Science Fiction Quote of the Week

It all comes down to a question of sanity. What is sanity -- now, in the twentieth century, any time? Adherence to a norm. Conformity to certain basic conventions underlying all human conduct. In our age, departure from the norm has become the norm. Inability to conform has become the standard of conformity. That’s quite clear, isn’t it? And it enables you to understand, doesn’t it, your own case and that of your proteges? Over a long period of years you persisted in adhering to a norm, in conforming to certain basic conventions. You were completely unable to adapt yourself to the society around you. You could only pretend -- and your proteges wouldn’t have been able to do even that. Despite your many engaging personal characteristics, there was obviously only one course of action open to us.
--Phy in Fritz Leiber's “Sanity”

Science Fiction Quote of the Week

I know you’ve all laughed at the comic-book idea of some Martian monster lusting after beautiful white women. But has it ever occurred to you that a creature from outside might simply and honestly fall in love with you?
--Helen in Fritz Leiber's “The Ship Sails at Midnight”

Beware the Equinox!



The 1970 film Equinox can best be described as one of those low-budget horror films that works a lot better when you are ten than when you are twenty -- and even then, you can't help watching it as an adult and wondering, "What was I thinking when I saw this as a kid?"

It does have a memorable last scene. But whether it is memorable in a good way is yet another matter altogether.

For that matter, the opening sequence involving a car with no driver seemed pretty memorable to me when I first saw this movie -- but that probably says more about my inexperience with horror movies back then than it does the craftsmanship of the movie's director.

If I had to pick the saddest thing about this movie, it is that it featured a brief appearance by the famous horror writer Fritz Leiber -- who was not at his best here and who really deserved a better showcase for his acting than this movie. If I had to pick the best thing about this flick, it is that it probably inspired director Sam Raimi's first horror movie The Evil Dead -- though I somehow doubt that Mr. Raimi will ever acknowledge that.

Anyway, I remember liking it when I first saw it at a very young age. But why I liked it? I have no idea. Perhaps it was the Claymation sequences that impressed me. Or all the references to demons. The movie did tend to work better when it focused on the nonhuman characters than when it focused on the human characters -- though there was one kissing sequence involving a demonic being who looked human that seemed to my adult eyes to be more laughable than scary.

I suspect that some of the animated sequences haunted my dreams for many nights after I first saw the movie but I somehow doubt that I would be affected the same way if I saw it for the first time today. And I for one would like to think that is a good thing. Right?

Book of the Week

If nothing else, Fritz Leiber's novel Our Lady of Darkness certainly has one of the creepiest paperback covers I have ever seen. That alone makes it worth recommending. However, to be fair, the writing is good too.

Author Fritz Leiber virtually invented the genre of urban horror. Of course, he also helped make sword and sorcery stories popular when he was not writing horror stories but that's a topic for another time.

Fantasy Quote of the Week

Have you ever thought what a ghost of our times would look like, Miss Millick? Just picture it. A smoky composite face with the hungry anxiety of the unemployed, the neurotic restlessness of the person without purpose, the jerky tension of the high-pressure metropolitan worker, the uneasy resentment of the striker, the callous opportunism of the scab, the aggressive whine of the panhandler, the inhibited terror of the bombed civilian, and a thousand other twisted emotional patterns. Each one overlaying and yet blending with the other, like a pile of semitransparent masks?
--Mr. Wran in Fritz Leiber's “Smoke Ghost”

Still Waiting to Be Impressed

I finally broke down and saw the 2003 movie The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen a few years ago. To paraphrase a line from Roxanne:

I heard it was going to be bad, but I didn't expect it to be... bad.

The sad part is that with a little effort and foresight, many of this movie's problems could have been avoided in a way that even a die-hard Alan Moore fan like myself -- who was quite an aficionado of the original Moore comic book series which alleged inspired this movie -- would be won over.

Wanna have a vampiric character go out in the sunlight? Then take a cue from author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and EXPLAIN why she can be out in the sunlight. Show her wearing earth-filled shoes or mention that it is okay for her to appear on cloudy days or something. As many readers of the original Bram Stoker novel have noted, the whole “sunlight kills vampires” thing is mostly a Hollywood invention anyway.

But hey, if John Sayles can take time in The Howling to have a character explain what works and does not work against werewolves, then why not a similar exposition scene in this movie?

Also, if you are going to set a film's story in Venice, it might be a good idea to actually film in a locale that looks like Venice. And not like, say, Prague... And if you wish to have a car chase -- which would be dubious enough in a movie set in the Victorian era -- it might be a good scene to write your script in such a way that said chase does not take place in Venice.

While I am at it, that last scene in the movie was supposed to be... What? A homage to Fritz Leiber's short story, “The Automatic Pistol”?

Even if I could bring myself to forgive these nitpicks, there is still the fact that the story just does not work. The script takes a handful of fictional characters who were already famous, drafts them into the Victorian equivalent of the Dirty Dozen and yet depicts them as being just so eager to help out their comrades in arms that it seems ridiculous. Okay, maybe not as ridiculous as the sight of a confessed vampire using the mirror in her compact to adjust her makeup -- but still ridiculous.

Granted, it would probably have taken a mini-series to do Alan Moore’s original work proper justice and even then they would probably screw something up...

In the meantime, there is always the original comic book series...

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Doctor Who (The Second Series): “The End of Time: Part One”

Of course, it always seemed obvious to me that if the Master was ever to come down with an eating disorder, it would undoubtedly involve raging hunger -- just like in this episode.

But still... A hungry cyborg? A cyborg who is resurrected through potions?

Granted, series creator Russell T. Davies deserves kudos for resisting the temptation to toss in a visual reference to Meatloaf's “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” (After all, the title seemed reference enough as it was.) But did we also need visual references to Silence of the Lambs, Stargate, The X-Files and seemingly almost every sci-fi movie and TV show that is not Doctor Who?

I suspect that Davies' true love is really fantasy and indeed, if you look at most of his Doctor Who as basically sword-and-sorcery stories set in space -- with Captain Jack being Fahred to the Doctor's Grey Mouser and the Doctor's various female companions playing Maid Marion to his Robin Hood -- then the stories do not seem so weird. One of these days, Davies is going to settle down and start working on a fantasy series that is either similar to his beloved Buffy the Vampire Slayer or else similar to Wizards and Warriors. However, at this point, I am still not sure whether or not that would be a good thing.

Anyway, I did like certain scenes in this episode -- including a brief glimpse of my beloved Donna Noble and quite longer glimpses of Donna's grandfather. Indeed, one of the best scenes of the episode -- if not, the whole series -- is a brief conversation in a cafe between the Doctor and Donna's grandfather.

I am not sure how I feel about the episode's end. After all, that pun was pretty bad. But I will give it credit for boasting the most memorable cliffhanger since “Utopia.”

More Science Fiction Short Stories I Wish More People Were Familiar With

1. "Babel II" (1953) -- Damon Knight.

Imagine a world where nobody talks and everyone has to write in order to communicate. No, it is not the Internet. It is the world remade after a visit from an eccentric alien.

2. "Beachcomber" (1972) -- Damon Knight.

The ultimate end of the world story, if not the ultimate argument against putting all your eggs in one basket.

3. "Big, Wide, Wonderful World" (1958) -- Charles E. Fritch.

Reality... What a concept! The ultimate “this is your w -- er -- mind on drugs” story.

4. "Or Else" (1953) -- Henry Kuttner.

A visiting alien comes to Earth and interferes with a couple of feuding Mexicans, asking them to break up their fight over a waterhole while doing nothing to resolve the actual issue they’re fighting over. I must admit that I see absolutely no relationship between this story and current U.S. foreign policy. None whatsoever.

5. "Renaissance Man" (1974) -- T.E.D. Klein.

Klein has fun with the old cliché about a man from the future coming back to the past to “enlighten” us.

6. "Sanity" (1944) -- Fritz Leiber.

A classic sci-fi story that poses the age-old question: what is normal?

7. "S.F." (1975) -- T.E.D. Klein.

In a future world, technology allows people to experience something for the first time over and over again. Then the government gets involved and well -- surprise, surprise, there’s a catch.

8. "The Children of Night" (1964) -- Frederik Pohl.

An ad man does P.R. work for an would-be alien invader, only to face an attack of conscience. A story you won't see on Mad Men any time soon.

9. "The Tunnel Under the World (1955) -- Frederik Pohl.

The ultimate triumph of Madison Avenue in yet another story which makes the wildest episode of Mad Men look tame.

10. "You’re Another" (1955) -- Damon Knight.

The ultimate comment on reality shows -- which is odd because the story was written long before the concept of reality shows was created. I always thought it made an interesting thought on the human condition as well, but what do I know?

Words of the Present

1. adoxography -- skilled writing about an unimportant subject; good writing about trivial subjects
2. agelast -- person who never laughs
3. ailuromania -- excessive fondness for cats
4. anaxiphilia -- act of falling in love with the wrong person
5. antinomy -- contradiction or opposition, especially between two laws or rules; contradiction between principles or conclusions that seem equally necessary and reasonable; paradox
6. autodidact -- self-taught person
7. belamour -- glance of love
8. bellitude -- beauty
9. bibliogony -- production and publication of books
10. bibliosopher -- one who gains wisdom from books
11. cingulomania -- strong desire to hold a person in your arms
12. clockless worker -- employee who is willing to work at any time, day or night
13. cognoscenti -- connoisseurs of art, literature or music; those with refined tastes
14. cupboard love -- show of affection motivated by selfishness
15. digitalia -- computer hardware and software and other organs of digital technology, taken as a whole
16. dinosaur wine -- writer Kinky Friedman's term for petroleum or oil
17. gynics -- knowledge of women
18. hoplophobia -- fear of guns
19. lagniappe -- word mainly used in southern Louisiana and Mississippi to mean either a small gift presented by a storeowner to a customer with the customer's purchase or else an extra or unexpected gift or benefit
20. lexiphanes -- person who uses ostentatious language
21. logophilia -- love of words
22. macrobian -- term which describes any organism which has a long life
23. macrologist -- boring conversationalist, usually met at parties
24. mouse potato -- person who spends a lot of time at the computer
25. mulierose -- addicted to the love of women
26. neologist -- person who coins new words
27. neophobia -- fear of anything new
28. noctuary -- record of what passes in the night; a nightly journal
29. petrichor -- pleasant smell that accompanies the first rain after a dry spell
30. philonoist -- seeker of knowledge
31. playback drift -- inability to play back data that has been saved on an obsolete storage medium due to modernization and technological advances.
32. plutography -- book (or, more generally, literary genre) that examines the lifestyles of rich and famous people.
33. preterist -- one who is fond of reliving the past
34. pronoia -- suspicion that the universe is a conspiracy on your behalf; opposite of paranoia
35. sarcology -- study of the soft or fleshy parts of the body
36. Scholar's Mistress -- term used in Fritz Leiber's novel Our Lady of Darkness to refer to a random pile of books and magazines which forms a roughly human shape.
37. sensory miser -- one who begrudges a too-extravagant experience of life
38. sensualist -- someone concerned with gratifying his or her sexual appetite
39. sensuist -- someone who rejoices in sensory experience
40. sophophobia -- fear of learning
41. synesthesia -- stimulation of one sense stimulating another
42. tacenda -- things that should not be mentioned
43. tanquam -- something that only seems to exist
44. temporal provincial -- term used in Michael Crichton's novel Timeline to refer to a person who is both ignorant of the past and proud of his ignorance
45. thanatopsis -- contemplation of death
46. verbivore -- person who devours words
47. vespertine -- during the evening
48. vetanda -- forbidden things
49. videnda -- things that ought to be seen
50. voluptuary -- one whose life is given over to luxury and sensual pleasures and who habitually indulges in (an excess of) sexual activity; sensualist

All the Classic Horror Novels That I Have Read, Part One

1. Frankenstein (1818) -- Mary Shelley.

The one that started it all -- at least, historically speaking. Ironically, I never read the whole thing until recently but I do remember reading the plot synopsis in my parent's Masterplots collection over and over again.

2. The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) -- Oscar Wilde.

Another book I've read recently. (I did read Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in high school, but unfortunately, it's technically a novella, not a novel, so I can't really put it on this list.)

3. Dracula (1897) -- Bram Stoker.

Another one that I've only recently read all the way through.

4. The Invisible Man (1897) -- H. G. Wells.

Horror novel or science fiction? You decide. One of the few classic horror novels I've read in high school.

5. The Werewolf of Paris (1933) -- Guy Endore.

Yes, I already mentioned it on another list, but it really is a good novel.

6. Conjure Wife (1943) -- Fritz Leiber.

One of the first novels of contemporary horror. Also the inspiration of at least two movies.

7. I Am Legend (1954) -- Richard Matheson.

Another co-mingling of science fiction and horror. This book has been ripped off so often it's a wonder Matheson gets any royalties at all.

8. Psycho (1959) -- Robert Bloch.

Yes, the novel that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. Definitely different -- and more realistic -- than the movie. Save for that decapitation scene.

9. Carrie (1974) -- Stephen King.

The first book from some obscure writer named Stephen King. Whatever happened to him?

10. Ghost Story (1979) -- Peter Straub.

One of the best -- and most artistically ambitious -- horror novels I've ever read. Also way better than its cinematic namesake.