[Do you have an idea for a future Mind Meld? Let us know!]

I recently watched The Amazing Spider-Man, directed by Marc Webb. I really enjoyed the movie, especially after the horrendous Spider-Man 3, but I know that a lot of people felt that the reboot came too soon. With this on my mind I thought I’d get some feedback from authors regarding the topic of reboots.

The question posed to this week’s panelists:

Here’s what they said…

Necessary? Hmm, I’m not sure ever really necessary. Remakes either. I think you really only want to start playing with established works if you’re sure that you can bring something new (and better!) to it. Expand the characters, the universe. In that sense, I don’t think any project should be protected from reboots, if it has the potential to become better and richer for the experience, say something new.

What properties could do with a reboot? Well, perhaps Rambo? With a younger actor, as a veteran of Iraq/Afghanistan? Could work…preferably with less jingoism though, get it right back to ‘Troubled soldier tying to make sense of the aftermath’. Highlander would be superb – we could not have number 2 as well! Blade maybe could do with an overhaul, and Spawn. I’d have said Mad Max and Robocop too, but they’re being/have been done. Perhaps try again on Mad Max…

For me, some of the best already done are the Batman series, the new Star Trek (I love how they expanded on our knowledge of characters we thought we knew inside out, and then put them in new and interesting positions), which also goes for the Bond reboot. I also liked the new Dredd. What didn’t work for me? The Conan reboot, Mad Max’s Doomsday… Remake/extensions of old franchises, Prometheus and The Thing prequel just didn’t work for me. The originals (Okay, the Carpenter version of The Thing was a remake itself) were so good, that they would have been better leaving well enough alone.

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Weston Ochse is the author of nine novels, most recently SEAL Team 666. His first novel, Scarecrow Gods, won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in First Novel. He’s also had published more than a hundred short stories, many of which appeared in anthologies, magazines, peered journals and comic books. His short fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Weston holds Bachelor’s Degrees in American Literature and Chinese Studies from Excelsior College. He holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from National University. He has been to more than fifty countries and speaks Chinese with questionable authority. Weston has studied martial arts for more than 30 years, including Tae Kwon Do, Ryu Kempo Jujitsu, Kali, and Kuai Lua.

His last name is pronounced “oaks.” Together with his first name, it sounds like a stately trailer park. He lives in the Arizona desert within rock throwing distance of Mexico. For fun he races tarantula wasps and watches the black helicopters dance along the horizon.

Weston took time out of his very busy schedule to chat with us about his newest novel, SEAL Team 666!

Kristin Centorcelli: Weston, thanks so much for joining us! Will you tell us a bit about yourself and your background?

Weston Ochse: Sure. Here’s the Cliff Note Version. Born just south of Devil’s Tower in Wyoming. Moved around a bunch as a kid following my English Professor father, until eventually settling down to life in Eastern Tennessee. Flunked out of two colleges and joined the army. After a twenty year career with time spent in infantry, special operations and special mission units, I retired and went to work for the U.S. military in a civilian status. Eventually received a Bachelor’s Degree in American Literature and Chinese Asian Studies, then a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. Have written ten novels, more than a hundred short stories and an equal number of non-fiction. Won awards. Have a beautiful wife. Three Great Danes to curl around my feet. And a fine home in southern Arizona.
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Each year when autumn arrives, I’m drawn by a kind of inner gravity to revisit the work of Ray Bradbury, and to recharge his fictional vision within me. This is always inextricably intertwined with the transcendent longing that I mentioned in my previous (just-published) column, Fantasy, Horror, and Infinite Longing.

There I talked about the sense of transcendent yearning that I’ve experienced intermittently since childhood, and that often comes to me as a companion to the autumn season. I speculated about its profound significance for both human consciousness and the fantasy and horror genres, and I talked about some of the authors — C.S. Lewis, H.P. Lovecraft, Colin Wilson — who have known it and focused directly on it in their work.

Here I focus on the fact that Bradbury is a master at both arousing and confirming this experience of heightened inner intensity. My first readings of The October Country, The Illustrated Man and Something Wicked This Way Comes as an early adolescent left a permanent mark on me, both intellectually and emotionally. More than just the sum of their parts, his books and stories conveyed to me then, and convey to me now, an entire vision of the world in which darkness and light both intensify to new heights and depths of vividness, and all the daily details of life assume a kind of mythic numinosity. Which is to say that his work exemplified then, and still exemplifies now, what I take to be the deep raison d’être of fantasy and horror.

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