I just had to share this today - it's so weird. entertaining and retro! Thank goodness this vision of future fashion didn't come to pass, because I certainly don't have the body shape to rock this outfit. Imagine a potato instead of Raquel Welch and there you go. According to the helpful YouTube comments, this is from 1970. While some things haven't stood the test of time like space girl bikinis, you can still visit the park pictured in the background. It's Ruta de la Amistad or "Route of Friendship" built for the 1968 Olympics in Mexico.
I know, I know, technically this is not a book, but 2016 has turned out to be a pitiful year for reading. I have started - and abandoned - so many books that I feel a lot of shame. I love reading. It's a huge part
of my identity and I am completely confused about it!
Today's blast from the past is a time capsule in itself. While we were on vacation, my parents cleverly hid a few boxes of old books in the basement. It took about a month for me to notice :D.
See, back in the day when there were used bookstores all over the place and trendy neighbourhoods were less Starbucksy than they are today, I used to enjoy scooping up old sci-fi paperbacks by the pound. My husband also enjoyed this hobby, and it's possible that we bumped elbows in those dusty, musty places. Digging through the boxes was almost like shaking hands with my younger self. “Why hello there, young woman in the plaid shirt! You don’t know me, but let me tell you about the fuuuuuture!”
Sometimes I wasn't too careful about what grabbed - sometimes all it took was an interesting cover to seal the deal. Let's start with the author photo and cover of today's tome. Pretty groovy for 1976!
Doesn't the title alone make it sound like this awesome dystopia? The “Terminal Generation?” Who are these poor, trapped souls? Are they like “The Starlost”? What evil overlord must they overcome, what adventures will they have? I can totally see why I bought it. On the inside it says:
We are the Terminal Generation...
on the brink of despair, engulfed by waves of confusion, desperately grasping for hope in what seems to be an utterly hopeless world.
But, if I had read a little further, I would have discovered that it was one of those 70s disasters books full of future predictions, and this one more so than others. Hal Lindsey is an end times author, or dispensationalist, as Wikipedia helpfully explains, and apparently there was no shortage of all the ways the world was going to end by the mid-80s, if not sooner. Mr. Lindsey is still at it, actually! There isn't a cohesive narrative that most non-fiction books are able to form at all, just short screeds that clearly inspired the cover artwork. Lindsey's mind is wrapped up in a lot of anxiety caused by world events, particularly a fear of communism. The chapter on false prophets is particularly quaint - sometimes it's easy to forget all the consciousness raising stuff people did in the 70s that was pretty cultish.
It's pretty hard to take the book seriously in this day and age - maybe we’re just used to the news or have some disbelief because we're still here 30-plus years later. It was the idea that the alignment of the planets in 1982 would trigger disasters - but at least there's a hint of science fiction within. Lindsey mentions The Jupiter Effect, a book from 1974 which somehow had an introduction by Isaac Asimov. It's nice to know that goofy ideas existed long before the Internet :-D
We saw Mad Max: Fury Road with friends this weekend and it was amazing. I knew a little about the film from the trailer and that some people were upset that it was a “feminist action movie”, but it was definitely one of those movies that I didn't want to know too much about beforehand, so if you haven’t seen it, don’t read beyond the trailer below.
Fury Road is a challenging movie in many regards. It helps to have watched the previous movies (which my friends had not) and it requires a certain amount of visual literacy to enjoy it to the fullest (remember that I went to art college). Every frame is filled with so much detail like car parts, logos and tattoos. Three-quarter views, profile views and symmetrical shots add a lot of visual interest and show off the cars and craziness. Much like how authors will write entirely in dialogue or start their story by discarding the first part, Fury Road is told almost in visuals and with very little dialogue. Most dialogue sounds pretty grunty anyway! Close attention needs to be paid to how the characters use objects and speak through their actions. For example, Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa expresses emotions mostly with her eyes and Tom Hardy as Mad Max has a wild, fearful look most of the time. It’s the ultimate in “Show, don’t tell”.
Come to think of it, Fury Road is not a traditional action movie at all. Fury Road challenges viewers expecting to be spoonfed the who, what, when, where and why. It was clear that our friends would have preferred to see Age of Ultron instead as they did not like it at all. “I don’t understand why…” they kept wondering as we wandered the mall afterwards, and I kept piping up with answers like “The War Boys spray their mouths with spray paint because huffing paint gives them a high before battle…”. The movie is so nuts that questioning how the drummers hang on to the sound machine or why the world is so weird will just drive you nuts.
I welcomed the challenge and found the movie so refreshing in many ways. I loved every second, from the practical effects and stunts. The movie does not shy away from showing blood or the effects of violence. Another piece of sly commentary on bloodless CGI, perhaps? Be prepared for a lot of squishy stuff to happen.
Trivia: did you know that George Miller also directed Happy Feet and Happy Feet 2? Are you surprised at all? I’m not, since Fury Road has a strong environmental theme. In one of the more subtle moments, reformed War Boy Nux points at a tree in the desert and doesn’t even know that it’s called a tree (this tree, by the way, is a nod to the Arbre du Ténéré). There’s something hopeless about watching the tree being uprooted by the war rig in order to keep the Five Wives from being recaptured.
Speaking of the Five Wives - five physically healthy and beautiful young women held captive by top baddie Immortan Joe - they are never shown as damsels in distress. Although they are fragile and unsure after living their lives locked behind a vault door, they quickly find their strengths and fight for themselves alongside Furiosa and Max. All the women in the movie are given agency, and there’s even room for older, wrinkled women to shine. The Vuvalini are bad ass little old ladies on motorcycles that show up about halfway through the movie. It’s all right for men to look a little rugged in movies, but never women. Furiosa and Max fight as equals, never trying to one up the other and sometimes shooting at the exact same time. They triumph not just physically over Immortan Joe but over inequality of the sexes when they stand together in victory at the end. A movie that shows men and women working together equally and respectfully to solve a problem? OMG!
It seems that all the reading that the Wives did put some ideas into their heads about equality, and as seen in the trailer, they wrote “We are not things” in their sheltered paradise. At every turn Miller slips this idea in that people are not commodities. Max is treated as a “blood bag” by Nux, the Wives are stored away like precious jewels and the War Boys are Immortan Joe’s disposable warriors. I really liked that Nux, shown as a crazy disciple worshipping Joe and V8, is allowed to become human again. So many times society writes off people who have made poor choices in life. Once bad, always bad - but the wife known as Capable does not believe this about Nux and treats him with love and kindness.
Whoo…I should probably stop here. A whole book could be written on all the subtle intricacies and meanings of Fury Road. Just enjoy it if you see it, and marvel that George Miller was able to make the film he always wanted to make 30 years ago.
The world is full of knock-offs meant to trick parents and grandparents, from toys to movies, and if you ever received a Go-Bot or a My Little Phony, you may have also been disappointed with a trip to see...
Starcrash
I thought my husband's enthusiastic embrace of The Starlost meant that he would be all over this 1978 movie. He kept hemming and hawwing and even my plea that the 16 people that read this blog regularly were losing out on a fun column couldn't persuade him. So I made some popcorn, got out my notebook and found it on YouTube. Later when he wandered out of his man cave, he asked "So what was it about?"
"I don't know."
"You don't know?" He was mystified.
"Well, it's about this space outlaw named Stella Star and she wears this leather space bikini - " He rolled his eyes at my description of leading lady Caroline Munro.
"And she travels with her space navigator and in their spaceship they get chased by space cops..."
My husband squinted at me something fierce as I continued. "And they go to separate space prisons...but then they are freed because the space emperor needs them to defeat the space devil, well, he looks like Satan, so they go to this planet with space Amazons and I don't know what they were doing there, but they face the giant space Amazon robot. Then they go to this other planet with space cavemen..."
He slowly walked away from me before I could utter another mention of "space". However, that's the best way to describe this movie in a time where science fiction films were not exactly taken seriously nor had great production values. Starcrash is no Star Wars, but while Stars Wars has roots in pulpy serials of the 30s and 40s, Starcrash has them proudly on display as Stella Star leaps into a new plot every fifteen minutes. When I realized that I didn't understand why things were happening, I thought it was a case of inattention. But nope, there are whole...holes...happening.
Is Starcrash a bad movie? Well, it's a bad movie, but it's also a FUN movie full of hilarious lines, goofy acting and out of the blue costume changes. It never takes itself seriously and Caroline Munro does such a good job as a plucky space heroine. It dares to be whimsical when so many movies opt for grim and dark. What's not to love about a robot with a Texas twang, David Hasselhoff wearing too much mascara and Christopher Plummer appearing as if he had wandered onto the wrong set? Star Wars it is not, but at least there's a ten minute laser battle near the end that must have been awesome on the big screen.
Oddly enough, Starcrash opened up a whole new genre of film for me. Surely you have heard of spaghetti Westerns? Have you heard of spaghetti science fiction? Looks like there is plenty more fun and weirdness to indulge in :-)
It's hard to believe the amount of research that goes into writing a blog post that takes ten minutes to read. In fact, it took 17 hours of research to bring you...
The Starlost
My husband latched onto The Starlost last summer and read everything he could about it, then recited it back to me at random moments. "I did not know this, but..." is my cue that I'm going to hear about carburetors, single propeller planes or anything, really! Imagine a science fiction TV series with a stellar concept starring well-known actors and backed by two science fiction titans. Now imagine that series being produced in the age of Canuxploitation and shot on video while the entire concept falls apart before and during production! "Jill, just what are you rambling about? What is this show? Why haven't I heard of it? I'm a huge science fiction fan!" you may be saying. Wonder no more, my friend, because the Internet coughs up everything eventually. Bet you'd never guess that Keir Dullea, who played Dave Bowman from 2001: A Space Odyssey is the star of this series.
There's no shortage of blogs and YouTubers to help you understand the world of The Starlost. Harlan Ellison wrote the series bible and Ben Bova was brought on as science advisor. Both left the project (Ellison before it aired, Bova after six episodes) and the entire run of episodes was never finished.
I can sagely nod at the lost potential of The Starlost, and while many focus on the technical aspects, the failure of the Magicam system and goofy 70s haircuts, no one talks about the relationships between the three main characters. It's a glaring omission in my eyes. The backstory of the main three characters - Devon Rachel and Garth - makes up the entire amazing first episode. Devon is to be stoned to death after questioning the elders of rustic Cypress Corners and being a rabble rouser. He is in love with Rachel, but she is betrothed to his friend Garth. After discovering that their dome world is a sham, the three escape and go about exploring the interstellar ark in a "dome of the week" style format. Rachel chooses to leave with Devon because she loves him...but the love part is mostly forgotten, replaced with a quest to find the "back-up bridge" in order to save the Ark from certain doom. The tension that your best friend stealing your bride to be would have been amazing to explore! But if Garth is ever jealous or unhappy about being friendzoned, it never really shows. Despite having the freedom to love each other, Devon and Rachel remain pretty chaste.
A complete lack of consistency is really the main problem with The Starlost (even the format of the titles change halfway through). The Canadian writers threw out tantalizing plot lines and intriguing characters without following up. The entire premise of the dome inhabitants being unaware of each other goes out the window with the introduction of dome paramedics. At least the main characters hold onto their naivete and innocence as inhabitants of an agrarian society. Bit by bit they stretch their thinking and learn from their strange encounters.
As much as possible for the time, The Starlost does have progressive roles for women as scientists, pilots and technicians and Rachel is far more than just a prop. Her modest ways shine in "Children of Methuselah" where she wins the trust of the children with compassion and love. Idona, in "The Alien Oro", amazes Garth as she works on some circuit boards. Idona does her best to ignore Garth as he tries to talk to her and tells her that he's never seen women use tools before.
My favourite episode is "Circuit of Death"
Despite having a reputation as one of the worst science fiction shows ever, The Starlost is not that bad. It looks like any episode of 70s vintage Dr. Who. It's just that it's futuristic ideas about dystopian societies and technology get lost in the slow pacing, low production values and twangy music. It's just begging to be remade. But until then, you can enjoy the novelization, the the graphic novel adaptation of the first episode or grab the whole series on DVD.
It is appropriate that today's book features a big giant head, because so much has been going on in my head over the last month and a half, and I still don't know why! Let me say that I'm thankful for antibiotics when my salivary gland became infected. There were times too, when I was sure my ear canal was going to give birth to something gross and alien. Life is weird and so is this book:
Herds
The wife of a powerful figure in California is found brutally murdered in the couples' lonely mountain retreat. Wesley Stoneham made certain that all the evidence concerning the murderer of his wife pointed to a nearby hippie community. He had three goals in mind: to get rid of his wife, to drive out the hippie commune and to enhance his own power in the State. He was at the point of achieving them all when Garnna, from the peaceful planet of Zartic finally made contact with Debby, a hippie from the commune, who had problems of her own. Then Stoneham's troubles began.
Herds is number two in a new series called Laser Books - at first I thought this was a book of short stories. The main focus isn't even on Wesley Stoneham, but Garnna the alien centaur. He and his fellow Zarticku have a strong herd mentality that he comes to doubt and question. As an Explorer, he visits other worlds in a psychic sort of way (actually, in a box). Garnna is traumatized by witnessing Mrs. Stoneham's murder, which would be hard to work into a brief synopsis for the back cover.
The cover artist is a legend and his work is better known than his name. Sadly Frank Kelly Freas passed away in 2005, but his website remains. And although it doesn't have the same snazzy cover, you can buy Herds and other books by Stephen Goldin on his website too.
We saw Guardians of the Galaxy last Sunday and it was awesome! Maybe it was several months of being plied with trailers and advertising, but the coolness I originally had towards it warmed up to the point where I was practically vibrating. Why, why am I so excited to a movie with a trash talking raccoon and one of my favourite actors as a tree? Maybe it was that being in an air conditioned movie theatre for two hours was way more exciting than lying limp around the house.
Out of all the Marvel movies, this is quite possibly the best one to date. It's free of earthly concerns and has such an interesting and diverse cast, characters and settings. Maybe too, I'm just tired of dark and gritty reboots, movies that are just a little too based on coincidence or forget how to tell a story completely. There's only so many times you can watch Iron Man be a jerk, after all. Come to think of it, it's easier to describe GotG by what it's not. The main characters don't drag each other down, there's no big city destruction scene (well, just a little) and it's not serious at all. Serious characters get their dramatic comic book speeches, but also get upstaged by humour. GotG is incredibly self-aware of having one foot in B-movieland.
The movie is pretty tight, zipping along at a fast pace and helped along by the "awesome mix" soundtrack. Right after the opening scene, the audience gets to dive in as Peter Quill steals an artifact, an orb, from an ancient temple (if that scene looks a little familiar...it's just the start of nods to the 70s and 80s that will make a lot of freeze frame fun later). It would take a lifetime of reading Marvel comics to understand all the characters and why Ronan and Thanos are baddies, but after a little planet hopping, the audience has all it needs to know without too much set up. We are here to see a talking raccoon and a sentient tree, after all!
All five main characters are flawed in ways that anyone can relate to, and for a group that doesn't initially get along, they come to treat each other with a lot of respect. Rocket, for example, could have been played solely for laughs and comic relief, but he's not just a cute funny animal. He delivers some devastating lines (which he can, because he's an animal). He might talk tough, but he's a softie inside. Likewise, the other characters stretch their personalities - Peter Quill finds a higher purpose, Gamora wants to redeem her past (and is never treated as a sex object - she rejects Quill's "pelvic sorcery", and Drax learns to love his enemy. Uh, I'm not sure what Groot's flaw is, maybe it's that he can only say three words - but his strength is definitely in his selfless actions. GotG does a great job of showing the characters - we don't have to sit through long and convoluted backstories. I guess that's important to note too - the movie treats the audience with respect as well. Surprisingly, the real lesson of GotG is that friendship is magic :D
It's tempting to see it again this weekend...we were excited for another piece of nostalgia, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but it looks more like a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turkey, so we'll probably pass.
I was so bummed about not being able to make yesterday's post, so I backdated this one. I had the most severe pain ever in my face yesterday, and ended up Googling "ear infection or toothache" (Dr. Google says - "Inconclusive! See a real professional."). Maybe the virtual doctor needs another ten years. Anyway, the latest book on top of the reading pile is:
New Dimensions 11
The exciting series that showcased the best of the 70s now launches the 80s with superb science fiction - from the terrifying to the sublime!
It's really surprising that we don't have one of the earlier volumes on our bookshelf, because there were some truly groovy ones. I honestly can't figure out what this cover is about - the flip side has the faint skeleton of a pterodactyl and some sand. Is this the Planet of the Crystal Skulls? A user on GoodReads seems to hint that the contents match the weirdness of cover:
I read this collection of short stories when I was in junior high, much too young to be reading it. It contains a story about a spaceship navigated by sexual fantasies. And another story introduced me to the concept of sentient beings having more than two breasts.
We escaped from Choreville and To-Do Town to watch Edge of Tomorrow in 3D on the weekend. It was awesome, and I'm not even a fan of Tom Cruise (I prefer Matt Damon or Vin Diesel, at minimum). But the peculiarly non-aging Cruise did a fabulous job as a reluctant hero thrown into a battlefield.
We didn't know much about the movie except that it had scored high on Rotten Tomatoes and was described as a science fiction Groundhog Day. The mister has a soft spot for time travel movies, and this was a neat take on the genre. This movie was also totally made for fans of PC or video games. It's easy to relate to the endless grinding or change of plans required to get past a target. And the constant reloading and switching of equipment and ammo. With drop ships, futuristic exo-skeletons and battle ready marines, Edge of Tomrrow crosses from the XBox to the big screen. Once Cruise's character, Major Cage, learns the secret to ending the war, resetting is played for laughs (honestly, this was surprisingly funny once the grimness of it wore off) and he wearily tries new things each day in hopes of defeating the aliens, called mimics.
My husband was reminded of Independence Day; I thought of Starship Troopers. Edge of Tomorrow still finds something new to explore with such a simple humans versus aliens plot. It's never quite revealed why the mimics are here - at one point Cage finds himself in a bar with some speculating seniors, but he shuts them down by saying something like "It doesn't matter, because they're already here". That too, is an apt metaphor for conflict - we don't know why we're supporting something except that it's happening. After a while, I stopped caring about the alien conflict part and cared a lot more about how Cage and fellow soldier Rita Vrataski were going to solve their time trap. The human factor never gets bogged down in technology or CGI.
Emily Blunt, who we loved in Looper, was fabulous as Rita, who has also experienced the same effect and guides the hapless Cage through his new-found power. It is Cage's transformation from coward to hero which is the heart of the story and the movie never waivers from that. Edge of Tomorrow really impressed me by also sticking to "show, don't tell". It makes me cringe when a movie starts out by narration the backstory, because it means something has really gone wrong with the movie! But you won't go wrong at all with Edge of Tomorrow, trust me. We scarcely noticed that two hours had gone by because it was so engrossing.
Now I just have to get a copy of All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, which the movie is based on, and toss it on the to-read pile.
Everything lost is found again, and whether it's a centuries old manuscript or a pile of old paperbacks behind a VHS collection, there's always a gem like...
Interfaces
Hand-picked by Ursula K. Let Guinea, multiple award winning master of science fiction and fantasy, and Virginia Kidd, one of the field's most knowledgeable agents and discriminating anthologists, this is a wildly eclectic bouquet of the best that speculative fiction has to offer. Hugo and Nebula winners Ed Bryant, Vonda McIntyre, and James Tiptree, Jr. have a free hand within these pages, as do the young writers who will be turning up on next year's award ballots. Every story is appearing here for the first time, and every one is as unique an achievement as you would expect to find in the first anthology ever edited by Ursula Le Guin. This is a collection to be savored, a meeting of minds between fine authors and rare editorial excellence and imagination.
This is INTERFACES
I am smitten with this cover! Some of our paperbacks are too damaged to present (price tags and paperbacks are never a good combination) or just not as exciting as I hoped. But this cover, by Alex Abel, is so exciting! I love how the faces in the crystals fly upwards, freed from a huge chunk of crystal. Thought gains lightness! Each facet is beautifully airbrushed and the whole thing seems inspired by prog rock record covers. It's mysterious and fascinating and should be enlarged to poster size.
It is also beautifully in sync with the book - in the introduction, Le Guin and Kidd explain how they did not want to restrict the authors to a theme. Short stories are my favourite - longer works seem needlessly padded - but like the editors, I marvel at how lopsided anthologies can be. They wanted every story to be first rate and the collection carefully curated. It even includes some poetry! And so I add it to the reading pile, which never seems to get any shorter :)
It's easy to see that a lot of science fiction deals with control, but the why seems so elusive. Who are the mysterious "they" and why are they so prevalent? What happens when the hero goes up against Big Space Mega Corp? It's a topic that science fiction loves to explore over and over again like in...
Sundog
An unthinkably vast, invisible, and absolutely impenetrable screen imprisoned man within the solar system.
Cut off from the stars, men applied their ingenuity to themselves, setting up a world of total control - where even dreams were programmed.
If this sounds a little mystifying, the inside page reveals a little more:
Spacepilot Dod liked his work. It was dull and monotonous, and that was fine for the loyal, unthinking employee of the all-powerful Dog Company - the fourth of the original governing organizations, which had long since swallowed up Able, Baker, and Charlie, the first three.
And then, on his 71st routine trip between Pluto and Moonbase, a glowing light encircled his head. And strange, unnerving things began to enter his mind: curiosity, doubt, and even...ideas!
This 1965 book by Brian N. Ball presents a dystopia where an average Joe turns out to be key to the whole scheme. TV Tropes does a great job defining the Mega Corp, but doesn't quite get to the why. I think I know what it is though - as in so many fantasy and science fiction books, the main characters figure out how to control a situation where they should have none. Maybe toss in some anxiety caused by social upheaval, increased automation and a lack of the promised shiny post-World War 2 future, and the seed of a story sprouts. The cover - where I wish the head was much larger - is by Don Crowley. It really speaks Dod's mental state, perhaps even more so than Ball's writing.
As we've seen before, science fiction isn't just all about hardcore technology, new worlds or current events carefully couched as the future. I can only imagine that there was so much change going on in the 1960s that Edmund Cooper may have wistfully sighed and wished for escape to a place where he could see...
A Far Sunset
The year: 2032 A.D. The Gloria Mundi, a starship built and manned by the new United States of Europe, touches down on the planet, Alatair Five. Disaster strikes, leaving only one apparent survivor - Paul Marlow, whose adventures in the lair of a strange primeval race known as the Bayani leads him first to their God, the omnipotent and omniscient Oruri, and eventually to an unlimited power that is so great that is must include a built-in death sentence. The forces that have remained static for centuries overcome both the forces of the future and the quest for unlimited knowledge.
If you don't want to hop on over to Google, Gloria Mundi comes from the saying "Sic transit gloria mundi", which translates to "Thus passes the glory of the world". My literary insides tell me that the 1977 cover of this book by David Bergen (original printing 1967), has little to do with the story inside. Paul Marlow, who is rechristened Poul Mer Lo, is a psychiatrist who finds himself accepted by the "primitive" society as a sort of god. The chapters are short and after six of them I get the impression that it's a pulpy men's adventure book - naturally Paul ends up with an exotic alien female who seems more concerned for him than herself. My gut is also telling me that Paul saves the Bayani, marries Mylai Tui and lives happily ever after. I'll keep reading and update this post later!
If A Far Sunset piques your interest, Edmund Cooper's books are now available as eBooks. He's one of the seemingly rare older authors whose works have made the digital leap, and thank goodness, because some of these old paperbacks get pretty fragile.
Today's Swiss Army knife post is a book review, a movie preview and a 70s Sci fi scan, because the 70s could only have produced...
Rocket Raccoon
I have been gamely trying to get through this book since I bought it in November and really pushed to try and finish the original comics collected in Rocket Raccoon and Groot. It was one of those titles I had often heard about, but didn't want to spend hours digging for every year the local comic expo rolls around. Marvel has saved me from boxes of dusty newsprint by thoughtfully combining the original Groot comic, Rocket Raccoon comics and part of the new GotG series together in one volume.
Now, part of the excitement is that Bradley Cooper will be providing the voice for the plucky procyon lotor in Guardians of the Galaxy this summer. My anticipation for it has been been up and down - nothing is worse than a bad comic book movie after all - but then I found out Vin Diesel is voicing Groot. Groot is a tree. Let me rephrase that: One of my favourite actors is playing a CGI tree.
The new trailer is out and I don't know what to think:
But let's dial back to the mists of time, when Groot first appeared in 1960. There's something dorky about a sentient space tree that terrorizes a town, and he meets a predictable, goofy end. Rocket shows up in 1976 with his furry pals, who are the guardians of the Keystone Quadrant and protectors of the Loonies - mentally ill people who...well, I really don't know what they do except bounce around in straitjackets. They all live on a planet called Halfworld, where competing toy companies start a war. Colourful, weird and punny sum up the original comics. At times they were almost unreadable, but then I went through a box of old Thor issues and realized it was just the style at the time - it was I, the reader who had changed! I can appreciate the editorial and creative freedom that abounded.
Even though the 2008-2010 comic version of Guardians of the Galaxy is slicker and well, more coherent in its narrative, it's hard to beat the sheer gleefulness of the 1970s series. Eye popping colour, dynamic action and a whole lot of weird, is something that comics have lost. The whole "dark and gritty" thing can get pretty old. Just look at this scene - killer clown tanks! Banana bombs! What?! There's creating something to send a message, and then there's creating a work just for the sheer fun of it. In that case, it's mission accomplished for Rocket Raccoon :-)
Click on over to Comixology where you can download the issues for your mobile device or just marvel (heh!) at the previews. I suppose I'll be back in a few more months reviewing the movie - until then, I'm going to try and figure out how they're going to make a cross-over with the Avengers ;-)
These days when so many parts of our lives are planned and regulated, it's always nice to be surprised. And today's book thrilled me because just when I thought I had read all of Monica Hughes' science fiction books, but it turned out I hadn't read...
Crisis on Conshelf Ten
When Moon-born, fifteen year old Kepler Masterman visits Earth for the first time, he finds heavy gravity impossible to live in. An underwater atmosphere seems to offer the best solution to his problems and friendly relatives welcome him to their experimental community many fathoms deep in the depths of the ocean. But on Conshelf Ten Kepler discovers a sinister situation linked to the mysterious, water-breathing Gillmen, and realises that not only is he in great personal danger but that the survival of the entire Earth is threatened.
I don't have any complaints about the cover. This is actually her second book, published in 1975, and thankfully it looks very impressive. I mostly want to tell all y'all how wonderful Hughes' books are - my particular favourites are Devil On My Back and the Isis trilogy. She's another author that started writing later in life, and sadly she passed away in 2003. I assumed that she had stopped writing a long time ago, but she actually put out one book (sometimes two) a year. That's productivity to aspire too, not to mention all the reading I have to do now.
I was getting worried that I was running out of 70s paperbacks - and it turns out that if I do, this column can be renamed 60s Saturday Sci-Fi Scans, because we have lots of those too! While digging through the cache I found another Arthur C. Clarke book. I suppose dreaming of going to the moon is like dreaming of going to Mars for folks today, but back in 1955, Clarke dreamed of...
Earthlight
Like many works published in the 50s and 60s, one could still dream of a fantastic future in the 80s and 90s from the 70s. Today we take the acceleration of technology for granted, wondering why our mobile devices are so slow when 30 years ago teletypes were still chunking away and 20 years ago you had to have a second phone line if you wanted to make calls and use the Internet. Just 10 years ago most cellphones didn't even have a colour display.
I grew up on the tail end of the fantasy that this cover so fondly predicts. Colonies on the moon! Domed compounds! Monorails!! No wonder Futurama wasted little time with Fry visiting the moon in the second episode of the first season (it probably would have been an amusement park by now anyway). There's also something a little weird about this cover. That, uh, moon tree looks a little suggestive. Nothing quite says "We conquered the moon" by imposing a big ol' fertility symbol on it :-D
As one year ends and a new one begins, people struggle to define the past within the present and the future. Ten years from now, 2013 will seem like a faraway place. Thirty years from now, the teens will seem weird (heh, I guess teens always will be) but time is actually a continuum, which may surprise children of the 80s that one of their favourite series had roots in the 70s. Maybe it's more appropriate that the first book was called...
The Cave of Time
You are the hero of your own adventure
This is a book you'll love reading. You will read it differently from any other book you have read before, because in this book you will decide how the story comes out. You'll get to choose exactly where you - the hero - will go along the way. Like this:
What happens next in the story? It all depends on the choices you make. How does the story end? Only you can find out! And the best part is you can keep reading and rereading until you've had not one, but many incredibly daring experiences!
It's so quaint that they had to try so hard to explain the concept in 1979. We play Choose Your Own Adventure every time we play a game or surf the Web (especially Wikipedia), but, for legions of kids, this was the closest they would get to hypertext or the burgeoning interactive fiction genre. My brother and I read them as fast as the library could get them, and the original series spawned dozens of titles. We used a deck of cards to mark our places should we need to retrace our steps. And even though the covers and illustrations mostly featured boys, the text was gender neutral enough to appeal to girls. My brother was always a reluctant reader, and since comics were a no-no in our house, these were perfect for him. My favourites ended up being Be An Interplanetary Spy and Which Way books, which had more of a science fiction/weird horror bent.
It was fun to pick up The Cave of Time and remember why the series was so successful - kids often don't have much choice in their lives (or, at least, I didn't) and the books were literally all about you - just about every sentence starts with the word. You are the hero! You are the genius! You are anything you can be in the CYA universe!
I was pretty sure there would be something Christmas themed in our collection - no luck. Not even a cheesy kids book where Santa saves Martian reindeer or something like that. But I did remember a cheesy kids Christmas special from the 70s. Hint: trivia ahead!
It's all too easy to link to the fabled Star Wars Christmas special (just like that!). Truly an awful, unwatchable show. The one part of the special that is often praised is the cartoon that introduces Boba Fett. Han Solo's squished in face aside, do you know why it's the best part? Because it's Canadian! The ten minute short was made by Nelvana, a studio notable for producing lots of service cartoons like Babar, Care Bears and more in the 1980s. But as I said before, there won't be a groovier time again like 1970s, when creative people had incredibly free rein. There's no other way to explain the existence of...
A Cosmic Christmas
There's no Santa, but there are a trio of intergalactic wise men who come to Earth to learn about the meaning of Christmas. Rendered in mostly black and blue, it's not very festive, it's actually kind of strange, but at least the sweet voice of Sylvia Tyson chimes in for a couple of short songs. I didn't watch it enough to feel nostalgic about it as an adult, but if it weren't for YouTube, I would have thought it was something I just totally imagined as a five year old!
Today we have another on the cusp book, from 1968 that I just couldn't pass up (and for 60 cents, who wouldn't!). Let's look at...
The Planet of the Blind
Eyes to see with...
Eyes to flee with...
What would happen to an intelligent, sighted inhabitant of Earth marooned on a planet inhabited by unsighted people with a technology equal or superior to his? Further, let us suppose that this man heads a world organization that controls the now expanding field of tests and testing - Mr. Test himself. How would he fare on this PLANET OF THE BLIND? This is the story of Dr. Thur Stone in just such a situation.
Unfortunately the writing is just as stilted as the back cover copy and I didn't get far into the book despite it being a quick read. Dr. Stone is roaming around the universe in his spacerover for some rest and relaxation when he lands on Grenda. He quickly discovers that the people are blind - but animals are not. Convincing the Grendans that he's not an animal is going to be tricky!
Once he discovers his predicament, he realizes how flawed his own testing methods have been. He's the director of Terra-Testing, known as Mr. Test, with the power to determine the fate of others with his testing methods. Having the tables turned on the doctor should make an exciting adventure, but the rambling, stream of consciousness style cries out for an editor. And while this book is Corey's first science fiction novel, it wasn't his first book at all. He is best known for a series about farming in Iowa called The Mantz Trilogy.
Nothing is ever produced in a vacuum, however, and the cover suits the book well. Psychological testing and abstract art were pretty new and interesting back in the 1950s and 1960s,and just like space, another realm to explore!
Whoops, today's book is actually from 1983, but I just love the cover so much! It's funny how every decade has it's own tell-tale style, but the author, Ardath Mayhar, started writing science fiction in the 70s and perhaps that's when she found her own...
Khi to Freedom
For Hale Enbo, servitude promised freedom! He loved his life as a planetary scout, indentured to the alien
Ginli, travelling throughout the universe, finding and befriending the myriads of intelligent life forms.
Until he discovered what his masters were really after.
Until he found one of his new friends staked out on the Ginli vivisection table...
Eeek! I'm keeping this one out to read because it looks very promising. In case you're thinking that Ardath Mayhar is the most made up name ever, it's not. It does fit the SF&F checklist though: punny title, fantastic sounding name, exotic female alien life forms. Cover artist Steve Hickman even managed to sneak a breast in there. Really though, this is the kind of cover that makes an art teacher swell with pride. At least one of my students was paying attention. he or she might think. I love how the arms of Hale, alien and the tree match, just as the two also match with her tail. Warm colours advance, and a little yellow and purple make some interesting browns. See, I paid attention too in class!
