Odds, ends, the new Doctor, and where's Jack?!

Life is a process of waiting, before you rush maniacally through some vital chore so that you can get back to waiting again. And then waiting some more.

You guessed: I'm watching the mailbox for the proof copy of THE LORDS OF HARBENDANE. Our postman has recently discovered that he can actually shove a book parcel from CreatSpace into the mailbox, if he pushes hard enough, so the proofs aren't up on the porch anymore; they're sticking up out of the mailbox, down on the road.

Except HARBENDANE isn't -- not yet. And yes, I knooooow the Christmas mails are slow. I know I have to be patient. I know I won't see the proof for a week yet, and even when I do have it in my hand, it'll take another 10 days or so before it shows up in the engine at Amazon. But still ... one is keenly aware of all the WAITING.

The browser page for the book is done and also (!) waiting to upload, but there's little point putting it out there till the Amazon engine actually knows what the blithering hell everyone is talking about. Harbendane? Where's that, somewere in Denmark?

Otherwise, work continues slowly, as usual. The good news is that Amazon sales are very promising indeed. How about two per day in the period since the New Year break, without a shred of advertising being done yet?! Keep this up, and the numbers soon turn very, very "friendly" indeed. I'm guardedly optimistic, especially since soon -- I swear by any deity you care to nominate, including Marduk, the Babylonian god of war, if you like! -- I'm going to start some bloody advertising. You're supposed to market your books: I know, I know. The real world, however, is about TIME, or the lack of it. (In other words, I can blog, or I can write a new story, or I can edit/polish an existing story, or I can do marketing work ... or I can go to work and pay some bills, buy some groceries. Right now I'm juggling all these things, which is why work progresses slooooowly.)

A couple of things of interest: the latest version of my favorite imaging program, Irfanview, has been released. Get the free download here: http://www.irfanview.net/. Wouldn't know what to do without this program -- best on the market, except it isn't on the market, it's free. You can help development of further versions with a $12 donation (or set your own amount). Best program of its kind.

Cheers to Aricia on the new blog, which is the featured blog right now at The Book Bloggers. AG put me onto this site back at Christmas -- it's a great innovation which should help a great many writers both old and new. Go here: http://breenibooks.today.com/. Also, thanks to AG for the excellent reviews of my vampyre novels, which were just uploaded. Much appreciated.

Peripheral to Torchwood, the, uh, part of the Doctor has at last been recast. We've known for some time that David Tennant is departing after some impending movies; but which face would he be regenerating into? Here it is, plastered on the Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/4124591/Doctor-Who-Introducing-Matt-Smith-the-26-year-old-Time-Lord.html

This will be the youngest Doctor yet ... and one has to speculate about a Doctor in his tender mid-twenties, and, uh, Jack. Nudge, wink, and so forth. I guess they know where they're going with this!

It's certainly going to make the next season or two of DW interesting. Personally, I'll miss David Tennant, who is responsible in large part for making the Doctor "the role in UK television."

Not bad for a show that started about 45 years ago and had the cheesiest scripts, effects and sets ever seen on the tube. David T. was certainly the best doctor, though I must admit, there was a flirty sense of fun between John Barrowman and Christopher Eccleston's delightfully goofy/angsty Doctor ... there, you felt that "something could happen."

And on that note, I'll leave you and head back to work!

Cheers,
MK

Gay publishing: interesting trends!

I got myself into a discussion the other week, and found myself defending an indefensible position. My point was that gay science fiction was a viable marketplace; the man said, although he said it kindly, "Keegan, the squirrels have made off with that peanut you call a brain, you just haven't noticed it's gone yet."

Well, I was mildly perturbed about this. I think I'd notice if my brain had been purloined by fuzzy-tailed rodents --

Also, I still believe gay science fiction is a viable medium ... although I admit, the evidence to the contrary is stacking up alarmingly.

When's the last time you looked at the Alyson Books online catalog? I just did, and the stats are alarming. Alyson Books have their finger on the pulse. They read the market keenly -- they've survived decades in a publishing environment that'd have a warthog shot, skinned and on the barbie before you can blink. So you can confidently use their catalog as a barometer. They've done the research; all a smart-alec like Keegan has to do is interpret the stats.

Their catalog is very neatly organized into categories, which made it easy to derive these data:

General gay and lesbian fiction: 27 titles
Gay studies: 28 titles
Gay (male) romance: 4 titles
Gay science fiction: 3 titles (all lesbian; a series)
Gay (male only) erotica: 35 titles

(Verify the stats for yourself here: http://www.alysonbooks.com/gay-literature.html)

Uh ... huh. That's 97 titles in all -- close enough to 100 to round it up and make the rest of the math a piece of cake.

A third of all gay books fall into the porn bracket. The porn outsells general gay fiction by better than 25%. It outsells gay science fiction by a factor of almost 12:1 ... while gay SF accounts for about 3% of what's being published; and none is gay male. There's no gay fantasy in the list at all. To make the point even more poignantly, porn outsells romance by a factor of about 9:1 ...

Loooooooong pause for reflection.

Can't say I wasn't warned! Times have changed.

When Ice, Wind and Fire came out in 1990 it was called raunchy, and I copped hell from a number of critics, one of whom said he sincerely hoped it would be Mr. Keegan's last book. These days, there's nothing noticeably raunchy about IWF, and even if there were, this quality would simply plunk the novel into the top-selling bracket!

I find it interesting to see the way the market has swung in the last 20 years -- since, say, 1980, when Richard Dipple at GMP was asking for and approving rewrites on IWF. Go back ten years earlier, and you had writers tippy-toeing around their sensual scenes, trying to say "the two guys jumped in the shower and bonked their brains out," without actually saying this.

These days? Gay publishing is heading in a curious direction. If the trend continues, you soon won't be able to give away a gay novel if it doesn't sizzle with candidly-stated sensuality! This is not necessarily a bad thing -- but it's a curious trend, in a world where you have TV networks still refusing to show Torchwood, and quoting, as their reason, the gay sensually of it all...

Not so long ago, publishers were saying that the "crossover" novel was something like the holy grail of publishing: a novel that was gay enough to interest gay readers, but underwritten enough to be acceptable to the mainstream market.

Well ... I think the goalposts just moved, all by themselves. Gay readers seem -- as an observation based on the data! -- to want sizzling-hot seduction scenes, while the mainstream audience isn't even ready to accept Torchwood and the new independently filmed Trek episode with the gay storyline.

Which means the "crossover" novel, like the holy grail, is more elusive and impossible than ever. Let the market mature through another decade or two, and see if the mainstream catches up with us! (Good golly, I'll be how old by then?!!)

Got to go back to work, guys. Let me know what you think of the Infolinks which are appearing in the text now. Leave a comment if you have something to say!

Ciao for now,
MK

Happy New Year! Start rolling out those barrels...

There's not much to say today except HAPPY NEW YEAR! The old year has seven or eight hours left in it, as I write this. I find myself looking both backward and forward, at the events that surprised, disgusted, delighted and grieved us during 2008, and at the events that ought to get us up on the soap boxes next year.

Ought-eight was the year everybody got rid of George W. Bush; it was the year Americans elected a president of color ... it was also the year when people were hoodwinked by the religious right, into voting against civil liberties and human rights. However, it was also the year when the aforementioned religious right well and truly shot their bolt, and "all came out in the wash." Their lies and perfidy became common knowledge, and as they saying goes, "they can't pull that trick again." Gay marriage rights will be back on the ballot sheet very soon, and this time the people of California will go to the polls with their eyes wide open.

It was the year Heath Ledger died; the year the recession hit the whole world broadside. The Olympics went to China ... China could no longer disguise its air pollution problems. The global climate went bung some more, and did it faster than anyone had ever expected ... but record snowfalls are being taken by some idiots as a sign that there's no such thing as global warming! Apparently, we need to start building "proper" power stations as fast as we can. I read a feature article in the UK's Telegraph online; I read it because I thought the teaser line promised a great joke, and was two thirds through it before I realized, this buffoon is deadly serious, and so are the pea-brains who left comments on the page: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html ... don't you love the title? "2008," it says, "was the year man-made global warming was disproved." O...kay.

Well, it certainly was the year that The Dark Knight showed how much money a movie can make at the box office! It also showed that there's a disturbing large part of the audience that's identifying with the psychos, not the heroes. Woah.

But 2008 was also the year when the Vatican said it was fine and dandy to believe in aliens (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D90KSE100&show_article=1), and at the same time, gay athletes decided not to come out! Of 10,500 athletes in Beijing, only 10 were out, and only one of those was a guy (http://www.theage.com.au/news/off-the-field/10500-athletes-and-only-10-of-them-gay/2008/08/18/1218911546077.html). Statistically, it's far more probably that about a thousand of these athletes were gay or bi, but with the hurricane of Prop 8 going on in the background, who was going to come out?! The time isn't right, not yet, not quite.

Because this was also the year the Dominionists came within tickling distance of the White House. Don't get me started on Dominionists.

It was the year John Barrowman published his autobiography (!), and Aussie TV decided they couldn't show season two of Torchwood because (so they said) there was material which would offend viewers. If you believe a syllable of that.

This year, our prime minister was demonstrated to be a "cradle catholic" with aspirations to build "the great Australian firewall," meaning Aus becomes one of only five countries to deliberately and vastly censor the Internet. The others are China, Iran, Egypt and ... England. Go figure.

The year Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman starred in a major flop: Australia ... and Kidman has been blamed for it. Well, who could blame Hugh Jackman when the poor man just can't help looking like this:




See what I mean? Not his fault. Couldn't be his fault. Blame Kidman. It's all her fault anyway. (And yes, even Keegan decided to wait for the DVD ... and I'm not usually swayed by critics. I'll talk about the movie when I've rented the disk!)

It was also the year Will Smith was outed, whether he liked it or not! Kewl. Unless you're Will Smith, of course. Then, well, maybe not so kewl. The year Brad had twins ... I expect he had help there somewhere. The year Michael Jackson's nose fell off -- or was that last year? One loses track. The year Whacko Jacko ... and Mel Keegan ... turned 50. Good golly, what happened to time? The last time I looked at a calendar, it was 1997, and I'll bet Jacko would tell you the same.

It's actually been one hell of a year, and the next one will be just as weird and wonderful.

We live in "interesting times," to borrow from the old Chinese curse!

H a p p y N e w Y e a r ! I'll be back next year,

Cheers,
MK

YouTube vidoes not loading?!

Just a service message here (with a little help from Torchwood):

If your YouTube videos are not loading ... you're seeing a white area where the movie should be -- it's a very safe bet you need to update your Flash player. It's as simple as that.

In fact, if you have your system configured to update automatically, all you're probably need to do is reboot your computer.

To figure out if you need to do this ... if you're seeing this video, you're fine, if you're seeing a white space, give the computer a restart:


[John Barrowman singing Anything Goes on the Torchwood set]

Hope this fixes problems! (And a liberal dose of John fixes most...!)

For more John Barrownman videos and so forth onsite here:
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/09/mel-keegan-show-and-heeeeeers-mel.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/07/racehorses-gravions-and-gremlins.html
http://mel-keegan.blogspot.com/2008/10/captain-jack-webpages-and-hunks-in.html

Captain Jack, webpages, and hunks in harm's way

We're having all kinds of fun today. So much fun, we're thinking of hiring a marquee and throwing a garden party, and inviting y'all.

Not.

The "fun" is all about webpage design. Now, design work is relatively easy. Basically, you treat the monitor as a page, and fiddle with elements to achieve the same kind of harmonious balance as you would get on paper ... book covers are a perfect example. Making a full wraparound jacket work, much less the dustjacket for a hardcover, is not the easiest job in the world. Thank gods, Jade at DreamCraft has been doing this for over fifteen years now, and things like the below example just fall into place:

(I still smile when I see this cover, because the painting, "The Jungle Book" was done first -- it was the painting that made the whole story jump into my mind. The hunk turned into Sonny Moran, the tiger just was Indhira, the location was the Tarkine. My brain is weird. I know.)

The beauty of working on paper is, you know ahead of time what size it is. You tell the printer what size to print on, and upon pain of death s/he (or more likely a digital printing robot these days) does exactly what s/he (or it) is told.

Webpages are different. For a start, monitors come in all shapes and sizes, and are never the same color twice. What's pale butter on one screen will come up as the brightest shade of sickly yellow on another; and their brightness settings are such that you can never, predict how images are going to appear. Worse than this, there are so many moitor resolutions today that designing a common page, something which is going to look good on them all, is a job that's assumed the proportions of the the Labors of Hercules.

Right now, we're designing a raft of new pages for the MK OnLine site ... trying to make it easier to get through the jungle to the "point of sale" whatsit; trying to get as close as possible to "one click shopping." And it's not so easy.

The design itself is simple enough ... making it work well, and look good, on anything from a square screen laptop with a 1024 x 768 resolution, to one of the big widescreen doohickies, is something else.

We'd hoped to have the new pilot page up and testable today, but it's still not right. We might get it online later, or it could be tomorrow. Bear with us: we look forward to your feedback. We read everything and listen to criticisms with a completely flexible mind. You'd be surprised how often a design (especially in the fluid pixelic world of the web) has been changed along the lines of visitor comments.

So that's the thrilling work which has us all shackled to the desk today; and not surprisingly, in the midst of boredom and frustration, my mind is wandering...

Wandering back to the last episode of the latest season of Doctor Who (went to air here last Sunday, on ABC 1), which was deliciously crossed with Torchwood and a new show I know absolutely nothing about, but which seems to revolve around the inimical Miss Smith, her kid, the tin dog, and a supercomputer that sounds like a wine waiter.

It was very, very nice to see Captain Jack back: John Barrowman looking great, as always. One could have wished they had devoted more screen-time to the character, but the script called in so many guest stars, there's a limit to what can be given to any single character.

In the limited time he had available, Jack was very effective, and Cheers to all concerned for a great job. You really had to concentrate on this one, though; blink, and you'd lose the plot -- which makes me wonder how this show will go down with critics, esp. in the US, where the third segment of the PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN trilogy was apparently way to complex to be followed by the poor widdle dears viewing on the free critics' passes.

(Well, if you insist on continually running out of the cinema to take phonecalls, smoke, use the loo because you've drunk buckets of watery coke to wash down your wheelbarrow loads of popcorn ... you can expect to lose the plot of a complex movie; critics shouldn't blame a film for this. However, re: POTC3 ... they did!)

I haven't looked at reviews of the end of the latest DW season yet, but I suspect the less cerebrally gymnastic of the general media critics will be saying the end was incomprehensible -- NOT true. But you did have to know your Doctor Who inside out and upside down (they didn't stop for one second to explain who in the hell Davros is; did you notice that?) ... and you had to stay glued to the screen with both ears open.

Lastly, Americans and other non-British native speakers might have their work cut out for them, following the rapid-fire dialog which is delivered in regional accents -- David Tennant and Catherine Tate, both amazing (how they get their tonsils around that lot beats hell out of me), both very British, and both so fast, one is reminded of the line from Pirates of Penzance: "This particularly rapid, unintelligible patter isn't generally heard -- and if it is, it doesn't matter." Personally? I had no problem with the accents or dialog ... then again, I have almost as much family in the UK as I have in the US, am used to the dialect, and was prepared to give it benefit of my few remaining brain cells! I thoroughly enjoyed the show; and it looked to me like the actors themselves were having a blast.

Lastly, for today, since I haven't given an update on the progress of LORDS OF HARBENDANE for a week or more, it couldn't hurt to do that right now. The book is well along, and we're still looking at a release date of end-October, which is in good time for Christmas.

Galleys are being proofed at this time, and the cover is under design. The cover blurb has not been written yet, but I can give you the book in a semi-coherent nutshell: "Gorgeous Gay Hunks adventuring across a fantasy landscape, with battles, sword fights, horses, shamanic powers, savage tribes, barbarous enemies, a cast of thousands, some sizzling pages (!), a fully-detailed fantasy world which might astonish you, and a (gay) romantic streak at least foot wide." You know me by now!

We should have sample readings online in the next couple of weeks, and you'll be able to download a PDF right off the blog here. Later on, we'll do the full book launch on the blog, just as we did for AQUAMARINE. (Incidentally, many thanks to all who sent feedback on the new edition of that one. We labored long and hard on it, and the good work showed ... we hoped it would!)

And now, it's back to the grind: trying to figure out a way to make the same damned page design look good, and work properly, on screens, and resolutions, that are so different, it's like trying to design a cut of LORDS OF THE RINGS that'll look terrific on your Pocket PC. Oof.

If we do manage to get the new pages online today, I'll post again later -- a recruitment ad for test pilots. Till then (or till tomorrow),

Cheers,
MK

Just a link in the chain, today

Today is Keegan's Official Day Off (hereafter referred to as KODO), and since I'm trying to not even look at the computer (fat chance; I've been here for the last hour ... but not working. There's a difference), my post today is going to consist mostly of a link, to a page where someone else is going to say it all for me ...

Because I couldn't have said it better. In fact, I've said all these same things so often, I'm hoarse, and I know for a fact there are legions of GLBT actors, writers, directors, producers and (!) VIEWERS out there who are saying the exact same thing.

I received an email forward of the body of this essay from a friend who is still plugged into a 'list' which began as a movie-review 'circular' eons ago and morphed into a 'GLBT political rant' list in later years. And there's lot to rant about. Still. (You ever feel like you're invisible, or that you've falln off the radar? We're not out of the woods yet, kids.)

Ayway, KODO and all, here's the link:

Ilene Rants a Little ...

...on the network page for The L Word (which, I confess, is a show I haven't even seen. To the best of my knowledge it does't air down here; I don't get cable (don't have time for it); and to begin with, I hardly ever watch TV. (The closest I've come to following a TV show in the last several years? Torchwood. And its parent show, esp. when the Cap'n is aboard. And I've had a look at Dante's Cove on disk, but by the end of the second season (where it turns into gay softcore with soap opera plots), I gotta admit, I don't know if I can even be bothered even watching the third season. It's already so stutteringly weak in all departments save the ripped muscles and bronzed limbs and bonking, can the next season, dramatically, get any worse???)

One longs for GLBT characters in real, serious, 'proper' TV shows. God knows, I'd watch the damned things myself. But even Torchwood Season 3 is slithering into the family entertainment end of the market, and John Barrowman won't be there for most, or all, of the five-episode short season.

Someone needs to get in quick and cast John as a sleuth, a detective, a coroner, a pilot, a troubleshooter, something that would make for REAL stories. I want a gay take on shows like JAG, and TOUR OF DUTY, and FIREFLY. The central character can have boyfriend woes and delicious gay romances on the side, but (sorry!) the story has to pivot around the hub of REAL drama, good writing and so forth, or the next time you look, you're sliding the way of Dante's. Now, don't get me wrong: Dante's Cove is fine and dandy when you're in the mood for ripped muscles, bronzed limbs and a whole lot of gratuitous gay bonking ... but think about this: straights, who can stand any amount of the above so long as it's dedicatedly co-ed, get blushingly embarrassed and tune out if/when it's gay ... which is not what we want. The whole object here is to craft shows that are so bloody good, the mainstream audience tunes in religiously, despite the fact (not because of it!) that the hero is gay. And I don't mean 'subtext' shows like Xena; nor do I mean 'gay reference' scripting like Firefly. I mean the real, genuine McCoy. Shows that will give the GLBT community visibility and credibility in the big world picture ... or at least in the slightly gaga landscape of TV Land, where most people seem to live these days.)

And I really am going to throw to that other page right now, and get started on KODO. We have tickets booked for an afternoon show, THE DARK KNIGHT, following a healthy(ish) lunch, and Keegan's out of here. Here's your link again: Ilene Rants a Little.

Batdude, start polishing the car; we're on our way!

Racehorses, gravitons and gremlins

Thursday finds me still trying to work out how to get a YouTube video to play without vertically squishing itself. It's really weird, and difficult to describe, so rather than try to describe it, I'm just going to paste the thing in here, and let you see for yourself.

This is the clip I was talking about a few days ago, where John Barrowman is getting eaten alive by a racehorse. It's a great clip, and about six months ago (when I discovered it) it used to play perfectly. Then something happened either on this end of YouTube's end, and now ... it's squished. Someone, somewhere must have a clue about what's going on here! A little help, please??




...like I said, great clip. You gotta love the man. And the horse. The only wrinkle is the way it plays back -- and it's playing back this way from YouTube direct and from this link, on three different computers that I know of, including two XPs and a Vista machine. I could have understood it, if it was just Vista was stuffing around. I've been an observer at the high-jinx of trying to get Vista to play nice, and ... I think I'll stick with the ol' XP.

Speaking of which, Microsoft must know they've got a turkey of epic proportions on their hands, because they said a short while ago, they're going to support XP till 2014. By which time, one hopes, they'll have come out with a whole new operating system. Like, maybe, one that works.

The latest episode of Tales from the Mel-o-sphere is about the frustration of not being able to get on with what I want to do (WRITING) for the avalanche of fiddling little details in other projects which have to be attended to first. I know, I know: you get patches like this, when the gremlins get into the machinery. What one needs is a tiny little baseball bat, with which one can reach into the aforementioned machinery and bash their tiny little gremlin brains out. Or a cricket bat, for that matter. I've never been fussy. Put it this way: just wait till I get my hands on the little buggers.



And now, welcome back to the world of HELLGATE, as I try to answer a very, very good question from a reader in the Chicago area, without rambling on and boring everyone else to death.

In the HELLGATE books (and particularly in PROBE), I talk about gravitons, and the existence of this particle is pivotal to the development of the technolgy that's going to drive the rest of the series ... and I do mean drive! Moreover, I talk about J-type gravitons, known in the world of HELLGATE as Jung particles. The question is this: are Jung particles real science? Come to that, are gravitons real science?! (Like I said, it's a very, very good question.)

Gravitons: yep. They're almost certainly as real as photons, though at this moment they're stll theoretical. String theory predicts that they most certainly do exist --as 'closed strings' with the tiniest possible 'packet' of energy ... the gravity equivalent of a photon. As for Jung particles (being J-type gravitons), sorry, those are a product of my feverish imagination. The J-type graviton is one of many kinds of gravitons knowin 600 years in the future; this one exists on the very line where this dimension of ours nudges up against e-space, or hyperspace. Does hyperspace exist? String theorists are developing math to describe many more dimensions than our own, so ... oh, yeah. More than likely hyperspace is very real. Now, as to WHAT a graviton actually is --

Want to drive yourself nuts? Chase links around on this site: World of Physics. There's a couple of books you need to read, too. HYPERSPACE by Michio Kako, and THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS by Brian Green. Here's my thinking, in a nutshell (and this is what's driving the technology in the later HELLGATE books). Mass and energy are interchangeable, if you remember your basic Einstein (E=mc|2 ... I have no idea how to make this thing superscript to get the 'squared' symbol, so you'll have to interpolate there). The graviton is predicted to have micrcoscopic amounts of energy, which have to be derived from mass (ain't nowhere else energy is going to come from), so if gravitons carry/transmit gravity, and they're made of converted mass, and they pump out of black holes at the rate of how many gazillion tons per nanosecond? Well ... you chase this snippet of reasoning to its logical conclusion, and you might get a glimpse of where HELLGATE is going. Then again, maybe not!

To answer an oft-asked question (actually, two quesions), YES, I know exactly where HELLGATE is going, at a detail level which would probably surprise you. And YES, the next book is on my agenda. In fact, this is one of the reasons for the frustration I was talking about above. How sweet it would be, to be able to tell the world to go away, and have time to WRITE. I imagine it's every writer's dream.

'Work' is the other four-letter word ending in 'K.' Somebody needs to put that on a bumper sticker. Or a teeshirt.

Rummaging, the Cap'n, and the price of DVDs

I spent a while this morning rummaging around on websites, trying to find out if Torchwood season 2 would be airing in Australia (it's my day off; I'm allowed to rummage). To date there isn't a word about it, one way or the other, but it seems Season 1 was shown almost under protest. Well into 2007, neither the ABC (which screens the parent show, Doctor Who), and SBS -- the station specializing in international favorites like Inspector Rex (Austria, German language, subtitled), Iron Chef (Japan, Japanese overdubbed into English), and Red Dwarf (England; English; subtitles for hard of hearing; like kids whose music has been making their ears bleed), among rafts of others -- seemed to have any interest in Torchwood ... the reasons for which remain obscure.

Someone suggested they'd shy away from it because it was foul mouthed and sexy. Well, that's possible, I suppose; but there are already shows on both networks (esp. SBS) which are equally explicit, and more so. I doubt they'd turn down ANY show which would sell advertising space (yes: SBS is showing commercials now. And it drives you bloody nuts) ... so the bottom line is much more likely that thehy can't/don't/won't believe Torchwood will rate in Australia.

It's painfully true that this country doesn't have much time for SF ... and South Aus is the nation's dim spot. SF won't rate worth a deleted expletive down here (much less gay SF, or SF with a gay twist: perish the thought), and SciFi shows usually bumped back into the wee small hours of the morning.

It would also be reasonable true to say that some (even most?) Aussies view SF as being something of a juvenine genre -- it's for kids, isn't it? Now, Doctor Who might slide into the niche with a couple of inches to spare on each side. For decades it's had a cheesy-horror aspect which contributed to its cult status ... but who could take the horror seriously, much less get a chill out of it, when the monster is all-too-obviously a guy lurching around in a suit?

Okay, there's maybe one exception to this rule. The Brain of Morbius was fairly well done. It was 'let down' here and there by some pretty silly costumes and a few bit-players over-acting, but the idea was excellent and much of the execution was good enough that, when it aired in Australia for the first time, the ABC shoved it on at 9:30pm. Reason: (shock, horror) it was SF that had exceeded what The Powers That Be (hereafter referred to as TPTB) deemed to be suitable for kids. As per the new incarnation of the show -- it's what we used to call 'kidult.' Certainly not kids' TV pure and simple, but something a wide range of people can enjoy. The horror aspect is done well, without being gross; even in 2008 you have to know where to draw a line with the blood, gore, dismemberment and so on. And as it happens, the way the 'movie violence' aspect is handled, within it's own parameters it's quite effective.

You can hear the South Aussie TV executives spluttering. Good golly, SF that's not for kids? SciFi that can't be shown in the 5:00 - 8:00 bracket? Now, there has to be something wrong with this picture ... if kids can't watch it, who in the world will be watching it? Nobody else watches SF! Do they?

Therefore, in the minds of TPTB, nobody would be watching, so no one would be buying advertising, so the show constitutes a dead loss.



Naturally, they're dead wrong. I was reading somewhere, a while ago, that Torchwood out-perfomed Doctor Who in the US. But TV executives down here don't seem to be able to learn from the experience of others, and Torchwood landed firmly in a category which was too-hard to label. And if you can't label it, you can't market it.

Perhaps against the odds, Torchwood season 1 did go to air here, but its premier was in a late-nite slot and it was soon bumped back to midnight-ish. I have to confess, we used to set up the DVD recorder, go to bed, and figure it out in the morning. And before the show was halfway through, a friend handed us a DivX DVD with the whole shebang on the one disk, so we abandoned the actual broadcast.

Now, season 2 probably won't screen down here at all (following in the time-honored tradition of Highlander and Trek, and the new Galactica, and what have you) ... but the good news is, the whole season just came out on DVD in the UK. Of course, it'll be months before you can get it down here, and it'll be very expensive when it does put in an appearance. However, the DivX people won't let that stop them. I have absolutely no doubt that someone, somewhere has already uploaded it --

And no, I am NOT an advocate of, nor a participant in, video piracy. Let this be firmly understood, or nothing significant will come out of the argument I'm about to make (and my apologies to Dickens for the mutilation of that line).

I DO NOT advocate video piracy. I firmly agree that video pirates should be quashed.

However, I also CAN NOT condone the abuse of the video public, where two DVDs in a slipcase can cost $125. This is executive level thieving, just as surely as video piracy is boot-end stealing. There is no case anyone could make to justify charging over a maximum of maybe forty bucks for a two- or three-DVD set of ANYTHING. People would line up to pay forty bucks for a season of their favorite show. You'd beat 'em off with a stick. But at double, and triple, that price ... people can't pay it. Not won't. Can't. And, if TPTB fondly imagine fans will go without, well, I have some glorious shoreline property at Lake Eyre I'd like to sell to them. So video piracy happens, and it'll continue to happen, as a direct result of the executive level thieving.

You want to stop video piracy? Make DVDs affordable. It's as simple as that. Who in his or her right mind would be watching a dub-down, or a shonky copy, when you could have perfect copy in a beautiful slipcase, at a price you can afford??

Okay, Keegan, get down off the soapbox!

Feet on the ground. Right.

Interestingly, though, Torchwood is morphing as it heads into a third season ... and you gotta wonder why. They're only doing a short season (5 shows), which smacks of something experimental. Jack's gone (!), along with other vanishing characters, and the whole show is being dumbed down and polished up to appeal to a younger audience.

Well...shoot. I have no idea if John Barrowman left the show because it was being dumbed down, or if it's being dumbed down because he's gone. It's almost as if the mature nature of the show was riding on the shoulders of Jack, who, being gay/bi/omni, was a character designed, and predicted, to appeal to, uh, big kids. Take Jack out of there, and what's left is the SF element --

In which case, there's no good reason not to ramp it up and be a whole lot more like Doctor Who, which, admittedly, has been a lot of fun. Your audience is wider, your viewers can afford to be younger. You might leave a 'sub-text' omnisexual element in there for the sake of continuity, but until or unless Jack's back again, the gay element can be put on hold ... and when he *is* back, the gay element could be handled more along the lines of what we saw in Doctor Who.

So I would be guessing the 5-episode 3rd season is an experiment ... try the waters, see what they're like. (DW itself is having a shakeup, with a number of movies being scheduled instead of a whole 13-show season; looks like Tennant is probably back -- I don't know that anyone's too sure of anything much more than that, right now.

Surprising what you can get out of an hour's rummage among websites and blogs!

Right now, I'm on my break, the winter sun is shining and I'm going to take a book, a cup of tea, and go find a suntrap.

Cheers for now,
MK

Australian Graffiti

Thursday finds me wondering how much echinacea tea you have to drink to beat an ear infection. I hate echinacea tea; it tastes vile. It also works. One has to wonder if it would be effective used as a douche in the aural cannal, or if you HAVE to swallow the stuff. I suspect the latter.

To divert myself from the fact my left ear is killing me, I turn my threadbare attention to the few pages I have left to prepare for the upcoming website relaunch; and today I tackle the subject of gay science fiction. (It's either that, or proofread AQUAMARINE, and right now I think the virus in my ear is trying to get into my sinuses, and since I'm seeing double I wouldn't trust myself to proofread a laundry list.)

The gay SF I've ben talking about for the last hour or so is print-media ... books. I'd been wondering if I would take on the challenge of gay SF in movies and TV, but decided to leave it alone for the moment, because it can be such an aggravating topic. For example, don't get me started on Star Trek. It's very easy to blow breakers on that subject ... which is to say, how is it possible to do 28 full SEASONS of an *SF* show, and never have so much as a single gay guest character, never mind a series regular?! Then again, STARGATE is up to 14 seasons, counting SG1 and Atlantis, and if there's been a gay guest character, I must have blinked when s/he bolted through.

Speaking of Trek, cheers to George Takei, everyone's favorite starship driver, who is wedding his partner of many years, with the welcome shift in California's gay marriage laws. Wonderful stuff.

So, I stuck with novels for the Gay SF discussion; but the 'research' I did for the backgrounding did land me on some interesting websites ... which just pointed out how thin on the ground gay SF heroes are, because in order to get to Ten Favorite Gay SF Heroes, they had to count Frank N. Furter and Bunny Wigglesworth! Well, you could list them, I guess; but is ROCKY HORROR really SF? And I'm fairly sure ZORRO THE GAY BLADE is a comedy western. Will we stretch a point and call them fantasies? Hmmm.

All of which brings me around to wondering if any TV network in this state is going to be carrying the rest of TORCHWOOD, or if they've abandoned the show. It premiered in the 9:30 timeslot, migrated to past-midnight, and vanished without a trace. South Australia is notorious for this kind of reception of TV science fiction. Even STARGATE, which is smash-hit by local standards, is late-late-late-show fare. FIREFLY was marooned in the same slot, and most of STAR TREK VOYAGER didn't seem to air down here at all ...

I hear you asking what South Aussies actually watch. There's a lot of football (by which I mean Aussie Rules, VFL, NFL, that sort of thing). If you're lucky, they'll squeak in a rugby game between the endless tennis tournaments and the reality TV, but only if it's Rugby League. Heaven help you if you have an insatiable lust for Rugby Union. The All Blacks versus the Springbocks? Be still, my beating heart ... not that any such game is likely to be seen on local free-to-air TV. Because the Wallabies aren't on the field. Fishing shows. Cooking. Lots of cooking. And one show where they yank the fish out and cook them right there on the boat -- I kid you not. It's called OUT OF THE BLUE, 'starring' the senior brother in the big local private fisheries company. The longer, warmer, dryer days of October bring a welcome end to the Aussie Rules season, and the beginning of the cricket season; TV becomes the pixelic equivalent of the Sargasso Sea, with reality TV reruns, rained-off test matches which cause Channel 9 to rerun 10-year-old games, and reruns of old cooking shows.

Yes, Keegan owns a TV set. Also a DVD player. Thank gods for DVDs.

And now, I'm on my way to the kitchen, to brew some more echinacea tea.