British television and film producer, writer and voice actress Sylvia Anderson passed away March 16 after a short illness. She was known for co-creating numerous television series with Gerry Anderson, her husband between 1960 and 1981. (He died in 2012.)
Many of these series, such as Thunderbirds, featured marionettes as actors. The BBC obituary explains:
They developed a production technique using electronic marionette puppets, called Supermarionation, in which the voices were recorded first, and when the puppets were filmed, the electric signal from the taped dialogue was hooked up to sensors in the puppets’ heads.
That made the puppets’ lips move perfectly in time with the soundtrack.
In 1963, the couple came up with the idea for Thunderbirds, which told the story of the Tracy family who form a secret organisation dedicated to saving human life, set in the future.
As well as co-creating and writing the series, Anderson worked on character development and costume design.
The Thunderbirds character Lady Penelope, a glamorous agent, was modelled on Anderson’s own appearance, and she also voiced the character.
She returned to voice Lady Penelope in a 1994 episode of the sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. And when a new Thunderbirds Are Go series was produced in 2015, she was cast as the voice of Lady Penelope’s elderly Great Aunt Sylvia.
Sylvia leaves a daughter, Dee Anderson, and a son, Gerry Anderson, Jr.
(1) BELIEVE YOUR EYES. “Apparently TARDIS-es are manufactured in NYC’s Brooklyn Navy Yard,” said an incredulous Andrew Porter after seeing this photo in NY Curbed.
Photo by Max Touhey for Curbed
Capsys, the building manufacturer responsible for modular projects like Carmel Place and the Nehemiah Spring Creek development in East New York, recently announced that it would vacate its factory in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and shutter operations entirely.
JPL is hosted a “State of NASA” Social in conjunction with NASA’s federal budget rollout on Tuesday. The tour includes a visit to the Spacecraft Assembly Facility’s clean room, where the heat shield for Mars 2020 is, as well as the testing of some hardware used on the Juno mission, which arrives at Jupiter on the Fourth of July. (Photo by Walt Mancini/Pasadena Star-News)
They played on-screen partners in crime for one series
But after Jenna Coleman and Matt Smith both quit Doctor Who to pursue other projects, their friendship was put on the back burner as they were tied up in their various career commitments.
Therefore it was little wonder the former co-stars were so thrilled to be reunited as they attended a pre-BAFTA party in London on Friday evening.
Jenna, 29, and Matt, 33, put on a sweet display as they cosied up to each other while attending Harvey Weinstein’s dinner which was held in partnership with Burberry and Grey Goose at Little House in Mayfair.
The ex Clara Oswald actress gently rested her head on the former Doctor’s chest as they posed inside the venue which was filled with some of the film industry’s biggest talents.
The former BBC One stars couldn’t contain their happiness to be back in each other’s company once again as lapped up the pre-award-ceremony celebration.
(4) READING WHAT YOUR TEA LEAVES. John King Tarpinian found this message inside the cap on his bottle of ice tea —
Schindler led two of the earliest anime tours to Japan. She was an active costumer, presenting her work at many Worldcon masquerades and worked on the early Costume Cons.
Fox’s Deadpoolis bigger than anyone thought possible. Yes, it has scored the top opening for a February release with $135M over FSS and $150M-$153M over FSSM, beating Fifty Shades of Grey‘s first weekend figures last year. But, Deadpool also flogged Matrix Reloaded‘s $91.8M opening record to become the highest R-rated debut of all-time, not to mention it’s the biggest opening Fox executives have ever seen, surpassing Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith (FSS $108.4M).
(8) BRITISH BASEBALL. I just learned there is minor league baseball in Britain, and one of the teams is called the Bolton Robots of Doom. They play in the British Baseball Federation’s (BBF) AA North division.
Obama was questioned during Thursday night’s taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show by 6-year-old “presidential expert” Macey Hensley, and she asked the president about the legendary “Book of Secrets.”
“That’s a secret,” the president quipped.
Hensley theorized the “secrets” in the book could include an answer to whether “aliens are real.”
“We haven’t actually made direct contact with aliens yet,” Obama said. “When we do, I’ll let you know.”
The president did not clarify whether indirect contact had been made with aliens through some type of intermediary.
My advice is this: Don’t be this guy. Remember him, staring into the mystical power and majesty of the ark of the covenant…but then having the whole face melt-y thing happen? This is what happens when you engage in this Hugo nonsense. The Hugos are neither mystical, nor magical, but their bullshit will melt your face clean off.
Do this instead: Be Indy with his fave alcoholic, adventurous gal pal and look away! Withstand the mighty bullshit storm of bizarre political arguments surrounding a rocket-shaped literary award. You respect the market power of SF/F, but you choose the wise course and LOOK AWAY!
‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ for the U.S. thanks to Amazon. The streaming service has ordered four 13-episode seasons of the series, which combine CGI animation with live action models. The first two seasons (26 episodes) have already aired on ITV in the UK, where the first series from the 1960s originated. The third and fourth seasons are expected to air on ITV later this year and will be available to stream on Prime Video after the episodes become available in the U.S.
‘Thunderbirds Are Go’ is an update of ‘Thunderbirds’ a TV series that launched in the UK in 1965, from the minds of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. This show combined marionettes and vehicular models in a completely unique form of entertainment. The series followed the adventures of the Tracy family, with most of the action revolving around the five brothers Scott, John, Virgil, Gordon and Alan, who each piloted their own high tech vehicle.
In my experience, a good editor is not trying to evaluate your story on ideological grounds, nor is a good editor trying to get you to write the story their way. A good editor spots how you yourself are already trying to tell the story, and (s)he will simply make suggestions about how to do that job even more effectively than you’re already doing it. That’s the difference between, “You’re doing it wrong,” and, “You’re doing it right, but here are a few suggestions that should help you do it even better.” Most of the editors I’ve worked with (so far) have edited in this manner. And while some of them have barely touched my manuscripts, others have been so heavily involved in revision, they’re practically co-authors at the end of it. But again, their focus has always been: this story is hitting singles and doubles, let’s change a few things, and get this story hitting triples, or even a home run.
[Thanks to John King Tarpinian, Martin Morse Wooster, and Andrew Porter for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Steve Davidson.]
Doctor Who is home to some of the greatest and most confident writers in the history of television, who have each been responsible for some of the most riveting storylines of the last 52 years, and every great writer must start somewhere. So far in Capaldi’s era, five ambitious personalities have made their first contribution to the show, expanding the already respected list of accomplished Who alumni significantly. With Sarah Dollard’s “Face the Raven” having aired last weekend, she has become the final new addition for the show’s ninth series, as such making this the perfect time to reflect on the newer talent we’ve seen grace our imaginations in the last two years.
Today, Airbus has been granted a patent (US 9,193,460) on a method that essentially turns an airplane into an articulated truck. The plane, instead of being a single, contiguous hull, would have a huge hole in the middle where the passengers and luggage would normally be. Instead of boarding the plane directly, passengers and luggage would be loaded into a separate “cabin module.” Then, when the module is ready to go, it’s simply dropped into the airplane. If you ever watched Thunderbirds as a kid, it’s a lot like Thunderbird 2.
“The Dubliners of American Gothic”—that’s how Stephen King referred to Ray Bradbury’s first book, the little-known 1947 short-story collection, Dark Carnival. There’s good reason few readers, even those well versed in Bradbury’s work, are unfamiliar with Dark Carnival: Arkham House, a small press out of Sauk City, Wisconsin, published the book in a modest run of 3,112 copies; the book went out of print just a few years later. Besides a pricey limited-edition reprint in 2001, Dark Carnival exists as a literary apparition.
And yet many people have read some of Dark Carnival without knowing it
The nice thing about Anakin is that he gets to redeem himself in Return of the Jedi—which, if you’re a kid experiencing the Star Wars movies in the Lucas-order, is a pretty neat arc. Also for contemporary kids, Anakin is the focus of more hours of Star Wars than really any other character, thanks to The Clone Wars. So for better or worse, the prequel-era Anakin defines Star Wars for a big chunk of the viewing public.
If all the actors from the classic trilogy are reprising their roles, the giant space elephant in the room is how old everyone has gotten. Let’s get real, the focus of these new films will doubtlessly be on new characters, but it would be nice to have some existing Star Wars characters in there too, particularly ones who don’t look super old. Luckily, you don’t have to do any Tron: Legacy de-aging CG action on Hayden. He looks good!
THE FIFTH SEASON. The Broken Earth: Book One.By N.K. Jemisin. (Orbit, paper, $15.99.) In Jemisin’s fantasy novel, civilization faces destruction and the earth itself is a monstrous enemy.
(6) Michael Damien Thomas will work on accessibility at SFWA’s big annual event —
News I forgot to mention. I am now the accessibility head for the 2016 Nebula Awards Weekend. #AccessibleCons
(7) With Carrie Fisher returning in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this 2011 comedy video has a new lease on life —
Kaley Cuoco addresses an important issue affecting cosplay girls across the globe: Slave Leia fatigue. With so many choices available to women who cosplay, there’s no reason everyone needs to be Slave Leia.
Seed bombs began as a fun and friendly tactic for greening abandoned lots in urban spaces, but are still a developing idea to be done in large scale. It involves throwing small seed ‘bombs’ from planes onto deserted areas that have suffered deforestation, to gradually begin to recover the ecosystem. This method not only allows the growth of more trees and plants, but helps combat the extinction of bees, indispensable beings for the reproduction of life on Earth….
Each seed capsule is made from biodegradable plastic and functions as a small greenhouse where the seeds grow at first. When they reach the ground, the capsule disintegrates without polluting the environment until it disappears completely, allowing the plant growth to take its natural course.
Yesterday we celebrated our Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. One popular tradition is to enumerate what you’re thankful for. I’m thankful for lots of things. Of course, I’m thankful for my family and friends and my cats. I’m thankful that I have a fulfilling career and no major health issues. I’m thankful that I have neither the greed nor the need to go “Black Friday” shopping today. I’m thankful that the new Star Wars movie is coming out soon!
Also, I’m thankful for my regrets. Like most people, I have plenty. I regret that I haven’t done more international travel and that I haven’t done more charitable giving and volunteering. I regret never figuring out this whole physical fitness thing. I regret that I saw Star Wars: Episode I seven times in the theater. I regret voting for Ralph Nader in 2000. I regret that I didn’t spend more time with my mom.
I don’t think regrets have to be the soul-crushing thing they’re made out to be; you don’t have to exterminate them entirely to have a healthy life. I also don’t think you need to go in the direction of some Nietzscheans and existentialists to say that you have to take ownership of regrets and affirm them, because they’ve made you who you are. There is, as Buddhists would say, a middle way between these extremes.
(10) There’s an app for the Battleship Iowa?
The Battleship IOWA experience is at your fingertips – you’re all aboard for adventure! You will never look at the Navy the same way. The Battleship IOWA Interactive Tour will let you experience, first hand, what it was like to live and serve on this historic ship. You’ll be part of the adventure!
You’ll see and hear the fascinating stories behind the ship, its crew, and the part it played in shaping our world and our country. It is virtually impossible to get a feel for the service and spirit of this historic shp by simply reading a sign or placard. The Battleship IOWA Interactive Tour puts you in control of your experience. Dive deep into the content of the ship and explore the areas that intrigue you most. You’ll find crewmember stories, fun facts, ship service records, videos of her in action all in the palm of your hand. Enjoy content that isn’t available anywhere else in the museum.
…The show stars Kristen Ritter as Jones, a private investigator who got super powers after an auto accident that killed her family. She’s not the typical hero. An encounter prior to the show with a mind controller named Kilgrave (played by David Tennant) leaves her with a healthy dose of PTSD and a penchant for whiskey.
Early on, she meets a bar owner who she’s been following for a reason explained later in the series. The bar owner is a large black man named Luke Cage.
Yeah, baby.
Ritter is solid as Jones, nailing the smart mouth and feigned apathy the script called for. Her natural thinness might not normally fit a super strong hero, but personally I think it fits the character nicely. Not only does it make it more impressive when she lifts a car’s back wheels without straining, but it fits the alcoholic aspect of the character pretty well….
The casting of David Tennant makes Kilgrave’s grim demands seem ever more shocking, and this must be deliberate from the showrunners. At points, when Kilgrave’s enthusiasm levels rise a little, he really does resemble a twisted version of the Tenth Doctor. His charisma – combined with his creepiness and callousness – makes for unsettling viewing.
(13) Black Gate’s John ONeill knows why it continually costs more to be a fan who’s passionate about “Collecting Philip K. Dick”.
I have a lot of experience selling vintage paperbacks at conventions and other places, and nobody — but nobody — has skyrocketed in value like Philip K. Dick. The only authors who even come close are George R.R. Martin, James Tiptree, Jr, Robert E. Howard, and maybe Samuel R. Delany.
A big part of the reason, of course, is that virtually all of Dick’s novels were originally published in paperback, which means that — nearly unique among highly collectible authors — the coveted first editions of his novels are all paperbacks.
(14) Not all of CheatSheet’s “10 Sci-Fi Cult Classics That Everyone Should See” are as surprising as Snowpiercer (at #4) – who knew it had been around long enough to be a classic? Some might even agree with its strong preference for remakes — John Carpenter’s version of The Thing, David Cronenberg’s The Fly (#10) and Philip Kaufman’s Invasion of the Body Snatchers (#5).
The Thing
Audiences in 1982 were more interested in cuddly aliens like Steven Spielberg’s ET than they were in monstrous, shape-shifting ones, which explains the critical and commercial failure of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Thankfully, viewers have rediscovered the film, which stands as one of the greatest horror films and one of the greatest science fiction films. An Antarctic outpost of men struggles to identify and destroy an alien that can assume the form and personality of any living thing it consumes. The men, led by a never-better Kurt Russell, act competently in facing the threat, making it all the more terrifying when they can’t stop it. There’s mounds of existential tension and paranoid distrust to go around in the icy and isolated setting. Carpenter knows how to play off the tension brilliantly, using some of the most tactile and creatively terrifying practical effects in cinema history, courtesy of Rob Bottin.
Ridley Scott has confirmed that ‘Alien: Covenant’ will be the first of three films that will then link up to the story from the original 1979 ‘Alien’.
The second movie in his ‘Prometheus’ series is in its pre-production stage in Sydney, Australia, at the moment, where Scott confirmed the plans in a press conference.
He said that the newly-named ‘Covenant’ and the next two films will answer the ‘very basic questions posed in Alien: why the alien, who might have made it and where did it come from?’.
Covenant will tell the story of the crew of a colony ship which discovers what it believes to be an ‘uncharted paradise’ world, but is in fact a ‘dark and dangerous’ place, inhabited solely by David, Michael Fassbender’s android character from the first ‘Prometheus’ movie.
[Thanks to Michael J. Walsh, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Daniel Dern.]
Also called the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone is the region around a star where a planet’s surface is not too hot and not too cold for liquid water—and thus life as we know it—to exist.
The above map is the result of a painstaking and admittedly quixotic effort to catalog the country as it has been described in the American road-tripping literature. It includes every place-name reference in 12 books about cross-country travel, from Mark Twain’s Roughing It (1872) to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild (2012), and maps the authors’ routes on top of one another. You can track an individual writer’s descriptions of the landscape as they traveled across it, or you can zoom in to see how different authors have written about the same place at different times.
(3) Thunderbirds fans are very enthusiastic about the plan to combine old-fashioned “Supermarionation” with audio lifted from three original 21-minute mini-albums released in the 1960s (each was a 7″ single, but played at 33-1/3 rpm). The Kickstarter appeal to fund production, with a goal of $115,789, has already gathered $206,325 in pledges from over 2,000 contributors. The original goal would have paid for one – the current total should pay for all three.
[Director] Stephen La Rivière says: “We have shot new sequences with the puppets using the old-fashioned techniques. Whilst many of the methods used seem a little archaic and time-consuming by today’s standards, we thought that it would be very special to do a one-off project bringing Thunderbirds back to life 1960s style. Sadly, many of the original voice cast have passed away since 1965. However, thanks to the original audio footage we’ve rediscovered, we have new, authentic stories that have never been adapted for screen.”
(4) Being a critic is a higher calling for Jonathan McCalmont than most sf bloggers who spend a lot of energy churning other people’s advertising in return for pageviews. (Pay no attention to the man behind the file…) McCalmont inquires “What Price, Your Critical Agency?” on Ruthless Culture.
These days, few cultural ecosystems operate independently of commercial interests. The ability to artificially engineer an interest bubble means that commercial interests will always have some control over the agenda of an enthusiast press. Reviewers will request DVD screeners and ARCs of books they have been encouraged to look forward to and editors will always be happy to slipstream a wave of hype by providing content that satisfies the readership’s artificially-engineered interest in a particular subject. Money and effort devoted to creating buzz translates into traffic and so anyone who is interested in getting more traffic will always go out of their way to chase the hype.
While traffic is a significant carrot to offer in return for collaborating with commercial interests, review copies are another great way of controlling the agenda. At an institutional level, it is difficult to run a reviews department without review copies you can pass on to your reviewers and so the output of a reviews department will always be dependent upon the nature of the screeners and ARCs provided. At an individual level, a commitment to operate any kind of reviews platform means an open-ended commitment to media consumption and while you may very well be willing to pay for the media you choose to consume, the volume of reviews required to build an audience realistically means deep pockets, a relationship with publicists, or a willingness to obtain review materials for free by either borrowing or stealing.
One of my favourite recent discoveries has been S.C. Flynn’s Scy-Fy, a blog that features no fewer than 100 different interviews with book bloggers, magazine editors, podcasters and something he somewhat alarmingly refers to as ‘booktubers’. One thing that struck me about these interviews is that despite many of them warning about the dangers of writing only about new books and how setting your own critical agenda is the best way to stay productive and stave off burnout, most of the interviewees operate platforms that lavish their attention on new releases. In other words, they know that allowing commercial forces to influence their critical output is dangerous and yet they continue to let it happen.
(5) But at the very tip of the cultural pyramid is the blogosphere’s most highly evolved parasite, with an enviable track record of breaking stories before the studios’ own PR staffs ever hear about them. Alex Pappademas on Grantland tells how El Mayimbe creates those leaks.
El Mayimbe’s real name is Umberto Gonzalez, born 41 years ago in Queens, New York, of Dominican and Colombian descent, and as a self-proclaimed “fanboy journalist” and “ace scooper,” he lives for moments like these. If a studio’s measuring an actor for an iconic leotard or cowl or enchanted helm or loincloth, if a director signs up to reboot a trilogy based on an action figure, Gonzalez wants to be the first to know, and the first to trumpet that information on the Internet, via a fistful of social-media accounts and a new website called Heroic Hollywood, which went live in June. In an era when the movie business sometimes appears to be rebooting itself as a machine that cranks out nothing but superhero movies, Gonzalez is far from the only reporter whose beat includes stories like these, but no one follows it as closely or as aggressively. Gonzalez broke that Brandon Routh would play Superman, that Heath Ledger would play the Joker. He knew that Bradley Cooper would be supplying the voice of Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy, he says, before Cooper’s own publicist did.
(7) You don’t need to know French to catch the drift of this Telerama article about the Puppies, titled “Hugo Awards : le plus grand prix de SF menacé par des groupes d’extrême droite.”
Fervent défenseur des armes à feu
Cette année, le débat est autre. Un groupe de fans extrêmement conservateurs, les sad puppies (« chiots tristes »), dirigés par un fervent défenseur des armes à feu, Larry Correia, s’était déjà fait attaquer pour ses choix. En 2014, il avait mis de l’eau dans son vin, proposant aussi sur ses listes des auteurs progressistes. Trop, au goût de certains de ses membres, qui ont formé un groupe dissident, les rabid puppies (« chiots enragés »), l’ont débordé sur sa droite et ont réussi, en faisant voter en masse leurs soutiens, à faire inclure dans toutes les listes de nominés la plupart de leurs candidats. Démarche parfaitement en accord avec les règles du prix. Mais les livres ainsi proposés deviennent les fers de lance d’une percée idéologique forte. Et le prix est aujourd’hui au bord de l’implosion.
[Thanks to Steve Green and John King Tarpinian for some of these links.]
Material available there includes a video tour of the miniature Tracy Island sets produced by the WETA Workshop, model makers for Lord Of The Rings.
There’s also a teaser trailer, and several short videos of the various Thunderbirds:
ITV has also confirmed that Sylvia Anderson, the voice of Lady Penelope in the original series, has been cast to voice the character of Lady Penelope’s elderly Great Aunt Sylvia in an episode.
He’ll be the voice of Parker, chauffeur of Lady Penelope’s pink Rolls Royce. Rosamund Pike will be Lady Penelope.
ITV will air 26 episodes in 2015. The show will use a mix of CGI animation and live-action miniature sets. ITV first aired the original series in 1965.
Graham, besides collaborating on several other Gerry Anderson series, was one of the first voices of the Daleks in Doctor Who. In the “1984” TV advertisement made to introduce the Apple Macintosh, he played the role of Big Brother.
Thunderbirds creator Gerry Anderson died December 26 at the age of 83. He was diagnosed with mixed dementia two years ago and his condition “worsened dramatically over the past six months” said his son to Time Magazine.
Anderson was a guest of honor at Intersection, the 1995 Worldcon in Glasgow.
He was famous for “supermarionation,” using puppets to act out science fiction TV adventures, and it was an affectionately bestowed, enduring fame — just last year the Royal Mail set FAB: The Genius of Gerry Anderson as the theme of its first issue of 2011, featuring his shows Stingray, Joe 90, and Captain Scarlett on postage stamps.
Anderson was also notable for Space: 1999, a live action sci-fi adventure that reportedly was the most expensive tv show made up to that time. Its not-especially-scientific premise was that the Moon had been hurtled into interstellar space by a thermonuclear explosion of nuclear waste dumped on the lunar surface. It starred Mission: Impossible vets Martin Landau and Barbara Bain.
