Pixel Scroll 9/16/16 Amok Pixel

(1) HE’S FROM THE FUTURE. Dennis Mathis tells how he learned to understand “the reader” in “The Future Began on a Tuesday” at the SFWA Blog.

The future was twenty-five years old and not getting any younger when I was accepted to the Iowa Writers Workshop, the legendary (even then) graduate program for writers. Kurt Vonnegut, who had taught there, said, “Picture Harvard Law School if only one out of ten graduates actually becomes a lawyer.” Dedicated to the principle that the last thing you’d want happening in a classroom is teaching, the Workshop strove to be the opposite of academic, and more or less succeeded. Zipping their lips about how writing should be done, the staff was restricted to role-modeling the lifestyle of a writer: mostly competitive drinking, womanizing, wrestling, and snorting at weaklings; the Viking concept of higher education. Despite being a weakling myself, I did the best writing of my life.

And then in my second year, a last-minute substitute on the Workshop staff. A guy named Frank Conroy, author of only one book, and it wasn’t even fiction — who writes a memoir in their twenties? — who’d taught creative writing only once before, at (get this) M.I.T.

He specified we were to read the worksheets (someone’s delicate work-in-progress cast into the lion’s den) pen-in-hand, poised to mark any point in the text where we felt a “bump,” no matter how vague. In class, we went through the worksheets sentence-by-sentence, hashing-out whether some reader’s bump was an idiosyncratic misreading or an actual problem. They always turned out to be problems. If a reader misreads, Conroy taught us, it’s always the writer’s fault…..

(2) CHINA’S SPACE PROGRAM. Motherboard has the story: ”China’s Newly Launched Space Station Will Receive Its First Crew Next Month” .

China successfully launched its second space station, Tiangong-2, into orbit on Thursday at 10:04 AM EDT, from Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert. It will soon be an orbiting home to two taikonauts (the Chinese term for astronauts).

The mission is regarded as a key stepping stone towards the nation’s larger spaceflight ambitions, which include sending taikonauts to the Moon and eventually to Mars….

This second generation spacecraft, whose name translates to “Heavenly Palace” in Mandarin, will conduct some initial tests before boosting itself even higher to an altitude of 393 kilometers, roughly on par with the International Space Station (ISS).

If all goes according to plan, the tubular orbital laboratory will receive its first taikonauts in late October on a spacecraft called Shenzhou-11. Though the names of the two crew members have not been released, they are both men, and they are expected to spend 30 days aboard Tiangong-2, according to Xinhua News. If successful, it will be the longest manned Chinese space mission to date.

In terms of specs, the new station is almost identical to its precursor, Tiangong-1, which operated in space from September 2011 until March 2016, and is on track to deorbit and immolate in the atmosphere next year.

(3) COMIC ART EXPLORED. Superheroes have taken over the Huntsville Museum of Art in the Rocket City of Huntsville, Alabama.

“My Hero: Contemporary Art & Superhero Action” is the name of the show running through December 11.

For decades popular culture has been fascinated by superheroes — their superhuman capabilities, their desire for truth and justice, and their ability to save the day. Their storylines have captivated many, and their images have become contemporary idols throughout the world. My Hero presents a rich array of work by over 50 international artists, including painting, illustration, photography, sculpture, mixed media and video, that celebrates and re-envisions the lives of iconic superheroes.

(4) ROOTS OF THE GENRE. Atlas Obscura writes about Margaret Cavendish. “One of the Earliest Science Fiction Books Was Written in the 1600s by a Duchess”.

No one could get into philosophical argument with Lady Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and walk away unchanged. Born in 1623, Cavendish was an outspoken aristocrat who traveled in circles of scientific thinkers, and broke ground on proto-feminism, natural philosophy (the 17th century term for science), and social politics.

In her lifetime, she published 20 books. But amid her poetry and essays, she also published one of the earliest examples of science fiction. In 1666. She named it The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing World.

In the story, a woman is kidnapped by a lovesick merchant sailor, and forced to join him at sea. After a windstorm sends the ship north and kills the men, the woman walks through a portal at the North Pole into a new world: one with stars so bright, midnight could be mistaken for midday. A parallel universe where creatures are sentient, and worm-men, ape-men, fish-men, bird-men and lice-men populate the planet. They speak one language, they worship one god, and they have no wars. She becomes their Empress, and with her otherworldly subjects, she explores natural wonders and questions their observations using science.

(5) MEMBERSHIP IN THE GUARDIAN. The Guardian is going through a financial squeeze.

According to the Huffington Post:

The Guardian is scaling back its U.S. operation through a staff reduction of 30 percent, according to a source with knowledge of the plans.

The Guardian, a 195-year-old British newspaper and global news site, has struggled financially as print revenue and circulation collapsed throughout the industry. Earlier this year, The Guardian announced plans to cut costs by 20 percent over three years, and nearly 270 employees in the U.K. operation took buyouts in June.

Now the U.S. operation, which was launched in 2011, is grappling with what Guardian Media Group CEO David Pemsel described Thursday in a staff meeting as a “course correction.” Guardian US chief Eamonn Store informed staff the company was facing a $4.4 million budget shortfall, thereby necessitating major cuts.

(6) PRIDE OF STARFLEET. Nalo Hopkinson went to her first sf convention in 1978 outfitted as Lt. Uhura.

(7) TODAY IN HISTORY

  • September 16, 1966  — Fahrenheit 451 premiered in theaters.

(8) THE BEST WAY TO ATTEND THE WORLDCON. Mike Headley reports on his first Worldcon – “Hugo Awards – a (Belated) Retrospective”. Many things underscored his feeling of being an outside until —

Things changed when I volunteered; I ended up hauling ice and stocking drinks for the hospitality suite. I was only there for a couple hours, but I got to glimpse this community at its best. I saw MIMO crew helping set up plates of vegetables, people who brought their whole family to volunteer. People who talked about how this was there 10th, 20th, or more convention. They weren’t writers, or publishers, they were just sincere fans. On top of that the con staff were so grateful I helped out in a pinch, and there sincerity stunned me. It made me feel like I had made a difference, however small, and I like that I got to give back, even a tiny bit.

That’s when I saw this wasn’t a community of writers talking about writerly things. This was a community of fans, of people pitching in to make sure that this worked. They helped each other, and they did it to make the best experience they could for everyone.

The second major turning point was during the Hugo ceremony itself. At one point they did a retrospective of all the members who had died in the previous year. And as I watched this somber stream of names scrolling up, I noticed that yes there were several creators, screen-writers, and editors. There was also plenty of people listed as just “fan” or “volunteer.” The fact that the organization took time to recognize these people, some of whom were just and only fans, showed just how deeply some people cared about this community.

(9) TWEETER’S DIGEST. It’s a commonplace that not everything people want to say will fit in a 140-character tweet. And yet here’s someone who has summarized every Stephen King novel in 140 characters or less.

(10) NOT ONLY A MESSAGE. Those who are allergic to political messages in sf may break out in hives by the time they’ve made it through “The G’s List of Mind-Bending/Expanding SF/F Novels” at Nerds of a Feather.

In my case I don’t have a political message to convey *with* my list, but rather have chosen a list of books that either have political messages or which made me think about the world in different terms. Even that was too big, so I decided to further limit myself to books that are either science fiction or transgress the boundaries between science fiction, fantasy, horror and mimetic fiction. It’s not an exhaustive list by any means–I probably could have done one with 50 entries or more. But 21 is a snazzy number, isn’t it? 1. Aldiss, Brian. Non-Stop [Faber and Faber, 1958]

Curiosity was discouraged in the Greene tribe. Its members lived out their lives in cramped Quarters, hacking away at the encroaching ponics. As to where they were – that was forgotten. Roy Complain decides to find out. With the renegade priest Marapper, he moves into unmapped territory, where they make a series of discoveries, which turn their universe upside-down… (GoodReads) The best #GenerationStarship novel I’ve ever read. Thought-provoking, with an ending that still manages to unsettle many years later. Also make rats utterly terrifying. (G)

(11) NERDCON APPROACHES. NerdCon: Stories will soon return, and several leading sf/f writers will be in the mix — Mary Robinette Kowal, Mikki Kendall, Wesley Chu, Patrick Rothfuss, Paolo Bacigaulpi, and Saladin Ahmed. (And who knows, maybe more if I’d kept scrolling…..)

(12) ORSINIA. The Paris Review has posted an excerpt from the introduction to Ursula K Le Guin’s Library of America editions — Ursula K. Le Guin: The Complete Orsinia (Library of America, 2016).

LOA jacket template

Much as I loved my studies, their purpose was to make me able to earn a living as a teacher, so I could go on writing. And I worked hard at writing short stories. But here my European orientation was a problem. I wasn’t drawn to the topics and aims of contemporary American realism. I didn’t admire Ernest Hemingway, James Jones, Norman Mailer, or Edna Ferber. I did admire John Steinbeck, but knew I couldn’t write that way. In The New Yorker, I loved Thurber, but skipped over John O’Hara to read the Englishwoman Sylvia Townsend Warner. Most of the people I really wished I could write like were foreign, or dead, or both. Most of what I read drew me to write about Europe; but I knew it was foolhardy to write fiction set in Europe if I’d never been there.

At last it occurred to me that I might get away with it by writing about a part of Europe where nobody had been but me. I remember when this idea came: in our small co-op dorm at Radcliffe, Everett House, in the dining room, where you could study and typewrite late without disturbing sleepers. I was twenty years old, working at one of the dining tables about midnight, when I got the first glimpse of my other country. An unimportant country of middle Europe. One of those Hitler had trashed and Stalin was now trashing. (The Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1947–48 had been the first event to rouse the political spirit in me.) A land not too far from Czechoslovakia, or Poland, but let’s not worry about borders. Not one of the partly Islamized nations—more Western-oriented … Like Rumania, maybe, with a Slavic-influenced but Latin-descended language? Aha!

I begin to feel I’m coming close. I begin to hear the names. Orsenya—in Latin and English, Orsinia. I see the river, the Molsen, running through an open, sunny countryside to the old capital, Krasnoy (krasniy, Slavic, “beautiful”). Krasnoy on its three hills: the Palace, the University, the Cathedral. The Cathedral of Saint Theodora, an egregiously unsaintly saint, my mother’s name … I begin to find my way about, to feel myself at home, here in Orsenya, matrya miya, my motherland. I can live here, and find out who else lives here and what they do, and tell stories about it.

And so I did.

(13) THIS JUST IN 17 YEARS AGO. J. K. Rowling sounds a little exasperated here.

(14) DINNER BELL. Scott Edelman has released Episode 18 of his Eating the Fantastic podcast where you are invited to  “Dig into a lobster roll with F. Brett Cox”.

fbrettcoxeatingthefantastic-768x768

Now it’s time to say farewell to Readercon with a visit to The Lobster Stop in Quincy, Massachusetts for (what else?) lobster rolls … and F. Brett Cox.

Brett co-edited (with former Eating the Fantastic guest Andy Duncan) Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic (which featured a story about Randy Newman by yours truly!), and has had fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews appear in Eclipse Online, War Stories, Century, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, Postscripts, and many other venues. He’s also hard at work on a book-length study of Roger Zelazny for the University of Illinois Press.

(15) MEMORABLE TV THEMES. Catherynne Valente asks:

I don’t know what she’d pick as the best theme for a dramatic series – for me it’s the theme from Hawaii 5-0. I’m also a fan of the Mission: Impossible theme, and have a real soft spot for the full rendition of The Virginian theme.

[Thanks to Steven H Silver, Marc Criley, Stuckinhistory, JJ, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit belongs to File 770 contributing editor of the day Jon Meltzer.]

155 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 9/16/16 Amok Pixel

  1. More Theme Songs!
    Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast (It’s even titled “Hit Single”!)
    MST3K (What other SF show admits its handwaving right upfront?)
    Super Chicken (George of the Jungle and Tom Slick not bad, but, hey, SC boasts superfan GRRM, who often quotes it: “You knew the job was dangerous when you took it!”)
    Rawhide! (Especially if you have to play a bar that likes BOTH kinds of music: country AND western!)
    Secret Agent (Gets bonus points for its transition into The Prisoner)

    More votes for many above including MASH (full version or Bill Murray version, preferably), MI, Hawaii Five-0, Greatest American Hero, Cowboy Bebop, Addams Family (Can baseball organists and DJs across the country be wrong? Well, yes, they can, but not about this footstomping, fingersnapping tune).

    Man, apparently I wasted a lot of my youth watching television!

  2. Best themes? Someone already mentioned Blake’s Seven, and the Gerry Anderson shows (the quintessential one being Thunderbirds, I think.) I have much love, also, for the opening sequence to Survivors, and possibly also Moonbase 3. Oh, and how could I forget Berry Lipmann’s Euro-pop-tastic theme for Star Maidens?

    Outside SF/F, Secret Army is a good one, and Department S, and the insistent snare-drum-and-penny-whistle theme for Z Cars.

  3. Yesterday’s read — The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin

    Fantasy, second book in a trilogy; after an apocalyptic catastrophe, a woman seeks answers, and her missing daughter.

    And here is my review, long after everyone else’s, I think … Another excellent work from Jemisin — gripping, stylistically unique, and full of great depictions of flawed, realistic characters. It’s a bit hard to judge this one on its own, however, because it is very much the middle third of a story.

    Less happens from a plot perspective than did in the first book, and much more is revealed about what is going on and why. Of necessity, the narrative is also not as innovative in terms of storytelling technique, although it’s still hardly a conventionally written novel. These are not flaws, however, as much as they are requirements of the story; this book is, in large part, set-up for the third and final book. But it’s a hell of a set-up, with unstoppable forces already in motion towards immovable objects, so to speak, and I have every expectation that there’s going to be a jaw-dropping finish when they hit.

    I’ve posted it to the 2016 recommended reading thread as well.

  4. If you’re going to do a list of boring, depressing books by the greats (Genocides, A Scanner Darkly), you should pick The Sheep Look Up instead of Stand on Zanzibar.

  5. Today’s read — The Guns of Empire, by Django Wexler

    Musket fantasy, fourth in a pentalogy; the army, and our heroes along with it, presses its way into a chilly northern country, aiming for the real enemy.

    Once again, Wexler’s secondary-world-riff on the Napoleonic wars is carried by propulsive writing and great characters. There are sweet character moments, visceral descriptions of an army on the march and in battle, and the stakes never stop going up. There’s also an acknowledgement, so rare in genre literature, that first teenage love need not necessarily be the One True Romance Of All Time.

    My one complaint is that this novel was, from a plotting standpoint, more predictable to me than the previous ones in the series. This is the first time I was able to say things like, “They’re going to lose this battle. These two characters are going to hook up. That character is going to die soon.” I wasn’t able to predict every turn of the plot — there were certainly some surprises. But I was surprised to see an author who usually keeps me guessing fall into some more conventional novelistic patterns.

    This did not spoil my enjoyment of it, however, and I will be posting this to the 2016 recommended thread as well. It also, as it has since the second volume, remains on my Good Lesbian Romance SFF list.

  6. So a second-hand bookshop has recently come into a huge stack of old issues of Astounding Stories. And yesterday I noticed one on display has They’d Rather Be Right, the infamously awful second winner of the Hugo! It’s only €5, I’m quite tempted to buy it, even though I generally find pre-70s SF hard to read at the best of times…

  7. Sitcom themes… I admit to a bit of findness for the sheer self-referentiality of It’s Gary Shandling’s Show. But it isn’t nearly as catchy as the theme for Laverne & Shirley or The Addams Family. And for non-sitcoms, my very first earworm was Greatest American Hero, followed by a couple of Henry Mancini themes, with Peter Gunn in the lead… and I’ve never watchec that show.

    Snowcrash, good call on the opening themes for Ghost in the Shell!

  8. Lorcan Nagle: So a second-hand bookshop has recently come into a huge stack of old issues of Astounding Stories. And yesterday I noticed one on display has They’d Rather Be Right, the infamously awful second winner of the Hugo! It’s only €5, I’m quite tempted to buy it, even though I generally find pre-70s SF hard to read at the best of times…

    JUST SAY NO.

    You can get it here on ebook for £0.71.

  9. @Kyra

    I’m midway through the first in Wexler’s series, having been enthused to get it off the tbr by your rec, and I can confidently predict I’ll be buying the rest of the series.

  10. JUST SAY NO.

    You can get it here on ebook for £0.71.

    I think if I buy it it’d be more to have such an odd artifact rather than any other reason.

    Looking at those megapacks, why does the Lester Del Ray one have a half-finished Macross model kit on the cover?

    (OK, I know it’s because they probably found it in an image library or took the photo to add some flavour to the cover, but still)

  11. @Kyra

    I recently read the first four books in that series in a remarkably short period of time. They are real page-turners, but thoughtfully crafted.

    On a similar musket fantasy theme, I really enjoyed Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Guns of the Dawn.

  12. More theme songs, this time from the Saturday mornings of my misspent youth:

    Thundarr the Barbarian (which I referenced in my Seveneves review)
    The Bugs Bunny Show (“Overtures! Curtain lights! This is it, the night of nights!”
    Land of the Lost

  13. Just off the top of my head– ask me tomorrow and the answers might be completely different…

    Favorite sitcom theme: Red Dwarf
    Favorite drama theme: Knight Rider
    Favorite inappropriately perky opening theme*: School-Live!

    *This is an actual category that anime fans will recognize. The most famous is the opening of Neon Genesis Evangelion, but there’s lots more where that came from.

  14. Anime themes:

    Agreed with “Tank!” from Cowboy Bebop, and I see Hampus linked the end theme from FLCL which is hella catchy. I’d also like to add the Read or Die theme.

    Non-anime I’d say Alfred Hitchcock Presents, but that’s just “Funeral March of a Marionette”. First place I ever heard the piece, though.

    ETA: @Petréa Mitchell: inappropriately perky anime theme: “Connect” from Madoka Magica, with bonus lyrics that take on horrifying meaning once you watch the show!

  15. @Rob Thornton
    Still immersed in Godstalk II….

    That’s my third favorite in the series. My favorite is GS V (aka Honor’s Paradox) Hope you enjoy.

  16. How about the theme from that proto-steampunk-before-steampunk-was-a-thing show The Wild Wild West? Hey, it’s genre!

    I loved the theme for the short-lived Mel Brooks Robin Hood show, When Things Were Rotten.

    Nobody’s mentioned The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

    But it terms of sheer recognizability it’ll be hard to beat M*A*S*H (I’d say Game of Thrones, but there’s too many channels now. *Everyone* watched M*A*S*H.

  17. Thinking about Rick & Morty’s theme music reminded me of The Venture Brothers, which segued into The New Adventures of Mighty Mouse, Police Squad!, Phineas & Ferb, Bullwinkle, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, and… oh lord yeah… The Tick! The idea of putting all my beloved theme songs into an arena to battle it out, however, falls somewhere between depressing and nauseating me. Do not want.

    Matthew Johnson,
    they showed the original Littles Hobo series for a while, after I got home from school, and I can still sing the wistful theme song, or something close to it. All I can ever find online is this rebooted version, which is, alas, not my nostalgia. “I find adventure everywhere / And friends, with whom I like to share / This is a stop along the way / Don’t really know how long I’ll stay…”

    junego,
    a definite YES on Route 66. That’s one of the ones I was glad to find sheet music for (as was Park Avenue Beat, aka Perry Mason—a superb arrangement, no less). Some others I’m truly glad to have in sheet music include F-Troop, Mr. Rogers, Bugs Bunny (This Is It!), The Muppet Show, The Flintstones, Leave it to Beaver (The Toy Parade), Batman (Batman!!), Mickey Mouse Club, NBC Mystery Movie, Mr. Ed, Remembering You (end theme from All in the Family), Twilight Zone (Etranger #3/Milieu #2), Patty Duke, Mission Impossible, Smothers Brothers, Dick Van Dyke, The Match Game (A Swingin’ Safari), Star Trek, Star Trek TNG, The Civil War (Ashokan Farewell, written in ’83), Rocky & Bullwinkle, The Munsters, The Addams Family, Jackie Gleason (Melancholy Serenade: took years to find), and Flipper, the omnipotent god of the sea.

  18. Littlest Hobo is great. I always had a soft spot for the Beachcombers theme too, while we’re on Canadian TV. Makes me feel bad I didn’t think of any Australian themes. How about Mr Squiggle

  19. No one’s mentioned ‘Taxi’ yet? A theme that is ruminative, even melancholic — not moods that you would expect a sitcom theme to evoke.

    And has there ever been another ‘Peter Gunn’ theme? Most theme tunes remain in memory attached to their respective TV shows, but ‘Peter Gunn’ the show is mostly forgotten, while its theme has become a classic.

    Finally, an instantly memorable theme that I don’t think has been mentioned yet : ’77 Sunset Strip’.

  20. @Kip W: I can’t believe I forgot Perry Mason (and I also had no idea that the theme had a name). I loved that show – it’s the closest TV ever came to film noir.

  21. @BGHilton: I love the Beachcombers theme too. For some reason Canadian shows of that era, while varying widely in quality (which may be putting it mildly), almost all had excellent music.

  22. (1) “role-modeling the lifestyle of a writer: mostly competitive drinking, womanizing, wrestling, and snorting at weaklings;”

    I always resented this kind of thing, and I’m finding it more important to say how much of a crock of shit I think that whole thing is. It’s an evil thing that for so long, the condition of having something to say, the talent to say it well, and being able to sell the results enough to make substantial only at it has been tied to a particular bundle of heterosexual male cliches about living the self-abusive life. It’s cost the world plenty in voices who were worth hearing, with ideas and stories we’d have liked to hear. The more that shit gets buried under alternatives, the better.

    (15) Themes. Hmm. Since I agree that Mike Post owns it for American shows….

    Supreme Earworm: Airwolf

    Maybe my sentimental favorite of all time, the Planetes theme, which nicely captures the show’s mix of meticulous attention to technical detail and warm sympathy for the cast of hopeful drifters.

    In the “well, we can see that Yoko Kanno shares our fondness for Mike Post” category, Wolf’s Rain theme. It is, again, very suitable for a show about the last werewolves in a bleak future. (I don’t want to run over my link quota, so I’ll just note that the closing song, “Gravity”, is a sad, compassionate delight, too.)

    I don’t know if others here know that there’s a whole thing of using video from other shows with the A-Team credits, like this Star Trek as the A-Team.

  23. I think theme song is somewhat dependent on when you first heard them. There are a handful of themes from ABC sitcoms from the 70s that are totally crap, but for whatever reason take me back to that time. I have a much harder time remembering the themes from modern shows.

    In a similar theme, I always liked the Peter Gunn theme, but I learned to love it playing the Spy Hunter arcade game which used it as a non-ending soundtrack. I think the game kept ramping up the volume the longer you played so it was really screaming if you were doing well.

  24. @Jack Lint: I’m prepared to argue for the objective merits of a bunch of Henry Mancini themes. 🙂 And Peter Gunn in particular lends itself to so many uses – Spy Hunter (gimme oil slicks), and The Blues Brothers, and The Art Of Noise….

  25. @ lurkertype

    Theme songs just aren’t what they used to be, since TV shows mostly don’t have extensive credit sequences nowadays.

    I knew the days of tv theme songs were waning when ending credits got smooshed into a little sidebar while they played commercials over everything.

  26. I knew the days of tv theme songs were waning when ending credits got smooshed into a little sidebar while they played commercials over everything.

    I think part of the reason anime still has a lot of good themes is that animation’s expensive, and good credit sequences means that viewers will thank you for what’s in effect the same minute or so of footage reused a dozen or two dozen times.

  27. Seriously, not one other person immediately thought of Steven Universe? I can get the theme song in my head every time I hear the first word. And since the first word is ‘we’, that’s not exactly infrequent.

    By contrast, it takes the whole opening line to get Firefly, the Beverly Hillbillies or Gilligan’s Island into my head.

  28. No making fun of me for this. I swear I *will* find you.

    When I was much younger and learning to skate I had fantasies of using the 1970’s Battlestar Galactica theme as my short program music* hitting triples on all the flourishes.

    *In the Olympics, of course, I dreamed big when I was still all arms and legs

    Edit: fixed a typo

  29. @Ultragotha, thanks, but I’m afraid that didn’t chase M*A*S*H away for me. I watched an awful lot of it in reruns, and it’s ever so catchy.

  30. @Lenora Rose: We… Are the Crystal GEMS! That’s a great one. My husband and I sing along every single time.

    If we’re doing anime, then the opening theme to Serial Experiments Lain needs a mention. As a song, it’s beautiful*; as a music video, it’s well timed to the visuals. I like that about the Ghost In The Shell Standalone Complex: Second Gig theme, too.

    *The song is “Duvet.” The entire album by Boa, “Twilight”, is very good.

    Saturday morning cartoons from the mid-80s – Anyone remember “Wildfire”?

  31. The Angel theme really worked for me, as did the Babylon 5 S4 theme.

    But, and I know this is cheating, I’m pretty sure it’s literally impossible for me to ever again love a theme as much as I loved the Eldar theme from Dawn of War 2.

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