18 August 2014

Birthdays
Max Charles b. 2003 (White Space, The Amazing Spider-Man 1 & 2, True Blood)
Maia Mitchell b. 1993 (After the Dark)
Richard Harmon b. 1991 (Continuum, The 100, Fringe, Caprica, Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Smallville, Flash Gordon [TV], Jeremiah)
Mika Boorem b. 1987 (Mighty Joe Young, Jack Frost, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch)
Mizuo Peck b. 1977 (Night at the Museum, Witchblade)
Malcolm-Jamal Warner b. 1970 (Jeremiah, Sliders)
Edward Norton b. 1969 (The Incredible Hulk)
Christian Slater b. 1969 (Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, Beyond the Stars)
Sarita Choudhury b. 1966 (Midnight’s Children, Lady in the Water)
Craig Bierko b. 1964 (The Thirteenth Floor, Red Dwarf [TV Movie])
Adam Storke b. 1962 (The Invisible Man [TV], Prey, Death Becomes Her, Lifepod)
Glenn Plummer b. 1961 (Monsters in the Woods, Vegas Vampires, Saw II, The Day After Tomorrow, Stephen King’s Dead Zone, Strange Days, Beauty and the Beast [TV])
Madeleine Stowe b. 1958 (Impostor, Twelve Monkeys, The Amazing Spider-Man)
Dennis Leary b. 1957 (Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2, Small Soldiers, Demolition Man)
Sergio Castellitto b. 1953 (The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian)
Patrick Swayze b. 1952 died 14 September 2009 (George and the Dragon, Donnie Darko, Tall Tale, Ghost, Amazing Stories)
Teri McMinn b. 1951 (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre)
Shirley Prestia b. 1947 died 6 October 2011 (Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Charmed, Babylon 5, Species, ALF)
Martin Mull b. 1943 (Eastwick, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Lois & Clark, Wonder Woman)
Robert Redford b. 1936 (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Twilight Zone)
Roman Polanski b. 1933 (director, Rosemary’s Baby, The Fearless Vampire Killers)
Grant Williams b. 1931 died 28 July 1985 (Brain of Blood, The Outer Limits, The Munsters, The Monolith Monsters, The Incredible Shrinking Man)
Joan Taylor b. 1929 died 4 March 2012 (Men Into Space, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Earth vs. Flying Saucers)
Brian W. Aldiss b. 1925 (author, The Year Before Yesterday, Enigma, screenwriter, Brothers of the Head, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Frankenstein Unbound)
Shelley Winters b. 1920 died 14 January 2006 (Purple People Eater, Alice in Wonderland [1985], Pete’s Dragon, Batman) 

A few simple declarative statements about the Picture Slot choice.

1. Robert Redford is the biggest movie star on this list. There are other people I count as movie stars - Edward Norton, Christian Slater, Patrick Swayze, even Shelley Winters - but Redford is more famous than they are.

2. Some big stars have avoided genre films almost completely. Horror, sci-fi and fantasy were small budget affairs for the most part until Star Wars. Even then, fantasy and sci-fi films could be big hits without big stars in the cast. A lot of very popular sci-fi films did not make the actors in them household names,  the huge counterexample being Harrison Ford. Still, a lot of big names have clearly avoided sci-fi and fantasy, even now when the genre rules the roost in terms of big box office for films and popularity among TV shows. Redford is one of those people, but even he has succumbed now, appearing in the second Captain America movie.

3. While most sci-fi and fantasy of the 1950s and 1960s was considered slumming, The Twilight Zone was not. A long standing character actor like Burgess Meredith is the prototypical Twilight Zone protagonist, but a lot of young actors and actresses on their way to being stars had roles as well, and that includes Robert Redford pictured here.

4. My, oh my, by the names of Odin, Vishnu and the little baby Jebus, Robert Redford was so, so pretty when he was a young man. Regular readers can correctly assume from my reliance on fabulous babes in the Picture Slot my heterosexual tendencies, but I'm not blind to good looking guys, especially when the good looking is off the scale like this guy.

Many happy returns to the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Predictor: OMNI Future Almanac, published 1982

Prediction: With a combination of x-ray treatments and immune system enhancements, the age-old scourge of malaria will be as good as eradicated by the year 2000.

Reality: Umm, no. About half the world's population is still at risk and in 2012 alone, there were somewhere between 150 and 300 million cases with slightly more than a half a million deaths.

As with many diseases, the numbers are going down over time and the reduction in this century is encouraging, but we can hardly say it's eradicated.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Tomorrow will be the first prediction of our new Tuesday regular.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE! 

12 June 2014

 Birthdays
Abbey Lee b. 1987 (Mad Max: Fury Road)
Luke Youngblood b. 1986 (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)
Dave Franco b. 1985 (Warm Bodies, Fright Night)
Richard Ayoade b. 1977 (The IT Crowd, The Watch, Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace)
Rick Hoffman b. 1970 (Battleship, The Day After Tomorrow, What Planet Are You From?)
Gordon Michael Woolvert b. 1970 (Supernatural, Andromeda, Sliders, Mysterious Island, Forever Knight, Maniac Mansion, Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future)
Sarah Trigger b. 1968 (Pet Sematary II, Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey)
Frances O’Connor b. 1967 (Timeline, a.i. Artificial Intelligence, Bedazzled [2000])
Patrice Martinez b. 1963 (Beetlejuice)
Eamonn Walker b. 1962 (Unbreakable)
Paul Schulze b. 1962 (The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Roswell)
Scott Thompson b. 1959 (Star Trek: Voyager, Millennium)
Timothy Busfield b. 1957 (Revolution, Lois and Clark)
Gary Farmer b. 1953 (Mutant X, Forever Knight)
Roger Aaron Brown b. 1949 (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, Supernatural, Dark Skies, Galaxis, RoboCop 2, Alien Nation, Hard Time on Planet Earth, Near Dark, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Incredible Hulk)
Len Wein b. 1948 (writer, Swamp Thing)
Henry Slesar b. 1927 died 2 April 2002 (author, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Examination Day)
Uta Hagen b. 1919 (The Twilight Zone [1986], The Boys from Brazil)
Irwin Allen b. 1916 died 2 November 1991 (producer/writer/director, Aliens from Another Planet, The Swarm, City Beneath the Sea, Land of the Giants, The Time Tunnel, Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Lost World)

 Regular readers will know that I have a complicated relationship with the work of Irwin Allen, the guy in today's Picture Slot. Compared to his contemporary show-runners Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry, Allen is a midget in terms of talent and taste. But in terms have creating a good relationship with networks and giving them what they wanted, Allen is more successful than either of his more fondly remembered colleagues. I give him credit and have a label for his stuff because the 1960s is the beginning of Hollywood thinking of sci-fi as a genre that can make money, whether aimed at kids or adults, and Irwin Allen's shows were a big part of that.

To be blunt, the competition for Picture Slot today was not filled to the brim with iconic characters. Some of the faces are recognizable, notably Paul Schulze as Father Phil on The Sopranos, Scott Thompson from Kids in the Hall and Timothy Busfield from Thirtysomething, but none of those roles are in genre. The second place choice was Roger Aaron Brown, an Oh That Guy actor who you very well might see next year.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.


Movies released
This is the End, released 2013

Predictor: Oliver Owen in The Plague of Lights, published 1904, reprinted in Mike Ashley's anthology Steampunk Prime

Prediction: On 12 June 1906, the first recorded instance of the phenomenon known as "the plague of lights" occurs outside the Strand Theatre in London.

Reality: The story is one of those "old switcheroo" types, the lights from the sky touching people in the crowd symbolizing people who have found true love. Though I was happy to find Steampunk Prime since it had several stories with exact dates that were set in the future from the point of view of the writer, I'm not that keen on re-labeling the sci-fi from the Victorian and Edwardian eras "steampunk". Some modern stories set in that era deserve the label, but most of the stories I read from this collection don't have that feeling of the future coming in fast due to technology hurtling forward.

Just one readers opinion.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

On Wednesday, we bid goodbye somewhat reluctantly to T. Baron Russell as a prognosticator. Tomorrow, we get the last prediction from Dr. Paul Ehrlich, I will be glad to see the last of him. I'm running out of adjectives to describe how bad his stuff sucked.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

28 May 2014

Birthdays
Jacob Kogan b. 1995 (The Tomorrow People, Star Trek [reboot])
Carey Mulligan b. 1985 (Never Let Me Go, Doctor Who)
Megalyn Echikunwoke b. 1983 (The 4400, Supernatural, Buffy, Sheena, Creature)
Alexa Davalos b. 1982 (Clash of the Titans, The Mist, The Chronicles of Riddick, Angel)
Monica Keena b. 1979 (Night of the Demons, Freddy vs. Jason, The Devil’s Advocate, Snow White: A Tale of Terror)
Jesse Bradford b. 1979 (Clockstoppers)
Kate Ashfield b. 1972 (Shaun of the Dead)
Glenn Quinn b. 1970 died 3 December 2002 (Angel)
Kylie Minogue b. 1968 (Doctor Who, Street Fighter)
Ashley Laurence b. 1966 (Hellraiser, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys)
Christa Miller b. 1964 (The Andromeda Strain [2008], Clone High)
Julie T. Wallace b. 1961 (Speed Racer, Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible, The Fifth Element, Time Riders)
Townsend Coleman b. 1954 (The Tick)
Sandy Helberg b. 1949 (Mortal Kombat, Spaceballs)
Patricia Quinn b. 1944 (Doctor Who, The Box of Delights, Shock Treatment, Hawk the Slayer, Hammer House of Horror, Beauty and the Beast [TV], The Rocky Horror Picture Show)
Zelda Rubenstein b. 1943 died 27 January 2010 (Southland Tales, Wishcraft, Sinbad: The Battle of the Dark Knights, Little Witches, Timemaster, Tales from the Crypt, Teen Witch, Poltergeist)
Shane Rimmer b. 1932 (Dark Shadows [2012], Alien Autopsy, Mee-Shee: The Water Giant, Batman Begins, The War of the Starfighters, Space Truckers, A Kid in King Arthur’s Court, Year of the Comet, Space Police, Morons from Outer Space, Space, The Hunger, Superman II, Warlords of the Deep, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, Space: 1999, Twilight’s Last Gleaming, Rollerball, UFO, Doctor Who)
Ian Fleming b. 1908 died 12 August 1964 (author, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang)

If the first criterion is iconic roles, today's Picture Slot belongs to Zelda Rubenstein from the Poltergeist series of movies and TV. But for me, today's list highlighted my fickle relationship with voice acting work. I usually do not list voice work done by actors on my list, though I did include the narration of Thriller by Vincent Price yesterday. Townsend Coleman does a lot of voice work, but because of my particular interests, I only list his favorite role of mine as the lead on The Tick. Shane Rimmer is a Canadian Oh That Guy, but Google says he is best known for his voice work on Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's Thunderbirds Are Go!, which I didn't list. My rules about voice work are in place mostly to keep from typing all morning, but I readily admit that "rules" is a poor description of how I do the selection process when it comes to voice work and "idiosyncratic pickiness" is a more apt description.

And while on the topic of idiosyncratic behavior, I only include Ian Fleming's name since it has been so long since I used the Flying Cars HELLZ YEAH label.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list, and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

 
Movies released
The Day After Tomorrow released 2004

Predictor: T. Baron Russell in A Hundred years Hence, published in 1905

Prediction: Every forward step in medicine serves to save alive some weakling that in a less advanced civilisation would die; and these survivors, possibly propagating their species, will have weak descendants, on whom whatever possibility of disease continues to exist will certainly fasten.

Reality: For a guy who calls himself an optimist, Russell is kind of an asshole sometimes. Getting rid of diseases like TB, polio and the childhood ailments like measles and chicken pox hasn't weakened the gene pool, it's just cut down on the amount of random death and disability from an otherwise healthy population. I'm giving zero points for this creepy old fashioned stuff.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

We re-arrange the regular weekly schedule for a birthday boy.


Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

5 February 2014

Birthdays
David Meunier b. 1973 (Revolution, Jericho, Buffy, Angel, Charmed)
Michael Sheen b. 1969 (Twilight Saga, Doctor Who, TRON: Legacy, Alice in Wonderland [2010], Underworld)
Laura Linney b. 1964 (The Mothman Prophecies, The Truman Show, Congo)
Barbara Hershey b. 1948 (Insidious, Once Upon a Time, Breakfast of Champions, The Invaders[TV])
Robin Sachs b. 1951 died 1 February 2013 (Resident Evil, Torchwood, Buffy, Star Trek: Voyager, Galaxy Quest, Babylon 5, The Lost World: Jurassic Park)
Tom Wilkinson b. 1948 (Batman Begins, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind)
Christopher Guest b. 1948 (actor, The Princess Bride, Night at the Museum : Battle of the Smithsonian, Small Soldiers, Heartbeeps; director, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman)
Charlotte Rampling b. 1946 (Babylon A.D., Angel Heart, Orca, Zardoz, The Avengers [1967])
H.R. Giger b. 1940 (illustrator, Necromicon, Giger’s Alien)
William S. Burroughs b. 1914 died 2 August 1997 (author, The Soft Machine, Naked Lunch, The Wild Boys: A Book of the Dead)
John Carradine b. 1906 died 27 November 1988 (Twilight Zone [1986], The Ice Pirates, Frankenstein Island, The Howling, The Sentinel, Land of the Giants, Lost in Space, The Green Hornet, Billy the Kid vs. Dracula, The Wizard of Mars, Twilight Zone [1960], Invisible Invaders, The Cosmic Man, Half Human)

Good birthday list today, lots of famous faces, but for iconic status, I went with an illustration from H.R. Giger, whose work brought a new twist to horror and science fiction back in the 1970s. I don't know who will get the Picture Slot next year, but John Carradine and his jillions of roles has the inside track at this early date.

Many happy returns to all the living on the list, and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.

Movies released
Spy Kids 3D: Game Over released 2003  
 

Prediction: On 5 Feb 1971, Piedmont, New Mexico is infected by a virus brought back from space by a satellite.

Predictor: The Andromeda Strain, released 12 March 1971

Reality: Okay, this is a little bit of a cheat. The date of the infection is actually before the release date of the movie. I've cheated like this once before with H.G. Wells' First Men in the Moon, but my excuse is both stories really count as science fiction. I also have to congratulate the producers for deciding to go with a relatively unknown cast of ordinary looking people, which made the story that much more believable.

As for alien viruses, it's possible, but most viruses are successful because they evolve in the environment, interacting with hosts they infect. Some random virus from outer space would have to get pretty damned lucky to land on a strange planet and fit right in.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

For a few more weeks, Thursday still belongs to Isaac Asimov.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE! 

7 January 2014

 Birthdays
Robert Sheehan b. 1988 (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, Misfits, Season of the Witch)
Lyndsy Fonseca b. 1987 (Kick-Ass, Kick-Ass 2)
Lauren Cohan b. 1982 (The Walking Dead, The Vampire Diaries, Supernatural)
Jeremy Renner b. 1971 (The Avengers, Thor, 28 Weeks Later, Angel)
David Yost b. 1969 (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers)
Nicolas Cage b. 1964 (National Treasure, Kick-Ass, Ghost Rider, Season of the Witch, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Vampire’s Kiss)
Mark Allen Shepherd b. 1961 (Deep Space Nine)
Robert Longo b. 1953 (director, Johnny Mnemonic)
Erin Gray b. 1950 (The Guild, Nuclear Hurricane, Jason Goes to Hell, Superboy, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century)
Terry Moore b. 1929 (Mighty Joe Young [1949 and 1998], Death Dimension, Batman)
William Peter Blatty b. 1928 (author, The Exorcist)Gene L. Coon b. 1924 died 8 July 1973 (writer, Star Trek)
Vincent Gardenia b. 1920 died 9 December 1992 (Little Shop of Horrors [1986], The Twilight Zone, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)
Alan Napier b. 1903 died 8 August 1988 (Batman, Twilight Zone, Premature Burial, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Island of Lost Women, The Mole People, The Invisible Man Returns, Cat People)

Interesting birthday list today. Jeremy Renner got the Picture Slot last year, so I was thinking about how to mix it up this year. Both Erin Gray and Lauren Cohan would be well-known faces and meet the Pretty Girl = Picture Slot criteria, and I was surprised at how much work Alan Napier did in genre. As for Nicolas Cage, sadly when you think about his over-acting, it's almost always in genre, which is sad because he did good work early in his career. But instead, I went with Star Trek and a character who never spoke on screen, though Quark often says Morn never shuts up. It should also be mentioned that writer Gene L. Coon is credited with the creation of the Klingons, the Prime Directive and Khan Noonien Singh.

Many happy returns of the day to the living on our list, and to Gene L. Coon, Vincent Gardenia and Alan Napier, thanks for all the memories.

Predictor: H.G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published 1933

Prediction: From May 1955 to November 1956, a worldwide epidemic of maculated fever kills half the world's population.

Reality: And with this, we bid a fond farewell to The Shape of Things to Come. Wells makes up a disease which is supposed to exist in baboons and gives it a name which was previously used to discuss typhus.

The reason the book is famously "prophetic" is that he predicted war in Europe starting in 1940 between the Germans and Poles and that the United States and Japan would also be combatants in a separate war in the 1940s. Other than that, the book gets a hell of a lot of stuff wrong and his attitude toward non-Englishmen - most especially the Americans and Irish - is exceedingly prejudiced. As of next Tuesday, we will get a new regular, Ray Kurzweil, making predictions about 2009 in his 1999 book The Age of Spiritual Machines.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

We hear from our Wednesday regular T. Baron Russell, not always accurate but a hell of a lot more cheery than Herbert George Wells.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

29 December 2013

Birthdays
Jude Law b. 1972 (Hugo, Repo Men, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortuante Events, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, A.I., eXistenZ, Gattaca)
Leonor Varela b. 1972 (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Blade II, Stargate:Atlantis)
Patrick Fischler b. 1969 (Grimm, Lost, Idiocracy, Star Trek: Enterprise, Angel, Charmed)
Andy Wachowski b. 1967 (director, The Matrix, V for Vendetta, Speed Racer, Cloud Atlas)
Dave McKean b. 1963 (artist, Sandman, Coraline, MirrorMask)
M.H. b. 1955 (blogger)
Jon Voight b. 1938 (Dracula: The Dark Prince, National Treasure, Transformers, Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, Anaconda)
Barbara Steele b. 1937 (Dark Shadows[TV], Piranha, She Beast, Castle of Blood, Nightmare Castle, Castle of Blood, The Ghost, Pit and the Pendulum, Black Sunday)

I was a little surprised at how much of Jude Law's career has been in genre films and considered putting him in the Picture Slot, but instead you are looking at a picture of the 1960s scream queen Barbara Steele.

Many happy returns of the day to all mentioned.

Movies released
Twelve Monkeys released, 1995
 
 

Prediction: Starting In 1996, a pandemic virus is released that forces the survivors to live underground.

Predictor: Twelve Monkeys released 29 December 1995

Reality: Like the plot of The Terminator, one man is sent back to the past to avoid an apocalypse. Since The Terminator was made in the 1980s, the great fear was nuclear war, but in Twelve Monkeys, made in the 1990s, the threat was some biological terror escaping from a lab.

The reality of time travel is that it's very tough to accomplish and if it did work, it would take huge amounts of energy. You have to wonder how people living in a post-apocalyptic hellhole could pull it off.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Yet another prediction from a 1990s movie, this one about what will happen in Los Angeles in the last days of 1999.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

8 December 2013

 Birthdays
AnnaSophia Robb b. 1993 (Bridge to Terabithia, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Jumper, Race to Witch Mountain)
Ian Somerhalder b. 1978 (The Vampire Diaries, Lost, Smallville)
Dominic Monaghan b. 1976 (Lord of the Rings, FlashForward, Lost, X-Men Origins: Wolverine)
Tyler Mane b. 1966 (X-Men, Halloween[2007])
Matt Adler b. 1966 (Chronicle, Smallville)
Teri Hatcher b. 1968 (Smallville, Spy Kids, Lois & Clark, Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Kevin McNulty b. 1955 (Fantastic Four, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate: Atlantis, Smallville, Andromeda, Dark Angel, Millenium[TV], The X-Files, Timecop)
Kim Basinger b. 1953 (Batman, Cool World, My Stepmother is an Alien)
Rick Baker b. 1950 (Make-Up and special effects, Men in Black, Tron: Legacy, X-Men: The Last Stand, Hellboy, Planet of the Apes, Escape From L.A., Starman, An American Werewolf in London, Star Wars, King Kong)
Belinda Belaski b. 1947 (Gremlins, The Howling)
John Rubenstein b. 1946 (Star Trek: Enterprise, Charmed, Angel, Star Trek: Voyager, The Boys From Brazil)
Mary Woronov b. 1943 (Death Race 2000, Buck Rogers in the 21st Century, Night of the Comet, Babylon 5)
David Carradine b. 1936 died 3 June 2009 (Dinocroc vs. Supergator, Death Race 2000, Nightfall, Charmed, Q)
Maximilian Schell b. 1930 (Deep Impact, The Black Hole)
Dewey Martin b. 1923 (The Thing From Another World, The Outer Limits, Twilight Zone)
Richard Fleischer b. 1916 died 25 March 2006 (director, Red Sonja, Conan the Destroyer, Soylent Green, Fantastic Voyage, Doctor Doolittle, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea)
Georges Méliès b. 1861 died 21 January 1938 (director, A Trip to the Moon, The Hallucinated Alchemist, Gulliver’s Travels, 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea)

A long list today, all movies and TV. A few well-known stars, more than enough fabulous babes to choose from, but I would like to note the people behind the scenes. Rick Baker has done some great make-up and special effects, as well as a lot of on-screen time dressed as a gorilla. Richard Fleischer directed a lot of well-known genre films, notably the 1954 Walt Disney produced 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of the first big budget sci-fi hits, finishing second in the year's box office to White Christmas and just ahead of Rear Window. But it is the first born on our list, Georges Méliès, who gets the Picture Slot, making the first special effects in films back when films were still brand new. It is no surprise that a fellow who decided to put such things on film started his career as a magician.

Many happy returns of the day to all the living on the list, and to the dead, we give thanks for their work as pioneers.

Prediction: By 2010, seven million people in South Africa will have died from AIDS/HIV.

Predictor: 2002 report by NMG-Levy, South African Labor relations organization, reported in Our Final Hour by Martin Rees

Reality: Rees is a glum bastard, I'll give him that. Looking at the chart, the blue line is the best estimate of deaths, the red line is the high threshold and the green the low for the 95% confidence interval. The black line at 7,000,000 is at the very top of the graph, and as we can see even the high estimate is nowhere near it. In 2002, the total number of death crossed one million, but in 2010, around four million people have died of the disease since 1990 when numbers were first tracked. This looks like exponential growth, but in fact the numbers are slowing down. It's hard to be proud or optimistic when there are still 300,000 people dying a year from the disease in this country, but according the numbers from the World Health Organization, it looks like the epidemic is on the wane after two decades of steady growth.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Strange events on the moon are uncovered by filmmakers in 2012. Could lunar beings control life on Earth?

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!  

22 September 2013

 Birthdays
Tom Felton b. 1987 (Harry Potter)
Tatiana Maslany b. 1985 (Orphan Black)
Godfrey Gao b. 1984 (The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones)
Laura Vandervoort b. 1984 (Smallville, V, Ted)
Billie Piper b. 1982 (Doctor Who)
MyAnna Buring b. 1979 (Twilight: Breaking Dawn)
Daniella Alonso b. 1978 (Revolution)
Mireille Enos b. 1975 (World War Z)
Frazer Hines b. 1944 (Doctor Who)
Toni Basil b. 1943 (Village of the Giants)
Samuel A. Peeples b. 1917 died 26 August 1997 (writer, Star Trek)

Today's birthday list has a bunch of choices for Pretty Girl = Picture Slot. Every female on the list qualifies. If I was going to go with the face best known to the public, it would probably by Tom Felton as Draco Malfoy. But I chose Tatiana Maslany, who is so good in the Canadian sci-fi show Orphan Black that airs on BBC America, playing a remarkable number of roles very effectively. If you haven't seen the show, I recommend finding it. I bought it on iTunes and I'm looking forward to the second season, which will air next year. 

Many happy returns of the day to all the living on this list.
 

Prediction: In June 2001, the Fourth Martian Expedition lands and this one survives, because the Martian population has been wiped out by the chicken pox.

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

Reality: Bradbury gave the Martians magical powers and an implacable hatred for humans, so if the stories were going to move beyond "crew lands, sees amazing things, gets killed", the Martians had to be out of the picture and Bradbury decided on chicken pox as the culprit, brought unwittingly by previous expeditions, which he plays as both tragic and slightly ridiculous.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

What with preemptions and such, it's been over a month since we heard from the folks who brought us The OMNI Future Almanac, that 1982 treasure trove of predictions that should have already happened or are just around the corner. While they aren't always correct, they are big on exact years, which makes them a favorite of mine.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
 

25 July 2013

Birthday
D.B. Woodside b. 1969 (Buffy)

Mr. Woodside's best known role is likely on 24, but genre fans might remember him as the principal of Sunnydale High School once it was rebuilt. Many happy returns of the day to Mr. Woodside.
 

Prediction: In 1935 and 1937, the world was swept by influenza epidemics of unusual virulence.

Predictor: H.G. Wells in The Shape of Things to Come, published 1933

Reality: Wells' book paints a pretty dismal picture of the remaining years of the 20th Century. The eventually successful flu vaccine creation started in 1931, but didn't get put in place until World War II. No flu epidemic since 1918 compares to the slaughter of that awful year, and unless the anti-vaccination movement becomes much bigger than it is now, we are very unlikely to see a repeat of that catastrophe.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!


Another Friday is upon us, and that means another French postcard.



Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!