tomorrow and his family is proud of him. It's kind of sad though, that they tell Rin that they will celebrate him getting the ever-elusive second day at the same job along side Yukio getting into True Cross Academy. The only thing sadder than how obviously lower the standards are for Rin is that he is genuinely happy, not because he's too stupid to realize it's kind of an insult, but because he realizes he's the screw up and he's relieved to actually do something right for the first time in his life. Sadly this happy ending to a mundane story does not last. Rin sees a little girl complaing about being harrassed by a little monster that only she and Rin can see. Rin tries to help her by getting rid of the monster but he just ends up looking like a fool and gets fired. On the way home he is accosted by a gang, and the leader suddenly grows horns and fangs and his voice gets a deep echo, identifying himself as a demon who will bring Rin to his father Satan. Rin has absolutely no idea what's going on and his adoptive father shows up and exorcises the demon attacking Rin. Changing over to the second episode, Rin learns that he is the son of Satan and that demons will be coming for him now, and the powers he inherited have been sealed with a sword that will allow him to be an ordinary human as long as it's not drawn from it's sheath. Rin's father, Shiro, makes a mistake in how he words this information leading Rin to feel he was never loved and storms off saying "You're not my father! Stop pretending that you are!" Shiro's heart breaks hearing this and the devil takes advantage of his moment of weakness by possessing him. It turns out shiro has been holding off possession by Satan by sheer willpower to protect the brothers and hearing Rin's cruel words caused him to falter long enough to allow a demon invasion. Interestingly, all the clergy are exorcists with special powers to fight the demons. In the midst of this, Satan, speaking through Shiro, tries to get Rin to go to Gehenna, his realm. Shiro manages to get control long enough to sacrfice himself to stop Satan "Rin is my son, I won't let you have him!" are Shiro's last words. Satan desperately opens a portal hoping to drag Rin to Hell, but Rin draws the demon-slaying sword to cut the ties that bind the portal and stop the demon invasion. At Shiro's funeral, Rin calls a number that Shiro said would provide him with help. The call is answered by Mephisto Pheles who says that he and his team of exorcists are here to eliminate Rin. Rin has three options, "Kill the exorcists, be killed, or surrender." Rin replies that he wants to join the exorcists, and when asked why he says the best line ever "I'm gonna kick Satan's ass!"
In the third episode, Rin is invited to join True Cross Academy with his brother Yukio. Rin is told there is a secret school for exorcists and he will be going there. Rin has learned that while he and Yukio are in fact twin brothers, only Rin inherited Satan's power and Yukio, despit having the same parentage, has no demon traits of his own. Rin believes his brother is innocent and this is all his problem to deal with alone-until he finds out that Yukio is his first instructor at the Cram School for exorcists. There is a breif moment of tension where it could go all Inuyasha where one brother hates the other, Yukio could envy his brother's power or hate him for destroying their family, but instead they get it all out of their system while fighting goblins that Rin accidentally summoned and very quickly settle down and allow their brotherly love to overcome all. It turns out when you spend your whole life growing up with your brother, a little thing like learning one of you is Satan's heir and the other is a prodigy demon slayer and you should be mortal enemies by nature isn't enough to erase all that came before.
The next few episodes introduce the supporting cast, including Shiemi, a shy young girl who can tame plant demons, Ryuji, a rival for Rin who also wants to "kick Satan's ass" for destroying his temple, his two cronies, Renzo and Konekomaru, who surprisingly are quite friendly with Rin despite how much their de facto leader seems to hate him, and Izumo, another demon tamer who is basically a bitch. I mean, I guess the girl has her reasons, but she somes off as a pretentious bitch, but even her familiars don't buy it and it takes time for her to even get control of them. What is most interesting right now is the fact that they are each choosing specialties that sound like classes in an MMORPG. Rin is leaning towards Knight(tank) because of his sword, Yukio is a Dragoon(damage dealer) and a Doctor(healer), Shiemi and Izumo are Tamers(crowd control/buff) Ryuji and his cronies want to be Arias(debuff spellcaster) which seem the most boring because theyjust recite scriptures to dispatch demons, though it does prove effective. Last week they even referred to their group as a party, which lads me to expect that the next episode will deal with HP/MP/GP/XP. Seriously, even though I joke about how cheesy it is at this stage, I am very curious to see where they go with this because it's not entirely different from my approach to 7th Moon and it will indicate how receptive audiences will be to my project. Also, this is some funny stuff, and funny on purpose because it's witty. I mean, there is just no end to the amount of humor you can get out of reluctant demonspawn who have no evil inclinations and desire only to help people rather than hurt them. If I did a good job of letting you know how cool this show is, tune in at 1:30AM on Toonami Saturday nights and check it out. If I didn't sell you on it, watch anyway to decide for yourself and tweet about your favorite arts with #BlueExorcist.
Blue Exorcist focuses on the brothers Okumara, Rin and Yukio. They are orphans raised in a monastery, twins as different as can be, total opposites, Goofus and Gallant. Yukio is preparing to attend a prestigious private school while Rin is looking to hold the same part time job for more than one day. Rin gets a job at a grocery store and struggles, failing at everything until he gives a hand with the free samples and finds his one skill seems to be cooking and he can prepare samples that keep customers happy. His boss tells him he can come back tomorrow and his family is proud of him. It's kind of sad though, that they tell Rin that they will celebrate him getting the ever-elusive second day at the same job along side Yukio getting into True Cross Academy. The only thing sadder than how obviously lower the standards are for Rin is that he is genuinely happy, not because he's too stupid to realize it's kind of an insult, but because he realizes he's the screw up and he's relieved to actually do something right for the first time in his life. Sadly this happy ending to a mundane story does not last. Rin sees a little girl complaing about being harrassed by a little monster that only she and Rin can see. Rin tries to help her by getting rid of the monster but he just ends up looking like a fool and gets fired. On the way home he is accosted by a gang, and the leader suddenly grows horns and fangs and his voice gets a deep echo, identifying himself as a demon who will bring Rin to his father Satan. Rin has absolutely no idea what's going on and his adoptive father shows up and exorcises the demon attacking Rin. Changing over to the second episode, Rin learns that he is the son of Satan and that demons will be coming for him now, and the powers he inherited have been sealed with a sword that will allow him to be an ordinary human as long as it's not drawn from it's sheath. Rin's father, Shiro, makes a mistake in how he words this information leading Rin to feel he was never loved and storms off saying "You're not my father! Stop pretending that you are!" Shiro's heart breaks hearing this and the devil takes advantage of his moment of weakness by possessing him. It turns out shiro has been holding off possession by Satan by sheer willpower to protect the brothers and hearing Rin's cruel words caused him to falter long enough to allow a demon invasion. Interestingly, all the clergy are exorcists with special powers to fight the demons. In the midst of this, Satan, speaking through Shiro, tries to get Rin to go to Gehenna, his realm. Shiro manages to get control long enough to sacrfice himself to stop Satan "Rin is my son, I won't let you have him!" are Shiro's last words. Satan desperately opens a portal hoping to drag Rin to Hell, but Rin draws the demon-slaying sword to cut the ties that bind the portal and stop the demon invasion. At Shiro's funeral, Rin calls a number that Shiro said would provide him with help. The call is answered by Mephisto Pheles who says that he and his team of exorcists are here to eliminate Rin. Rin has three options, "Kill the exorcists, be killed, or surrender." Rin replies that he wants to join the exorcists, and when asked why he says the best line ever "I'm gonna kick Satan's ass!"
In the third episode, Rin is invited to join True Cross Academy with his brother Yukio. Rin is told there is a secret school for exorcists and he will be going there. Rin has learned that while he and Yukio are in fact twin brothers, only Rin inherited Satan's power and Yukio, despit having the same parentage, has no demon traits of his own. Rin believes his brother is innocent and this is all his problem to deal with alone-until he finds out that Yukio is his first instructor at the Cram School for exorcists. There is a breif moment of tension where it could go all Inuyasha where one brother hates the other, Yukio could envy his brother's power or hate him for destroying their family, but instead they get it all out of their system while fighting goblins that Rin accidentally summoned and very quickly settle down and allow their brotherly love to overcome all. It turns out when you spend your whole life growing up with your brother, a little thing like learning one of you is Satan's heir and the other is a prodigy demon slayer and you should be mortal enemies by nature isn't enough to erase all that came before.
The next few episodes introduce the supporting cast, including Shiemi, a shy young girl who can tame plant demons, Ryuji, a rival for Rin who also wants to "kick Satan's ass" for destroying his temple, his two cronies, Renzo and Konekomaru, who surprisingly are quite friendly with Rin despite how much their de facto leader seems to hate him, and Izumo, another demon tamer who is basically a bitch. I mean, I guess the girl has her reasons, but she somes off as a pretentious bitch, but even her familiars don't buy it and it takes time for her to even get control of them. What is most interesting right now is the fact that they are each choosing specialties that sound like classes in an MMORPG. Rin is leaning towards Knight(tank) because of his sword, Yukio is a Dragoon(damage dealer) and a Doctor(healer), Shiemi and Izumo are Tamers(crowd control/buff) Ryuji and his cronies want to be Arias(debuff spellcaster) which seem the most boring because theyjust recite scriptures to dispatch demons, though it does prove effective. Last week they even referred to their group as a party, which lads me to expect that the next episode will deal with HP/MP/GP/XP. Seriously, even though I joke about how cheesy it is at this stage, I am very curious to see where they go with this because it's not entirely different from my approach to 7th Moon and it will indicate how receptive audiences will be to my project. Also, this is some funny stuff, and funny on purpose because it's witty. I mean, there is just no end to the amount of humor you can get out of reluctant demonspawn who have no evil inclinations and desire only to help people rather than hurt them. If I did a good job of letting you know how cool this show is, tune in at 1:30AM on Toonami Saturday nights and check it out. If I didn't sell you on it, watch anyway to decide for yourself and tweet about your favorite arts with #BlueExorcist.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Happy Birthday to me!
April 12 is my birthday, and on this day in 2012, I submitted 7th Moon to createspace and published the book as a present to myself, to enter my thirties as a published author. I feel really old, partly because things are moving ridiculously fast right now. As a gamer, I realize they are on what seventh, or eighth generation consoles? I remember when the first generation came out. Yes, this week we take a stroll down memory lane and see what things were like when I was a kid. I am inspired to do this largely because when I went to Tora-Con a few weeks ago I sat next to a young girl at Tia Ballard's panel and when Tia was talking about how Jaleel White did the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog, the young girl next to me rolled her eyes with dismay, and I had to correct her, "Honey, Jaleel White was the original Sonic the Hedgehog." Kids these days don't know the foundation of the entertainment they enjoy today, so for those of you who equate 8-bit graphics with cave paintings and think "The Goldbergs" is ancient history, let me tell you what it was really like(Hint: it was AWESOME!)
First of all, gamers tend to measure our age by our first video game. The true OGs say Pong, but I'm not that old, I am precisely as old as Mario and Donkey Kong, but they weren't my first video game, that was Frogger. Oh yeah, my dad got an Atari 400, which was just a keyboard and two joysticks and one cartridge for Frogger, all connected to a black and white TV. My dad eventually got some other games, Hookey(Q-bert with bad graphics), Round-Up(a game where you herd horses with a helicopter, the challenge being that you need the gate open to get horses in, but when the gate is open horses you herded in can also get out) and a couple Sesame Street games. Now before you pick on me about Sesame Street, let me make this clear, I got started at age 3, Sesame Street was da bomb. I learned my shapes from Ernie's magic show and learned patterns from Big Bird and little bird at the market. But of these, Frogger was my game. Then came Nintendo. Everybody else got the package with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and the laser gun. I got the cheap package with no game and my parents got Donkey Kong Classics as my first game on Nintendo. Every weekend I got to rent another game from the store and played the hell out of it. I pretty much never beat a game, and not just because of time, but because there was no saving back then. It was all or nothing, you finished the game in one sitting or you lost. Some games did save, many with passwords, leading to the original cheat, enter the password that gets you to the last level with maximum lives and all weapons, items, power-ups, skills, abilities, etc. Then came Dragon Warrior, my first RPG. I've already talked about this in my first ever post, but you need to understand how hard this was. Rpg video games were reknowned for being non-linear, as if that's a good thing. Sorry, but I started with getting my frog across the street, getting Mario up the construction site, and getting Mario from the left to the right to save the princess from the turtle. Giving me a game in my single digit years and telling me I can go anywhere was too much freedom, I jst didn't know what the point was. Dragon Warrior has one goal, to defeat the DragonLord, which they state at the very beginning of the game. They also hint that you have to save the princess from another dragon and collect armor from your ancestor which along with the Golem of Cantlin makes for three mini-bosses ont he way to the final boss. It was short and simple in theory, in practice it was bashing a lot of slimes while you level up. And you didn't have a party, you were obligate solo in this game so you had to fight and heal. The worst part was you only had one save point, so you had to haul ass all the way back to the King at the beginning to save every frickin' time. The one high point is there are two endings, the good ending where you defeat the Dragon Lord, and the badass ending: when you face the dragon Lord he asks you if you will join him, and you can actually say yes. If you say yes he asks if you're sure, and this is very important, because if you say yes again, he says something like "So be it! Muwahaha!" And then the screen goes dark and you realize you've become the villain's right hand man. Then came Final Fantasy, which was actually somewhat linear, but still had some save issues(you had to stay at an inn or use a tent/cabin/house every time you saved) but it did let you have a party to specialize purposes, and it had a unique interface that allowed you to watch your characters fight the monsters. It really changed RPGs for Nintendo. Then came the great mistranslation of imported games controversy that wouldn't be exposed until Sony took over the FF franchise for Playstation. Nintendo, like so many other companies that imported foreign stuff aimed at kids, didn't think we'd care if they fudged a few details, like replacing Super Mario Bros. 2 with an unrelated game, or editing Dragon Ball beyond recognition. But the biggest of all was FF, which actually had three games for the original NES, but we only saw one. Apparently the process took too long and when Super Nintendo came out they jumped to FFIV and renamed it FFII to keep numbering straight in America.Then they skipped FFV because they thought it was too complicated(Not true in my opinion) and went on to FFVI as FFIII. Then came FFVII and a new company who decided not to worry about nintendo's numbering system and just stuck with the original name, leaving Americans to wonder what we missed. The error has since been corrected but those were hard times for us gamers back then.
However, video games were not the only form of entertainment to undergo a revolution in my youth. I remember the beginning of Cable TV. Now we have thousands of channels, I had fifty, and that counted premium channels, which I didn't actually have, except when Disney did a free preview. Yes, Disney Channel used to be a premium channel, I don't know why, the only show worth remembering was the Mickey Mouse Club. Long ago, TV really only had five real channels, the big three CBS, NBC, and ABC, PBS, and Fox, which was back then what the CW is now, a wannabe. These were all distributed between local affiliates within the first thirteen channels, and if you did not have cable, those were the only channels that existed. We had cable on two televisons, though we had a third that didn't get cable at all. The main TV was cable ready so we put our cable box with the secondary TV. Now kids, the reality is your main TV is actually on channel 3, which is reserved for cable boxes and video games. It was true then and it's true now, you change your channel through the box. Our cable box was a slide dial that only went up to channel 50 because there wasn't anything past that, so there was no need to have access to those non-existent numbers. Channel 1 is actually for radio, so nobody has that, we didn't really have channel 2 either, and channel 4 was...I can't remember. Channel 5 was WGN, a local channel from Chicago that was apparently worth national attention. Channel 6, on cable was TBS, which was distinct for running 5 minutes later than every other channel, primarily to keep people from changing the channel because you'd either miss the end of the TBS show or the beginning of whatever you changed to, it was a pain. Then came the big five with a couple local cable access channels. I don't know if these still exist, but they are such crap, even then it was a joke and it still would be if anyone had time to pay attention to whether they exist at all. After channel 13, I can't really remember what came in the teens, but I think one of them was TLC, formerly The Learning Channel. TLC used to be filled with educational shows for children in the morning and insightful documentaries and other highbrow material for the rest of the day, it is one of the saddest statements on the collapse of society that this channel is now known for "Here comes Honey Boo-Boo". Moving along, getting into the twenties we had channels that actually had a grasp of how to use cable, CNN, the original 24 hour news network, ESPN and the Weather Channel(23), which used to simply be an 8-bit digital weather map that cycled through weather reports with jazz music playing in the background, it was boring but it served it's purpose. Then there was TNN(27), MTV(28) and VH1(29) at the end of the twenties, and back then, MTV actually showed music videos. Oh it was so pure and simple, pop, rock and rap musicians would make videos to go with their songs and they would just play all day, and that was all there was to it. It was beautiful, and then we got "The Real World", which quickly spawned enough reality series that they actually made MTV2 to air the videos that would now longer air on MTV, until reality took over MTV2 leading to a third channel...at what point are they just going to remove the M and admit they sold out and gave up on music altogether? VH1 was aimed at the parents of the MTV generation, and one of the things that makes me feel rally old is realizing I have aged out of MTV into VH1, and so has everyone else which is why the only videos are on the Top 20. Sorry, I just had to stop and cry. Okay, so that leaves the last ten channels, because my dial actually went to static after channel 41. Here we had Nickelodeon, USA, TNT, Lifetime, A&E, Discovery, Comedy Central, Family Channel, the Travel Channel and the spanish channel Telemundo. Travel Channel has not changed a whole lot, their quality has improved, but they have probably stayed the most true to what they originally intended of all these channels along with Discovery which unlike TLC is still educational. The same can not be said of A&E which once showed such artsy stuff that it was quite literally the television equivalent of going to the museum of modern art, looking at some avant garde piece and just saying "what the hell?" but at least it was culture, and now it's "Duck Dynasty". Comedy Central pretty much just reused censored clips from HBO stand-up comdey shows and replayed them the same way MTV played music videos(for those of you who still don't get it, MTV used to be like Vevo on Youtube, when Vevo becomes all about reality, it's time to riot, we will not, we can not, let that happen again). The other channels, honestly, just ran various reruns from the real networks. Admittedly, by this time, there was enough of those reruns to fill 24 hours on five channels, but it took years for them to come up with anything worth watching unless you weren't alive for the first time Kung Fu aired. But Nickolodeon was definitely the one that I owe a lot to. They filled their airtime with imported programming, primarily "You Can't Do That On Television" form Canada which introduced the green slime which I understand is still their trademark to this day. f course my fans know when I speak of imported television, I'm talking about anime. My firsts were "The Little Prince" "Belle and Sebastian" and "Mysterious Cities of Gold". That was quality programming dammit! I was just a kid and they sucked me in hard, and I never really let go, Adult Swim is just enabling my addiction, and the vast supply available on the net and local conventions caused me to cave and admit, I am a lifelong otaku, I was born this way and I may even ahve a buddhist/shinto funeral, Kami help me. One more thing I have to mention about the good old days is the greatest thing ever to exist in the entire history of youth entertainment...SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS! Kids today are spoiled with Cartoon Network(yes I am older than Cartoon Network, and I remember when it started, I was at least in middle school by then) but back then cartoons were a special for Saturday, from 8AM to Noon, the major networks fought for the attention of kids starting their two days of freedom from school with the most incredible collection of overcommercialized toy advertising animated nonsense(I still lose sleep contemplating the irony of how many plastic Captain Planet action figures are in landfills right now) and I lived for it along with every other kid in America. It's hard to pin down which was the most awesome, Pirates of Dark Water definitely had the best story, damn ABC for cancelling it, Captain N defintitely appealed to the gamer in me, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clearly has the staying power. I am so not ashamed to admit that my hero was Michelangelo and I wanted to be him when I grew up. My nieces watch the reboot on Nickelodeon and I asked the older one, "Which one is your favorite?" and her answer was "Michelangelo." I wanted to cry I was so proud of her. Going back to Captain N, this was a serious testament to how much video games and cartoons crossed over, the show was about a teenage boy who played video games so much that he was actually transported through his televison set into the Nintendo Universe where he fought Mother Brain from Metroid, King Hippo from Punch-Out! and the Eggplant Wizard from Kid Icarus alongside Mega Man, Simon Belmont form Castlevania and Kid Icarus himself, using the power of a gamepad that could pause the world and move things around, and his laser gun, clearly the peripheral used with games like Duck Hunt. I think the fact that this show even existed says alot, the fact that it ran for more than one season says even more. The most can be said that if I couldn't be Michelangelo, I wanted to be Captain N, I would actually hope my game would suck me in while I was playing, tragically it never did:( I now leave you with three of the greatest Saturday Morning Cartoon intros so that you may decide the best for yourself. And for the record, regardless of what anyone else says, what I show below is the REAL TMNT(I'm talking to you Michael Bay).
First of all, gamers tend to measure our age by our first video game. The true OGs say Pong, but I'm not that old, I am precisely as old as Mario and Donkey Kong, but they weren't my first video game, that was Frogger. Oh yeah, my dad got an Atari 400, which was just a keyboard and two joysticks and one cartridge for Frogger, all connected to a black and white TV. My dad eventually got some other games, Hookey(Q-bert with bad graphics), Round-Up(a game where you herd horses with a helicopter, the challenge being that you need the gate open to get horses in, but when the gate is open horses you herded in can also get out) and a couple Sesame Street games. Now before you pick on me about Sesame Street, let me make this clear, I got started at age 3, Sesame Street was da bomb. I learned my shapes from Ernie's magic show and learned patterns from Big Bird and little bird at the market. But of these, Frogger was my game. Then came Nintendo. Everybody else got the package with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and the laser gun. I got the cheap package with no game and my parents got Donkey Kong Classics as my first game on Nintendo. Every weekend I got to rent another game from the store and played the hell out of it. I pretty much never beat a game, and not just because of time, but because there was no saving back then. It was all or nothing, you finished the game in one sitting or you lost. Some games did save, many with passwords, leading to the original cheat, enter the password that gets you to the last level with maximum lives and all weapons, items, power-ups, skills, abilities, etc. Then came Dragon Warrior, my first RPG. I've already talked about this in my first ever post, but you need to understand how hard this was. Rpg video games were reknowned for being non-linear, as if that's a good thing. Sorry, but I started with getting my frog across the street, getting Mario up the construction site, and getting Mario from the left to the right to save the princess from the turtle. Giving me a game in my single digit years and telling me I can go anywhere was too much freedom, I jst didn't know what the point was. Dragon Warrior has one goal, to defeat the DragonLord, which they state at the very beginning of the game. They also hint that you have to save the princess from another dragon and collect armor from your ancestor which along with the Golem of Cantlin makes for three mini-bosses ont he way to the final boss. It was short and simple in theory, in practice it was bashing a lot of slimes while you level up. And you didn't have a party, you were obligate solo in this game so you had to fight and heal. The worst part was you only had one save point, so you had to haul ass all the way back to the King at the beginning to save every frickin' time. The one high point is there are two endings, the good ending where you defeat the Dragon Lord, and the badass ending: when you face the dragon Lord he asks you if you will join him, and you can actually say yes. If you say yes he asks if you're sure, and this is very important, because if you say yes again, he says something like "So be it! Muwahaha!" And then the screen goes dark and you realize you've become the villain's right hand man. Then came Final Fantasy, which was actually somewhat linear, but still had some save issues(you had to stay at an inn or use a tent/cabin/house every time you saved) but it did let you have a party to specialize purposes, and it had a unique interface that allowed you to watch your characters fight the monsters. It really changed RPGs for Nintendo. Then came the great mistranslation of imported games controversy that wouldn't be exposed until Sony took over the FF franchise for Playstation. Nintendo, like so many other companies that imported foreign stuff aimed at kids, didn't think we'd care if they fudged a few details, like replacing Super Mario Bros. 2 with an unrelated game, or editing Dragon Ball beyond recognition. But the biggest of all was FF, which actually had three games for the original NES, but we only saw one. Apparently the process took too long and when Super Nintendo came out they jumped to FFIV and renamed it FFII to keep numbering straight in America.Then they skipped FFV because they thought it was too complicated(Not true in my opinion) and went on to FFVI as FFIII. Then came FFVII and a new company who decided not to worry about nintendo's numbering system and just stuck with the original name, leaving Americans to wonder what we missed. The error has since been corrected but those were hard times for us gamers back then.
However, video games were not the only form of entertainment to undergo a revolution in my youth. I remember the beginning of Cable TV. Now we have thousands of channels, I had fifty, and that counted premium channels, which I didn't actually have, except when Disney did a free preview. Yes, Disney Channel used to be a premium channel, I don't know why, the only show worth remembering was the Mickey Mouse Club. Long ago, TV really only had five real channels, the big three CBS, NBC, and ABC, PBS, and Fox, which was back then what the CW is now, a wannabe. These were all distributed between local affiliates within the first thirteen channels, and if you did not have cable, those were the only channels that existed. We had cable on two televisons, though we had a third that didn't get cable at all. The main TV was cable ready so we put our cable box with the secondary TV. Now kids, the reality is your main TV is actually on channel 3, which is reserved for cable boxes and video games. It was true then and it's true now, you change your channel through the box. Our cable box was a slide dial that only went up to channel 50 because there wasn't anything past that, so there was no need to have access to those non-existent numbers. Channel 1 is actually for radio, so nobody has that, we didn't really have channel 2 either, and channel 4 was...I can't remember. Channel 5 was WGN, a local channel from Chicago that was apparently worth national attention. Channel 6, on cable was TBS, which was distinct for running 5 minutes later than every other channel, primarily to keep people from changing the channel because you'd either miss the end of the TBS show or the beginning of whatever you changed to, it was a pain. Then came the big five with a couple local cable access channels. I don't know if these still exist, but they are such crap, even then it was a joke and it still would be if anyone had time to pay attention to whether they exist at all. After channel 13, I can't really remember what came in the teens, but I think one of them was TLC, formerly The Learning Channel. TLC used to be filled with educational shows for children in the morning and insightful documentaries and other highbrow material for the rest of the day, it is one of the saddest statements on the collapse of society that this channel is now known for "Here comes Honey Boo-Boo". Moving along, getting into the twenties we had channels that actually had a grasp of how to use cable, CNN, the original 24 hour news network, ESPN and the Weather Channel(23), which used to simply be an 8-bit digital weather map that cycled through weather reports with jazz music playing in the background, it was boring but it served it's purpose. Then there was TNN(27), MTV(28) and VH1(29) at the end of the twenties, and back then, MTV actually showed music videos. Oh it was so pure and simple, pop, rock and rap musicians would make videos to go with their songs and they would just play all day, and that was all there was to it. It was beautiful, and then we got "The Real World", which quickly spawned enough reality series that they actually made MTV2 to air the videos that would now longer air on MTV, until reality took over MTV2 leading to a third channel...at what point are they just going to remove the M and admit they sold out and gave up on music altogether? VH1 was aimed at the parents of the MTV generation, and one of the things that makes me feel rally old is realizing I have aged out of MTV into VH1, and so has everyone else which is why the only videos are on the Top 20. Sorry, I just had to stop and cry. Okay, so that leaves the last ten channels, because my dial actually went to static after channel 41. Here we had Nickelodeon, USA, TNT, Lifetime, A&E, Discovery, Comedy Central, Family Channel, the Travel Channel and the spanish channel Telemundo. Travel Channel has not changed a whole lot, their quality has improved, but they have probably stayed the most true to what they originally intended of all these channels along with Discovery which unlike TLC is still educational. The same can not be said of A&E which once showed such artsy stuff that it was quite literally the television equivalent of going to the museum of modern art, looking at some avant garde piece and just saying "what the hell?" but at least it was culture, and now it's "Duck Dynasty". Comedy Central pretty much just reused censored clips from HBO stand-up comdey shows and replayed them the same way MTV played music videos(for those of you who still don't get it, MTV used to be like Vevo on Youtube, when Vevo becomes all about reality, it's time to riot, we will not, we can not, let that happen again). The other channels, honestly, just ran various reruns from the real networks. Admittedly, by this time, there was enough of those reruns to fill 24 hours on five channels, but it took years for them to come up with anything worth watching unless you weren't alive for the first time Kung Fu aired. But Nickolodeon was definitely the one that I owe a lot to. They filled their airtime with imported programming, primarily "You Can't Do That On Television" form Canada which introduced the green slime which I understand is still their trademark to this day. f course my fans know when I speak of imported television, I'm talking about anime. My firsts were "The Little Prince" "Belle and Sebastian" and "Mysterious Cities of Gold". That was quality programming dammit! I was just a kid and they sucked me in hard, and I never really let go, Adult Swim is just enabling my addiction, and the vast supply available on the net and local conventions caused me to cave and admit, I am a lifelong otaku, I was born this way and I may even ahve a buddhist/shinto funeral, Kami help me. One more thing I have to mention about the good old days is the greatest thing ever to exist in the entire history of youth entertainment...SATURDAY MORNING CARTOONS! Kids today are spoiled with Cartoon Network(yes I am older than Cartoon Network, and I remember when it started, I was at least in middle school by then) but back then cartoons were a special for Saturday, from 8AM to Noon, the major networks fought for the attention of kids starting their two days of freedom from school with the most incredible collection of overcommercialized toy advertising animated nonsense(I still lose sleep contemplating the irony of how many plastic Captain Planet action figures are in landfills right now) and I lived for it along with every other kid in America. It's hard to pin down which was the most awesome, Pirates of Dark Water definitely had the best story, damn ABC for cancelling it, Captain N defintitely appealed to the gamer in me, but Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles clearly has the staying power. I am so not ashamed to admit that my hero was Michelangelo and I wanted to be him when I grew up. My nieces watch the reboot on Nickelodeon and I asked the older one, "Which one is your favorite?" and her answer was "Michelangelo." I wanted to cry I was so proud of her. Going back to Captain N, this was a serious testament to how much video games and cartoons crossed over, the show was about a teenage boy who played video games so much that he was actually transported through his televison set into the Nintendo Universe where he fought Mother Brain from Metroid, King Hippo from Punch-Out! and the Eggplant Wizard from Kid Icarus alongside Mega Man, Simon Belmont form Castlevania and Kid Icarus himself, using the power of a gamepad that could pause the world and move things around, and his laser gun, clearly the peripheral used with games like Duck Hunt. I think the fact that this show even existed says alot, the fact that it ran for more than one season says even more. The most can be said that if I couldn't be Michelangelo, I wanted to be Captain N, I would actually hope my game would suck me in while I was playing, tragically it never did:( I now leave you with three of the greatest Saturday Morning Cartoon intros so that you may decide the best for yourself. And for the record, regardless of what anyone else says, what I show below is the REAL TMNT(I'm talking to you Michael Bay).
Friday, April 4, 2014
WOOL, SHIFT, and DUST, the Silo Saga
Today I take time to discuss the work of another self-published author, Hugh Howey. He's doing fine without me, but I've kind of thrown my lot in with his with my second novel, Silo Saga: Surface, and I've actually been doing okay on sales, so I better give it some attention. For one thing I have to say Hugh Howey inspires me with the fact that he started the same way I did, self-publishing science fiction on Amazon and he became a huge success, I can only hope to follow I his footsteps. From a six chapter novella, he went on to expand into an entire novel, then a sequel, and then made it into a trilogy, then it was picked up to be printed by Simon & Schuster and Ridley Scott has optioned to make it into a movie. Then it came full circle by opening up to Kindle Worlds so we the readers and fans can write our own stories that expand the world Hugh Howey created-and we can get paid for it!
Okay so here's the rundown of the Silo Saga, since mine takes place after I need you to have a frame of reference. First Howey wrote a six chapter short story called Wool, which was about Holston the Sheriff of a Silo being sentenced to a cleaning, which is actually way worse than it sounds. You see, the Silo is an underground bunker protecting everyone from a toxic atmosphere, which they are reminded of by a screen that shows what's going on outside, which is nothing, all they see is dust in the wind sweeping across the barren crater their Silo is in. There are a group of people who are supposedly trying to monitor the situation so that people can go back outside one day, but every now and then somebody gets impatient and decides they want to go outside now. These people are given what they ask for, they go outside and clean the dust off the cameras that get the video and the other sensors used to collect data about the conditions outside. And then they die. Through the eyes of Sheriff Holston, whose wife went out for a cleaning three years ago, we find out just what a cleaner goes through. Holston feels he has nothing to lose because his wife had won the population control lottery and they were going to have a child and she threw it away to go outside and he wants to know why. So he puts on his hazmat suit and goes out the airlock, pulls the wool pads out of his pocket and wipes the cameras clean. But the weird thing is that when he gets out there, the sky is blue and the ground is covered with green grass and he thinks what they see on the screens must be a lie. He walks up the edge of the crater seeking freedom, and then suddenly the world briefly turns back to the horror he has always known for an instant and then it goes dark and he dies. I was so depressed I did not want to go on to the next part, but fortunately I had the fully printed omnibus from the library so I knew there was more. The next part follows Mayor Jahns and Deputy Marnes as they go searching for a new Sheriff, and their candidate is a mechanic named Juliette who lives all the way at the bottom of the Silo. This story drags on as they walk down the stairs and visit certain important floors, including IT where they make the hazmat suits for cleaning, and where we meet Bernie, a fat...I can't think of a noun that properly fits Bernie, there just isn't anything vile enough in my vocabulary, but right away you get the gist this guy is no good. They also meet Juliette's father, a doctor in the nursery who reveals Juliette had a brother who died due to a power failure in his incubator after he was born slightly premature. We know that Juliette moved from the upper levels down to mechanical, which is usually seen as an act of rebellion, the Silo equivalent of running away, but now we get the perspective that she actually just wants to work in maintenance to make sure nobody else has to lose someone to a failed machine. The Mayor and the Deputy finally get down to the bottom floor where they find Juliette, who is described as beautiful yet rugged(I pictured Michelle Rodriguez) she doesn't care about her appearance, she only cares that if she doesn't keep everything working somebody might die. The only way they can convince her to take the sheriff job is to reduce power so she can switch to the backup generator and fix the main generator. The Mayor and the Deputy walk back up and it's as slow and painful as the walk down, but they finally admit to each other that they were in love all along...and then Mayor Jahns dies. So far this pattern is not promising, but Jules has her first case. Part three shifts the focus to the de facto protagonist, Juliette, who investigates the death of the Mayor, who seems to have been poisoned from her canteen, or rather the Deputy's canteen, since they found it easier to drink from the canteen on the other's back rather than reach around to tack it off their own backpack, a fact which Bernie observed before refilling their canteens on their return trip, but only the Deputy was present to know this and fails to figure it out before taking his own life out of guilt. Jules is missing details so it takes time for her to catch up during which time she meets Lukas, a young man from IT who has not yet learned how horrible his department really is, but he will. Jules and Lukas develop feelings for each other, but Juliette's investigation leads her to the truth that the suits were made to fail, Holston's wife was sent to clean for figuring out IT was lying, and Mayor Jahns was killed because making a mechanic Sheriff meant bringing up someone smart enough to put it all together. But before she can arrest him, Bernie has assumed leadership because the Head of IT is interim Mayor in case of a vacancy according to the laws of the Silo. Bernie realizes she's too smart and too close to he truth so he sentences her to a cleaning. However, Jules has friends in the right places, and they arrange for better heat tape to be sent to IT so that her suit will actually last outside. Jules is sent to clean but then she does something nobody has ever done in the history of the Silo, she refuses to clean and heads right over the edge of the crater, where she sees the truth, that there is a simulation programmed into the helmet that presents a convincing illusion of the world outside, but it only reaches to the top of the crater and after that the illusion fails, which is why every death is timed to happen before that. Bernie knows she was supposed to die before getting above a certain altitude and the fact that she does make it alarms him, and those who witness it are motivated to rebel. Lukas is selected to be the next head of IT so Bernie can train him, and he learns the horrible truth, there are fifty Silos, and they are all that is left of the world after it was destroyed-by the same people who built the Silos to control the population, a group known as World Order Operation Fifty, with fifty represented by the Roman numeral L the acronym is WOOL. Meanwhile, Jules learns some of that when she sees the other Silos from the outside and finds her way to an adjacent abandoned Silo where it seems everyone has died. Then she meets a man named Solo and six children who have survived alone against all odds. She finds a radio in the IT department where Solo was living and contacts her Silo, learning from the numbered switchboard that she is in Silo 17 and her home was Silo 18. Her first message is to tell Bernie "You sent me to die you sick fuck! I'm coming back to clean!" (I really hope that makes it into the movie) Lukas gets to talk with Jules and eventually her old friends down in mechanical figure out how to talk to her too. Of course there is a happy ending with Jules making a new suit and crawling back to Silo 18 to reunite with Lukas and liberate everyone from Bernie's tyranny.
Shift tells a different story that explains what happened in WOOL. The first of three parts tells two stories, one of Donald Keene, a brand new congressman from Georgia, and the other story is of Troy, the head of Silo 1. Donald was an architect who got caught up working for Senator Thurman, a lifelong friend who is also the father of Donald's ex-girlfriend Anna who still works on Capitol Hill and makes Donald's wife Helen uncomfortable. Thurman has arranged for a nuclear waste dump just outside Atlanta and as part of the project, he wants Donald to design a safety bunker to protect workers in case something goes wrong. Donald is pushed to treat this project as top priority and grows more elaborate, although he has no idea why. Meanwhile, we learn seemingly unimportant details of Thurman, such as how he had invested in cryogenics only to sign a law against it, and how he swears by nanotechnology therapy. Finally there is a political convention in Georgia, a sort of ribbon cutting ceremony for the completion of the building of the dump, with each state having 4,000 people representing at their respective bunkers. and then, while a girl sings the national anthem, written in such a way to seem like slow motion, bombs drop on Atlanta and everyone gets in the bunkers. Troy goes through almost a full six months of his shift as head of Silo 1 before his memories come back and he realizes he is Donald Keene and he was cryogenically preserved as well as everyone else in Silo 1. To keep the same people in control of the project, everyone is cryogenically frozen and released for six shifts of six months each, and almost everyone is drugged to forget the past, but now that it's not working for Troy/Donald he's being put back under permanently. Second Shift sees Donald waking up and meeting with Thurman to try to figure out a problem in Silo 18. We get to see what happened in Silo 18 as well, but I find it to be unimportant to the larger story, thought good on it's own, and I urge you to read it yourself. The main point is we learn the truth from Thurman and just what a....again, I don't really have a noun for how vile this guy is, but the creepiest thing is that he really believes he's doing what's best and explains it in such a way that you start to believe he may have a point. Apparently his motivation is that nanotech can be programmed to target certain individuals by DNA, which means they can be used as the ultimate bioweapon, targeting a specific group, suggesting that in the Middle East that they were designing nanites to attack Israelis and Arabs and it was just a matter of who finished and released their weapon first. Thurman believed the outcome was inevitable, and since they couldn't stop it, they would at least control it. Donald tries to escape, but he gets put back in deep freeze. Third shift brings us to the present, relatively speaking. It starts with a 16-year-old boy named Jimmy being put in a safe room in IT in Silo 17, and then watching as everyone dies around him. Jimmy struggles to survive over the course of decades while we see Donald awakened due to a clerical error in which everyone believes he is Thurman. The story ends with Jimmy, who turns out to be Solo, meeting Jules and Donald talking to Lukas, which reveals he was in fact the person on the other end of the call when Lukas gets sworn in as the new head of IT, which frankly I saw coming from page one 'cause why would we care unless it catches up to the original story.
Okay here are the really big spoilers, so SPOILER ALERT! Dust puts together Jules, Lukas, Jimmy/Solo, Donald, and Donald's sister Charlotte who he wakes from cryogenic stasis because he can't trust anyone else in Silo 1. Jules discovers a machine that can dig through to Silo 17 where she rescues her friends and unites the Silos. Jules also goes outside to do research and discovers that the air reaches a critical point of destruction at the elevation where everyone dies, meaning this whole thing is a setup. She and Lukas continue to talk with Donald who is getting sick and swears he is trying to help them. Donald had made an attempt to kill Thurman, but doesn't realize there are enough nanites in his system to bring him back to life and Thurman tries to stop Donald and Silo 18. Jules leads as many people as she can through to Silo 17 and seals off silo 18. Since there are still a bunch of unused hazmat suits, Jules leads an exodus overland with the theory that there is a limit to the reach of the toxic atmosphere, and people follow realizing they may be doomed either way, but trust Jules enough to lead them to freedom. Donald helps Charlotte escape but sacrifices himself in the process blowing up Silo 1, leaving Charlotte as the sole survivor of that Silo and wandering off desperately seeking any chance of salvation. Happy ending though, as it turns out, the toxic air is actually a cloud of nanintes localized over the Silos and as soon as they get past the horizon as seen from the outermost Silo, the outside world actually is full of life, just not human life. There is a vault that was set up for the survivors that were to be chosen at the end of five hundred years, which they were only half way through, and they break in and collect the supplies and seem to adapt to the outside world, and by they I mean not only Jules and Jimmy's group, but also Charlotte, who manages to catch up with them. Jules and Charlotte recognize eachother from the radio conversations they had. Jules had some trust issues before, but believes Charlotte isn't a threat and invites her to join the others. We are left believing that they begin rebuilding the world and all is well.
I read these books being aware of Kindle Worlds, and planning to write my own story all along. At first I was going to do a 7th Moon knockoff titled Silo 7, but that title was taken before I could finish reading the trilogy. I then had to think of something else. As I finished Dust, I thought about what would happen if everyone else stayed in the Silos for the remaining two and a half centuries and then came out to find the people descended from Charlotte and the survivors from Silos 17 and 18 settled outside already. It actually took me a few minutes of thinking, "someone should write that story" before I realized this was the angle I was looking for. For National Novel Writer's Month last November, I wrote a story that would be named Aftermath or Surface. Aftermath was taken by the time I finished so I went with Surface. I apologize to my readers for the poor quality the reviewers have pointed out, but with the fast pace of publishing, I was afraid to wait since I already lost two titles, I needed my story out there before I had to think of another title, or worse, if someone else came up with the same story, so the day I finished typing the last word, I submitted it without editing. I believe 7th Moon is much better than my Kindle worlds fanfic, but sales say otherwise. You can get all these books for Kindle on Amazon and judge for yourself.
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