Forrest J. Ackerman RIP

Forry Ackerman the father of 'Sci-Fi' and Famous Monsters of Movieland died yesterday. When I learned this I said to a friend wow I thought he had passed away years ago. At least he had as a pop culture icon of fantasy, sci-fi and movie monsterdom. He was relagatedto occasional apperances in cheesy B sci fi and monster movies, which he loved, while the fickel world of pop culture popularity replaced him with George Lucas, Stephen Spielberg, Harry Potter and Tolkien.
One thing I learned from this LA Times obituary bio was that he was a closet lesbian. Which makes alot of sense, Hollywood where he grew up was always a kinky place and science fiction was place where homosexuality was one of the speculative fictions.
And the science fiction community known as 'fandom' was always a fringe community, begining in its earliest days as pulp fiction, it was based on readers and writers who cooresponded with each other, in doing so they linked to other fringe groups, and movements, some of them in their embryonic forms; feminism, occultists, conspiracy theorists, socialists,beatniks, hippies, homosexuals, etc. etc. It was not limited to the United States. Fandom was populated by the original geeks and nerds who read wild tales of imaginary worlds. In doing so they helped create the counter culture of the fifties and sixties. And in LA they created links between sci fi and libertarian politics as well as the feminist, homosexual and occult community. And no one was more of a geek than Forry.

By his late teens, he had mastered Esperanto, the invented international language. In 1929, he founded the Boys Scientifiction Club. In 1932, he joined a group of other young fans in launching the Time Traveler, which is considered the first fan magazine devoted exclusively to science fiction and for which Ackerman was "contributing editor." Ackerman also joined with other local fans in starting a chapter of the Science Fiction Society -- meetings were held in Clifton's Cafeteria in downtown L.A. -- and as editor of the group's fan publication Imagination!, he published in 1938 a young Ray Bradbury's first short story. During World War II, Ackerman edited a military newspaper published at Ft. MacArthur in San Pedro. After the war, he worked as a literary agent. His agency represented scores of science-fiction writers, including L. Ron Hubbard, Isaac Asimov, A.E. van Vogt, H.L. Gold, Ray Cummings and Hugo Gernsback. In 1954, Ackerman coined the term that would become part of the popular lexicon -- a term said to make some fans cringe. My wife and I were listening to the radio, and when someone said 'hi-fi' the word 'sci-fi' suddenly hit me," Ackerman explained to The Times in 1982. "If my interest had been soap operas, I guess it would have been 'cry-fi,' or James Bond, 'spy-fi.' " At the time, Ackerman already was well-known among science-fiction and horror aficionados for his massive collection. After a couple from Texas showed up on his doorstep in 1951 asking to view the collection, Ackerman began opening up his home for regular, informal tours on Saturdays. Over the years, thousands of people made the pilgrimage to the Ackermansion. He also wrote what has been reported to be the first lesbian science-fiction story ever published, "World of Loneliness." And under the pen name Laurajean Ermayne, he wrote lesbian romances in the late 1940s for the lesbian magazine Vice Versa.





SEE:

Childhoods End

RAW RIP

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

Lily Munster RIP

Grandpa Munster RIP

Van Allen Belt

LEM RIP

Octavia Butler RIP

New Age Libertarian Manifesto

Heinlein Centennial

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Andre Norton 1912-2005

Lagrange 5

Good Morning Dave

Another Character Generator




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On Magick and Technology

In my obit yesterday I had overlooked my favorite quote from Arthur C. Clarke, his definition of magick.

It ranks up there with any given by Aleister Crowley or Robert Anton Wilson.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

Which of course was the logic behind the Technomages on Babylon 5, who quoted Clarke to explain their magick; "using technology to create the appearance of magic". Ah yes Babylon 5 one of the best SF TV programs ever.

And befitting his humanism Clarke leaves this vale of tears as he came.

Clarke's brother was traveling to Sri Lanka for his burial, due in Colombo's general cemetery later this week. Clarke left written instructions that his funeral be private and secular.

"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.

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Childhoods End

Arthur C. Clarke the great SF writer who put the 'science' into science fiction has passed on. He was a humanist who believed in the spirit of man. I got emails from Clarke because he supported the SETI project.

In 1945, a UK periodical magazine “Wireless World” published his landmark technical paper "Extra-terrestrial Relays" in which he first set out the principles of satellite communication with satellites in geostationary orbits - a speculation realised 25 years later. During the evolution of his discovery, he worked with scientists and engineers in the USA in the development of spacecraft and launch systems, and addressed the United Nations during their deliberations on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

Today, the geostationary orbit at 36,000 kilometres above the Equator is named The Clarke Orbit by the International Astronomical Union.

Space expert Robin Scagell told Sky News: "He was very much a scientist and science was at the heart of his work.

"As well as predicting satellites, he saw that rockets would go into space."

Astronomer Sir Patrick Moore paid tribute to his friend.

"He was a great visionary, a brilliant science fiction writer and a great forecaster," he said.

"He foresaw communications satellites, a nationwide network of computers, interplanetary travel - he said there would be a man on the moon by 1970, while I said 1980 - and he was right."

Childhood's End is a science fiction novel by Sir Arthur C. Clarke. It was originally published in 1953, and a version with a new first chapter was released in 1990 due to the anachronistic nature of the opening chapter (the first attempts to launch rockets into orbit by both the Americans and Russians are in progress but aborted suddenly when aliens arrive, with a sense of the death of a dream). This story was originally a short story dubbed Guardian Angel which Clarke first published in 1950 for the Famous Fantastic Mysteries magazine. It is basically the novel's section after the prologue, Earth and the Overlords but with some different text in certain places.

Clarke struck notes that were poignant and challenging, as with this final, anguished question which ends "The Star":

"There can be no reasonable doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?"

May he join the stars in his passing unto the duat.

"Term of all that liveth, whose name is Death and inscrutable, be thou favorable unto us in thine hour. And unto him, from whose mortal eyes the veil of physical life hath fallen, grant that there may be the accomplishment of his True Will. Should he will absorption in the Infinite, or to be united with his chosen and preferred, or to be in contemplation, or to be at peace, or to achieve the labour and heroism of incarnation on this planet or another or in any star, or aught else, unto him may there be granted the accomplishment of his true will."

My libertarian science fiction opera loving uncle Phil Smith, a bread truck driver, turned me on to sci-fi as a kid. Clarke, Asimov, Heinlein, Andre Norton, the books he read he passed on to me. And we both shared our love of sci-fi with lots of political debate as well as I became a radical teen ager. He was right wing libertarian and I was a left wing anarchist, yet we agreed more often than disagreed. My favorite memory of my uncle was the two of us seeing 2001 together.I got to help him pass into the duat when he died of cancer.

Unfortunately as I cruise the sci-fi section of bookstores I find that it is stuffed full of fantasy novels, sci-fi has been eclipsed by the money making fantasy genre. Hopefully with Clarke's passing more folks will decide to read his works, as dated as they me be, and to begin to read more sci-fi because science fiction has always been a radical critique of existing society unlike fantasy. Which may be why the publishers like it, safe money making literature, not unlike that other fantasy genre; romance novels.



SEE

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

RAW RIP

Octavia Butler RIP

Van Allen Belt

LEM RIP

Andre Norton 1912-2005

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The Death of Quality TV

In a discussion of the decline of quality Sci-Fi TV programing, in this case Battlestar Galactica, in the niche market of cable channels like the Sci-Fi network, Space in Canada, James Bow concludes;

Clearly what has happened is that the vaunted 500-channel universe has not delivered the democratization of programming that was promised twenty years ago. We used to believe that any niche program could find itself an audience here, but we forgot the other side of the demand/supply equation: television costs money to produce, and sometimes good television costs a lot of money to produce.

Well actually we didn't forget that good TV costs money to produce. What some folks forgot was that the bottom line always was the basis for all commercial TV production. Which is why we have the rise of reality TV programs, including whole channels devoted to reality TV like the Food Network, Home and Garden channel etc. All this costs far less to produce than a regular network show which of course has real writers (unionized), directors (unionized), actors (unionized), techies (unionized).

In other words the 500 channel universe did not democratize TV nor did cable. What has happened is that the business tycoons who own the studios and production companies have expanded into a variety of other entertainment and amusement businesses and are using TV to support these endeavours. In doing so they are looking to create cheap productions and that has resulted in a plethora of union busting bottom line programming hence reality TV. The sound you hear is the owners cashing in.

Look at the Sci Fi programming on mainstream channels; ABC, NBC, CBS that were launched last year and were canceled; Surface, which was excellent and had potential, Threshold, and Invasion. Gone. In some cases they barely lasted one season. While the networks cash in on them by issuing them on DVD.

Just as the Sci-Fi network did in killing Babalon 5 and later Farscape. They still profit by issuing them as DVD's and with mini series tie ins.

Quality TV programing especially science fiction and drama is now too costly to produce, not because it is, thanks to the advances in CGI technology, but because the bottom line is so low in production costs that anything that is quality is priced out of the market. Thus reality TV is the thin wedge of union busting in TV land.

Nor has the 500 channel universe opened itself to DIY programming, in fact it has closed off access. It is still controlled by the same corporate interests the owners of production and cable companies.

While fears that the 500 channel universe would be the Deathstar to commercial mainstream TV such has not been the case. Instead mainstream TV and its cable, movie, news, DVD rivals are the New Empire; resulting from interlocking corporate ownership .

The sucking sound you hear is not Darth Vader, it's the decline in quality TV production as the Empire expands in the inevitable mediocrity of the bottom line.

SEE:

Blade Runner

Dr. Who Curse

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TV

Blade Runner

Blade Runner along with Alien were groundbreaking movies by Ridley Scott.

Unfortunately I have to disagree with him about excising the voice over from his 1992 Directors Cut of Blade Runner.

I found it less satisfying than that with the voice over, though I agree with him that the 'happy ending' in the original sucked.

He has reissued it again for release this fall containing 5 DVD's. And the narration is still excised. So I will see if it really captures the Noir genre it comes from which did often use voice overs.

There is no rambling voiceover by Ford, which the film’s distributors, Warner Bros, originally insisted on for the hard-of-thinking. Here Rick Deckard keeps his thoughts to himself and is infinitely more interesting for it.

This simple conceit makes the film a colder and lonelier place. It was always ravishingly dark. Scott’s vision of Los Angeles in 2019 is the ultimate movie dystopia: a fabulous hell of skyscrapers and monolithic Fritz Lang factories. The sky is cluttered with fuming aircraft and floating neon adverts. It never stops raining on the cramped and seedy streets, and everyone, apart from Ford, smokes like a chimney.

What does it mean to be human in such a diseased world? This is the thrust of Scott’s film noir, which has aged quite brilliantly.

Blade Runner's new cut

Twenty-five years after "Blade Runner" was panned by critics and pulled from theaters, British director Ridley Scott savors revenge with the final cut of the science-fiction film now considered a cult classic.

Presenting the new version of what he considers his most accomplished movie, Scott recalled the difficulties he had when he first pitched the work to Hollywood.

The response at early sample screenings before the official release in June 1982 was so weak that the producers forced Scott to add voice-overs to the film and change the final scene to make it a more "happy ending."

"I thought I'd really nailed it, I really thought I'd nailed it. And the person I used to show it to was my brother (director Tony Scott). And my brother, he loved it so much. Then we preview, and the previews are really, really bad, and my confidence is really dented," said Scott.

The reworking of the film led to "voice overs which started to explain what was about to happen, who the characters were and who was going to do what to who, which is the antithesis of a good movie making process," he said.

Over the years, five versions of the film have been released, including a director's cut in 1992. But Scott said the "Final Cut" -- which will be issued as a collector's DVD edition later in the winter -- was "really as it was intended to be."

So what did you really want to have in your Final Cut?

Ridley Scott: Well, certainly get rid of the voiceover once and for all. If you get rid of the voiceover, then you do not want the ending. This is a film noir. It's an Elmore Leonard kind of influence or Philip Marlowe. This is a Marlowe-esque kind of story which of course is Mr.Dick and Mr.Fancher. Do Androids [Dream of Electric Sheep] has about 17 stories in the first 25 pages, so there was a big distillation right down to the bottom line of what this is about. That was the agony and the ecstasy of working with Hampton and Michael Deeley way back when. We were trying to get this down to a screenplay that we could make. I was completely for voiceover. There was all this bullsh*t saying I was against voiceover. Absolute horse twaddle. I was there and when Harrison and I would talk about this saying, "You like this?" I said, "Well, I think there's a possibility that if we're confusing the audience who are saying, 'What's cityspeak? What is this? What is that?' We may have to explain a few things. If we can get the right words, then it could work." Because three years earlier, there was a film called Apocalypse Now where you have an incredibly important voiceover which is the entire internalization of Martin Sheen's part, who is a man who seems to be a nihilist where you would not know what he's thinking if he didn't have that voiceover. The voiceover was brilliantly written and brilliantly delivered by Martin Sheen. So I hung my hat on that thinking that it may be a possibility, because also it's Philip Marlowe, because also it's Elmore Leonard and Mr. Dick, Philip Dick. But that's the style. He's a cop. He's a dark cop who's a bit of an alcoholic. He's a nihilist who hates himself and hates his job. Sounds like Elmore Leonard to me. And therefore out of it should come a great voiceover. We couldn't crack it. And Harrison really tried and I really tried and I think the voice was becoming over explanatory. When all you're going to do is sit there and actually see how it evolves, or you work it out, 10 minutes off. A film should always be ahead of the audience, not the audience parallel to the movie.

Crave Online: There is a work print on the DVD which has a better voice over than the theatrical cut.

Ridley Scott: Yeah, it's okay. It felt like it could come in and it could be okay, and Harrison's got a great voice and a very listenable to voice, a very deep voice. But we couldn't get the words quite right so that Harrison felt comfortable, so it really did feel like him inside. Most of it was very tricky.

Another issue with the original release was the failure to release the awesome groundbreaking electronc sound track by Vangelis.

Android Love Cry

Just as a graphic novel will never be awarded the book of the year honors, Android Love Cry will never be acknowledged as album of the year. Why? Think about science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. Science fiction is your first clue, we don’t suppose great literature can be science fiction, but Dick wrote some fantastic fiction, even a story (forty years before Philip Roth) pondering what if the Nazi’s had won W.W.II and occupied the United States. But you’ll never see his name listed with the greatest writers of his time, although his works have been turned into motion pictures including; Minority Report, Total Recall, Paycheck and Blade Runner.

What does Blade Runner have to do with Android Love Cry from Tigersmilk? The original title of the 1982 Ridley Scott film was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and certainly the music made by this trio could be the soundtrack for a modern remake of the film.

These thirteen pieces lead you into flights of imagination—story lines appear, old science fiction movies like Silent Running, The Andromeda Strain or The Omega Man rerun in your head. But this music isn’t your “Hearts of Space” smooth ambient sounds. This trio meshes improvisation seamlessly with the science. Bassist Roebke is quite adept at adapting his double-bass to his partners and their effects. Although the highlight of the disc might be the 56-second “Circuit Overload Demise,” where he opens with a monstrous attack of bass energy before playing against drummer and computer plunks, the display of control and power is awe-inspiring.

And Scott has announced the death of Science Fiction Film...

Ridley Scott says 'Sci-fi films are as dead as Westerns’

Me thinks he speaks tongue in cheek considering his latest movie is a Western. And in this case he can't complain if it bombs, he didn't direct it. And like Blade Runner it appears it too will be cursed by the critics. Much like Michael Cimino's over budget ill fated 'Heavens Gate'.

Brad Pitt plays legendary outlaw Jesse James in the Warner Bros. release;
The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford

Whether it directly resembles them or not, this impeccable new picture is at one with the adventurous spirit that produced such films as "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," "Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid," "Bad Company," "The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid," "Jeremiah Johnson," "The Outlaw Josey Wales," "Days of Heaven," "The Long Riders" and, yes, "Heaven's Gate," rather than with anything being made today.

Shot two years ago and long delayed in editing, pic marks an enormous advance for Dominik beyond his 2000 Aussie prison crimer "Chopper." Elegant, artful and consumed by a fascination with American history and Western lore, his adaptation of Ron Hansen's popular 1983 novel retills the once overworked ground of outlaw legend so thoroughly that it has become fertile once again. Pic's hefty 160-minute running time will no doubt cause carping in some quarters, but this is one film whose length seems absolutely right for what it's doing.

"Assassination of Jesse James" a celluloid crime

Coming from the production companies of the film's star, Brad Pitt, and Ridley and Tony Scott and based on Hansen's well-received novel, the film's pedigree probably means a solid opening week. However, word-of-mouth might kill the movie faster than Robert Ford killed Jesse James.

SEE:

LEM RIP

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Film Noir

Heinlein Centennial

Vonnegut, Dresden and Canada

Kurt Vonnegut, author of `Slaughterhouse-Five,’ dies


The defining moment of Vonnegut's life was the firebombing of Dresden, Germany, by Allied forces in 1945, an event he witnessed firsthand as a prisoner of war. Thousands of civilians were killed in the raids.

The firebombing of Dresden, he wrote, was "a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany."

His experience in Dresden was the basis of "Slaughterhouse-Five," which was published in 1969 against the backdrop of war in Vietnam, racial unrest and cultural and social upheaval. The novel, wrote critic Jerome Klinkowitz, "so perfectly caught America's transformative mood that its story and structure became best-selling metaphors for the new age."

Slaughter House Five became the anti war novel of the Viet Nam era in America. Today the fire bombing of Dresden is still controversial in Canada as military chicken hawks attempt to white wash Britain's Bomber Harris because he used Canadian pilots to do the dirty work of bombing civilian targets in WWII.

A war of words over Canada's role in the bombing of German cities during the Second World War will move to Parliament Hill after a Senate committee on veterans' issues agreed to calls from the Royal Canadian Legion to host hearings on a contentious exhibit at the Canadian War Museum.

The display, which notes critics have questioned the "value and morality" of the Allied bombing campaign in Nazi Germany, has sparked outrage among some veterans and prompted the legion to urge a public boycott of the Ottawa museum until the disputed wording is changed or removed.

A single panel at the heart of the conflict describes the "enduring controversy" over the role of Canadian bombing squadrons in attacking Germany's industrial infrastructure and major cities as part of an Allied strategy to destroy the enemy's morale and cripple the Nazi war machine.

"Mass bomber raids against Germany resulted in vast destruction and heavy loss of life," the panel reads.

"The value and morality of the strategic bomber offensive against Germany remains bitterly contested. Bomber Command's aim was to crush civilian morale and force Germany to surrender by destroying its cities and industrial installations.

"Although Bomber Command and American attacks left 600,000 Germans dead, and more than five million homeless, the raids resulted in only small reductions in German war production until late in the war."

The museum has defended its exhibit, arguing the actions of Bomber Command have been debated for decades and that raising questions about the conduct of the 1939-1945 war is part of what historians should do.

Fire bombing tests were conducted on model cities built in the Nevada desert as Mike Davis writes in his book Dead Cities. The tests showed what we know today; fire bombing was not a military success but it certainly was successful as terrorism against a civilian population.

Davis begins our apocalyptically inflected tour with a trip to New York’s Ground Zero. He then takes us to “German Village,” a Utah wasteland that was once a test site for Allied science advisors to rehearse the perfect plan for destroying Berlin,

As Niels Gutshow has shown, some hardcore Nazi ideologues actually welcomed the thousand-bomber raids and firestorms as a ritual cleansing of the "Jewish influence" of big city life and the beginning of a mystical regeneration of Aryan unity with nature. Thus, in the aftermath of the Hamburg, Cologne, and Kassel holocausts in 1943, the "eco-fascist" Max Karl Schwarz, who shared Ruskin's and Jefferies's aversion to the "toxicity" of big cities, proposed to "revitalize the landscape" by leveling the debris and planting trees. The old, dense cities would not be rebuilt; indeed, "only after the destroyed areas are animated through forest will they become a true urban landscape, that is, with houses and gardens." Authentically German garden cities would replace the decadent "Jewish" metropolis. After all, had not Zarathustra commanded his followers to "spit on this city of shopkeepers"?

The British Air Command also planned a final solution for Germany had D-Day not been successful, they were going to drop anthrax on Germany.


See:

RIP

Obituary


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