Marc Scott Zicree is among the writers who received a certificate for his work on one of the “101 Best Written TV Series” — Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Monthly Archives: December 2013
WGA’s List of Best-Written Series
The Writers Guild of America, West has ranked The 101 Best Written TV Series. Topping the list at #1 is The Sopranos.
Genre shows regarded as the best-written series of all time are:
3. The Twilight Zone
26. The X-Files
27. Lost
33. Star Trek
38. Battlestar Galactica
40. Game of Thrones
49. Buffy The Vampire Slayer
79. Star Trek: The Next Generation
90. The Prisoner
The WGAW is sending certificates to the writers for these series — Harlan Ellison announced he’s received two, for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Star Trek.
Pratchett, Holmberg on BBC Radio
Terry Pratchett and John-Henri Holmberg were on consecutive episodes of BBC Radio4’s Front Row Daily last week, now available as podcasts.
Terry Pratchett on the 40th Discworld novel [MP3 file]
[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the links.]
Malnutrition in Middle-Earth?
An offbeat study in the Canberra Times concludes that the evil characters in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit lost their battle against men, elves, and dwarves because they suffered from vitamin deficiency —
Shunning sunlight, surviving on a sketchy or unbalanced diet based on rotten meat or (in Gollum’s case) the occasional blind fish, they lacked vitamin D, a key component for healthy bones and muscle strength.
The idea is proposed by Nicholas Hopkinson, a doctor at Imperial College London, and his son Joseph, in the Christmas edition of the Medical Journal of Australia. They scoured The Hobbit for references to characters’ living conditions, habits and diet.
Next thing you know, these quacks will be telling trolls to boost their vitamin D levels by getting more sunlight.
[Thanks to Janice Gelb for the story.]
Rosemary Wolfe (1931-2013)
Gene Wolfe’s wife, Rosemary, died on December 14 following a lengthy illness. She was 82.
[Thanks to Steven H Silver and SF Site News for the story.]
Birthday Coincidences
December 16 is not only Beethoven’s birthday, but Arthur C. Clarke’s. (And Jane Austen’s!)
For musical purposes, it would make more sense for Clarke to share a birthday with Wagner or Strauss, but you can’t plan that sort of thing…
[Thanks to Sam Long for the reminder.]
Peter O’Toole (1932-2013)
By Steve Green: Peter O’Toole, Irish actor raised in the UK, died December 14, aged 81.
Genre roles include: Supergirl (1984), The Ray Bradbury Theater (tv, 1986), High Spirits (1988), Phantoms (1998), Stardust (2007) and Highway to Hell (2012).
Joan Fontaine (1917-2013)
By Steve Green: Joan Fontaine, actress. Died December 15, aged 96.
Born in Tokyo to British parents who then moved to California. She won the Best Actress Oscar in 1942 for her role in Hitchock’s Suspicion. She is survived by her elder sister, the actress Olivia de Havilland (1916-).
Genre roles: the original Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961) and The Witches (1966).
Cabinet of Curiosities
Marc Scott Zicree
By John King Tarpinian: Today Marc Scott Zicree gave a lovely talk at Mystery and Imagination in Glendale, CA and signed copies of the book he wrote about Guillermo del Toro’s collection of “stuff”, Cabinet of Curiosities. I cannot do justice to a review of this book. I should add that Guillermo is in Canada working two projects back-to-back but he sent down customer signed bookplates for anybody who bought the book, copies are still available with both Marc’s signature and Guillermo’s bookplate.
Guillermo needs no introductions but a little background on Marc might be helpful. Marc is best known for the definitive book on the Twilight Zone, The Twilight Zone Companion. He has written for such shows as Star Trek, TNG, Deep Space Nine, The New Twilight Zone, Babylon 5, and Sliders, among others. As you can see he’s done a thing or two on his own. Marc is currently producing/writing/directing for his current project, Space Command.
China’s Lunar Lander Reaches Moon
Not only is truth stranger than fiction, it’s often more entertaining.
CNN reports China has deployed its first-ever lunar rover from the unmanned spacecraft Chang’e-3, which landed on the Moon Saturday, December 14.
Jade Rabbit (called Yutu in Chinese) is a six-wheeled lunar rover equipped with at least four cameras and two mechanical legs that can dig up soil samples to a depth of 30 meters.
Filmmaker Christopher Nolan must feel it’s a cruel irony for a pioneering space mission to make headlines on the very day a teaser trailer was released for his movie Interstellar (due next November) — a trailer filled with nostalgic images of American aeronautic and space accomplishments accompanied by actor Matthew McConaughey’s glum voiceover saying —
We’ve always defined ourselves by the ability to overcome the impossible, and we count these moments, these moments when we dared to aim higher, to break barriers, to reach for the stars, to make the unknown known — we count these moments as our proudest achievements. But, we lost all that. Perhaps we have just forgotten that we are still pioneers.
Nolan is probably on the phone right now telling the studio they’re going to need a different trailer for the China market…