6 September 2013

Birthdays
Idris Elba b. 1972 (Prometheus, Thor)
China Miéville b. 1972 (won 2010 Hugo for The City & the City)
Patti Yasutake b. 1953 (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Max Schreck b. 1879 died 20 February 1936 (Nosferatu)

Elba is likely better known as Stringer Bell on The Wire and Ms. Yasutake was Nurse Ogawa, but I gave the Picture Slot to Max Schreck in his iconic role in the silent vampire movie that pre-dated Dracula.

Many happy returns to the living.

 

Prediction and predictor: In 1992, Harold Camping publishes a book 1994? that predicts a strong likelihood Christ will return in September 1994.

Reality: Camping made a huge spectacle of himself in 2011, but he had already made a smaller similar mistake in the early 1990s. There's even a question mark in the title, but I remember seeing a few bumper stickers on cars in the Bay Area. (Camping's Family Radio network is headquarted in Oakland.) It's easy to mock Camping and he obviously has earned it, but I think it would be wrong to call him a charlatan. He spent almost all his fortune in 2011 getting the word out.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

An exact date for the end of the world, this time with nukes in 1974.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

5 September 2013

Birthdays
Skandar Keynes b. 1991 (Narnia)
Carice Van Houten b. 1976 (Game of Thrones, Repo Men)
Paddy Considine b. 1974 (The World’s End)
Rose MacGowan b. 1973 (Charmed, Grindhouse)
Michael Keaton b. 1951 (Batman, Beetlejuice)
William Devane b. 1939 (The X-Files, Stargate SG-1, The Dark Knight Rises)

An all-actor list today and I put pretty Ms. Van Houten in the Picture Slot for the usual reasons. Being old, I can remember when fandom got their panties in a bunch because Michael Keaton was cast as Batman, and that worked out pretty well.

Many happy returns of the day to all concerned.

Prediction:September 2012: Army doctor Lt. Colonel Robert Neville is the last healthy human in New York City immune to a virus turning humans into vampires.

Predictor: I Am Legend, released 12/14/2007

Reality: Fans of sci-fi will know that I Am Legend and the 1970s movie The Omega Man were both based on Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend. Both movies give dates five or six years after the movie is released for the time frame of when the crap hits the fan. And since this paragraph is entitled "reality", it should be noted have avoided the zombie/vampire/gun-nut/Mayan apocalypses so far.

Atlantic Hurricane Season prediction update

This has been a quiet storm season so far. September 1 is the midway point and there have been only seven named storms so far, none of them reaching hurricane level. The current storm - titled Tropical Depression Seven in the illustration - has now become Tropical Storm Gabrielle and made landfall in Puerto Rico in the past few hours. As it goes back over the water, it is predicted to become the first hurricane of the season, which will set a record for the latest first hurricane. The track is currently moving away from the mainland of North America, but Bermuda may get hit early next week. Best wishes to everyone in the path.

As a reminder, the prediction was for 12 to 20 named storms this season, with 16 being the most likely. If the last three months are the same as the first three, the total will be 12. The Next update will be December 1.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Yet again the end of the world is predicted, this time for September 1994, though the predictor can hardly be said to be in the genre.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

4 September 2013

Copyright 1997 PTN Consortium

Birthdays
John DiMaggio b. 1968 (Futurama, Princess Mononoke, Adventure Time)
Wes Bentley b. 1978 (The Hunger Games)
Patricia Tallman b. 1957 (Babylon 5)
Dick York b. 1928 died 20 February 1992 (Bewitched, Twilight Zone)

I sometimes do not include voice actors on the birthday list, especially actors who have never appeared in a live action genre film but have given voice to an animated character. (Ray Romano in Ice Age is an example.) But John DiMaggio's career is almost entirely as a voice actor with many important roles in genre, the best known of which is probably Bender on Futurama.

The Picture Slot goes to Patricia Tallman as the psychic Lyta Alexander on Babylon 5, which isn't on the air anywhere on cable or even streamable on Netflix or Hulu. This is a damn shame, because it's become famous for being obscure (at least that's the gag that is used on The Big Bang Theory) and it is every bit as watchable as the Star Trek franchises that were its contemporaries, Next Generation and Deep Space Nine.

Many happy returns to the living. 
 

Prediction: We have no conception of means by which the cold depths of interplanetary space may be traversed. Even if we allow imagination, untrammelled by the most evident necessities of the case, to suggest a speed of transport computable only by astronomical analogies, we still lag behind anything which could serve this purpose, unless we concurrently believe that human life shall, by that time, be lengthened into centuries. Otherwise, however recklessly we may conceive of speed in interplanetary travel, man would almost require to live for many centuries in order to reach and return from any destination which would not inevitably destroy him by fire or cold when he arrived at it. Most likely man is for ever destined to accept the bounds of his own planet, and to be limited by its resources.

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


Reality: Many science fiction fans would give Russell a big strikeout for this one, but I think he deserves a little credit. He's writing only a few years after the Wright Brothers fly at Kitty Hawk, so the technological advances to get to space craft are still decades away and that path of progress is very hard to see. More than that, he sees the problems that a lot of sci-fi writers gloss over, the incredible distances and the time it would take to traverse them. (To their credit, both Heinlein and Blish wrote stories about prolonging human life to make space travel possible.)

I'm going to give him half marks here. Since we made it to the moon, he's wrong about space travel, but his caveats about the difficulty explain why we aren't on Mars. Guys like Heinlein assumed we'd already be on Pluto by now.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Yet another prediction from a film based on Richard Matheson's most filmed story.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
  

Never to be Forgotten:Frederik Pohl 1919-2013

Frederik Pohl died yesterday at the age of 93. He was, among other things, a writer and editor. Besides his decades of work in science fiction, much of his early stuff under pen names, the Encyclopedia Brittanica employed him as an "official expert" on the Emperor Tiberius. He also wrote ad copy and wrote for Popular Science. He worked for a while as an agent, his best known client being Isaac Asimov. During World War II, he served in a bomber squadron in Italy, the 456th. (Another famous author, Joseph Heller, had similar service but in a different unit, the 488th.)

He won a Nebula for Man Plus, a Nebula and a Hugo for Gateway. He wrote many books in collaboration with other writers, including Lester Del Rey and Jack Williamson while all parties were alive and well, and he finished Arthur C. Clarke's The Last Theorem after Clarke died.

He didn't have much luck writing for films or TV. Tunnel Under the World was turned into an obscure Italian film. He wrote one episode of the 1952 sci-fi show Tales of Tomorrow and his stories were turned into episodes of the 1960s show Out of the Unknown and the somewhat better known though little loved 1980s series Tales from the Darkside.

A lot of his work attacks consumerism, including The Space Merchants, a dystopian satire about a planet ruled by ad agencies. No wonder so few of his stories were filmed.


Two different quotes are called Pohl's Law. The first is "Nobody is ever ready for anything." The second is "Nothing is so good that somebody, somewhere will not hate it." 

As a mathematician, I am always looking for a counter-example for any general statement. I believe I can refute the first version of Pohl's Law. The second version, on the other hand, is pretty much golden.

Best wishes to the family and friends of Frederik Pohl, from a fan. May he never be forgotten.

3 September 2013

Birthdays
Garrett Hedlund b. 1984 (Tron, Eragon)
Clare Kramer b. 1974 (Buffy)
Merritt Butrick b. 1959 (Star Trek II and III, Star Trek: The Next Generation) died 3/17/1989
Valerie Perrine b. 1942 (Superman I and II, Slaughterhouse Five)

Today the Picture Slot goes to Clare Kramer playong Glory, the Big Bad on Season 5 of Buffy. I might switch it up next year to Valerie Perrine or even Merritt Butrick, who went to school in Marin County with my younger sisters.

Many happy returns to the living on the list.

Prediction: In 1999, Dr. Samuel Beckett finds a way to travel in time, inhabiting the bodies of others in the past.

Predictor: The TV show Quantum Leap, first airing in March 1989

Reality: Of course, we can't time travel yet, and certainly not like it was done on this show. We also haven't perfected hologram technology, a favorite gimmick in sci-fi TV and films from The Next Generation on. It should also be noted that the show is generally a nostalgia trip for baby boomers, as almost all the jumps are between the end of World War II to the end of the 1980s, never leaping into the future, not even into the 1990s beyond the air date of the show.

The only thing close to real in show is Al's hand held computer. The state of the art cellphones now are getting pretty darned good, but of course a 1999 cell phone was nothing like this.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Another prediction from our new Wednesday regular T. Baron Russell, looking into the century ahead from his vantage point in Edwardian London.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

2 September 2013

Birthdays
Salma Hayek b. 1966 (Spy Kids:Game Over, From Dusk Till Dawn, Dogma)
Keanu Reeves b. 1964 (The Matrix, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure)
Samuel A. Peeples b. 1917 died 27 August1997 (writer, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan)Mel Stuart b. 1928 died 9 August 2012 (director, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

When a fabulous babe is in the Picture Slot, I often look for somewhat modest photos that are not Cleavage Forward. I did not do this with Ms. Hayek because... reasons.

It's hard for me to believe Keanu Reeves will be 50 next year. I still think of him as a not very bright twenty something. I could be kind and say that's a testament to his acting skills, but you and I know that isn't true.

Many happy returns of the day to the living.

Prediction: In late summer, Hate Week begins.

Predictor: Nineteen Eighty Four, written by George Orwell in 1948

Reality: We haven't turned it into a special week's holiday every year, but a lot of politics today reminds me of Orwell's Two Minutes Hate. Right now we are being told why we should hate Syria, right wingers have Fox News and talk radio beating a constant drum of hatred towards Obama and the Democrats and websites like Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos and Media Matters are always digging up disgusting behavior from right wingers and Republicans, either media figures or politicians.

It gets exhausting.

Looking ahead one day... INTO THE FUTURE!

A prediction about 1999 from a 1989 TV show.

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!