Pixel Scroll 1/17/17 ‘Twas Pixel That Killed The Scroll

(1) ASK ME ANYTHING. SFWA President Cat Rambo visited with her fans at Reddit today — “Yup, It’s My Real Name: AMA with Cat Rambo”.

I think that, more than ever, it’s important for writers to be working together and sharing notes. I see a lot of scams out there, and also some increasingly shady activity on the part of some of the traditional publishers.

Perhaps at one time, a writer could live an existence where they produced a manuscript, handed it off, and got enough money to go write another. Increasingly, though, that’s not the case and writers have to spend at least a little time thinking about marketing themselves – even if they’re publishing traditionally. Publishing continues to change rapidly, and writers need to stay on top of that, because they’re the ones with the most at stake.

(2) BUSINESS WISDOM. Kristine Kathryn Rusch continues her advice to writers in the aftermath of the latest publishing fiasco — “Business Musings: All Romance Ebooks & Visions of the Future Part Two”.

But I’m not here to discuss the merits or lack thereof of Booktrope or ARe. I did that in other posts. What I need to discuss here is the future.

You see, these closures were right on time. And several other closures will follow in the next few years.

Some of the upcoming closures will be predictable. And others will catch us all by surprise.

Why am I saying this?

Because three different factors are coming into play in the next few years. These three factors intertwine, at least in the indie publishing industry, which will amplify the result.

You’ll need to bear with me. This will take some explaining.

One note on terminology. When I say indie publishing, I mean the non-traditional side of the publishing industry. Indie publishing encompasses the self-publishing revolution which started thanks to Amazon and the Kindle in 2008. (Amazon released the Kindle in November of 2007, just in time for holiday giving.) Some writers still self-publish, but many use services or have created their own publishing companies to publish outside of the mainstream infrastructure. Hence, indie as in independent. (What confuses all of this was that, back in the day, many small but traditional presses called themselves independent presses. I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about publishing that could not have happened in 1985.)

So, what are these three intertwining factors that will impact us in the next few years?

They are:

  1. A gold rush
  2. An investment bubble
  3. A business cycle

(3) GHOST TOWN. Comic Excitement, whose antiharassment policy made news ahead of last weekend’s debut convention (“They Think It’s a Joke”), reportedly bombed. Trae Dorn covered it in Nerd and Tie — “Comic Excitement Convention’s Flop and the Hubris of Man”.

You’d probably be forgiven for not knowing that “Comic Excitement Convention” (yes, that’s the actual name) took place this last weekend in Los Angeles, CA. Despite their touted $10,000 cosplay contest prize, it doesn’t seem like a lot of effort was put into marketing the con.

Which is probably why hardly anyone showed up.

The first year convention occupied Kentia Hall at the Los Angeles Convention Center, and although early promotional materials talked about expecting a massive turnout, at con observations estimate attendance to be under a thousand. The whole thing… well it seems to have been a mess….

(4) NO SH!T SHERLOCK. Naked Security says those rascally Russian hackers are suspected of another break-in — “BBC launches probe into leak of Russian-dubbed Sherlock finale”.

Damn you, Russia, we wish we knew how to quit you!

If you’re not hacking our politicians  and our politicial machinery, you’re leaking a Russian-language version of the recent season finale of the BBC’s hotly anticipated Sherlock a whole day earlier than it was supposed to air.

Maybe. Allegedly. At any rate, Russian state TV is definitely investigating the leak “in close contact with the BBC”, according to Russia Today (RT), Russia’s English-language broadcaster.

Russian Channel One is blaming hackers for the show’s last episode, dubbed in Russian, having been illegally uploaded for all to see and all Russians to decipher on Saturday.

(5) SIMPLY HORRIBLE. Cheatsheet argues these are “10 of the Worst Sci-Fi TV Shows of All Time”. But first on the list is Space:1999  — how can that be right?

In the past decade or so, science fiction on television has seen a dramatic uptick in both quantity and quality. Shows like Westworld are keeping critics engaged and audiences coming back for more week after week, but while a number of sci-fi shows over the years have developed significant cult followings, others have become notorious examples of just how bad the genre can be when it isn’t executed effectively. Here’s our look at some of the worst sci-fi shows to ever hit the small-screen. For the record, we’re focusing specifically on live-action series only. So any infamous animated shows won’t be appearing below….

  1. Logan’s Run (1977–1978)

Based on the popular sci-fi film of the same name, this television adaptation has remained largely forgotten. An attempt to cash in on the film’s success, the show — which starred Gregory Harrison as Logan 5 and Heather Menzies as Jessica 6 — lasted only 14 episodes before network executives called it quits.

(6) ROSARIUM MAKES A DEAL. Bill Campbell’s award-winning Indie house Rosarium Publishing will be publishing Taty Went West, the critically-acclaimed fantasy debut novel by South African born writer, artist, and musician Nikhil Singh.

The story is the first in a trilogy of what Singh describes as “Alice in a necrotic Wonderland” and follows Taty, a teenage girl who is forced to run away from home and escape to The Outzone, who discovers along the way that she has extrasensory powers. She finds herself kidnapped and dropped into a world filled with a motley cast of eccentric characters, including a feline voodoo surgeon, a robotic sex slave nun, detachable siamese twins and a sinister pleasure peddler who wishes to exploit her gifts.

Described by Lauren Beukes as “a hallucinogenic post-apocalyptic carnival ride,” Taty Went West is part satire, part science fiction and completely fantastic. Singh’s prose style of writing and elaborate descriptions are only enhanced by the gorgeous illustrations which head each chapter and are drawn by the author as well.

Nikhil Singh art

(7) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY GIRL

  • Born January 17, 1933 — Shari Lewis, actress and puppeteer, best known for Lamb Chop.

(8) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

  • Born January 17, 1931 — James Earl Jones, who became even more famous by voicing Darth Vader,

(9) COVER UP. Out of Print has a line of clothing featuring the art from classic sff/f book covers.

The-Outsider-and-Others-Mens-Book-T-Shirt_01_2048x2048clockwork-orange_Womens_Red_Book_T-Shirt_1_2048x2048

(10) FLAME OFF. CinemaBlend knows “How Lynda Carter Helped Supergirl With That Old School Wonder Woman Reference”.

The CW’s Supergirl has dropped nods to major superheroes of DC Comics history many times over its first two seasons so far, and it surpassed itself in a Season 2 episode that featured legendary actress Lynda Carter as President Olivia Marsdin. The episode managed to sneak in an unforgettable reference to Carter’s role as Diana Prince on Wonder Woman. I spoke with veteran TV director Rachel Talalay about her work directing Lynda Carter and star Melissa Benoist on Supergirl, and she told me this about what went into the Wonder Woman callbacks in the “Welcome to Earth” episode of Season 2:

They were written in the script, and they were absolutely embraced. We were allowed to push them, but they were definitely in the script. That was great because that gave us permission to just say ‘We know we’re doing Wonder Woman homages.’ So there was an absolutely magical moment when it was scripted that Melissa was to do the Wonder Woman twirl to put herself out when she was on fire. Lynda came and said, ‘I’ll show you how to do it.’ I have on my phone a video of Lynda Carter showing Melissa Benoist how.

(11) THIRD ROCK. Curiosity has found its third meteorite on Mars.

NASA’s Curiosity rover has spied a potential meteorite on Mars, which would be the third it has found since it landed in August 2012….

There’s a bit of a puzzle about these meteorites, though. On Earth, 95 percent of all meteorites are stony, and only 4.4 percent are iron. But so far on Mars, all eight meteorites seen (three by Curiosity and five by Opportunity) have been iron.

(12) RAPT ATTENTION. A subject near to our hearts: ”Striking photos of readers around the world”.

A new book brings together Steve McCurry’s photos of readers, spanning 30 countries. From a steelworks in Serbia to a classroom in Kashmir, they reveal the power of the printed word….

McCurry’s photos are made up of those moments, glimpses of people absorbed in the written word, many unaware they were being photographed. The Swiss poet, novelist and painter Hermann Hesse gave an insightful description of what can be an all-consuming experience in his 1920 essay On Reading Books. “At the hour when our imagination and our ability to associate are at their height, we really no longer read what is printed on the paper but swim in a stream of impulses and inspirations that reach us from what we are reading.”

(13) SAD POOKAS. I’ve been informed these aren’t the droids I’m looking for. I also just realized I love Big Brother.

(14) NEWS TO ME. There’s such a thing as a Game of Thrones edition of Monopoly.

Featuring custom Game of Thrones packaging, stunning game design, and large, hand-sculpted custom tokens, the MONOPOLY: Game of Thrones Collector’s Edition Game will transport fans into a world of intrigue, valor, and betrayal. After all, when you play the MONOPOLY: Game of Thrones Collector’s Edition Game you win, or you go bankrupt!

MONOPOLY: Game of Thrones Collector’s Edition Game includes:

– Custom Game Board Featuring Westeros awaits your rule

– 6 oversized, hand sculpted tokens elegantly cast in zinc. Includes: Crown, Direwolf, Dragon Egg, The Iron Throne, Three-Eyed Raven and White Walker – Game of Thrones MONOPOLY money features the symbols of Westeros and Essos….

(15) BRADBURY PLAQUE. Mentioned in yesterday’s comments, here are photos of the plaque in UCLA’s Powell Library commemorating the spot where Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 on a rented typewriter. John King Tarpinian, who was instrumental in getting the school to put up the plaque, appears with Bradbury and Dennis Etchison in the second picture,

Plaque commemorating Ray Bradbury's use of Typing Room at UCLA's Powell Library to write Fahrenheit 451.

Plaque commemorating Ray Bradbury’s use of Typing Room at UCLA’s Powell Library to write Fahrenheit 451.

John King Tarpinian reading plaque to Ray Bradbury

John King Tarpinian reads the plaque to Ray Bradbury. Dennis Etchison is on the right.

(16) BELIEVE YOUR LYING EYES. L’Illusion de Joseph, on Vimeo, is a charming look at 19th-century “phenokistascopes” and the unusual images 19th century people found entertaining.

[Thanks to Chip Hitchcock, Martin Morse Wooster, Daniel Dern, David K.M.Klaus, BGrandrath, kathodus, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Robert Whitaker Sirignano.]

77 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 1/17/17 ‘Twas Pixel That Killed The Scroll

  1. 3) Not really a surprise given their website. Hope they can learn some lessons and do better next year.

    Cover up) What I need is a t-shirt with changing book covers. Can’t commit to just one.

  2. (13) SAD POOKAS.

    Cirsova: This is a lie; these examples are NOT typical of what is on #sadpookas

    Such cute denialism. I count at least 16 items on their slate which are either Puppies, or works by and/or about Puppies. But noooooooo! This is not typical of their slate! They’re not really about Puppies! 😆

  3. (5) Somebody forgot all about Patrick Duffy in The Man From Atlantis, with his cute little webbed hands!

    Also Judson Scott in The Phoenix. Yay, Bennu of the Golden Light!

  4. I do love me some phenokistocopes! The crazy, pointless cycles for the sheer joy of motion, drawn in the somewhat alien-looking style of antique cartoons. What a bizarre world they occupied, where it was presumed that little black babies would leap into the waiting mouths of native predators, over and over (I remember Mom had a pencil wit the head of an African child that stuck out of the mouth of a crocodile, which she had had since forever: same weird syndrome, of which there are a million other examples). The music, urgent, drumming, other, and chasing its tail around and around in endless cycles, was quite appropriate.

    “By the pixel of Greyscroll!”

  5. (5) Manimal? MANIMAL?! I bid you good day, sir! Honestly, I was probably too young to judge, but I remember loving Manimal. So strange – 8 episodes. I swear it was a significant part of my childhood for at least a few years. Time goes by so slowly when you are 10…
    ETA @Kip W: not quite what you described, but close.
    http://www.thisiscolossal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/phenakistoscope-5.gif

    (9) That link goes to the women’s t-shirts section, but there are also unisex/men’s t-shirts if you poke around a bit.

    (13) Good on them! They got attention!

    (16) Wow! I’m about to fall into an interwebbian rabbit hole on that subject…

    Also, woot! I got me a thanks on File770!

  6. (1) ASK ME ANYTHING

    My favorite exchange:

    Question: You’re trapped on a non-deserted island with Steven Gould and John Scalzi. There is an uncontacted tribe of cannibals, and they want a new chief – but they also want two good meals. How do you convince them that you are the best choice to lead them?

    Cat Rambo: Hmmm. Scalzi is easy to dupe and I would just tape bacon on him. Gould is a bit trickier and difficult to tape things onto. For him, I might have to call on our SFWA Ombudsman, the inimitable Gay Haldeman. She’s a cagey lady and I’m pretty sure she’d have some good suggestions.

    (13) SAD POOKAS

    Okay, so only about a third of the total are clearly puppy-adjacent choices. It’s a sad puppy/furry hybrid that just happens to come from a group that recently made a half-hour YouTube vid declaring their support for SP (which they are now pushing, because of course they are.)
    It’s highly unlikely to have any real influence or effect but the point that there are now these little splinter groups out there inspired by SP is a valid one.

    14) NEWS TO ME

    Sean Bean does not pass Go, and he may not collect £200.

  7. Mark on January 17, 2017 at 11:41 pm said:

    (13) SAD POOKAS

    It’s highly unlikely to have any real influence or effect but the point that there are now these little splinter groups out there inspired by SP is a valid one.

    All of which will lessen slate discipline and the impact of the primary Puppy slates.

    Also further degeneration into in-jokes and squabbles which are hardly likely to generate positive attention for the cause.

    I think the ultimate winners will be the writers who focused on putting out good stories for their fans to enjoy. Hard luck Brad!

  8. In the “bad SF TV” department, I’ve started seeing commercials for a Time After Time remake.

    Yes, the one about Jack the Ripper using H.G. Wells’s time machine to get to our present.

    Yes, as a TV series.

    No, I’m not optimistic.

  9. 5) Manimal. I can’t admit that was good television. The 80’s were a strange and weird time, though.

    14) There seems to be a Monopoly set for everything. Of course, Monopoly as it is frequently played (money on free parking, not enforcing the auction rule) is a boring and grindingly dull game. But that’s me.

    @Rev Bob I heard about that too. Yeah…

  10. 3) The first season of Space: 1999 was wildly uneven, but occasionally reached great heights. The second season, under the auspices of producer Fred “funnily enough, I made the last season of Star Trek, too” Freiburger, ranged from “mediocre” down to “crime against humanity”. I’m a fan of the show, but I could see people legitimately coming away from it with a negative impression,

    Currently reading Tade Thompson’s Rosewater, which I’ve seen mentioned around here a few times. Looks good to me so far; interesting setting, and Thompson has a nice, slickly readable, style. (He came up on my radar through a shorter piece, “The Apologists”, in one of last year’s Interzones.)

  11. I’ve been doing some new-to-my-region-of-Netflix TV viewing:

    Sense8 Christmas Special – not amazingly subtle with its politics but still good fun and I’m looking forward to season 2.

    Dirk Gently – I’ve not read the source material and I suspect that it may not be too faithful to it, but I enjoyed this.

    The Shannara Chronicles – gave up after two episodes. It is SO teenaged.

  12. Of course, Monopoly as it is frequently played (money on free parking, not enforcing the auction rule) is a boring and grindingly dull game.

    Fixed that for you.
    It is curious that whenever one states that Monopoly is a bad game and that there are so many better games out there, especially these days, there is always someone who feels a need to make the point that it’s artificially extended by all these house rules. But it’s still a bad game, I don’t want to play a bad game for any time whatsoever and I have plenty of good games to play. Could we just consign Monopoly to the trashheap of history and make something like Ticket to Ride or Carcassonne the basic board game example?

  13. Space: 1999 was a terrible show with great spaceship designs and groovy 1970s set & costumes; and one episode (The Dragon’s Graveyard) which absolutely terrified me as a child, playing, as it did, upon our primitive & atavistic fears of those big, dangling strips in an automatic carwash.

    Edited to add: And even for a 1970s SF TV series its understanding of physics was ludicrous.

  14. I gotta say, I can never see the name “Cat Rambo” without imagining a cat wearing a headband and two belts of bullets while firing a machine gun. Google images doesn’t disappoint in providing Rambo-ish cats, including this badass zombie.

  15. You’re trapped on a non-deserted island with Steven Gould and John Scalzi.

    For me, Steven Gould has always been “that guy who’s mentions I had to sift through when looking for stuff by Steven J. Gould.”

  16. Space: 1999. Even as a kid you could recognize the flaws: weak acting, poor scripts, bad costumes, ludicrous science; but, if you were the right age, you had to love it for the Eagles.

  17. If Manimal is on the list, why not Automan?

    Space 1999 series 1 should not be on a list with those two (there is no series 2).

  18. The TV show IT’S ABOUT TIME was pretty bad. Its opening song was pretty good.

    I am not amused by the idea that “cave men” were stupid. Almost no one from this era could live in such a manner.

  19. They include Manimal but they don’t include Supertrain? (Maybe not enough sciene fiction, but still any bad show list is an excuse to mention Supertrain.)

  20. @3: someday people will figure out that you can’t get huge attendance in the first year of a convention. Oink flap — the life-cycle portrayed in @2 either doesn’t apply or keeps getting recycled. Maybe there will always be tyros who think nobody else’s advice can possibly be useful (per Dorn’s comments).

    @5: “Space: 1999 — marked down from 2001.” (Mark Chartrand, Hayden Planetarium director). But the article’s judgment slips — calling Logan’s Run the movie popular? “The SF Boom Starts with a Bomb” said CFQ, and I recall that as the reaction on the street as well. I hadn’t even \heard/ of most of these shows; another reason to be happy I got pushed away from TV watching.

    @14: wow — that’s a step up from the assorted Westeros coins that were (IIRC) pretty much the entire stock of a dealer at the 2013 Worldcon. I’m finding all the hate for Monopoly amusing; possibly it drags more than other games when played by people who don’t know its basic strategies (the house I played it at tended to finish in around an hour), or maybe it just depends too much on luck.

    @Bloodstone75: good point. OTOH, it’s already taken its licks by having its production turned into a comic SF novel.

  21. Today has a bumper collection of borderline-interesting links:
    Sir Pterry was right: endangered orangutans and the commerce responsible. (Title in another BBC link to the same story: “The World’s Most Beautiful Crime Scene”.)
    Clocks on Galileo (new GPS satellites) are failing at very unexpected rates.
    Japan’s manufacturers of high-tech toilets agree on standardized symbols.
    People just won’t turn in their Galaxy Note 7’s may get their service diverted.
    Forget those stories about Australia having >50% of the deadliest {snakes,spiders,…}; horses are the real killers. (A classic demonstration of false comparisons.)
    A moth that looks like Donald Trump has been named after him.

  22. Rob_matic: The hubby and I just started into Dirk Gently. The passing references to cases solved involving a sofa and Thor (not together) are the Adams books, this is all later. I’m enjoying the insane premises played out with weird logic, but I’m a bit sad that they’re kind of explaining as much as they are (ie, Gently as possibly the result of a government program). I almost feel it would be stronger if he was just someone who had arbitrarily come into being.

  23. @Rev. Bob: Oh come on. Time travel stories are popular now, serial killer are popular! Combining the two is bound to be a winner! It’ll be like Travelers crossed with Hannibal!

    Every season our time traveler will bet a new girlfriend, and each season she gets murdered or seduced or both by the charismatic and edgy Jack! We’re talking Emmy potential here!

  24. 3) I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the media-con market is heavily over-saturated. Newbies look at successful, long-running events which got their start before there was a media-con every weekend and think, “Hey, there’s a ton of money in those things, and I WANT SOME!” and, almost without exception, they fail.

    5) I guess Lucan is slanted too far toward fantasy to make the cut, but it would certainly belong on such a list if I were making one.

    6) Doesn’t sound like my cuppa, but the premise seems interesting. I’ll be looking forward to hearing what other people have to say about it.

    10) <3

    @ rob_matic: I gave up on The Sword of Shannara after 2 chapters, and I was in college at the time. “Teenage” and “able to recognize a shoddy Tolkien ripoff” are not mutually-exclusive conditions. 🙂

  25. Given all the 80’s nostalgia reboots, perhaps the time has come for a movie remake of Manimal, titled Womanimal and helmed by Paul Feng.

    Couldn’t possibly be worse than the upcoming CHiPS.

    Forget those stories about Australia having >50% of the deadliest {snakes,spiders,…}; horses are the real killers.

    “Horses killed more people in Australia in recent years than all venomous animals combined, research has shown.”

    Well, of course. How often is someone going to run across all venomous animals combined? (Assuming that their name isn’t “Rincewind”.)

  26. Bloodstone75: 5) Oh, puh-lease. Call yourself a Worst-of List and forget this nugget?
    The Starlost

    Who could forget Cordwainer Bird’s masterpiece!

  27. @Rose:

    It ain’t got Malcolm McDowell, it ain’t an adaptation of the sequel*, so I don’t see the point. I’m particularly dubious about the attempt to make a series out of it.

    * Yes, there’s a sequel to the original novel. Jaclyn the Ripper reconstitutes Jack as a woman, and Wells has to deal with her in the age of cellphones.

  28. Re Time after Time : I wouldnt be surprised if they just use the premise with no connection to previous work

    Scroll “File” and enter!

  29. But the article’s judgment slips — calling Logan’s Run the movie popular?

    The movie grossed almost three times its budget at the box office in its North American release. The success of the film got MGM out of debt. In the pre-Star Wars era, a $25 million box office take for a science fiction movie was a solid success.

  30. @bookworm1398:

    Cover up) What I need is a t-shirt with changing book covers. Can’t commit to just one.

    I’ve been saying for a while now, after collecting badges at conventions, that what I really need is an e-paper badge on a lanyard so I can just flip through the possible images on it rather than trying to wear a dozen things at once.

    @Chip Hitchcock:

    Maybe there will always be tyros who think nobody else’s advice can possibly be useful (per Dorn’s comments).

    I had a friend who started up a small con several years ago now, thinking they were great parties. Somewhat fortunately for him, two other cons started up in the general area around the same time, with his as the last of the three to actually happen, and along with hosting room parties at both the other cons, he decided that volunteering at them to get more experience would be a good idea. So by the time the con actually happened, he had an idea of what he was doing.

    Later we were looking at descriptions of another new con starting up in New York State, he mentioned the previous attempt by some of the same conrunners having failed miserably (and nearly got them blacklisted by the hotel), and said ‘I hope they’ve learned that running a con is a bit more complex than running a big room party.’ After I just shot him a look, he smiled and said, ‘And I should know, right?’

    That said, Trae Dorn’s line in the comments that ‘Comic Excitement Convention WISHES it had been DashCon.’ really sets the bar for failure…

    @Others:
    Oh lord, I remember Automan. AKA the effective end of Desi Arnaz Jr.’s acting career. And Man from Atlantis, and The Phoenix with the alien uber-hippie… and most of the ones mentioned, really. This one is probably not on a ‘worst of’ list, but does anybody remember the swan song of the 1980s super-vehicle shows, The Highwayman with the truck cab that converted into a helicopter?

  31. I remember The Highwayman‘s big claim to fame was that they cast Mark “Jacko” Jackson as a sidekick or something. He had become popular in the US* for doing battery commercials. IMDB says his character’s name was Jetto.

    * He had become popular in Australia for playing Australian rules football and singing “I’m an Individual.”

  32. @Jack Lint:
    It also had one of Claudia Christian’s earlier roles, before she would become Susan Ivonova on Babylon 5. That wouldn’t have been a claim to fame at the time, though.

  33. @Bonnie McDaniel

    (5) Somebody forgot all about Patrick Duffy in The Man From Atlantis, with his cute little webbed hands!

    That’s another show I loved! I suspect I mostly loved the part where he walked in slow motion back to the ocean. In my defense, I was about 4 years old when it was airing. I just now realized that wasn’t a TV version of Aquaman.

    Also @Bonnie McDaniel – Are you familiar with those (any/some/all) of the works on the Storybundle? I don’t think I’ve heard of any of those authors. Sounds like it could be an excellent bundle, but at the same time, I have so many books on the TBR pile, I’m nervous about obtaining so many at once.

  34. I prefer John Brunner’s title for 1999;: Space 1949. The postcard that that was written hung on the wall of The Science Fiction Shop for many years.

  35. I blogged some time ago about old SF shows that (for me) do and do not withstand the test of time. I added The Time Tunnel to my awful list, but I have to add another big reason why. In one episode, two aliens in silver spandex (c’mon, all aliens wear silver suits, it goes with their silver skin!) control an old west town with an alien shootin’ iron, I mean super-scifi handgun. The plan to defeat them? Destroy that thar fancy six shooter! They do that by throwing it on the floor. I repeat: throwing it on the floor. Aliens travel light years, take over the minds of puny humans, and rustle cattle by freezing time (which looks a lot like pausing the playback) but they have not figured out how to make their technology shockproof. Or carry backup shootin’ irons. I’ll never buy a smart phone from anyone in silver.

  36. @Joe H. That episode scared me, too. (But I remember the title as Dragon’s Domain)

    I’ve seen it called Space £19.99

  37. But it’s still a bad game, I don’t want to play a bad game for any time whatsoever and I have plenty of good games to play. Could we just consign Monopoly to the trashheap of history

    Nah. Just play the good games you like and let those of us with different opinions play the games we like.

  38. @Paul — Yes, you have the title correct; I was going from (far from reliable) memory. Glad I wasn’t the only one who remembers that episode, though.

  39. But “Visitors from Beyond the Stars” taught us that “Resistance is impossible.” Not just futile, but totally impossible!

    Of course, the real fun part of watching any Irwin Allen show is figuring out where you’ve seen the props/costumes before.

  40. @Jack Lint — Thanks. I forgot to add the title, Visitors from Beyond the Stars. Think on this: someone was actually paid to write that title.

    Yeah, this was a show stuffed to the gills with stock footage. They thought they’d save money that way. likely the execs bloated steak-stuffed bellies rippled with joyful laughter at that thought, but The Time Tunnel was expensive anyhow.

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