Pixel Scroll 1/5/18 A Scroll By Any Other Name Would Pixelate Just As Adequately

(1) SETTING A VISION. Author Fonda Lee explains her approach to storytelling in a thread that begins here —

(2) LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HIGHLIGHTS WOMEN ILLUSTRATORS. The Washington Post’s Michael Cavna, in “Undersung women illustrators get their due at Library of Congress exhibition”, reports on a Library of Congress exhibition featuring such significant women cartoonists as Dale Messick, Lynn Johnston, and Lynda Barry.

It is possible, in this era of increasing recognition of women artists, to gaze at the recent prize-laced success of Alison Bechdel and Roz Chast and Raina Telgemeier and Lynda Barry, to name just a few, and consider that the field of illustration is becoming more level along gender lines. But then you consider that only two women have ever won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning, or that The Washington Post runs only two comic strips created by women — and none by a woman of color — and you remember how much further the cause of women artists getting fair representation has yet to travel.

That is a central thread running through “Drawn to Purpose: American Women Illustrators and Cartoonists,” the rotating exhibit of nearly 70 works now up at the Library of Congress’s Swann Gallery from its Prints and Photographs Division.

“This show has been years in the making,” says its curator, Martha H. Kennedy, noting that her vision for “Drawn to Purpose” long preceded 2017’s shifting zeitgeist amid the #Resist and #MeToo movements.

Here’s a link to the Library of Congress webpage about the exhibit.

Features the rich collections of the Library of Congress and brings to light remarkable but little-known contributions made by North American women to the art forms of illustration and cartooning. Spanning the late 1800s to the present, the exhibition highlights the gradual broadening in both the private and public spheres of women’s roles and interests, and demonstrates that women once constrained by social conditions and convention, have gained immense new opportunities for self-expression and discovery.

The exhibit, which opened in November, continues through October 20.

(3) PAPERBACK SHOW. Here’s an updated poster for the 2018 Vintage Paperback Show with the names of participating writers and artists.

(4) BY THE NUMBERS. Here’s an ambitious project – Ross Johnson gives us “Every Episode of Black Mirror, Ranked” at the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

  1. “Shut Up and Dance”

Hackers take over a teen’s computer and threaten to expose his solo sexual activities to the world if he doesn’t commit a series of increasingly intense tasks. Commentary on the “for the LULZ” troll culture aside, its an episode that falls victim to the show’s worst impulses: much as in season two’s “White Bear,” the big twist undermines the whole thing, attempting to convince us maybe the kid had it coming all along—after we’ve been lead to care about him. The performances are spot on, and the story’s engaging enough for a time, but the vague moral (“people who are bad deserve absurdly elaborate punishments, or do they?”) is just lazy. This is Black Mirror at its most mean-spirited. (Season 3, Episode 3)

(5) TV SF. Here is “io9’s Ultimate Guide to 2018’s Scifi, Fantasy, and Superhero TV”. For example —

Counterpart

Series premiere: January 21 at 8:00 pm, Starz

The always-great J.K. Simmons stars in this scifi thriller about a pencil-pusher who realizes the government agency he’s working for has long been concealing the existence of a parallel dimension. Things get really odd when his double (a badass secret agent) pops up in his world and enlists him to help catch a killer who’s also slipped in from the other side.

Daniel Dern sent the link with these notes —

  • I’d given up on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D ~2 seasons back, but the current one has been worth watching IMHO
  • Legion’s (the Marvel mutant, not DC’s L of Super Heroes (1)) first season was incredible. Halfway through that season, I thought they were going to go yukky-horror, but happily that’s not where they went. Yes, it’s a Marvel mutant, but no, this isn’t a mutant or superhero show per se, more like Number Six’s Last Year In Marienbad.

(6) ANTIQUE COOLTH. Gotta love this. (If you’re a geezer.) “I was there when it was cool”.

(7) NO SPECTRUM FANTASTIC ART LIVE IN 2018. John Fleskes, Cathy Fenner, Arnie Fenner announced on Facebook that they will not be holding a convention in 2018, however, there will be a Spectrum Awards ceremony.

We have (understandably) been receiving a number of messages and emails inquiring about the 2018 dates for Spectrum Fantastic Art Live. While we have worked diligently since the close of the 2017 show last April to come up with something workable this year, we, unfortunately, were unsuccessful. Kansas City is an increasingly difficult venue to find acceptable show dates; we’ve felt lucky to have been able to squeeze in when we could in the past (realizing, of course, that any dates we used put SFAL in conflict with other conventions artists like to attend). With a new downtown convention hotel in the works and a new airport approved by voters, dates in Kansas City will continue to get harder to come by in the future rather than easier as more—and bigger—shows move into the area. The dates, spaces, and hotel prices that were available to us this year simply didn’t work for the vision we have for SFAL.

Reluctantly we’re announcing that there is no Spectrum Fantastic Art Live convention planned for 2018.

However, there IS a Spectrum 25 Awards ceremony in the planning stages for May 2018: we are working with Baby Tattoo’s esteemed showman Bob Self on something pretty wonderful. We’ll be making an announcement once details are finalized in the coming weeks.

But what about another SFAL? Well, we’re working on that, too.

This hiatus is allowing us to rethink the model for an artist convention/fair. While we’re extremely grateful to the 2000+ supporters who turned out for SFAL in Kansas City, we recognize that we were falling short of the event’s potential. Being unable to break through that attendance ceiling has prevented us from achieving the goals we have for the show and community….

Certainly, the social and networking opportunities of any convention or gathering are extremely important—but so are the finances for all. SFAL was never set up as a profit-generator for us, but it has to pay for itself and to provide a reasonable return for exhibitors. Spending time together is always an emotional plus, naturally, but artists paying for their own “party” while an organizer pockets their cash isn’t—and will never be—our purpose. Growing the market and giving the Fantastic Art community the public recognition it deserves are what SFAL, like the Spectrum annual, have always been about.

(8) UP ALL NIGHT. From The Guardian, “Buy a cat, stay up late, don’t drink: top 10 writers’ tips on writing”.

…stay up late as HP Lovecraft did: “At night, when the objective world has slunk back into its cavern and left dreamers to their own, there come inspirations and capabilities impossible at any less magical and quiet hour. No one knows whether or not he is a writer unless he has tried writing at night.”

(9) STEUER OBIT. Jon Paul Steuer (March 27, 1984 – January 1, 2018), known as the first actor to play Worf’s son Alexander Rozhenko in Star Trek: The Next Generation, is dead at 33.

(10) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • January 5, 1950The Flying Saucer opened theatrically.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born January 5, 1914 Superman actor George Reeves.

(12) BLACK PANTHER. Capitalizing on the new film, Marvel will release Black Panther – Star Here, a FREE sampler, on January 31.

Featuring excerpts from Marvel’s current Black Panther ongoing series, as well as World of Wakanda, Black Panther and the Crew, and portions from Reginald Hudlin and John Romita Jr.’s Black Panther run, BLACK PANTHER – START HERE serves to introduce brand new readers to the character’s expansive 50-year Marvel history, while long-time fans will be able to relive some of T’Challa’s most epic adventures.

(13) ADVANCE NOTICE. The New York Historical Society will host “Harry Potter: A History of Magic” from October 5, 2018 through January 27, 2019:

Journey to where magic and myth began! Join us in October 2018 for “Harry Potter: A History of Magic”, a British Library exhibition. New-York Historical Members can reserve tickets starting February 14 at 12 pm. Tickets go on sale to the general public in April.

Capturing the traditions of folklore and magic at the heart of the Harry Potter stories, Harry Potter: A History of Magic unveils rare books, manuscripts, and magical objects from the collections of the British Library, New-York Historical Society, U.S. Harry Potter-publisher Scholastic, and other special collections. Visitors can explore the subjects studied at Hogwarts and see original drafts and drawings by J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter illustrators Mary GrandPré and Jim Kay. Harry Potter: A History of Magic is currently on view at the British Library in London through February 28, 2018.

September 2018 marks the 20th anniversary of the U.S. publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, following the 20th anniversary celebrations of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in the U.K. in 2017.

(14) RELIC OF MIDDLE-EARTH. The New York Times, in “The Hero Is a Hobbit”, has unearthed W.H. Auden’s review of The Fellowship of the Ring from 1954.

Seventeen years ago there appeared, without any fanfare, a book called “The Hobbit” which, in my opinion, is one of the best children’s stories of this century. In “The Fellowship of the Ring,” which is the first volume of a trilogy, J. R. R. Tolkien continues the imaginative history of the imaginary world to which he introduced us in his earlier book but in a manner suited to adults, to those, that is, between the ages of 12 and 70. For anyone who likes the genre to which it belongs, the Heroic Quest, I cannot imagine a more wonderful Christmas present. All Quests are concerned with some numinous Object, the Waters of Life, the Grail, buried treasure etc.; normally this is a good Object which it is the Hero’s task to find or to rescue from the Enemy, but the Ring of Mr. Tolkien’s story was made by the Enemy and is so dangerous that even the good cannot use it without being corrupted….

(15) TIME PASSAGES. In the past Jim Butcher has rarely spoken out about fan controversies (no matter how hard people tried to get him involved), but after reading Larry Correia’s fresh condemnation of the Worldcon banning Jon Del Arroz he made these comments:

Don’t agree with Larry about everything, but when it comes to WorldCon and the Hugos, I think he’s got a point or two which are, based upon my experiences with WorldCon, difficult to refute.

The choices made by various folks involved with WorldCon have, over time, convinced me that there’s quite a few more less-than-nice people there than at other conventions. As I get older, my remaining time gets increasingly valuable. If I went to WorldCon, that’s a weekend I could have spent with some of the many wonderful people in my life, or with excellent and nerdy readers who don’t much care about politics and just want to do fun nerd things. Or I could have spent that time writing.

There’s probably a lot of perfectly wonderful people helping with WorldCon, and there’s certainly a lot of nice people attending. But it’s sort of hard to see them through the crowd of ugly-spirited jerks, and the nice people of WorldCon? They are completely inaudible over the noise the jerks are making.

So for the kind people at WorldCon, I hope you catch me at another con or signing sometime, and thank you so much to those of you who buy my work.

To the jerks, may you meet no one who displeases you, and I hope that your con goes exactly the way you want it to go.

(16) WHEN WAS THE FUTURE INVENTED? Can’t find a record of linking to this when it came out – Adam Roberts’ essay “Till Tomorrow” in The New Atlantis.

So this future, the one Gleick is talking about, is a quite recent technological invention. There is a peculiar irony here: Gleick, who scolds Shakespeare for being stuck in the present, is so attached to our present ideas that when he encounters past views of the future he denies that they count as “the future” at all. If the difference were not framed so absolutely, Gleick would surely be on to something — nobody could gainsay the observation that, at the very least, stories about the future are very common today whereas a few centuries ago they were not. In the hands of a less breathless writer, this might have led to a more fruitful discussion about how our “temporal sentience,” as he puts it, differs from our ancestors’.

But the larger claim is dotty. Can you really imagine any population of human beings living their lives wholly incurious about what next week, or next year, might bring, or thinking that it won’t be different? Think through the practicalities: How could anybody have planned anything, stored grain for the winter, calculated the interest on loans, or mustered armies, if the future truly were indistinguishable from the present?

And this brings us to hunter-gatherers and farmers. It is certainly possible to imagine our hunter-gatherer ancestors living in some bestial, continuous present of consciousness, their experience of time pricked out with moments of intensity — the chase, the kill, the satisfaction of a full stomach — but indifferent to the distant future.

But it is quite impossible to imagine farmers prospering in such a frame of mind. Once we humans began to depend on planted crops and domesticated animals, our new mode of life absolutely required us to think ahead: to anticipate setbacks and think through solutions, to plan, to map out the future world — indeed, many potential future worlds.

Time travel as mental exercise must have begun at least that early. And that makes this focus on recent modernity look a little parochial. We are not so special. Indeed, thinking in this way of the future’s origins might make us rethink some of the metaphors we use to articulate our sense of time. Gleick is good on the limitations of these figures of speech — for example, time, as he shows, is not really “like a river.” Farmers, the original time travelers, are likewise prone to think of rivers not first as modes of transport but means of irrigation. Might time be the same for us — not a vehicle for taking us somewhere, as a horse is to a hunter, but a resource to make fertile what we have and hold dear?

(17) MORE ON SWATTING. According to Vice, “Fatal swatting results in felony charges for gamer but not cop who pulled trigger”.

Barriss has been charged in Kansas, though he’s being held without bail in Los Angeles. He’ll likely be out in Kansas to face trial by early February, according to the Wichita Eagle, and could wind up spending up to 34 months in prison.

The police officer who allegedly pulled the trigger has not been charged, though Finch’s mother is calling for charges against the officer.

“Justice for the Finch family constitutes criminal charges against the shooting officer and any other liable officers as well as damages against the city of Wichita for the policies and practices of its Police Department,” attorney Andrew Stroth, who is representing the family, told the Associated Press in a phone interview.

The Wichita police department claims that Finch was shot after he came to the door and moved his hand toward his waistline. Police Chief Gordon Ramsay called the incident a “terrible tragedy,” according to TIME.

(18) SOUND FAMILIAR? Curvature with Lyndsy Fonseca and Linda Hamilton, is a time travel drama about an engineer who travels back in time to stop herself from committing a murder.

[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Cat Eldridge, JJ, Carl Slaughter, Andrew Porter, K.M. Alexander, Martin Morse Wooster, Chip Hitchcock, and Woody Bernardi for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Peer.]

71 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/5/18 A Scroll By Any Other Name Would Pixelate Just As Adequately

  1. (12) Black Panther

    This looks interesting and I know some people who are interested in the movie who aren’t comic book fans. Is there a link to info on how to get a copy? Is it paper or a download?

  2. PhilRM: (15): Wow. Just eff right off, Jim.

    Yes, that Butcher sees nothing wrong with JDA’s harassing behavior, and that he thinks Worldcon members are “less-than-nice people” for No-Awarding works which were cheated onto the Hugo ballot, says a great deal about him, and none of it is good. 😐

  3. 15) I’m a regular reader of the Harry Dresden books and voted both Skin Game and The Aeronaut’s Windlass above “No award” and even above at least one non-puppy nominee, because I do like Butcher’s work (though The Aeronaut’s Windlass could have used a judicious edit and someone to explain how airships work) and considered him an innocent puppy hostage. I know little about him as a person, since he seems to be pretty private, which is okay.

    However, this comment does say a lot about Jim Butcher and, as JJ said, none of it is good. I’m willing to give him the benefit of a doubt that he is really unaware of what JDA did to get himself expelled. I also suspect he listens a bit too much to Larry Correia, though Butcher seems surprisingly blind to Correia’s faults.

    I have no idea if Butcher ever attended a WorldCon, but his experience regarding the “less-than-nice-people” runs directly contrary to mine. And if Larry Correia was treated badly at WorldCon, when he was a Campbell nominee (for which we only have his word), then it was very likely because Larry Correia is a jerk (which is plain to see to anybody who has spent five minutes looking at his blog) and not because he is conservative or because he is Mormon or because he owns a gun shop.

    And while I disagree with no awarding Skin Game, since it was one of the few puppy nominees that were actually decent, I fully respect other Hugo voters right to do so. Besides, as the latest instalment in a long-running series, Skin Game really didn’t stand very well on its own and also was one of the weaker Dresden books, so I’m not surprised that people who were not already fans of the series bounced off it. Cause you’ll notice that for all its faults, The Aeronaut’s Windlass did finish above no award. And if the best series category had been around in 2015, Jim Butcher might well have won for the Dresden Files.

    So in short, I really liked Butcher better when he kept his mouth shut and just produced largely enjoyable books. Cause he didn’t do himself any favours with that comment.

  4. 6)
    Sadly, only ROTJ would be accurate for me, even though I could have been potentially taken to the theater for ANH and ESB.

    15) Ah.

  5. @Paul Weimer Ditto, I’d been born when a new hope came out… just. And too young to be taken to Empire so Return of the Jedi is the only one my parents took me to. And then my father went out and found a littlest black karate gi in all the land so I could be a jedi for halloween.

    And I was adorable.*

    *Probably for the last time.

  6. 6) Correction: Return of the Jedi was never cool, though it was and is a lot of fun.

  7. @Paul Weimer, iphinome: stop making me feel old, dammit! (I went to see Star Wars when I was fifteen… during its initial UK run, at the Odeon, Leicester Square….)

    I’m not old. I’m not old. I was born a long time ago, but that’s not the same thing.

  8. @Cora: I didn’t nominate Skin Game (I think?), exactly because I think it did not work as a stand-alone. If Best Series had existed then, it would’ve triggered that nomination for me, though. I did nominate The Aeronaut’s Windlass, because it was among the five best books I’d read that were eligible.

    Actually, one of the reasons I voted for the Best Series was very much with Dresden Files in mind.

  9. 15:
    Butcher needs better friends and get of his ecochamber.

    Now the mean guys at worldcon and the hugos: Is this about how bad Skin Game did at the hugos, is this about finishing behind no award 5. or were people really mean to Jim?

    If the second then he has a right to complain.

    If the first: Sorry Skin Game never had a chance to win. Without beeing part of a slate of jerks, (Say normal Dresden Filesfans would have nominated it) I can see it getting 4.th place beating no award. I don’t thing it would get much higher.

  10. I might be more disappointed to learn of Butcher’s opinion had he actually published a new Dresden book since Skin Game. (The one slated for this summer is another collection of short fiction.) As it stands, I’ve gone from anxiously awaiting his next book to wondering if Harry’s run out of steam.

    I’m not trying to police anyone’s creative pace, but as a fan, going three-plus years without a new novel does tend to dampen enthusiasm for the series. Butcher’s pretty much joined Jasper Fforde in my “it’d be nice to see something new from them, but I’m not holding my breath” stack.

  11. 15) Has Butcher ever been to Worldcon since 2004? Would be nice to have him there, but it isn’t as if he ever was a regular as far as I know.

  12. @Ingvar
    My Mom, who’s a big fan of Jim Butcher’s work, also nominated The Aeronaut’s Windlass (though not Skin Game, because she wasn’t eligible to nominate that year). She also nominated the Dresden Files short story that came out in an anthology in 2015 or 2016.

    In fact, I suspect that The Aeronaut’s Windlass picked up quite a few non-puppy nominations, because it was a series starter and stood alone better than a later in series Dresden Files book. And if Butcher ever publishes another Harry Dresden novel, the Dresden Files have an excellent chance of being nominated for and even winning best series, because these are the sort of books the best series Hugo was created for.

    So yes, Butcher should get out of his bubble and find himself some better friends or at least pay attention to how Larry Correia treats people who are not authors who outsell him.

  13. The Aeronaut’s Windlass was one of my few DNFs of the past couple of years, as I didn’t develop any interest in the characters or worldbuilding, but it wasn’t the kind of DNF where you can’t see what anyone could find enjoyable (unlike certain other nominations from that year) and I can easily believe it had a solid organic Hugo vote. It’s a shame to see Butcher weighing in among the “I don’t know any of the relevant facts from this situation but let me give you my ever so relevant opinion anyway” brigade, I had a higher opinion of him than that.

    I wonder if there will ever be a Trufan t-shirt for people whose life changing cinematic Star Wars experience was the ANH Special edition in 1997? Say what you want about Lucas’ meddling in those films, but I’m glad I got to see that on a big screen first rather than Phantom Menace…

  14. Jim Butchers response is why Worldcon should have explained in detail why Arroz was banned. I saw the email e change Mike posted with him. Then he threatened to secretly record people. He made it clear he was going to be a jerk, put it on the interet, edit it, in an attempt to msrket his books.

    So just state in detail what he did. Provide links and say people are not paying to be annoyed by this guy. Speak in American vernacular and not left wing jargon so you sound like a human being. Larry Correia was never banned. John C Wright wasnt banned. This guy made it clear he was going to intentionally annoy people for publicity. He is doing this to market his book.

    So just say it. You dont have to wear deodorant in public either. You will not ne real popular if you dont.

    Jim Butcher is a reasonable guy. If they lost him, they are losing. So just spell it out one time and be done with it. Its not alot of effort. The guy made it clear he was going to intentionally bother people.

  15. @Guess:

    Perhaps you should peek in on the dedicated post here concerning the subject. “Just spell it out one time and be done with it” is not and has not worked. Using vernacular terms has only invited legalistic challenges, denials, and claims not to see what the problem is.

    Those who are determined to misconstrue the situation will do so regardless of the facts, the evidence, or anything anyone connected with (or even sympathetic to) WC76 says on the matter.

  16. What about the Worldcon announcement constitutes “left-wing jargon”?

    I read one Dresden novel and decided it was somewhere between poorly written and not-my-thing, and so didn’t care enough to read another. (I think I’ve read Furies of Calderon and found it similarly unimpressive, but I’m 300 miles from my database and can’t check.) I also read a Dresden short, probably “Bombshell” (IIRC it was in one of the Dangerous Women anthologies) and found it so sexist that I’m not bothering with any more of his work. It might be a pity he’s in a bubble, or he might just not be capable of hearing other voices.

  17. Guess:

    “Jim Butchers response is why Worldcon should have explained in detail why Arroz was banned.”

    Why? Because a person who was not going to worldcon anyway has written a facebook post quoting a well-known jerk? Why should that matter?

    “Jim Butcher is a reasonable guy. If they lost him, they are losing. “

    If who lost him? What is it they are losing!?

  18. @Steve Wright : I went to see Star Wars when I was fifteen… during its initial UK run, at the Odeon, Leicester Square….)

    You kids get off my lawn!
    (I’m older than you by more than a decade. My brain still has trouble with the idea of “old”. My body understands it fine, though.)

  19. @P J Evans, yeah, I saw Star Wars in pre-release while I was at university.

  20. I had a somewhat unusual Star Wars experience – the movie came out when I was 12, but since my family was moving that summer, I didn’t have the opportunity to see it. Therefore I read the Foster novelization (and saw the Holiday special!) before seeing the rerelease in a drive-in in 1979. By the time “Empire” came out, I had the opportunity to see it in the theater within a few weeks of its release, and I saw Jedi the day after it came out (accompanied by a friend who had already seen it the day before, but who wanted to see it again).

  21. @Steve — Dunno when Star Wars was released in the UK, but we are probably about the same age. I saw Star Wars 13 or 14 times while it was still in its first theatrical release (in the US) — actually got my grandfather to sneak into one sold-out show with me. 😉 Empire Strikes Back was the only movie where I was the first person sitting outside the theater waiting for the ticket office to open on the first day of release.

    I will never forget the first time I saw the opening scene for SW. Wooooooooooooooowwwwwwww.

  22. (12) With the caveat that I’m behind both in reading Black Panther and following along with File770, how do people like it? I’ve mostly been reading because of Coates and have only read the first two collections (so the first 8 issues). I really enjoyed the issues he was exploring but also wondering if he could pull it off. The art I’ve been weirdly meh about. That, however, could just be me.

    (also totally okay to give me spoilers)

  23. @Shao Ping
    I’ve liked the Black Panther as a charter for decades and I have up on the current series about where you are. Coates appears to be one hell of a journalist, but I worried a little when it was announced that he had no experience of writing fiction, even less the kind of adventure fiction necessary for comics, and I was just bored by the result.

  24. I also must be old, since I was 25 when Star Wars was released.

    It played continuously at a theater here in the Portland area (it was the longest run of Star Wars anywhere in the world, and I think a world-record for the longest run of any first-run release). Every few weeks, we’d head over to see Star Wars again–I literally have no idea how many times I’m seen it.

    The first time I saw it was a midnight showing, and I was in the last row of the theater. So when the battle cruiser came from behind me at the start of the film, it was very impressive.

  25. Maybe the puppies had some notion of Butcher’s sympathies when they put his book on the ballot.

    I read Skin Game and enjoyed it enough to go back and start the series, but that project didn’t get very far. I started Aeronaut’s Windlass but abandoned it pretty quickly. His stuff isn’t for me.

    I was about 20 when Star War s came out. Very exciting at the time but I havent paid any attention to the franchise since Return of the Jedi. I don’t really get its enormous popularity.

  26. First time I saw Star Wars was in the summer of 1977. I was 9 years old, visiting my grandparents who lived in the Bay Area at the time, and my cousin (who had already seen it) took me along on one of his subsequent viewings.

    Mind. Blown.

    I’m not even sure if I’d been aware of it as a thing before I went to it, but I sure as heck was when I walked out of the theater.

    (And later in 1977 I saw the animated Hobbit cartoon, which led me to the books, so: Very formative year for me.)

  27. Yay, title credit!

    (5) So, there are plans for a Snowpiercer TV series? The movie and comic were visually stunning and that would be hard enough to do on tellie, but mainly everything is always just getting worse and worse and that already depressing enough on a movie. I dont know if id want to watch that over weeks…

    “ The fifth amendment gives me the RIGHT to scroll pixels!”

  28. 6) I’ll just smugly point out to all you oldies that I am much too young to have seen any of the original trilogy in the cinema upon release (my first trip to the cinema was in 1990).

  29. @Joe H.

    (And later in 1977 I saw the animated Hobbit cartoon, which led me to the books, so: Very formative year for me.)

    The same goes for me. I think I read the Foundation trilogy and Moon is a Harsh Mistress that year, too – a very good year.

  30. @rob_matic —

    Shut yer yap, ye young whippersnapper! Children should be seen and not heard!

  31. rob_matic: I’ll just smugly point out to all you oldies that I am much too young to have seen any of the original trilogy in the cinema upon release.

    GET OFF MY SCIENCE-FICTIONAL LAWN!!!   AND TAKE YOUR LITTLE DOG TOTO WITH YOU!!!

  32. Very sad news about Jon Paul Steuer. He was a talented child actor on both ST:TNG and Grace Under Fire. Steuer’s parents pulled him out of the latter sitcom when he was 12 because the show’s star, Brett Butler, reportedly engaged in inappropriate behavior that included flashing her breasts and hiking up her skirt in his presence.

    Until today’s news I didn’t realize he was the first actor to play Worf’s son. Alexander Rozhenko was a great character. Looking at pictures of Steuer in real life and as Alexander, I have a pot-stirring question: Isn’t that blackface?

  33. @rcade —

    I have a pot-stirring question: Isn’t that blackface?

    It’s Klingon-face.

    I haven’t heard any Klingons complaining.

  34. I haven’t heard any Klingons complaining.

    18 Klingons on TNG through Enterprise were portrayed by black actors, according to this list. There’s a special regard for Klingons among African-American Trek fans because of this representation.

    When Klingons have black skin as an obvious part of how they are depicted, is it questionable to use a white actor in black makeup instead of casting a black actor? I think today it would be, if the subject arose.

  35. @rcade —

    18 Klingons on TNG through Enterprise were portrayed by black actors

    And many other Klingons were portrayed by white actors. No, I don’t have a list, though whats-her-name, Alexander’s mother, is an obvious example. And no, it doesn’t matter that her character was half-human, any more than it matters that many “black” actors have a white parent.

    When Klingons have black skin as an obvious part of how they are depicted, is it questionable to use a white actor in black makeup instead of casting a black actor? I think today it would be, if the subject arose.

    I often get uneasy about this question. Does Othello always have to be played by a black man? Does Hamlet always have to be played by a white man? Do the “Arabian Coffee” characters in The Nutcracker ballet always have to be danced by Arabs? IMHO it’s easy to get too precious about “authenticity” with this sort of thing.

  36. I was 4 when Star Wars came out. If it’d come out a year later, or if I’d come out a year earlier, my parents would have taken me to see it. As it was, I was still obsessed with it, but my initial exposure to it was a picture book with a 7″ picture disk (IIRC) that showed some of the highlights of the movie. Whenever it was that they re-released it, I was there. And yeah, the opening credits gave me goose bumps.

    @PJ Evanz – “My brain still has trouble with the idea of “old”. My body understands it fine, though.”

    Ha! Yes, that’s exactly how I feel, too.

  37. I often get uneasy about this question.

    It’s a touchy subject because people want to be represented in the media they enjoy. I’d rather have that uneasiness than go back to the old days where it wasn’t even a concern.

  38. @rcade — I agree that representation is a Good Thing, and I agree that many really dumb decisions are made in that vein even today — like casting Scarlet Johanssen in Ghost in the Machine or Emma Stone in whatever that movie was. But that doesn’t mean that every actor in the world has to look exactly like the character he or she is playing. And IMHO that’s especially true when the character being played isn’t even human.

    (Another miscellaneous example I thought of: does the King of Siam have to be played by a Thai actor?)

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