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An Longish Excerpt from the Great Work Itself — My Novel

The End had come. It had taken it’s good sweet time to get here, but at last, the tragedy began to unfold one Alanarn Morning, as the Wildebeasts crowed and grazed in the hillocks and brambles beyond the domed city. Mina had come in, just as she had been summoned, as had the other students—Bildengryn Elociate, Snylveros, Pubert, Akesteron, Shinne, and Velaxa. Enochea drew her lab-coat tighter around her frame, as though a chill had gone through the air. Maybe that was the current set of gods’ way of reminding her, “Don’t get cocky, kid.”

“Centuries before this time,”  said Enochea to her class — probably the last one she would ever teach — “two million years before this time, in fact — the Shyphtorilaen were simple felines who first learned to walk upright and shed some of their feline characteristics in favor of more hominid characteristics, and in order to adapt to their planet’s shifting ecology, they developed an amorphous, malleable genetic matrix. They became shapeshifters, after a while, changing form, gender, and species, and classification of object as they went along their way, discovering the world at a rapid pace whenever they dissolved into one another and became The Collective—the Great Oneness. It was in this state that they first learned how to pool their psionic powers, and contact — or be contacted by; history is not clear on who had placed the call — the Aletheiaeon: One of the galaxy’s master-races who had developed a Type III Civilization — one capable of harnessing the energy of an entire galaxy — a million years before, and who were now Transcendental, a true ‘Type IV’ civilization, like the mathematics of creation itself. They existed as energy matrices and spin networks across vast dimensional membranes that stretched beyond the usual four, consuming gravity as it leaked out of our universe and onto their plane of existence. This is the reason that from time to time, meaningful patterns are detected amidst the cosmic background microwave radiation that permeates all of spacetime . . .

Her students, as always, listened with rapt attention as she read from a textbook she herself had written, as another explosion rocked the city’s foundations and its parapets. Similar brutal assaults — seemingly from all directions in the sky at once — had fallen upon the Planet Shyphtor’s other enormous Megacities, as well. And everywhere, the screams of the dying, the sound, smell, and sight of blood splashing, the clanging of swords and the zzt of particle-beams firing. Sirens wailed and blared — “Get to the shelters. This is not a drill” — as Civilians fought in the streets for their chances to enter the shelters in endless streams of foot- and vehicle-traffic, many trying to make it to the Emergency Escape Ships, even though the government had not authorized their use yet. It was too late anyway; the world was coming undone at the hands of the Zarcturean at long last. And as for Enochea’s small corner of it, cracks were beginning to appear. Tiny chasms that indicated the closeness of the realm in which only hellacious chaos reigned supreme.

“The Aletheiaeon,” she went on, ‘“tried as they might to create a heaven made flesh and stone for all sapient life in the galaxy, even as they battled for their own survival; the Eidolon, on the other hand, tried to raze their efforts, tried to build engines of war to more quickly emerge the victors. The war between these two ravaged the universe; whole worlds burned; entire solar systems destroyed and sacrificed — some that contained the nascent stages of life — and histories crumbled. Civilizations ceased to exist in a wisp of the cold winds of space. Agents of one or the other — sometimes the child-races “the Shyphtorilaen” (the Aletheiaeon) and “the Zarcturean” (the Eidolon) — would travel back through time, changing history on dozens of worlds until time itself resembled a hacked-up pretzel, while others fought each other on behalf of their creators on the continents, the seas, the atmospheres, and lower orbits of each others’ planets. Even remote outposts of both were not safe havens. The Zarcturean and Shyphtorilaen war took on dimensions of its own that went beyond the Aletheiaeon and the Eidolon, and stretched on for centuries . . .”

“Heh,” said one student. “Don’t we know it. And here we are at the end of that war. Tell us, Professor, how will it all end?”

Enochea raised a finger to her lips to indicate she wanted silence.

“The Aletheiaeon had created them, the Shyphtorilaen—we—had later learned,” she read, “along with countless other races throughout the cosmos, such as a wily race on a faraway world, Humans. Descended from apes, Humans had not yet learned how to adapt their own genetic matrix to any and all conditions. So, they had been picked over, and the Shyphtorilaen elected instead. They had been chosen, the Aletheiaeon told them, to be the Guardians.”

“But of what?” asked Pubert Philsonaeux.

“‘All that is good and holy,”’ answered Enochea. “Replied the Aletheiaeon.”

“But Guard it — from what?” Akesteron asked.

Enochea sighed. “The stars are bright tonight,” she said, “but soon, they will all go out for all but the few of us that remain.” 

As a scientist, she had learned that layers of order emerged out of lesser layers of order as a species pressed forward, ever evolving, each genetic iteration further from chaos and more refined toward a specific goal. But not all permutations were good ones. “Some permutations . . . Are not ones we wish to keep, or that we wish nature would keep,” she said aloud, “that will take us further on up the food chain. The violence inherent in the sentient condition prevents us from becoming what we truly could be, and what we could be . . . Is a reflection of the Gods. The Aletheiaeon.” 

“Do you really think so professor?” asked Snylvestros. “Or are you just trying to reassure yourself that this isn’t the end of us? The end of us forever?”

Was it so? She plumbed the depths of scientific reasoning, beckoning hope but finding grief. She tried to focus on the next not . . . Not the way the battle, the bloodshed, and the raging fires of the apocalypse raged outside her tower. The other students gathered around her for as much comfort and protection as to signify their unity, their dedication to her, even, almost ceremonially. They were Shyphtorilaen and Draytorilaen alike—the Draytorilaen were a subspecies who looked like humanoid wolves instead of cats. An elder offshot from the genetic tree. Some people disciminated against them harshly, but Enochia did not. Her philosophy: “Anyone can be taught. All it takes is the proper teacher.” She smiled. “Or teachers plural—sometimes it take some teamwork.”

“In other words, no, not the end of us forever,” she replied, and Mina blinked. “We can be as the gods are, or once were, if we only try. We can recover from this, though it will be painful. For Order, and thus Harmony and its less tasteful brother, Dissonance, ere emerge out of chaos, rather than devolving back down into it, and the Great Song goes on.”

“But how?” asked Mina. “How can you think so when we’re this close to — practically on the eve of — our own annihilation?”

“Because it takes more work to be decent than to be evil,” said Enochea. “And more work . . . Results in more muscle. Muscle . .  . with which we can move the motor of the world. Or the entire universe. Hell, the multiverse. And the multiverse . . . Respects muscle and work ethic, gods-dammit.”

“Well, everyone knows that,” said Mina. “But it is so very hard to keep that faith — the faith that evolution will serve us, not walk us backward toward nothingness — especially on days like today, when the whole planet is under assault and our people cower in the streets and run to evacuate and never return.”

“Indeed, indeed. It is a hard faith to keep.” Enochea turned the page, and continued reading aloud: “From ruination. From those who would harm it,” came the answer. “For a time we — as a people — were one, an indivisible whole something like your shapeshifter Collective. Many called us simply the Iova, which simply means, “Of the light.” But out of humility, we discarded our own unique identities, those that were based on actions that served only us; it was only then that we began to measure ourselves in terms of what aid we could be to others. What alliances we could forge, what friendships worth keeping, what wonders we beheld when the universe was young, once. We created many. Including you. But then came the Sundering.. We don’t quite know why it came, but suddenly the light of Twizion went out of the universe, and along with it went all Magick and wonder . . . And from the depths of the dark chasms between harsh reality and severed dreams, came the Demiurges. Our Otherselves; our Once-brothers; our antimatter twins . . . The Eidolon.”

The building shook, perhaps at the very mention of the word.

“The Eidolon measured evolution in terms of who and what they could conquer, and what they could use to build their Empire. Everyone and everything that wasn’t measured in terms of either strength or power, they discarded. They discarded elegance. Empathy. Hope. Dreams. The impractical. The absurd. The whimsical. The nutrients of the imagination — gone. All they knew how to imagine was how to get from point A to point B in as little time as possible. Nothing else mattered to them. And so began their conquest of the Fabric of Reality . . . The Infinite Tapestry of All of Existence . . . More and more worlds fell under their sway; their creations — other species — more hideous with each iteration,. Until, finally, we were forced to act. And to exercise a strength of our own. We imprisoned the Eidolon — still creatures of the flesh, still corporeal — in the same form we ourselves took to be Advanced Enlightenment made manifest . . . Energy matrices that defined their molecular patterns, held their consciousness, and contained their individual personas — at least, what little they had of them — into the substructure of what you would call ‘the Eighth Dimension’ — the sister dimension of the Time Dimension. In other words, we trapped them in an eternal hell made of nothing but . . . Themselves.”

“Uh . . . What?” said Shinne. “That makes no sense whatsoever!”

Enochea steadied herself against a nearby crystalline abutment as she gazed out the highest, arched window of her towering laboratory and academic refuge; watching the Zarcturean attack upon her planet, her jaw hanging open slightly even though she didn’t quite realize it. She was agog at the raw, unabashed violence that seemed damnably inherent to the entirety of sapient existence . . . but was not surprised by it. Saddened, yes, but not a bit surprised, despite her faith that good should, mathematically, win out. In many ways, war and violence — especially that of the Zarcturean — were synonyms for stupidity and blind, fumbling rage following no real plan, but instead a chaotic blueprint for destruction, drawn up by minds too small to create anything of real value save for the destruction of the world around them.

The tower that contained her lab and classroom shook violently, its crystalline core cracking and coming undone. In the streets below, people screamed for mercy but received none. Kind souls helped others to their feet, or lead lines of children, and some mounted the city’s outer ring on Zahara back and began just randomly shooting into the oncoming armada. Still others comforted the grieving and led them away from their would-be executioners. The Men-At-Arms and Women-At-Arms were at their stations, firing away with half the city’s plasma cannons; an artificial sapience known to one and all as “Grandmother”  — controlled the other half. Enochea wasn’t sure if Grandmother had achieved sapience . . . But then again, she had to have: For she fought with the ferocity of a mother protecting her cubs.

“Tell me, Shinne,” said Enochea, “What is the universe? Physically, I mean.”

Shinne stood, cleared her throat, and nervously recited, as though from memory: “The universe is an eleven-dimensional construct. Seven of these dimensions are compactified; that is, just as a hose appears to have only one dimension — its length — from a great distance away, upon closer inspection it is found that the hose has a diameter and a thickness, as well.”

“Very good,” said Enochea. “And Akesteron, what can you tell me of this compactification Shinne speaks of?”

“Compactification occurred very early on in the universe’s development,” he answered, folding his hands beneath his chin in thought. “Possibly in the seconds just after the initial Explosion. So, while these dimensions are there and can be entered and exited, they mostly exist as rolled up membranes of higher-dimensional space lurking around the corner of every point of our four dimensional continuum.”

“Excellent,” said Enochea. “You do us all proud. “Now, Snylvestron,” she said, “Tell me of these dimensions. These other worlds.”

He too cleared his throat and stood. “The first two dimensions are the gauge string membrane dimensions; when the two-dimensional braneworld they delineate is cut into a nearly-infinite number of ribbons; these ribbons the vibrating strings that both are—and that tie, reality—together. It is the vibration of these strings in the other nine dimensions that creates our familiar, four-dimensional universe and everything in it — all matter, energy, space, and time. Their vibration is also responsible for all the other four-dimensional universes — all the ‘parallel universes’ out there, as in Asimoclarke’s Theorem. However, all of these universes exist ‘superimposed’ upon one another like the layers of a hologram in 5-space; but because their strings vibrate at different frequencies than ours, they appear to be completely separate spacetime continuua. The third dimension is that of depth, and is the one in which the aforementioned two-dimensional membranes undulate—forming a 3-cube—their vibrations manifesting as particles of matter, and patterns of energy. Motion comes into play — and this includes the motion of the strings themselves — by the time you consider the presence of the fourth dimension, known as time, which is conjoined with the first three dimensions into one of many continuua. Like ours. All in all, it is an inverse Möbius loop of dependency made of  interacting braneworlds.”

“Fantastic,” smiled Enochea. “I couldn’t have explained that better myself. Well. Actually I could’ve made one or two points clearer were I speaking with a novice, but you did a fine job.”

“The fifth dimension — or rather, the five-dimensional bulk,” said Shinne, without being called on, “is the actual container for multiple four-dimensional universe constructs; nearly an infinite number of them. A new set of these universes is generated whenever one quantum wavefunction representing one single ‘event in four-dimensional spacetime, collapses due to interference from stray gravitons — hence, multiple universes, one for each “possibility” represented by the wavefunction in its uncollapsed state. Since these universes all appear to be superimposed on top of one another, and are traversable only through the fifth dimension, it is the sixth and seventh dimensions that form the two-dimensional membrane that separates them from each other.”

“But the eighth dimension is unique, isn’t it,” said Enochea, her tone darkening. “Because it can only be perceived at the subatomic level, and can only be entered and existed via the quantum spaces that exist between subatomic particles once those spaces have been hollowed-out of any electromagnetic superstructure. For instance; if one were to fire a steady stream of vector bosons of intermediate-mass at a solid object, those intermediate vector bosons would cause the virtual photon exchange between the electron shells and nucleuses of the object’s atoms to collapse; thus rendering them full of “empty space” through which one could, theoretically, walk, run, or jump; one could go right through solid matter if one wanted to, by way of the eighth dimension. But if one does so, one’s experience of reality shifts to that dimension. Together with the ninth and tenth dimensions, the eighth forms an ever-present “subspace” that exists beneath normal space, and once one adds the eleventh dimension — a second dimension of time — to this three-dimensional construct, it appears to become its own stable universe with its own unique, permanently uncollapsed wavefunction; in other words, it is a space and time that is formless, and that exists outside of our own and all parallel universes . . . and that can be entered or exited from within any of them.”

The class nodded and murmured in agreement, with a few “ahhs” and “Oh, alright”s, mixed in with their restless, rapt attentive rapport.

Enochea picked up the text again. “‘We were forced,’ said the Aletheiaeon, ‘by their actions, to erect sturdier and sturdier walls between the various Dimensions . . . To allow Time to flow in one direction only in the minds of all creatures everywhere . . . To restrict the manifestation of Dreams into literal reality via the sacred substance of Twizion Energy, and to disallow as many deviations from the ‘norm’ of Reality that they had left us to work with, so as to simplify Creation and its accompanying mindset, so that they — the Eidolon — might never find a way back into the world of corporeal existence. And ow, we take our leave, and we go . . . Beyond. To sleep. To Dream. To Be more than we Are Now. And in our stead, we leave you, Noble Shyphtorilaen, to guard the watchtowers of Reality. Ensure that the Eidolon never escape their prison . . . And wreak havoc on the universe’s creative spirit once more — it is a living thing, after all.  We were once Dreamers, Shapers, Singers, and Makers. We studied the Mystery of Laser and Circuit, of Crystal and Scanner. And we know . . . Many things. Some of them we can teach you . . . Others you will have to learn for yourselves. And now, let the lessons commence.”

She closed the book. “So this is the final lesson children: Life, despite evil, goes on. And evil can never be vanquished; it is locked in mortal combat for eternity with the forces of good. Its core manifestation, the Eidolon—trapped in the eighth-dimension, now—are not the only evil things, but they are a source of evil. And now we do the one thing evil despises most: We keep buggering onward despite its malice!”

The entire class stood and applauded. At least she hadn’t lost her touch as a lecturer.

“But enough meditation,” she said to them. “It is time to ensure that one day, the Eidolon — and their foully-crafted children, the Zarcturean — will all be dead and gone, even if we don’t live to see the sunrise the day after . . . Or those of any of the days before that.”

Enochea swished her cat-like tail, and flicked her cat-like ears with a shiver. She blinked slowly, as though to ask of the battle raging outside: Please, just a little more time. With my students . . . And time to ready The Launch.

She turned to her Mia. Poor young Mia. She had always looked at Enochea as though she possessed all the answers to all the mysteries of the cosmos, and all she had ever wished to do — more wishfully than she had thought of anything else in this world — was to sit at her teacher’s feet and learn. Forever.

“Mia,” said Enochea. “It is time. We need the Child.”

Mia bowed her head and swished her tail as though being chided. Her eyes lowered, and her whiskers following suit, meant a feeling of deep shame had suddenly arisen within her.

“What is it?” said Enochea. “Child, what have you done?”

“Pr — pr — professor? I have failed.”

“How do you mean?”

“I left the Child in the care of the . . . The Priests and Priestesses of the Order of the Oppopanox.”

“You left the Child,” growled Enochea, “our only hope against the Eidolon and their evil military war-engine, the Zarcturean — with the Order of Priests and Priestesses who once betrayed us to the Zarcturean in the first place?” Shock, more than anger, arose in her throat as she spoke. She drew nearer to Mia’s own silver-slash, vertical-pupil eyes and blinked a threat at her. Mia opened her mouth and hissed through her fangs at Enochea, and Enochea did the same. Her eyes grew narrower, saying to Mia, this old woman may look tame, but she can still maim, with tooth and claw and words, young one.

“Watch your next words very carefully, Mia, “ said Enochea. “Very carefully.”

“Professor, please! It was — was a risk, I know, but — ” Mia pleased, going to her knees, and she burst into tears. “Professor, listen! Harken to me! I am not as stupid as you take me for! Nor am I a fool. But I am in love . . .”

“Love makes us fools,” snorted Enochea. “One of the eldest teachings. Go on.

“The — the — the Priest I left her in the care of is named Oroville ‘akha’ Farlanzev. He is a Thirty-third Level Miter-Maker in the Keymakers, a subset of the Order. No one would dare accuse him of the doubly-treachery he’s actually been a part of all these years — treachery in service to us! He believes . . . That there is a third realm — one not of ordinary time and space, but something much more profound and exotic . . . And that the doors of this reality will pull back like curtains once the Keymakers open them, once the right locks appear before us so we can pick them — and when the stars are right. And when the Child is finally . . . I suppose ‘activated’ in her future womanhood . . . and used as the key to turn the dimensional tumblers that hold the Eidolon prisoner . . . And then she is supposed to destroy them.”

“I know of this Prophecy, girl. I also know one that, gravely, says she will do the opposite. Only my optimism keeps me from despairing under that second notion.”

“But the point is, Oroville is loyal to our cause, Professor. I swear he is.”

“Heh. Who says your Oroville isn’t in deep with ‘Them,’ and his proximity to the Child an engineered happenstance? We will know soon enough, I suppose. Curse you if that is the case, girl!”

“But Professor . . . You don’t understand. Oroville is repentant; he is on our side. I’ve known him a long time. He’s not a . . . A blood-traitor like the rest of the Oppopanox.” She nearly spat the term. “All it took to deprogram him was me sleeping with him and giving him a night of passion that literally whirled his perspective around. Our souls had a long debate about it in the afterglow of our lovemaking.” 

Enochea rolled her eyes.

“And the next night, we did it all over again,” continued Mia, smiling a bit, a twinkle in her eye. “And the next after that . . . And the one after that . . . And so on .  . For . . . Perhaps the last ten years?”

“Ten?” said Enochea. “And you’ve never spoken to me of this? Curse your willful tongue, child!”

“I — I don’t really know how long it was. I lose track of time when he and I are in . . . The Great Conjunction of Souls, only one made of two, and not our entire race.”

“You . . . Melted into one another?” said Enochea angrily, but not without a great deal of awe in her voice. “Such has not been done since the olden days! Now you should have especially told me, since I could have studied the phenomenon!”

“Our bodies pressed against each other, flesh to flesh, merge into one being, our souls united as one,” said Mina, distractedly staring off into space and slinkily running her hands over her thighs. “Oh, and we — er — might have rendezvoused on your couch once — or two, or three  — times, or perhaps  in the tower’s gravitic lifts once. Or twice. But, never mind all that. Just trust me, as you never have before, my good teacher and friend . . . that I know Oroville’s heart — and he is no villain! I know his soul, on the deepest level any of we Shyphtorilaen can know one another.” She stopped, and bit her lip. “Although . . . He was supposed to give the child to Tremaine this morning, at the Hour of Scampering, so he could bring her here, to us, and--”

“Oh, my, really!” Enochea spread her arms wide and looked both left then right in exaggerated fashion. “Well it’s long past the Hour of Scampering and I see no Child here in my lab, ready to depart on her . . . Starlit adventures! Nonetheless, in Tremaine at least, I have the utmost of faith. Were he sent to retrieve a child, and that child were not there, there would be all-out holy war until he found the Child and — ”

The room shook again. A bright streak of the Zarcturean warship weapons-fire zoomed past the window, rather closely, like the thunderous cleaving of some giant axe cutting into the tower’s structure beneath them.

Enochea looked upward, to the convex ceiling and said, to herself, “All our hopes go with her. All of our demons too, I am afraid.” 

The actual “flying saucer” — for no other term better described it —  that would take the Child to its appointed destination — or rather, her destination — sat resting, poised like someone had welded two giant metal discs together around a small sphere that lay slightly off-center, toward the vessel’s “front.” The saucer sat upon the roof, making it look like a model on display before the gods. Perhaps it was.

In fact, the ceiling of the laboratory was actually the saucer’s steely-grey underbelly. Hoses and wires from the lab below, some of them entangled near Enochea’s feet, rose into the air like charmed ropes that defied gravity, and plugged into the many and various sockets on the bottom of the ship. A steady stream of vaporous steam and other gasses, jetted out from some of the machinery assembled around one of them. The ship’s propulsion system. Or as the ship — no; that’s not right; she prefers to be called Astrid. 

Astrid was one of the many artificial silicon-based life-forms that Enochea had created, and that lived the span of its entire existence upon a wafer of Positronium, its soul caught somewhere in the tiny metasynaptic circuits, lost between the infinitesimal and the universal, utilizing components so small that they threatened the breach of a Dimensional barrier themselves, thus crossing the threshold into the Quantum Realm: A veritable “phantom zone” where effects preceded their causes, and where slippage or over-spill from one “D-brane” might enter another . . . For all timestreams eventually flowed to the same place — The End of All Things — and every parallel reality was somehow superimposed on each and every other parallel reality . . . All of them co-existing in the same space and time, yet not in the same space and time, too.

Enochea sighed heavily. She did not feel like having to travel back in time to make sure the Big Bang actually occurred, so she would just have to take it on faith that Astrid’s metasynapic positronic circuits were time-invariant.

She was startled out of her admiration for the ship they had cobbled together, when the tall wooden door to her laboratory came flying open with a loud scream of ancient steel-upon-steel.

And there, standing on the other side, a bloody wound erupting from his forehead and missing part of his plate-mail armor, was Tremaine. His black tail swished excitedly, raised in a greeting stance, and he drew back his whiskers and gave Enochea a single, long blink of the eye. Someone had made a deep, crimson cut slashed across his exposed skin, where there should’ve been mounted a protective vambrace. The horde he fought off had been a gaggle of the Zarcturean Stormterrors, he said, mixed up with a dozen Shyphtorilaen that had signed up for the opposite team, blood-traitors, sensing a “winner” in the conflict. Disgusting filth. But how to mourn their sanity, their morality, when it seemed that their whole universe’s life had been cut short, and that all of them — yes, all, or almost all — would soon be dead?

Tremaine ascended the stairs in the lofty tower one by one — the electrogravitic lifts had been damaged in the Zarctureans’ initial assault — huffing and puffing for breath, carrying the swaddling infant in his arms, cradling her against his muscular chest. A stout warrior bred from infancy to fight — though Tremaine had always told him he had more the heart of a philosopher — Tremaine did not mind taking the stairs. Especially if it afforded him a few last moments with the Child. She was so delicate, like a frost-covered flower freshly burst from the just-thawed ground in spring . . . But strong, oh so strong; her little arms grasped at his neck like vice-grips, determined to hold onto him despite their tiny size. He smiled at her. She cooed and ahed at the sounds of the battle raging outside the tower, her sprig of red hair bouncing atop her small head as Tremaine’s boots thudded upon step after step as he ascended towards Enochea’s lab, carrying the babe toward her inevitable date with Destiny.

It had been a hard-won battle just getting her this far. The Zarcturean had landed their ground troops sooner than expected; in squads of twelve, sixteen, and twenty-four, they had stood at the Gates of Vandaleron and with a mighty, primitive battering ram — in the shape of a wolf’s head, with fire burning in its eyes and jaws — and smashed them to pieces. Then they had come marching in — their insectoid faces hidden by goggles and black gas masks, some of them attacking with only two weapons in each of their lower hands. Their other pairs of arms and hands — which sat just above their other two — were more concerned with launching toxic-gas grenades, which clattered when they hit the paving stones beneath, and then exploded in a bright puff of green smoke, melting the flesh off of anyone nearby. Screaming skeletons had surrounded Tremaine as he had ducked and woven himself through the battle, trying to reach the Sanctum of the Order. When he had finally arrived, he stopped short of the large, stained-glass doors, for there had been a particle-beam cannon pointed at his head by one of the Zarcturean.

Followed, then. In a fit of rage — to be so close to the goal, the living prize they had forged from a thousand years of genetic engineering and artificial enhancement — he drew his sword; large and unwieldy but for only the strongest of warriors to handle, the five-foot sword cleaved the head off the Zarcturean pointing the gun at his head as he spun around quickly, unexpectedly.

Then, he had dashed into the Sanctum.

Oh bloody hell.

What he saw — puddles, splatters, and streaks of blood staining the carpet and crystal and stone — mocked his belief in a higher power; that any deity, unless they had gone mad, would allow such atrocity in this, their holy temple. It looked as though a few of the Order had tried to hold off the invaders, but had fallen victim to them instead. Flies buzzed around their cracked skulls, and entrails oozed out of sliced-open stomachs. The smell of decaying corpses was so powerful that Tremaine — who had once won the Star-forge Academy’s joke-award of “least likely to vomit during battle,” did so now as he leaned against the wall for support. A tapestry of dead monks lay littering the bloodstained carpet the way in all three hallways that branched off the main entryway. Tremaine swished his tail angrily, low to the ground, and he hissed loudly at the assassins he knew that the Zarcturean were likely to have left behind. He growled low in his throat, a dangerous, dissonant, strangled sort of withheld howl, as though fine-grained machinery meant for singing, instead turned churlish and ground its gears. Still holding his sword with his left hand, he reached with his right for his sidearm, a subatomic disruptor; a device capable of reducing any living thing into a melted mess as every electron in their bodies ripped itself from its home, the atomic shell, the protons and neutrons pried pried apart with a cleaving axe until nothing was left but radioactive slime and dust. He had taken a step forward then, his foot crunching a broken crystal shard beneath his feet. No sooner did it crack and crumble than two of the Zarcturean were upon him at once.

He reached out and aimed squarely at the head of one, and pulled the trigger. As its head exploded and its internal organs liquified, the other one made to jump him while he was occupied. But Tremaine had been a soldier for a long time — eight hundred and ninety-four solar cycles out of a  lifespan of twelve-hundred. The charging Zarcturean tackled him with enough force for them to both take a tumble to the floor, slipping in ribbons of blood as they did, and Tremaine had fallen on his back, his disruptor ray knocked flying out of his hands. And so it was to the triumph of the brutish that he now lowered himself to, and  began to choke the life out of the creature. They had four arms, the Zarcturean, and this one used two to choke him in return, one to hold his head against the stone floor, and the last to shiv him with its dagger. He was still seeing stars from the fall when he felt the cold metal of the blade pierce his side, the Zarcturean ripping it from the rest of his plate-mail as though it were tissue paper. The rage that had been building in Tremaine up to this point exploded in a sudden furious writhe of his entire body, as though he were a snake trying to shed a dead skin. He reached up toward his throat, grabbed, and then and crushed the thumbs of his attacker, who drew back to gander at his now-broken hands. The creature howled in pain and drove the knife in even deeper. But this only enraged Tremaine  further. With all the force he could muster he turned the tables by rolling over with a mighty yell, putting the Zarcturean beneath him, pinning it with his knees on either side of his head. For a moment there was silence. Then Tremaine ripped the tube off its gas mask, and delighted in its creaking gasps, its wheezing breath as its lungs pumped furiously, only ingesting the poison of Planet Shyphtor’s atmosphere even more, and then finally, he heard a satisfying death rattle shuddered through his victim’s body, and the light went out of the Zarcturean soldier’s eyes.

Tremaine wasted no time. He clutched at the depth of the wound and realized the dagger’s blade was still inside him. He would be dead long before he reached the Tower of the Scrying Sentinel — wherein Enochea and Mina waited impatiently, half-angry at him for his lateness, half-terrified of what might’ve kept him — so continuing on like this was not an acceptable state of affairs. He grabbed the dagger by the leather-wrapped handle, scrunched his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, and then in one swift move he removed it from his side. No vital organs punctured . . . But the loss of blood alone would drag him down to the despairing, cold-burning stars of death, if he didn’t see to it. And that meant doing the one thing he knew was a bad idea. He cried out for help.

Luckily, no leftover Zarcturean troops came at him; only the shocked and surprised face of Maunt Edactica, one of the Order’s sisters, and his only hope. He prayed to the Aletheiaeon that she had not, since the time they had last spoken, also betrayed her species, her culture, her planet, siding with those revolting creatures just to be on the winning side, and happy to claim at least claim of servitude before cruel masters (they were wrong, though; the Zarcturean had not taken prisoners the last time this battle had been fought — this was its sixth incarnation, separated from the last by a thousand cycles. They would not lose now, either.)

“Tremaine?” said Maunt Edactica, helping him stand to his feet. She glanced at the wound in his side. “That needs stitching,” she said. “Come, come with me. To the Room of Secret Need. The Zarcturean can’t enter that room, ever, because . . . Well, because they’re not Shyphtorilaen and don’t know how to find the entrance. Perhaps you and I can find sanctuary there as I work. And — to answer your unspoken question — ” and here she smiled slyly, “the Child is safe within its walls as well. I placed Warder magick on it so that if they get too near any place its entrance might appear, they will receive the nastiest — quite possibly deadliest — electronic shock in the universe.”

Tremaine smiled at her, and together they made haste — well, as hastily as they could with him gripping that seeping wound — toward the other end of the hallway, which grew larger and grander the further in one traveled. The Sanctum used Dimensional technology so that the inside was far larger than the outer structure could have permitted; the hallway — in fact, the innards of the entire Sanctum — existed in what Tremaine had told him was “a pocket universe.” Right now though, he didn’t care what it was called. Or how it worked. He just knew that with each step he took — he was growing light-headed now; dizzy — it brought him closer to his quarry, the Child they intended to send across the galaxy to a safe location while they pieced back together the shattered remains of their civilization.

It would be hard saying goodbye to the little one. Her little bell-like laugh would be missed in the great crystal halls of The Order, that was for sure. They had cared for her now these six long months since her birth — the first fully “human” child ever born on Shyphtor, one without any shapeshifting ability, the first in a thousand years or more — in the deepest of secrecy. How the Zarctureans had learned of her birth, he would never know. There had to be a defector. As unthinkable as it was — a species-traitor in their midst! — that was the only possible explanation. Hard as that was to accept — and the very thought of it made Tremaine’s blood boil and set his nerves on edge with worry — he supposed he had to face it: The whole of the world was coming undone. These were, indeed, the Last Days of the Shyphtorilaen.

“But not for the Child,” he said as they arrived at the invisible doors to the Room of Secret Need. They required the delicate hands of someone used to wielding a Khaototronometer — someone like Maunt — to decipher the (all but invisible to eyes other than those looking directly at the right spot) glyphs placed over and around the doorway, “No, for her, this journey is only the first of two. Of many, I fear.”

“Womanhood will be her greatest challenge,” said Maunt.

“If she chooses to settle as ‘female’ in her final form.”

“Oh, aye, indeed,” said Maunt. “And if she chooses, at the appointed time, to settle into a masculine form . . . That of a man, like you. What will you say then?”

Tremaine smiled. “I’ll say ‘may the Aletheiaeon have pity on you, young one . . . We men have our own hells, our own demons to fight.”

Together he and Maunt entered the Sanctum, and Tremaine collapsed in a heap on the floor beside her. “I need blood — “ he began. “A transfusion should do the — “

“No,” said Maunt. “You require more than that. You require Mystic Healing from that awful creature’s cursed blade, its poison deepening into your heart as we speak. For that, I will need my Scepter, and my Will-worker’s tools, which I happen to have a virtual edition of stored on the Virtual Psychonexus. I will have to put on the mental transponders, I’m afraid — attach them to my skin just above my eyes — to connect to it and perform the ritual to heal you. Shouldn’t take long.”

“Time,” he said, shaking his head, “is fluid. The future, unknown. The past, uncertain. The present now the only thing that matters. Do what you can, and I’ll hope that I live long enough to repay you someday in kind, Maunt.”

Maunt smiled. “There’s no way to truly repay me unless you use Magick. At which you are as talented as a boar in a ballroom. But, a nice dinner over mulderberry wine — and a little fooling around while we’re inebriated — should do the trick, I think.”

She smiled at him, her tail swiping back and forth excitedly as she ran the fur of her fingers down the fur of his chest. No — this would not do. Duty, Tremaine. Focus on your duty, he told himself sternly. Still, an advance like that — and not an unwelcome one; Maunt was hauntingly beautiful, her tall, thin ears perking up and her moonslit eyes dilating whenever they were together — deserved a response.

“We’ll, right now,” said Tremaine. “Let’s just try not to get killed . . . Make that dinner and night of passion a promise, and I promise you that the Child will be delivered safely to Mina and Enochea.

“Oh, just one thing,” said Maunt, as she turned around and faced him. Where the blazes are they sending her, or is it all up to Astrid?”

“It’s pretty much all down to Astrid, at this point. That machine knows the heavens the way an expert lover knows where to touch and massage.”

“Well, if I’m not allowed to know, I suppose — “

“It’s not a matter of permission,” said Tremaine, conjuring a chuckle from the grueling pain he felt in his side. “It’s a matter of whether or not you can match Astrid, the ship’s living intelligence, in navigation and interpreting star-charts.”

“Oh, I see. I feel we’d be doomed for certain, then, were I to take over that role.” She smiled sweetly at him and laughed. “You rest here. I will bring the Child.”

“Maunt, tell me something,” he said, grabbing her by the arm before she could leave. “How do you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Remain optimistic even when the world is crumbling around our heads?”

“Ah,” she said, and thought for a moment. “I suppose it’s because I’ve always had a knack — ” She held up the shiny, five-armed Golden Compass cast in gold, bronze, copper, steel, and chromium. “For knowing when to hold them . . . And when to fold them. Now come on . . . Let’s get you the chid, and then get her to Enochea and Mina!”

Entry Into The MegaGrants Race!

Though there are those of you out there who would gleefully see me strung up by my toes and left to die as my brain became over-oxygenated, this will no doubt mark as a ruffling of their feathers. To all those who love me, it will be a day of celebration, rivaled only by Festivus every year, just because I chose to try it, in the first place.

I speak of course of Epic Games (the makers of the Unreal Engine), have started giving away their gaming platform — all the code, all the examples, all the libraries of functions, even some of the (never-ending sea) of plugins, and a lot of those are usually on sale, despite. This is terrific, and I even — guess what? — submitted a proposal for an Epic MegaGrant for $30,000 in order to make a crazy CGI animated film about Dizzy Weatherspark, the literal girl of my dreams since I’ve gotten back into the realm of the writersphere. I can’t believe I’ve been gone so long.

But anyway, time marches on, and the book changes and is in flux even as I read back what I wrote this morning. I’ve got some terrifying concepts in there — superheroes, supervillains run amok; the police going on strike nationwide because of it; and then heroes like Dizzy and Gadget, who use technology and their wits to go from “HUMAN” to “MORE THAN HUMAN” in the blink of an eye. As seen in Watchmen, this is probably going to lend itself well to dystopian fiction, but I’m thinking of telling a more adventurous story, a funnier, lighter-toned deconstruction of the world of ink and pulp. You’ll see when the Time is right.

Sorry I Went Off-Line There For a While. Had To Deal with a BUNCH of Real Life Shit. So. How've YOU Been? ;-)

“Andrew Hainline! You put some clothes on that model immediately! Sometimes I don’t like your work because I think it looks like you look down on and objectify women.” — My Mother.

Me — “Yeah, but why? First of all, their proportions are fairly normal. Second of all, the girl bending backward is wearing some kind of . . . metal underwear; maybe it’s like a silvery, bio-luminescent goo which covers whatever part of her body she wants covered at the time. Also note that this is an evolving act of passion, done right here in this alley; no sleazy hotel rooms, no luggage, no alcohol in sight, either. Dark alleyways are traditionally the kinds of places where “rape” always takes place, in movies and TV shows. Not that that’s a bunch of bullshit TV stuff, but really, it is.. This act, depicted here? I really don’t think the girl on the right is either drugged nor prisoner. This is completely consensual, believe me. I thought these characters and situation up and at no point was consent not explicitly given in the way I narratively established in my head.. Ttey are in fact undressing one other, unable to endure the heat of the other’s burning blood. any longer. And. Lastly, that woman is a dark-skinned Vulcan, not a human, from Earth. And if she had just heard you even imply that she was—Human, that is—she would explode out of this computer and “Vulcan nerve-slap” yo ass so hard, it’d send the shockwave back In time, so that I would then experience a phantom hand hitting my ass just as I was born.. Look, I’m sorry mom, but you’d lose that cat-fight. In quite a hurry.”

Well, let’s see . . . . My dad moved to Lexington Kentucky, which is good for him and his “having a job there situation,” and he met a woman and they fancy each other. So that’s kinda cool.. My brother’s horrific schizophrenia continues to torture him mercilessly, like the Red Knight in The Fisher King plagued the once-brilliant professor of medieval literature, played by Robin Williams, a court jester of some renown. It’s so sad that all the greatest, brightest stars in the galaxy are slowly saying goodbye to us, isn’t it?. Harlan Ellison, that crotechy old fuck we all knew and loved dearly, and who would be complimented by those words posthumously quoted above, and maybe laugh with you or share a beer with you, just for having the balls to say it to his face. We lost both Uncle Stan and Leonard Nimoy. Those two wounds still need cauterizing. Not since the Death of Optimus Prime, nor the Death of Spock Himself, nor the Death of D̶a̶r̶t̶h̶ ̶V̶a̶d̶e̶r̶ Anakin Skywalker, who redeemed himself, in the end by saving Luke.

These are the thoughts that kept me out of Harvard. Yale. MIT especially didn’t me handling “lasers.”

Why Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" Deserves A Goddamn Oscar, Goddamn It!

I had a chance the other day to blow some money, and so I went in search of good movies to watch. And one that I hadn’t seen in a while occurred to me as the perfect film for the context I find myself in — that is, writing a book about the, er, “downside”—to say the least—of there being actual superheroes and supervillains in the world. That movie was, of course, Zack Snyder’s much-debated adaptation (though some would insist ruination) of Alan Moore’s epic (and historic) graphic novel masterpiece, Watchmen. Moore’s name doesn’t appear on the opening credits anywhere (as you may or may not know, he despises Hollywood), so you know he didn’t sanction the film whatsoever. David Gibbons, however, didcontribute to the film creatively. And it shows. A lot. Moore even tried to sue them to get them to stop production, but was ultimately unsuccessful; I am so glad he lost in court; for out of that firestorm, a creation unlike any other, both cerebral and visceral at once, emerged. Zack Snyder’s best film ever, and. The one he will most likely be remembered for the most: Watchmen.

But, you know what? These days, I find myself less and less interested in what the “experts” and “critics” in one medium—even the man or woman who wrote the source material for the work in the first place—offering their (often boorish and uninformed, and in some cases, patently unrealistic in their expectations) comments on Hollywood’s job of adapting their work to the silver screen. How can I say that, and still call myself a “writer?” Did I just “sell out,” big time, as they say? Nay, not at all. Because. It goes like this: Stephen King once told a story about two writers. I’m paraphrasing a lot here, but, basically, he said, “The young author comes to visit the older author, and asks him why he isn’t more angry that Hollywood has made (poor) adaptations of his works, thus ruining them forever? And the old author simply smiles and says, ‘Son, they’re not ruined at all. They’re right there on my bookshelves where they belong. That’s their true form, and the one I’d prefer be remembered. But if someone goes and sees one of these ‘bad adaptations, and that spurs them on to read the original source—my book—then how in the world is that possibly a bad thing, for me especially?”

That is the position we must put ourselves in — that of the “older author” in the parable — if we ourselves are going to take Watchmen seriously as a film. Now, what follows is my opinion, nothing more. Feel free to call this a load of fanboy bullshit if you want to; like I said,, I care less and less these days what other people think. You can call this opinion a bunch of stinking offal if you wish, but please at least try to understand that I’m critiquing the film from the standpoint of having grown up with the graphic novel, having read it many times, and loving it more and more each time. That’s where I’m coming from — a place of deep love and respect, and honor, with regards to Moore and his writing, his work. But—I also grew up in the “Golden Age of VCRs and video and Cable TV,” and it was during my lifetime that we made the switch from cassette to disc, and from disc to the cloud. I’ve watched Hollywood itself very carefully in that time, and to say that it has “gone downhill” a bit is an understatement, as I’m sure you are aware. That’s one reason I think Watchmen’s star burns so brightly—because it does so against an unfathomable darkness, bereft of any other lights that shine quite as distinctively as it does.

Another reason is—yes, I’m going to come right out and say it—the book’s narrative involving the “giant monsters from another dimension” (neatly appropriated from an Outer Limits episode entitled, The Architects of Fear,  which still gives me the creeps whenever I watch it. It’s damned good entertainment!) would simply not have worked on film. Why, you ask? Because it’s far too complicated a concept to easily get across in a visual medium (like a movie), rather than a cerebral medium (like a book). For another thing, Snyder’s ending is more logical than the book’s, and is actually carefully foreshadowed throughout the entire film, and amazingly, they manage to do that without butchering the rest of the story. Which brings me to my next point: Watchmen is unique in its slavish devotion to the rest of its source material, if not its final plot twist. It’s not any kind of “rewrite” or “reimagining” or “rebooting” of the concept or the story and characters. It’s not a “spin off” or a “riff upon” or a parody of the book. No. What you see on that movie screen is a jaw-droppingly accurate, live-action, literally frame-by-frame retelling of the graphic novel, only now it moves and as real people in it instead of drawings. Everything about the film visually—from the lovemaking between Silk Specter and Nite Owl inside the Airship; to the prison riot that turns into a hilarious black comedy starring Rorschach; to Doctor Manhattan’s mesmerizing origin story . . . all of it is presented exactly like the book does it. Hell, it even uses the same color palette and exactly the same color tone as he the novel does for Rorschach’s costume, and Manhattan’s glowing-blue body (yes, he is fully-frontally nude throughout the film), Archie’s design, the “inches away from a bona fide rape scene” starring Silk Specter and the Comedian, as well as all the characters’ costumes, body language, dialogue . . . and that brings me to the casting.

Jackie Earl Haley is an absolutely terrifying—yet exceedingly dry-witted and often funny—psychopath as Rorschach; he even gets what Rorschach’s voice sounded like in my head whenever I first read the book. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is spectacularly horrifying, brutal, and nearly inhuman as “the Comedian;” a murdering, cackling, evil-incarnate rapist and bully who, after gunning down a few protestors and giving a few others concussions at one point, declares, “God I love workin’ on American soil again!” (Referencing Vietnam which—in this parallel universe—we won, hands down, and where Nixon is still president after five terms in office. The rest of the cast does a stellar job of not only embodying their graphic-novel alter-egos, but of looking exactly like them, as well. Many of Snyder’s shots are a cinematographic reinterpretation of actual panels in the novel itself, and much of the film’s dialogue is ripped right from the speech balloons; they even manage to somehow synthesize the exact sonic nature of the “comic book sound effects words” that anyone who ever watched the 1960’s Batman show would easily recognize. 

In Watchmen: The Ultimate Cut, which is what I watched the other day, there is more of everything I love about the theatrical and director’s cuts, but also, a new addition to the film, that adds a “missing dimension” to it that the graphic novel had but that the film initially lacked. And that is an astonishingly loyal-to-the-source-material—and even animated, the drawing-style reminiscent of the horror comic of the 1940’s!--adaptation of The Tales of the Black Freighter  story thread, starring Gerard Butler as the maddened captain sailing on a raft made of corpses toward Davidstown in order to save it from invasion from the evil spirits aboard—you guessed it—The Black Freighter. And just like everything else in this film, they get it so right it’s uncanny. And Butler’s vocal performance as the captain is awe-inspiring. I didn’t know Butler had that in him as an actor. But now that I know that he does, I will expect more from him than I have until now.

The one—and only—change from the graphic novel is the climactic Architects of Fear moment when (SPOILERS) Ozymandius engages the Dr.-Manhattan-engineered zero-point energy reactors in every corner of the globe, even and especially America, causing them to overload and explode, killing over 15 million people the world over and decimating every major city across the world, in order to make the world’s governments see the pettiness of their differences and unite to fight against . . . what? Well, in the book, it’s a giant, genetically engineered squid whose brain explodes upon its impact in our dimension—seen as a “botched invasion attempt”—and sending a terrifying psychic shockwave around the planet, also killing millions. In the movie, though, it’s people having to deal with the potential threat of Dr. Manhattan suddenly experiencing what pro-wrestling fans call a “heel turn” and blowing half the world to smithereens, even though he didn’t; it was simply engineered to look that way. But Ozymandius’s “evil” plan for achieving world peace does in fact work, though . . . so long as the Watchmen involved keep the secret to their graves. Countries all over the world stand down their bombers and their soldiers, abandon their plans for nuclear midnight, and begin to work together to face this incredibly powerful new foe, whom they know is lurking somewhere out there in the universe, and who just gave the planet a deadly swirlie in the cosmic toilet, and might—just might—come back and do so again. (Kind of like the dark but [intentionally] hilarious moment in the “prison escape”—which has some gorgeous fight choreography in it, by the way—where the Rorschach enters the men’s room, only to find the Little Person Gangster who earlier threatened his life. The door swings closed and open, open and closed, and each time it swings we see “Big Figure” cowering in the corner with an even more horrified facial expression than before, until finally the door shuts all the way, we hear a toilet flush, and Rorschach silently emerges, ready to go. Blood runs out in freshets from under the men’s room door. Just like in the graphic novel.

The film is problematic for several reasons, though. One is a paucity of people of color. Practically the entire cast—except for two minor characters—is white. (Me personally, I’d be glad for that were I a person of color, because the way the story paints these “superheroes” as nothing of the sort is at first amusing then ghastly when we witness the consequences.) Also, it seems to come within mere inches (quite literally) of fetishizing rape in one intense scene—though the woman involved does break the guy’s nose at one point, before she is rescued at the last second by another minor character we’ve only heard mentioned once, yet who does an admirable job of beating the living shit out of her rapist (though we are given the very strong message that she could have done so herself, had things happened in an only-slightly-different order). And, worse, the film tells us, that the Original Silk Specter (mother of the current Silk Specter) eventually “forgave” her rapist and wantonly had a child with him, who grew up to be one of the main characters—the new Silk Specter. Luckily they give her plenty of agency, and the film does past the Bechdel test. 

Regrettably, this too is slavish loyalty to the graphic novel, because it happens in there, too. This is somewhat made up for by the tender, obviously mutually-consenting, and kindly relationship Silk Specter shares with Nite Owl, who proves he hasno trouble fighting side by side with a (very) empowered woman who can kick loads of ass. (And who can apparently can only get sexually aroused when they’re both thousands of feet up in the air, in an owl’s-head-shaped spaceship, and both in full superhero regalia. And yep, that’s in the graphic novel as well.)

The one thing I can say about all this that might wash some of the guilt off Snyder and company’s hands is that the film itself is aware that these things are problematic, and that the scenes will make you either smile or cringe or wince, depending on which one you’re talking about, and that they are there for a purpose; to get a specific message or theme—regarding either plot or character—across to the audience. These scenes are not placed in the film (nor are they themselves filmed) gratuitously or haphazardly; rather, they have been almost surgically implanted into the film to get across specific ideas—even really awful ones—about the story’s world and characters, and just exactly why  (spoilers) the Comedian was such a huge, monstrous asshole that someone might very well want to kill him over his past behavior; the world would probably not miss him much. Again, Jefferey Dean Morgan is terrific as this violent, creepy, fetishistic, rapist, murdering, psychopathic terror of a man. If “over the top” is an acting skill, then Morgan has definitely mastered it.

Visually the film is gorgeous. It’s as if Snyder left nothing out if he felt it would make the film even a small bit more colorful, bizarre, unsettling, weird, or alter its mood significantly. The special effects used to bring Dr. Manhattan—a fully computer-animated humanoid being—to life on film here are on par with James Cameron’s Avatar or Spielberg’s Ready Player One.We not only see him as a nuanced and delicately articulated CGI character, but foremost, we view him as just another actor in the movie. Which is an amazing technological feat for a film of this time period (which was circa 2009). The sets are unbelievably realistic, the costumes look sewn by hand, and designed by either technological geniuses or fashion gurus, or both; the performances from everyone involved are stellar and believable and really pull you into the story—and sometimes lead you to places you don’t want to go—and most of all, the film is relevant. Not just in the context of superhero films and commentary upon them . . . but relevant to current events in American and world politics. It pre-visages the liberal-conservative divide we have today; it even comments on mass protests that turn violent for all the wrong reasons (though is there ever a right one? The film asks us that too.) In fact, the film raises more questions than it answers, though when it does answer, it does so with the gloves off, so check not your privilege at the door—and yes, the film comments heavily on that too—but instead, check your paradigm.

So, there you have it. My opinion on why Watchmen is a classic, deserving of high honor from the Academy. It’s not a popular opinion. As far as marketing and distribution goes, Watchmen was a dead-on-arrival, box-office failure. But artistically, there is no denying it was—and still is—a masterpiece of superhero cinema, and the touchstone for all “commentary” efforts within the genre; even Chris Nolan owes a debt of gratitude to this film; because for all its wild, unbelievable technology and characters; for all its problematic-ness; for all its little warts and small-time failures and—yes, I’ll go ahead and say it—missed opportunities, it still remains a powerful piece of cinema that is not afraid to upset its audience. And that is the highest regard that any film can be held in, bar none.

Heh heh, check out these NEW renders!

These were made before Deucalion fell off the desk and committed hari-kari. Sigh. The original designs may in fact be lost forever. :-( But I can share the renders with you folks, at least! Here, take a gander . . .

"Well, shazbot!"

Deucalion broke the other day. I’m just now posting about it because when it happened, I was such an emotional wreck—and that’s putting it lightly—that it took my mom, dad, and little brother to even get me to stop crying and screaming about it like a madman. They thought about sending me for a week’s vacation in the local loony bin, it was so serious.

What happened, you ask? Well, I tripped over the cat (hey, it was dark, and he’s jet-black) and instinctively put out my hands to brace for the fall . . . I went down, and so did Deucalion. He went tumbling off the side of my desk and now he is . . . Uh, broken. Fuck. Now all I’ve got is a $8,500 paperweight, unless my renter’s insurance will cover it (they say they cover personal belongings as part of my policy, and the adjuster should be calling me today. Yay Progressive! But still. All that work . . . All those near-nervous-bnreakdowns and near-insanity moments; all those rants I went on full of unprintable filth, alll hurled at uncooperative circuits . . . Plus a good deal of Data Loss, too. Unbelievable. I had just gotten all my software reinstalled, had just got all my preferences set in every program, and was even trying out the new machine’s capavlities as far as nusic creation went . . . And then BAM!, one trip over a napping cat (he wasn't too thrilled about it either, believe me; I got a lot of “meowing to the management” later on). But for real . . . I’m heartsick over this tremendous loss, folks, and it might take me a while to get over it emotionally. What a waste, what a waste. But my father was kind enough to offer me a new motherboard, and that’s sweet of him. But I think this machine’s beyond repair at this point, unless we spend $2-3000 fixing it. And by that time, and with that amount of money spent, I could’ve gotten myself a Mac Pro. But,, alas, it wasn’t meant to be. I put Deucalion together instead, and we don’t have near enough cash in the bank — or on credit — to repeat this (failed) experiment again.We will miss ye, Deucalion old friend. Give ‘em Hell in Valhalla for me! :-(

New Renders, And a Musical Update

Hi all you sports fans — or, well, okay; fellow geeks who, like me, probably aren’t into sports — it’s time for an update on the wild world of Andy’s Brain. My psychiatrist put me on some new medication — Klonopin and Wellbutrin, to help with depression — and I swear, I’ve never been more productive in my life! Not only did I build the Beast, Deucalion, but also have finished several new 3D projects and am working like gangbusters on The Wrath of the Con, the novel that I’m writing, which ties in with the art I’ve been doing and the music I’ve been composing. (Don’t have any tracks to share at the moment; to hear an older version of the book’s sprawling, rock-operatic “overture,”go here:

The melody, as you can hear, is pretty much unchanged. But a lot of other stuff is going to change between this and my friend Rommy Driks’ stunning vocal rendition of the lyrics. Which, by the way, are finished! Here they are . . .

Fight On Forever (So Dreams Never Die)

Lyrics © 2019

William A. Hainline

He was a no one and a dreamer, with a renegade inventive mind / Who met a dark and dangerous femme fatale / Who flipped around his paradigm; / Well now she rescued him from heartache,/ Boy never really stood a chance . . . / Because he fell in love with her wicked ways / And then they joined hands and danced . . .

Oh, he was alone, / She had the power, / They joined hands, and / Like Jaeger pilots, no / Nothing could stop them / They were tremendous, and / Unstoppable! / Yes, Unstoppable!

And then they flew away on star-streams, / In a flying saucer built for two / And they went on crazy adventures/ All you have to do is make believe; / You gotta fight the evil Nothing, / As it claws and bites and it devours,/ You gotta fight the vacuum of daily life, / Before it sucks away your power . . .

When all hope is gone, / All seems forsaken, / Heroes rise up, / To risk everything. / They never fail; / Always remember: / Heroes don’t fail! No, / Heroes don’t fail!

Never in life have we ever ft in, / Forever outside the fire have we been, / For Hogwarts And, for Wonderland, / By Neverland’s last light; / Break down all the walls and get ready to fight, / The minions of orthodox thought all take to flight! / We’ll fight on forever so dreams never—

Fighting a battle against the Mundane; / We don’t give a damn if they think we’re insane! / We’re kickin’ ass and takin’ names, we’ll fight ‘til morning’s light, / With magical rock and roll dreams in the night; / Come on fight with me so that they’ll never die! / We’ll fight on forever, so dreams never—

Blood-sucking vampires and devious devils / Just Dust by the light of the moon . . . / Battling bosses who don’t really care / And budgets and trolls on the loose;

But taxes and interviews… / My kid’s sick with stomach flu, / I pray the gods deliver me, / I feel the Nothing’s touch . . .

When the darkness is all around you, / And real life’s dreaded demon hordes / Come knocking on your door/ And all the magic’s faded In the lost and lonely night

Just throw on your best headphones, / Grab your vorpal sword and fight / And face down all those demons, / With your last remaining might!

God speed to the Mages and Vampires. / God speed, as their powers increase. And, / God speed, as the carnival show ends, / Godspeed, I think I’ll never leave!

Dragons, and their ruinous hellfire, / Can’t stop what I feel deep inside, / Our lips touch just like in my dreams, now, / Masks off, let your fantasies fly!

Well now the heroes of our story / They may not be made of flesh and bone / But stories have a life of their own apart / The poets racing minds and souls…

And if you ever need some saving / From the fire and ice of daily life.. / You can just ride away on the midnight wings, / Of a rocket powered motor bike . . .

When all hope is gone, / All seems forsaken, / Heroes rise up, / To save the day; and, / They never fail; / Always remember; / Heroes don’t fail! No,/ Heroes don’t fail!

Never in life have we ever ft in, / Forever outside in the fire have we been, / For Wonderland, the OASIS, even the Upside Down, / We’ll fly through the sky and never let them down, / We’ll fly there tonight at warp drive factor nine! / And join in the fight without guns or swords sworn, / But we’ll fight forever so dreams never—

Fighting a battle against the Mundanes; / We don’t give a damn if they think we’re insane! / We’re kickin’ names and takin’ ass, / (Ah shit, I blew that line!) But, / we still live on so our dreams cannot die; / The Mundanes don’t care that their world’s a façade. / So let’s tear it down as they all watch in awe!

(Sparse accompaniment begins—“breakdown””)

Dungeons and Dragons, and Babylon 5! / On wings made of Buffy and Firefly we ride, / For Stan the Man and Wizards of the Coast we’ll always fight, / On Mothra’s great wings we’ll forever fly high! / Come on roll a D6, I tell you no lies, / We must carry on, or else the dream—!

Full Orchestration returns)

Never in life have we ever ft in, / Forever outside in the fire have we been, / Forever will we dream, and always heed the battle cry; / We’ll fight on forever where dreams never die! / We’ll fight on forever so dreams never die! / We’ll fight on forever so dreams never die!

We’ll must fight forever, or else the dream dies!

That’s it for thje lyrics… Now head on over to my DeviantArt page and fill your eyeballs with the wonderment of my new renders, all done on Deucalion in record time!

Latest Renders From 3D Land!

Well, I got the beast built, finally. It’s name is Deucalion (named for the Frankenstein’s monster character in Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein). It’s a 16-core (32-thread), 128 GB of RAM having, 30TB of drive-space having, double (and NVLINKed) GeForce RTX 2080 sportin’ mofo of a computer. It’s a totally bad-ass Windows PC. It’s not Apple’s new Mac Pro (by a long shot (which just to look at gives me funny feelings in my special spot), but it’s mine, goddamn it. I built it. With my own two hands and my own damn brain. Take that, establishment! Anyway, I thought I’d show off what it’s capable of. It did this in less than thirty minutes:

Pretty nifty, huh? It took me longer than twenty-four minutes (the length of the render time) to put this together, let alone do any post-work on. That’s pretty impressive, and it’s something that the vaunted Mac Pro couldn’t even dream of doing (at least, at the moment), because guess what? I used the Iray rendering engine, which uses Nvidia’s CUDA technology to accelerate the render process. And thanks to Apple’s corporate pissing contest with Nvidia, Macs don’t use Nvidia GPU chips. So in a way, I’m kinda glad it’s not a Mac Pro. The only really, really awful thing about it not being a Mac Pro is that it lacks two things: (1) Scrivener, the world’s greatest writing program, and (2) Logic Pro, the world’s greatest MIDI/Audio sequencer. There’s a chance that later this year Scrivener will finally achieve feature-parity with the Mac version, but there is no chance that Logic will ever come to the PC world. It’s one of Apple’s “Pro Apps,” and you can bet those are staying put on the Mac. So if I wanna do anything musical with the new PC, I have to use either Cubase 10.5 Pro, or PreSonus StudioOne, neither of which is up to Logic Snuff. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll one day discover a DAW on the PC that hits my kickass-spot button. Just haven’t gotten there yet. For now, I’ll confine the sequencing work to Logic on the Mac, and the sample playback to the PC. Because y’know, with MIDI over Ethernet, you can do that sorta thing.

Hell Is For System Builders

Have you ever noticed that (most) people, when assembling some piece of technology, and confronted with a piece that stubbornly refuses to allow itself to be inserted, or that doesn’t work quite the way it should . . . That be they man or woman, they automatically enter “Alpha Male Bear-Wrasslin’ Mode,” and that suddenly, even though we might be the most erudite of ladies or gentlemen otherwise, every other word out of our mouths from that point on, as we work on the project, becomes some variation on “cocksucker!”, “son of a bitch!” “piece of shit!”, “goddamn it, go in there!,” "or “you little bastard!”, and the ever popular “motherfucker, I’ll show you who’s boss!” And then when the piece of technology finally relents in the struggle, and does what it’s supposed to do (after about nine million attempts, during which the person assembling the machine has come close to three aneurisms, two heart attacks, and has probably cut their hand open on something), they just have to — loudly — proclaim their victory (“Yeah! Whose house is this! Whose house, you little bitch-ass!”) and showboat around a bit (i.e., dance around in their underwear, maybe) to celebrate their “win” over “that son of a bitching thing!”

It’s not just me who notices this (or, okay, I admit it — actually does this). I’ve seen both women and men reduced to stark raving lunatics during the “assembly” phase of putting together a new custom computer rig from nothing but parts. The more expensive and complex the rig, the more cussing and threats on the machine’s life you’re bound to hear if you’re close by one of us as we work.. Trust me. If you’ve never done it — putting together a computer out of nothing but parts purchased from Amazon is far, far more frustrating, messy, and bad for your mental health than even that goddamn office furniture they sell at Walmart and Office Depot, and that we, in our arrogance (and perhaps wanting to save a hundred bucks or so) think we don’t need professionally assembled. “Heh, naw, I can do it,” we say to the clerk, who then proceeds to inwardly laugh his ass off at the ordeal he knows we’re going to put ourselves through.

I thought I knew a lot about doing this. Hell, back in “the day,” I assembled systems left and right. I built 3 of the 5 PC computers that I owned before my I got my first Mac, and helped several friends on their builds; I got my A+ and Net+ Computer Repair Certifications way back in 2003, I used to sell computers and upgrades — and perform them — at CompUSA, Radio Shack, Walmart, and at H.H. Gregg. And at NTR.NET, I was the man to call if you needed some custom Dynamic HTML and JavaScript written. I’ve got about 24 credit hours at Indiana University in the Computer Science department; not the “Information Systems” department . . . The actual goddamn Computer Sciences department — in other words, Im trained in the really hard, conceptual and theoretical shit that you need Calculus to chew through. I’ve had 25 years experience working with everything from 8086 processors and MS-DOS 4.0, to Windows 10 (this year’s update) and macOS 10.15.2, Cataliana. I’ve taken apart and fused back together and cannibalized and hacked together systems since I was a tween.

But THIS SYSTEM. Jesus H. Christ driving a shit-truck, this thing is a MAJOR pain in the ass!

First thing, fresh outta the gate, the initial motherboard was no good, so we had to send it back for a refund. Then while the new one is on its way, I discover that the RAM I ordered, despite the Amazon description saying otherwise, isn’t the right spec to run on the replacement motherboard. Fuck! So we sent that back and ordered new RAM for a pretty penny more. Got the new motherboard. Then got the case. Discovered the case is too small to support all my equipment. So, sigh, we ordered. a new case. New case gets here and it looks big enough. Notice I said looks. It’s got a locking glass door that’s locked. And the fuckers — the FUCKERS — forgot to give us the keys that open it. It turns out this was a manufacturing and shipping snafu. Finally pried the case open by gently picking (and kinda ruining, but oh well) the locking mechanism. Then began to build. Annnnnnd it’s too small. Too shit-fuck, goddamn, motherfucking, cocksucking small. Not enough room for the radiators. I’m at my wits end. So we order a THIRD case. But while it’s on its way, I have an epiphany: Use the back of the motherboard’s backplane to mount the 3.5” hard-drives; that’s what it’s there for, you moron! So I tried that. Went to mount everything and . . . . .

Bent pins on one of the main motherboard interface headers. Well, fuck, fuck, fuckity fuck-fuck. So, hello, Amazon? Yeah its your favorite idiot. I need a new motherboard. No this one isn’t defective; the guy assembling it is certainly defective as fuck, but other than having bent the pins—and even broken one off while trying to straighten it; oops!—the motherboard was good to go. Until Captain Dumbass (that’d be me) fucked it all up. So. New motherboard arrives tomorrow, maybe; or Saturday. Who the fuck knows. I obviously do not know dick anymore about properly assembling computers or planning a build. If I did, none of these snafus would have happened.

But, anyway. We’ll see what happens when the new motherboard gets here, and the new case. I might turn out to like it more than the current one, and just chuck the current one into the supply-parts closet. Who knows. I kinda feel like Dr. Frankenstein with this thing. Not Victor Frankenstein. Either — Fredrick Frankenstein . . . And it’s pronounced “Frahnk-en-STEEN.”, thank you very much. (But I do not say “Eye-gore” or “Froe-drick.”)

Dammit, I am determined now. I WILL make this thing LIVE. I WILL bring it to life, despite being cold-cocked a few times in the first few rounds of this titanic struggle between me and the gods of fate and luck. I say to those gods now what I said to the USB 3.0 motherboard cable last night: “Motherfucker, I’ll fix your ass!”

"Well, I'm Back."

That’s right, I, the inimitable, inimical, ingenious William Andrew Hainline have returned from the neither-world with great things to share. Cool news, stories, updates. I hope you’ll enjoy the ride.

First off, I’ve decided to give my blog a WHOLE new look and feel, as you can probably tell if you have working eyeballs. (I shouldn’t say that; it’s insensitive to people whose eyeballs don’t work. So how about this — “if you happen to be looking at it visually?”) A lot has gone on with me, with my writing, and with my life in the past year or so, and I’d like very much to share the excitement — and some of the pratfalls — with you, Constant Reader. (I always loved how Stephen King gave us all that affectionate name; “Constant Reader.” And I knew — just knew — he was speaking to me, and me alone . . .)

Anyhow. I’ve had my back and lower body operated on three frickin’ times this past year. Well, not really operated on. They stuck big needles in me and injected me with cortisone. (But they had to knock me out first; so I guess it counts as “surgery,” right?) Secondly, insofar as my digital art goes, I’ve come a long way with that — in terms of both my artisic and software skills — as you can see over on my DeviantArt gallery and also here on this site. Right now I’ve set myself a high bar . . . I’ going to spend this winter learning as much as I can about Maya, the Arnold renderer, the Houdin Enginei, OctaneRender, iClone and Character Creator, and the Substance texturing platform. I’m going to master modeling, lighting, texturing, rigging, animating, effects, and rendering professional-level 3D content, even if it kills me. In other news, my brother is doing okay, still struggling with schizophrenia, but dating a wonderful guy named Nick (finally, he found a diamond in the rough!); my mom really struggles with the stress of keeping up with not one, but two sons who both have serious psychiatric issues (myself, I’m bipolar; diagnosed schizoaffective, bipolar type).. My dad moved to Lexington so I don’t see him as much as I used to, which is very hard, ‘cause I love him (plus he just bought me THE coolest set of audio plugins from Waves!). My friend Mira moved back to town — Huzzah — but she stays pretty busy trying to save the world with science. I’m not being flip or sarcastic — she’s an excellent “armchair scientist,” as they used to say, and has read (and commented on) more peer-reviewed papers than I think anyone else I know has, including my stepdad. And he’s got a freakin’ Doctorate.

I’ve ignored my music for a while — shouldn’t have done that — and I plan on getting back to it soon. After all, with these new plugins, I plan to be Dark Overlord of Audio Processing.

I’m also going to start selling book covers, for those of you who might be interested. The gimmick is, they’re not going to rely on Photoshopped models wearing costumes, or traditional painting and illustration techniques. Nope; they’re going to be completely computer generated. I’ll post an update on this project soon — maybe even with prices!

Lastly, there’s the novel, my novel, my baby. Which has changed titles so many times it’s amazing I still remember what to properly call it during conversation without getting confused. First it was called The Reality Engineers: What Happens At Con Stays At Con. Then I reversed that, and it became, What Happens At Con Stays At Con, Part One: The Reality Engineers. Then it became, during a subsequent rewrite, The Technowizard Guardians of the Infinite Worlds of Fandom, which — though I really liked it — everyone else thought was too damn long and cumbersome. So I shortened it to The Techowizard Guardians of FantazmagoriCon, since “FantazamagoriCon” is where most of the action takes place. But I didn’t like that title nearly as much, so I shortened it again, to The Wizards of FantazmagoriCon. “There, by God,” I thought, “I’m done renaming it!”

Then one night, not too long ago — I was lying in bed thinking about how pissed off all my friends who want to read it would be if I quit it altogether,, when I mumbled to myself, “I better finish that book or else I’ll face the wrath of the con!”

BANGORANG!

That became the book’s official title that I will finish it — and publish it — under: The Wrath of the Con. And you know what happened then? The floodgates opened once more. I began writing like the dickens. For two months now I’ve written night and day, and I am proud to announce that I have the FIRST TEN CHAPTERS all finished and ready for editorial review! I’m almost halfway done with the book — in just under two months! I’m really going to finish it this time. Dear gods, at long last, it’ actually going to be FINISHED! And PUBLISHED.

Oh, and did I mention that my parents helped me build a badass, 16-core, 128GB of RAM, dual graphics card MONSTER of a 3D workstation, and got me legal licenses for all of the software I’d need? Guess I left that out. It’s a beast of a machine with just one problem — overheating. So I’ve ordered a liquid cooling kit (actually, three liquid cooling kits; one for the CPU, two for the gfx cards) to help keep the operating temperature stable. But lemme tell you what: This. Thing. Is. Awesome. And for a THIRD the price of a similarly equipped Mac Pro.

That’s all for now, I guess. I promise I’ll post more frequently this time, to give folks something interesting to read while they’re either on the toilet with their iPad (you know who you are) or just casually surfing the net. TTFN, and cheerio. I will leave you with a render I recently did in DAZ Studio, for my friend Greg’s story-in-progress, The Draven Chronicles.

Forever Yours, Constant Reader,

Andy

Bat Out Of Hell, The Musical - A Steingasmic Operatic Experience

I recently procured the soundtrack to a musical I didn't know existed, but was incredibly awed once I found out that it did: Jim Steinman's "Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical." This. Is. The. Coolest. Thing. On. Earth. Well, okay, maybe not the coolest thing — there's still Orange Julius and Mongolian Grill, and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, and the macOS operating system — but you get the idea, right? It would appear that good ol' rock composer Jim Steinman finally achieved his lifelong dream of creating a Peter-Pan-like, dystopian, sci-fi romance for the stage — and a musical, at that — featuring a number of his epic, Wagnerian rock-operatic songs, almost all of which have been taken from his past oeuvre of work with Meat Loaf. When I found out this was really a thing, I was ecstatic. (See elsewhere on this website for my fanboyish obsession with Steinman and his work.) I was like, "Holy shit! He actually did it!" So, without further ado, a quick review of the two-disc soundtrack album, recorded by the original cast:

The album is very slickly produced. The sound is very open and clear, with every instrument very clear within the mix; the guitars are lightly used, but when they do show up in the arrangements, they are really effective. They add a great rock 'n roll edge to the arrangements, and are really loud in some of the songs (such as the version of "Bat Out Of Hell" that appears here). So, that's good. The "solo" guitars are a little thin, though; they could've used some beefing up, I think. But then again, this is for a theatre audience, not a rock concert audience, so I can sort of understand the guitars not being balls-out loud and distorted. The orchestra sounds great and very full, with the brass and string ensembles both getting a good workout here and there, especially the strings in some songs. The choir that accompanies some of the arrangements is in full voice as the backup singers for many of the songs, and they sound gorgeous. The mix is exceptionally good; like I said, every instrument and part seems clear and separate, and very "visible" in the mix. Nothing is muddy and there is no clipping or overbearing loudness, and you don't have to turn the speakers up to hear any instruments, as everything is evenly spaced in the mix. That's some good engineering, right there. Finally, the vocals sound sensational, and that's good, especially because there's a large cast involved, and sometimes they sing together, and one on top of the other, or several all on top of one another . . . but again, nothing ever gets muddy or muddled in the mix; the voices remain distinct and listenable at all times, and high notes and long, sustained legato notes don't feel like they're firing your speakers up. And the bass . . . good god, there's a lot of great bass in the soundtrack, and it plays and resounds smoothly, even on crappy speakers. I feel like this thing was produced by freaking Alan Parsons, but it wasn't; it was produced by a tag-team of Steven Rinkoff, Michael Reed, and Jim Steinman himself. Say what you will about his songwriting, but Steinman knows how to twiddle knobs and adjust faders. He's a dynamite producer.

And that brings me to Steinman’s songs themselves. They are wonderfully used here! I love these songs so much — I grew up loving them, and still love them to this day, and will always love them. And finally, I feel like I understand them so much better. This is how these songs were meant to be heard. This is their proper context: Sci-fi. The story of Peter Pan in a post-apocalyptic future. A tale of teenage angst and rebellion and hormones gone haywire. That’s what Steinman’s music has always been about, and here it finds its final, appropriately vital niche. Listening to Strat sing Bat Out Of Hell is a revelation; not because the kid’s voice is better than Meat Loaf’s (hey, no one can be Meat but Meat), but because the song feels so right here, shared in this moment between Strat and Raven. Same goes with Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through, For Crying Out Loud, and the other numbers in this musical. They all just fit perfectly, so perfectly. It’s All Coming Back To Me Now is utilizes to heartbreaking effect; and Paradise By The Dashboard Light was never funnier or more poignantly put to good use. I’d Do Anything For Love is the closing number, and boy is it amazingly sung by the entire cast; I used to swear by the Meat Loaf version of this song—aside from a killer metal cover by the band Xandria—but man, I don’t know anymore . . . the cast just kills it, and they kill it with fire, my friends! And I mean that in a good way, of course. There are some Steinman songs that I wish were here. Going All The Way Is Just A Start (A Song In 6 Movements) didn’t make it. I wish it had. But then again, its proper home is Tanz der Vampire, as Braver Than We Are, I suppose.

I do have some minor quibbles, here. The songs are not as “long” as the songs on the albums they are taken from; they are much shorter than their full-length counterparts in some cases. And sometimes this is good (as in the case of For Crying Out Loud), sometimes it is bad (for instance, Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through; and I miss the gorgeous bridge section in Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere). Oh well. Can’t have everything, I guess.) I realize this was probably a concession to the length of time available on ordinary CDs, and to the length of time that an audience can realistically be expected to sit still in the theater . . . . but, still. These are fantastic songs. These are hymns and paens to teenage abandon and they are wild-youth anthems; they are Steinman’s “erections of the heart.” They deserve to be heard in all their glory. I wish Jim had seen fit to compose a second, longer version of the musical that featured the songs in their full-length incarnations, but still sung by the cast of the show. Now that would’ve been something to behold! It would’ve taken 4 CDs to hold it, but . . .

The young cast's performances are likewise stellar. And "young" is good. I emphasize the word "young" because really, Meat Loaf is 72, and Steinman himself is 71. They’re still fantastic musicians, but, I think it's time to pass the torches, guys, in the name of keeping the flames burning. And this amazing young cast are the perfect new vehicles for Steinman's grandiose, Wagnerian rock stylings and his beautifully deranged, bombastic romanticism. I say let them run with it! Andrew Polec, the kid who plays "Strat" — the main protagonist of the musical, Steinman's Peter Pan stand-in — has an incredible voice, and he's very much what I think a younger Jim Steinman might've sounded like in a parallel universe. And the girl who plays "Raven" — Christina Bennington—the leading lady, Strat's love-interest — has a great set of lungs and vocal cords on her as well; she can really pack a punch when she belts out Steinman's soulful operatic tunes, and I'd love to see her launch a solo career singing his works. The supporting cast is fantastic, too. They all do such a good job, I could list every one of them, compliment every one of them, use a hundred adjectives, and still not say enough superlative things about them.

If Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical is a visitation of Steinman’s past as a composer and lyricist—and duh, of course it is—then it's visitation that's damn well worth the trip down memory lane. For both him, and for us. It's a colossal, epic orgy of "Steinmania," and it's terrific, over-the-top, gothic, and fantastic in every way that there is. This is, after all, how Steinman always wanted these songs to be performed: In an actual theater, on a stage, with impressive set-pieces, by an entire cast of performers dressed in wild costumes, with an orchestra and a rock band together in the pit, complete with savage dance routines and epic monologues, and with whiz-bang special effects, lighting effects, and giant video screens to boot. The show is light on plot and story, but that's okay; if you're going to see Bat Out Of Hell: The Musical for it's story, you're in the wrong theater, folks. The book is by Steinman, and his dialogue skills are excellent, as evidenced by the snippets of dialogue you get to hear between some of the songs . . . because oh yeah — unlike some of Lloyd Webber's soundtracks, this one doesn't include any dialogue from the show (or at least, not much of it). It's just the songs.

All in all, I'd say this is a great two-disc album to own. Especially if you're a Steinman and/or Meat Loaf fan. The songs are fantastic, the performances are great, and the quality of the mix and the recording itself are terrific. The arrangements are a little wimpy in places, so if you're looking for all of the songs to stay true to their hard rock roots, well, sorry. Your mileage may vary with this concept though. Me, I kinda liked it, kinda didn't. I miss the gargantuan excess of the longer, more elaborate versions of the songs from the original albums, but at the same time, these smaller, more scaled-down versions can be a breath of fresh air, especially since they also tend to have sparser, less full-bodied arrangements. Most of the time, they work. Sometimes, though, they leave you pining for their longer, album-cut cousins, as is the case with the version of "Rock And Roll Dreams Come Through" that appears here. It's way too short, in my opinion, and deserved a place of greater prominence in the show. I also miss the gorgeous bridge section of “Good Girls Go To Heaven” and the awesome guitar work on “Out Of The Frying Pan (And Into The Fire).” Not to mention all the histrionic choirs and mad cellos and wailing guitars from “I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Wont’ Do That).”

Bottom line: If you're a Steinman and Meat Loaf fan, this is an album you can't afford to miss out on. Go buy it today, right now. You can thank me later, if you can get the songs unstuck from from your head.