Science Fiction

Science Fiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to.
Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish that it could.

Arthur C. Clarke
Forward to "The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke"
January - 2002

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Two 'Hard Sci-fi' Writers

Arthur C. Clark

To film buffs, Arthur C. Clarke is best known as the author who collaborated with Stanley Kubrick to produce 2001: A Space Odyssey. The scientific community remembers him as the man who first conceptualized geosynchronous communication-satellite relays, in a 1945 paper that became the foundation for modern communications technology. But science-fiction fans have any number of touchstones for the British author: He's one of very few to be designated a Science Fiction Grand Master, he's the author of the classic novels Childhood's End and Rendezvous With Rama, and he first created the popular axiom "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magick." Now in his late 80s, Clarke has written or collaborated on more than 70 books, including three 2001 sequels, three Rendezvous With Rama sequels (co-authored with Gentry Lee), two autobiographies, and a wide variety of essays and short stories. His non-fiction includes collections of his correspondence with C.S. Lewis and Lord Dunsany, as well as many books on physics, science, and space travel, from 1950's guidebook Interplanetary Flight to 1994's The Snows Of Olympus, a graphic look at a terraformed Mars. His latest, Time's Eye, is a new collaboration with Stephen Baxter, the first in a series of novels involving a cataclysm that slices Earth into segments from across history, leading cosmonauts and prehistoric humans to mix in an epic struggle. From his home in Sri Lanka, Clarke recently (2004-02) spoke with The Onion A.V. Club about religion, transcendence, the possibility of life on Mars, and the dinosaur that was named after him.

It all began at Christmas 1948 - yes 1948 - with a four-thousand-word short story that I wrote for a contest sponsored by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). "The Sentinel" described the discovery of a small pyramid on the Moon, set there by some alien civilization to await the emergence of mankind as a planet-faring species. Until then, it was implied, we would be too primitive to be of any interest. The BBC rejected my modest effort , and it was not published until almost three years later in the one-and-only (Spring 1951) issue of "10 Story Fantasy" - a magazine that, as the invaluable Encyclopedia of Science Fiction wryly comments, is "primarily remembered for its poor arithmetic (there were thirteen stories)."

From "Valediction", "3001: The Final Odyssey"
Ballantine Books (1997) hardcover edition


"Astrologers used to believe that Man's destiny is controlled by the stars. But one day it may come to pass that the stars' destiny is controlled by Man."
-- Arthur C. Clarke, 1917-2008

IEEE Spectrum: Final Thoughts from Sir Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) - Clarke's very last interview

Odyssey Series

Rama Series

Odyssey-Rama Superscript Notes:

  1. Coauthored with Gentry Lee
  2. Coauthored with Stephen Baxter
  3. Click www.bookfinder.com or www.alibris.com to purchase rare and out-of-print books

Other note-worthy books

Some Useful Links:

Clarke's First Law:

"When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."

Clarke defines the adjective 'elderly' as :"In physics, mathematics and astronautics it means over thirty; in other disciplines, senile decay is sometimes postponed to the forties. There are of course, glorious exceptions; but as every researcher just out of college knows, scientists of over fifty are good for nothing but board meetings, and should at all costs be kept out of the laboratory". (in Profiles of the Future.)

Clarke's Second Law:

"The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible."

Clarke's Third Law:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Though he wrote after the laws that "Since three laws was sufficient for both the Isaacs - Newton and Asimov - I have decided to stop here", he continued to write laws, as we can see in the Appendix 2 of The Odyssey File where he states the Clarke's 69th Law:

"Reading computer manuals without the hardware is as frustrating as reading sex manuals without the software."

Clarke's Fourth Law:

“For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert.”

Cool quote:

A hundred years ago, the electric telegraph made possible - indeed, inevitable - the United States of America. The communications satellite will make equally inevitable a United Nations of Earth; let us hope that the transition period will not be equally bloody.

Arthur C. Clarke, "First on the Moon", 1970

Rendezvous With Rama (the Game)

Based on the novel by Arthur C. Clarke By now, the year 2130, all of the largest asteroids in the solar system have long since been discovered. Smaller ones are being downed at the rate of a dozen a day. So when a huge new asteroid appears the only surprise is that is was overlooked for so long. It is duly assigned the next available name, Rama, and is promptly forgotten about - but not for long. As Rama approaches the Earth, every question about it seems to have an answer that raises more questions. And as observations continue, the most impossible explanation becomes the only one: Rama is actually a spaceship. The next step is obvious: mankind must attempt a rendezvous. But only one of our spaceships is close enough. As fate has it, that ship is Endeavor - the ship that you command. Without even reading them, you know what your orders will be: to rendezvous with the giant ship, to explore it, to meet with its inhabitants, and to return home before it speeds on its orbit away from the solar system. Yet even in your excitement, you realize it is not an easy mission. You will have to make difficult decisions - many of them. And you will have to work very fast - because if you stay on Rama too long, returning home will be impossible. From the first moment it has been clear: this is the mission of your lifetime. Thousands would gladly sacrifice anything for the chance. Only you can explore Rama. Rendezvous with Rama is the first computer adventure to be produced in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke. The program allows you to talk with three other crew members. Multiple disks offer extended play - and the game may be played with or without graphics. Arthur C. Clarke, world-famous author of 2001: A Space Odyssey, continues to be a major force in science fiction; over twenty-million copies of his books have been printed World-Wide. The novel Rendezvous with Rama has won three highest science fiction awards: the Hugo, the Nebula and the John W. Campbell Awards. The adventure game Rendezvous with Rama was developed and produced by Byron Preiss Video Productions, Inc., leading designers of entertainment and educational software. Their technical director is Lee Jackson.

Dr. Isaac Asimov (not an honorary degree)

From the rear dust jacket of "The Caves of Steel"
Doubleday 1954 hardcover edition

For a long time the author has led a double life: one as one of the masters of the fast, terse, often humorous galactic melodramas, and as a biochemist and teacher at the Boston University School of Medicine, where he is engaged in cancer research. Mr. Asimov says: "Science Fiction invades most of the facets of my life, even my serious research. At my final examination for a doctorate in biochemistry (with seven professors asking profound and embarrassing questions) the last question concerned one of the incidents in one of my science-fiction stories. I got my degree." Mr. Asimov also says he is better known for such stories as Pebble in the Sky, The Stars, Like Dust and The Currents of Space in the science fiction world (which takes science fiction very seriously) than he is ever likely to be for his cancer research.

TODAY'S (1954) FICTION - TOMORROW'S FACTS

LIFE Magazine says there are more than TWO MILLION science fiction fans in this country. From all corners of the nation comes the resounding proof that science fiction has established itself as an exciting and imaginative NEW FORM OF LITERATURE that is attracting literally tens of thousands of new readers every year! Why? Because no other form of fiction can provide you with such thrilling and unprecedented adventures! No other form of fiction can take you on an eerie trip to Mars ... amaze you with a journey into the year 3000 A.D. ... or sweep you into the fabulous realms of unexplored Space! Yes, it's no wonder that this exciting new form of imaginative literature has captivated the largest group of fascinated new readers in the United States today!

From "Author's Note" (pages ix to x) of "Prelude To Foundation"
Doubleday 1988 hardcover edition © 1988 by Nightfall Inc.

When I wrote Foundation, which appeared in the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, I had no idea I had begun a series of stories that would eventually grow into six volumes and a total of 650,000 words (so far). Nor did I have any idea that it would be unified with my series of short stories and novels involving robots and my novels involving the Galactic Empire for a grand total (so far) of fourteen volumes and a total of about 1,450,000 words.

You will see, if you study the publication dates of these books, that there was a twenty-five-year hiatus between 1957 and 1982, during which I did not add to this series. This is not because I had stopped writing. Indeed, I wrote full-speed throughout the quarter century, but I wrote other things. That I returned to the series in 1982 was not my own notion but was the result of a combination of pressures from readers and publishers that eventually became overwhelming.

In any case, the situation has become sufficiently complicated for me to feel that the readers might welcome a kind of guide to the series, since they were not written in the order in which (perhaps) they should be read.

The fourteen books, all published by Doubleday, offer a kind of history of the future, which is, perhaps, not completely consistent, since I did not plan consistency to begin with. The chronological order order of the books, in terms of future history (and not of publication date), is as follows:

Syllabus reading order as suggested by Isaac Asimov (Webpage editor's comments in RED):
# Title Asimov's Comments Wikipedia
1 The Complete Robot (1982)
or
I, Robot (1950) 1
  • The Complete Robot is a collection of thirty-one robot short stories published between 1940 and 1976 and includes every story in my earlier collection I, Robot (1950). Only one robot short story has been written since this collection appeared. That is Robot Dreams, which has not yet appeared in any Doubleday collection. 2
  • I, Robot is a collection of nine short stories presented as the memoirs of robot psychologist Dr. Susan Calvin (an employee of "U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men Corporation"). Most people find the title of this book just plain weird until they read chapter 8 ("Evidence").
 wiki link
2 Caves of Steel (1954) This is the first of my robot novels. wiki link
3 The Naked Sun (1957) The second robot novel. wiki link
4 The Robots of Dawn (1983) The third robot novel. wiki link
5 Robots and Empire (1985) The fourth robot novel. wiki link
6 The Currents of Space 3 (1952) This is the first of my [Galactic] Empire novels. wiki link
7 The Stars, Like Dust 3 (1951) The second [Galactic] Empire novel. wiki link
8 Pebble in the Sky 3 (1950) The third [Galactic] Empire novel and first novel. wiki link
9 Prelude to Foundation (1988) This is the first Foundation novel. wiki link
10 Forward the Foundation 4 (1993) This is the second Foundation novel. [ this title was not in Asimov's original list ] wiki link
11 Foundation 5 (1951) The is the third Foundation novel but most of the world knows this book as the first book of the "Foundation Trilogy". Actually, it began as a collection of four short stories, originally published between 1942 and 1944, plus an introductory section written for the book in 1949. wiki link
12 Foundation and Empire 5 (1952) This is the fourth Foundation novel, made from of two short stories, originally published in 1945. wiki link
13 Second Foundation 5 (1953) This is the fifth Foundation novel, made from two short stories, originally published in 1948 and 1949. wiki link
14 Foundation's Edge (1982) This is the sixth Foundation novel. wiki link
15 Foundation and Earth (1986) This is the seventh Foundation novel. [ Asimov's list shows a publishing date of 1983 but this is a typo ] wiki link

Will I add additional books to the series? I might. There is room for a book 6 between Robots and Empire and The Currents of Space, and between Prelude to Foundation and Foundation (which turned out to be Forward the Foundation 4), and of course between others as well 6. And then I can follow Foundation and Earth with with additional volumes -- as many as I like. Naturally, there's got to be some limit, for I don't expect to to live forever, but I do intend to hang on as long as possible.

Webpage Editor's Superscripts:
  1. Even though this book was originally published in 1950, the pre-1950 stories contained within seem to stand the test of time. This might have something to do with the fact that Asimov usually glosses over technological details while concentrating more on the humanity side of things. Remember that these stories were written during the age of vacuum tubes thus predating the age of transistors and chips; Asimov never mentions tubes or transistors but he does mention something called the Positronic Brain with is just a literary device for "unknown technology". One dated phrase he uses is "robot psychologist" which should probably have been "computer programmer" but who really knows if my criticism is correct. Artificial Intelligence (AI) programming may become so complex that "robot psychology" might be a programming discipline ;-)
     
  2. The story Robot Dreams did appear in a robot compilation published by Byron Press in 1986 titled Robot Dreams. A second robot compilation was published by Byron Press in 1990 titled Robot Visions.
     
  3. Books 6-8 are part of Asimov's Galactic Empire series. Asimov thought that these books were not very good (as far as the Robot-to-Foundation story line is concerned). He once stated "You can skip these books and still have a very enjoyable read [of the other 12]"
    • There once was a time when Asimov was better know for these three books than he was for the Foundation Trilogy
    • Book 8 (Pebble in the Sky) was republished in hardcover on January 2008 and I enjoyed it immensely.
    • Book 7 (The Stars, Like Dust) was republished in hardcover on December 2008 and I enjoyed it as well.
    • Book 6 (The Currents of Space) was republished in hardcover on April 2009 and think it was worth every penny.
       
  4. Book 10 (Forward the Foundation) was not in Asimov's original list because he had not yet written it. This means that books 11-15 reflect new numberings. Forward the Foundation was Asimov's last book. Click here for suppressed information about Asimov's death in 1992 at the age of 72.
     
  5. Books 11-13 are known by the public-at-large as The Foundation Trilogy. Even still, for maximum enjoyment you should read books 9-15 in order. Since some well known Robots pop up here, you should read books 1-5 (or 1-8) first.
     
  6. It is unfortunate that we cannot able to travel back in time to convince Asimov to get 45 minutes of daily exercise so he could avoid the triple bypass surgery responsible for infecting his blood with a deadly virus. I cannot imagine this collection without Forward the Foundation and now can only wonder about what he had in mind for these other insertion points. Generally speaking, Asimov fans have been very critical about the work done by other authors commissioned by Asimov's estate.
     
  7. If you are a sci-fi fan like me, every one of these 15 books are worth reading. They seem to stand the test of time and do not seem dated. Click www.bookfinder.com or www.alibris.com to purchase rare and out-of-print books
Isaac Asimov = Hari Seldon?

It has not escaped my attention that "stumbling upon Asimov's suggested reading order in an original book from 1988" is very much like "receiving a posthumous message from Hari Seldon". Yes, Asimov still speaks to us today...
NSR
Behind the Foundation
From the introduction to "Foundation and Earth"
Doubleday 1986 hardcover edition

On August 1, 1941, when I was a lad of twenty-one, I was a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University and had been writing science fiction professionally for three years. I was hastening to see John Campbell, editor of Astounding, to whom I had sold five stories by then. I was anxious to tell him of a new idea I had for a science fiction story.

It was to write a historical novel of the future; to tell the story of the fall of the Galactic Empire. My enthusiasm must have been catching, for Campbell grew as excited as I was. He didn't want me to write a single story. He wanted a series of stories, in which the full history of of the thousand years of turmoil between the First Galactic Empire and the rise of the Second Galactic Empire was to be outlined. It would all be illuminated by the science of "psychohistory" that Campbell and I thrashed out between us.

The first story appeared in the May 1942 Astounding and the second story appeared in the June 1942 issue. They were at once popular and Campbell saw to it that I wrote six more stories before the end of the decade. The stories grew longer too. The first one was only twelve thousand words long. Two of the last three stories were fifty thousand words apiece.

By the time the decade was over, I had grown tired of the series, dropped it, and went on to other things. By then, however, various publishing houses were beginning to put out hardcover science fiction books. One such house was a small semiprofessional firm, Gnome Press. They published my Foundation Series in three volumes: Foundation (1951); Foundation and Empire (1952); and Second Foundation (1953). The three books together came to be known as The Foundation Trilogy.

The books did not do very well, for Gnome Press did not have the capital with which to advertise and promote them. I got neither statements nor royalties from them.

In early 1961, my then-editor at Doubleday, Timothy Seldes, told me he had received a request from a foreign publisher to reprint the Foundation books. Since they were not Doubleday books, he passed the request on to me. I shrugged my shoulders. "Not interested, Tim. I don't get royalties on those books"

Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the rights to the books from Gnome Press (which was, by that time, moribund), and in August of that year, the books (along with "I, Robot") became Doubleday property.

From that moment on, the Foundation series took off and began to earn increasing royalties. Doubleday published the Trilogy in a single volume and distributed them through the Science Fiction Book Club. Because of that the Foundation series became enormously well known.

In the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention, held in Cleveland, the fans were asked to vote on a category of "The Best All-Time Series". It was the first time (and, so far, the last) the category had been included in the nominations for the Hugo Award. The Foundation Trilogy won the award, which further added to the popularity of the series.

Increasingly, fans kept asking me to continue the series. I was polite but I kept refusing. Still, it fascinated me that people who had not been born when the series was begun had managed to become caught up in it.

Doubleday, however, took the demands far more seriously that I did. They had humored me for twenty years but as demands kept growing in intensity and number, they finally lost patience. In 1981, they told me that I simply had to write another Foundation novel and, in order to sugar-coat the demand, offered me a contract at ten times my usual advance.

Nervously, I agreed. It had been thirty-two years since I had written a Foundation story and now I was instructed to write one 140,000 words long, twice that of any earlier volumes and nearly three times as long as any previous individual story. I re-read The Foundation Trilogy and, taking a deep breath, dived into the task.

The fourth book of the series, Foundation's Edge, was published in October 1982, and then a very strange thing happened. It appeared in the New York Times bestseller list at once. In fact, it stayed one that list for twenty-five weeks, much to my utter astonishment. Nothing like that had ever happened to me.

Doubleday at once signed me up to do additional novels and I wrote two that were part of another series, The Robot Novels. - And then it was time to return to the Foundation.

So I wrote Foundation and Earth, which begins at the very moment that Foundation's Edge ends, and that is the book you now hold. It might help if you glanced over Foundation's Edge just to refresh your memory, but you don't have to, Foundation and Earth stands by itself. I hope you enjoy it.

Isaac Asimov,
New York City, 1986


Start of Asimov Caveat Section (runs for ~ 250 lines)
Caveat: Don't bother reading between the two red boxes. Long after creating my own online review of Isaac Asimov's books as I re-read them in 2004, I discovered a much better collection of reviews at Wikipedia.

See what Asimov had to say about Protein Folding

Skip to my last "Isaac Asimov" paragraph below to learn about Isaac Asimov's strange and tragic death in 1992.

My "Isaac Asimov" Book Reviews and Observations (2004)

Note: the following information does not contain any spoilers. Most of the information comes from dust jackets or things I noticed while re-reading the books in 2004.

Click www.bookfinder.com or www.alibris.com to purchase out-of-print books

Robot Series

Galactic Empire Series

Foundation Series 1

Other

Superscript Notes:

  1. Initially written as a series of short stories based on Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
  2. Rereading this book in early 2004 was somewhat refreshing. Except for occasional references to "smoking tobacco" or "non-metric measurements", the material does not appear to be dated in any way.
  3. I wonder if this idea is an extrapolation of the investment science of "technical analysis" which attempts to predict the future actions of the stock market?
  4. "Astounding Science Fiction" was renamed "Analog Science Fiction" in 1960

Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics (From the 1942 short story "Runaround")

  1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Note: In Isaac Asimov's book "It's Been A Good Life", Isaac states that Astounding Magazine publisher John W. Campbell deserves joint credit in the creation of the Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics

Some Useful Web Links:

End of Red Section: Please read the "caveat" 250 lines up

Some Useful Multimedia Links:

Sad Information About Isaac Asimov's Death

In 2002-08-10 it was revealed by Dr. Asimov's widow, Dr. Janet Jeppson Asimov, in the new biography It's Been a Good Life, that his death was in fact due to AIDS. In 1983 he had triple bypass surgery and received blood transfusions containing HIV. (Ironic that the city he loved was the cause of his death; doubtless nowhere else in the United States had a higher incidence of HIV in the blood supply than New York at that time.) As Dr. Jeppson Asimov states, after his triple bypass "the next day he had a high fever... only years later, in hindsight, did we realize that the post transfusion HIV infection had taken hold." In the mid-Eighties Dr. Jeppson Asimov noted that her husband had some AIDS symptoms and brought them to the attention of his internist and cardiologist, who pooh-poohed and refused to test him. He was finally tested in February of 1990, prior to further surgery, when he presented HIV-positive with his T-cells half the normal level. The astonishing fact of Dr. Asimov's AIDS was kept secret at the advice of his physicians - they apparently strong-armed him in his sickbed with the threat that his wife would be shunned as a suspected PWA (person with AIDS) as well. The secret was kept not til after Dr. Asimov's death in 1992, nor til after the death of his widow and daughter (indeed they are still alive), but till after the deaths of his physicians (see Dr. Jeppson Asimov's letter to Locus magazine). You can draw your own conclusions, but that makes me feel that it was primarily the physicians' reputations that were being protected by this secret.
So there you have it. The whole world has been deprived of probably another dozen books by Isaac Asimov. In hind site, we all should have convinced him to exercise and diet so he could avoid the triple-bypass surgery as well as the associated blood transfusions which infected him.

Undiscovered Gems

While the following examples were not "ratings busters", you should check them out whenever your sci-fi hunger pangs are strong and you feel you might be settling for reruns of "Lost in Space"

TV Programs (Undiscovered Gems)

Movies (Undiscovered Gems)

My 2 cents worth on Hollywood Science Fiction

I don't understand why Hollywood thinks that every story which takes place in the future, or in space, is automatically labeled "Science Fiction" (unless they are nothing more than marketing "scam artists"). IMHO, science fiction must have most of the following properties:

Examples of good Hollywood science fiction:

Labels that should be used for movies and/or TV programs:

Some examples of "Hollywood mislabeled" science fiction:

X-Files (not really sci-fi, but cool)

Government Denies All Knowledge... but The Truth is Out There

The Lone GunmenMy Favorite Program:

title:

"Unusual Suspects"
episode 5.01 (5x01)

synopsis:

Flashback to Baltimore, 1989. Mulder is found, naked in a warehouse, and the Lone Gunmen are captured by a SWAT team. John Byers tells Detective John Munch about the activities of the day:

Byers was attending a computer conference as a member of the FCC's public affairs department. He met Suzanne Modeski, who needed his help. She was being chased by FBI agent Fox Mulder. Byers and Melvin Frohike hack into the FBI computer with Langley, where they confirmed Mulder's identity and read that Modeski is wanted for murder. Modeski explained that she worked for the DOD. She quit to expose a government plan to test a paranoia inducing chemical on population of Baltimore. They found the location of the chemical and followed it back to a warehouse. Mulder finds them there, but before he can arrest Modeski, two men come for her and fire on Mulder. The chemical is sprayed on Mulder, and he begins to freak out. As Byers, Langley, and Frohike watch, a group of men, including Mulder's future contact "X", clean up the scene. "X" specifically tells his crew to leave Mulder alone, and he leaves the other three unharmed. When Mulder confirms their story, the police let them go. They later find Modeski, and watch as she is picked up by "X" and his crew. Mulder finds them (the lone gunmen) later, and asks them to explain the events of the past night.

revelations:

My 2cd Favorite Program:

title:

"Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man" (a.k.a. the "Forrest Gump" episode)
episode 4.07 (4x07)

credits:

3 producers
3 co-producers
3 consulting producers
2+1 executive producers
written by Glen Morgan
directed by James Wong

revelations:

Links:

TRON (actually Science-Fantasy, but still cool)

Tron uses the I/O tower to
communicate with his user "Alan1"
TRON is probably the best science-fantasy computer theme ever made into a movie ever made (what else would you expect from Disney?). People studying computer science or working in IS/IT will recognize many more things than non computer folk. This must be why TRON is an underground cult classic with engineering students at MIT.

Computer Trivia:

  1. In the early days of computing some video terminals had a TRON key which meant "TRace ON". There was also a TROF key.
     
  2. In the 1970s and 1980s, DEC PDP-11 minicomputers running the RSX-11M operating system signaled readiness to the operator with an MCR> prompt. MCR stood for Monitor Console Routine. In the movie, the computer's operating system is the MCP which stands for Master Control Program. Coincidence? I think not!

Memorable Lines:


Program User Actor
CLU Kevin Flynn Jeff Bridges
TRON Alan Bradley Bruce Boxleitner (Captain John Sheridan in Babylon 5)
SARK Ed Dillinger David Warner
YORI Lora Cindy Morgan
DUMONT Dr. Walter Gibbs Barnard Hughes
RAM ??? Dan Shor
CROM Mr Henderson, a full branch manager
(never seen in the movie)		 Peter Jurasik (Ambassador Londo Molari in Babylon 5)
BIT ??? CGI (computer generated graphics)
MCP ??? CGI

Links:

  1. The TRON Home Page
  2. TRON @ SciFlicks

Graphic Novels (Comic Books) Turned Movies

Comic Books Not Turned into Movies (but still responsible for warping my brain)

Oops! The phrase "comic book" is no longer cool. We now use the phrase Graphic Novel

Miscellaneous - Links

To reduce clutter, the following item was moved to its own web pages.

Firefly / Serenity

Babylon 5 / Crusade / Legend of the Rangers (high quality science-fiction written for an adult audience)

Dune etc.

ST:TNG (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

Interocitor Info

Other Stuff

  1. Klaatu's Speech: I am leaving soon and you'll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by any group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. Now this does not mean giving up any freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We, of the other planets, have long accepted this principle. We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is, of course, the police force that supports it. For our policemen we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first signs of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk. The result is we live in peace without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war, free to pursue more profitable enterprises. Now, we do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system, and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It is no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned-out cinder. Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you.
     
  2. As George Winston, the beleaguered hero of George Orwell's "1984", leafed through Emmanuel Goldstein's subversive tract "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism" he learns the rationale that underlies the mobilization for perpetual war. According to the principles of doublethink (synonym for American Neo-Con Newspeak?), Winston reads, it does not matter if the war is not real or real, victory is not possible – what matters is that the masses are kept are kept in a relative state of deprivation. Thus the purpose of war is to destroy surplus wealth (+US$400 Billion in Iraq?) in order to maintain the hierarchical structure of society – the status quo. As George Orwell baldly puts it, "A hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation - the war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or east Asia but to keep the very structure of society in tact"
    1. 1984 by George Orwell: A searchable online version at The Literature Network
    2. The Complete Newspeak Dictionary
       
  3. Art imitates Life:
    Sonny: I just might get to like this place. Let's see if the Braves are on. How do you turn on this here teevee?
    Riker: Teevee?
    Sonny: Yeah, boob-tube... you know. I'd like to find out how the Braves are doin' after all this time. Probably still finding ways to lose.
    Data to Riker: Oh -- I think he means television, sir.
    Sonny: Or maybe catch up on the soaps.
    Data to Sonny: That particular form of entertainment did not last much beyond the year Two Thousand Forty.
    Reference: STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION - Episode 126 - Titled: "The Neutral Zone"
    Reality: Television died in 2004; not 2040
    Reason: in order to maximize their profits, the networks decided to replace programs based upon "professional writing and acting" with "so-called Reality TV"
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Neil Rieck
Kitchener - Waterloo - Cambridge, Ontario, Canada.