25 writers

More for National Egotism Week....  25 fiction and poetry writers who have influenced me.


1. William Tenn 
2. John Brunner 
3. Robert Benchley 
4. Pablo Neruda 
5. Robert Anton Wilson
6. H. Beam Piper 
7. Andre Norton 
8. John Dos Passos 
9. Spike Milligan 
10. Edison Marshall 
11. Clifford Simak 
12. Tom Sharpe
13. Steven Saylor 
14. S. J. Perlman 
15. Seamus Heaney 
16. Cordwainer Smith 
17. Robert Heinlein
18. Sinclair Lewis
19, Bernard Cornwall
20. John Mortimer
21. George O Stewart
22. Anthony Burgess
23. Mary Oliver
24. H.G. Wells
25. Alan Furst

Number Six Escapes at Last

Patrick McGoohan (1928-2009)

Keep on trucking

(Or, Kolchak gets into shape by jumping to conclusions.)

I’m not a truck driver—and I’m sure that comes as a big surprise to everyone—but I drive the interstates often enough to have noticed a few changes in truck stops.

One change I’ve noticed is that there aren’t as many truck stops as there used to be. Now, you’re more likely to find a travel center or a travel stop than a truck stop. I’m not sure what the new nomenclature accomplishes, if anything. Maybe the owners are just trying to make their places more attractive to non-truckers.

Another change seems to be taking place on the paperback rack. You can find a lot of westerns and war stories at truck stops—sorry, travel centers—but I don’t think that’s new. What may be new is the number of science fiction and fantasy novels you can find. There seems to be a focus on series books, rather than individual novels : Star Trek novels in sf and series like Forbidden Realms and Warhammer in fantasy.

Over at the audiobook rack, things are changing too. On my most recent trips, I’ve been looking at a series of CDs that are described as full-cast dramatizations and “Movies for your mind.” This series features adaptations of prose stories featuring DC super heroes and post-holocaust action stories.

I’ve seen four different series in the latter category: Death Lands; Outlanders; The Survivalist and Doomsday Warrior. I know the first two are active series, but I’m pretty sure The Survivalist is out-of-print and I think Doomsday Warrior is too.

In an ultimate sense, you could call the emphasis on pulp-style characters depressing, but, personally, I have a very simple rule-of-thumb here: reading for pleasure is better than not reading for pleasure. And the same thing holds with listening for pleasure.

Now THIS is holiday cheer....

One of the best covers I have ever heard....

Check out their other stuff..  Phenominal group...

Tip of the old sombrero to Kolchak for turning me on to these guys. I was having a truly horrible day...and it just went away....

The Old Songs Really Are the Best

via ICanHazCheezburger.com:

The Pettigrew principle

From KOLCHAK:

Barack Obama’s campaign for the presidency is nothing less than a history-marking event, regardless of how it turns out. For those of us who attended Catholic school in the 1960s, however, the campaign is not entirely unfamiliar.

If you were attending Catholic school at that time, you could subscribe to a comic book called Treasure Chest. As you might imagine, given the time and the audience, there were lots of “educational “and “inspirational” stories in Treasure Chest. As an adult, I would probably find these stories stupid or offensive, or both…if I remembered them. Fortunately, the stories I remember are the ones that slipped in under the radar. There was a series about kids living on a space station that I remember liking, and there was 1976: Pettigrew For President..

From what I’ve been able to put together so far, 1976: Pettigrew For President ran for 10 chapters in 1964. Treasure Chest came out every two weeks, so the story played out over roughly half a school year. The title character was Gov. Timothy Pettigrew, who was running for his party’s presidential nomination in that exotic future year of 1976. I would’ve been in fifth grade when the series ran, but my parents were already wondering how much longer would I be reading those weird funnybooks.

It probably took me a couple of chapters before I realized that there was something strange about “Pettigrew.” We would never see the governor’s face. We would hear his voice as part of a telephone conversation, but, if he was in the room, his head would always be blocked by something, or someone. I knew that the strip’s creators were building up to something, but I don’t think I had any theories about what it was. So I was definitely surprised when, on the last page of the story, as he accepts his party’s nomination, Tim Pettigrew is revealed to be African-American.

I know: to an adult, this all sounds heavy-handed, at best. To a fifth-grader, though, it was anything but, even though we never find out if the governor was elected president.
For what it’s worth, there’s a similar reveal in “Judgment Day,” a story that appeared in one of the classic EC science fiction comics. In this story, a man from Earth comes to Cybrinia, a planet where humans had deposited a colony of super-intelligent robots sometime in the distant past. The visitor was to evaluate the culture the robots had developed, to see if Cybrinia was worthy for inclusion in the Galactic Republic.

While many aspects of the cybernetic culture are positive, the Earthman quickly discovers that the robots with orange skins are discriminating against the robots with blue skins. This disqualifies the Cybrinians for membership in the Republic. Throughout the story, the human visitor wears a spacesuit that obscures his face. In the last panel, though, he takes his helmet off and “the instrument lights made the beads of perspiration on his dark skin twinkle like distant stars.”

“Judgment Day” first appeared in 1953, but I first read it in Tales Of the Incredible, a paperback reprint which came out in 1965 (and is sitting beside my computer right now).

Someone named Bob Wundrock—another survivor of the Catholic School system, I’m guessing—has posted some pages from 1976: Pettigrew For President on YouTube. They confirm another memory I had of the series—Pettigrew actually looks a bit like Obama—and they provide some plot points that I’d forgotten.

Pettigrew’s major opponent for the nomination is the ominously-named Senator Oilengass. The governor picks Oilengass to as his vice president , but a typo adds some unintentional humor to the invitation. The word balloon reads: “Senator, will you run as vice-president with me? I’d be proud to have you?”

Go ahead, look at it again. I’ll wait.

Even in fifth grade, I was far enough into comics that I was looking at credit boxes and noticing artists’ signatures. So it registered on me at the time that 1976: Pettigrew For President was drawn by Joe Sinnott. Sinnott is probably best known as Jack Kirby’s inker on the Fantastic Four comic, but he was providing both pencils and inks here.

As for the writer, I still don’t know much about him. He appears to be someone named Barry Reese, but that’s all I’ve been able to find out. For the record, “Judgment Day” was drawn by Joe Orlando. I haven’t been able to find a writing credit for this story either, but stories in the classic EC comics are usually credited to Al Feldstein.

1776:Pettigrew For President may have been an indicator of the liberal trends in the Catholic Church at the time. Or it may have just slipped in under the radar. In either case, the so-called real world is finally catching up to it.

Barack O'Bama

 Obama is as white as he is black.

And he is neither as well.

This song hits exactly the right tone about something that has always baffled me about the subject of race in America. Oh I understand the "reasoning" about a "drop" of the fatal blood and all that. But if being white is so superior you'd think that well, the "good" would overcome the "bad'. Seems to me.

Of  course that doesn't stop someone who has a cousin who dated a woman who once kissed an Irishman from claiming that that makes him Irish as well.

Oh and by the way, you fucking racist asshats coming out to Gov. Palin's rallies..

KISS MY MIXED RACE BEHIND!

From the Mighty Pen of the Great John Cleese

via TPM:

Ode to Sean Hannity

by John Cleese


Aping urbanity 
Oozing with vanity 
Plump as a manatee 
Faking humanity 
Journalistic calamity 
Intellectual inanity 
Fox Noise insanity 
You’re a profanity 
Hannity

OH JOY!!!!

HE'S BACK!

Bring out the fatted neocons. Line up  innocent conservative students so that their lives, spirits, and careers may be properly crushed by inappropriate leftist mental touching. Fire up the zamboni. Let the merrymaking begin.

Michael Berube, Penn State's own  member of David Horowitz's axis of academic evil  and the ONLY person who has ever been able to make it possible for me to both understand a discussion of critical theory and to then have me believe that it in any way matters,  has restarted his superlative blog.

The political whirlwind is now in full storm.

Joan Winston, ‘Trek’ Superfan, Dies at 77

from NYT:

By WILLIAM GRIMES
Published: September 20, 2008 

For the “Star Trek” faithful, it was a historic event. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the series, showed up. So did the science fiction writer Isaac Asimov, not to mention fans dressed as Klingons, Tribbles and Bele from the planet Ceron. NASA delivered a scaled-down lunar module and a spacesuit.
 
It was January 1972, and the first Star Trek convention was under way in a rented ballroom at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan. The organizers had expected a crowd of about 500. In the end, more than 3,000 fans turned up, so many that by the final day of the event registrars were issuing ID cards made from torn scraps of wrapping paper. For fans of the series, the convention marked the moment when a diaspora became a nation.

And it made a subculture celebrity of Joan Winston, who played a leading role in creating the event and went on to achieve a second-order fame as one of world’s most avid “Star Trek” fans. She died of Alzheimer’s disease on Sept. 11 at age 77, her cousin Steven Rosenfeld said. She lived in Manhattan.

Like many SF fans from the period, I "knew" Joan mostly by sight and reputation. She truly was a force of nature.

It still takes a village...

From Kolchak:

Much like Number Six himself, I'm back in the Village.

Production has started on the remake of The Prisoner, the cult classic TV show from the 1960s, and, so far, even a hardcore fan like yours truly can't find much to complain about. There are still some questions that need to be answered--which is only fitting for The Prisoner, I guess--but the producers of the new show may actually know what they're doing.

Hey, it could happen.

The original "Prisoner." for the record , is a British television series from the late 1960s, which also ran here in America. It starred Patrick McGoohan, who also co-created the show and wrote several episodes. Over the course of 17 episodes, the show went from being a weird variant of the then popular spy shows to a surrealistic parable about paranoia, identity and the misuse of technology. My first post about The Prisoner here at the Blatt was back in April, and it looks like I'm going to geek out again. But don't worry: I'll wash my hands afterwards.

The new "Prisoner" is a co-production of ITV in Britain and AMC. It will run for six episodes on AMC in 2009. It will star Jim Caviezel as the title character, Number Six, and Ian McKellen as Number Two, Number Six's jailer and the man trying to break his spirit. As one website put it: it's Jesus versus Gandalf.

I've not seen Caviezel in anything, but I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this (though I have to wonder whether going from Jesus to Number Six qualifies as typecasting).

I think Caviezel may have benefited from some old-school networking, for whatever that's worth. McGoohan worked with Mel Gibson in the movie Braveheart, and during the promotional drive for that movie, McGoohan said that Gibson would make an excellent Number Six. If they're still friends, it's easy to imagine Gibson recommending Caviezel for the part.

This isn't really on-topic, but I can't resist mentioning it. I went to the Internet Movie Data Base and called up The Passion of the Christ, in order to double check the spelling of Caviezel's last name. There are a number of pre-set categories in IMDB's basic listing for each movie and one of them is "Plot Keywords." The first words under this heading were "Spoiler Alert!" The story of the crucifixion needs a spoiler alert?

As for McKellen , I've no doubt he'll do a fine job as Number Two. His casting, though, does represent an interesting departure from the original. In the original series, a different performer played Number Two every week. The only exception to this rule was Leo McKern, who appeared in three episodes.

I think they should've kept this system. If nothing else, the parade of Number Twos in the original series could be interpreted as a victory of sorts for Number Six, which was much needed, since he clearly wasn't escaping. Still, that may not be needed in a shorter series.

I'm a little more concerned about the casting of a woman named Hayley Atwell for the remake. She's describing her role as Number Six's "love interest", and the original series did quite well without giving Six a love interest. Oh, there were women in the original show.There were even women serving as Number Two, which was a fairly progressive idea for the time. There wasn't much in the way of traditional romance, though. I'm hoping the phrase was slip of the tongue on Atwell's part. But we could be in for an unpleasant surprise there.

On the other hand, there was a pleasant surprise concerning where the new "Prisoner" is being filmed. Originally, the role of the Village, the bizarre town where Number Six is held captive, was played by Porteirion, a resort in Wales. The Victorian design of Portmeirion made a striking contrast with the surveillance and mind-control technology operated by the overseers of the Village.

So I was getting ready to go into a geekfit when I read that the new version would be filmed in Swakopmund, Namibia. Err, excuse me a minute. My spellcheck just threatened to quit.

Okay, we're back. When I googled the name, though, I quickly learned that Swakopmund is a resort town, settled by the British and many of the buildings have a pronounced Victorian look to them.

I'm still not positive as to why the show is being filmed there. Money is the usual reason, but is really cheaper for a British production company to go to Africa than it is to Wales? In any case, I was pleased to see that the creative staff is respecting the look of the original series.

There are some good, if small, photos of Swakopmund, at www.sixofone.org.uk/prisoner-remake.htm Another good source of information is at www.theprisoneronline.com.

AMC is promoting the show through a blog at www.amctv.com/originals/theprisoner. There is also a site called www.seekthesix.comwhich is probably going to lead to some sort of game or viral promotion. If anyone can unlock the first image, let me know, will you? I haven't had any luck so far.

AAAARRRRRGH!!!!

It's National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Go forth and plunder, me hardies!

Nobel Prize Winner Doris Lessing on Science Fiction

from New York Times Magazine:

For the last two decades, most of your fiction has veered toward science fiction, which has disappointed literary critics like Harold Bloom.

I can’t be bothered with Bloom. A lot of people think some of my best writing is in science fiction, and they are just as significant as bloody Bloom.

The lyrics

An English translation of the Bengali lyrics for the Dancing video below:

Stream of Life

by Rabindranath Tagore

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day
runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth
in numberless blades of grass
and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth
and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

And since this is such a cumbaya day....

Sing Along.

WOW WOW WOW!

This has just got to be the best thing I have ever seen on the intertubes. So utterly, utterly joyous. And as you may have guessed from my recent posts,  joy is rather thin on the ground these days. It just proves that the best anti-depressant is hanging out with happy people.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Click on the link for a larger image player.

Congratulations George and Brad

WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. (AP) — "Star Trek" star George Takei is ready to "live long and prosper" with his partner of 21 years.

Takei will marry 54-year-old Brad Altman on September 14th in Los Angeles.

The 71-year-old actor, known for his role as Sulu on the "Star Trek" sci-fi TV series, was the first to pay $70 for a marriage license in West Hollywood early Tuesday. The marriage license is good for 90 days.

Takei was jubilant, saying "it's going to be the only day like this in our lives and it is the only day like this in the history of America."

He told reporters and a swelling crowd outside the West Hollywood city auditorium "may equality live long and prosper."

The California Supreme Court has legalized same-sex marriage.

HURRAY! Some good news for a change.

George Carlin, RIP

Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, CockSucker, MotherFucker, and Tits

Times have changed since Carlin made these words famous.

Piss is said on regular TV with a growing frequency.

Shit crops up in dialog on the cable channels regularly.

Fuck was immortalized by HBO's Deadwood.

Few rap songs exist that don't use MotherFucker.

Cocksucker is still a bit outre, though it does sneak an appearance into a movie or  comedy routine on occasion.

And Tits, well Tits is as Carlin said, cute.

That leaves Cunt as the lone holdout, the one that still can offend even the staunchist  free speech advocate. And that is more because its meaning has shifted from being denotive of a part of a woman's anatomy to being a hateful derogatory term for that woman in general.

I think Carlin would choose a different set of words today.

Nigger, Kike, Fag come to mind instantly...

Any suggestions for the other three?

Bebe Barron (1925-2008)

Scored the Science Fiction Film "Forbidden Planet"

Bebe Barron, a pioneering composer who started manipulating sounds after receiving a tape recorder as a wedding present and later scored the 1956 science-fiction film “Forbidden Planet," the first full-length feature to use only electronic music, has died. She was 82.

Barron died April 20 of complications related to old age at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said her son, Adam Barron.

With her engineer husband, Louis Barron, she created “a soundscape for 'Forbidden Planet' that no one could ever have imagined," Jon Burlingame, a film music historian who teaches at USC, told The Times. “It was hugely ground-breaking." (more)

Village people

From Kolchak:

The forthcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still promises to be a Richter-scale disaster. The new version of The Andromeda Strain, coming soon to A&E, is only slightly less offensive. And don't get me started on how Will Farrell is turning Land Of the Lost into a comedy....

Despite this tidal wave of mediocrity, though, there may be reason for optimism.

Yes, really.

ITV, the British television network, has announced that it will be producing a six-episode version of The Prisoner,, the genre-bending series from the late 1960s starring Patrick McGoohan. So far, the only name associated with the new show is the writer, Bill Gallagher. However, there is a persistent rumor that Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) may star.

Meanwhile, director Christopher Nolan (Batman Begins and Momento) is supposedly working on a feature-length version of The Prisoner, with a script from Janet and David Peoples ( Blade Runner and 12 Monkeys ).

I think this new burst of interest in The Prisoner carries some interesting implications with it, beyond Hollywood’s fascination with remakes. To explain this properly though is going to require some background.

In this series, McGoohan plays a British secret agent who resigns from his job without warning. or explanation. (Although it is never mentioned specifically in any episode, most fans of the show believe that McGoohan was still playing John Drake, the character he introduced in an earlier show, Secret Agent.) However, before he can leave London, this former agent is abducted and taken to the Village, a prison for individuals--seemingly from around the world, not just England--who have too much classified information in their heads to be allowed their freedom.

The Village appears to an aggressively quaint seaside community, but the Victorian architecture hides high-tech surveillance devices and brutal mind-control experiments. Attempted escapes are often dealt with the by the Rovers, huge white spheroids that look like they escaped from a really big lava lamp.

Day-to-day operations in the Village are controlled by an individual known as Number 2. Usually, there was a different performer in this role every week, but one or two were called back for an encore. The new arrival is designated Number 6, and is told that he is being held because the Powers That Be--the people Number 2 is reporting to--want to know why he resigned. Number 6's response has become the show's mantra::

" I am not going to be pushed, filed, indexed, stamped, briefed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own."

The remainder of the series-- there was a total of 17 episodes--becomes a battle of wills as the Village tries to break Number 6, and he tries to escape.

The Prisoner starts as a peculiar twist on the spy shows popular in the 1960s but eventually turns into a surrealistic parable about identity, integrity and the possible misuses of technology. As the show evolves, McGoohan starts to write and direct segments, as well as star in them. (He is also credited as co-creator.) In order to tell his story, he borrows symbols and techniques from a wide variety of genres and styles, which both fascinated and alienated his audience Some viewers probably had both reactions at the same time.

While the original "Prisoner" isn't shown regularly on TV, it's never really gone away, either. It's usually available on home video--whatever this week's hot new format is--and it clearly influenced other creators. References to the series can be found in Babylon 5; the original run of the Fantastic Four comic book; the current version of Battlestar Galactica and The Simpsons.

That's right, The Simpsons

The Prisoner was a groundbreaking series in a lot of ways, but here are two that I don't think are mentioned as often as they should be:

Before Lost, before The X-Files, before Twin Peaks, McGoohan and his associates were producing stories with questions that were carried over from week to week. How these questions were finally answered produced some strong reactions--both positive and negative--but it may be one the reasons why the show is still talked about today. (More on this shortly.)

There's a long-standing belief that it takes decades for an idea to migrate from written science fiction to sf television and movies. That wasn't the case for The Prisoner, however. Many people consider it a part of the "New Wave" school of sf writing, which was gaining in popularity in England at the time. (Basically, New Wave writers emphasized psychology and literary technique more than their American counterparts) This link was made stronger when Thomas Disch, one of the leading New Wavers, wrote a "Prisoner" novelization. In addition, Anthony Skene, who wrote the first episode of the original show, has been collaborating with Michael Moorcock, another leader of the New Wave.

As for me, I was in high school when The Prisoner debuted in America. I was fairly familiar with Secret Agent , but this show caught me completely by surprise. It quickly took up permanent residence in my imagination. For a long time, I didn't see any real need for a remake, even though some of the elements of the original hadn't aged very well.

Now, though, I'm not so sure.

Here at the Daily Blatt, handrummer ran a photo of what can only be called a propaganda poster promoting the increased use of video surveillance in England. The poster promises that the public will be "secure beneath the watchful eyes" of the television cameras.

When this sort of sentiment becomes a real poster in the real world, I think you can draw only one of two conclusions: either The Prisoner has been totally eclipsed by reality or it's time to do a remake Really really time. This may be one of those rare occasions where Hollywood's perpetual quest for pre-sold properties actually matches up with a contemporary issue.

Hey, it could happen. It may already be happening, with movies like V For Vendetta or comics like Marvel's Civil War, which takes a metaphorical look at fighting terrorism and excesses of government power.

However, if either of the "Prisoner" remakes are going to be as intense as the original, a number of difficult creative decisions are going to have to be made., over and above things like casting a new Number Six.

For example, in the original series, McGoohan went to Portmeirion, a resort community in Wales, to shoot the exterior shots of the Village. The fanboy side of me says that it won't really be The Prisoner unless they go back to Portmeirion. On the other hand, technology has changed so much over the years, that it may no longer be necessary to give a prison a geographic location. In this world of GPS and electronic house arrest, it may be the Prisoner carries his jail cell around with him in some way.

Finding an appropriate resolution to the story is going to be tricky too, particularly since McGoohan's own conclusion left a lot of people frustrated and annoyed.

According to the various books about the show, McGoohan wanted to produce six, maybe eight, episodes. However, when he pitched the idea to Lew Grade, the president of ITV, Grade wanted enough for a standard syndication package (which, according to which source you use, was anything from 24 to 32 episodes.) ITV did finance the show, but there was constant tug-of-war about how many episodes there were going to be.

"Once Upon a Time," the next-to-last episode in the original series, deals with Number Six giving Number Two (Leo McKern, one of the actors who played the role more than once), a nervous breakdown during a bizarre psychodrama called Degree Absolute. The episode ends with another member of the Village staff asking Number Six what he wants.

The Prisoner replies he wants to see Number One, and he leaves with the staffer. This was apparently McGoohan's original idea of how the series should end.

However, he eventually added one more episode, "Fall Out." He may have been under pressure to provide a tidy, straightforward conclusion to the show. If he was, though, he managed to withstand it. "Fall Out" is filled with surrealistic images, overlapping dialogue and strange musical combinations. Calling it psychedelic is an understatement.. McGoohan (who also wrote and directed the episode) does provide some answers, but I think it takes multiple viewings to find them.

handrummer and I, along with several of our friends, once saw "Fall Out" dubbed into French, while attending a world science fiction convention in Toronto. It actually turned out to be a good experience. Since neither drummer nor I could speak French, we weren't even tempted to try and follow the dialogue. It allowed us concentrate on the images.

As I've said though, the episode didn't sit well with audiences at the time, and I'm not sure how well that approach would go over with most modern audiences. On the other hand, it's going to be difficult to come up with a realistic ending that hasn't already been seen on the news. In the late 1960s, the possibility that the Good Guys were running the Village was shocking. Now, though, we've seen smaller versions of the Village in the real world: the CIA's "safe houses" for suspected terrorists. Maybe one of the remakes will be called The Prisoner: Extraordinary Rendition.

In general, I imagine both production companies are going to be tempted to make changes just to keep the two versions distinct from each other, never mind whether it enhances the story. It's going to be a tricky balancing act, but I'm looking forward to seeing how it's all going to....um, fall out.

For more information about the original "Prisoner," check out www.theprisoneronline.com.