(1) USPS ‘DROID STAMPS ISSUED TODAY. [Item by Daniel Dern.] From a post office near you, or via online: Star Wars Droids Stamps.
Use ’em to mail stuff! — or as an affordable, fungible gift to a Star Wars fan.
(2) THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES. Fansided’s “Dork Side of the Force” shares a collection of “25 of the most iconic Star Wars movie posters of all time”.
… The movie posters used to promote the movies have sometimes become as iconic as some of the movie moments themselves. These are 25 of the iconic works of art that have become some of the most memorable Star Wars images over the years….
1. The Phantom Menace teaser poster
After a decade and a half without a new Star Wars movie coming to theaters, The Phantom Menace was announced. We would all finally get to experience the first chapter of the saga.
There were rumors as to what we would get to see and more than a few images released of the movie being worked on, but this was the first official image we got advertising the upcoming movie — and really the trilogy as a whole. The image of a 9-year-old Anakin casting a Darth Vader shadow on the wall hit the world with a bang…
(3) BRADBURY STRIKES BACK. This 2019 IndyStar article begins its list of “7 cool items you can see at ‘Fahrenheit 451’ author’s IUPUI center” with a Star Wars relic —
Star Wars ‘Empire Strikes Back’ script
The second movie in the original trilogy is the one Bradbury almost co-wrote.
In the early 1940s, the writer studied with Leigh Brackett, a pioneer for women and the melodramatic space opera in science fiction. That gave way to a collaboration with “Lorelei of the Red Mist,” a novella about a powerful, siren-like woman who controls the strong, barbarian body that a convict has recently been transplanted in.Brackett went on to become a screenwriter and was a co-writer with Larry Kasdan on the “Empire” script. But she was in failing health, so the producer asked Bradbury whether he was familiar enough with her work to finish it if she couldn’t.
“Ray Bradbury said, ‘Yes, I do. But I want her to have credit,’ ” center director Jon Eller said.As it turned out, Brackett completed her draft before she died in 1978, so Bradbury never had to work on it.
But the script — a fourth revision that doesn’t even contain Darth Vader’s big reveal to Luke because that detail was so secretive — remains part of Bradbury’s collection.
(4) THE LOREMASTER. Craig Miller, author of the superb Star Wars Memories, shared a joke with Facebook readers that got an immediate laugh from George Lucas and Gary Kurtz at the time, and that he needs to explain to the rest of us.
…And now, the story. This is one that appears in my book, Star Wars Memories (available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Walmart). More, and less obscure, stories throughout Star Wars Season.
Suggesting a Title for Film #3
(Warning: This story has a punch line. But it requires deep knowledge of both Star Wars lore and motion picture history in order to get it. I’ll explain it at the end but it won’t be as funny – maybe not funny at all – if I have to explain it you.)…
(5) LOCATING THE LOCATIONS. And Craig has definitely been to some of the places in “The Real Star Wars Universe” charted by Statista. (Click for larger image.)
(6) BIGGS SAVED FROM THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR. “Star Wars: A New Hope – Deleted Scenes” on YouTube is 8 1/2 minutes of footage cut from Star Wars, including several scenes with Garrick Hagon as Biggs Darklighter that never appeared in the final cut of Star Wars.
(7) BRING ME THE HEAD OF DARTH VADER. “Darth Vader’s helmet raises charity funds in May the 4th auction” reports The Guardian.
In an auction house far, far away (well, Bristol actually), the enduring power of the force was clear.
A Darth Vader helmet sold for £2,200, more than five times the top estimate, and a signed picture of Alec Guinness in his Obi-Wan Kenobi robes was snapped up for £3,100, treble what was anticipated.
Someone, somewhere, paid £9,000 for a prototype lightsaber, the weapon of choice of Jedi knights in the Star Wars saga, which the Earthlings at East Bristol Auctions had judged might bring in £80-£120.
Hundreds of items hoarded and collected by David Prowse, the Bristolian who played Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, were sold off in his home city following his death, aged 85, last year.
Naturally the sale took place on May the 4th…
(8) DISSENTING VOICES. Not everybody is attuned to the spirit of the day.
(9) INSIDE AMAZON. Publishers Lunch learned something about how Amazon handles internal controversies:
Controversies
From this article we learned that Amazon has an executive who serves as director of book content risk and quality, Sarah Castle. It was her job to assess internal complaints from “dozens of Amazon employees” asking the company to stop selling Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, by journalist Abigail Shrier, arguing that the book violates Amazon’s recently stated policy against selling books “that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.” The Seattle Times reports that Castle told employees on an internal message board, “After examining the content of the book in detail and calibrating with senior leadership, we have confirmed that it does not violate our content policy.”
(10) DOOM IN RETROSPECTIVE. GamesRadar+ does a Q&A with a past writer of a popular comic book: “Doom Patrol, New Gods, Old Gods, and a Fissure King: The Rachel Pollack Interview”.
In 1993, Rachel Pollack took over DC/Vertigo’s Doom Patrol following Grant Morrison’s star-making turn on the book. Her run lasted 25 issues, but has never been collected – but has begun making its way to DC digital platforms recently.
Among the memorable stories is the initial ‘Sliding In the Wreckage’ arc, as well as the introduction of Kate Godwin (Coagula) – the first trans superhero for DC or Marvel comic books. Over the course of her run, Pollack touched on concepts of family, fitting in, and making a path for yourself in a world that didn’t have a set path for you.
Newsarama spoke to Pollack earlier this month about her Doom Patrol run, her prose work such as the new novella collection The Fissure King, and her poised return to comic books.
Newsarama: Rachel, what are you working on today?
Rachel Pollack: I’m actually typing up a second draft of a story called ‘Visible Cities.’ I always write everything longhand with fountain pen and then type it up, and that’s my second draft. I’m doing that at the moment. And then I’m preparing for a trip to Scotland.
(11) MOORE ACQUISITIONS. “’I’m bursting with fiction’: Alan Moore announces five-volume fantasy epic” in The Guardian.
Two years after announcing that he had retired from comics, Alan Moore, the illustrious author of Watchmen and V for Vendetta, has signed a six-figure deal for a “groundbreaking” five-volume fantasy series as well as a “momentous” collection of short stories.
Bloomsbury, home to the Harry Potter novels, acquired what it described as two “major” projects from the 67-year-old. The first, Illuminations, is a short story collection which will be published in autumn 2022 and which moves from the four horsemen of the apocalypse to the “Boltzmann brains” fashioning the universe. Bloomsbury said it was “dazzlingly original and brimming with energy”, promising a series of “beguiling and elegantly crafted tales that reveal the full power of imagination and magic”.
The second acquisition is a fantasy quintet titled Long London, which will launch in 2024. The series will move from the “shell-shocked and unravelled” London of 1949 to “a version of London just beyond our knowledge”, encompassing murder, magic and madness. Bloomsbury said it “promises to be epic and unforgettable, a tour-de-force of magic and history”….
(12) MEDIA ANNIVERSARY.
May 4, 1962 — The Twilight Zone‘s “The Dummy”.
“You’re watching a ventriloquist named Jerry Etherson, a voice-thrower par excellence. His alter ego, sitting atop his lap, is a brash stick of kindling with the sobriquet ‘Willie.’ In a moment, Mr. Etherson and his knotty-pine partner will be booked in one of the out-of-the-way bistros, that small, dark, intimate place known as the Twilight Zone.“
On this day in 1962, The Twilight Zone aired “The Dummy”. It was written by: Rod Serling from an unpublished story by Lee Polk. It was directed by Abner Biberman and produced by Buck Houghton. It starred Cliff Robertson, Frank Sutton and George Murdock. An average ventriloquist finds he has a not-so-average and quite horrifying dummy. The plot here would later influence many other series including Batman: The Animated Series with its own terrifying animated apparent dummy.
(13) TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS.
[Compiled by Cat Eldridge and John Hertz.]
- Born May 4, 1893 – Alfred Pollard. Four novels for us; outside our field, crime and war stories, fiction and non, threescore books all told. Served in World War I, earned the Victoria Cross. (Died 1960) [JH]
- Born May 4, 1909 — Ray Quigley. Here solely for the three covers that he did for Weird Tales in the Forties. He didn’t do a lot of pulp work that I can find but these three are amazing. He did the December 1938 cover with the Dracula-like figure, the September 1940 cover with the nightmarish skull-faced Bombers and finally the May 1942 cover with the really scary living ship. The latter issue had Henry Kuttner, Robert Bloch and Dorothy Quick listed on the cover! (Died 1998.) (CE)
- Born May 4, 1913 — John Broome. DC writer during the Golden Age. He’s responsible for the creation of an amazing number of characters including The Phantom Stranger, Per Degaton (with artist Irwin Hansen), Captain Comet and Elongated Man (with Carmine Infantino), Atomic Knight and one of my favorite characters, Detective Chimp. The DC UNIVERSE streaming app has his work on The Flash starting on issue #133 and the entire early Fifities run of Mystery in Space that he wrote as well. (Died 1999.) (CE)
- Born May 4, 1920 — Phyllis Miller. She co-wrote several children’s books with Andre Norton, House of Shadows and Seven Spells to Sunday. Ride the Green Dragon, a mystery, is at best genre adjacent but it too was done with Norton. (Died 2001.) (CE)
- Born May 4, 1940 – Bob Layzell, age 80. Threescore covers, a score of interiors. Here is Farthest Star. Here is Drunkard’s Walk. Here is Dangerous Frontiers. Here is A Trace of Memory. Here is The Grey Prince. [JH]
- Born May 4 (year unknown) – Ernie Wheatley. Known as the Dormouse of the LASFS (Los Angeles Science Fantasy Soc.) for falling asleep with his head on his arms at table during restaurant after-meetings, raising it to speak aptly, sleeping again. Once after we had adopted “Death will not release you” and someone uttered it on some such occasion EW piped up “Even if you die!” which was promptly added. In 1960 while Westerns were big, also home-made films, and fanfiction meant fiction about fans, Lee Jacobs wrote “The Musquite Kid Rides Again” for SAPS about a transparently-disguised Wrai Ballard; it was filmed; here is EW as “Killer Kemp” i.e. Earl Kemp who by then had won a Hugo for Who Killed SF? [JH]
- Born May 4, 1943 — Erwin Strauss, 78. I’m not sure I can do him justice. Uberfan, noted member of the MITSFS, and filk musician. He frequently is known by the nickname “Filthy Pierre” which I’m sure is a story in itself that one of you will no doubt tell me. Created the Voodoo message board system used at a number of early Cons and published an APA, The Connection, that ran for at least thirty years. Do tell me about him. (CE)
- Born May 4, 1956 — Murray McArthur, 65. He first shows on Doctor Who in “The Girl Who Died”, a Twelfth Doctor story before being The Broken Man on The Game of Thrones. He also shows up as a stagehand in the historical drama Finding Neverland before playing Snug in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (CE)
- Born May 4, 1957 – Nancy Canepa, Ph.D., age 64. Here is Teaching Fairy Tales she edited. Professor at Dartmouth. “My teaching and research centers on early modern Italy (1550-1700). I’m particularly fascinated by the development of new literary forms and languages during this period, in genres that range from the fairy tale to the mock epic to the travelogue.” [JH]
- Born May 4, 1960 – Kate Saunders, age 61. A dozen novels, a couple of shorter stories for us; two dozen books all told, some for adults, some for children. Newspapers, magazines, radio, television. Trask Award. Costa Children’s Book Award. [JH]
- Born May 4, 1974 – James Bacon, 47. He’s a 14-time Hugo nominee, as a fan writer and as co-editor of The Drink Tank and Journey Planet, and a two-time winner — one Hugo with each fanzine. James was the 2004 Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund delegate: download his trip report at the unofficial TAFF website, WorldConNomicon. In addition to working on Irish convention Octocon, he ran his own conventions: Aliens Stole My Handbag, Damn Fine Convention, and They Came and Shaved Us. Ultimately he chaired the Dublin 2019 Worldcon. He ran Sproutlore—the Robert Rankin Fan Club. With fellow fans he established The James White Award, an annual short-story competition. And he often contributes to File 770! (OGH)
- Born May 4, 1977 — Gail Carriger, 44. Ahhhh such lovely mannerpunk she writes! I think I first noticed her with the start of the Finishing School series which she started off with Etiquette & Espionage some six years ago. Moirai Cook does a delightful job of the audiobooks so I recommend that you check them out. I also love the two novellas in her Supernatural Society series as well. (CE)
- Born May 4, 1978 – Shaenon Garrity, age 43. A score of short stories. Known for Webcomics Narbonic and Skin Horse. Interviewed in Lightspeed. Web Cartoonists’ Choice Award for Outstanding Writing. Lulu of the Year Award. Summa cum laude from Vassar. Website. [JH]
(14) COMICS SECTION.
- The Argyle Sweater has a wonderful set of Star Wars “character cuts.”
- In Ralph Ruthe’s cartoon the lower fly says “So, this is the famous ‘Death Star'”
(15) BLADE STUNNER. “Star Wars Day: Disney Parks shares footage of a real-world lightsaber” – as SYFY Wire explains.
When guests head to Orlando’s Walt Disney World next year for the Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser (an immersive, two-night experience housed at Galaxy’s Edge), they’ll probably catch sight of an actual lightsaber. That’s right, the Disney Parks Imagineering Research and Development team have built an honest to goodness retractable Jedi blade inspired by the iconic franchise.
To celebrate May the 4th (aka Star Wars Day), the Mouse House’s theme park division revealed a short video of the potentially patented lightsaber (it works kinda like a high-tech, dual measuring tape) — wielded by a cast member dressed as Rey — in action, and it’s beyond cool.
(16) A SHARPER IMAGE. Jeff Foust reviews the Folio Society Edition of Andrew Chaikin’s famous history of the Apollo missions for The Space Review: “Review: A Man on the Moon”.
…To be clear, the text of the book is unchanged from earlier editions: this is not a revised or expanded version. The only new words in this version is a brief preface by Chaikin, which he uses to explain the other major change of the book: the inclusion of nearly 200 color and black-and-white photos that he curated for the book. As high-quality digital versions of the photos became available in the years after he first wrote the book, he explains, “I was amazed at the details I could now see; I felt they had opened a new portal I could step through to witness what the astronauts had seen and done.”
This is not the first illustrated edition of the book, but this version strikes a better balance between the photos and text than that earlier three volume set, where the images at times drowned out the text. Here the images are better ties to the text, and include a mix of obvious famous pictures as well as less-famous ones from the missions or training for them. The book includes fold-out color plates, such as one that combines several views of the Earth taken by the Apollo 8 mission on its way to the Moon; it illustrates the spacecraft’s journey by showing our home planet get ever smaller.
The real value of A Man on the Moon, though, remains Chaikin’s account of the missions, enabled by his interviews with the Apollo astronauts. At the time he started the book, all but one of the 24 men who went to the Moon on nine Apollo missions were still alive (Apollo 13’s Jack Swigert died of cancer in 1982.) Enough times had passed for the astronauts to reflect on their journeys, but not so long that we would lose the chance to have them recount their experiences….
(17) RHUBARB PIE. Doris V. Sutherland received a virtual ovation for the new lyrics to “American Pie” posted as a comment on Camestros Felapton’s post “About three months to the Dragon Award 2021 finalists”. The first stanzas are —
A long, long time ago,
The Hugo Awards came along to honour sci-fi at its height
And I knew when I’d had a look
That each winner had been a classic book
Except perhaps for They’d Rather be RightThen Puppies made some voting slates
The ’15 Hugos weren’t so great
The big winner was No Award
In science fiction’s culture war…
(18) KISS YOUR ASS GOODBYE. IFL Science has – simulated – bad news: “Large Chunk Of Europe “Annihilated” In NASA’s Latest Asteroid Impact Simulation Exercise”.
Every two years, international governmental and space agencies take part in a tabletop scenario as part of the Planetary Defense Conference. In this exercise, a space rock is discovered to be heading toward Earth and members of different agencies have to work out what are the best things to do to try and avoid catastrophe.
… The second day also sees a detailed look at what missions could be sent to deflect such an asteroid. And it’s not good news. The asteroid is too close and too fast (and possibly too big) for a course correction. So you ought to hit it hard. Either a nuclear weapon, among the biggest, ever assembled during the Cold War, or shooting like dozens of rockets at it. With the risk that it would fragment and still crash into Earth.
“If confronted with the 2021 PDC hypothetical scenario in real life we would not be able to launch any spacecraft on such short notice with current capabilities,” members of the group stated….
(19) CTHULHU FHTAGN. When a “Japanese Town Uses Relief Money To Erect Giant Squid Statue”, Cracked is there to haul in a net-full of puns.
…So folks, whether you hate the giant squid statue or find it ink-redible, what’s fin-ished is fin-ished.
(20) FLY CASTING. In “The Falcon and The Winter Soldier” on YouTube, the Screen Junkies say the series “comes from the military espionage side of the MCU, where the morals are as grey as the visuals” and that the cameo appearance of Julia Louis-Dreyfus leads them to speculate about when the rest of the Seinfeld cast will show up in the MCU. No spoiler warning – but who knows?
(21) VIDEO OF THE DAY. In “The World Begins With You” on YouTube, Fandom Games says the game is set in “nightmare Tokyo a place where you have to worry about how good you will look when you’re dead” and is so busy that the game “will have you tapping at your screen like a crazed woodpecker.”
[Thanks to Peer, Michael Toman, Andrew Porter, John King Tarpinian, Rob Thornton, John Hertz, Dann, Mike Kennedy, JJ, Cat Eldridge, Jennifer Hawthorne, and Martin Morse Wooster for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day bill.]
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First!
I’ve always amazed how well the original Twilight Zone episodes by and large hold up almost sixty years on. It’s not just the writing by Serling, the acting and production were spot on as well. Being black and white certainly added to the moodiness of them.
Yeah, Ive occasionally put a TZ episode on, and a lot of them work, and some of them are absolutely riveting still.
Paul Weimer says Yeah, Ive occasionally put a TZ episode on, and a lot of them work, and some of them are absolutely riveting still.
It’s the only show from that era that I look forward to rewatching. Most genre shows from the period feel dated in a way that Twilight Zone doesn’t. Oh I can make an argument that some series like The Munsters are still a hell of a lot of fun but they’re not nearly as brilliant as that series.
(13) Shaenon Garrity’s cartoon X-Files recaps are great fun http://www.shaenon.com/monsteroftheweek/2012/06/29/06292012/
Yes, Twilight Zone was just really excellent tv.
9) Surprising absolutely no one, Amazon is evil.
11) I am both curious and bracing myself, because the last time I read any Alan Moore it ended with me remarking “Is it possible Alan Moore has never actually met a woman?”
18) I had no idea anyone was paying attention to that. I’m glad someone is, even if we’re not doing well at it– the first step to solving any problem is admitting it exists.
(2) Dork Side of the Force must not have been at MidAmericon, the 1976 Worldcon in Kansas City. He says that a December 1976 poster was “the first time the public ever saw the title Star Wars.” If memory serves, there was a Star Wars exhibit at that September 1976 Worldcon, which featured an advance poster by artist Howard Chaykin (which I wish I had picked up), which did not make Dork Side’s list.
https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/star-wars-online/star-wars-poster-howard-chaykin-us-1976-signed-by
Kit Harding says I am both curious and bracing myself, because the last time I read any Alan Moore it ended with me remarking “Is it possible Alan Moore has never actually met a woman?”
Was that by any chance The Lost Girls? That graphic novel was possibly the worse erotic novel ever done in that manner. Total misuse of classic female characters as well.
And I see that she’s done the entire sixth season since the last time I checked. Excellent!
6) Star Wars cutting room floor: I’ve watched that video before, and honestly there’s a good reason those scenes were cut — they suck. There’s a bunch of articles you can find online about how the director’s cut of Star Wars wasn’t that great, and the movie was greatly improved by smart editing.
@Joel Zakem: they showed a preview of Star Wars at MidAmericon, and had a half-hour Q&A session. (Milwaukee fan Leah Fisher helped Lucas, Hamill, etc. set up their exhibit, and has some unique dated autographs as a result.) I’m a Quaker, so didn’t bother to go see some flick about wars; but I did go see Rocky Horror Picture Show at the same con…. and nothing will ever be the same.
@Cat Eldridge: I never cared for the Munsters (too mundane); it is The Addams Family who remain my role models.
Michael J. Lowrey says I never cared for the Munsters (too mundane); it is The Addams Family who remain my role models.
Actually your choice is a much better example of a successful comic series from that era than mine was, but I’d forgotten about them. I’ll have to see if they’re on iTunes.
Well, there’s definitely a class difference. IIRC Gomez Addams is a wealthy attorney while Herman Munster is just an ordinary working stiff.
Jeffrey Jones says Well, there’s definitely a class difference. IIRC Gomez Addams is a wealthy attorney while Herman Munster is just an ordinary working stiff.
Indeed you’re correct. The Gomez Addams character was always immaculately portrayed as a wealthy elite in both the series and the films. (I think Raul Julia was spot on.) And the series certainly was better written than The Munsters were by a wide margin.
(8) Now listening to Take Five…
Title credit: James Agee and I (both of us Tennesseans) thank you.
6) We just watched the “improved” version of Star Wars tonight, and honestly, none of the added effect shots or CGI elements added anything to the story. At best they added clutter, at worst they did damage to the pacing. A classic exemplar of “They were so busy asking if they could do it, they didn’t ask if they should”
9) Seriously? If that piece of crap doesn’t meet the standards for harm, what does?
11) Alan Moore is the guy who wrote a child rape scene. For laughs. And did a massively anti-Asian racist scene. For laughs. And tried to tell black people that golliwog dolls weren’t actually racist it’s about 20 years past when he should have retired from writing completely.
@Cat
Pluto TV (free app) has an Addam’s Family channel, the whole series on a continuous loop. Fun stuff
I rather like The Lost Girls – I read it as playing the same kind of genre games with early 20th Century erotica that most of the rest of his work plays with superheroes, so questions of realism don’t arise for me. I wouldn’t try to claim he’s ever been good at writing women, though, and the gollywog in Black Dossier was a definite mistake.
Does anyone else remember A Hypothetical Lizard? Some of the ideas and images still stay with me, but the overblown style didn’t encourage me to look for more of his prose writing.
Rose Embolism says Alan Moore is the guy who wrote a child rape scene. For laughs. And did a massively anti-Asian racist scene. For laughs. And tried to tell black people that golliwog dolls weren’t actually racist it’s about 20 years past when he should have retired from writing completely.
He has some brilliant work. His Voice of The Fire novel which covers severs millennia of history in his hometown of Northampton is frelling amazing. I’d also single out From Hell, with Eddie Campbell, as being quite great, and the first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Is quite stellar. That said, you’re right — much of his beliefs are definitely cringe inducing in the extreme.
@Rose Embolism
There is more to that discussion from Alan Moore’s perspective.
The short version –
Within that interview, Mr. Moore acknowledges that golliwog dolls accrued racist connotations. He maintains that the original character was admirable rather than presented as being the proper object of derision and disrespect.
Regards,
Dann
Never preach harder than you can entertain. – Jim Butcher
@Cat Eldridge: Top Ten, actually, a book with a wonderful concept that I would love to see written by anyone else. I do have vague memories of hearing about the Lost Girls– though I think in a context that made me curious about it, before I’d read any more Alan Moore than V for Vendetta, from someone who’d rather liked it. I was quickly disabused of the notion I wanted to read it once I’d investigated his other stuff– even From Hell has some sexist stuff in that’s above and beyond what’s required just from being a Ripper novel.
(Being a Magic player, I was initially like “But that one’s Nic Kelman?” But no, his creepy book with “girls” in the title was “Girls: A Paen”.)
6) There are cut… for now. If Star Wars has shown us one thing in the past ddecades is that sooner or later, they stuff every scene in the movie, wether they are fit (or actually work) or not.
Is Filerman like Wellerman
David Goldfarb wrote:
I don’t know, I rather liked the bit with Biggs outside the dive desert bar…it provides context, character development, and adds some structure to the story. Or does it? Im not sure the former myself would have noticed. My current edition feels it’s nice to see more of Biggs, at least.
Regarding “The Munsters” and “The Addams Family” each was trying to do different things. “The Addams Family” was based on Charles Addams’ New Yorker cartoons, that started in the 1930’s. Addams participated in the series only a little, he named the Characters (in the cartoons there were no names).
“The Munsters” on the other hand aspired to be “the Ozzy & Harriet of Transylvania”. “The Munsters” was created and produced by the same team who created and produced “Leave It to Beaver”. In fact the Cleaver house was located 2 doors down from the Munster house on the backlot street.
One genre series that holds up pretty well from the same time as “The Twilight Zone” is “Thriller” with Boris Karloff. Some of the episodes were un-even but any episode with Boris Karloff acting in it is a treat. (Karloff hosted the show and appeared in a handfull of episodes.
As to the Twilight Zone, I program the Balticon Video Room, and in 2019, which was our latest in person con, was the 60th Anniversary of the Twilight Zone. I programmed episodes from most of the series. One night I programmed Twilight Zone episodes all night long from about 11 pm until 8 am. I checked in as it started and was pleased to see that there were 6 or 7 younger fans (late teens-early 20’s) As the 1st episode began (The Fever, about a man who falls victim to a demonic slot machine) I noted some laughter and giggling, but by the end they were rapt. Just in time for Time Enough at Last.
@Iphinome
Probably.
As the old song goes:
Soon may the Filerman come
to bring us books and cats and rum.
One day, when the scrolling’ is done,
We’ll tick the box and go.
I’d take one of those scenes with Biggs over the scene with Jabba the Hutt any day, frankly, and guess which one they decided you couldn’t watch Star Wars without?
17) There’s another, older SF filk on American Pie: Richard Friedman’s “Fantasy and Sci Fi”.
http://www.swil.org/FILKS/filkbook2.html#5
“For the world is scrolled and I have touched the pixel.”
Regards,
Dann
We’re born with success. It is only others who point out our failures, and what they attribute to us as failure. – Whoopi Goldberg
Lenora Rose says:
Ugh, yeah. It even reuses lines from Han’s scene with Greedo!
Adding to peer‘s:
There once was a site that put to sea
And the name of that site was File Seven Seventy
The recs came fast, reviews were great
Build, Mt Tsundoku, build (huh)
I wrote an sf parody version of the “American Pie” lyrics while it was still on the charts. Luckily for all of you I can’t lay my hands on that apazine at the moment.
Scroll on the pixel
Filing up Mt. Tsundoku
Scroll on the pixel
The pixel, scroll.
Meredith moment: Clifford Simak’s Hugo Award winning Way Station Is available today from the usual suspects for a buck ninety nine.
@Dann
How about “For the File is Scrollow, and I have Ticked the Box”?
Scroll, Filerman, scroll
Keep on scrolling your files
Scroll, Filerman, scroll
Lots of hungry readers are ashore
(Millions of them!)
(Hat tip to The Congos)
@Dann665
Thanks for the link. I’m not too familiar with Moore’s work, and his opinions looked to be well-considered (even if they don’t match my own). For me, the pull quote was
“these people were all entitled to their opinion, but . . . that opinion was completely useless and I feel that we were right to ignore it.”
@Andrew (not Werdna)
That works as well!
Regards,
Dann
The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. – Isaac Asimov