25 years ago, today, a massive explosion blasted the moon out of orbit with Earth.
Sigh.
No moon base.
No flying cars.
But we got smart phones!
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YaKnow, that sounds like a Genuine climate problem.
ReplyDeleteSpace 1999. It was an interesting series.
ReplyDeleteI always wondered how the hell they were re-supplying themselves. Every episode, it seemed, they'd lose at least one or two Eagles---how many did they have?
ReplyDeleteI always liked Alan Dean Foster's comment on the original series: Space 1999...Marked Down From 2001. Never watched even a clip of it, nor of the other series, Cattlecar Galaxitive..
ReplyDeleteSpace: 1999 was *AWESOME*!!! When I was seven...
DeleteNow? Another item of childhood nostalgia killed by an adult watching. The Eagle is still a cool ship, but...
However, 2001: A Space Oddity is fucking boring. I said it. I even read it, hoping it made more sense in print. And it does, but it's not that good. It's just not. Arthur C Clark just isn't for me. Kubrick is hit and miss for me. I either love it or hate it.
BSG I is Mormons in Space ace ace ace ace ace. BSG II is just action schlock. Shut off your brain, eat the popcorn. BSG I is also a show that childhood nostalgia demanded I watch as an adult. It's both worse and not as bad as I feared.
I saw 2001 in a theatre with my dad when it came out. I didn't care for the ending, but I was fascinated with the technology, particularly the orbiting space station and the space ships. I watched the Apollo landings on TV, and I migrated toward the engineering side of the space program after bouncing around with interests such as archaeology and entomology. I was involved with sf fandom for a time, but I wanted to actually design and build spacecraft and the related. infrastructure. My wife was a Trekkie, but more pragmatic than most of them.
DeleteAs to Clarke, I think his best works were the Tales From the White Hart and Rendezvous With Rama, with The City and the Stars was not far behind. His non-fiction was good, but not as good as Asimov's, though.
Clarke and Asimov are both authors where I'm left to wonder, "why all the hype?" I read some of it, but they never got me excited to read more. Foundation is the first book series where I asked myself, "Why are you still reading this if you're not enjoying it?" I'd famously gut out a series to the end before that.
DeleteThere's some great stuff in there, for certain, but I suspect that they're remembered for the same reason as The Godfather. They were first and they suffer if you come in after you've been experiencing the people who were second or third and those firsts are cliche now.
My "firsts" authors were Campbell and Heinlein, which a completely different branch of sci-fi.
It probably doesn't help Clarke or Asimov in my mind is they were preachy bastards who'd take the tack that if you didn't understand their work, perhaps a coloring book would be more your speed.
Not near as bad as Gregory Benford's line about not writing for the uneducated masses and if they didn't understand what he was writing, perhaps they should get their own graduate degree in advanced theoretical physics.
My response there is, "oh, you don't want my money? OK!"
My reading list was Poe, Sherlock Holmes, Steinbeck, stuff like that. Went to visit mom for the summer, and the reading material was sparse, but The God Machine was there. So I read it. In 68. And it left a mark. I enjoyed that book.
ReplyDeleteIf ya like Sci-fi, ya might consider it.
Well, crappola! I can't C&P the Wiki on it.
The writer eventually wrote something that was used as the basis for The Six MillYun Dollar Man.
Imagine what That MoFo would cost today..