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Start From the Beginning
My innovations:
Sophia Stewart's unfinished "Masterpiece"
I
contacted Sophia
Stewart with an offer
that I would review her novel
"The Third Eye-Where it all Begins" on my Cosmic Cookout blog in
exchange for emailing me the novel in E-book form for free, which
usually sells for $24.95. She responded the same day and agreed to my
offer with the one
condition that she gets to read the review before I post it.
I'm sad to report that I cannot review Mrs. Stewart's book because in
my opinion it is not a finished novel. What you get for 24.95 is a PDF
file with 286 pages...of which her "novel" takes up about 36 pages from
chapter 1 titled "Earth's Past" to Chapter 9 labeled "The Climax". If
this had even a little meat I would have been happy to review it, but
it's just not complete.
You might be asking what
fills the other 250 pages? Mrs. Stewart has
included legal documents and other tidbits detailing her copyright
fight, which if looked at closely tells a sad
story that was best told by Los Angeles Times freelance writer Kemp
Powers back in 2005.
He does a great job at explaining exactly why this urban myth is still
making the rounds, but if you just want the facts check out this Sophia
Stewart Snopes.com page.
You also get the original
draft, an addendum, and a sort of sequel
titled "The Saga Continues" which is dated 1999 and written in the same
incomplete format that spends its pages setting up what each chapter
will entail
and how the story arc will progress but offers no real substance to
help you
get lost in the world.
In my opinion what made "The
Matrix" so original and compelling was the
details about some sort of machine/computer intelligence taking over and
harvesting humans for our electrical energy while they kept all the
humans blissed out in some sort of holographic dream state. There is
none of this in Sophia Stewart's material. She does have a prophecy
tangent, but so do several other stories and there is a planet with
some machine intelligence, but it's more of a symbiotic relationship as
compared to the parasitic type the Matrix clearly portrays.
Amazon.com
has 22 reviews of this book
when it was being sold in hard copy format for 100 dollars. There are
several critiques that point out its unfinished nature and 11 reviews
that give it 5 stars. The reviews that give 5 stars seem to be more
concerned about commenting on the alleged theft than an actual opinion
on the novel.
The bottom line here is that
I feel duped.
I wished Mrs. Stewart would have explained to me that what she was
sending was an unfinished rough draft instead of calling it in her
words a "Masterpiece".
I'm glad I didn't spend $24.95 to make this discovery, but having a few
hours of my time wasted feels pretty bad.
In my opinion this is a
classic example of the old Bait and Switch
scam. I thought I was
getting a finished novel that would shed some light on how such a
glorious story as the Matrix was given birth to. Instead I was given
286 pages of unfinished confusion wrapped up in an empty promise to
show me where the Matrix really came from.
See older posts in the archives.
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I'm including the email back and forth here I had with Sophia Stewart to add a some more context to the situation. The following is copied from my last email with her.
Mark,
This is the reason why you should not view film material. You know nothing about the movie business. Stop hating. Anything you say about my book is going to sell it. Love it or hate it. I wrote the Matrix & Terminator movies. That is a fact that is never going to change. You are so funny I am laughing. The Truth is hard to swallow. Review the copyrights. I bet you wont give your copy away! In a few years you will be trying to sell it, because you will be so hard up for money.
Sophia Stewart Writer of the Matrix & Terminator Movies
Also this letter
From: mark ham mrlocalmusic@yahoo.com To: sophia stewart sophiastewart10@yahoo.com Sent: Wed, October 20, 2010 1:21:37 PM Subject: status of review
Sophia,
The status of your review is suspended until you submit a finished novel.
Why didn't you explain to me on the phone you were sending something incomplete?...and why clutter it up with all of those legal documents?
I'm curious to know how many people have paid 24.95 for this E-book? and even more curious to know how many hard copy editions were sold for 100 dollars?
You really had me built up believing in your claim of being the true mother of the Matrix......and now I'm disappointed.
The next time someone offers to review your book why not tell them it's still a rough draft that only spans 36 pages?
If you ever do finish "The Third Eye-Where it all Begins" I'm still interested in reviewing it, but please leave out the legal paper trail or anything else that does not pertain to the story. Put those documents up on your website, but please don't expect folks to pay good money for it.
mark hamilton
--- On Thu, 10/7/10, sophia stewart sophiastewart10@yahoo.com wrote:
She comes across like a typical conspiracy nut to me. Selling legal documents (which are supposed to be accessible to the public anyway!) as part of a novel is indeed misleading.
This is exactly why I'm always weary of people selling plans for "free energy" devices. If they work as advertised, why not make money selling them?
A point to remember is that all expressions of culture build on others. The main theme of the matrix, "people fighting to escape oppression", is an ancient one that has been depicted in countless books and movies. See e.g. the 1927 silent film Metropolis by Fritz Lang.
Generally science fiction (of which I'm quite a fan) requires suspending disbelief, which is usually fine by me. But the concept of using humans as energy convertors (sources) is quite silly, looking at the relatively low thermodynamic efficiency of humans.
I agree Rolland.
It seemed very ineffecient to me for the machines to go to all the trouble of keeping a human alive and fed in exchange for a few volts of power?
How much power did they use to make the food, or harvest the water, or produce the heat needed to maintain optimum health?
In my opinion what would have helped the viewer stay in that dis-belief zone would have been to have the human brain networked with other brains for some super computer utility the machines somehow needed to accomplish their goals.
You could have still used the dream metaphor world and still had characters wake up to the truth and shed their shackles.
For the record I thought the first Matrix film was ground breaking and fresh in a way that really spoke to me, but the two follow up sequeals sort of wore me out and deflated some of the original steam for me.
IMO, the first movie was great. The second was okay-ish and the third was a let-down, especially the ending.
In general I'm not bothered much by technical flaws in science fiction, be it books or movies, unless they are especially glaring (as in this case). Relatively few writers have the background required to write science fiction that is actually plausible. Arthur Clarke, Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov come to mind as technically plausible writers.
I like all of those authors you listed. I think if more people "Groked" the book (Stranger in a Strange Land) then we might have more respect for how we raise and eat meat in this country.
Thought you might find this interesting if you haven't ran across it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQv-sdMCClQ Pay close attention around the 17 min mark. I have heard about this a little but don't know what happened with it.
I would love to get a copy of it. The cramming of it with Legal doc as you stated even tho they are in public domain is obviously to get the reader easy access to it WHO is gonna logg off to go to the legal records archives and check what she states in the book?
Where it all begins promises to show how it all started when she started to write it and send it out and her concepts of the work as well as of course the legal aspects of it .
Give her a little more respect it is very difficult to sit here and watch someone steal your work make money out of it and then u go to court and have all kinds of haters on ya. Incidently you have broken your promise to her as you stated that you would clear your review with her first before you write up on your website : am guessing you didnt?!
Her lawyers threw the case in the first instance and the judge was not qualifed in the second instance...plus the racism aspect which many would like to play down..
What would have been more constructive and good for your website is to have actually had a poll or something to see how many people felt that the work that she wrote was like the one that we have all seen ( the Matrix) you know like a "cake taste test" as we call it..a comparison that is after all what copyright infringement law requires to be done.
Sophia Stewart clearly said in the following interview that it wasn't a book work, it was a movie work. So she left the story opened. It didn't have to finish. What a useless and misleading "review". Good that you didn't buy the book. That an honor for her Here is a link to an extensive interview: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chasitie-s-goodman/2011/04/09/an-evening-with-sophia-stewart