Thomas Dekker b. 1987 (Star Trek: Generations, Village of the Damned, Star Trek: Voyager, Heroes, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, A Nightmare on Elm Street [2010])
Beau Garrett b. 1982 (TRON: Legacy, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer)
Sienna Miller b. 1981 (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Stardust)
Noomi Rapace b. 1979 (Prometheus)
Joe Manganiello b. 1976 (True Blood, Spider-Man)
Denzel Washington b. 1954 (The Book of Eli, Virtuosity)
Dame Maggie Smith b. 1934 (Harry Potter, Nanny McPhee Returns, Hook, Clash of the Titans)
Nichelle Nichols b. 1933 (Star Trek)
Stan Lee b. 1922 (Marvel Comics)
Lew Ayres b. 1908 died 30 December 1996 (Donovan’s Brain, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, The Questor Tapes, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, Damien: Omen II, Battlestar Galactica)
F.W. Murnau b. 1888 died 11 March 1931 (director, Nosferatu)
A long and varied list today of birthdays today. A lot of the good looking young people who have been in genre films and TV this century and two honest to Odin movie stars in Denzel Washington and Dame Maggie Smith. For my money, the two genre icons are Nichelle Nichols and Stan Lee, and as often happens when I allegedly flip a coin, pretty wins. I do love the story about Nichols considering quitting and being talked out of it by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who knew how important it was to have such a hopeful view of the future.
Many happy returns of the day to all the living on our list, and to Lew Ayres and F.W. Murnau, thanks for all the memories.
Favorite predictions published in 2013
Prediction: World War III will be fought with intercontinental missiles. The entire conflict will be over in 36 hours with millions of lives lost on both sides, though America will emerge victorious.
Predictor: General Henry "Hap" Arnold, reporting to his superiors in 1945, the findings illustrated and published in the November 19th, 1945 issue of LIFE magazine.
Reality: This prediction does not have a date of any kind assigned to it, which is usually a prerequisite on this blog. I decided to include it when it was kindly forwarded to me by Professor Ian Abrams of Drexel University because it is the start of the nuclear anxiety that was so strong in the global consciousness of the last half of the 20th Century. When Arnold wrote this, we were the only country with nuclear technology and intercontinental ballistic missiles had not been developed yet, but that situation changed soon enough. As luck would have it, all out, toe to toe nuclear confrontation with the Russkis never took place, though people were honestly and rightfully terrified by the Cuban Missile Crisis. More than that, there were several false alarms and accidents that happened during the Cold War that could have been disastrous.
This is the third time I've mentioned this prediction this year. Let's hope it isn't like Candyman. As a pre-caution, I was not looking in a mirror when I made the mentions.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
We return to previously unpublished predictions tomorrow with a warning of a pandemic that would send the human population underground.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
i can't help but notice that murnau was apparently a time traveller. i wonder if younger people get what it was like growing up under the bomb. with the bomb drills and missile sites all over and civil defense messages and fallout shelters, it was widely considered to be a not if but when question. not that growing up in the shadow of existential dread is all that unusual. kids now have global warming and mass extinction and water wars and resource depletion as omnipresent apparent inevitabilities. really, in that light my generation was relatively lucky. at least eing nuked would have probably been a quicker death.
ReplyDeleteHi, Clem. Thanks for the heads up on Murnau, the date has been fixed.
DeleteYou make an interesting point about the fear of the bomb. The other great fear in sci-fi from that time was overpopulation and a lack of food. We didn't blow ourselves up and food production has kept up with a still growing population, though the growth rate has slowed down.
Still, there was a lot of optimistic sci-fi from back in the day - notably Star Trek, 2001: A Space Odyssey and even The Jetsons. Today's sci-fi seems almost universally bleak, focusing on lack of resources and growing inequality.
Nichelle Nichols is still a darn good looking woman.
ReplyDelete