‘Savagery of the Gods’ – J Edward Neill – 2020
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Thursday Art Assault – Savagery of the Gods
Tag: End of the world
New Dystopian Poem – Extinction
Extinction
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Crowning smoke
cloaks the heads of fallen kings.
And there I walk, on silent streets
over broken bridges
through the dark capillaries
of yesteryear’s fall.
With ashes, the towers weep
carpeting black the castle floors.
Their sacrificial fires, a century extinguished
but still they smoke
ever fuming
from glass eyes and stone-toothed mouths.
No one is here, save me.
Were they ever?
Ten grains of burning sand
on the fathomless shore of infinity
was the kingdom of man.
Three ticks of eternity’s clock
did we reign.
All that remains is me
straggling through grey fields
beneath crumbling battlements
crunching forgotten bones
under the last boots I will ever wear.
It was never my place
to ask why
or how.
Nor have I the desire, nor means
to dig answers from the dust
from the sunless sky
from the dwelling crypts of billions
whose laughter has gone.
No one is here, save me.
Were they ever?
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J Edward Neill
More words here
A book for when all things go dark
It’s the end of an era.
The final book in the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy is here.
Nether Kingdom
At the world’s edge, Andelusia awakens to the terrible realization that all her dreams have come to nothing. No matter that her father, the warlock, has fallen into exile. No matter that the enemies of mankind have retreated into darkness. When the shadows in her heart cause the seasons to change and deadly storms to sweep across Thillria, she knows what will come:
The Black Moon will descend.
The Ur will rebuild their haunted civilization atop humanity’s graveyard.
Unless she alone wages war against the Nether Kingdom, the world will burn.
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Now available for $0.99 (and £0.99 in the UK).
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Nether Kingdom can be read as a stand-alone novel, but in case you want the full, dark trilogy…
Down the Dark Path – Deadly Little Discount
This week only.
Down the Dark Path
Mega-discounted for Kindles underworld-wide!
When Andelusia Anderae leaves home in search of a better life, she plunges into the world-ending war between Graehelm and Furyon. The deeper she falls, the more she senses the dark powers rising within her, and the more she realizes she is not so different than the enemy.
Love might not be enough to save her, for the Furyons are all-powerful.
And the shadow within desires her more than any living man ever will.
Down the Dark Path – Epic Fantasy for Adults
Something for the day to die upon…
…the return of darkness is a planned event, a spoke in the universal clock waiting to be ticked…
At the world’s edge, Andelusia awakens to the terrible realization that all her dreams have come to nothing. No matter that her father, the warlock, has fallen into exile. No matter that the enemies of mankind have retreated into darkness. When the shadows in her heart cause the seasons to change and deadly storms to sweep across Thillria, she knows what will come:
The Black Moon will descend.
Grimwain will return.
The Ur will rebuild their haunted civilization atop humanity’s graveyard.
Unless she alone wages war against the Nether Kingdom, the world will burn.
Nether Kingdom
Now Available via Amazon – Free signed copies to the first five reviewers!!
Book III – The chilling conclusion of the Tyrants of the Dead trilogy
Cover art by Amanda Makepeace
2015 Tessera Guild Publishing
Ex Machina Movie Review
Disclaimer: This is a mostly spoiler-free review
In the modern realm of wide-release films, it’s rare to see science-fiction movies that are:
A. Unabashedly intellectual
and
B. Not reliant on hyper-violent technological advances
Ex Machina is both of these.
I saw this movie in a cozy, nearly empty theater. I felt torn about the empty part, because I worried it might mean not enough people were interested in the kind of movie I’d like to see a whole lot more of. Apparently that’s not the case, since to date it’s netted a cool $18.7M. That’s good news. Great news, actually. Meanwhile, the experience was almost ruined by a few stereotypical loud-ass movie talkers. But the offending parties managed to shut up long enough for the rest of us to focus.
Thank goodness for that.
At first, Ex Machina comes off as boy-meets-girl completely flipped on its head. Caleb (played to nerd-fection by Domhnall Gleeson) is an apparent coding whiz for a huge computer search engine company. When he’s selected to travel to a mysterious, almost CIA-like black box facility, he does so with glee. And who wouldn’t? For an opportunity to meet Ava, the world’s most advanced android, most of us would leap in headfirst. And the setting in Ex Machina is so realistic, one begins to believe something like this can…and will…happen someday soon. Go Caleb. Get some.
If Arnold Schwarzenegger was the perfect person to play the original Terminator, Alicia Vikander (who plays the aforementioned android) is perfect-er. She’s eerie. She’s beautiful. And she nails every little tic you’d expect from a woman-robot. It’s clear from the beginning who owns the dialogue between Ava and Caleb. And it ain’t Caleb. I have to believe Lady Vikander will score big based on her performance here. She echoes the strength of Game of Thrones’ super-heroine (Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys Targaryen) and frosts it with the sort of intelligence you’d like to see Hollywood give more of its female roles.
Very quickly, the boy-meets-girl vibe melts away.
For those who aren’t aware of what the Turing Test is, I recommend you study the concept. It’s the frontline premise of Ex Machina, and quite possibly (in part due to this year’s epic The Imitation Game) a new piece of vernacular everyone will soon become familiar with. Essentially, the Turing Test is the methodology for determining whether or not an A.I. can behave human enough to trick us into no longer knowing it’s a computer. If the computer fools the human, it passes.
Turns out the one inviting Caleb to perform the world’s most important Turing Test (on Ava) is the buff yet emotionally FUBAR Nathan (played to frat-brother genius levels by Oscar Isaac.) Nathan is like a chessmaster working both sides of the board. He’s got tech game like no one’s business, and a penchant for working off his hangovers by pumping iron and intimidating the slim, non-alpha Caleb. Nathan’s motivation is the question of the hour. It’s clear he wants more than just a Turing Test. And it’s obvious he gets his rocks off by head-fucking people. But the lines between antagonist and protagonist are blurred, just as they should be.
Where Ex Machina really succeeds is in its pace, its dialogue, and its atmosphere. Caleb’s encounters with Ava are blocked off into seven sessions, each of them growing in intensity. Conversations between Caleb and Ava have a permanent shadow lying overhead, a subtle reminder that she’s smarter, quicker in her learning curve, and possibly deadlier. And the hyper-realistic, we-could-picture-these-moments-actually-happening, verbal sparring between Caleb and Nathan leave one needing to know what comes next. Even once our suspicions of dread become tense enough to snap.
Not to be underestimated is the melodic yet somewhat dark soundtrack. Composers Ben Salisbury and Geoff Barrow blend their music so well into the film I knew halfway through I needed to buy it and play it…over and over again. Which I did end up doing.
And then there’s the end sequence. It’ll be hard to watch without wanting to see it again and then immediately becoming a part of the growing online discussion. I’ve read many takes on the path of evolution Ava takes. Some speak of sweetness, others of liberation, but I saw something darker. Watch it twice, I say. And tell me you don’t sense one possibility for how the world might end.
So if you crave MORE than robots with laser guns, spaceships doing things that are impossible in space, and over-the-top future battles, go see Ex Machina. It’s a solid A, and the best sci-fi movie to hit theaters in a long, long time. And if I have a special love for it, it’s also because the director, Alex Garland, is also an author and screenwriter. Would that I were so talented.
From time to time, I’ll review more movies.
Sorry ’bout that.
Get into my coffee table philosophy series here.
New release: Dark Moon Daughter
Tonight I’m reminded of one of my favorite literary quotes:
“End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The grey rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.”
“See what?”
“White shores, and beyond, a far green country under a swift sunrise.”
I leave it to you to find the source of this gem.
No, I’m not dead. Not just yet.
I’ve been working on this one for so long, it hurts in a very real, physical sense. I was a young man in my twenties when I wrote Dark Moon Daughter‘s first chapter. I was fresh, full of hope, bright-eyed, sun-shiny, and so forth. And now I’m a bitter, black-hearted old man. Ok. That’s probably overkill. But it’s true; seeing both sides of the coin is enlightening. It’s hard to write about darkness, shadows, and bone-crushing defeat until you’ve experienced a bit firsthand…and stood up stronger afterward.
And so, without further ado, I present:
Click me. Buy me. Read me. Love me.
I loved and sometimes hated every moment of writing Dark Moon Daughter. Yes, seriously. An adventure, it was, and not always easy. I climbed mountains tall and snowy…and wandered caverns dark and deep. Writing and editing this one felt like a relationship with an onery, passionate woman, and now I’m happy to let her soar free as a falcon. As of today, the Kindle version is on sale for a mere $6.99. In a few days, the softcover version will be out on Amazon (and for those who live near enough, via me directly). Also, for the first five people willing to post an Amazon review (any amount of stars) I will hand over a signed softcover edition. I’ll even pay shipping if needed. You know where to reach me.
A little background on Dark Moon Daughter:
– At only about half as long as Down the Dark Path, she’s more in the realm of traditional fantasy novels. For those terrified of my first epic’s staggering word-count, fear not. DMD is shorter and focuses primarily on three characters instead of six
– The front cover is a painting hanging on my living room wall. Eileen Herron, a supremely talented sculptor and painter, braved an unedited copy of the book to prepare for the painting. Eileen also drew up the sketches in this post, each a dead ringer for the image of Andelusia…and the Ur
– I began writing Dark Moon Daughter in 2003. I was miserable after the Chicago Cubs blew a 3-1 series lead over the Florida Marlins, and thus decided the only way to recover was to write a supremely dark, gut-wrenching novel. Weird, eh?
– While a spiritual sequel to Down the Dark Path, ‘Daughter does not require the reader to know DDP through and through. But without a doubt, the third and final book in the series, Nether Kingdom, will demand a reading of Dark Moon Daughter. It’s almost like a mini two-part series rather than a trilogy, but ‘trilogy’ sounds better, so that’s what I’m calling the three books combined
– Dark Moon Daughter is definitely the least dark entry in the series. I like to think of her as a gateway drug. Inject a little Andelusia, Grimwain, and Ur into your veins, and you’ll be unable to resist coming back for more
A simple Eileen Herron sketch and an accidental preview of the Ur, who will haunt the pages of Nether Kingdom aplenty…
Supporters of fantasy, lovers of the night, eaters of words, I hope you’ll snag Dark Moon Daughter soon and give her a spin. She’s quite a catch.
Love,