Science Fiction
Books at the Movies
by Jamelah Earle on Friday, April 29, 2005 08:13 pmAs you may or may not know, a film version of the Douglas Adams classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is opening in theaters this weekend. I know this book remains a popular favorite among many, so I thought I'd ask what you think about it being adapted into film. Do you plan to see it? Why or why not? If you catch it this weekend, be sure to give us a short review.
But now, because I'm fond of changing the subject, I'm going to, uh, change the subject. Even though it's often like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, the subject of books on film is capable of spurring debate among devotees of each form. (No, really. It is.) But beyond that, I think we can all agree that there are some film adaptations that shouldn't have happened, like, ever. (The Scarlet Letter, anyone?) We can all agree on this, yes?
But now, because I'm fond of changing the subject, I'm going to, uh, change the subject. Even though it's often like the proverbial comparison of apples and oranges, the subject of books on film is capable of spurring debate among devotees of each form. (No, really. It is.) But beyond that, I think we can all agree that there are some film adaptations that shouldn't have happened, like, ever. (The Scarlet Letter, anyone?) We can all agree on this, yes?
Rod Serling
by Bill Ectric on Wednesday, January 7, 2004 06:11 pm
It's common among Beat aficionados to scorn the popular media version of the Beats, especially the term "beatnik", and the stereotypical goatee-sporting hipster. But to a youngster growing up in a small town, like me, sensing there was more out there than what they taught in middle school, even the cliche hints of downtown jazz and nightlife and hip lingo were welcome. I could tell right away that Rod Serling was cool, from the subdued bongo drums in the opening theme to his sly, out-of-this-world countenance. He almost seemed to wink knowingly when he shared his imagination and vision with me, the viewer.
I remember the episode about the trumpet player, down on his luck and questioning his very reason for living. In a kind of jazz version of It's A Wonderful Life, the musician is hit by a car, killed, then finds himself hanging out with another, older, trumpet player whose chiseled features, goatee, and night club suit are a sharp contrast to the pudgy angel Clarence in the Frank Capra classic, though he is an angel, nonetheless. After giving the young musician a new lease on life, we learn the angel's name as he makes his exit.
"I didn't catch your name!"
"Just call me Gabe," says the goateed veteran horn-blower. "Short for Gabriel." He holds up his trumpet to illustrate his point. Gabriel is the trumpet blowing angel in the Bible. But this wasn't my parents' church, it was the concrete-neon jungle where the hipsters dwell and Doctor Sax blows jazz in a smoky bar room.
The 12th Planet: Tale of Man’s Creation
by zen on Sunday, November 2, 2003 08:17 pmThe 12th Planet is book one in the Earth Chronicles series. Originally published in 1977, it is the original and most well known. The premise of his work, simply, is that life originated outside planet earth. It was transplanted to and genetically modified on here by an alien race of supermen-gods, know collectively as the Nefilim. If one can wrap his head around this concept, the research and work following is marginally easier to accept. Sitchin seeks to support a number of scientifically unpalatable and unpopular theories. Most of these challenge the prevailing paradigm of modern scientific thought.
Baffling questions regarding human origins, as well as those of agriculture, horticulture, animal development, and society in general, are ones that continuously haunt the hallowed halls of academia. Archeologists, anthropologists, and botanists alike are, at points, forced to throw their hands up in exasperated uncertainty when examining the origins of ancient man and his society. We are plagued with inconsistencies and apparent holes in our timeline of development. Prevailing intellectual theories seem little equipped to effectively answer these queries.
Sitchin strings together facts, figures, illustrations, and analyses from a most diverse range of disciplines and sources. An interesting explanation is created, at least fairly plausibly explaining man's ancient past. At first blush, his account is at once coherent and incredibly fanciful. It's generally easier to believe his facts and translations are wrong than to believe his conclusions.
An example of an inconsistency in man's development is shown immediately:
The first being considered to be truly manlike -- advanced Australopithecus -- existed in...Africa some 2,000,000 years ago. It took yet another million years to produce Homo erectus. Finally, after another 900,000 years, the first primitive Man appeared, his name Neanderthal
Accepted modern sciences agree evolution unfolds on a massive scale of years. However, it seems that where it relates to modern man, i.e. Homo sapiens, this scale is condensed. It is reduced by an order of 10 to 100 times.
The appearance of Modern Man a mere 700,000 years after Homo Erectus and some 200,000 years before Neanderthal Man is absolutely implausible. It is clear that Homo Sapiens represents such an extreme departure from the slow evolutionary process that many of our features, such as the ability to speak, are totally unrelated to other primates.
At task is the very origin of man. Or perhaps it is the standard, accepted origin that becomes questioned. Simple evolutionary theory is insufficient and too immature to explain man's premiere place on Earth. The Bible, literally taken, is also insufficient to competently explain man's origin. As Sitchin tells the reader, standard scientific explanations can't seem to explain why things happened. The Bible doesn't explain HOW. He discounts neither contemporary scientific discoveries, nor biblical accounts, however, the two seemingly opposed camps, combined with other mythological texts can be consulted to form a highly readable and somewhat credible theory of our beginnings on this planet. One such mythological text is Enuma Elish, the Sumerian Epic of Creation.
Although he mostly stays close, for obvious reasons, to the region of Mesopotamia, he delves into the issue of how many cultures, assumedly separated by impenetrable boundaries such as mountains and oceans have similarities. Examples include languages, symbols and signs (mostly zodiacal), creation myths, and pyramids. The prevailing theory holds that spontaneous development is responsible for cultures' development of tools and language. However, if cultures thousands of miles apart develop similar words, concepts and culturally-significant archeological buildings, does spontaneous development truly explain it? Sitchin would say no. There was a greater hand at work. This is the hand of the Nefilim.
Historically, various definitions of the Nefilim have been offered. The one accepted by Sitchin is "they who to Earth came." The standard translation most used by biblical scholars: "those who FELL to Earth"; makes them, essentially fallen angels. Obviously this is not a small point, according to Sitchin. If these are the gods, or the Divine Our, found in Our image of Genesis, then the Nefilim couldn't be fallen angels. This is relevant as he asserts that the Nefilim are our creators.
It is these Nefilim who lived, and still live, on the twelfth planet, called Nibiru. We'd been visited many times previously, but around 50,000 years ago they colonized Earth, starting with Mesopotamia. In the process Modern Man was invented. The process was genetic experimentation with many awful by-products resulting. It seemed that the Nefilim, also called Annunaki in Sumerian texts, were gods. Sitchin supports the theory that Man's development radically changed and advanced every 3,600 years. That is the span of time that Nibiru takes to orbit our sun. They are due to come back somewhat soon, although no return date has been offered.
Opinion:
My take on the work is that it is fascinating. Obviously I'm not being critical of his work. If anything, modern science needs the criticism. I'm not certain about some of his translations, however. They seem far-fetched. For example: the Sumerian KA.GIR translated literally is rocket's mouth (170). Conversely, when looking at the chart with the words KA.GIR, ESH, ZIK, and DIN.GIR; rocket's mouth, Divine Abode, ascend, and righteous ones of the bright pointed objects (169) respectively, they are a curio together. Their shapes are interesting, and in context, they could resemble rocket ships or command modules.
It would be a mistake to literally depend on any book, including some of the obvious ones. But I ask myself, "what if?" If we can accept that the ancient Sumerians know something about flying, then it makes sense why they had such extensive astrological lists and texts. What would a farming community need with advanced astrological texts, when a simple calendar would suffice? Additionally, if the kings and gods were one-in-the-same, coming down from heaven, then it is important to have terms for flying, coming down, landing, space craft, etc. as the Sumerian language has.
Of course, when we talk about myths, we've been told they're metaphorical. Perhaps even the pictures carved into stone and preserved on clay tablets are only metaphorical, also. At our point in time, the illustration of a female deity sitting in a room, with rows that look amazingly like test tubes, is only metaphorical. If it's not genetic testing, what is it then? It's obviously only decoration. (It seems that modern archaeologists and anthropologists promulgate that tired old rhetoric anytime confronted by facts that they can't neatly, conveniently rubric into an established pigeonhole.) But then when the dust clears from these arguments, we're still left wondering how so many new, previously non-existent varieties of foods evolved over such a tiny fraction of time. All of them, magically, capable of nourishment.
I don't think Sitchin has to be 100% right. I don't think he is 100% right. Suppose he's only 10% correct about what he says. That sure makes things interesting, as a plausible alternate explanation for why things are. There's tons of stuff on this planet that we just can't explain. I'm not even talking about hauntings and evil spirits and stomach stapling. I'm not talking about why we call the pyramid a tomb when there was no evidence anyone was ever buried in one, while actual burial chambers were found on a different location. I'm simply talking about the tablets and sculpture culled from the ground with the weird pictures and words, which strike amazingly resonant with our modern world.
Baffling questions regarding human origins, as well as those of agriculture, horticulture, animal development, and society in general, are ones that continuously haunt the hallowed halls of academia. Archeologists, anthropologists, and botanists alike are, at points, forced to throw their hands up in exasperated uncertainty when examining the origins of ancient man and his society. We are plagued with inconsistencies and apparent holes in our timeline of development. Prevailing intellectual theories seem little equipped to effectively answer these queries.
Sitchin strings together facts, figures, illustrations, and analyses from a most diverse range of disciplines and sources. An interesting explanation is created, at least fairly plausibly explaining man's ancient past. At first blush, his account is at once coherent and incredibly fanciful. It's generally easier to believe his facts and translations are wrong than to believe his conclusions.
An example of an inconsistency in man's development is shown immediately:
The first being considered to be truly manlike -- advanced Australopithecus -- existed in...Africa some 2,000,000 years ago. It took yet another million years to produce Homo erectus. Finally, after another 900,000 years, the first primitive Man appeared, his name Neanderthal
Accepted modern sciences agree evolution unfolds on a massive scale of years. However, it seems that where it relates to modern man, i.e. Homo sapiens, this scale is condensed. It is reduced by an order of 10 to 100 times.
The appearance of Modern Man a mere 700,000 years after Homo Erectus and some 200,000 years before Neanderthal Man is absolutely implausible. It is clear that Homo Sapiens represents such an extreme departure from the slow evolutionary process that many of our features, such as the ability to speak, are totally unrelated to other primates.
At task is the very origin of man. Or perhaps it is the standard, accepted origin that becomes questioned. Simple evolutionary theory is insufficient and too immature to explain man's premiere place on Earth. The Bible, literally taken, is also insufficient to competently explain man's origin. As Sitchin tells the reader, standard scientific explanations can't seem to explain why things happened. The Bible doesn't explain HOW. He discounts neither contemporary scientific discoveries, nor biblical accounts, however, the two seemingly opposed camps, combined with other mythological texts can be consulted to form a highly readable and somewhat credible theory of our beginnings on this planet. One such mythological text is Enuma Elish, the Sumerian Epic of Creation.
Although he mostly stays close, for obvious reasons, to the region of Mesopotamia, he delves into the issue of how many cultures, assumedly separated by impenetrable boundaries such as mountains and oceans have similarities. Examples include languages, symbols and signs (mostly zodiacal), creation myths, and pyramids. The prevailing theory holds that spontaneous development is responsible for cultures' development of tools and language. However, if cultures thousands of miles apart develop similar words, concepts and culturally-significant archeological buildings, does spontaneous development truly explain it? Sitchin would say no. There was a greater hand at work. This is the hand of the Nefilim.
Historically, various definitions of the Nefilim have been offered. The one accepted by Sitchin is "they who to Earth came." The standard translation most used by biblical scholars: "those who FELL to Earth"; makes them, essentially fallen angels. Obviously this is not a small point, according to Sitchin. If these are the gods, or the Divine Our, found in Our image of Genesis, then the Nefilim couldn't be fallen angels. This is relevant as he asserts that the Nefilim are our creators.
It is these Nefilim who lived, and still live, on the twelfth planet, called Nibiru. We'd been visited many times previously, but around 50,000 years ago they colonized Earth, starting with Mesopotamia. In the process Modern Man was invented. The process was genetic experimentation with many awful by-products resulting. It seemed that the Nefilim, also called Annunaki in Sumerian texts, were gods. Sitchin supports the theory that Man's development radically changed and advanced every 3,600 years. That is the span of time that Nibiru takes to orbit our sun. They are due to come back somewhat soon, although no return date has been offered.
Opinion:
My take on the work is that it is fascinating. Obviously I'm not being critical of his work. If anything, modern science needs the criticism. I'm not certain about some of his translations, however. They seem far-fetched. For example: the Sumerian KA.GIR translated literally is rocket's mouth (170). Conversely, when looking at the chart with the words KA.GIR, ESH, ZIK, and DIN.GIR; rocket's mouth, Divine Abode, ascend, and righteous ones of the bright pointed objects (169) respectively, they are a curio together. Their shapes are interesting, and in context, they could resemble rocket ships or command modules.
It would be a mistake to literally depend on any book, including some of the obvious ones. But I ask myself, "what if?" If we can accept that the ancient Sumerians know something about flying, then it makes sense why they had such extensive astrological lists and texts. What would a farming community need with advanced astrological texts, when a simple calendar would suffice? Additionally, if the kings and gods were one-in-the-same, coming down from heaven, then it is important to have terms for flying, coming down, landing, space craft, etc. as the Sumerian language has.
Of course, when we talk about myths, we've been told they're metaphorical. Perhaps even the pictures carved into stone and preserved on clay tablets are only metaphorical, also. At our point in time, the illustration of a female deity sitting in a room, with rows that look amazingly like test tubes, is only metaphorical. If it's not genetic testing, what is it then? It's obviously only decoration. (It seems that modern archaeologists and anthropologists promulgate that tired old rhetoric anytime confronted by facts that they can't neatly, conveniently rubric into an established pigeonhole.) But then when the dust clears from these arguments, we're still left wondering how so many new, previously non-existent varieties of foods evolved over such a tiny fraction of time. All of them, magically, capable of nourishment.
I don't think Sitchin has to be 100% right. I don't think he is 100% right. Suppose he's only 10% correct about what he says. That sure makes things interesting, as a plausible alternate explanation for why things are. There's tons of stuff on this planet that we just can't explain. I'm not even talking about hauntings and evil spirits and stomach stapling. I'm not talking about why we call the pyramid a tomb when there was no evidence anyone was ever buried in one, while actual burial chambers were found on a different location. I'm simply talking about the tablets and sculpture culled from the ground with the weird pictures and words, which strike amazingly resonant with our modern world.
Ray Bradbury
by Jay Meija on Sunday, July 20, 2003 01:20 pm"The act of writing is, for me, like a fever -- something I must do. And it seems I always have some new fever developing, some new love to follow and bring to life.
"I've never doubted myself; I've always been so completely devoted to libraries and books and authors that I couldn't stop to consider for a moment that I was being foolish. I only knew that writing was in itself the only way to live."
--Ray Bradbury
It was the summer of 1990 and I was in Los Angeles on assignment to cover a national convention of health professionals and dieticians. The LA riots were light years away, not many people paid attention to some place called Iraq, and O.J. Simpson was considered a hero. George Bush was in the White House, George Herbert Walker Bush.
"I've never doubted myself; I've always been so completely devoted to libraries and books and authors that I couldn't stop to consider for a moment that I was being foolish. I only knew that writing was in itself the only way to live."
--Ray Bradbury
It was the summer of 1990 and I was in Los Angeles on assignment to cover a national convention of health professionals and dieticians. The LA riots were light years away, not many people paid attention to some place called Iraq, and O.J. Simpson was considered a hero. George Bush was in the White House, George Herbert Walker Bush.
Howard Waldrop And The Future Of Science Fiction
by Pete J. on Sunday, April 20, 2003 04:27 pmWhat are the new circumstances - and how might we react to them?
That's a question that the best of science fiction tackles - the best in the old genre traditions dating back to the thirties and before. And happily, last week.
Due to a chain of coincidence stretching back years, I've come into temporary possession of an advance copy of something called Custer's Last Jump and other collaborations by a fellow named Howard Waldrop. This novelist and short story writer has, as is the fashion among some in this business, done projects with others in addition to alone, and the stories here originate from very recently to up to 25 years ago. For background, he thoughtfully gives space to the collaborators for an afterword as well as to himself for a forward, thus building an explanatory package for each piece. I've never met Howard Waldrop but two of his collaborators (via certain obscure fan groups) I do know: Joe Pumilia (unanthologised here but mentioned repeatedly) I know from his Lovecraft parodies with Bill Wallace from as far back as the 1970's - and a NASA subcontractor named Al Jackson. Waldrop and Pumilia are primarily writers; Jackson is, to paraphrase Waldrop, a wearer of T-shirts that say "Rocket Scientist" who can actually back it up. The existence of the book in question, its assembly by a roundup of quite unusual suspects (some Hugo and Nebula nominees and winners) and the events surrounding its construction form an example of what's kept me interested in SF: that there's a cross-pollination between fictional situation construction (writing) and the Real Deal data (science) that, when it occurs, creates milestone stories. Put those high-point tales together with their imitators and you have a genre.
It's happened again. And again. Take the alternate history angle, an example of which would be Mackinley Kantor's If The South Had Won The Civil War. Add a few flip-flops in the order of scientific discovery and you get Waldrop and Steve Utley's Custer's Last Jump, in which the same personalities of the relevant period have a different technological background against which to act out their parts on the world stage. Utley/Waldrop shuffles the deck of innovations arriving over, say, a 40-year period and such results emerge as
-the existence of rudimentary airplanes and dirigibles at the outbreak of the civil war
-the continuation of Indian nation pacification efforts regardless of whatever else happened
- the possible residual effect of an Indian alliance with the Confederacy against the Union forces
and you get a story of well-known historical struggles being played out in an environment of balloon-based paratroops and Crazy Horse having the chance to get hold of electrically-fired Sharpes repeaters stuck on the wingtips of something like an Avro...
Provocative.
Take the predictive history angle, an example of which would be the D. F. Jones novel Colossus, regarding a single computer entrusted with all national defense functions - which upon activation discovers a cold-war-era analogous machine on the "other side". Recall that the grand SF idea (at least as understood by me above) is that you take a known capability or group of them and try to see the outcome of the potential uses of said capability. If we can do X, what will it mean in the end? The Jackson collaboration, fueled by Al's life of empirical discovery, produced the problem of a robotic probe's realization of its own death (due to an unforeseen nova to which it got too close). Given the capacity for independent goal-directed action on the part of the probe, what solutions might it try to come up with on its OWN? And what if the solution involved the cannibalization of its own resources?
I use the Kantor and the Jones precedents not because of actual similarities but because I'm grasping at anything with which to draw comparisons. I can't actually say the stories in Waldrop's collaboration are "like" anything. They're "unlike" to the point of provoking things in me I'm not sure I've felt in a long time. Not all these provocations are pleasant; they sometimes resemble unwelcome surprises courtesy of the evening news. But we need surprises to be truly alive. Here they are.
By the evidence of Custer's Last Jump, science fiction is back. And never left, if only I'd known where to look. See, I'd wondered if SF had run its course, considering these recent years of fantasy emphasis, let alone Hollywood sequelization. I'd wondered if the people who could make the science connect with the fiction, with one foot in the real and another in the possible were no longer with us. But the difficulty of finding good literature may simply be another example of what radio people might call the "golden hits" effect - that it's easier to see the hits that have stood the test of time than it is to see a hit amongst all the dreck not yet weeded out. The good will rise to the top, but until it does we have our work cut out for us in finding the good stuff unassisted by history.
If this last is true, SF has a future; it's simply up to the reader to get back into the race and Waldrop's one of the runners that just handed us the baton.
That's a question that the best of science fiction tackles - the best in the old genre traditions dating back to the thirties and before. And happily, last week.
Due to a chain of coincidence stretching back years, I've come into temporary possession of an advance copy of something called Custer's Last Jump and other collaborations by a fellow named Howard Waldrop. This novelist and short story writer has, as is the fashion among some in this business, done projects with others in addition to alone, and the stories here originate from very recently to up to 25 years ago. For background, he thoughtfully gives space to the collaborators for an afterword as well as to himself for a forward, thus building an explanatory package for each piece. I've never met Howard Waldrop but two of his collaborators (via certain obscure fan groups) I do know: Joe Pumilia (unanthologised here but mentioned repeatedly) I know from his Lovecraft parodies with Bill Wallace from as far back as the 1970's - and a NASA subcontractor named Al Jackson. Waldrop and Pumilia are primarily writers; Jackson is, to paraphrase Waldrop, a wearer of T-shirts that say "Rocket Scientist" who can actually back it up. The existence of the book in question, its assembly by a roundup of quite unusual suspects (some Hugo and Nebula nominees and winners) and the events surrounding its construction form an example of what's kept me interested in SF: that there's a cross-pollination between fictional situation construction (writing) and the Real Deal data (science) that, when it occurs, creates milestone stories. Put those high-point tales together with their imitators and you have a genre.
It's happened again. And again. Take the alternate history angle, an example of which would be Mackinley Kantor's If The South Had Won The Civil War. Add a few flip-flops in the order of scientific discovery and you get Waldrop and Steve Utley's Custer's Last Jump, in which the same personalities of the relevant period have a different technological background against which to act out their parts on the world stage. Utley/Waldrop shuffles the deck of innovations arriving over, say, a 40-year period and such results emerge as
-the existence of rudimentary airplanes and dirigibles at the outbreak of the civil war
-the continuation of Indian nation pacification efforts regardless of whatever else happened
- the possible residual effect of an Indian alliance with the Confederacy against the Union forces
and you get a story of well-known historical struggles being played out in an environment of balloon-based paratroops and Crazy Horse having the chance to get hold of electrically-fired Sharpes repeaters stuck on the wingtips of something like an Avro...
Provocative.
Take the predictive history angle, an example of which would be the D. F. Jones novel Colossus, regarding a single computer entrusted with all national defense functions - which upon activation discovers a cold-war-era analogous machine on the "other side". Recall that the grand SF idea (at least as understood by me above) is that you take a known capability or group of them and try to see the outcome of the potential uses of said capability. If we can do X, what will it mean in the end? The Jackson collaboration, fueled by Al's life of empirical discovery, produced the problem of a robotic probe's realization of its own death (due to an unforeseen nova to which it got too close). Given the capacity for independent goal-directed action on the part of the probe, what solutions might it try to come up with on its OWN? And what if the solution involved the cannibalization of its own resources?
I use the Kantor and the Jones precedents not because of actual similarities but because I'm grasping at anything with which to draw comparisons. I can't actually say the stories in Waldrop's collaboration are "like" anything. They're "unlike" to the point of provoking things in me I'm not sure I've felt in a long time. Not all these provocations are pleasant; they sometimes resemble unwelcome surprises courtesy of the evening news. But we need surprises to be truly alive. Here they are.
By the evidence of Custer's Last Jump, science fiction is back. And never left, if only I'd known where to look. See, I'd wondered if SF had run its course, considering these recent years of fantasy emphasis, let alone Hollywood sequelization. I'd wondered if the people who could make the science connect with the fiction, with one foot in the real and another in the possible were no longer with us. But the difficulty of finding good literature may simply be another example of what radio people might call the "golden hits" effect - that it's easier to see the hits that have stood the test of time than it is to see a hit amongst all the dreck not yet weeded out. The good will rise to the top, but until it does we have our work cut out for us in finding the good stuff unassisted by history.
If this last is true, SF has a future; it's simply up to the reader to get back into the race and Waldrop's one of the runners that just handed us the baton.
J. G. Ballard
by asmadeus on Monday, November 18, 2002 09:26 am"People within the science fiction world never regarded me as one of them in the first place. They saw me as the enemy. I was the one who wanted to subvert everything they believed. I wanted to kill outer space stone dead. I wanted to kill the far future and focus on inner space and the next five minutes. And sci-fi'ers to this day don't regard me as one of them. I'm some sort of virus who got aboard and penetrated the virtue of science fiction and began to pervert its DNA." - Ballard in a 1995 interview with Spike Magazine
British author James Graham Ballard was born in Shanghai, China in 1930, where his father ran a textile company. He was only seven years old when the Japanese invaded China. After Pearl Harbor, the International Settlement was occupied, and the British living there were moved to a prison camp outside Shanghai - a camp that would be depicted in Ballard's 1984 novel of wartime memories - Empire of the Sun. In 1987, a movie adaptation was done by playwright/screenwriter Tom Stoppard and director Steven Spielberg.
After the war, Ballard moved to England, only to experience a major culture shock, having spent the first 15 years of his life in China - a culture shock some sources claim he has never fully recovered from. He started studying to become a psychiatrist, but gave it up after a few years, wanting to pursue writing as a career. His acquired knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology would nevertheless be put to good use in his literary production. One period, he would train with the RAF in Canada to learn how to fly, and his knowledge of aviation would also come to show in his literature.
Among his influences Ballard counts such artists as Dali, Magritte, and Ernst, and he considers William Burroughs to be one of the most important authors of the last century. He has claimed to not be "a literary man" and says he reads mostly non-fiction when not working on his own fiction.
The surrealist painters were also the main inspiration for Ballard's early, unpublished and allegedly highly experimental works, written in the late 40s/early 50s. His early science fiction short stories were published in magazines such as Science Fantasy and New Worlds Science Fiction, and Ballard mixed classic sci-fi elements and imitations of other writers of the genre with elements of the surreal. And this was, unsurprisingly, shortly after the publication of Burroughs' The Naked Lunch. His science fiction has been described as "a poet's vision of a haunted world".
Ballard published four science fiction novels and a number of short stories, before starting to move away from the genre with his 1970 novel The Atrocity Exhibition. In 1973, he published the hightly controversial Crash, a tale of eroticised car accidents, of which one editor famously proclaimed "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish!" David Cronenberg wrote the script for and directed the 1996 movie adaptation.
My personal Ballard favorite so far is the 1989 novella Running Wild, about the "Pangbourne Massacre". Here, too, some taboos are sacrificed, and these have to do mainly with family and children.
In the 1995 Spike interview, Ballard said that he has felt welcomed into the mainstream since the publication of Empire of the Sun, although he's not entirely sure that he wants to "be embraced by the mainstream". All in all though, it would be highly surprising should his work come to be remembered primarily as mainstream, and not as innovative, experimental, controversial and, at times, highly morbid.
Novels:
The Wind From Nowhere (1962)
The Drowned World (1962)
The Drought (1964)
The Crystal World (1966)
The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)
Crash! (1973)
Concrete Island (1974)
High Rise (1975)
The Unlimited Dream Company (1979)
Hello America (1981)
Empire of the Sun (1984)
Day of Creation (1987)
The Atrocity Exhibition (1990; Reissued with extensive annotations by Ballard)
The Kindness of Women (1991)
Running Wild (1989)
Rushing to Paradise (1994)
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Super-Cannes (2001)
This article first appeared on Everything2.com.
British author James Graham Ballard was born in Shanghai, China in 1930, where his father ran a textile company. He was only seven years old when the Japanese invaded China. After Pearl Harbor, the International Settlement was occupied, and the British living there were moved to a prison camp outside Shanghai - a camp that would be depicted in Ballard's 1984 novel of wartime memories - Empire of the Sun. In 1987, a movie adaptation was done by playwright/screenwriter Tom Stoppard and director Steven Spielberg.
After the war, Ballard moved to England, only to experience a major culture shock, having spent the first 15 years of his life in China - a culture shock some sources claim he has never fully recovered from. He started studying to become a psychiatrist, but gave it up after a few years, wanting to pursue writing as a career. His acquired knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathology would nevertheless be put to good use in his literary production. One period, he would train with the RAF in Canada to learn how to fly, and his knowledge of aviation would also come to show in his literature.
Among his influences Ballard counts such artists as Dali, Magritte, and Ernst, and he considers William Burroughs to be one of the most important authors of the last century. He has claimed to not be "a literary man" and says he reads mostly non-fiction when not working on his own fiction.
The surrealist painters were also the main inspiration for Ballard's early, unpublished and allegedly highly experimental works, written in the late 40s/early 50s. His early science fiction short stories were published in magazines such as Science Fantasy and New Worlds Science Fiction, and Ballard mixed classic sci-fi elements and imitations of other writers of the genre with elements of the surreal. And this was, unsurprisingly, shortly after the publication of Burroughs' The Naked Lunch. His science fiction has been described as "a poet's vision of a haunted world".
Ballard published four science fiction novels and a number of short stories, before starting to move away from the genre with his 1970 novel The Atrocity Exhibition. In 1973, he published the hightly controversial Crash, a tale of eroticised car accidents, of which one editor famously proclaimed "This author is beyond psychiatric help. Do not publish!" David Cronenberg wrote the script for and directed the 1996 movie adaptation.
My personal Ballard favorite so far is the 1989 novella Running Wild, about the "Pangbourne Massacre". Here, too, some taboos are sacrificed, and these have to do mainly with family and children.
In the 1995 Spike interview, Ballard said that he has felt welcomed into the mainstream since the publication of Empire of the Sun, although he's not entirely sure that he wants to "be embraced by the mainstream". All in all though, it would be highly surprising should his work come to be remembered primarily as mainstream, and not as innovative, experimental, controversial and, at times, highly morbid.
Novels:
The Wind From Nowhere (1962)
The Drowned World (1962)
The Drought (1964)
The Crystal World (1966)
The Atrocity Exhibition (1970)
Crash! (1973)
Concrete Island (1974)
High Rise (1975)
The Unlimited Dream Company (1979)
Hello America (1981)
Empire of the Sun (1984)
Day of Creation (1987)
The Atrocity Exhibition (1990; Reissued with extensive annotations by Ballard)
The Kindness of Women (1991)
Running Wild (1989)
Rushing to Paradise (1994)
Cocaine Nights (1996)
Super-Cannes (2001)
This article first appeared on Everything2.com.
Terry Nation
by slurpy on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 02:31 am"They talk of democracy, freedom, fairness. Those are the words of cowards. The ones who will listen to a thousand viewpoints and try to satisfy them all. Victory comes through absolute power and power through strength. They have lost!
Davros in The Genesis of the Daleks
Born on the 5th of November, 1930, Terrence Nation is still waiting for his 'big break' so to speak. Although he has achieved minor cult status in his native England, a reputation of any sort in America remains more or less invisible.
Belonging to a respectable but hard working East Sussex family, attendance in college (as well as high marks in A-level classes) was demanded of him by the parental units. As he was, to put it mildly, a school nerd, Terry was all too happy to oblige. At this point, he'd written many short stories in the science fiction genre, heavily influenced by the arrival of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, J.R.R. Tolkein and Edgar Rice Burroughs, his favorite. He mapped cleaverly drawn out, slow moving suspenseful tales in both novels and screenplays, emulating Burroughs' Martian Chronicles and The Stories of Tarzan. Though he felt perfectly at home in a schooling environment, many have often speculated as to whether or not his ulterior motive was to find recognition through the walls of the university. In either case, it was not to be.
He did, however, acquaint himself with fellow student Angela Berring, a soon-to-be wife. They would marry years after graduation in 1957. Leaving his short stories by the wayside (many of them would not become available until after 1993) he began to formulate an idea for a novel. A story of radioactively altered creatures dwelling inside travel machines which are, in effect, their bodies. They administer a "Hitler-esque" way of dealing with enemies (in fact all creatures who aren't part of their own species are the enemy) and have destroyed their own world through radioactive decay. The moral implications of their actions on the planet they live in, as well as the history of said planet, were (are) explored in a series of novels.
This career was not a lucrative one. Angela supported the couple as a common day secretary. This went on until one fateful morning at the tail end of 1963 when Terry was commissioned to write a script for the TV program Doctor Who. Rather then forcing him into their pre-ready material, a story built around "his own alien species" was broadcast.
Originally to be called The Mutants, the story was eventually renamed The Daleks. These creatures re-appeared on no less then 13 occasions in the program. Nation penned most of these Dalek episodes.
Terry had been writing adventurous tales of those in the clutch of merciless Daleks. Now he began to develop a mythology (Where the Daleks came from, where they were going, where he was going with the story and so on and so on). An idea involving the Daleks' violent based take over of earth was conceived into an actual Doctor Who episode (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) in September, 1964.
These provided a meager pittance of cash yet Angela did not waver in her fiscal or emotional support and they remain close to this very day. Nation carried on, creating without appreciation. Two of his other scripts for Doctor Who were transmitted on the BBC in 1965 (Mission to the Unknown, The Chase). As Doctor Who slowly became a mainstay of English television, public demand for Nations stories had risen. Three tales of the Daleks were published in 1966 along with another commissioned script for Doctor Who, The Power of the Daleks. The novel paired to it was available in England by 1969. Doctor Who was practically a household name in England by now. Influence in America would come later. Exhausted with writing the Dalek tales, Terry finally moved on. New fictions began to take shape. Single minded yet very adaptable machines enslave the planet earth with rudimentary force, totalitarianism, and brain washing. They can also modify their shape, turning into any object. Like the Dalek scribblings, it was a lesson in morality but now the themes had developed a higher level of sophistication. The Androids, a finished book in 1971, received not a hint of interest from either a publishing company or Doctor Who.
Out of work, weaving menacing yarns of Dalek swashbuckling (while Angela paid the bills), Terry's Planet of the Daleks aired on Doctor Who in 1973, earning him a modestly sized royalty check. The novelisation along with a condensed version of The Androids were both released in 1974. Terry earned fame in America with the help of Tom Baker's reign as Doctor, popularizing the show in that country. Genesis of The Daleks, written by Terry, was broadcast in 1975. In the next season, The Androids morphed into The Android Invasion, first aired on the BBC in 1976. Two companion novels released in 1977 sold better then any had previously.
This would be Nation's last effort in the Doctor Who format as a scriptwriter. Detaching himself from the program was not hard. Nation was ready to move on and create the television show Blake's 7: The story of Roj Blake, a political dissident in a 22nd century earth. He is brainwashed and reconditioned as a model citizen. But memories of the stultified past haunt him endlessly. Going back to his deviant ways, he finds most of his fellow protesters have been "eliminated" by the powers holding earth in captivation. Recruiting another barrage of rag tag rebels, Blake is imprisoned and sent to a far off alien political prison on the other side of the galaxy with a trumped up charge of child molestation. Nation uses social criticism instead of inter-galactic adventure.
In the third episode, Blake frees himself and the other rebels, commandeering an abandoned ship of unknown origin. Christening it The Liberator (appropriate, don't you think?), Blake and company devote the rest of the series to crushing the Federation. It was a tremendously profitable show, earning steady pay for Nation. Something Doctor Who never did for Terry. The program ran for four years and was cancelled in 1982.
Unlike Doctor Who, Blake's 7 was Terry's own masterpiece. He only created the Daleks, not their show. Omitting the Doctor from his Dalek novelizations (written during 1984, then ongoing several years henceforth) allowed him to create independently. First Published by Virgin Books in 1987, they sold moderately well both in America and England. Seven were written in all.
On the eve of Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary in 1993, Terry published The Doctors: Thirty Years of Time Travel and Beyond. It is Terry's longest work, breaking the 300 page barrier (most of his stories are fairly condensed). Every single Doctor appears (it seems now he felt comfortable enough to include the beloved time lord in his stories!) and the book was made into a film. You'll be hard pressed to find a copy in America. Many of Terry's early short story efforts were published at this time.
Not long after, film adaptations of The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth were finally distributed after years on the shelf. Terry then began working on Blake 7 novelisations building the mythos of the original show's canon and stark (often terrifying) commentary on modern society. "It was something I had been meaning to do for a long time", Nation said.
Documenting Blake's political activism before his re-conditioning, The tales of Roj is so far the only Blake novel. Terry is most likely still working on the other. It is, as with many writers, hard to say due to his introversion from publicity. By all accounts, he still lives with Angela somewhere in Debbenshire, creating tales of rebellion, adventure, mystery and horror. He's been cited as inspirational by none other then Paul Andersen (Author of Event Horizon), and the late great Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Overcast, Perversions of Science, Logan's Run, Minority Report etc.).
Davros in The Genesis of the Daleks
Born on the 5th of November, 1930, Terrence Nation is still waiting for his 'big break' so to speak. Although he has achieved minor cult status in his native England, a reputation of any sort in America remains more or less invisible.
Belonging to a respectable but hard working East Sussex family, attendance in college (as well as high marks in A-level classes) was demanded of him by the parental units. As he was, to put it mildly, a school nerd, Terry was all too happy to oblige. At this point, he'd written many short stories in the science fiction genre, heavily influenced by the arrival of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, J.R.R. Tolkein and Edgar Rice Burroughs, his favorite. He mapped cleaverly drawn out, slow moving suspenseful tales in both novels and screenplays, emulating Burroughs' Martian Chronicles and The Stories of Tarzan. Though he felt perfectly at home in a schooling environment, many have often speculated as to whether or not his ulterior motive was to find recognition through the walls of the university. In either case, it was not to be.
He did, however, acquaint himself with fellow student Angela Berring, a soon-to-be wife. They would marry years after graduation in 1957. Leaving his short stories by the wayside (many of them would not become available until after 1993) he began to formulate an idea for a novel. A story of radioactively altered creatures dwelling inside travel machines which are, in effect, their bodies. They administer a "Hitler-esque" way of dealing with enemies (in fact all creatures who aren't part of their own species are the enemy) and have destroyed their own world through radioactive decay. The moral implications of their actions on the planet they live in, as well as the history of said planet, were (are) explored in a series of novels.
This career was not a lucrative one. Angela supported the couple as a common day secretary. This went on until one fateful morning at the tail end of 1963 when Terry was commissioned to write a script for the TV program Doctor Who. Rather then forcing him into their pre-ready material, a story built around "his own alien species" was broadcast.
Originally to be called The Mutants, the story was eventually renamed The Daleks. These creatures re-appeared on no less then 13 occasions in the program. Nation penned most of these Dalek episodes.
Terry had been writing adventurous tales of those in the clutch of merciless Daleks. Now he began to develop a mythology (Where the Daleks came from, where they were going, where he was going with the story and so on and so on). An idea involving the Daleks' violent based take over of earth was conceived into an actual Doctor Who episode (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) in September, 1964.
These provided a meager pittance of cash yet Angela did not waver in her fiscal or emotional support and they remain close to this very day. Nation carried on, creating without appreciation. Two of his other scripts for Doctor Who were transmitted on the BBC in 1965 (Mission to the Unknown, The Chase). As Doctor Who slowly became a mainstay of English television, public demand for Nations stories had risen. Three tales of the Daleks were published in 1966 along with another commissioned script for Doctor Who, The Power of the Daleks. The novel paired to it was available in England by 1969. Doctor Who was practically a household name in England by now. Influence in America would come later. Exhausted with writing the Dalek tales, Terry finally moved on. New fictions began to take shape. Single minded yet very adaptable machines enslave the planet earth with rudimentary force, totalitarianism, and brain washing. They can also modify their shape, turning into any object. Like the Dalek scribblings, it was a lesson in morality but now the themes had developed a higher level of sophistication. The Androids, a finished book in 1971, received not a hint of interest from either a publishing company or Doctor Who.
Out of work, weaving menacing yarns of Dalek swashbuckling (while Angela paid the bills), Terry's Planet of the Daleks aired on Doctor Who in 1973, earning him a modestly sized royalty check. The novelisation along with a condensed version of The Androids were both released in 1974. Terry earned fame in America with the help of Tom Baker's reign as Doctor, popularizing the show in that country. Genesis of The Daleks, written by Terry, was broadcast in 1975. In the next season, The Androids morphed into The Android Invasion, first aired on the BBC in 1976. Two companion novels released in 1977 sold better then any had previously.
This would be Nation's last effort in the Doctor Who format as a scriptwriter. Detaching himself from the program was not hard. Nation was ready to move on and create the television show Blake's 7: The story of Roj Blake, a political dissident in a 22nd century earth. He is brainwashed and reconditioned as a model citizen. But memories of the stultified past haunt him endlessly. Going back to his deviant ways, he finds most of his fellow protesters have been "eliminated" by the powers holding earth in captivation. Recruiting another barrage of rag tag rebels, Blake is imprisoned and sent to a far off alien political prison on the other side of the galaxy with a trumped up charge of child molestation. Nation uses social criticism instead of inter-galactic adventure.
In the third episode, Blake frees himself and the other rebels, commandeering an abandoned ship of unknown origin. Christening it The Liberator (appropriate, don't you think?), Blake and company devote the rest of the series to crushing the Federation. It was a tremendously profitable show, earning steady pay for Nation. Something Doctor Who never did for Terry. The program ran for four years and was cancelled in 1982.
Unlike Doctor Who, Blake's 7 was Terry's own masterpiece. He only created the Daleks, not their show. Omitting the Doctor from his Dalek novelizations (written during 1984, then ongoing several years henceforth) allowed him to create independently. First Published by Virgin Books in 1987, they sold moderately well both in America and England. Seven were written in all.
On the eve of Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary in 1993, Terry published The Doctors: Thirty Years of Time Travel and Beyond. It is Terry's longest work, breaking the 300 page barrier (most of his stories are fairly condensed). Every single Doctor appears (it seems now he felt comfortable enough to include the beloved time lord in his stories!) and the book was made into a film. You'll be hard pressed to find a copy in America. Many of Terry's early short story efforts were published at this time.
Not long after, film adaptations of The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth were finally distributed after years on the shelf. Terry then began working on Blake 7 novelisations building the mythos of the original show's canon and stark (often terrifying) commentary on modern society. "It was something I had been meaning to do for a long time", Nation said.
Documenting Blake's political activism before his re-conditioning, The tales of Roj is so far the only Blake novel. Terry is most likely still working on the other. It is, as with many writers, hard to say due to his introversion from publicity. By all accounts, he still lives with Angela somewhere in Debbenshire, creating tales of rebellion, adventure, mystery and horror. He's been cited as inspirational by none other then Paul Andersen (Author of Event Horizon), and the late great Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Overcast, Perversions of Science, Logan's Run, Minority Report etc.).
Douglas Adams
by Ian Frost_Jones on Saturday, April 14, 2001 07:59 pmDouglas Noel Adams, creator of Zaphod Beezlebrox and Dirk Gently and inventor of the number 42, was born in Cambridge, England in March 1952.
He created "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a BBC radio show in March 1978, and it quickly became popular. A book adaptation was published soon after and quickly made him a bestselling author. His style was sci-fi satire, in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins with a definite touch of Monty Python.
His books always had great titles, like "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Life, the Universe and Everything" and "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul".
Adams embraced the technological innovations of the 1990's, producing an award-winning CD-Rom called Starship Titanic, a Myst-like puzzle/adventure game in which the user tries to pilot a damaged starship to safety despite the interruptions of weird characters and situations. He also launched his own multimedia/internet company, The Digital Village, which runs his website DouglasAdams.com.
Another good Douglas Adams site is this list of Douglas Adams quotes, and a Usenet group called alt.fan.douglasadams has been around forever and has lots of good information. He wrote an article called 'What Have We Got To Lose?' for the first issue of Wired UK Magazine and proved he was still cool by getting interviewed at Slashdot.org in June 2000.
He died suddenly of a heart attack on April 12, 2001 at the age of 49. Goodbye, Douglas, and you know we appreciate all the fish.
He created "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" as a BBC radio show in March 1978, and it quickly became popular. A book adaptation was published soon after and quickly made him a bestselling author. His style was sci-fi satire, in the vein of Kurt Vonnegut and Tom Robbins with a definite touch of Monty Python.
His books always had great titles, like "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe", "Life, the Universe and Everything" and "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul".
Adams embraced the technological innovations of the 1990's, producing an award-winning CD-Rom called Starship Titanic, a Myst-like puzzle/adventure game in which the user tries to pilot a damaged starship to safety despite the interruptions of weird characters and situations. He also launched his own multimedia/internet company, The Digital Village, which runs his website DouglasAdams.com.
Another good Douglas Adams site is this list of Douglas Adams quotes, and a Usenet group called alt.fan.douglasadams has been around forever and has lots of good information. He wrote an article called 'What Have We Got To Lose?' for the first issue of Wired UK Magazine and proved he was still cool by getting interviewed at Slashdot.org in June 2000.
He died suddenly of a heart attack on April 12, 2001 at the age of 49. Goodbye, Douglas, and you know we appreciate all the fish.
