RE: Book review: Odd Thomas, by Dean Koontz
Sounds interesting, even if its much of a "6th Sense" thing. Well expanding a idea is not always a bad thing. But often it is.
For example, I just watched a remake of "The Stepford Wives"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0327162/?ref_=tt_rec_tt
While it is well made and has a bunch of famous actors in it, it screwes up the whole theme of the story, by trying to make a comedy out of it. The original movie from 1975 and the novel are bone chilling scifi-horror, and now its all funny how the wives behave weird and it all has a happy ending of course. For someone, who has seen the original movie, it all seems pretty ridiculous.
On the subject of thrillers set in a small community, I know some peculiar examples, too. One is the BBC TV series "Inspector Barnaby". Generally a rather good crime series, in the tradition of the Agatha Christie stories, it really can make you wonder about the life expectancy of country folk. Its set in a village and the rural area around it, probably even smaller than Albion. But the people die like flies there - usually one murder is even followed by some more to cover up the crime. I think the homicide rate per capita can easily compete with the worst Chicago town quarters, or mexican border towns that are run by drug cartells.
Anyway.... I have some Koontz books waiting as audio books, I think, but didn't get around to listen yet. And Odd Thomas doesn't sound familiar to me either. But lets see what comes next...
Not a problem: although there are similarities in the idea, the story itself is very, very different from The Sixth Sense.
I'm not even going to try to watch the new Stepford Wives! the first one was terrifying, and couldn't have been improved.
I'm shopping around a mystery novel involving a murder, that's also set in a small town. We've had maybe two murders in Albion that I can remember, and one was about a hundred years ago--but sometimes you just have to suspend disbelief. Also, I made my little town a lot bigger than the one I actually live in, to give me opportunities in case it should become a series.
Yeah, don't waste your time watching the Stepford Wives. Even if it is made by Frank Oz... :)
May be someone who has not seen the original movie might think its not too bad. But if you have, it just appears ridiculous.
Well, one murder case in a small community is still plausible, but if it goes on and on in a series it starts to look a bit weird. The "Inspector Barnaby" series has lots of episodes, so after a while you kind of wonder how there is anybody still alive in that village.
We have a german TV series that is similar, in the way that it plays in a little village in the country side. But it does not try to appear realistic, since its kind of a comedy. " Mord mit Aussicht" its called (Murder with a View), because its such a pretty place, with a annual farmers fest and a farm wives club and all that - and once a week they find a corpse somewhere. The local doctor tends to diagnose "heart failure", unless there is a bullet hole visble or something similar. But the female police inspector - she got send to this village from a big city because she got in trouble with her boss - always suspects a crime. If only to spice up the otherwise boring daily village routine. But usually she is right.
I guess you would like that show, its full of weird characters and a portion of black humor.
Ah, but I love Frank Oz!
That's the thing about a series: It requires characters to essentially do things many would avoid doing after their first experience. Or it would involve something that just wouldn't happen to a character more than once. I remember reading once a theory that each episode of "Star Trek" takes place in a different parallel universe, because how else do you explain so many galactic threats targeting the crew of just one starship? Where are all the other ships?
It does sound like I'd like Murder With a View. Quirky character and dark humor, I'm there! It sounds like a more funny version of the series "Fargo".
Yes, I know Frank Oz from a lot of good stuff, too, like all the Muppet Show stuff, or as the voice of Yoda in Star Wars, or from making The Dark Crystal.
And there are other big names in the Stepford Wives movie, like Christopher Walken (the perfect villain guy), Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler and Matthew Broderick. Thats why I thought it cant be that bad. But I was wrong.
Well, agreed, Star Trek is rather repetitive. We spoke about that before - the famous "Captain, we are receiving a distress signal!" thing... :)
But of course they have their reasons. It wouldn't make much of a show to hear "Captain's log, stardate 4728.1 - nothing has happend lately". And then - there is really a enormous number of episodes! After the original 3 seasons from the 60s there is STNG, Deep Space 9 and ST Voyager, each with 7 seasons, plus the 4 seasons ST Enterprise, which brings it to around 500 episodes all together. Its not so surprising that they are not all unique.
Fargo I did not watch yet, but if I get a chance I'll have a look. Yes quirky characters for sure, and good actors who can play them well. One is for example a guy called Bjarne Madel, who is specialized on "weirdness".
He plays the title roll in another series called "Der Tatortreiniger" (The Crime Scene Cleaner), in which he is a employee of a cleaning contractor who does the cleaning up murder scenes or after accidents inside house, when the blood and guts are all over the place. But mainly he is a hobby philosopher and he is always talking a lot to the relatives or widdow of the victim, its quiet hilarious.
Oh, Christopher Walken is awesome. It is a great cast, but sometimes all the good people in the world just can't salvage a problem.
Don't forget the new show, Star Trek Discovery! I saw the first two episodes and wasn't really all that impressed, but I understand it gets better. I'm just not willing to pay for an entire channel just to watch one show. Anyway, I wasn't talking so much about the repetitive stuff as the fact that they always seemed to be in a galaxy threatening situation--how dangerous of a universe must this be, if every starship captain saved it two dozen times in his career? So the theory is that maybe each of these giant threats happens only once per parallel universe.
Ah, a crime scene cleaner ... my job's not so bad.
Well, who knows... we sit on our little blue planet, not knowing a thing of whats going on in our galaxy really. May be it needs to be rescued once a week - only by some other hero race. It can make you hope that they dont watch our TV... I can vividly imagine what they would say to something like Star Trek: "Look at those primitive monkeys! They can't even protect their own planet, but think they can save the galaxy or even the universe."
But to be fair to Star Trek, its not always such huge threats they are dealing with. All this trouble with the Romulans and Klingons reminds more of the cold war period, or the North Koreans.
And as I said before, in some episodes it seems the Enterprise is something like a interstellar automobile club - if your ship breaks down somewhere, just call and they come and fix it, or tow you to the next star base. :)
Well, I didn`t watch any of the new ST show yet. Frankly I'm a bit scared. All the later (post Voyager) stuff was just not really Star Trek anymore. Like ST Enterprise, or the movies. Starfleet officers with baseball caps? Really? Its always like that, when they try to make something better that is already perfect. Happened to Stargate as well.
I checked on Fargo, but they still want money for that on Amazon Prime Video. I give them some time to reconcider. :)
Yeah, crime scene cleaner is certainly not a job like any other. I wonder what the pay is for doing that...
Yeah, if the world needed saving once a week before humans developed warp drive--who saved it?
It reminds me of the way the two major comic book companies handled the concept. Usually with DC, Earth was just a small, unimportant planet in the whole galactic society. Marvel tended to treat it more like Earth being the most important place there was, or at least the people from it were. But as long as the story writers are Earthlings, people from Earth will tend to be the center of the story. I'm struggling with how to handle that in my own space fiction story.
Well, I have read SF novels which had no humans in them. Ages ago, so I cannot remember the titles. One was a fascinating story around a species that had 3 genders - which, as you can perhaps guess, really doesn't make things easier. Another one was about a heavy planet, a planet with high gravitation. All the lifeforms there were built accordingly, very compact, solid and strong. And they were always terribly afraid to fall down from somewhere, even if it was only 2 ft deep, because that would kill them instantly.
I think its a nice way to come up with something really new - but that doesn't mean its easy to do. But it leaves more room for the imagination, and has not been done so often before.