My writing week: Issue 32, Year 4

Hi all,

Disabilities in Science Fiction.

I have a new article up on Divine about characters with disabilities in science fiction. The ending of the article has changed since its original posting as some emails about last minute revisions went astray.

Rise of the Apes

I saw the prequel to Planet of the Apes on the weekend. I wasn’t expecting it to be very good, especially after Tim Burton’s unneeded remake of the classic original, but it surprised me. It is probably the best science fiction movie since Inception (I know that is not saying much as their have been very few reasonable science fiction movies in the past year or so).

I was expecting the plot to revolve around trained apes revolting, happily the plot was much more original. A scientist’s experiments on apes, with a drug that he hopes will cure brain disorders, has unforeseen consequences (and no, the apes are not let out by a bunch of radical greenies).

The main scientist’s father, played by John Lithgow, has Alzheimer’s. Lithgow’s performance reminded me of some of the sad behaviour of my father who had dementia. If I had seen the movie before I submitted my article about characters with disabilities in science fiction, I would have included him as someone who had an intellectual disability.

The special effects are the best I have seen since District 9. The apes were computer generated and for most of the movie look real. But don’t go to see Rise of the Apes for its special effects, see it for its better than B-grade script.

David Hicks being Ripped Off?

If you haven’t heard, the Commonwealth Director of Public Persecutions has decided to try and take David Hicks’ royalties from his autobiographical Guantanamo: My Journey. I would assume the DPP would also be after any advance Hicks received. I read in the Age that the book has sold 30,000 copies and Hicks has received around $10,000. That works out to be about 33cents a copy. Something is very wrong here. He should have received at least $70,000 at 6-10 percent of the $30 - $50 selling price.

For the record: I have read Guantanamo. It reinforced what I had read in the AGE and seen and heard on the ABC. David Hicks was and never planned to be a terrorist. He never assisted terrorists. He was more a naïve adventurer who became a victim of John Howard’s attempts to appease George W. Bush.

My Writing

I did a bit of writing of a short story.