IGMS Issue 36 Read online

  Indeed, the producer revealed that the mashup between the two iconic Christmas stories is merely the first step in what he calls "phase one" of a long-term, multi-platform universe of holiday heroes. Viewers can expect not just a standalone film, but many entries in the continuing adventures of George Bailey and Ebenezer Scrooge.

  "Modern audiences expect so much more than did their primitive 1940s predecessors, and we feel we have the obligation to give them exactly what they want: all of their favorite holiday heroes together in one expansive Christmas hero universe -- or yule-niverse, if you will," the visionary Abrams joked. "These two characters are the cornerstones of this effort, and we feel this new, improved, dark and gritty It's a Wonderful Life will kickstart us into the future of holiday filmmaking."

  The filmmakers also confirmed the rumors that the studio plans on bringing the likes of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman into the mix. "We feel our darker, grittier interpretation of Frosty the Snowman will really connect with today's audiences," Kurtzman said unironically. "Look, he's basically a snowy version of George Bailey, if you just go with it for a second and don't actually think about it. Who better to teach us the meaning of Christmas?"

  Kurtzman added that he sees Frosty teaming up with Rudolph for a "dark, gritty buddy movie in the vein of Lethal Weapon or Lethal Weapon 2 or Lethal Weapon 3 or The Last Boy Scout - but, y'know, for kids!"

  But first things first. While the two famous animated characters are expected to make cameo appearances in It's a Wonderful Life, they are not expected to take the spotlight in their own film until phase two. For now, the beloved story of George Bailey's downfall and salvation will be front-and-center. Meanwhile, our sources have corroborated the widely circulated rumor that the film will be a jumping-off point for several spinoffs and origin stories of the beloved characters brought to life by Capra and co-writers Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett.

  The big question now is who will be tasked with the momentous responsibility of bringing this new incarnation to the screen. The answer, according to various reports, is visionary director Zack Snyder, of 300 and Sucker Punch fame.

  "This is a timeless story of truth, justice and the American way," Snyder said. "It's that timelessness that has inspired us to make a new one . . . uh, even though the original is timeless. I mean it's not timeless, it's super-old and in black-and-white. But still."

  While expressing disappointment that the original film did not feature any fighting between George Bailey and his nemesis - and confirming that his interpretation will remedy that flaw and will include "several fights" between George and Mr. Scrooge - Snyder wants fans of the 1946 classic to rest easy, as he insists he will stay true to the spirit of the original.

  "But with more fighting," he said.

  "To be honest, I envision my film as being kind of Capra-esque," Snyder added un-self-consciously.

  Where will the franchise go from there? Well, loyal fans apparently won't have to wait too long, as production on the various offshoots of the fledgling Baileyverse is expected to ramp up once filming on the Wonderful Life remake is officially underway.

  As George's Christmas exploits continue from sequel to sequel, he will eventually join forces with Santa Claus, and over the course of the franchise will even team up with Jesus, played by James Franco - who said that the character will be "like the Nick Fury of our world," confirming that he will, in fact, have a cool eyepatch and leather duster just like Nick Fury.

  And that's not all, It's a Wonderful Life fans!

  "Did you ever wonder what Clarence did after he got his wings?" the visionary Orci asked. "No? You didn't wonder? Well now you'll wish you had wondered, because we're going to make a bunch of movies about all of his winged adventures."

  Orci also added that there will be a prequel chronicling Clarence's early days, leading up to his fateful meeting with a shotgun-wielding George Bailey. In an interesting wrinkle, Orci also revealed that the Clarence Chronicles will be made using performance-capture technology, brought to life by none other than mo-cap visionary Robert Zemeckis.

  "Motion capture is the only way to truly bring the character of Clarence to life," mo-cap visionary Robert Zemeckis said. "The technology available to us now allows us to bring more humanity and more emotion to the screen than we ever got from Henry Travers' original performance. Morgan Freeman's CGI Clarence will be the best Clarence - and the best Morgan Freeman - you've ever seen."

  Orci and Kurtzman also announced that, in addition to Frosty, Rudolph and Clarence, phase two will also include a new take on the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas!

  "Look, nothing can recreate the classic, original version of The Grinch that Ron Howard and Jim Carrey created and which has been beloved by audiences for years and years and years," Kurtzman said unblinkingly. "But I'll tell you one thing - that Grinch wasn't dark enough, and definitely wasn't gritty enough."

  Additional future plans include more Christmas movie mergers, including a combination of Black Christmas and White Christmas ("I'm thinking, like, Black and White Christmas," Kurtzman noted) as well as a Miracle on 34th Street / Bad Santa combo.

  When asked whether or not the plan is to eventually combine all the Christmas characters for one giant film, Abrams was predictably cagey, forcing fans to try and read between the lines. "Yes," he answered. "Yes, we will be combining them all into one giant film."

  As of press time, there is no confirmation about the rampant speculation that George Bailey will, in fact, be an Avenger.

  InterGalactic Interview With Jack Campbell

  by Darrell Schweitzer

  * * *

  INTRODUCTION:

  John Hemry (who writes as Jack Campbell), is a retired Lieutenant Commander of the U.S. Navy specializing in military science fiction, though he has also written many stories dealing with alternate history, time travel, and the occasional fantasy. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling series The Lost Fleet and two spin-offs from that series (The Lost Fleet - Beyond the Frontier and The Lost Stars), as well as the Stark's War and Paul Sinclair ("JAG in Space") series. He has also published about thirty short stories (many of them in Analog Magazine), and recently the stand-alone alternate history novella The Last Full Measure.

  SCHWEITZER: First, give me some idea of who you are and what your background is. How did you get drawn into writing science fiction, before you became Jack Campbell?

  HEMRY: My first efforts at writing SF were in high school. The less said about them the better, though I did actually submit one short story to Analog and got a nice rejection letter from Ben Bova. I'd been reading SF since stumbling across The Mastermind of Mars in my Elementary School library (ERB has earned his reputation as a famous gateway drug to SF and Fantasy for the young). But at that point I lacked enough experience with writing and with life to put together any good stories.

  I didn't have much free time for the next twenty years or so, as first the Naval Academy and then the Navy itself did its best to keep me fully occupied. But I accumulated a tremendous amount of varied experiences, met a lot of different sorts of people, learned a lot about things I never would have pursued on my own, and even picked up useful experience doing things like writing assessments, intelligence reports, exercise scenarios, and editing similar work from others. (It was in such a position that I learned the importance of copy-editing and proofing when a report summarizing events in the Middle East was supposed to end with "the situation is unclear" but a coworker of mine let it go out with the first two letters of "unclear" transposed. I don't recommend ever doing that sort of thing unless you really enjoy negative attention.)

  Finally, with the end of my naval career looming, my wife urged me to make a real effort to write fiction again. I didn't have any firm ideas for a novel, so I started working on short fiction and submitting it to every short fiction market I could find (which, in the early 1990s, were not very numerous since e-magazines had yet to spring into existence). Like most suc
h writers, I accumulated many rejection slips, but since I was working on short fiction I could always write something else, try something else, explore some new methods and ideas, and so on. The only real feedback I got was from Stanley Schmidt, who deserves immense credit for all of the new writers he has encouraged and brought along. Ironically, I sold my second story to Stan. My first sale was fantasy, to Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, and was a frustrated attempt to break through by breaking the rules. MZB told people not to send her dragon stories. I sent her a dragon story. She bought it. Soon afterwards, Stan bought a story I had written about Mars probes. Both of those stories were satirical. After a long gap, I eventually sold a third story (a serious one), this one also to Stan, and promptly joined SFWA just in time for the last Worldcon in Baltimore.

  At the Worldcon, I met another writer who introduced me to an editor from Ace. Eventually, I realized I could ask her what Ace was looking for, and when she told me I said "I can do that!" She gave me her card, I sent her the first chapters of what became Stark's War, and she offered me a contract that set me on a path to primarily write SF and to also write a lot of military-themed work. But the Navy had helped put me on that track already by exposing me to so much engineering and science. You could say I learned to write SF on the deckplates.

  SCHWEITZER: What you must have really learned on the deckplates is what kind of people are in the military, how they behave in both routine and non-routine situations, and what the military culture is like. One reason I have not tried to write "military" fiction is that I have not been there and don't know those things. So, what are some of the common errors writers make in this area? What sends up a red flag right away and tells you that the writer doesn't know what he's talking about?

  HEMRY: The most common error is in relationships between different ranks and rates, how officers of different ranks interact and how they relate to the senior and junior enlisted. If you haven't been there, it's hard to grasp how the relationships are so close and yet maintain a certain distance. From the outside, those relationships can appear old-fashioned and rigid, but handling them right is one of the keys to getting the job done, and one of the keys to writing authentic military fiction.

  There's also often a misunderstanding of the different roles and specialization. A lot of fiction creates the idea that the senior officers are technical specialists who can run and fix the gear best of anyone on the ship. Enlisted either don't exist or are just red shirts. The truth is that the officers are (for the most part) generalists. Their job is to provide direction and coordination and leadership. The technical specialists are the enlisted, and without the senior enlisted and their wealth of knowledge and experience the military can't function. The original Star Trek mostly got that right, with clear delineations between what Kirk, Spock and McCoy did, but still over-emphasized those officers because it was a TV series. Later Treks completely lost it.

  Logistics is a big issue than mainly gets noticed when it's not there. In the real world, things like fuel and food and ammo drive a lot of decisions. Get rid of them, toss in magic technology that eliminates the need to worry about them, and it warps (if you'll forgive the term) the story.

  Civil/military relations can be presented in a cartoonish fashion rather than the realistic back and forth and clashing of professional ethos that actually happens. Seven Days in May took American civil/military relations to the extreme and did it right. Too much fiction handles day-to-day civil/military relationships in ways that don't match reality.

  And, if you haven't been there, it's hard to grasp just how mind-numbingly stupid the military can be on a daily basis. Ridiculous rules, tossing out hard-earned lessons, commanders obsessing over trivial issues, and so on. The Caine Mutiny got a lot of that right.

  The last big mistake is when everything works. Nothing breaks just when you need it, no one misunderstands an order, no one goofs off, the enemy does exactly what your plan calls for, and you have just what you need. Murphy has a long and painful relationship with the military. Or, as Clausewitz called it, friction. It's all simple, but all of the simple stuff is complicated.

  SCHWEITZER: How do you avoid making such a story merely a transplanted navy story, set in space?

  HEMRY: I don't worry too much about a story seeming too maritime because when I do a story, I'm placing it in the environment of the story. Space has a lot in common with the sea in terms of being a hostile medium in which small ships cross great distances. It's different in that while the sea actively tries to kill you, space is passive, waiting for the mistake that will doom you. I think sailors will remain sailors, and many of the customs and systems developed for sea travel will translate into space travel. Commanding officers (whatever they are called) will have to wield a lot of power. Ships will have to be as self-sufficient as possible. Engineers will still be engineers and think like engineers. When I wrote Lady Be Good, I was thinking of those old movies about tramp freighters in the South Pacific in the 1920s or 1930s. A lot of things translated well into space, because it's still about keeping old equipment running and trying to assemble enough crew members by hook or by crook and trying to get enough profit off the cargo to keep the ship going. Andre Norton did that, too, in her Solar Queen stories. But it will still be different. I never use any historical situation as a direct import into a story set in space, because space isn't like the sea or the air. Different traditions will evolve. Different ways of thinking to deal with new situations. To use a silly example, in my Sinclair/JAG in space books, there's a tradition of the New Year's fruitcake. On New Year's Day, every ship loads a fruitcake into a firing tube and launches it into deep space, accompanied by solemn speeches and ceremony. Nobody does that today, but it's the sort of thing you find in militaries, a counterpart and a relief to the strain and formalities of day-to-day life.

  SCHWEITZER: You sound very much like the late A. Bertram Chandler on this point, when he said that a submarine is basically a spaceship, and that you can't write about life on a spaceship without understanding sea-going ships and their routines. Have you read much of Chandler's work?

  HEMRY: I have read a lot of Chandler's work, though it has been quite a while now. I think it is true that the closest thing we have today to a long duration spaceship is a nuclear-powered submarine. The designs of spaceships with engines jutting off on pylons (the stuff introduced by Star Trek The Original Series) don't make a lot of sense in terms of engineering. Imagine the stress on those pylons! Neither do the great big compartments. One irony of space travel is likely to be that while space outside is infinite, space inside the ship is cramped. In that design aspect, spaceships are very likely to be ships. More significantly, spaceships will be doing exactly what ships have done for thousands of years - going out into a medium hostile to human life, on their own for months and even years on long journeys where help may be very far away. The customs and organization and systems which evolved to meet that challenge on ships will, I think, also work to a great extent in space, though the exact technologies available will also have an impact.

  SCHWEITZER: Another thought: The whole genre of military SF seems to carry a very pessimistic assumption with it, that human nature will not change, and there will always be war. It furthermore suggests that alien intelligences will have this in common with us. Would it be too subversive to suggest, within the context of military SF, that there could be alternatives?

  HEMRY: I guess I do buy into the concept that basic human nature won't change. It's commented on in my writing, where characters will note (despairingly or resignedly or occasionally laughingly) that humans never seem to learn from our mistakes. Certainly history up to this point suggests that we have a very slow learning curve when it comes to armed conflict. Yet we also have the ability to back away from going too far. From the 50s through the 80s one of the common features of future history was the imminence of a major nuclear war that would at a minimum cause horrendous loss and possibly drive humanity to extinction. If not nuclear, t
hen someone would unleash some form of biowarfare that would annihilate humanity. Yet we've stepped back from that. We've cut back drastically on nuclear weapons. We dodged some serious crises, including one in the 1980s, without the nukes flying. I personally believe that SF (and what is now called military SF) played a role in that. The official line during much of that period was that nuclear war was survivable and possibly winnable. I've read official studies from the 50s and 60s which treated nukes as simply bigger bombs, without regard to fallout, EMP and other effects. But, in popular media, there was a drumbeat of alternative visions. SF portrayed the impact of nuclear war in the starkest terms, giving mass audiences a look at what could happen. On the Beach (and if that isn't military SF with its US nuclear sub and all, what is?) is still an extremely powerful book and movie. The ending of Planet of the Apes is now a cliché which is mocked, but in the late 60s it was a shocker. And in the 1980s, when Reagan viewed The Day After it led him to resolve to pursue big reductions in nuclear weapons, and even propose to Gorbachev that they be eliminated altogether. By presenting these pessimistic views, SF made people think about what could happen, what might happen, and what alternatives might exist. In official reality, everything always works as expected and no problems appear. In good SF and military SF, reality intrudes in a way it often does not in real military planning (and I can speak to that authoritatively). You could argue that military SF provides a means of anticipating problems that can be foreseen. This is what could happen. Do you really want to go there? My Stark's War series is my clearest example of that, written after my last active duty tour, which was in the Pentagon. It looks at what trends in communications and politicization of the military officer corps could cause in the way of extreme micro-management and promotion of the well-connected rather than the competent. Maybe there won't be wars a century from now. But if there are, it is a good thing that nonofficial minds are considering what might happen.