Transcript
Speaker: You know who else is proud of you?
Speaker: Hey there everybody!
Speaker: Welcome back to Pixel It!
Speaker: I was like, I think this might be a good one.
Speaker: You almost had me.
Speaker: Jesus.
Speaker: It was the one set of footsteps on the page in the beach.
Speaker: because he was carrying you as he wrote it.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker: He was responsible for all of this.
Speaker: He was responsible.
Speaker: He gave you the coffee when you needed coffee.
Speaker: Yep.
Speaker: He turned his blood into wine.
Speaker: Occasional back rub.
Speaker: He turned his blood into wine.
Speaker: Which I need more frequently than most, let's face facts.
Speaker: This is my worst intro ever.
Speaker: Anyway, on the show today, we got John Shirley, author of Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: He is on and we spoke to him.
Speaker: It was a lovely conversation.
Speaker: It was terrific.
Speaker: With a guy that has a heck of a pedigree.
Speaker: Dude, this guy's resume, like he just, he was just casually dropping people.
Speaker: He's worked with like William Gibson and all that stuff.
Speaker: And Harlan.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Just, just, this man has had a, you know, yeah.
Speaker: It makes one it really does make it.
Speaker: I think the problem with being a writer, Kevin, and doing the interviews of the people that we interview is that these are not lazy writers.
Speaker: These are people who come out with a book every four or five months.
Speaker: Sometimes their their passion is just writing.
Speaker: It is that they get up and they write as.
Speaker: Yeah, that's what they do.
Speaker: And as we're going to find out in this interview, Mr. Shirley has been a freelance writer.
Speaker: That is how he has paid his bills for all of his adult life.
Speaker: So this guy knows his way around.
Speaker: He's worked for some amazing franchises, including a few of our favorites.
Speaker: And yeah, it was a real pleasure to have him on.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So let's let's go ahead and take a listen.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: Did you get the book I sent you?
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: I love the idea, by the way.
Speaker: I think that's such a cool setting with the climate change set up.
Speaker: Stormland.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm really looking forward to reading this.
Speaker: The concept is just, you know, in a nutshell, a place in the United States where there are
Speaker: huge storms, hurricane level storms going 24 seven, 365 days a year, for year after year in the near future as a result of climate change extremes.
Speaker: So could it happen?
Speaker: Well, I found ways to rationalize that it could happen.
Speaker: Scientifically, maybe not quite so bad as I have it, but it makes a great metaphor.
Speaker: And that ties in kind of a parallel to Bioshock.
Speaker: Bioshock is an environment created to be a great metaphor for as well as a place for adventure, of course, for playing out of these ideas, sociological ideas.
Speaker: And so is Stormland.
Speaker: That's about the only thing they have in common.
Speaker: But it's, uh, but it's, my thing is set in the future in our future and his thing is a kind of alternate history or something.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's anyways, that's what storm land is.
Speaker: And it's, and, uh, it's waiting, um, we're waiting to see if it's going to become a television series.
Speaker: There's, that's fantastic.
Speaker: But apparently Bioshock is going to become a Netflix series.
Speaker: Is that so?
Speaker: I've heard in the past talks, rumblings about that kind of thing.
Speaker: It came out and it was announced in February that they were going that way.
Speaker: And Netflix takes a lot of chances.
Speaker: Spends a lot of money.
Speaker: I think it's, I could really see it being a good either miniseries or a series probably developed from like the very first days of Rapture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then you watch the thing fall apart and then you see all the little sisters and all these other bizarre permutations come into it.
Speaker: And yeah, I would guess they're doing something like that.
Speaker: But they might, on the other hand, be following the story time timeline in the from the games for the first and second Bioshock.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I'm really into watching it.
Speaker: I'm going to try it out.
Speaker: I think it would make a fabulous looking thing, you know.
Speaker: Oh, it would be gorgeous.
Speaker: The neon and the art deco and all the.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And just all the, you know, the world outside.
Speaker: And there's just so much you could do with it.
Speaker: It's a very great environment to play with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, absolutely.
Speaker: Well, let's say, let's start from the beginning then.
Speaker: You know, we, we, we know of your resume and we hope that our audience does too, but just in case, tell us, tell us about your early work.
Speaker: Where'd you begin?
Speaker: Well, as it, I probably first started publishing in underground publications in the,
Speaker: in the 70s.
Speaker: You know, this was the Vietnam War and everything, and we were all reacting to it.
Speaker: And I put my first fiction in some of these things.
Speaker: They were little allegorical set pieces and also nonfiction pieces.
Speaker: And I published a magazine of my own and there's just obscure stuff.
Speaker: You know, there was a whole culture of these long before the Internet.
Speaker: We just did everything by the mail and and sometimes through head shops, you're
Speaker: Ask your parents what head shops are if you don't know, you know, the shops where hippies went.
Speaker: And they're the fathers of our contemporary places where you, where people, you know, buy weird designer drugs and.
Speaker: And, and, you know, I'll just elaborate glass pipes and so on.
Speaker: But in those days, they also had underground magazines and newspapers.
Speaker: So then I started out getting confidence there.
Speaker: And I went to the Clarion Writers Workshop and my teachers were people like Frank Herbert, who was the creator of Dune, the novelist who wrote Dune.
Speaker: And he mentioned that he had in fact taken magic mushrooms.
Speaker: And that did influence some
Speaker: some of his creation of the Bene Gesserit.
Speaker: And he was there and Ursula Le Guin was there.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: And Harlan Ellison was there.
Speaker: And Robert Silverberg, these are all well known people in science fiction and fantasy.
Speaker: And there were some editors and it was just a great environment for six weeks.
Speaker: Every week you had a different teacher.
Speaker: So you would submit stories and Frank Herbert would read your story, you know, and Harlan Ellis would read your story.
Speaker: And then they and the and the other students would all kind of workshop it.
Speaker: And that was a big growing thing for me.
Speaker: And I that's where I learned to be tough.
Speaker: But I also got a lot of encouragement from them.
Speaker: Ellison helped get me published.
Speaker: And I can only imagine that if you're going to get tough under any writer, it would have to be Harlan Ellison.
Speaker: Yeah, it was.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, he could be.
Speaker: Yeah, he did encourage me.
Speaker: He sent one of my stories to an anthology editor and the guy took it.
Speaker: And that was my first paying genre publication.
Speaker: And after that, I started submitting novels and I sold paperback novels.
Speaker: And
Speaker: I had, I only had jobs for a short time in my adult life.
Speaker: I was a typist at a newspaper and did some stuff like that.
Speaker: But, and I went to a few years of college and worked around the college, but I, I mostly have been a freelance writer for all of my adult life and in television and in, in books and movies.
Speaker: I wrote the crow, right?
Speaker: So, you know, whenever there's a sequel to that, I get paid and
Speaker: Uh, and I wrote a lot of, uh, books, adapting, um, franchises like, uh, uh, Bioshock.
Speaker: I wrote that, uh, was followed up by, um, uh, Borderlands books based on that video game.
Speaker: I wrote three of those.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: those sold pretty well.
Speaker: And Bioshock is actually probably my best selling thing.
Speaker: It really is sold well and still in print or kind of around the world.
Speaker: Bioshock rapture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I have a novel called demons that sold very well.
Speaker: And it's about giant demons invading the earth.
Speaker: And how do you deal with that?
Speaker: And it's still around.
Speaker: And that also was that was optioned by dimension pictures and they were
Speaker: They had a script and a director and then the recession came and they blew off about 75% of their projects.
Speaker: They paid me fairly well already, but so that came close to being a movie, but there are still people who want to make a movie out of demons and it might happen.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: So, you know, anyway, went to Clarion, wrote a lot of paperbacks.
Speaker: And then I made connections with a really good Hollywood agent because I'm the one who found the comic book, The Crow.
Speaker: And I was going to write something kind of like that.
Speaker: And then the Caliber comics said, no, we've got one that's a little too much like that.
Speaker: So I bought a comic at the store and I said, this looks like a movie.
Speaker: And I took it to a young
Speaker: would-be producer who happened to have a friend who knew Edward R Pressman, his name is producer, and he liked the pitch on it, but especially liked the comic books because it looked like a movie.
Speaker: It's like storyboards.
Speaker: It was already storyboarded.
Speaker: James O'Barr, who created The Crow, was very into movies and he was a very cinematic comic artist.
Speaker: So we were able to
Speaker: work a deal with a bar and, um, and, uh, set it up over there.
Speaker: And I, I wrote the first four drafts of that.
Speaker: I share credit with Dave Scow.
Speaker: Um, and that led to my getting, uh, uh, agents and I worked in television.
Speaker: I worked in deep space nine and various other, uh, fantasy and horror things like a poltergeist TV show and so on.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I wrote scripts for those and,
Speaker: I wrote a lot of animation.
Speaker: I even sometimes still write some animation.
Speaker: Like a few years ago, I was still in my spare time writing for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the CGI version.
Speaker: We had an Emmy nomination, but we lost to Bob's Burgers.
Speaker: Well, I'm sure I'm sure they they deserved it more than we did.
Speaker: But it was fun.
Speaker: It's fun to work on that.
Speaker: And so I've done all that stuff.
Speaker: And I wrote a cyberpunk trilogy.
Speaker: I wrote a lot of cyberpunk science fiction.
Speaker: And some I was one of the original cyberpunk writers with William Gibson and Bruce Sterling.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: This big TV show coming up, adapting Gibson's novel, The Peripheral.
Speaker: It really tried to do Neuromancer.
Speaker: It couldn't get that set up, but the, but the peripheral is happening.
Speaker: So check that out because that is real cyberpunk.
Speaker: Now, a lot of these websites and people who think they know about cyberpunk, well, it's actually just some comic book you read, but yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: That's fun stuff too.
Speaker: But if you want to see the real thing, you should watch the peripheral when that comes on.
Speaker: I forget what channel is doing it at the second time.
Speaker: Uh,
Speaker: Was it Amazon?
Speaker: I think it's Amazon.
Speaker: But so Gibson and I collaborated on stories and scripts and the scripts didn't get made, although we got paid for them.
Speaker: And we collaborated on a story that was in his story collection.
Speaker: And I worked with Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker and other cyberpunk writers.
Speaker: And that, see, those connections led me to being a sort of consultant for different things.
Speaker: That's why they should have-
Speaker: hired me for cyberpunk 27, seven.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It was, it's an okay game.
Speaker: It's a little glitchy.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: And, um, I, um, I think they should have, they should have hired one of the original cyberpunk.
Speaker: I agree.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: But, um, so I I've written a many novels include, uh, of my own that are just John Shirley novels.
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: including the song called use cyberpunk trilogy, which is still in print from Dover.
Speaker: But, uh, my, my, uh, I, I, there was a whole long period there after I moved away from Hollywood, when I, um, was looking to keep the cash flowing more and I got offers to write, um, adaptations and, uh, for series.
Speaker: I wrote a one for the grim television series.
Speaker: Uh, and, um,
Speaker: I wrote, uh, a, um, aliens versus predators book and an aliens book, uh, and a predator book.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: It's right.
Speaker: I feel Sally.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You're talking about my favorite franchise and a Batman, uh, novel, um, and, uh, a, a bunch of video game related things.
Speaker: Um, so, uh,
Speaker: You know, that led to Bioshock Rapture.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's what we're here to talk about mostly, I guess.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think I think we've got room for plenty, though.
Speaker: I mean, you've got it.
Speaker: You've had such a varied career.
Speaker: I think we would be remiss if we didn't bring some stuff up there.
Speaker: I do a lot of stuff.
Speaker: I write songs for the Blue Oyster Cult.
Speaker: If you know that band, your dad knows it.
Speaker: Oh, we know the Reaper and absolutely don't for the Reaper.
Speaker: I didn't write that song, but I've written a lot of songs they recorded.
Speaker: They have a new album called, uh, the symbol remains is the first studio album in 20 years.
Speaker: And I wrote the five songs on it, including the singles and it's doing really well.
Speaker: And it's just a really good, good album.
Speaker: Uh, yeah, there's a song on it called the alchemist, which I didn't write, but, um,
Speaker: it's a great song if you love HP Lovecraft because it's based on a HP Lovecraft story, but the album is called the symbol remains.
Speaker: You can hear the whole album free on YouTube.
Speaker: That's, that's awesome.
Speaker: Well, let's check it out.
Speaker: Um, one of the things you mentioned actually kind of reminded me a little bit of, of, uh, something John Carpenter has said, uh, when you were talking about, uh, uh, the, the sequels to, um, uh,
Speaker: Whenever they make a sequel to it or what have you, you still get a check.
Speaker: And John Carpenter has said the same thing with with Halloween, where somebody asked him, like, so what do you think of the new Halloween movies?
Speaker: And he he said every time they make one, I open my mailbox and there's a big check in it.
Speaker: It's so relaxed.
Speaker: That's the upside and I don't blame him for basically adhering to that.
Speaker: That's how I feel about the Crow sequels too.
Speaker: That's amazing.
Speaker: So what was the process like for since you've done a bunch of novelizations from video game film?
Speaker: Was there anything different in doing a adaptation of a comic book to a screenplay that you would say that that you felt?
Speaker: You mean in adapting like
Speaker: Bioshock rapture to a novel.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You comparing that to doing a screenplay.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Uh, yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, yeah, pretty different.
Speaker: Um, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, it's almost the opposite.
Speaker: So the inverse, because you're, you're sort of wording, working from scripts when you, you adapt a, a, a video game, cause they are scripted, you know, not the sets, the set, uh,
Speaker: the scenes, you know, the set pieces, the cut scenes are scripted.
Speaker: But also there's in a game like Bioshock, very elaborate story and plot.
Speaker: And it can be experienced from different angles, which is one of Levine's fascinations.
Speaker: He likes to give you lots of choices and experience things from different places.
Speaker: I think he had a lot to do with the development of the popularity of these big
Speaker: playground style games that we have now, these big sandboxes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So but even even when you go off on one branch or another, those are scripted to and and they they did give me some of the scripts for things.
Speaker: And they gave me a lot of material to go with as well as of course, I played the game.
Speaker: There was a kind of Bible of the game.
Speaker: And when they when when
Speaker: you are adapting something, you always want that Bible, of course.
Speaker: You don't want to run afoul of their canons.
Speaker: You want to be faithful to these basics that are part of the franchise so that you're not contradicting the game.
Speaker: Even though in any adaptation I do, there's room for a lot of creativity and fleshing out.
Speaker: I did a move some movies like I did it.
Speaker: I did a novelization of the movie about doom speaking of video games and one for the movie Constantine the Keanu Reeves film.
Speaker: And you know, I was there that this the scripts left a lot of unanswered questions.
Speaker: So I was able to fill to answer those questions and and to
Speaker: to fill out all those things that hadn't been, you know, offered in the movie.
Speaker: And they'll let you do that up to a point.
Speaker: Although if they're thinking of sequels, they're very careful that you don't step on anything.
Speaker: And sometimes they might even, I can't think of an example right now, but sometimes they might take something from your novelization and use it as a sequel, which is okay because they're buying all rights for that.
Speaker: It's their property essentially.
Speaker: Well, it's entirely their property.
Speaker: Usually the writer gets paid only a flat fee rather than royalties for these things.
Speaker: Right, right.
Speaker: So that's just something you accept.
Speaker: But they give you a good flat fee.
Speaker: So you go along with that and one gig leads to another.
Speaker: So it is kind of like the inverse of adapting a script to a novel, for example, or a novel to a script or anything like that.
Speaker: It's more like being, you know, working.
Speaker: It has a lot in common with working with people
Speaker: television or movies because there is this sort of committee environment where you have to you have to have meetings with groups of people.
Speaker: At the time, they were they were phone meetings.
Speaker: Usually sometimes you're around, you can go in in person.
Speaker: But usually, I mean, I never met Ken Levine.
Speaker: We just talked on the phone.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So there there's that feeling about it like you're you're almost developing something.
Speaker: like developing a movie, except that the novel.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And there's a lot of tension between my creativity, which is, you know, I, I, I love to bring something more to one of these projects.
Speaker: Um, and of course the, you know, the, the rules and the parameters set down by the people who created the game.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And, and there's a lot of back and forth and like, I'm looking to see how far I can go with
Speaker: with adding something of my own and then I'm getting arraigned in and.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's, that's just, that's, and you get the same feeling when you're working at a television series, for example, you, you're constantly, you're constantly trying to find a place for your own expression within the context of the TV series.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, we it was that's funny because it's the same thing that Bill Dietz told us when he was writing one of the Halo books for Bungie.
Speaker: They wanted him to just basically write the game.
Speaker: And he basically said, no, I got it.
Speaker: I got to put something else in here.
Speaker: It can't just be beat for beat the game.
Speaker: I got to inject something else.
Speaker: And even he eventually was able to add some interstitial plot elements that aren't in the game at all.
Speaker: But yeah, I totally understand that.
Speaker: I wrote a halo novel called broken circle.
Speaker: That's right.
Speaker: Yeah, you did.
Speaker: We're going to be getting to that one.
Speaker: We'll be getting to it eventually because we're working through the halo, all the halo books.
Speaker: So that one was different.
Speaker: I'll just mention briefly from the other ones.
Speaker: I think it's distinct from the other ones.
Speaker: I haven't read them all.
Speaker: I read a couple of them, but in that,
Speaker: It is from the point of view of aliens and the hero of the of the other Hale and novels is just kind of a legend on the periphery, never enters into it.
Speaker: There is no human point of view in Halo broken circle at all.
Speaker: And that wasn't my preference.
Speaker: It was their idea that I do that.
Speaker: I, you know, and I I knew it would be harder.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because there's not that much established about some of these alien civilizations like their culture, for example, and how they relate to one another.
Speaker: So I had to work closely with them and experiment to find things that would work.
Speaker: But eventually it turned into a really good creative experience where I got to be very imaginative about it.
Speaker: So my, my halo novel was a little different.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: To say the least.
Speaker: To say the least.
Speaker: And maybe, you know, I, I'm, I'm pretty alienated.
Speaker: So maybe I was the right guy to do the alien.
Speaker: Now, what about when it comes to writing for an animated series versus a live action series?
Speaker: Do you find that there's a lot of difference there?
Speaker: I mean, you can do more with an animated series, right?
Speaker: Or would you find that it's about the same?
Speaker: In some ways, more.
Speaker: In some ways, less.
Speaker: I mean, there's not really a special effects budget in an animated series exactly that you have to think about.
Speaker: I mean, if you're writing a science fiction series, you have to think about, well, how much would that cost?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Do they have to do they have to build a model?
Speaker: You know, do they have to spend a lot of on CGI for this?
Speaker: And in with animation, they just have this flat out budget for and they can they can do a whole lot.
Speaker: There's in some animation programs, there's their rules against having people running at the camera.
Speaker: There's some animation problem with that.
Speaker: And then a few other things like that.
Speaker: I've forgotten a lot of them, but I think they got over that now with the with CGI animation.
Speaker: But there, you know, it's with on the other hand,
Speaker: With live action, you can usually get a grittier and there, I mean, there is some pretty, there is now some pretty gritty and raunchy animation out there.
Speaker: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker: There's plans for a new show.
Speaker: I'm not allowed to say I might be writing it, but I'm not allowed to say yet.
Speaker: Right up against that NDA wall.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: NDA wall.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Nondisclosure, but it's based on a Philip Dick novel.
Speaker: And so it's pretty, it's pretty raunchy and gritty.
Speaker: But,
Speaker: And some of that is beginning to happen more and more in animation.
Speaker: There's a new TV show.
Speaker: Ooh, what's the name of it?
Speaker: It's about, it just started recently.
Speaker: And maybe you guys know, it's about like fighting elves and stuff, tough fighting elves.
Speaker: And they're always cussing.
Speaker: And there's, you know, a lot of sexual implication and so on.
Speaker: And I believe it's that really sounds right up your alley.
Speaker: That sounds, I don't know what this is, but I automatically love it.
Speaker: Just that description.
Speaker: Rubbing my nose because of the pollen.
Speaker: That's why I'm sniffling and rubbing my nose.
Speaker: Sure it is.
Speaker: So I may even sneeze.
Speaker: So you prepare for that.
Speaker: I may have to wipe off the screen here after
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, you can do most of the time, especially with television animation on the network.
Speaker: So you have to you have to be kind of a little bit PG at most rated and that affects what you can write.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: And also you it's
Speaker: kind of adult concepts, just, just even intellectually adult concepts seem harder to get across in, in a lot of television animation.
Speaker: In my experience, not counting something like adult swim.
Speaker: I didn't mean their animation.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's a whole nother category.
Speaker: That's a whole different thing that I wrote, which was like, you know, uh, I wrote, I wrote, uh, an iron man armored adventures aimed at teenagers.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Um, so there were a lot of rules about
Speaker: how involved you could get in ideas because there wasn't that much time to put them across.
Speaker: And you can't have a lot of talking heads explaining things.
Speaker: These are all considerations.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That reminds me of what was it?
Speaker: There is that Sony Marvel agreement that just got leaked where all of the there's basically all these considerations that Sony must abide by in the treatment of the of Spider-Man.
Speaker: Like like Peter Parker cannot do this.
Speaker: He cannot do that.
Speaker: He cannot do this.
Speaker: He can do this, but only if he is wearing the black symbiote suit suit.
Speaker: it's like right you have to know that stuff every time you have one of these jobs whether it's you know whatever you're adapting whatever world you're adapting you you have to know all that i did a one short story for dungeons and dragons when they were doing a dungeons and dragons short story anthology they sent me a pile of dungeons and dragons books like this and i had to pour through them to try and get things right and get the feel right because
Speaker: I had never played Dungeons and Dragons anyway.
Speaker: And they were very definite about what they wanted.
Speaker: And they all are.
Speaker: Yes, you have to know who has what powers and what technology is used and whether or not they may possibly be the unknown love child of Thor or whatever.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: You got to be careful of all these things and they expect you to know them.
Speaker: So there's a learning curve for a writer for each of these projects.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Even if you think you know it, you know, I thought I knew the alien series pretty well.
Speaker: But there was a lot of stuff that I still had to learn in order to not run afoul of these kinds of, you know, other little precepts and canonical understandings.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Canon is.
Speaker: Especially nowadays with fans on the internet, they'll let you know.
Speaker: Canon is wild.
Speaker: That's true.
Speaker: It's hard to escape.
Speaker: It's hard to escape.
Speaker: Now, one of the things we did talk a lot about when we were going through Bioshock Rapture was Ayn Rand.
Speaker: I myself am a former card carrying objectivist.
Speaker: And then I then I wised up quite a bit.
Speaker: Everyone was involved.
Speaker: That's why this is one of the reasons why we one of the reasons why we need women.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: So, and one of the things, and I kept, as we were reading through it and talking about it and everything like that, it just became constant moments of me going, okay, all right.
Speaker: So when Atlas shrugged, they talk about this, and I feel like, and there would be these parallels.
Speaker: How much experience do you yourself have with Ayn Rand's work?
Speaker: Did you actually read those?
Speaker: I read her first thing, which was...
Speaker: the title of which I forget, which is one of her thinner books.
Speaker: I have not read Atlas Drugged, but I've read I went and read articles that explained her ideas.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And of course, she has and people into that have had a sort of watershed effect on aspects of our culture, our political culture, especially in recent years.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, people like
Speaker: Rand Paul and who's Rand Paul named after.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, uh, and, and his dad, um, both Ayn Randians, uh, and they, and they make policy to try and fit within that philosophy.
Speaker: Um, and the problem of course, for me, uh, who is a person who loves nature and animals, um, and, and he likes to have clean air and clean water, um, some perverse reason,
Speaker: The problem for me is with these philosophies is that they don't like regulations.
Speaker: You know, people, objectivists and libertarians fight regulations and Rand Paul fights regulations.
Speaker: And until we started having environmental regulations, we were having just
Speaker: catastrophic effects in our environment.
Speaker: Now we're still having problems, but some aspects are better because of the regulations we do have.
Speaker: I mean, of course, anything can be over-regulated.
Speaker: And, you know, in Bioshock, too, they kind of touch on the way you can overreach when you're trying to socially engineer.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And of course you can.
Speaker: I mean, look at, you know,
Speaker: look at Stalin and so on.
Speaker: This is, these are people in Mao, these Mao Tse Tung, these are people that they like to cite and they like to say, and so Barack Obama is just like Mao Tse Tung.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right, buddy.
Speaker: There's the, you know, that's, that's like saying, uh, uh,
Speaker: You know, it's like saying the Sahara Desert is just like a warm day in Indiana.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: That's fine.
Speaker: These are extremes of- Not really comparable.
Speaker: The other is an extreme, okay?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: These are the same.
Speaker: And really, despite what they say, most Democrats have no real socialism about them.
Speaker: You know, and the funny thing is a lot of people who really believe in this stuff and who are the older people,
Speaker: all get social security, which actually is kind of socialist.
Speaker: It isn't some kind of crazy extreme socialism.
Speaker: It's just government trying to help elderly people not die of starvation.
Speaker: And God help you if you suggest the idea of taking it away, they'll come out and deliver some against you.
Speaker: What are you talking about?
Speaker: I'm getting it.
Speaker: My grandma gets it.
Speaker: So all of a sudden they're arguing for it, you know, and the same with Medicare.
Speaker: And so there are the most, the purest Ayn Randians and libertarians would
Speaker: would theoretically like to get rid of social security and medicare and they just say you know the market will fix everything the free market fixes everything but history hasn't shown that to be the case no no no historically never the case what we learned from when we see these things caricatured in in bioshock this is my theme here i'm gonna win it
Speaker: is that there is a sweet spot between extremes.
Speaker: Sure, right.
Speaker: And where you can use ideas of community, strong ideas of community, and a strong respect for freedom and for enterprise too, even free enterprise.
Speaker: Regulated free enterprise, but even football games, very competitive, have rules, right?
Speaker: Yeah, right, exactly.
Speaker: So there's a place for both things.
Speaker: sides in an intelligently run society, which we may accomplish someday.
Speaker: We may come up with one.
Speaker: Fingers crossed.
Speaker: Fingers crossed.
Speaker: We've had approaches to it anyway.
Speaker: There's a place for freedom, lots of freedom, and lots of community, and some basically
Speaker: cushions for people when they need to reboot their lives and start over, for example.
Speaker: There's a place for all those things in an intelligent society.
Speaker: Bioshock shows us what happens when you drop one or the other summarily.
Speaker: Yeah, right.
Speaker: And things get nuts.
Speaker: Yes, a little bit.
Speaker: A little bit nutty.
Speaker: Now, you mentioned before that you've played Cyberpunk 2077.
Speaker: Clearly, you're a gamer.
Speaker: What are you working on these days?
Speaker: You're playing anything in particular?
Speaker: What game am I playing?
Speaker: Yeah, what are you playing?
Speaker: I was thinking of, well, I've played all the Halo games.
Speaker: I enjoy them.
Speaker: Some more than others.
Speaker: I was thinking of playing Halo Infinite.
Speaker: But then I read about it, and it just seemed like it might be just kind of a lame interstellar version of, oh, what's the game I'm thinking of?
Speaker: Far Cry.
Speaker: Oh, Far Cry.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I'm going to turn up my volume.
Speaker: They like their drugs in Far Cry.
Speaker: I always thought that was- Right.
Speaker: Far Cry is the one.
Speaker: Far Cry was always, it always made me think of like, it was like an action game told by Hunter S. Thompson.
Speaker: It just felt very.
Speaker: I did write a novel for that company, but for something else entirely.
Speaker: Oh, nice.
Speaker: Well, that actually brings me to the next question.
Speaker: You know, you've worked on so many franchises, some really like legendary franchises.
Speaker: Is there one that you haven't worked on that you'd really love to try out?
Speaker: Well, man, you know, I'd love to.
Speaker: I'd like.
Speaker: Well, I'd like to help develop a video game.
Speaker: Oh, that'd be awesome.
Speaker: To develop if there's a sequel to.
Speaker: to the Cyberpunk 2077, I would honestly like to work helping them develop stories just as a consultant probably.
Speaker: And I wouldn't mind writing a novel based on that because I'm qualified, certainly, but also they do give you a lot of room to maneuver.
Speaker: And that would be great, actually.
Speaker: I kind of enjoy that, I think.
Speaker: I wouldn't mind doing another Bioshock novel maybe if the right opportunity came along, because there are going to be other Bioshock games.
Speaker: Levine stopped developing them.
Speaker: He has quit, but there are going to be more games.
Speaker: And I don't know exactly what stage they're in.
Speaker: right um i i wouldn't mind writing another bioshock novel because i have a pretty good feel for that environment and it's just so fun you know characters characters like i think dr steinman yeah he is such a wild character such a fun such a fun character um i i really liked working with uh with that because he um
Speaker: Uh, he's insane.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So not a stretch for me.
Speaker: I'm in punk rock bands, but I'm not really insane.
Speaker: Uh, if you see me on stage, you'll think he's insane.
Speaker: Um, you know, in, in literature, I just find harmless ways to, to act out.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I was able to do it through J.S.
Speaker: Steinman, the you know, the the mad plastic surgeon.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: And just the whole concept of of a mad plastic surgeon.
Speaker: I've had that idea myself in the past, and I thought now is my chance to really play with that.
Speaker: And also there's a there's something that comes up in these Bioshock games that I think I think he I'm not sure if Levine ever references or not, but I think he might be
Speaker: having some influence from Edgar Allen Poe.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Like if you think of a certain classic Edgar Allen Poe stories, like the black cat, um, and, and, uh, the telltale heart, one of the things post specialized in was getting really deeply into
Speaker: a mad subjectivity, you know, like you're really so rooted in the mind of a madman that you can see the madman's own personal logic and how he's sort of trapping himself with this insane logic.
Speaker: And you see that in characters in Bioshock when they're like getting into very extreme states or they're on drugs
Speaker: And they've been altered mechanically and they go nutty from it.
Speaker: And also even Ryan gets, you know, I think he becomes crazy eventually.
Speaker: Oh, definitely.
Speaker: He gets paranoid to the extreme.
Speaker: He gets very paranoid.
Speaker: So Levine explores that and explored that assignment.
Speaker: And I've always loved Poe and I was able to kind of riff on that and explore that myself with him.
Speaker: And I got very into Ryan's character because I did some research and I kind of understand how these people
Speaker: think people with that philosophy.
Speaker: I should have studied you since, but I didn't know Phil.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: I would have, I would have, I would have, I would have, when you were at your worst and
Speaker: Oh, if only you'd known me when I was in my 20s, John.
Speaker: It's a very much a young man thing for the most part.
Speaker: And then people start getting a little maturity and they start thinking, oh, maybe we should think about other people after all.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's also they want to get laid.
Speaker: Yeah, that was a big part of it.
Speaker: I'm not going to lie to you.
Speaker: No, but a big thing for me is when you're when you're at that point, it's real good that objectivism is real good for people who think that they're geniuses.
Speaker: And I find that most people, the older they get, no matter how successful they are, they start to realize, oh, I might not be a genius.
Speaker: And that's all very eye of the beholder there.
Speaker: Yeah, because
Speaker: There's a certain megalomania in objectivism because it's the idea that the individual rules and you really see it in, you know, John Gant, what's the name of the character?
Speaker: John Galt.
Speaker: John Galt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, I read at that and I read about him and yeah,
Speaker: megalomaniacal people.
Speaker: Oh, look at Elon Musk.
Speaker: I think it's a libertarian.
Speaker: I don't know if he said so or not, but I know.
Speaker: But he's 100 percent.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He walks and talks like that.
Speaker: Is anybody a more megalomaniacal than Elon Musk?
Speaker: I mean, he's
Speaker: He really wants to do everything his way and he'll let the chips fall wherever.
Speaker: Like when he sprayed thousands of satellites into the sky without really getting it cleared with all the companies, the countries of the world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He did that.
Speaker: And it's creating problems as people predicted it would.
Speaker: Yeah, it is.
Speaker: It is has some uses, of course, but a lot of technology that has uses is also problematic.
Speaker: It's not moderated.
Speaker: Astronomers basically said Elon Musk's little Starlink program is messing with their work.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's messing with the night sky for just the naked eye, but astronomers are really having problems with it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: It's getting in the way and it's creating more space junk, which is already a huge problem.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So, you know, that and to me, Musk is not in his 20s, but he seems like in what we used to call an arrested adolescent or a person arrested in adolescence.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: 100 percent arrested development.
Speaker: I like that he was able to get spaceships to land on their tails because I grew up with that golden age science fiction idea.
Speaker: And I dig that part.
Speaker: You know, he also, you know, kind of pushed his his cars out there rather hastily.
Speaker: And they had this thing where they catch on fire.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The one thing you don't want a car to do.
Speaker: And he built a he dug that tunnel that a car can fit through.
Speaker: You know, because that tunnel is kind of a good idea, but you can't like.
Speaker: You actually have to get permission for giant projects like that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's sort of like a Robert Heinlein character.
Speaker: He's a lot like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, he's definitely got some high line.
Speaker: I'm no question.
Speaker: Nope.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: We're, we're starting to wrap up here.
Speaker: So John, we've got to ask the important question.
Speaker: The big question, tell us about your music.
Speaker: I was in a lot of bands.
Speaker: I recorded and I was on a label in New York City and I played at CBGB.
Speaker: And then I was in after punk rock bands, I was in funk bands, what we called modern funk or music.
Speaker: Futuristic, we called it some George Clinton kind of stuff, kind of like talking heads and but all right, certain things by Bowie.
Speaker: And at least in my dreams, it was like that.
Speaker: We played in clubs around New York and I never and I never gave it up.
Speaker: And I always wrote songs for other people.
Speaker: I've written songs for Blue Coop, which has people from the Alice Cooper Band and
Speaker: You know, I've written a lot for the Blue Oyster Cult and I write for just various little bands here and there.
Speaker: And I have my own band, the Screaming Geysers, which ScreamingGeysers.com.
Speaker: You can hear samples there.
Speaker: And we're going to play at a place called Dante's in Portland pretty soon on May 29th.
Speaker: So I'm still doing that stuff.
Speaker: I'm the front man.
Speaker: And I opened for the Blue Oyster Cult at a big theater called the Roseland in Portland.
Speaker: 1,500 people packed the place.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: We rocked it.
Speaker: They loved us.
Speaker: And it was a great experience.
Speaker: Well, let's tell Lee.
Speaker: The biggest place I ever played.
Speaker: I usually play in nightclubs.
Speaker: That's fantastic.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, what are you before we let you go?
Speaker: Is there anything you want to plug anything you're working on in particular right now?
Speaker: Well, I also, I, my latest thing is to write a trilogy of Westerns.
Speaker: Um, so maybe I should work on a red dead redemption or something, but yeah, um, that'll get you in the mood.
Speaker: I have played the first one.
Speaker: I don't like third person games that much.
Speaker: And I was able to switch it.
Speaker: You can switch it.
Speaker: So it's first person.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, but, uh, I played,
Speaker: Red Dead Redemption, but I've always wanted to write Westerns that had kind of a feel like Larry McMurtry, like Lonesome Dove, like Sam Peckinpah movies where you get this earthy feel of the frontier at its most combative.
Speaker: And so I wrote one called Wyatt in Wichita about Wyatt Earp, there's a young man in Wichita that's out there.
Speaker: And I'm gonna have one called Axel Bust Creek about a mining town.
Speaker: It's coming out from Kensington.
Speaker: It's this company that like when you go to supermarkets and you see the Western novels and the little slots in the book section of the supermarket, they do all of those.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So I'm writing a trilogy of those.
Speaker: I'm hoping to make it into the basis of a movie at some point, too.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: I've written a fantasy novel called A Sorcerer of Atlantis that is out.
Speaker: And I have...
Speaker: That Sorcerer of Atlantis I'll just mention is a real sword and sorcery thing.
Speaker: It's like if you like Conan, sort of like that, but with a little more sense of humor and also explore what Atlantis might have really been like.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And then there's the possibility of a sequel for Stormland.
Speaker: Stormland is is my my big novel out there right now.
Speaker: And I have some scripts that are being submitted here and there.
Speaker: So we'll see if anything happens with those.
Speaker: It's a horror script based on my story, The Rubber Smile.
Speaker: It has to do with discovering that an imaginary in my book series of psycho killer movies were actually not fiction.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Oh, I love it.
Speaker: That's cool.
Speaker: Yeah, I figured you had some horror in you based on what I wrote with Dr. Steinman.
Speaker: I won the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror World.
Speaker: Right, exactly.
Speaker: You got some horror chops.
Speaker: I never miss a chance to mention that casually.
Speaker: I won the Bram Stoker Award.
Speaker: I would neither.
Speaker: It's for my story collection, Black Butterflies.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I've got 10 story collections out there, by the way.
Speaker: I have a new one that just came out called The Feverish Stars.
Speaker: and uh it's a mix of dark horror and dark science fiction cool love it that's awesome that's that's his plug-a-roll a man i just i just plugged the hell out of it i just that's great we love it we love plugs our favorites thank you so much for coming on and joining us john that really we really appreciate this all right well it's been fun thanks for having me wow phil what a conversation that we had
Speaker: An hour ago.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: That was... You want me to take that one from the top?
Speaker: Or let's just keep rolling?
Speaker: No, leave it alone.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: Leave it alone.
Speaker: We're doing it live.
Speaker: It was perfect.
Speaker: Every moment of it was perfect, Kevin.
Speaker: Every single that came out of your mouth.
Speaker: Don't you dare.
Speaker: doubt yourself no it was it was that was that was very fun uh john sir he's a he's a real sweetheart uh and and glad we got to we got to know him for that for that hour um phil any closing thoughts before we start start plugging our socials i i think i need to write more
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That's the one thing that I learned when interviewing authors.
Speaker: They are authors because they author.
Speaker: They.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Who'd have thunk it, right?
Speaker: Who'd have thunk it?
Speaker: They are very intent on writing things.
Speaker: That was that was possibly the most prolific plug section of any interview we've ever done.
Speaker: Because that man works.
Speaker: That man friggin' works.
Speaker: Just imagine if we ever interviewed Stephen King, his plug section would last as long as the podcast.
Speaker: Stephen King, we're here for you, man.
Speaker: We're here for you, man.
Speaker: So if you're interested in getting witty insights such as these in your ear bowls, balls, your ear balls.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: That magical part of the anatomy, magical part of the anatomy where sound is received.
Speaker: Go ahead and give us a follow.
Speaker: Follow our podcast.
Speaker: Give us five stars.
Speaker: Type up.
Speaker: Author a little review for us.
Speaker: Practice your writing by writing us a five-star review.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Have fun with it, guys.
Speaker: That would be fancy.
Speaker: Share us on social media, your Twitters, your Facebooks.
Speaker: If you're feeling spicy, your LinkedIns.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Put us in LinkedIn.
Speaker: Put us in LinkedIn.
Speaker: Why not?
Speaker: Just just why not?
Speaker: I'm sure there's a CEO, a high powered Wall Street CEO listening to us who has like a million followers because he writes LinkedIn posts one sentence at a time, as you do, as you do on LinkedIn.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Anyway, I'm feeling punchy tonight.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Get that little shot in the arm.
Speaker: Little loose, little loosey goosey.
Speaker: Follow us on Twitter at PixelitPod.
Speaker: Same as on Instagram, Instagram PixelitPod.
Speaker: You can find our website, PixelitPod.com, where we post all of our episodes.
Speaker: And any time that we have had a guest appearance, you can find it on there as well.
Speaker: You can join our Discord through the website.
Speaker: All that fun stuff.
Speaker: So, yeah, that'll about do it.
Speaker: Have a good night, everybody.
Speaker: Good night.
