4 December 2013

Birthdays
Kevin Sussman b. 1970 (A.I., Big Bang Theory)
Tony Todd b. 1954 (The Man From Earth, Stargate SG-1, Andromeda, Smallville, Angel, Candyman, Babylon 5, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Star Trek: Voyager, Xena, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The X-Files, The Crow, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Night of the Living Dead[1990])
Pamela Stephenson b. 1949 (Superman III, Space: 1999)
Jeff Bridges b. 1949 (Tron, Birdman, Iron Man, R.I.P.D., King Kong[1976])
Gemma Jones b. 1942 (Harry Potter)
Samuel Butler b. 1935 died 18 June 1902 (author, Erewhon)

The only honest to Odin, name above the title of major motion pictures movie star here is Jeff Bridges,and given how many roles he's had recently playing old coots, I'm a little surprised he's only 64 and also surprised he is the exact same age as Pamela Stephenson. But the Picture Slot goes to Tony Todd, who has a long career mostly doing guest shots on TV, which is a tough way to make a living. Whoopi Goldberg has a quote that she loved the original Star Trek because it was the first time on TV that there was evidence there would be black people in the future. What she didn't realize then was that 30% of the black people in the future would be played by Tony Todd.

I kid. I'm a kidder.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list.
 

Prediction:December 4, 1912: Germany attacks the United States, sinking three cruisers and a revenue cutter in Honolulu, also bombarding the city.

Predictor: Jack London in The Iron Heel, published 1907

Reality: I am going to call this one eerily incorrect. A lot of writers thought war was coming in the early 1900s, but most thought it would be held in Europe, which it was from 1914 to 1918. But to guess a war would start (eventually) by an attack on Hawaii in December and that the U.S. would be at war with Germany does make one go "hmm".

Let me be clear. London doesn't get full credit or even half credit on this one. Monty Python had a horoscope sketch featuring two of their middle-aged ladies that explains my feelings here.

Mrs O, reading the horoscope for Mrs Trepidatious, whose astrological sign is Nesbitt: You have green, scaly skin, and a soft yellow underbelly with a series of fin-like ridges running down your spine and tail. Although lizardlike in shape, you can grow anything up to thirty feet in length with huge teeth that can bite off great rocks and trees. You inhabit arid sub-tropical zones and wear spectacles.

Mrs Trepidatious: It's very good about the spectacles.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Back to the regular weekly schedule, so it's another Asimov prediction from 1964 speculating about the wonders of 2014.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
 

25 May 2013

Birthdays
Esme Bianco b. 1982
Cillian Murphy b. 1976
Mike Myers b. 1963
Frank Oz b. 1944
Sir Ian McKellen b. 1939

If the Picture Slot went to the most important actor on the list, it would nearly impossible to argue against Sir Ian McKellen, not only for an entire career but for his importance in the genre as both Gandalf and Magneto. But this year I'm going with the Picture Slot = Pretty Girl rule and giving it to Ms. Bianco, not only because she's the only pretty girl on the list but to give her a shout out after how horribly her character Ros was used on Game of Thrones this season.

Many happy returns of the day to all concerned.

Movies released
MIB 3 released, 2012
Back to the Future: Part III released, 1990
Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi released, 1983
Star Wars released, 1977 (before we knew it was Episode IV: A New Hope)

Wow. It was 36 years ago today that nerds around the world were given a new hope that science fiction films could become the most important movie genre of all.

And it was 30 years ago today that some of us realized that while they might be shiny and fancy and show us things we had never seen before, a whole lot of them were going to stink on ice anyway.

Ewoks. Oh, how I hates 'em.

So on this blog, May 25 is officially the Birth and Death of Hope.

 May 25: Towel Day

Douglas Adams, most famous as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, died on May 11, 2001. One of his fans decided sent out a message on the 2001 version of the Internet - kind of a sad thing by today's standards - that two weeks after his death on May 25, and every May 25 into perpetuity, fans of Adams would carry a towel with them to show their solidarity.

Here are the reasons why, according to the guide.

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough. 

Advice the wise must surely follow, even to this day.



 

Prediction: December 4, 1912: Germany attacks the United States, sinking three cruisers and a revenue cutter in Honolulu, also bombarding the city.

Predictor: Jack London, The Iron Heel, published 1907

Reality: London definitely gets points for seeing that war is coming, but he's not quite as eerily prescient as H.G. Wells was in predicting war in 1940 between Germany and Poland. It should be noted that there was something of a mutual admiration society between London and Wells and that Wells' fully admits The Shape of Things to Come was inspired by The Iron Heel. In The Iron Heel, the story is told as a 20th Century diary discovered centuries later. The future annotator mentions Wells as an important thinker of his day.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

While today we looked at hope for the future George Lucas gave us then cruelly snatched away, tomorrow is our first visit from the man who almost strangled  filmed science fiction in its cradle.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

18 May 2013

Birthday
Andreas Katsulas b. 1946 died 2 February 2006

Katsulas is best known in genre as G'Kar on Babylon 5 and the Romulan commander Tomalak on Star Trek. He died at the age of 59 from lung cancer. Best wishes to his family and friends, from a fan.

Movies released 
Shrek the Third released, 2007
Battleship released, 2012

The less said about the movies released on this date, the better.

 

Prediction: The strength of the socialist vote grows rapidly in the United States. (Numbers with asterisks are predictions.)

1888: 2,068
1902: 127,713
1904: 435,040
1908*: 1,108,427
1910*: 1,688,211

Predictor: Jack London in The Iron Heel, published 1907

Reality:  The socialist vote was on the rise, but not quite as quickly as London had hoped. 1912 saw an election where four parties brought in significant votes in the race for president, with Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist standard bearer, picked up 900,000 votes for about 6% of the vote. Debs would get roughly the same number, 914,000, in 1920 running from jail due to his anti-war activities, but because of growth in the electorate due to women's suffrage, this was only about 3% of the vote in this contest.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

A prediction about 2017 from the Army Corps of Engineers.

 
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

 

4 May 2013

Movies released
Marvel's The Avengers, released 2012

Popular bad pun of the day
May the 4th be with you.
 

Prediction: February, 1912: Avis Cunningham meets Ernest Everhard at a party thrown by her father John, a professor at the University of California.

Predictor: Jack London, The Iron Heel, published 1908

Reality: Most people today know Jack London from his adventure novels like Call of the Wild, White Fang and The Sea Wolf, as well as a great short story entitled To Build A Fire. London was also a dedicated socialist and polemicist and wrote this dystopian novel of the United States coming under the control of a violent government controlled by the rich known as The Iron Heel.

The story is the diary of Avis Cunningham Everhard, telling the deeds of her husband in the struggle for workers' rights. The other structure on top of this is that the diary was discovered far in the future when a workers' paradise exists, so the dystopian novel gives the promise of a utopian future.

There were a lot of optimistic futurists at the turn of the Twentieth Century, many influenced by Edward Bellamy's 1888 novel Looking Backward: 2000-1887. (Blogger's note: predictions from Looking Backward will be published here later in the year. Bellamy gave note of three exact dates and I'll be publishing predictions from his book on those days.) My futurist man-crush John Elfreth Watkins has several predictions that mimic ideas from Bellamy's novel, as will the optimistic Victorian futurist T. Baron Russell who will supplant Watkins when we run out of his stuff. London is one of the first writers to predict a long hard struggle with many setbacks before the Glorious Future finally arrives. London's "temporary" dystopia gives more room for dramatic action and is certainly an influence on H.G. Wells' 1933 novel The Shape of Things to Come and George Orwell's classic 1984, though Orwell explicitly denies a promise of a future utopia in the book's post script.

More stories of the Everhards and their struggles will be published over the next few weeks.


Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Tomorrow, we get more predictions about the future of information technology from 1988 about that wonderful future that awaits us in... 2013!

 
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!