Heath Ledger b. 1979 died 22 January 2008 (The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, The Dark Knight, The Brothers Grimm)
Natasha Lyonne b. 1979 (4:44 Last Day on Earth, Blade: Trinity, Modern Vampires)
Barry Pepper b. 1970 (Battlefield Earth, Sliders, Highlander [TV])
Lisa Hammer b. 1967 (The Venture Brothers, Frankenstein and the Creature from the Blood Cove)
David Cross b. 1964 (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Men in Black II, Small Soldiers)
Robert Downey Jr. b. 1965 (Avengers, Iron Man, Incredible Hulk, A Scanner Darkly, The Shaggy Dog, Weird Science)
Hugo Weaving b. 1960 (The Hobbit, Cloud Atlas, Captain America: The First Avenger, Transformers, The Wolfman, Lord of the Rings, V for Vendetta, The Matrix)
Phil Morris b. 1959 (Smallville, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Star Trek: Voyager, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Dark Planet, Babylon 5, Star Trek III; The Search for Spock, Star Trek)
Tim White b. 1952 (artist)
Dan Simmons b. 1948 (won 1990 Hugo for Hyperion)
Craig T. Nelson b. 1944 (The Incredibles, Creature, Poltergeist, Wonder Woman, Flesh Gordon, Scream Blacula Scream, The Return of Count Yorga)
Kenneth Mars b. 1935 died 12 February 2011 (Weird Science [TV], Lois & Clark, M.A.N.T.I.S., Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, The Twilight Zone [1986], Misfits of Science, Project U.F.O., Wonder Woman, Young Frankenstein)
Anthony Perkins b. 1932 (The Black Hole, On the Beach)
Andrei Tarkovsky b. 1932 died 29 December 1986 (director , Solaris [1972])
Peter Vaughan b. 1923 (Game of Thrones, Brazil, Time Bandits)
David White b. 1916 died 27 November 1990 (Bewitched, The Incredible Hulk, Wonder Woman, The Amazing Spider-Man [1977], The Six Million Dollar Man, My Favorite Martian, Twilight Zone)
Richard Coogan b. 1914 died 12 March 2014 (Captain Video and his Video Rangers)
Last year, the Picture Slot went to Hugo Weaving. This year it's Robert Downey Jr. This is an incredibly deep list of actors, but those two are not only well-known, but their roles in genre films are as well known as anything else they have done. Just because of my idiosyncratic interest, I might go with a picture of Trianna from The Venture Brothers on another 4th of April. Heath Ledger as The Joker is another possibility and I might get in a Game of Thrones mood and put up Peter Vaughn as Maester Aemon.
Long story short, this is a heck of a list. Many happy returns to all the living, and to the dead, thanks for all the memories.
Movies released
The Adjustment Bureau released 2011
Prediction: On 4 April 1984, Winston Smith begins writing his diary
Reality: As an accurate prediction, 1984 is not very good. As speculative fiction, it's a masterpiece.
I told this story last year, but it bears repeating. I first got the idea for This Day in Science Fiction about twenty years ago and I thought it would be a day calendar with fun facts and predictions. Back then, researching sci-fi with exact dates was much more of a challenge, and I would go to the library and skim through books at high speed, hoping an exact date would show up. Of all the books I skimmed like this, including Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Larry Niven, William Gibson and many more, 1984 was the only one that made me slow down and read. I would start a paragraph and I'd want to read to the end, and that would make me want to read the whole chapter. Quite simply, I was reading the others as research, but I read Orwell for the pleasure of reading.
Orwell drank himself to death, a sadly common form of slow suicide back in the mid 20th Century. But damn, could that motherfucker write.
Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!
The regular schedule is again interrupted from a prediction about 2018.
Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!
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