5 June 2013

Birthday
Mark Wahlberg b. 1971 

Wahlberg's career has only a few genre films in it, including Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes, M. Night Shyamalan's The Happening and you could kinda sorta say Seth McFarlane's Ted.

It would be hard to choose a trio of directors who have done a better job of getting on my nerves.

But it's not their birthday, it's Mr. Wahlberg's, and the blog wishes him many happy returns.  

Prediction: Store Purchases by Tube. Pneumatic tubes, instead of store wagons, will deliver packages and bundles. These tubes will collect, deliver and transport mail over certain distances, perhaps for hundreds of miles. They will at first connect with the private houses of the wealthy; then with all homes. Great business establishments will extend them to stations, similar to our branch post-offices of today, whence fast automobile vehicles will distribute purchases from house to house.

Predictor: John Elfreth Watkins in The Ladies' Home Journal, published in 1900

Reality: Futurists were keen on pneumatic tubes. I can understand it. They made a cool noise and felt like watching a magic trick. I remember being in an office when I was a kid that had pneumatic tubes. They were big at drive-through banks back in the 1970s before automated tellers took over.

Watkins can be forgiven for thinking this was the wave of the future because both New York and Philadelphia had installed large scale pneumatic tube systems in the 1890s. According to the linked article, the cost was considered prohibitive by 1918 and the cities replaced the systems with auto delivery only. Watkins does get partial credit for assuming the automobile would make horse carts obsolete. Autos weren't rare in 1900 by any means, but they did have to share the road with horses everywhere and trolleys in most major cities.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Another prediction from H.G. Wells, this time about the future of war and architecture.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

4 June 2013

Birthday
James Callis b. 1971

Mr. Callis is best known as Baltar on the modern version of Battlestar Galactica. Many happy returns of his birthday to him.

Movies released
Post Impact released, 2004
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban released, 2004
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan released, 1982

Prediction: In 2010, a comet hits the Earth, starting a new ice age in the Northern Hemisphere

Predictor: Post Impact, released in 2004

Reality: This is the "big rock from space" movie you likely haven't heard of, unless you are a serious sci-fi fan like regular reader Ken Houghton, who asked if Deep Impact, one of the big budget Rock From Space movies was "the one with the dog".

Looking at the pictures online, I'd have to say Post Impact was "the one with the dog". Or "the one with Dean Cain". Or "the one where nobody flew into space to try to stop it". Or "the one where Johanna Taylor gets nekkid".

It is NOT "the one a lot of people saw". Box Office Mojo gives no ticket sales whatsoever. This one went straight to DVD.

As for the reality of the basic science, yes, a big meteor would mean a new ice age. As for happening in 2010, not so much.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

John Elfreth Watkins.

Regular readers need no more prompting.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

3 June 2013

Birthdays
Suzie Plakson b. 1958
Joe Haldeman b. 1943
(won 1976 Hugo and Nebula for The Forever War)
(won 1990 Nebula for the novella The Hemingway Hoax)
(won 1993 Nebula for the short story Graves)
(won 1999 Hugo and Nebula for Forever Peace)
(won 2006 Nebula for Camouflage)

When you list all his awards, you can see Haldeman is a Big Damn Deal in the world of printed sci fi, but does he look this good in a purple print jump suit? Even his mama would have to say no. And Ms. Plakson played a Vulcan and a (half) Klingon and a member of the Q continuum on Star Trek, one of a handful of people to play three roles as three different species.

Many happy returns to both Ms. Plakson and Mr. Haldeman.

Movies released
X-Men: First Class released, 2011  
 

Prediction: There will be great advancements in the field of microwave technique, whereby living rooms and their occupants will be heated by high-frequency waves from walls or ceiling and short waves will be used in the kitchen for roasting and baking, almost instantaneously, with far better results than in the past.

Predictor: Dr. Lee de Forest, "the Father of Radio" in 1952 (photo is not Dr. de Forest, but an early microwave cooker from 1937) quoted in Popular Mechanics.

Reality: Dr. de Forest was a self-promoter at the P.T. Barnum/Donald Trump level. He isn't Marconi, of course, the inventor of radio and he was keen of AM. Edwin Howard Armstrong is given credit for the more useful FM radio, though that credit was stolen from him through a long and vicious court battle with RCA.


Back to the prediction, he gets zero points for guessing we would heat rooms with microwaves and half points for saying it would be used in the kitchen and would be almost instantaneous, but gets marked down for saying it has far better results. Microwave cooking is to real cooking was margarine is to butter.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE! 


Our weekly routine is broken by a comet hitting the earth, plunging us into a new Ice Age. Boy, I hate when that happens, don't you?

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
 

2 June 2013

Birthdays
Jewel Staite b. 1982
Morena Baccarin b. 1979
Dominic Cooper b. 1978
Zachary Quinto b. 1977
Danny Strong b. 1974
Anthony Montgomery b. 1971

Lots of birthdays today, all but one on the low side of 40. There's a Whedonverse triple (Staite and Baccarin from Firefly/Serenity, Strong from Buffy), a pair from Star Trek (Quinto as the new Spock, Montgomery was Ensign Mayweather on Enterprise) and Cooper played Tony Stark's dad Howard in the Captain America movie.

All the actresses on Firefly were/are pretty, but they glammed up Morena Baccarin like crazy. It definitely worked, at least for me. I was always looking at her when she was on screen.

Cos she's purdy!

Prediction: In 1968, a secret government operation creates a time travel portal.

Predictor: The Time Tunnel, premiering in 1966

Reality: It's an Irwin Allen show. Reality ain't in it, mate. (Forgive me. I'm in the middle of re-reading Patrick O'Brian.)

As you might remember if you saw it, Robert Colbert and James Darren were thrown around in time and space and there was a control room in charge of finding them. Like Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, the cast was still very Caucasian, but at least there was one female regular, Lee Meriwether. It would be two more years before an Irwin Allen show had an integrated cast. (To be fair, Lost in Space had both males and females, but it was supposed to be a family unit more than a work situation.)

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Another prediction from the pages of Popular Mechanics, not always accurate but often with terrific illustrations.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

1 June 2013

Birthdays
Willow Shields b. 2000
Jonathan Pryce b. 1947
Brian Cox b. 1946
Rene Auberjonois b. 1940
Morgan Freeman b.1937

Ms. Shields played Primrose Everdeen, younger sister of the main character Katniss in The Hunger Games. The rest of the names, I hope, are well enough known to not need explanation. I went with Auberjonois as Odo for the Picture Slot because I think he is the actor whose best known role is in a genre TV show.

Many happy returns to everyone on the list.

Movies released
Snow White and the Huntsman released, 2012
Star Trek III: The Search For Spock released, 1984

Prediction: 6/1/2009: An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) set off by terrorists over the United States destroys communications, triggering a series of events that turn the U.S. into a third world nation.

Predictor: Dark Angel, TV series, first aired 10/3/2000

Reality: We don't need a nuclear attack to turn the U.S. into a third world country. We figured out how to do it with lower tax rates for the top earners and a housing crash.

We haven’t done that many high altitude nuclear tests, thank Odin, Vishnu and the Little Baby Jebus. An American test in 1962 code named Starfish Prime detonated a small nuclear device outside the atmosphere at about 400 km (250 miles) up over Johnson Atoll in the south Pacific. There was damage to electrical systems in Hawaii, knocking out some streetlights and setting off burglar alarms about 1500 km (~900 miles) away.

Science says EMP is real and the damage could be worse now than it was then due to our reliance on microprocessor technology. So far, the thing that isn’t real is terrorists getting nukes and the rocketry necessary to get a nuke into outer space where the detonation could do the most damage.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Another future date that has already passed, from the mind of Irwin Allen.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

31 May 2013

Birthday
Colin Farrell b. 1976

Mr. Farrell has made a lot of non-genre films, but the best known work he has done in the field would include Daredevil, Minority Report and the remake of Total Recall. The blog wishes him many happy returns of the day.
 

Prediction:1980: From a secret base hidden under a film studio, SHADO (Supreme Headquarters Alien Defense Organization) battles hostile aliens from a dying world.

Predictor: UFO, a 1970 British TV series produced by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson

Reality: Reality? C'mon, I already typed "Gerry and Sylvia Anderson". Reality don't enter into it, mate!

Big Ugly Stick removed from its protective casing: Okay, that's more like it.

Browsing around the Internet, there appear to be people still fond of this stinky cheese. If Irwin Allen was Star Trek's main competition when it started, Gerry and Sylvia Anderson were first major competitors just after, but they were constricted by tiny budgets and weak writing. The Andersons did learn a few lessons from Star Trek.

1. Put the women in outfits that are very tight or very skimpy, preferably both.
1a. Just to be fair, put some of the guys in outfits that are best described as "package forward".
2. There is no such thing as a wig that is "too ridiculous".
3. No amount of make-up can be considered "over the top".
4. Silver jumpsuits! Nothing says the future like silver jumpsuits!

Add to all this a level of smoking, drinking and sexual harassment at work that makes Mad Men look like a model of decorum and you start to get an idea why UFO was truly awful.

Star Trek had budget problems as well, but their problems were more along the lines of splurging too much on one episode and forcing the writers to keep all the action on the ship for a few episodes. Another option was to come up with scripts that could let them use costumes and sets that were easily borrowed from other Paramount productions, hence the Planet O' Nazis or Planet O' Gangsters or Planet O' Wyatt Earp Dream Sequence episodes.

UFO never splurged. The show looked cheap ass from beginning to end. Special effects looked almost exactly the same as the marionette shows they produced in the sixties, like Thunderbirds are Go! and Fireball XL-5. They made an effort to upgrade the moon base set late in the series, but the show was canceled after a single season and those sets were re-used in the next cheesy Gerry and Sylvia vehicle, Space:1999.

Several online sources make fun of the "two alien" rule. The aliens had special costumes and the budget was so tight they could only afford two of them, so there were never more than two aliens in a shot, even if there were more than two aliens in the script.

It's easy to make fun of the original Star Trek series as well, but it's a matter of degree. Compared to Irwin Allen and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, Gene Roddenberry looks like Ibsen compared to a Punch and Judy show.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

Again our regular weekly pattern is broken by an exact date, a post-apocalyptic vision that is almost livable. Maybe we should call it Apocalyse Lite.

 Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!

30 May 2013

Birthdays

Duncan Jones b. 1971
Mark Sheppard b. 1964
Colm Meaney b. 1953
Michael Piller b. 1948 died 11/1/2005

Jones is a director, Source Code and Moon his best known genre work. Sheppard is an actor and played recurring roles on Battlestar Galactica and Dollhouse.  Piller did a lot of writing for the Star Trek franchise and Meaney gets the picture slot for being the best known of all these guys.

Condolences to the family and friends of Piller, who died so young and many happy returns of the day to Jones, Sheppard and Meaney.

Prediction: 30 May 1887: Julian West falls into a coma, only to waken in the year 2000

Predictor: Edward Bellamy, in his 1888 novel Looking Backward:2000-1887

Reality: Unlike Rip Van Winkle who awakens with a long beard, West goes into a kind of suspended animation and wakes with no atrophy or aging whatsoever. If you want to know why this is so, I'll put it in the comments since it's technically a spoiler.

I waited until this day to mention Bellamy because it was the first exact date in his book. It is a hugely influential work and we will soon have predictions from books that were considered "answer novels" to this from several writers. Both Jack London and H.G. Wells acknowledge being influenced by Bellamy and several of the predictions of John Elfreth Watkins sound very much like descriptions from Bellamy's writing. Likewise, some pictures from the French and German postcards depict ideas found in this novel.

Without giving too much away, Bellamy envisions a socialist utopia but really does not discuss any struggles that would have had to take place to bring this paradise about. Almost all books influenced by his make the understandable artistic decision of actually having a plot, something Looking Backward lacks. We will actual predictions from the book later in the year.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE! 



We interrupt our regular Friday postcards with two names that have been known to make grown men shudder and wince in pain... Gerry and Sylvia Anderson!

You thought you could avoid them, that they were gone forever, didn't you? Foolish human.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!