Science fiction and classic crime novels have long been favorites of author K.C. Sivils. The combination of film noir and science fiction in director Ridley Scott’s adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi classic Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into the masterful Harrison Ford vehicle Bladerunner encouraged him to consume as much of both genre’s as possible.
A fan of past noir masters such as Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, Sivils also enjoys the current generation of storytellers like Renee Pawlish and Alex P. Berg.
Author of over twenty non-fiction books, including an Amazon Best Seller, Sivils has now ventured into the realm of fiction with his Inspector Thomas Sullivan series. Married to the former Lisa Green and the father of three children, Sivils is a dog lover and a fan of Classic Rock bands like The Rolling Stones and New Wave rockers The Cars.
The late film critic Roger Ebert liked film noir movies. Let’s be honest, some of Hollywoods best films from the Golden Era were noir. The film many critics say is the best American film ever made, Casablanca, is a noir.
Ebert penned a list of what he believed to be the ten characteristics that made a story a noir. Not all film noir movies fit all ten and the same is true for novels. The list however is a great starting point to determine if a film or novel fits the noir genre.
Here’s Ebert’s list:
1. A French term meaning “black film,” or film of the night. 2. A movie which at no time misleads you into thinking there is going to be a happy ending. 3. Locations that reek of the night, of shadows, of alleys, of the back doors of fancy places, of apartment buildings with a high turnover rate, of taxi drivers and bartenders who have seen it all. 4. Cigarettes. Everybody in film noir is always smoking, as if to say, “On top of everything else, I’ve been assigned to get through three packs today.” 5. Women who would just as soon kill you as love you, and vice versa. 6. For women: low necklines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, dressing rooms, boudoirs… high heels, red dresses, elbow length gloves, mixing drinks […] 7. For men: fedoras, suits and ties, shabby residential hotels with a neon sign blinking through the window, buying yourself a drink out of the office bottle, cars with running boards, all-night diners […] 8. Movies either shot in black and white, or feeling like they were. 9. Relationships in which love is only the final flop card in the poker game of death. 10. The most American film genre, because no society could have created a world so filled with doom, fate, fear and betrayal, unless it were essentially naive and optimistic.
Signup for The Inspector’s Report Newsletter! Keep up with Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his friends. Get updates on when the next book will be published. Enjoy the occasional short story and read author K.C. Sivils’ musings about science fiction, crime noir and what ever else is on his mind.
I love science fiction. As a little boy I became fascinated with Science Fiction due to early, and by today’s standards lousy, special effects and a new adventure in each television episode. Sometimes today’s SciFi effects are so good it’s hard to tell its a special effect. When I discovered the joy of reading, I read a lot of science fiction to go with the other books I read.
Many of these shows and movies have influenced my ideas in the creation of the universe Inspector Thomas Sullivan lives in. Here are my top ten sci-fi movies and tv shows.
Number One:Star Trek – The Original
Every day when I got home from school I had just over an hour before one of my parents got home. I spent that hour with Captain Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the crew of the Enterprise.
Star Trek
Number Two:Lost in Space
How could a little boy not love this show! Cool aliens, an even cooler robot for a sidekick, Dr. Smith was hilarious (and the real star of the show) and I seem to recall a couple of cute girls too! Oh, the pain, the pain I felt when the weekly adventures were gone due to cancellation!
Lost in Space
Number Three:Firefly
This show is what pushed me over the edge to create the Inspector Thomas Sullivan series of thrillers. If a Space Western could work as a story telling mechanism, then a sci-fi crime noir thriller could work too! Like all Browncoats, I felt the cancellation was a crime against sci-fi fans. Serenity was great, but there are so many stories left to tell about Captain Tight Pants and his crew.
Firefly
Number Four:Bladerunner
Classic noir film with a sci-fi story line. No, Decker is not the inspiration for Sullivan, but the two could probably swap quite a few stories about their jobs. Capital City isn’t as rainy, but if you’re in the wrong parts of town, it is certainly as dreary and dangerous.
Bladerunner
Number Five:Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
What a vehicle to explore the ills of society, theological issues, moral issues, you name it. The show was gone too soon and I blame it on the fact the writers and producers simply didn’t know who the real star was: Cameron. For a Terminator franchise to succeed, the Terminator MUST be the star. Lena Headey was great as Sarah Connor, but Summer Glau’s Cameron should have been the focal point of the show.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Number Six:Outland
Basically a remake of High Noon with Sean Connery playing the lone lawman who must face arrival of murderous criminals coming to his mining outpost to exact their revenge. Proof, in my mind at least, that lawmen can make for good protagonists in a sci-fi thriller.
Outland
Number Seven:Terminator 2 – Judgment Day
Perhaps Arnold’s finest work! A thoughtful, philosophical film about the value of human life. Not to mention it’s a great chase story filled with explosions, cool one liners and a T-1000!
Terminator 2 – Judgment Day
Number Eight:Star Trek – Next Generation
If it wasn’t for the fact the original Star Trek is what got me started on science fiction, I would rate this one as the highest rated Star Trek. As much as I love Kirk, Spock and the crew, Captain Picard was the best Captain, Data was cool as the android and how can you not love Worf and his need to go to Red Alert and launch photon torpedoes! A great mix of philosophical issues blended with a good mix of action.
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Number Nine:Serenity
Summer Glau stole the show as the character River Tams was finally turned loose. Great Space Opera with plenty of villains, the Operative, the Alliance and those evil Reavers! River as played by Glau is the consummate assassin! How do you stand a chance against an assassin who knows what you’re thinking? The late Ron Glass was good as always as Sheppard Book and Nathan Fillion did a great job as the lost Captain Malcolm Reynolds.
Serenity
Number Ten:Star Wars – Episode IV
Perhaps the greatest Space Opera ever filmed! Of course, had it not been for the 1930s movie serial Flash Gordon Saves the Universe many of the trademark ideas used in the film, such as the rolling story line at the start, Princess Leia’s hairdo, etc. would never have thrilled the millions of Star War fans.
Flash GordonStar Wars
As always, here’s some lagniappe!
Number Eleven:Logan’s Run
Great dystopian sci-fi film! Talk about taking the concept of over 30 being over the hill to an extreme! Take you pick, the film or the tv series, both center around the rouge law enforcement officer Logan who takes on the system that says humans aren’t smart enough, or valuable enough, to live out their life’s natural lifespan.
Logan’s Run
Number Twelve:Rollerball
Okay, the list said ten, but this dystopian film based on the novella by William Harrison is just too good not to include. In a future where the world and its people are controlled by seven elitist corporations, the ultra-violent sport Rollerball has been created to teach the masses individual effort means nothing. Unfortunately, nobody told Rollerball MVP Jonathan E.
Planet of the Apes
Signup for The Inspector’s Report Newsletter! Keep up with Inspector Thomas Sullivan and his friends. Get updates on when the next book will be published. Enjoy the occasional short story and read author K.C. Sivils’ musings about science fiction, crime noir and what ever else is on his mind.
If the movie or TV rights to The Predator and The Prey were purchased, would Capital City look like some fantastic, futuristic vision of urban life?
Probably not.
Parts of the Capital City would certainly appear as if they came from the wildest dreams of architectural fantasy. Certainly the Northwest Quadrant, where the wealthy and politicians make their homes, would appear to be futuristic. The Northeast Quadrant, with its industry, upper middle class and the SpacePort terminal would look futuristic.
But what about the Southern Quadrants? Where the poor and working class live?
Picture the tenements of North American industrial cities, where instead of brick and mortar, the buildings are converted containers left over from colonization with plastisteel facades. Buildings would have the same design and construction as the poured concrete buildings built in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Ugly, cheap to build and made for those considered beneath the ruling elite.
Hovercars require some type of fixed path to travel on requiring roads to be constructed. Perhaps the only advantage of a hovercraft over a wheeled vehicle is the roads will last longer.
There is very little that is truly new. Ideas are recycled all the time. Joe’s Restaurant, with its cliche neon lights, Classic Rock decor and North American comfort food, plus whatever the locals consider solid fare, is an example of retro styling and architecture some 500 years in the future.
Besides, Joe’s is home away from home. It’s an interesting place like Rick’s Cafe American of Casablanca fame is. The locals gather at Joe’s as do all sorts of interesting denizens of Capital City.
Old technology that works fine will be used on many Alliance worlds. As they say, if isn’t broken, there is no need to fix it. Railroads as we know them today, steel wheels on steel rails, are still used on many worlds where issues of climate and expense of construction and maintenance prevent the successful use of more “modern” technologies like Maglev Trains.
On a world like Beta Prime, a visitor would find a curious mix of the old, albeit updated, technology with the new. Soldiers and police would carry modern energy weapons with a variety of capabilities. Some soldiers and police prefer old school projectile weapons. As Inspector Sullivan constantly tells the pup Josephson, “a big exit wound is one way to make sure the perp stops shooting back.”
Fashion is one area where futuristic designs do make sense on a world like Beta Prime. But then again, what has come before often makes its way back through the fashion world. A tourist could expect to see the miners and industrial workers to be dressed in typical coveralls, designed both to protect the worker and keep the worker warm in the freezing environment of Beta Prime.
White collar workers, particularly the so-called elite and politicians would be those more inclined to wear the more daring fashion designs. Middle and working class fashions on Beta Prime tend to resemble those found in the 1940s and 50s with updates in materials. Life is dreary for many on the planet and the dark browns, blacks and blues of clothing reflect this aspect of life.
Classic styles, such as pin stripe suits, tailored to fit perfectly, never go out of style, regardless of the century, planet or city.
Other worlds, with different climate or life support needs, will have different levels of technology. Life on a moon, such as the two moons of Beta Prime, Serenity and Persephone, with no atmosphere, requires a more futuristic vision of the structures. The same is true of a colony on an asteroid of the space station serving as the terminal for large starliners and space freighters.
Why is the world I created for Inspector Sullivan and his companions to inhabit a mix of such commonly found items from today and the hoped and dreamed for technology of tomorrow? Because it is the way man does things.
We still make furniture from wood don’t we?
Still, if you look around, there is plenty to find that is not what one would expect to see in a city today.
Take Sarah. When was the last time you saw a human clone?
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My late mentor Don Meyer liked to say “there is nothing as difficult as original thought.” Life experience has taught me he was right. Another concept he liked was “there is nothing original under the sun.” Finally, he liked to say “you can get all the good ideas, you just can’t use them all.”
So what does this have to do with writing stories about a crime fighter who lives on an alien planet? It means I like crime fiction, science fiction and film noir movies. I’m not smart enough to come up with a totally original universe or story concept. But I can get good ideas from what has been done in the past and come up with something that is a slight variation of what has been done before.
Not that science fiction thrillers or futuristic crime stories are anything new. Bladerunner and Outland come to mind as a couple of my favorites. Then I ran across the quirky but delightful Firefly series that lasted for an all too short run on TV. A space western? What an idea!
Throw in the fact that I’m a fan of classic noir detective novels by writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler and you can see where this is headed. So why not send my hero to fight crime and corruption on a frozen planet sometime in the future?
If Joss Whedon could create the universe for space westerns in the stories told in Firefly and Serenity, then I can certainly have Clint “Dirty Harry” Eastwood and Humphrey “Sam Spade” Bogart serve as inspiration for my own Thomas Sullivan.
Not original and perhaps a bit risky since cross genre stories don’t always do well. I mean, what niche does the story fall in? How do you attract a reading audience? Sci-fi fans might not think the story has enough futuristic elements. Crime fiction and noir fans might think the story is not gritty enough.
But they’re my stories and its what my imagination has come up with. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The first of in my Thomas Sullivan: Lawman of Beta Prime series should be in print, I hope, no later than February of 2017. With a working title of The Predator and the The Prey I hope readers enjoy the story and look forward to reading more about the adventures and struggles of one Thomas Sullivan.
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