The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

While writing my last post, a review of the excellent movie Edge of Tomorrow, I had cause to reflect on science-fiction movies starring Tom Cruise.  He has some impressive credits: Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, War of the Worlds, Oblivion and Edge of Tomorrow. I have enjoyed them all. 

I then contemplated whether any other actors have appeared in so many great science-fiction movies. Charlton Heston immediately came to mind with Soylent Green, Planet of the Apes and The Omega Man. As I am a fan of John Carpenter movies, I then thought of Kirk Russell who stared in The Thing, Escape From New York and Escape From LA. He also appeared in the big screen version of Stargate and had a small role in Vanilla Sky.

But had any of those actors made it into a science-fiction hall of fame? There is a Science Fictionand Fantasy Hall of Fame located at the EMP museum in Seattle, a museum dedicated to contemporary popular culture.

Hall of Fame Members

• Brian W. Aldiss
• Poul Anderson
• Isaac Asimov
• Betty Ballantine
• Ian Ballantine
• Alfred Bester
• James Blish
• Chesley Bonestell
• David Bowie
• Leigh Brackett
• Ray Bradbury
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Octavia E. Butler
• James Cameron
• John W. Campbell, Jr.
• Sir Arthur C. Clarke
• Hal Clement
• Samuel R. Delany
• Vincent Di Fate
• Philip K. Dick

• Gordon R. Dickson
• Gardner Dozois
• Harlan Ellison
• Ed Emshwiller
• Edward L. Ferman
• Virgil Finlay
• Frank Frazetta
• Frank Kelly Freas
• Hugo Gernsback
• William Gibson
• Jean 'Moebius' Giraud
• Joe Haldeman
• Harry Harrison
• Ray Harryhausen
• Robert A. Heinlein
• Frank Herbert
• Damon Knight
• Stanley Kubrick
• H.R. Giger
• Ursula K. Le Guin
• Fritz Leiber

• George Lucas
• Richard Matheson
• Anne McCaffrey
• Judith Merril
• Abraham Merritt
• Hayao Miyzaki
• Michael Moorcock
• C.L. Moore
• Andre Norton
• Frank R. Paul
• Frederik Pohl
• Richard M. Powers
• Gene Roddenberry
• Joanna Russ
• Eric Frank Russell
• Ridley Scott
• Rod Serling
• Mary W. Shelley
• Robert Silverberg
• E.E. Smith

• Steven Spielberg
• Olaf Stapleton
• Theodore Sturgeon
• James Tiptree, Jr.
• J.R.R. Tolkien
• Douglas Trumbull
• Wilson Tucker
• A. E. van Vogt
• Jack Vance
• Jules Verne
• H.G. Wells
• Michael Whelan
• Kate Wilhelm
• Jack Williamson
• Connie Willis
• Gene Wolfe
• Donald Allen Wollheim
• Roger Zelazny

Tom Cruise, Charlton Heston, Kirk Russell and John Carpenter haven’t been admitted yet. Unless I am mistaken, no Australians have entered either. 

Nobody in this hall of fame has me questioning its validity. The vast majority of hall of famers are authors and male.  

Who Else is Missing?

 

After a bit of thought, I could not come up with any other science-fiction authors who should absolutely be in the hall of fame. I think Margaret Atwood is close, perhaps when I finish reading Madd Addam she might have me pushing for her admittance. I think the only Australian science-fiction author who comes close to getting in is George Turner. Greg Egan has the talent and critical acclaim to get there one day.

I could think of a few television/film makers who should be in the hall of fame. JJ Abrams should be there for Lost, Fringe, Revolution, the movies Super 8 and Cloverfield, and the reboot of Star Trek. We do have to forgive him for writing Armageddon and being executive producer for the television series Alcatraz.

Joss Whedon should definitely be in the hall of fame for Firefly, Dollhouse and Agents of Shield on the small screen, and the movies Serenity, Avengers and Cabin in the Woods.

Russell T. Davies should be in just for rebooting Doctor Who. If that is not enough, he also created the spinoffs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Who do you think is missing from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame?

Review of Edge of Tomorrow.

 

Edge of Tomorrow is a gripping, fast-paced, action science-fiction movie. It has time-travel, aliens and Tom Cruise being killed over and over again. What more could you want? It’s not exactly original, with a premise very similar to Source Code, except aliens replace the terrorists. For those who missed Source Code, think Groundhog Day, only in Edge of Tomorrow the conceited main character has to die to reset the day, and the stakes are slightly more than bedding Andie MacDowell. Cruise has to save the world, once more.

Cruise plays a different kind of hero here. He is not the Joe Everyman of War of the Worlds, or the inquisitive technician of Oblivion. In Edge of Tomorrow he is a media spin doctor for the army, Major Bill Cage. He is a man who knows how to spew out propaganda for the war effort, but has no intentions of going anywhere near the war front.  

The aliens are called Mimics. Their navigation system must have malfunctioned because they did invade Los Angeles, but Europe instead. Perhaps one of their many reptilian tentacles hit the wrong button on the navigation console while watching Independence Day. Most of Europe is occupied by the Mimics and if something isn’t done to stop their advance, they will soon threaten Los Angeles.    

The Americans, with the aid of one Aussie, plan to stop them. They decide to launch a massive D-day type invasion to re-take Europe. Cage is ordered to go in with the troops to report on the invasion. He refuses, so he is demoted and sent to the disembarking point for the invasion force, an airfield. There he is placed in a squad of other malcontents. The next morning he is quickly fitted out in a battle exoskeleton suit and marched onto a paratrooper plane. He is dropped into the front line and dies quickly.

Then the fun part of the story begins. When he dies he immediately travels back in time to the day before the invasion. He runs into a true war hero, Rita Vrataski, played by Emily Blunt. For such a petite actress, she is surprisingly convincing as a battle hardened warrior (the exoskeleton suit helps).  Together she and Cage set about trying to win the invasion, resulting in Cage dying and resetting over and over.

Aussie Noah Taylor makes an appearance as scientist who is slumming as a battle suit mechanic. He helps provide some of the technical information needed to explain the time loops. He also has some ideas on how to defeat the aliens.

The movie has some very nice twists as the story moves along at a great pace. No time is wasted in this movie. And it concludes with a realistic, logical ending. Well at least if you pay attention it does. Oh, and the special effects are excellent, unlike Avatar, the aliens look real and different. And I watched the 2D version. 

Edge of Tomorrow is based on the Japanese graphic novel All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. The movie was written by a commitee of Christopher McQuarrie and Jez and John-Henry Butterworth. It is directed by Doug Liman who, among other films, directed the okay science-fiction film Jumper.

If you enjoy Star Trek you will enjoy Edge of Tomorrow. Come to think of it, I am sure one of the Star Trek series had an episode with a time-travel looping story similar to Edge of Tomorrow. If you hate Tom Cruise, just get over it: you are missing some great science-fiction movies. So go and see Edge of Tomorrow and have a great science-fiction time.

A Divine Problem

 

I have had a busy couple of weeks thanks mainly to the Divine website that I write for. Two weeks ago we were told by Divine that the website was being moved onto a new server, and they were taking the opportunity to archive all pre-2013 stories. Twenty-four articles of my stories would no longer be viewable. And some of them were very good. I was not that impressed.

I had been under the impression that the articles I wrote would be on the web for at least as long as Divine existed (I hold my breath each time a state budget comes along and at the end of each financial year). If Divine stopped operating, I hoped that the Office for Disability, which owns the website, would keep my articles viewable.    

I contacted the editor by email and on the phone to express my disappointment. I was told that most online publications end up archiving much of their content. Just over 750 stories are on Divine at the moment, so to make the site more manageable pre-2013 stories need to be archived. But 24 of them are mine!

I made suggestions, like each writer nominating two of their own pre-2013 stories to stay on the site, but that went nowhere. Many of the other Divine writers expressed their unhappiness in an extended email exchange. I feel particularly for those writers who have not written for Divine since the beginning of 2013.

But rather than get angry or depressed or both, I have been working on a solution where readers and potential employers can still read my work. I have decided to put the articles up on my own website. I have 24 articles to play with so I could create a divine Divine section on my site.

I saved screen shots of all the affected articles, and tried to copy them onto my website using my website provider’s primitive website builder. I quickly found out it was not going to be that easy. After baulking at the $399 price of an up-to-date version of Dreamweaver (which I had used to create the original site), I reinstalled Dreamweaver 2004 on to my computer. Surprisingly it still seems to work.

After a bit of fiddling in Dreamweaver, I was able to copy the saved source code from one of my Divine articles into my website provider’s website builder. After more fiddling, this is the result: http://grahamclements.com/freelance%20writing/a%20novel%20approach%20to%20writing.html

What do you think?

So far my attempts to get the text to wrap around the picture have failed. I can wrap the text using Dreamweaver, but the formatting does not stick when I transfer the source code to my website.

Goodbye Doc.

It’s a very sad day today for me.  Doc Neeson, the lead singer of The Angels, has died. He was 67 and died of a brain tumour. The Angels were, and still are, my all-time favourite band.  I first went and saw them at Latrobe University in 1979 (see video above, I was there). I was in the first year of university at the time, staying at Menzies College. The Colleges at Latrobe are located on campus and are only a few hundred metres from Union Hall, which became a big live music venue while I was at uni.

A few months into my first year at uni, a concert was put on, featuring The Sports and a band I had never heard of, The Angels. I didn’t plan on going, but me and a mate scored pass outs from a couple who were more interested in each other than live music. I can’t remember much about The Sports set, but then The Angels came on. They were loud and aggressive, with an amazingly energetic front man, Doc Neeson. By the end of the night I was in a state of euphoria from jumping around to them. 

I rushed out and bought their second album, Face To Face. It contains some of their classic songs  like Take A Long Line, I Aint the One and After the Rain. I then bought their third album No Exit which contained further classics like Shadow Boxer,  Can’t Shake it, and my all-time favourite song of theirs: Ivory Stairs.

Lyrics of Ivory Stairs:

Rumour has it that you got a well laid plan
To make yourself a singularly self-made man
Imported shirts from Yves St. Laurent
You got everything that you want
Catch you running to your candy colored Chevrolet
Consumer consumed, the loser has to pay
The higher you climb, the deeper you go
Talking about a change, nothing changed so slow

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can't get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

Any kid on the street with his ear to the ground
Knows credit card conspiracy and flesh by the pound
Harlequin dancin' 'tween the sun and the moon
They got you dancing to a gallows tune

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can't get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can't get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

(Solo)

Oh no, you found the door
Too late you found that you never got the key
Oh no, in the confusion
Don't turn your weary eyes on me

Harlequin dancin' 'tween the sun and the moon
Got you dancing to a gallows tune
Tell me what happened to your well laid plan
To make yourself a singularly self-made man
Catch you running to your candy colored Chevrolet
Consumer consumed, the loser has to pay
The higher you climb, the deeper you go
Talking about a change, nothing changed so slow

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can't get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs

Climbing up the ivory stairs
Never gonna get anywhere
Slipping on the first step, can't get a good grip
Climbing up the ivory stairs
Ivory Stairs

(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
Climbing up the ivory stairs

(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
(Watch your step)
Climbing up the ivory stairs

It’s a song that contains my all-time favourite lyric: consumer consumed, the loser has to pay.  I loved the Angel’s introspective lyrics. They were singing about me and the world I lived in. 

I saw Neeson launch himself from the speaker stacks many times.  One of their most memorable performances was with Midnight Oil at the Melbourne Showgrounds. I even paid to see AC/DC at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, because the Angels were their support act. The crowd was so ecstatic after The Angels set that AC/DC waited 45 minutes for us to calm down before they started ringing their bell.

The Angels huge amount of live performances lead to them making the greatest live album ever, Live Line.

So it is a sad day for me and all the fans of Australia’s greatest ever rock band. I feel like the rain has started to fall. 

Somebody save me, the water's rising
sweet Jesus take the blame
who knows whose star is falling
after the rain, after the rain. 

You will be missed Doc.