In the news section fpw mentions Harbingers (RJ 10). He then mentions "I will likely do 4 more". This is the first mention I've heard of about how many RJ's there will be. To me, that's news!!! After Crisscross, I was worried that it would stop at 10 (a nice round number). Four more (after Harbingers) would be great! 20 more, even better!!

Who's been signed up and didn't receive the newsletter sent October 1?

I know about Marc and Lisa. Who else?

BTW -- the NEWS page has been updated with anything of consequence from the Newsletter.

This is a German film about the last days of Hitler in his bunker as told through his personal secretary Traudl Junge. I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch this at first - I was afraid that it might try to show Hitler as a human rather than the moster he was. In a way it did both. You see the side that fooled so many people into believing this thing had good intentions and could be viewed as a hero to his countrymen. Then when his world starts to fall apart his true side shows through. The good thing is that it never portrays him in a way that asks for compassion.

The film doesn't deal with just Hitler but also his staff and other military personnel and their views and actions during those last days. It's a pretty long film - 156 minutes. Bruno Ganz plays Hitler and is incredible. And Hitler wasn't the only monster holed up in that bunker. I don't know how historically accurate this movie is but his death doesn't leave you with a smile on your face, which to me is accurate because he deserved a far worse fate than dying by his own hand. A good film. Not great, because anything about Hitler doesn't deserve high praise.

Hello y'all,

I love Nightworld. Monsters!

Monsters Monsters MONSTERS!

And all our beloved characters brought together at last to face the enemy. (And the heartbreaking, heroic death of FPW's stand-in.)

However, I'd like my pleasure maximized. I've always wondered what the best way would be to think about the fact that the Otherness's ascent has the power to make the days shorter. I'd rather not have to simply suspend disbelief with respect to something which is so crucial to the book, yet preposterous on the face of it.

I'm not saying any of these explanations are any good, I'm just trying hats on for size. I'd be curious about anyone else's thoughts.

- BIG KAHUNA. This is the one I like least. It says that the Otherness has a blank check and can do whatever it wants. So the shortening of days is literally incomprehensible to us humans. The Otherness is magically doing _something_ to makes our days shorter. What would an observer on Mars see if he looked at Earth during the period of the book's events? How would Earth's oceans and climate remain normal in the absence of the normal periodic motion around the sun? The answer to these and all other questions is: "Who knows? Who cares" It's magic and it all works out somehow."

- EVEN BIGGER KAHUNA. (Really just a variation of the Big Kahuna.) The Otherness's ascent affects not only the Earth (or a region around the Earth), but our entire universe -- our shorter days reflect a softening/warping of the laws of physics in our universe. If the Adversary wins Earth it means it wins our entire universe, and another wee chess piece has fallen to it.

- SUNBLOCK. The Otherness is able to cloak the Earth from the Sun's rays. Earth is still in normal motion around the Sun, we just get less and less light. (I guess the fact that sunrises and sunsets remain normal could be explained by the Otherness having a theatrical bent, like the Joker or Dr. Phibes -- it gradually dims/brightens the sunlight to imitate sunrise and sunset.)

- RELATIVITY. I don't know enough to think this one through much, but I mean some kind of hard sci-fi explanation involving the Otherness placing the Earth in a zone of some kind that's out of phase with the rest of the universe. So, like, from the perspective of every other vantage in the universe the Earth starts moving faster through time, so from our POV our days get shorter. (I realize one problem with this is that presumably the stars would also appear to be moving faster in ye heavens, which doesn't occur. Come on, work with me, people!) In this explanation, the defeat of the Earth at the hands of the Adversary would theoretically be visible to beings in other areas of our universe. Wonder what they'd see?

- HUMAN-CENTERED. Not sure what to do with this one. Something to do with _us_ being effected in such a way that the days seem to get shorter... Like... (thinking our loud here) our perception of night-time expands to fill the entire 24-hour day as our minds perceive it, and our perception of day-time shrinks so, in terms of our experience, it eventually occupies none of the 24-hour day. Something kind of cool about this one (or something like it), though it's very unformed. In this explanation, the defeat of the Earth at the hands of the Adversary would theoretically be visible to beings in other areas of our universe. Wonder what they'd see?

One thing I like, lurking behind the above explanations, is the notion that there are no other sentient/ensoulled beings in our universe, so Earth is really the only game in town. If the Adversary gets the Earth, it gets our entire universe. (It's just that most of it is empty space and a bunch of stars and rocks, which it probably doesn't care a whole lot about.) So, under the "Relativity" option, even if Earth's weird fate were visible from some other vantage point, it wouldn't really matter since there's no one else to see it.

Finally, here's another idea. I think I like this one best, since it seems to explain the most:

- MANY WORLDS. There's many physically identical universes. One of these universes is more special than the others -- it "belongs" to the Adversary. All the planets in the Adversary's universe start out uninhabited, i.e., without any sentient/ensoulled beings. In all the other universes, the planets are inhabited and occupied by sentient beings in accordance with the vagaries of nature/fate.

Now, posit a particular inhabited planet called Crapton in Universe #311. Sadly, the Adversary succeeds in defeating Crapton in U311. "Defeat" means that, in the end, all U311 Craptonians phase out of existence on their home planet and phase into existence in the version of Crapton that exists in the Adversary's evil universe (which had hitherto been unpopulated). Eventually all the U311 Craptonians are killed by monsters. Meanwhile, the Crapton in U311 is now a dead planet.

So, in Nightworld that's what's happening on Earth. The Adversary wants to transfer our population to its version of Earth, in its evil universe, where we'll all eventually be killed (but not before emitting lots of tasty despair). The fact that from our POV the days are getting shorter is that, as the Adversary gains in power, we begin to enter a phase shift, and more and more of our time is spent over in the evil universe's version of Earth. We phase back to our version of the Earth during the daytime, but for shorter and shorter periods of time.

*Ack!* Head hurts.

-o

Just read in FPW's newsletter that he has decided on "Harbingers" as the title for the 10th RJ novel. I think he might have said that here, too. But it's now officially official and Lisa was credited with the brainstorm! Lisa's gonna get mentioned in the acknowledgement section of the book, too.

Way cool, Lisa, you brilliant Ms. Thing!

I want to know how come the reference to Lyle meeting Jack in Conspiracies. Lyle says in The Haunted Air "But a particularly close call when he'd barely out ran on the plainclothes D's who'd broken up thier game" (Wilson 81). And then of course Jack had done something very similar in Conspiracies when it describes him breaking up a similar game "With one lighting move he overturned the two end caps, shouted, 'I win!' when no ball showed, then snatched up the two piles of bills and the earring" (Wilson 63). So obviously there is a connection between the two parts. So why was this connection mentioned (probably teased) and then not explored? :confused:

P.S. Sorry I could not find a good exert from Conspiracies, but I was copying off of Google Print and it is difficult to find the perfect line.

Heya,

Sorry if this has been done before, I'm pretty new here. But does anyone have any favorite well-known actors whom they think would be a great Jack?

My ideal would be for him to be like he's described -- at best blandly handsome, maybe even just ordinary-looking. And dressing only in boring clothes that don't stand out. And there'd be maybe one scene in the movie where he changes his shirt or something and, as he does, you see that he's got like 10% body fat and is extremely mucular (in a lean kind of way) -- and probably that he has a fair amount of scars. Then it's on with the ordinary shirt and the baseball cap, and you'd never guess that's how he is. I think that would be a really cool moment, but given that the studio would only want a pretty-boy I guess that at least the physiognomy part would be asking too much.

Not sure I can think of anyone.

-ml

Schmuck-like, I'm still waiting on Amazon, from which it is not yet available.

*SPOILERS*

Anyone feel like talking about this one a bit? I read it a couple of months ago and was, er, blown away.

- First of all, by how much goddam research was in it. How has FPW had a medical practice and a family and still cranked out novel after novel, including monsters like this that seem to contain a bachelor's degree worth of historical information and a pretty deep take on another culture? These serious born-to-write types (Matheson, King, FPW, etc.) must all have some form of ADD or ADHD or Digital TV or _something_.

- I thought it was fun how much -- (um, I'm just remembering that I'm an absolute idiot when it comes to names, and I'm not going to be able to remember any of the characters' names) -- how much some of the parts of the novel dealing with the Japanese protagonist resemble a RJ book. The detective work he does, the clever solutions to problems, his lightning-fast decisions when it's crunch time, are all very Jack-like. (Plus the incredible amount he accomplishes in a short period of time -- like figuring our the entire U.S. nuclear plan in a few days; reminded me of Jack in CrissCross, gravely injuring the Dormentalists in a simliar time frame. Not people you want to have against you!)

- Humanness. The humanity! I think this novel is more affecting than just about anything else he's written. I love RJ, but Jack's relationship with Gina is just not terribly smokin'. By contrast, BW has a couple of really terrific romances in it and a lot of deep, rich, etc. emotional relationships among many of its characters. I liked seeing FPW pull this off, a lot. Hm, and along these lines, simply the depth of the characters themselves, their elaborate back stories and inner lives, etc., is really terrific.

- The plot. Well, in part this relates to the point above, about all the research FPW did for the book. Basically, an amazing horror-fantasy plot providing a secret history of Pearl Harbor and the nuclear strikes against Japan is not exactly a snore. So: Not bad! The Black Winds themselves are very frightening. I know that these days we relate the Black Winds to the Otherness; I wonder if FPW was consciously relating them at the time or if that only became a "fact" after he'd written/as he wrote so much more about the Otherness during the Adversary Cycle.

- The ending. The "ending" -- the whole, big, final coming together of all the parts -- occupies quite a few pages and I think is a masterwork. Once again, the amazing _cleverness_ that so shines in the best RJ stories is seen here, too. I think it's just fantastic how FPW gets all the lines to connect at the end -- not only the fictional lines he's created, but also the actual historic events. Just.... bravo. Oh, AND it works perfectly at the human/emotional level -- so it's not just cleverness and plot elements working out -- it's also all the human stories and agendas and fates and choices, etc., coming together in an immensely affecting way. Goshers.

The whole damn book is so interesting, so entertaining, so thought-provoking, and so MOVING that it sets me timbers ashiverin'. Too bad FPW just writes crappy genre fiction, maybe a search for him in the NY Times database would come up with some serious critical treatments and respect instead of his letters to the editor and his "Universal Prose Care" squib. ARRRGH!

-oss

I read APhew's post and thought I'd just reply, but I thought that was getting kind of long and I had a separate thought. I had a major problem and I was wondering if anyone agreed.....or disagreed, for that matter.

FPW definitely combined two of my favorite literary forms - RJ and a race against time. That was great. It definitely made the book un-put-downable. I even cried at one point.

But I felt like the end was almost a deus ex machina. You know - the dramatic tool dating back to the Greeks? When the situation is so dire, that only a god could fix the problem. So a god would enter at the end of the play and set everything right.

In my mind, that's a copout. (Maybe not so extreme, but I can't think of a better word).

I felt like the ending of INFERNAL was almost like a deus ex machina. I think it's great that Tom made a big turnaround but:

1.) It was quite abrupt (only a few hours earlier he was still decided in not doing anything).
2.) I thought it was very convenient that they were able to override the rules of the Lilitongue
3.) And it just seemed like a quick ending leaving a weak resolution. I don't mind the lack of action in the book, but at least a bigger ending. It was like.....only a few minutes to go til death.....problem solved......end of story.

Not to mention, the whole Wrath of Allah didn't seem to fit. It was almost like it was thrown in there so as to have a second storyline. It may come in later on (I wouldn't be surprised), but usually the second storylines have some sort of resolution, even if not everything is completely wrapped up.

I guess my main concern is that RJ is losing his touch. I still love RJ, and rate FPW's novels a cut above the rest (several cuts actually), but first, two people he was working with in CrissCross were murdered, in horrific ways (I know it wasn't his fault, but still....) and then everything kept getting botched in Infernal, and there was this quick wrapup ending which didn't ring true and ended everything pretty quickly.

I hate to criticize because I don't want to offend anyone.....especially the man who constantly amazes me with his creative and brilliant stories that affect me like no other. But Infernal actually concerned me. But maybe that's a good thing......the reason I'm concerned is because I care.

Thoughts anyone?