Suck, suckier, suckiest (AKA: The Walking Dead finale)...

So... AMC's The Walking Dead. Awesome comic series, that should have been a totally awesome TV series, right? I mean... you have the director of The Shawshank Redemption... the producer of Aliens... and, basically, a 100% storyboarded work of top-notch zombie fiction, featuring awesome characters facing mind-bending circumstance and life-altering events. All the film-makers really had to do was shoot what they had scripted for them, and follow Robert Kirkman's incredible manuscript. Hell, they even had the shots laid out for them in advance, thanks to illustrators Tony Moore's and Charlie Adlard's amazing pencils and moody, minimalist inks.

Instead... what we got was a murky, cliche-riddled piece of junk.

I mean... seriously. I watched every one of Season 1's six episodes on the night they aired, filled with a growing sense of dread. Not because of the impending zombie apocalypse (convincingly and chillingly captured in episode 1 - easily the series best episode), but rather because of the "additional stuff" that the series authors decided to add to Kirkland's solid story. Instead of a tightly-focused, character-driven story of a tightly-knit band of survivors, director Frank Darabont decided to give us drunken neo-nazi hillbillies shootin' at stuff (maybe to attract the "Sarah Palin's Alaska" demographic?), stereotyped LA-style "homie" gangbangers (hey... isn't this supposed to be Atlanta, 'ese?), weak-ass plot devices that seem inserted at random and are abandoned just as easily ("I told you this Winebago wouldn't make it very far... no, wait, now it's working!"), and a host of other confusing, unnecessary crap.

Episode 6 was the the series nadir in every way. Totally absent was the zombie horde, replaced with long, boring scenes shot in... someone's basement. Oh yeah, and lots of eating, drinking and showering. And some arguments, mainly about whether or not someone will open a door. They even did the unthinkable in the zombie genre: tried to explain the source of the impossibility of the walking dead. No, no NO, guys... that never works. really. Seriously. It's always a bad idea. You really can't do any better than "but the dead... they WALK!" Mystery only adds to the power.

'Nuff said.

To add insult to a pretty grievous injury, episode 6's "explosive climax" is exactly that: an explosion, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that when Hollywood is stuck for a story idea, the answer is always "well... we could try blowin' some shit up!"

And blow shit up they did, specifically a really fake CGI model of the Center For Disease Control, using a weak-ass computer-generated flame effect that looks like it came from a 1992 MTV music video.

Nauseating. No... worse than that. Lazy.

I've seen reviews online all day talking about how amazing the series was, and I suppose that, if you've never read the comic, or had to work even a little bit at imagining just how terrible such an event would be, then sure, The Walking Dead was at least better than the usual dreck... But do yourself a favor: if you liked the series, go pick up a few of the comic's collected editions. Read them, and see just how much better they are. How much tighter and better-written they are. How much more dramatic and tense and gut-wrenching and overall BAD-ASS they are. then ask yourself... "If they'd just made THIS, and left out all the other confusing, 'been there, seen that a million times already' crap, how much better would the series have been?"

Guess we'll never know.

Sorry, but for me, The Walking Dead, Season 1 is a huge missed opportunity and a disappointment. I wanted to love it, I really did, but in the end, all it did was leave a bad taste in my mouth. In the wake of the recent announcement that Darabont has fired the entire Season 1 writing staff in favor of freelancer-written scripts, all I can say is... better luck next time, guys. I hope you can get me interested enough to tune in next year. Because as of now, I'm thinking I won't tune in.

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Another positive review...

Gareth Jones just posted a positive mini-review of The Shoe Factory over on SF Crow's Nest - read all about it here:

http://www.sfcrowsnest.com/articles/books/2010/Interzone-no-231-15674.php

I've received several positive comments on the story's mingling of past/present tense, which is somehting I'm really thrilled to see. As a writer, I find it interesting to play with concepts of time, specifically how my characters interact with and move through time, and I always worry that I'm going to lose people with such odd shifts back and forth. Readers of my first novel, Blood Magic, will remember that I used an alternating current time/flashback structure, which some advance readers warned me "w0uld turn off readers" (or which would "piss off editors").

So very, very happy that this has not turned out to be the case...

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First reax to The Shoe Factory...

From Twitter user Vanamonde_Dpan:

It's been a while since a story had an emotional impact on me but 'The Shoe Factory' by Matthew Cook..wow.

From Blogger Anthony Williams:

"The Shoe Factory by Matthew Cook, illustrated by Ben Baldwin. A man keeps being distracted from his solitary mission on a doomed spacecaft by spells of reliving a past life with a former girlfriend. Can he escape by recreating his former existence? A strange story with a complex structure; I wasn't sure what was going on until the end (and I wasn't entirely certain even then)."

Guess I can't complain about the later review - it *was* kinda what I was going for, after all...

Have you run across any other reviews of the story, or of anything else in Issue #231 of Interzone? If so, please let me know!

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Interzone is OUT!! Get it now...

Issue #231 of Interzone (Nov-Dec 2010) is OUT! The Shoe Factory is the first short story in the lineup.

You can purchase copies at places like Barnes and Noble - copies are hidden usually in with sci-fi/fantasy story mags like Realms of Fantasy, Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (look on the bottom shelves if you don't see them). Don't be afraid to call ahead or ask the friendly counter workers for a copy if you can't find it. You can also order copies from the TTA/Interzone web site HERE.

Thanks so much to my amazing writer's group Columbus Writeshop, who provided first-draft critiques of the story, as well as to my friend Sherrian Gildemeister, who assisted me with some crucial details. Your comments and suggestions really helped! Thanks also to the editors over at Interzone, who read (and liked) the story enough to give me precious column space...

Kinds words for "Shoe Factory"...

I know it's weird to blog about someone's blogging, but I just saw this nice preview over on Jason Sanford's site. He says some really nice things about "The Shoe Factory" which I, attention whore that I am, find it impossible to not re-post. Thank you, Jason.

As far as Jason's stuff goes, I've only read one of the three stories he has in the forthcoming issue of Interzone, "Millisent Ka Plays in Realtime" (full disclosure: Jason and I sometimes participate together in the Columbus Writeshop writer's critique group, and have been critiquing each other's work for a while now, mainly to MY benefit, I admit...). It's an odd and totally "Jason-esque" tale of hierarchies based on music, and the power of melody, one that I really enjoyed reading. Jason's stuff is usually somewhat skewed (in a delightful, thought-provoking way) and ALWAYS depressingly well written (sigh). I mean, come on... take a listen to this prose:

This isn’t the way the future should be. But still, here it is. And here’s Millisent Ka, born to a doting mother and father in a neo-feudal musical fiefdom, their cement-dusted house perfectly balanced between the cracked asphalt plains of L.A. la la land and the rich-fool castles on the Pacific Palisades. Never mind that those castles rise so far above everything else – hopes, dreams, reality – it’s hard to remember only dirt and rock exist beneath their gilded skies, same as anywhere else.

All of Jason's writing that I've seen shares this almost lyrical tone, carrying the reader along effortlessly. If you're anything like me, you'll find the last paragraph arrives all too soon. I can't wait to read the other two stories in the forthcoming issue!

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More info: Interzone and The Shoe Factory

Interzone Magazine posted a preview of my soon-to-be-released short story, "The Shoe Factory", over on their site. You can read all about the line-up (featuring several pieces written by the most-excellent Jason Sanford), as well as see the cool artwork they commissioned for the piece HERE.

Be on the lookout for the issue, which is #231 (Nov/Dec). It should be on store shelves soon, or you can order it right from the Interzone Web Site store.

Full Welcome to Bordertown lineup

OK, last Bordertown post today, I promise...

I wasn't sure if this was "official" or not, but since Ellen Kushner's officially blogged it, it must be OK to release this. Here's the full lineup of stories, poems/song lyrics and graphic tales from the upcoming collection - look at those names!

Introduction - Terri Windling
Introduction - Holly Black
Bordertown Basics (Letter from the Diggers)
Welcome to Bordertown - Terri Windling & Ellen Kushner
Shannon's Law - Cory Doctorow
Cruel Sister (poem) - Patricia A. McKillip
Voice Like a Hole - Catherynne M. Valente
Stairs in Her Hair (song*) - Amal El-Mohtar
Incunabulum - Emma Bull
Run Back to the Border (song) - Steven Brust
Prince of Thirteen Days - Alaya Dawn Johnson
The Sages of Elsewhere - Will Shetterly
Soulja Grrrl: A Long Line Rap (song) - Jane Yolen
Crossings - Janni Lee Simner
Fair Trade (Comic) - Sara Ryan & Dylan Meconis
Lullabye: Night Song for a Halfie (song) - Jane Yolen
Our Stars, Our Selves - Tim Pratt
Elf Blood - Annette Curtis Klause
The Wall (poem) - Delia Sherman
Ours is the Prettiest - Nalo Hopkinson
We Do Not Come in Peace - Christopher Barzak
A Borderland Jump-Rope Rhyme (poem) - Jane Yolen
The Rowan Gentleman - Cassandra Clare & Holly Black
The Song of the Song (song) - Neil Gaiman
A Tangle of Green Men - Charles de Lint

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