Pixel Scroll 12/1/16 Is This A Tickbox Which I Scroll Before Me, The Pixel Toward My Hand?

(1) NO COUNTRY FOR OLD SPACEMEN. NBC News reports “Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Medically Evacuated From South Pole”.

Aldrin, 86, is in stable condition after “his condition deteriorated” while visiting Antarctica, according to White Desert, which organizes luxury tourism trips to the icy continent. The group said Aldrin was evacuated on the first available flight out of the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station to the McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast under the care of a doctor with the U.S. Antarctic Program.

He then was flown to Christchurch, New Zealand, and arrived at about 4:25 a.m. local time Friday (10:25 a.m. Thursday ET), according to the National Science Foundation, which provided the flight for Aldrin.

 

(2) FIRST FANS OF STAR WARS. Skywalking to Neverland’s latest podcast features Craig Miller:

Craig Miller, former head of fan relations at Lucasfilm and ancillary producer, is back to give more insider info on The Star Wars Holiday Special. He tells us about how the small production kept growing to promote the stars of CBS and other fun-facts. We also talk about the 1976 MidAmeriCon WorldCon where Star Wars had its first panel and exhibit featuring the first actual props and costumes from STAR WARS. Cut to: 40 years later and the staff that organized that presentation is back to replicate that same panel.

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(3) MENACE APPRECIATION. James Davis Nicoll selected Heinlein’s “The Menace From Earth” to be the latest test for the panel at Young People Read Old SF.

Of all the authors name-checked in the post that inspired this project, the one I figured would be least appealing to younger readers would be Robert A. Heinlein. He’s one of the grand old men of the field: winner of multiple Hugos, architect of the Future History, over-user of the word “spung.” He may have been a giant in his day, long long ago, but time has not been kind to his books….

These old stories generally don’t get a warm reception, but some of the panelists actually liked this one:

So, how did this story stack up? Good. It shows that women are capable of balancing their career ambitions with their romantic relationships, and that there is often a conflict between the two… especially for women. So that’s pretty cool.

(4) TIPTREE SYMPOSIUM. The 2016 James Tiptree, Jr. Symposium runs December 2-3 at the University of Oregon in Eugene. This year’s theme is “A Celebration of Ursula K. Le Guin”. View the full schedule of events and speakers.

We are very pleased to learn that Ursula Le Guin, honoree of this year’s Tiptree Symposium, is planning to attend the events on Friday, December 2. However, due to recent health issues causing limited mobility and stamina, she will not be able to sign books. Thank you for your understanding.

Ursula K. Le Guin (1929- ) is a remarkable poet, essayist, critic, translator, and storyteller. In all these forms, she never ceases to challenge our expectations about “words, women, places,” as the subtitle to her essay collection Dancing at the Edge of the World puts it. Her many awards testify to her literary skill and deep humanity, and her work has inspired a generation of writers by showing how the unreal can comment on (and incorporate) the real, and how the future can serve as a powerful metaphor for the present. Her writing combines perspectives from anthropology, feminism, science, history, utopian thought, and Taoist philosophy, all wrapped up in convincing and compelling narratives of exploration and self-discovery.

(5) IT’S A WRAP. Birth. Movies. Death. harshes the squee about a forthcoming reboot: The Mummy Gets A Poster, A Brief Teaser And A Stolen Tagline”.

As you can see, The Mummy stars Tom Cruise as a guy who has to stop The Enchantress from Suicide Squad. Good luck to him, she’s p tough.

The biggest curiosity is robbing The Bride of Frankenstein of its “Welcome to a new world of gods and monsters” line. I suppose it’s not outright theft since it evokes the larger universe at play here, but it still seems weird. Is it a clue that we might see a little Frankenstein in this? Or his monster? That should be very exciting for those who haven’t seen Penny Dreadful!

 

(6) HINES BENEFIT AUCTION #6. The sixth of Jim C. Hines’ 24 Transgender Michigan Fundraiser auctions offers some of the author’s own stuff – the complete audio book set of the Goblin trilogy.

The audio books are full-cast recordings from Graphic Audio, and the trilogy retails for $60. Each book comes as six CDs, with a runtime of approximately six hours apiece. They’re new and shrink-wrapped, but I’ll be happy to open them up and autograph them to you before mailing them, if you’d like.

About book one:

Jig the goblin was the runtiest member of an admittedly puny race. Jig was scrawny, so nearsighted as to be almost blind, and had such a poor self-image that when he chose a god to worship it was one of the forgotten ones – after all, what other sort of god would have him as worshiper? He also had a cowardly fire-spider for a pet, a creature that was likely to set your hair on fire if it got into a panic. Made to stand tunnel watch by the goblin bullies who’d been assigned the job, it was just Jig’s luck to be taken captive by a group of adventurers – with the usual complement of a dwarf warrior, a prince out to prove himself, his mad wizard brother, and an elfin thief. Forced to guide this ill-fated party on their search for the Rod of Creation – though Jig had no more idea how to find it than they did – he soon had them stumbling into every peril anyone had ever faced in the fantasy realms. And they hadn’t even found the Necromancer or the Dragon yet!

Listen to an excerpt online.

(7) BANDERSNATCH. Goodreads hosts a page of Bandersnatch quotes, I just discovered.

“As Tolkien points out, the name is “a pleasantly ingenious pun,” referring to those who “dabble in ink.” It also suggests people “with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas.” ? Diana Pavlac Glyer, Bandersnatch: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and the Creative Collaboration of the Inklings

(8) FANTASY DESTROYED. Lightspeed’s  “People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy” issue is available.  

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Funded as a stretch goal of LIGHTSPEED’s People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction! Kickstarter campaign, we’re happy to present a special one-off issue of our otherwise discontinued sister-magazine, FANTASY (which was merged into LIGHTSPEED in 2012), called People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy!: an all-fantasy extravaganza entirely written—and edited!—by POC creators. The People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! special issue exists to relieve a brokenness in the genre that’s been enabled time and time again by favoring certain voices and portrayals of particular characters. Here we bring together a team of POC writers and editors from around the globe to present fantasy that explores the nuances of culture, race, and history. This is fantasy for our present time, but also—most of all—for our future. People of Colo(u)r Destroy Fantasy! is 100% written and edited by people of color, and is lead by guest editor Daniel José Older, with editorial contributions from Amal El-Mohtar, Tobias S. Buckell, Arley Sorg, and others. It features four original, never-before-published short stories, from N.K. Jemisin, P. Djèlí Clark, Darcie Little Badger, and Thoraiya Dyer. Plus, there’s four classic reprints by Shweta Narayan, Leanne Simpson, Celeste Rita Baker, and Sofia Samatar. On top of all that, we also have an array of nonfiction articles and interviews, from Justina Ireland, Ibi Zoboi, Erin Roberts, Karen Lord, John Chu, Chinelo Onwualu, and Brandon O’Brien, as well as original illustrations by Reimena Yee, Emily Osborne, and Ana Bracic.

(9) LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATION. What John Scalzi has to say to those who complain when he writes about politics is pretty much what every fanzine editor thinks, whether the gripe is about politics or another favorite topic, but not all of us are as bold about saying so out loud as Mr. Scalzi.

  1. The Short Points About Me Writing On Politics

If you tell me you’re tired of me talking about politics, or tell me to shut up about them, I’ll tell you to kiss my ass. I’ll write about what I want, when I want, where I want, which in this case happens to be about politics, now, here.

(10) HI-TECH PRACTICAL JOKE. I’m speechless. But they’re not.

(11) CALLING FLINT FANS. Eric Flint asked readers of his blog to nominate his novel for a Dragon Award. I looked up Flint at the Science Fiction Awards Database and was shocked to discover that in a long and distinguished career he’s never won any of the multitude of awards tracked on that site. Maybe this will be his year.

I would like to ask for a personal favor. The Dragon awards are now open for nominations and I would appreciate it if as many of you as are so inclined would nominate THE SPAN OF EMPIRE, by Eric Flint and David Carrico, in the category of “Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel.” I will stress that you should only do so if you actually liked the novel, but most of the people I know who’ve read the novel liked it a lot.

Flint received two nominations in the first year of the Dragon Awards, both in the Best Alternate History category which was won by Naomi Novik’s League of Dragons.

(While fact-checking, I discovered the Dragon Awards website still has Novik’s name misspelled as “Novak”.)

(12) CLARKE CENTER PODCAST. The Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination’s new podcast, Into the Impossible, has released is second episode — “Becoming a Galactic Wonder”.

On this month’s episode of Into the Impossible – a podcast of stories, ideas, and speculations from the Arthur C. Clarke Center for Human Imagination – we’re looking at wonder and imagination. We’ll get there through the plays of Herbert Siguenza (playwright, actor, and director; founding member of Culture Clash) that take us from Pablo Picasso in 1957 to a post-apocalyptic California, and the art (and green thumb) of Jon Lomberg (astronomical artist), who worked with Carl Sagan on the original Cosmos and has created a garden that can help us imagine our place in the universe. Both ask, as Herbert does in the persona of Picasso himself, “How can we make the world worthy of its children?”

(13) MIGHTY BURGER. The creator of the Big Mac has died and Hogu fans everywhere mourn…. Michael “Jim” Delligatti was 98.

The menu was pretty simple back in those early days — hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries and shakes. But Delligatti saw that his customers wanted something bigger, so in 1967 at his restaurant in Uniontown, Pa., he put together two hamburger patties, topped it with cheese, lettuce, onions and pickles, and he developed a special sauce for the burger. He called it the Big Mac.

The early Big Macs were marketed with a paper collar around them. Pop culture scholar Dave Feldman said that sent customers the message that a Big Mac was  “A sandwich so mighty it needs a harness to restrain it!”

(14) BACK TO THE BREW-TURE. Of greater concern to our cousin fans across the Pond: when and how did Brits first brew?

Meanwhile, large pots and evidence of heat-cracked stones have been found at Skara Brae, a 5,000-year-old settlement in the Orkney islands just north-east of Scotland.

Local archaeologist Merryn Dineley believes that bits of the pottery were once used for heating malt – the germinated and heated cereal grains that ferment to produce alcohol. Dineley has experimented with Neolithic-style equipment and argues that malting of grains could have occurred in this period.

(15) CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. Entertainment Weekly invites you to “Watch these exclusive Star Trek: The Original Series clips from The Roddenberry Vault”.

If there’s a Star Trek obsessive in your family, their Christmas present will be released on Dec. 13. That’s when Star Trek: The Original Series – The Roddenberry Vault, a massive new Blu-ray treasure trove of footage left on the cutting room floor, goes on sale. The Roddenberry Vault draws directly from film cans stored for decades by the Gene Roddenberry estate, and includes deleted scenes, alternate takes, and other behind-the-scenes look at the making of the series that launched the Trek franchise 50 years ago.

EW is excited to share two exclusive clips from The Roddenberry Vault, one of them focused on the making of the maddeningly cute Tribbles, the other a short and mesmerizing clip of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner filming the “Transporter” effect.

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, John King Tarpinian, JJ, Martin Morse Wooster, and Stoic Cynic for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Niall McAuley.]

100 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 12/1/16 Is This A Tickbox Which I Scroll Before Me, The Pixel Toward My Hand?

  1. (10) HI-TECH PRACTICAL JOKE. LOL, so mean, tricking those poor AIs.

    Yes, I will not believe that we have achieved true “artificial intelligence” until the devices can become annoyed at being asked the same question over and over.

  2. 2016, keep your dammed paws off Buzz.
    We’ve got him now! Although it seems a very roundabout way to do the whole ‘Dammit, that idiot won, I’m moving to New Zealand!’ thing!

    Another one with the Big mac ingredient list burnt into my then-youthful brain.

  3. OK; I filed this just the other day, but since were in a cash mood, Ill expand it a bit (plus its not only one of Cashs best covers, its also from Downards Spiral, argubly Nine Inch Nails best album albums (lthough pretty hate machine comes a close second))
    I scrolled myself today
    To see if I still file
    I boxticked on the pain
    The only thing that’s real
    The pixel tears a hole
    The old familiar sting
    Try to scroll it all away
    But I remember everything

    (Rest of the day: Try to get the song out of my head again)

  4. (3) So kids have the ability to read and evaluate works within the context of the time when they were written and provide a thoughtful…and appreciative….response. Based on prior entries, I am unsurprised at the result.

    I wouldn’t recommend a reading diet of nothing but Golden Age authors. But I most surely would want new readers in the genre to have exposure to some of those works. Omitting Heinlein would have been an error, IMHO.

    (9) I agree. No one should tell someone to shut up and (insert professional activity here). I hope John understands that there are folks that have been told to shut up for the last 8 years that might have appreciated his support back then as well.

    Regards,
    Dann

  5. Scrolls, Mr. Pixel, Zillions of ’em!

    Anyone remember when Big Mac was the law and order in McDonaldland? Seems like most of those characters have disappeared. Whatever happened to Mayor McCheese or the Grimace and his various relatives?

  6. Nancy Sauer: To those criticizing the details of James Davis Nicoll’s reading project: I look forward to the reports of the vastly improved projects which you will be organizing.

    Heh — like the children’s story — no, everybody wants to EAT the bread, but help make it?

  7. Paul Weimer: 13) The paper collar helps reinforce my private theory that the design of the big mac was inspired by the club sandwich.

    I couldn’t rule it out. After all, people were selling burgers with two patties in them without sticking the extra piece of bread in the middle. That was one of the differences about the Big Mac.

    In spite of Dave Feldman’s wonderful interpretation of the paper collar, I think there was a practical reason for it — you know, those shreds of lettuce in a Big Mac fall out everywhere. I figured the object was to avoid the impression that it was a sloppily-made sandwich.

  8. I hope John understands that there are folks that have been told to shut up for the last 8 years that might have appreciated his support back then as well.
    As we used to say about whatever it was someone told us others would be only too happy to do– name two.

  9. hmmm either Mike canned my comment or I forgot to post it before closing the browser.

    To sum up; in this age of google, wikipedia and etc., why are we still seeing people write things like “I don’t know, but” instead of “I looked things up and don’t agree” or “I couldn’t find a good reference” or “everything I found seems to be biased”.

    I’m not talking casual, I’m talking on discussions with meat on the bones. Maybe its me, but if I’m planning on making a point based on what I consider to be factual information and I’m not entirely sure of what I’m thinking, I check sources before posting. And I don’t just take the first google link to wikipedia either; I try to go to first sources whenever I can. I try to verify that other (good) sources state essentially the same thing.

    It’s so easy to check stuff these days, I’m mystified by everyone’s retreat to a bubble. Sure, I’m just like the next guy – challenge my closely held beliefs and I’ll argue, but if you put facts in front of me, I’ll accept them, however reluctantly.

    Those “kids” reading Heinlein…yeah, older generations have been down on “the youth of today” for millennia (though of course cliches are cliches for a reason), but if it were me, I’d be looking up every reference I thought I wasn’t getting. Go type 1957 in wikipedia and you’ll have some context (they were just rolling out assemblers for Fortran, for example) which would probably quickly lead to a discussion of Moore’s law and at least a partial explanation as to why 3D mapping was the issue it was.

    Had I wanted to do that when I first read THE MENACE FROM EARTH, I’d have had to make multiple trips to the library and visit the local university’s computer science department (if they even had one). Today – right there at your fingertips.

    So why does it seem that in this era of information-plenty, so many people seem so reluctant to use it?

  10. Cash covers: one of my faves is his rendition of “The Mercy Seat”.

    My scroll-hand’s
    tattooed P.I.X.E.L. across it’s brother’s fist
    That file-thy five! They did nothing to challenge or resist.

  11. steve davidson: “To sum up; in this age of google, wikipedia and etc., why are we still seeing people write things like “I don’t know, but” “

    It’s a form of virtue signalling I suspect. I don’t need no steenking facts or research, when my opinion is already pre-formed.

    “Pixel Srolling Filing out along the bay”

  12. (5) – I loooove the first two Mummy movies, they are such an excellent love letter to b-movies of all sorts, plus the cast was just really solid, especially Brendan Fraiser and Oded Fehr, oh I had such a crush on Oded when those movies came out ha ha! I still quote from the movies on occasion, like I do with the Simpsons. It’s a shame that the versions following the second movie have not been quite the same and seem to suffer from series fatigue.

    (13) – When I was a kid, I used to love Big Macs and then at some point I stopped eating at McDonalds for a few years at a time (part of an overall trying to eat less junkfood idea) and the last few times I’ve had a Big Mac, it did not live up to my memory. I can’t figure out if it’s just that my tastes have changed, that present day is never as good as nostalgic memory or whether the quality/recipe has actually different now than it was back then.

  13. I, and others, have found that eating less greasy food makes you notice the grease more.

    I stopped eating regularly at McDonald’s at about age 16 (Burger King took me into my mid-20s, though I thought they were inferior, because the local SCA used to have their post-meeting hangouts at one.) I rarely enjoy their burgers when I do, though I enjoy a lot of other burgers including some fast foody ones, and I attribute it partly on my tongue not being trained to it any more.

  14. @Sunhawk

    Oh, absolutely on The Mummy, it hit that b movie vibe perfectly. Great casting too, especially Weisz and Hannah for me.

  15. I really need to update my pic. That baby is 20 months old now…

    Hey, I never clicked on your icon before. From the thumbnail, I always thought you were wearing scrubs with a face mask hanging down. I never saw that the “face mask” was a baby!

  16. “The Menace From Earth” may be my favorite of the Future History stories. It’s very 1950s, but it’s also very sweet.

    I don’t think Holly is bowing to societal pressure to deny her own feelings and become romantically involved with Jeff because she’s told to; I think she and Jeff were both denying their feelings to begin with, and crisis (well, two crises) brought them out.

    Which is a very 1950s approach to romance, but to argue that Holly doesn’t love Jeff and is being forced into it merely because she doesn’t want to admit it to herself (but still acts out of jealousy) is, to my mind, a serious misreading of the story.

  17. I hope John understands that there are folks that have been told to shut up for the last 8 years that might have appreciated his support back then as well.

    Ahh, shuddup for eight years.

    *Ahem.*

    Or to put it another way:

    Scalzi’s policy on this hasn’t changed in the past eight years. If you’re implying that he should come to the defense of people he disagrees with, rather than simply state that people can talk about what they want to talk about and damn any fallout, you’re trying the cast him as a guardian angel of people who can choose for themselves as readily as he can.

  18. steve Davidson: hmmm either Mike canned my comment or I forgot to post it before closing the browser.

    I haven’t canned any comments for a couple of days. 🙂

  19. @Kurt Busiek: That’s how I read “The Menace From Earth,” too.

    Also: I loved the flying part (until the crash). 😉 Along with my pony, I’d like some wings that work.

  20. @RedWombat: The Amiga! We still have two in working condition and all the software. So ahead of its time, so badly marketed. What wondrous things we might have now if it hadn’t taken off. The colors, man…

    @IanP: Fraoch, that’s what I’ve had. It’s fairly easy to find even here in Alta California. And I’ve seen Skullsplitter on the shelves.

    @Aaron: sorry for the confusion, I was trying to support your “sequels DO get Hugo recognition and even win” idea.

    I read “Menace From Earth” when wireless had yet to be invented and the net was still a tiny thing, so that didn’t bother me. I’ve always thought it was a pretty charming little story, and liked the thought that Holly and Jeff would have a family spaceship business, acting as equals, with their kids growing up to work in it. And everyone except Holly and Jeff (including the readers) knew they really did love each other. OF COURSE they were. The “Menace” was just the one who came out and told them both. She’s a decent sort, really, which is another nice touch.
    I’d like to see some 11-15 year olds reading these books — the two Golden Ages of SF coinciding (No, I can’t do it myself; I don’t know any kids in that age group).

    We’ve already had “I scrolled a pixel in Reno just to watch it die”, right?

    (5) Talk about your unnecessary remakes. And can’t Tom Cruise find something more interesting to do? Like Sunhawk, I loved the first two with Fraser and the beautiful Oded, and even the less-than-brave John Hannah.

    As far as fast-food burgers go, I only eat In N Out these days. I still like McD’s fries, even though they don’t taste as good since they stopped using beef in the oil.

  21. @steve davidson

    To sum up; in this age of google, wikipedia and etc., why are we still seeing people write things like “I don’t know, but” instead of “I looked things up and don’t agree” or “I couldn’t find a good reference” or “everything I found seems to be biased”.

    Sloth.

  22. I am a fan of the Fraser Mummy movies…the first two, anyway. The third is a mess even with Michelle Yeoh in it. Losing Weisz for it sn’t even the worst thing about that movie, IMO

  23. Yes, all kinds of problems with the third Mummy movie — and I was unhappy not just because they lost Weisz, but because they tried to recast Evie instead of just creating a new female lead.

    Wasn’t Mummy Returns kind of the movie that jump-started The Rock’s film career? Which is sort of funny given that he had about five minutes of screen time in the prologue, and then appeared as a really, really bad CGI scorpion drider thing at the end.

  24. @Nancy Sauer: To those criticizing the details of James Davis Nicoll’s reading project: I look forward to the reports of the vastly improved projects which you will be organizing.

    I think that’s an absurd response, especially in a forum where much of the discussion is about things we did or did not like as readers of various works. “Shut up if you can’t do better” isn’t a critical rubric anyone seriously holds to, I think.

    But if it makes any difference to you, when I commented on James’s series I also made it pretty clear that I am enjoying it overall and think it’s a good idea, even though I had some problems with its presentation and setup such that I don’t think it really is doing what he set out to do. James is of course under no obligation to care what I think, or do anything differently, but if he ever felt like launching a new round of the series maybe he would find that response of some interest – or not. I certainly hope he didn’t interpret my comments as totally negative and dismissive, as you seem to have done.

    The other commenters I’ve seen here have obviously been following the series enough to form opinions, which suggests that they also found it worth reading.

  25. I really liked the first Fraser Mummy movie. The second was ok, but rather disappointing by comparison. Beyond that…yeah, nah, as we say here in California.

    Still, I am thoroughly underwhelmed at the prospect of a Tom Cruise version, even if it’s not exactly a remake. Was never much of a Cruise fan even before he went off the deep end and started worshiping evil clams. 🙂

  26. @Xtifr . In the right vehicle, for me, Cruise does okay. (OBLIVION and especially EDGE OF TOMORROW). But Jack Reacher doesn’t interest me at all, for instance.

  27. @joe H Ironically, yes, With just a little screen time, and half of that as a CGI monster, the Mummy Returns is an unlikely vehicle that helped raise Johnson’s prestige. And yet it did. Talent (and he does have a good sense of comic timing and can laugh at himself pretty well in addition to his physical chops) does sometimes win out.

  28. Johnny Cash covers eh?

    Old pixels yes they rob I
    Scrolled I to the merchant ships
    Minutes after they took I
    From the boxless tick

  29. @ Kurt: It is extremely common for people to tell women that what they REALLY feel (as opposed to what they actually feel) is X. I got that from all sorts of people (including a family counselor!) as late as my 40s, and it’s much worse the younger you are. Once you start to recognize it as a recurring pattern, your tolerance for it drops very fast. Whether or not it’s true, shoving someone’s nose into it is the inverse of helpful.

  30. @Aaron: sorry for the confusion, I was trying to support your “sequels DO get Hugo recognition and even win” idea.

    Ah, I see. Thank you. Next you’ll get people telling you that it is really rare, and that’s some sort of problem. Of course, they never seem to notice that any novel winning a Hugo is rare – there are only around sixty winners out of the entire array of published science fiction novels after all.

  31. @Chip Hitchcock Mel’s misunderstanding of what seemed possible 7 decades ago (powerful handheld computers, vs star travel) is just amusing; do kids these days just not understand how much faster computers evolved than any device built mostly of moving parts?

    Given Heinlein’s prescience in predicting our moonbases and torchships, the LEAST we could expect of the Master would be to predict our pocket computers. Otherwise it would be as if science fiction lacks any sort of predictive element! Which is just not appropriate for the literature of the future.

    @ steve davidson Those “kids” reading Heinlein…yeah, older generations have been down on “the youth of today” for millennia (though of course cliches are cliches for a reason), but if it were me, I’d be looking up every reference I thought I wasn’t getting.

    It’s set in the future. Treating it as if it’s some obscure historical text implies that maybe it doesn’t have as important an educational function as people have been saying.

    Seriously, the whole argument that James Nicoll is testing, has been “If young people only were exposed to the great classics of SF, they’d understand how brilliant and vital their SFF heritage is.”, Not “If only people spent hours researching references of 1950s America, THEN read the classics of SF, then they’d understand how vital and important their SFF heritage is.” Your demand that they treat it like a historical research project, undermines the whole argument.

  32. Re: Reading old stuff when young. Anybody ever teach “The Dead”? Or Pride and Prejudice?

  33. Kurt: It is extremely common for people to tell women that what they REALLY feel (as opposed to what they actually feel) is X.

    Yes, I do know this, despite being alive for only 56 years and counting.

    Nonetheless, I don’t think that’s an accurate reading of “The Menace from Earth.” I don’t think anyone in the story tells Holly what she feels in contradiction to what she actually feels.

  34. I read “The Menace From Earth” at approximately the age of the protagonist, and certainly didn’t think anyone was telling Holly how she did or didn’t feel about Jeff. It was so obvious! Else why get so uptight and jealous and full of feels about the “Menace”?

  35. Had I wanted to do that when I first read THE MENACE FROM EARTH, I’d have had to make multiple trips to the library and visit the local university’s computer science department (if they even had one). Today – right there at your fingertips.

    I guess you can break people into two broad types–the ones who never want to pick up a reference work, and the ones who never want to put one down.

  36. @ Lurkertype: I didn’t notice it either back then; it was just the way women expected to be treated, and the “everybody knows X but the protagonist” meme was extremely popular back in the day. (For that matter, it’s still popular as a form of humiliation “humor” on sitcoms.) This story has had a very large visit from the Suck Fairy over the past 30 years.

  37. @Kip W: “Or those who always exclude the middle and those who never do.”

    That earns a ::snort:: LOL from me, thanks.

    @Lee: I tend to dislike most sitcoms. One of the various reasons is that most men are portrayed as bumbling (and/or hormone-driven) fools, in contrast to nearly every man I’ve ever met. (It’s possibly I’m a bumbling fool, granted.) So, it’s not just women who get short shrift in sitcoms. Most sitcoms aim very low on the humor scale.

  38. Re: “The Mummy” – I enjoyed the Brendon Fraser version very well, but was irritated at how much of the setup seemed to be lifted from Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody series without any attribution. I’m aware that she based some of her characters on historical ones, but as a devoted fan girl of hers, it still rubbed me the wrong way (which is a round about way to say that if you liked the movie, you might really enjoy the books! Squee!)

  39. @Mark – Oh yeah I really dig Rachel Weisz too! I agree with others that the decision to recast her in the third movie was just silly, maybe they should have taken that as a sign that they needed to do more with the script if they couldn’t convince one of their lead actor’s to sign on again. Or maybe they didn’t ask her? I forget what the situation was exactly.

    @Paul Weimer – I agree, Tom Cruise can do quite well in the right movies/parts. I really enjoyed Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow as well, maybe in part because EoT had Cruise poking fun at himself a bit playing a buffoon who had his ass handed to him over and over, that was pretty much the core of the plot lol

    I think the Scorpion King movie is actually a decent movie if you look as more of a Conan type movie, if that’s your thing then SK satisfies pretty well, at least from my perspective. My dad loves Conan-type movies, as well as anything based in Greek myth.

    @Another Laura – Oh I’ve never heard that before about The Mummy, it makes sense as pretty much everything in those Mummy movies is lifted from something else (hence the lack of actual attribution, I suspect they felt it was covered by the fact that they felt people would understand the movies as a send-up to well-known other things but I get why it rankles either way), I just didn’t know of the specifics regarding who they lifted Evie’s character from. I would definitely be interested to read those books!

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