5 January 2014

Birthdays
Oscar Isaac b. 1980 (Sucker Punch)
Paul Jarrett b. 1979 (Continuum, Fringe, Twilight: Eclipse, Smallville, Stargate, The Grudge 2, Dead Like Me, Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Millennium, The X-Files, Sliders)
January Jones b. 1978 (X-Men: First Class)
Bradley Cooper b. 1975 (Limitless)
Paul McGillion b. 1969 (Once Upon a Time, Fringe, Sanctuary, V [2010], Star Trek, Stargate: Atlantis, Smallville, The X-Files)
Vinnie Jones b. 1965 (X-Men: The Last Stand, Mysterious Island [2005])
Clancy Brown b. 1959 (Sleepy Hollow, John Dies at the End, Cowboys & Aliens, A Nightmare on Elm Street [2010], The Burrowers, Lost, Carnivale, Star Trek: Enterprise, Starship Troopers, The Outer Limits [1996], Earth 2, Highlander, The Bride, The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai)
Jeep Swenson b. 1957 died 18 August 1997 (Batman and Robin)
Robert Catrini b. 1950 (G.I. Joe: Retaliation, True Blood, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SeaQuest 2032)
Roger Spottiswode b. 1945 (director, The Sixth Day)
Cliff Potts b. 1942 (Silent Running, Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Hayao Miyazaki b. 1941 (Ponyo, Howl’s Moving Castle, Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, My Neighbor Totoro, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind)
Robert Duvall b. 1931 (Deep Impact, The Sixth Day, The Handmaid’s Tale, THX 1138, The Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone)
George Reeves b. 1914 died 16 June 1959 (The Adventures of Superman)
Stella Gibbons b. 1902 died 19 December 1989 (Cold Comfort Farm)

A very long list today, and I had to break a three way tie for the Picture Slot. It was either going to be:

a) Hayao Miyazaki, my favorite artist on the list
b) Robert Duvall, an honest to Odin movie star who did a lot of genre early in his career or
c) Clancy Brown, the guy glaring out at you. We have a lot of "oh, THAT guy" actors here, and Mr. Brown is the most recognizable of that group.

Many happy returns of the day to all our living birthday boys and girls, and a brief mention for the three on the list who are dead.

Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm is a very unlikely book to be called genre, but she did set it in the future (written in the 1930s, takes place in the 1950s) and there are a few futuristic touches in the few scenes set in London, but much of the story takes place on a farm that could be set in the 19th Century.

George Reeves played Superman on TV and died of a gunshot wound. There are several competing theories as to exactly what happened. The under-rated movie Hollywoodland, starring Ben Affleck and Adrian Brody, does a good job explaining the three most popular theories.

Jeep Swenson was a professional wrestler. He was listed as 6'4" and 405 lbs. (1m93 and 184 kg for readers more comfortable with the metric measurements), and that weight was mostly muscle. He played Bane in Batman and Robin, the movie credited with finally killing the 20th Century Batman franchise. Swenson died of a heart attack at the age of 40.
 

Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles, published 1950

Prediction: In September 2005, The LaFarges, an old couple that have moved to Mars, are visited by their son Tom, who died years earlier on Eath.

Reality: As has been written many times, Bradbury is really a fantasy storyteller rather than a science fiction author. The Martians have magical abilities and no scientific explanations are ever given. Bradbury killed the Martians off in an early chapter, but they keep popping up through unexplained time warps or unexplained lone survivors.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

The OMNI Future Almanac tells us what will be the ten leading companies... in the year 2000!

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

3 November 2013

 Birthdays
Dolph Lundgren b. 1957 (Universal Soldier, Johnny Mnemonic, Masters of the Universe)
Gary Ross b. 1956 (director, The Hunger Games, Pleasantville)
Kevin Murphy b. 1956 (Mystery Science Theater 3000)
Kate Capshaw b. 1953 (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Dreamscape)
Aneta Corsaut b. 1933 died 6 November 1995 (The Blob)
Lois Smith b. 1930 (True Blood)
Claudia Barrett b. 1929 (Robot Monster)
Osamu Tezuka b. 1928 died 9 February 1989 (writer, Astro Boy, Metropolis)
Robert Quarry b. 1925 died 20 February 2009 (Count Yorga, Vampire)
Leonard Stone b. 1923 died 2 November 2011 (Lost in Space, Land of the Giants, Soylent Green, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)
Ignatius Donnelly b. 1831 died 1 January 1901 (author, Caesar’s Column, Atlantis: The Antediluvian World)

It's a little unusual to have a list this long and the youngest person on it is in his fifties, but that's today's list.  I could easily have put Tom Servo in the Picture Slot or Dolph Lundgren. If I was in a puckish mood, I might have put Claudia Barrett being carried away by the guy in the gorilla suit with a space helmet, but I decided on Astro Boy instead.

I have discussed Ignatius Donnelly before, the writer of the anti-Semitic futuristic story Caesar's Column. Looking up names on the Internet Speculative Fiction Database this morning, they listed his book on Atlantis in "non-fiction". He made up Atlantis. We should be allowed to call a hoax that is now 131 years old a hoax.

Just sayin'.

Best wishes to all the living on the list.  

Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles,  published as a book in 1950

Prediction: In August 2002, Tomas Gomez, a worker newly arrived on Mars, has a strange meeting across time with a Martian. They disagree about whether the Martian is in the past or the future. Both of them are going to parties.

Reality: Yet again, Bradbury shows why the Hard SF crowd looked down their noses at him. Right now, I'm reading Rushdie's memoir Joseph Anton, and Rushdie is definitely of the view that writing is about sentences. It's obvious that Bradbury felt the same way.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Switching up the line-up a little this week to get another prediction about 2014 from Isaac Asimov in 1964.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE! 

15 September 2013

Norman Spinrad

Birthdays
Jonathan Liebesman b. 1976 (director, Battle Los Angeles)
Tom Hardy b. 1977 (The Dark Knight Rises, Inception)
Kenneth Hite b. 1965 (Lost in Lovecraft)
Colin McFarlane b. 1961 (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight)
Ed Solomon b. 1960 (writer, Men In Black)
John Reynolds b. 1941 died 16 October 1966 (Manos: The Hands of Fate)
Tommy Lee Jones b. 1946 (Men In Black, Captain America)
Norman Spinrad (Star Trek, Bug Jack Barron, The Iron Dream)
Henry Darrow b. 1933 (Star Trek, Babylon 5)
Jackie Cooper b. 1922 died 3 May 2011 (Superman)
James Fenimore Cooper b. 1789 died 14 September 1851 (The Monikins)

Eleven birthdays today, no fabulous babes, nearly equally split between actors and writers/directors. I nearly went with poor John Reynolds in the Picture Slot, whose only role on film was as Torgo in Manos: The Hands of Fate. He died at 25 the same year the film was made, and movie is best known to fans of the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Instead, today's picture is of Norman Spinrad, because I still recall fondly his book The Iron Dream. The conceit of the story was that it was written by a young Adolph Hitler and for me, the story lived up to the premise.

I was also surprised to find James Fenimore Cooper's name on the list at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. His story The Monikins is about intelligent monkeys who can speak and the trip to their homeland.

Many happy returns of the day to the living.

Prediction: The Third Martian Expedition lands on the red planet in the month of April, 2000. They find a small town in the style of the early 20th Century Midwest, populated with family members of the crew.

Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles, published in 1950

Reality: Small town Midwestern life from the early 20th Century is often portrayed by Bradbury as idyllic bordering on paradise, but just as often there is some aspect that acts like the serpent in Eden. Long story short, the Third Expedition does not survive.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

An exact date for nuclear annihilation taken from a TV movie.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
 

8 September 2013

 Birthdays
Martin Freeman b. 1971 (The Hobbit, The World's End)
Thomas Kretschmann b. 1962 (King Kong)

Air date of first episode
Star Trek, 1966

No disrespect to either Mr. Freeman or Herr Kretschmann, but today is the 47th anniversary of the words "Space, the final frontier..." being spoken, and in science fiction history, that is indeed a Big Damn Deal. If someone in 1966 predicted that Star Trek would be the most important TV show Desilu Studios ever produced, that person would have been called mad. Star Trek could never eclipse I Love Lucy in the history of television, right?

Well, that's at least partly right. Star Trek left the small screen and became a movie franchise or more accurately, three movie franchises, the original cast, the Next Generation cast and now, the reboot.


Many happy returns to Mr. Freeman and Herr Kretschmann, and here's hoping the reboot series can get around to making a good movie instead of just successful ones.

 

Prediction: In August 1999, the telepathic Martians begin to sense the thoughts of Second Expedition. When the four men land, they are assumed to be figments of the imagination of some insane individual, one of the aspects of insanity on Mars.

Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles

Reality: I didn't read The Martian Chronicles when I was a lad. I did read Bradbury's Golden Apples of the Sun and R is for Rocket. I think if I had read this one back then, I would have soured on Bradbury completely. This is a really depressing work.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

There have been several interruptions of our regularly scheduled features over the past few Monday, but tomorrow we get another prediction from the pages of Popular Mechanics.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
  

1 Septmeber 2013

Birthdays
Jhonen Vasquez b. 1974 (writer, Invader ZIM)
C. J. Cherryh b. 1942
(won 1982 Hugo for Downbelow Station)
(won 1989 Hugo for Cyteen)
Yvonne De Carlo b. 1922 died 7 January 2007 (The Munsters)
Edgar Rice Burroughs b. 1975 died 15 March 1950 (John Carter)

Though I put the Cute Girl in the Picture Slot, writers outnumber actors on today's birthday list, which is a rare thing.

While Cherryh may be the more honored in the genre, Edgar Rice Burroughs is easily the best known to the general public. My favorite tidbits of info about Burroughs are that he was 36 before he sold his first story. Before that, he had bounced around in low paying and lackluster jobs, the most often mentioned was as a pencil wholesaler. While the first story he sold was one of his Martian adventures, Tarzan is his best known creation and the keystone to his financial success. Though he had only started writing in 1911, he had made enough money by 1920 to buy his own ranch in California, which he named Tarzana. A town sprang up around the property and the citizens voted in 1927 to adopt the name of the ranch as the name of the town.

While I mention him last, Jhonen Vasquez is the creator of one of my favorite cartoon shows of all time, Invader ZIM. Many happy returns to Vasquez and Cherryh.

Prediction: February 1999, the first expedition to Mars lands and encounters the native population. It does not go well.

Predictor: Ray Bradbury in The Martian Chronicles, copyright 1950

Reality: Of course, humans so far have only set foot on the Moon and not anywhere else in the solar system so far. The best information that we have about Mars is no living creatures are there, though some think there might have been life in the ancient past.

Early 1999 was one of the times when Mars was closest to the Earth, but even then the distance is a little over 50 million miles and to make the trip in about a month means traveling at speeds at least twice as fast as the Cassini space probe.

This month's splash photo
Every month, I change the picture at the top of the page. I like pictures that are wide and not tall so the title of the daily post is visible as well as the first Picture Slot. This month it is artist Patrick Grimmel's rendering of the Hyperloop high speed tube train, proposed this year by Elon Musk, the billionaire behind PayPal and the Tesla electric car.

I've read the .pdf, which addresses stuff like earthquakes and power outages and avoiding sonic booms while traveling faster than sound, but I am not enough of an engineer to judge the practical aspects. I can say that it's nice to see something in the 21st Century that has that optimistic feel and sleek look that are so typical of the mid 20th Century's vision for the near future.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

We hear again from George Orwell and his prediction of a new holiday.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!