Here are eight developments of interest to fans:
(1) As if there weren’t already enough problems trying to resurrect the Star Trek Experience, John Katsilometes of the Las Vegas Sun complains:
The Mr. Spock of Neonopolis, Rohit Joshi, continues to talk of how picky “Trekkies” are about Star Trek’s culture and legacy. But he keeps referring to them as that — “Trekkies” — instead of the preferred “Trekkers.” This needs to be straightened out before the Star Trek Experience finally opens at JoshiLand
(2) Harlan Ellison announced on his website on that his lawsuit against Paramount for its uses of his “City on the Edge of Forever” Star Trek script has been settled.
(3) Talk about a hook. I had to read the rest of Patrick Shepherd’s review of Robert Heinlein’s Shadow by “Jubal Harshaw” when I saw that it began –
Anyone with chutzpah to use one of Heinlein’s character’s names as his own had better be a very good writer. Unfortunately, this is not the case here.
(4) David Klaus was not filled with admiration by his First glimpse of The Phantom (and his suit!) on Syfy.
Since the role of The Phantom passes from father to son in turn to maintain the myth of “the Ghost who Walks,” there’d better be an damned good explanation of how “Kit Walker” was separated from his heritage…and where this organization who put him back onto his family track comes from, as that has never been part of The Phantom mythos. Setting aside that the new costume (not even counting the stupid technobabble to justify it) screws with the image the mythos supports.
(5) Bill Warren says his friend George Carlisle, a worker at JPL, recently read Strange Angel, a biography of John (Jack) Parsons, one of the founders of JPL:
He was a strange person, evidently; he dabbled in mysticism, his ex-wife was in Kenneth Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, and Parsons himself attended LASFS in the late 1940s. George says there’s stuff in the book about the club, Forry, Heinlein and Hubbard. The author of the book thinks that Valentine Michael Smith (or is it Michael Valentine Smith?) was based in part on Parsons.
(6) Keanu Reeves has been cast in a retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
(7) Who thinks of these things? Here is a horror anthology where all the stories have been inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen — Darkness on the Edges.
(8) In his movies Roland Emmerich makes a habit of ruining every icon on earth, but he promises not to ruin Isaac Asimov’s Foundation.
Emmerich talked about what inspired him about the series. “Well, it’s the same thing that Asimov was inspired by,” he said. “Just the downfall of a great civilization and how you can stop it. And you cannot stop it, it’s just inherent. … As a civilization crumbles, it falls.”
Aren’t you reassured?
[Thanks for the links included in this post go out to Bill Warren, David Klaus, John Mansfield and Andrew Porter.]
