Any Peter F Hamilton fans?
Also Snow Crash TV show should be out in a year or something that’ll be… a thing. Good luck with casting that…
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I’m curious to know who they cast as the 15-year-old love interest! Actually not really! This book is gross!
Haven’t read this in 15 years but I loved it. Much better than Interstellar, how dare you.
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A thing you have to understand about Rod Serling is that he was constantly pushing against networks and corporate sponsors and ad agencies. He had an absurdly subversive message about America that only survived because viewers loved what he was putting down. Rod was constantly at war with the networks trying to get his message out there. He succeeded because the fans absolutely loved the stories he was telling. He gave no fucks. He went where no one else would dare to tread.
Gould, The New York Times reviewer, added this editorial note at the end of a glowing review for A Town Has Turned to Dust , a show about racism and bigotry in a small Southwestern town: “‘Playhouse 90’ and Mr. Serling had to fight executive interference … before getting their play on the air last night. The theater people of Hollywood have reason to be proud of their stand in the viewers’ behalf.”[23]
Frustrated by seeing his scripts divested of political statements and ethnic identities (and having a reference to the Chrysler Building removed from a script sponsored by Ford), Serling decided the only way to avoid such artistic interference was to create his own show. In an interview with Mike Wallace, he said, “I don’t want to fight anymore. I don’t want to have to battle sponsors and agencies. I don’t want to have to push for something that I want and have to settle for second best. I don’t want to have to compromise all the time, which in essence is what a television writer does if he wants to put on controversial themes.”[3]
Serling submitted “The Time Element” to CBS, intending it to be a pilot for his new weekly show, The Twilight Zone . Instead, CBS used the science fiction script for a new show produced by Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, in 1958. The story concerns a man who has vivid nightmares of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The man goes to a psychiatrist and, after the session, the twist ending (a device which Serling became known for) reveals the “patient” had died at Pearl Harbor, and the psychiatrist was the one actually having the vivid dreams.[3] The episode received so much positive fan response that CBS agreed to let Serling go ahead with his pilot for The Twilight Zone .[3]
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I feel it behooves me to re-state and underscore that one must definitely not start by reading Alfred Bester’s later work. No more need be said.
Didn’t love Pandora’s Star but MorningLightMountain was great
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After The Forever War discussion I realised this novel was at the back of my mind, and I remember it was also concerned with relativity’s time dilation effect on a society with very fast travel. I think it’s much bigger than that and I’ve forgotten most things about it, except that I enjoyed it despite seeming a kind of science heavy sci-fi I don’t normally go for.
Definitely second the Stand on Zanzibar recommendation. It also blew my mind when I read it in my early 20s, it’s great and I think right up the street of people with the political outlook that might bring them here.
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Lucille Ball was like an early Dolly Parton. Her company, founded with Desi Arnaz but later bought out and run by Lucille, played a pivotal role not just in Twilight Zone’s history but in much else that’s still with us today. Hot on the heels of the show that would make her a household name, her company produced shows that became all-time classics, including The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Mission Impossible, The Untouchables, and–perhaps most significant of all for a thread dedicated to sci-fi–Star Trek.
And since sci-fi is as much about the imagined as it is seeing technological innovations change our real-world existence:
Karl Freund, the cameraman on I Love Lucy , and [Lucy’s former co-star and ex-husband Desi] Arnaz himself have been credited with the development of the linked multifilm camera setup using adjacent sets in front of a live audience that became the standard production method for situation comedy.
I’ve been thinking about the difference between history and archaeology ever since J. Michael Straczynski announced he will be releasing a version of Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions after nearly five decades of delays and lies.
Yes, I’m calling Ellison a liar. Because with regards to this anthology, he was a well-documented one.
As Christopher Priest said in the intro to “The Last Deadloss Visions,” his Hugo-nominated analysis of how Ellison harmed numerous writers with his delays and lies related to The Last Dangerous Visions , the following essay will not be “objective.” I also urge everyone to read Priest’s essay, which was later released in a revised format in the 1990s by Fantagraphics Books as The Book on the Edge of Forever .
I was particularly interested to dig into the referenced essay by Christopher Priest (as well as his most recent comments). Christopher Priest is the author of The Prestige, a pretty good sci-fi novel that was adapted by Christopher Nolan into a fantastic movie starring Hugh Jackson, Christian Bale, and David Bowie.
The essay is linked for free above, and his most recent comments come from an article in The Guardian.
Contacted by the Guardian on Monday, Priest was unimpressed, saying that Straczynski was “in the same sort of unenviable position as Trump’s caddie”.
“I kind of lost interest in all that years ago. Ellison clearly did too, along with everyone else. (Although I gather he went on with his magical thinking if anyone asked when he was going to deliver),” he wrote. “Many of the stories were withdrawn, because Ellison acted like a dick. Of the ones that remain, most of them are by writers who are now deceased, so the rights have expired and the estates would have to be traced. A lot of the writers have disowned their stories as juvenilia, or outdated, or simply because Ellison was acting like a dick.”
But, Priest added: “Mr Straczynski is an experienced professional, so maybe he’ll work something out.”
Rewatching live die repeat, only seen it once, love the scene when he gets to the base at the start, forgot how it started
Edit: oh yea it’s bill Paxton as the gung ho base officer lmao
Edit:
Lmaoooooo
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Is the book any good?
I liked Cryptonomicon a lot and absolutely despised Seveneves.
I know of a review you can listen to!
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The book is good but overrated in the “well he guessed a lot of things that happened 10 years later” sort of way. If someone says it’s terrible, they aren’t listening to reason.
Has anyone been in more ridiculously good sci-fi franchises than Bill Paxton? RIP
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It would take a really long time to watch Star Trek episodes with this lady. I wouldn’t mind though.
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I really enjoyed reading Snow Crash, but I almost never thought about it after I finished. A sci-fi Pillars of the Earth.
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Sorry to the Rogan haters but here we are
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Interesting. I haven’t watched Interstellar but I want to, now.
I feel an impulse to reject what is said about love at the beginning. It may not be invented, but I doubt love is anywhere on the periodic table of emotions. I mean, it feels elemental, but I’ve never found it, when I went looking.
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I just finished The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. So much fun, I read it in two days. It’s so compelling. Not quite as good as The Stars My Destination but the same tasty sci-fi brilliance. A book tuber I follow described it as Pynchonian Science Fiction. Lol
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