Like a lot of other genre-related shows, The Munsters went into syndication fairly quickly after being canceled, and promptly gained loyal audiences outside of primetime. I suspect most of my memories of the show are from this era… Continue reading Monsters Are People, Too – more of why I love sf/f
I didn’t expect that it would be about faeries in space.
The blurb was a fairly accurate description of the set-up: Kilda is a young woman trying to find her place in the world. Her father was a spacer who had no interest in settling down with the woman who got pregnant during their brief political marriage. And her mother didn’t want to be saddled with a child like Kilda who was more interested in exploring and learning science and so forth than she was in being pretty and having babies of her own… Continue reading Changelings on Distant Worlds – more of why I love sf/f
It was during one of those rotations that I first found a copy of Eleanor Cameron’s Mr. Bass’s Planetoid. Of course I had to check out right away because it had “planetoid” in the title! It was clear from nearly the first page that this was a sequel. Two best friends, Chuck and David, are friends with an eccentric scientist, Mr. Tyco Bass, who helped them with their homemade rocket previously. Another scientist, Prewytt Brumblydge, has stolen a sample of a mysterious metal Mr. Bass had discovered in a meteorite, and soon he is using this metal to power a machine with which he hopes to solve two of the world’s problems: the lack of safe drinking water in some parts of the world, and the need for electricity. Unfortunately, the machine has dangerous side effects that could destroy the entire planet. The boy’s learn this part from yet another scientist who happens to be Brumblydge’s former teacher, who is convinced the student is looking for the source of Mr. Bass’s mysterious metal.
The problem is that Mr. Bass is nowhere to be found… Continue reading Homemade Rockets and Invisible Moons: more of why I love sf/f
Once I got the book home, I read through the titles in the table of contents again, and one jumped out at me: “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones.” It was just an interesting image: a helix of gemstones and the like as some sort of analogy or metaphor for time. And the author’s name, Samuel R. Delaney, seemed familiar, though I couldn’t think of any stories I had read by him.
So I jumped right to that story… Continue reading Semi-Precious Stone, Helical or Otherwise: more of why I love sf/f
The novel is told in rotating first-person viewpoint from each of the four characters: Eli, the Jewish bookworm; Ned, the flaming homosexual; Timothy, the rich boy; and Oliver, the farmboy/jock. They are students at the same college who have formed somewhat unlikely friendships. Eli, who has a gift for languages, found and translated a book about the mysterious Brotherhood of the Skull and their secret of immortality. The book says that four people must present themselves together, and work together to endure the trials of the Brotherhood. Even if they succeed, only two will gain mortality. The other two lives are forfeit: one must willingly commit suicide, and the other must be sacrificed by his fellows… Continue reading Mortality, Im- and Otherwise: more of why I love sf/f
Lost In Space is not remembered as being serious science fiction, or even as a serious series. Though this is primarily because of the second and third season. The first season was intended as a serious action adventure series giving a science fictional spin to the early 19th Century novel, The Swiss Family Robinson, which had itself been inspired by the 18th Century novel, Robinson Crusoe. Like those novels, the early episodes focused on the crew as castaways trying to survive in a hostile environment. Some of the sci fi notions of some first season episodes were pretty silly by modern standards, but mostly because they were attempts to adapt the sort of complications that might appear in a western series or a contemporary slice-of-life series and put a spacey spin on it… Continue reading Computerized Clods and Squeamish Scoundrels: more of why I love sf/f
Thinking back, I’m sort of surprised that particular public library in that tiny town had this book. It had only been published a year or two previously. Most of the science fiction they had was stuff that had been around for much longer. Of course, When Harlie Was One had been nominated in the best novel category for both the Nebula Award and the Hugo Award (it won neither) not long before the library acquired it, so maybe that’s why the librarian who ordered new books picked it. I don’t know… Continue reading Thinking Machines and Thoughtless People: more of why I love sf/f
Even within the third-person narrative, Stewart shifts perspective. The opening of the book is told in an omniscient viewpoint, the narrator revealing the thoughts and feelings of all the characters. While the bulk of the book is subjective, in some chapters the reader is privy to Mordred thoughts but sees all the other characters through his eyes only. In other chapter’s we are in Arthur’s perspective. Then at the end, she moves t a more objective viewpoint, though not fully omniscient. Anyway, I’m spending so much time talking about this viewpoint stuff, which you might be inclined to think of as the mere mechanics of writing, because in a completely different sense, The Wicked Day is all about viewpoints. Several important plot points turn on the fact that one or more characters is operating on incomplete or completely mistaken understanding. And the theme is about perspectives… Continue reading Dark Prophecies and Evil Half-brothers – more of why I love sf/f
Before I get into that, I want to remind you that voting for the Hugo Awards ends tomorrow. If you are a Sasquan (WorldCon 2015) member and haven’t completed your ballot online, do it now before the servers get bogged down with the rush. The ballot is here. If you aren’t a member, you can still buy a supporting membership to become a voter, but since processing a membership might take a while as more traffic hits the servers, time is running out!
At the time The Last Enchantment was published, in 1979, it was usually referred to as the last book in the Merlin Trilogy… Continue reading Aging Enchanters and Sinister Plots – more of why I love sf/f
Font Folly 