Science Fiction media and more

A bit of a sci-fi media roundup today.

How long have we waited for a television anthology series to be based upon (not just occasionally) genuine published short stories crafted by fine authors? Netflix has one, at last, titled Love, Death & Robots. See descriptions of some of the stories and authors featured.

31 Science-Fiction Things That Actually Exist Now… alas every one of them from TV or movies. How long would the list be, if they just took the forecasts of Frederik Pohl?  Including meat substitutes and tissue culture steaks that could help save us all. Oh, and today's cell phone with Siri. Yes that.

I want to see this... A famous “lost film” almost on a par with Jodorowsky’s DUNE, would be “Giraffes on Horseback Salad,” Salvador Dali’s attempt to sketch a possible film collaboration with the Marx Brothers! And now the pieces have been put together for a surrealist graphic novel: Giraffes on Horseback Salad: The Strangest Movie Never Made.

LATE NEWS: the composer of the concept album has announced that the sound track to "Giraffes" has just been released. Drop by for free samples.


== All SciFi news is miscellany! ==

Any Trekkies out there, Alec of the Axanar team (the fan production so good that Paramount took serious (&legal) notice) interviews me about Star Trek, my graphic novel, the missing concept re Klingons and comparisons to Star Wars.

Here are five science fiction themed music videos that take a look at unfolding, futuristic societal dilemmas. Janelle Monáe’s 2009 “Many Moons” is lavish and way fun. Rosamund Pike does an amazing marionette dance, and others.

A classic: my 1999 "Open Letter To Alien Lurkers" helped fill in a gap in SETI: "what if there are aliens or probes currently in the solar system, watching and reading our Internet, yet withholding first contact?" The Invitation To ETI site filled in that gap by formally asking for contact... but nothing happened. In my page on the IETI site, I contemplate 11 possible reasons why! (This list was dramatized and expanded and woven into the plot in EXISTENCE!) Watch the terrific/fun video trailer for Existence!

A fun look at the Captain’s quarters in various Star Trek shows.

Some folks say XKCD was referring here to my (Hugo-winning) short story “The Crystal Spheres” from The River of Time. I doubt it. But I’ll bask in the mistaken assumption.

== Sci Fi is “Speculative History” and so… ==

Extra History is one of the best things on YouTube. Quick, animated summaries of past eras that shaped our age. A 6-parter filled in my gaps about Sun Yat-sen and the Chinese Revolution. Another swept me across the end of the samurai era. This one about the Gracchi brothers shows how oligarchy undermined the Roman Republic, which was then torn up by radical populism. It all makes clear how fevered and harsh was "history" and why our present oligarchy plots against the new, modern, grownup ways of doing things.

The animations are way fun! But the narration is so good I get everything while turning my back to cook or do busywork at the computer. And dig it... he has a series on sci fi authors! Not comprehensive but cool.

Oh, also look at HISTORY BUFFS, which compares "historical" movies with actual events. I sometimes disagree. For example, the only good thing about the incredibly stupid flick  LAST SAMURAI was the fact that it made some more people aware that the Meiji Restoration happened. Treating the brutally oppressive lords as some sort of noble, repressed native tribe was silly. Nick Hodges understandably goes apoplectic over APOCALYPTO, though the simplest excuse for the 600 year gaffe is that one city survived the Classical Collapse and somehow kept going till the Spanish came. (Absurd, of course.) He waxes effusive over WATERLOO and ZULU and I agree -- while filling in a lot of interesting background.

On Tor.com “8 Books to Help You Rebuild After an Ecological Catastrophe.” The list doesn’t go back to tomes that were prescient about it all, though.

Along a similar topic… a new Swedish Sci Fi flick about a ship escaping Earth that gets waylaid… Aniara. 

I gave a club permission to translate and publish my short story ”Reality Check” (from Insistence of Vision) into Romanian. And here is the link for a few of you to enjoy.  

Every now and then someone sends me or links me to a semi-tribute song or composition based on one of my works, often inspired by some dolphin-poesy… in this case some trinary musings by the brain-damaged dolphin captain of Streaker, Creideiki.  Funky and strange use of poesy, yet catchy.   The key refrain is "where there is mind... there is deception..."

== short takes and news ==

Bill & Ted return? Oy. Forget the actors. Hire the old writers! Few flicks were ever more original. Alas, while the ‘third movies curse’ is no longer as perfectly true as it was in the 1980s and 1990s, it still is pretty strong. Bogus! 

Another theory that attempts to make sense of the utterly stupid Luke-Obiwan-Yoda story arc. And yes, it makes some sense… within the larger context of my STAR WARS ON TRIAL assertion the Yoda is probably the most-evil character (if you go by body count) in the history of all human storytelling. By far.

They Live is a 1988 movie directed by John Carpenter, based on Ray Nelson’s Sheckleyish 1963 short story "Eight O’Clock in the Morning." Rent it! It is truly wonderful. There's this scene that will make you laugh and cry at the same time, in which these two big, decent-but-dumb guys beat the crap out of each other in a fair-fight-of-honor over whether one of them will simply put on a pair of special sunglasses that will let him see the aliens who are enslaving the Earth. Oh, but what a perfect metaphor for our divided politics… how hard we’ll fight for our illusions! Oh, if only it were as easy as forcing our neighbors to put on some sunglasses. The fight scene. Truly classic.

== ... more... ==

An interesting video about a utopian experiment in the midwest in 1960’s America. A visionary scientist and a team of committed experts plan a domed city for 250,000 people whose futuristic technology and innovative design will eradicate the pollution and waste of the modern city, and lead the way toward 21st-Century urban life. But before the city of the future breaks ground on a virgin site in isolated northern Minnesota, rural citizens and mistrustful environmentalists rise up in protest, doubtful of its pollution-free promises. 

In my own yet-to-be-published SF comedy, my character muses about an even greater Lost Film, “The Road To Transylvania,” one of the “road” flicks of Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour, set in Dracula’s Castle with villains like Duchess Succubus. But it’s the song they sing – a variant on their traditional “Thanks for the Memories” – that got the film banned, never viewed until the year 2102. Want more? Hope I find a good publisher!

How wonderful! Science fiction is flourishing. It long ago took over Hollywood (though could use more depth from real novels). It’s on the upswing in China (for now).  Few cultural shifts could do more good in Latin America. So NYC area folks should drop in on “Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas,” (alternative worlds) currently on view through Aug. 18 at the Queens Museum. According to this review, there’s quite a bit of humor, too.

Kinda cool how the producers of a film NOMAD flew to an exact spot to film two lovers with a perfect solar eclipse in the background. The premise sounds cool, too.

Lawrence Schoen, author of BARSK and other way cool sci fi, has an amusing and fast-paced series starting with "Buffalo Dogs." -- The Amazing Conroy, the greatest hypnotist in known space, hits a snag when one of hypnotic suggestions is taken literally by aliens who only understand objective truth. Over the course of the day he'll lose everything, get blackballed from his profession, and smuggle an insanely valuable alien creature that can eat anything and farts oxygen.  Download it for free(!)

Science fiction scholars! Prof. Tom Lombardo has published the first volume of his epic work “Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future “Prometheus to the Martians” – dealing with how ancient myths all the way to HG Wells have dealt with a timely topic – how humanity might change. Or catch an audio interview about the book (skip about 5 minutes in).

Lombardo's followup - Volume Two: The Time Machine to Star Maker had been completed and scholars chafing at the bit to see it might write to him.

Rising SF star David Walton has a new novel from Simon & Schuster — Three Laws Lethal — about the inventor of a virtual world in which AIs train to be released into the economy, who begins to recognize that these entities are developing goals of their own—goals for which they are willing to kill. 

New Sci Fi media and messages and... fun?

Traditionally, I try to avoid politics on the weekend and focus instead on much less disgusting goings on... like dystopias, apocalypses and science fiction! Still, we're in a sci fi world right now... Robert Heinlein predicted the "Crazy Years" and we've been spiraling into something truly weird.

So tune in at the end of this posting for what I am hoping, for this Sunday's U.S. Presidential Debate.

For now, though -- sci fi!

ASU’s Imagination and Climate Futures Initiative just published Everything Change: An Anthology of Climate Fiction: a free digital collection featuring 12 stories from ASU's global Climate Fiction Short Story Contest. The book includes a foreword by Kim Stanley Robinson (the lead judge for the contest) and an interview with Paolo Bacigalupi. Free to download.

How about the new Star Trek? Sure, I have some disagreements with the J.J. Abrams conceptual reboot… but it’s still way cool stuff.  Frankly, we need the ambiance and underlying assumptions of Trek… that our children might – conceivably – be better than us.  It’s what we want. Yet the gloom and stupidity industries (Hollywood) seem to think you cannot tell a story that will sell tickets, if you let even a glimmer of hope raise its head.  See where I appraised this in my published piece on Trek…

See this speculation about how Game of Thrones will end leaves out one factor… that George R. R. Martin has been trying hard to show readers and viewers how bloody awful feudalism is! Okay, so none of you got that.  Wallow in the blood and oppression and infantile behavior and extremes of human nastiness while rooting for the marginally less-nasty!

But maybe, just maybe, the underdog common folk may have the last say.

== Rant-mode on! ==

 It may surprise you, given that I deem Yoda to be the most evil character ever, in the history all versions and forms of human storytelling... but I have no objections to his appearing in Episode 8 of Star Wars. After all, he lied to Luke endlessly about everything, so why not about "dying"? 

Poor Luke is an okay dude but a very dim bulb and on Dagobah he fell for the old Jedi "death fade-away" trick, which the vile green oven mitt pulled, just when Luke was ready to demand some answers!

Yes, yes, Mr. Abrams - while an absolute genius with characters - seems unable to imagine an original plot. He portrays Luke's new Jedi destroyed in exactly the same way that the original Jedi were. (Did I mention Luke is dim?) Luke then (The Force Awakens, Episode 7) goes on to precisely repeat Yoda's and Obiwan's cowardly actions - hiding away from the world, instead of trying to fix your own mistakes.

Only, if you actually think Yoda is anything but flat out super-Hitler, actually try sometimes tabulating the tens of billions of deaths he caused. And please, please come up with one... even one... genuinely wise and helpful thing the gnasty gnome ever really says.

He senses Anekin may be dangerous, yet foists him off to be trained by the most inexperienced master. He over-rules Mace every time Windoo says "let's tell the Republic what's going on!" Never once does he do his duty to the republic. 

There is zero reason to believe that the super smart gene crafters of Planet Kamino weren't telling the truth when they say that Yoda ordered up the clone army. Lucas doesn't even TRY to offer an alternative explanation. After all, who takes delivery of the clone army? Yoda!

When does he take delivery? Before he goes and orders all the Jedi into a suicide charge that kills 2/3 of them. He conveniently arrives with the clones JUST in time for that slaughter to be almost done.

Are you freaking kidding me? You noticed none of that? Yoda "dies" conveniently at the very instant when his dupe, poor Luke, is ready to look him in the eye and demand answers? W... T... F?

See this explored in more detail in Star Wars on Trial. I am giving you the tip of the iceberg, here.

The challenge stands. ONE genuinely wise and helpful thing that the little monster says. One. One. Offer up one.

Instead you have shit like "there is no try." Ooooooooooog

== a better Jedi ==

 Ursula LeGuin is deservedly praised as a giant of American letters. I also learned important things when I took a class from her, in grad school.  I am glad she has been receiving waves of commendation and recognition, almost-annually, all across the 21^st Century. (See her latest: The Complete Orsinia.) 

Still, LeGuin also represents the purest archetype of a literary maven who was given everything by science fiction – the liberty to express and develop a vast range of notions, ideas and thought experiments – and who was treated with respect by her SF peers and readers long, long before any discovery by the doyens of erudition... who has thereupon taken relentless pains to kick aside and spurn her first and most-generous love. From The New York Times: Le Guin has earned a rare honor. Just don't call her a Sci Fi writer. 

Oh, it is a fairly typical pattern. Kurt Vonnegut did it, as has Margaret Atwood, though both amended their disparagements at times, when brain and blood surged with that rare but precious trait called gratitude.  Heck, even Harlan Ellison gave in to the temptation, across a stretch of years when sycophants did what sycophants do – urging him to drop the pejoratively “career harmful” Science Fiction label. A harm that only happens because so many titans of exploratory fiction listened to the devil on their shoulders.

Fortunately, that era is passing. The best and brightest of a new generation – e.g. Paolo Bacigalupi, Michael Chabon, and Neil Gaiman  -- want no part of nasty ingratitude.  All refuse every invitation to re-name their writings “magic realism” or any other shill-concoction. They openly and proudly say: “I write science fiction; live with it.”  And the effects are starting to show.

Oh, it is still a very rare university lit or English department that promotes its science fiction lecturer with tenure. Hatred of SF – ironically the boldest and most-American of all genres – is still bilious and venom-drenched in those sections of campus.  But in New York literary circles, there’s been real movement. 

For example, The Atlantic, New Yorker and Harpers used to trade off a cycle of running hit pieces, savagely dissing SF, every 5 years or so. That cycle is shattered now, replaced by excellent survey articles by very with-it reviewers, every year.   

In other words, there is no longer even a fig leaf reason to perform rituals of churlish ingratitude toward the audacious genre of Mary Shelley, H.G. Wells, Huxley, Butler and Kress.

It’s a habit. And it is never too late to outgrow such childish things.

...At the HIGH end!... 

Seth Rogen and partners are preparing a pilot for a TV series about… the Singularity.  Got some funny ideas on that.

Hip-hop scifi? Gift of Gab and Blackalicious, especially their excellent pop-rap song “Powers,” which is joyful and stunningly original. Follow Gift of Gab over to The Mighty Underdogs doing “Droppin’ Science Fiction!” Sci-fi rap!  Seriously!

Let’s add to my list of sci fi comics Star Power, which appears to have a more uplifting motif and sensibility. The sort of attitude we need more of, these days. 

... and finally... yes... the crazy (political) year...

Hillary Clinton seems determined to obey advisers, who urge her to fight Donald Trump using political "Sumo"... grunting and shoving for margins of undecideds over this or that exchange of insults or tax returns.  It is a bloody awful mistake.  

Oh sure... fight those fights.  But only doing that is exactly why Tim Kaine did badly, last week. What would work better is Judo!

I've offered riff after riff that could be effective.  But all of them depend on HC wanting to win the OVERALL election. Which means taking back what was once the greatest deliberative body on the planet from monsters who have turned the U.S. Congress into the laziest, most dogmatic and worthless in US history.  

What? Does she want to accomplish anything? Or is she content to commence 4 years of pure hell, the moment she enters office?

In the first debate, she used the word "Republican" just once! Coached to try to win over marginal republicans, she has played nice to a party that has become a travesty. How about actually taking this seriously?

-  Cite Reagan!  He famously said "The Democratic Party left me." Brilliant.  So USE THAT! Say "the Republican Party has left you, abandoned you to cozy up to oligarchs and ONLY oligarchs."

- Point out that no GOP leader between Reagan and Ryan was even mentioned during the recent RNC.*  Bush, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hastert, Ailes... a long list of which the party is clearly ashamed, helping propel the Trump insurrection. And do not be afraid to mention the Bushes. You do not need their "support."

- Use the word LAZY to describe a Congress that almost never meets, passes no budgets, hates science, and avoids hearings about things that matter.  Lazy goes straight to character, bypassing typical divides. And it applies to republicans.

- Demand Trump appoint 5 distinguished conservatives to a commission to (1) check on accusations of election cheating AND (2) to supervise a trusted fact-checking service. With 5 democrats and 5 appointed by (say) Sandra Day O'Conner. Demand he name these sages THIS WEEK!  Or else admit he was bluffing.

- Lots of republicans dismiss Trump as a temporary disease-aberration. He is a symptom. Portray him as the natal outcome of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's takeover of US conservatism.

- Most metrics of US national health do far better across democratic administrations, even military readiness and the curve of change in deficits, which accelerate under republicans and slow down under democrats. And we'd be father along if the GOP congresses had passed the damn infrastructure bill.  Folks can understand this. 

- List the professions that Fox & pals attack! Not just science, teaching, journalism, medicine, economics… but all of them. Dare DT to name an exception.

Enough.  I got a million of them. But she's not reading this.  Nor are any of her stodgy, unimaginative and dismally-sumo-obsessed advisers.  All we can do is hope for the best.

=====
* Okay, Newt Gingrich got some time at the RNC. But think that one through.