Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

The Fantasy Inn Reviews OUR WAR

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The Fantasy Inn recently reviewed OUR WAR, my novel about a second American civil war coming from Orbit August 20, 2019, writing, “Once again, DiLouie has managed to distill one of humanity’s greatest conflicts into a masterpiece of literature. Where classics like 1984 or Brave New World warned of dystopias set years in the future, it’s only too easy to envision a world like the one presented in Our War becoming reality in mere months.”

The Fantasy Inn added:

“DiLouie pulls no punches and his books force us to take a long hard look in the mirror to examine uncomfortable truths… [He] shows an uncanny knack for capturing what it means to be human. I came into this book expecting a particular political point of view to be favored. Instead, vastly different beliefs were portrayed with compassion and understanding. I fell in love with characters on all sides of the war, complex humans capable of both good and evil.”

Thank you for the kind review, Fantasy Inn!

Check out the complete review here.

THE DARK Season 2

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I enjoyed season 1 of THE DARK and looked forward to the second season of this German science fiction thriller series watchable on Netflix. Where the first season sets up all sorts of spooky plot questions based around a time travel portal in the woods near a small town, the second season answers much of the mystery while going for broke on the premise. The result is engaging and fun, though it comes close to flirting with the ridiculous extremes of LOST and feeling at times like a sci-fi soap opera.

The second season picks up where the first left off, with various characters trying to understand the connection between disappearances in the town now and 33 years earlier, or becoming time travelers themselves and players in a contest between two warring sides. One side wants to end the cycle of time loops that culminate in the apocalypse, the other wants the apocalypse to occur but save a certain portion of humanity. I think that’s the case, it’s actually not clear, nor is it entirely clear who the good and bad guys are.

The show is a real workout for the brain. Because the time travel occurs in 33-year jumps, the story plays out in 1920-21, 1953-54, 1986-87, 2019-20, and 2052-53, after the end of the world. As a result, you see characters at different times in their life–as children, adults, and seniors. There are numerous characters and family relationships to track. Then you have the mystery of the time travel itself, how it works and its influence on events.

A great deal of the fun of the show is in the bootstrap paradox. This is where time travel reverses cause and effect such that events seem to create themselves with no discernible origin. For example, suppose you’re about to die, but future-you comes back and saves you in the nick of time. The paradox is that in linear time, you should have died, so future-you would not exist to save you. ARRIVAL plays with the same idea. The concept is milked to full effect in THE DARK, which I found as frustrating as fun if not more so, as it eliminates cause and effect, and the show starts to rely on constant emotionally heavy, paradox-based reveals until every character is heavily involved in the time travel and the plot starts to become meaningless while producing yet another paradox. Time travel changes everything, but everything must happen as it always has in the loop.

In the end, THE DARK is a fun ride. The characters are likeable, the science fiction aspect and its mystery are compelling, and the writers tease out a good combination of mystery and reveal.

CHERNOBYL (2019)

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The HBO series CHERNOBYL (2019) is without a doubt one of the most gripping and powerful dramas I’ve ever watched on TV. Intelligent, poignant, and horrific, this miniseries provides a fictionalized dramatization of an actual nuclear disaster in the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which came close to devastating an entire continent.

The show gets very quickly to the accident, which is horrifying itself because we, the viewers, know how dangerous radiation is and that there was a catastrophic explosion exposing the core to open air, while some of the characters don’t, either through ignorance or willfully ignoring the truth. The show frequently revisits this horror as we learn of the incompetence, lies, and brutality of the system that contributed to the accident while covering it up, and as various characters learn they have very little time left before they die a painful death.

As news of the disaster works its way up the Soviet bureaucracy, Valery Legasov (the fantastic Jared Harris giving the usual master class on acting), a nuclear scientist, is brought in to help Boris Scherbina (the always solid Stellan Skarsgård), a bureaucrat tasked with fixing the mess while safeguarding the interests of the State. At first, they hate each other, but a respect forms as Boris comes to understand the severity of the situation and that nothing else matters other than solving it.

The problem is eventually solved for the most part, but it’s only through the heroism of thousands of workers, soldiers, and scientists who flock to Chernobyl to help. These are truly shining moments among the horror and bureaucratic stupidity, where average people sacrifice themselves and/or tell the State to go to hell. Either because what needs doing is too important, or because they’ve been exposed to radiation and know they’re already dead. The show ends on this odd and poignant juxtaposition between disgust with human stupidity and hope in human heroism and compassion, combined with condemnation of the lies that go hand in hand with national exceptionalism.

Overall, CHERNOBYL is powerful, gripping, smart, interesting–a brilliant example of TV done right.

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD (2018)

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In THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD (2018), a young man ends up trapped in an apartment during the zombie apocalypse. The result is a highly gritty and realistic portrayal of survival and a meditation on loneliness and madness.

The film opens with Sam, a musician living in Paris, visiting his ex-girlfriend’s apartment to retrieve a box of music tapes he’d left with her. He finds a party in full swing, and his ex brushes him off until finally telling him where the tapes are. On the way there, a man bumps into him and bloodies his nose, and Sam passes out in a chair. He wakes up to discover a horrific zombie plague swept through Paris during the night. He now finds himself alone with limited means of survival.

The film is about him claiming the building as his fortress, clearing apartments, claiming tools and supplies, and basically surviving as city services begin to shut down. The loneliness slowly eats away at his sanity. In the end, he knows in the long term, he’ll die if he stays, but he’s terrified of leaving, resulting in a big decision.

THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD worked for me as an experience that is almost unique among zombie movies. It comes close to cinema verite as we see Sam do what he must to survive, and he reacts to everything with realistic terror. The zombies themselves are terrifically done.

The challenge for this film was to make an urban Robinson Crusoe interesting. The film accomplishes this for the most part, though it does drag in places. I believe the film would have been far more engaging and powerful if there’d been some sort of character arc, some necessary change addressing a character flaw, and a stronger external goal, such as being isolated from a survivor in a neighboring building but unable to get to that person unless he takes a very real leap. The result is a great climax and a dark denouement, but the overall effect is a bit flat.

Overall, I liked it a lot and found it something different and interesting in zombie movies.

CLEMENTINE: A SONG FOR THE END OF THE WORLD by John T. Biggs

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John T. Biggs’ intriguing apocalyptic sci-fi novel CLEMENTINE: A SONG FOR THE END OF THE WORLD is fast-moving, punchy, and filled with strange ideas–a very entertaining read, though the last act diffuses to a soft resolution.

In this novel, Clementine, a teenage girl living in Oklahoma, hears voices–as if her brain were a receiver for radio signals. Only these radio transmissions are from the future, and they predict the end of the world. This attracts the interest of Carl, a government scientist looking for a way to save humanity from extinction. She runs for it, only to be killed one of Carl’s agents–and then wake up a thousand years later. Clementine but not Clementine, and as for Carl, well, now there’s two of him.

The story rolls out as juicy as this setup sounds (no spoilers there, by the way, it’s all on the back cover). Carl and Clementine are strong characters and solid antagonists, and I found their cat and mouse conflict fun. My only criticism is the last act, while strange in its own right, becomes repetitive toward a diffused conclusion.

Overall, I liked this odd sci-fi story. Biggs is fearless in his writing and knows how to create sympathetic characters. I’m curious now to check out his other work.