Today, making fantastic creatures onscreen seem to move and breathe and interact with real people is commonplace, almost easy; one can go online and see some pretty darn impressive work being done by people with a little time and money on their hands. But back before the days of computer animation, there were only three ways to put fantastic things onscreen. The first was to have a human being (or, rarely, another animal) wearing a suit that looks like the fantastic creature in question. This rarely worked very [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: H.G. Wells
January 21, 2013 By 2 Comments
While the bulk of his written work was general fiction and commentary, Herbert George Wells is remembered today along with Jules Verne as one of the fathers of modern science fiction. I first encountered his work somewhat secondhand, as part of the script for the Orson Welles version of War of the Worlds; this was published in a marvelous anthology called simply Contact!, a collection of "first contact" stories (humanity's initial encounter with alien intelligences). It was many years later that I was looking [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Mobile Suit Gundam Wing
January 9, 2013 By Leave a Comment
The Gundam series is one of the longest-running and most successful anime/manga franchises in Japan. Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam in 1979, the Gundam franchise spans multiple television series, OAV series, movies, video games, novels, manga, and virtually any sort of merchandise one can imagine (and probably some you can't). Gundam itself is credited with changing the old "giant robot" genre from stories about a boy with some inexplicable and often personified superweapon to a story of war and politics which happened to feature [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Count of Monte-Cristo
January 7, 2013 By 3 Comments
There is perhaps no more famous account of love, betrayal, and revenge in literature than The Count of Monte-Cristo by Dumas. I first encountered the story in my mid-teens and was instantly captured by it. The basis of the story is simple: young Edmond Dantes is a sailor with a bright future – soon to be made Captain of a profitable merchantman, engaged to Mercedes, a Catalan girl noted for her beauty, having just completed an extremely profitable trading voyage for his employer, Morrel. It seems that he has already reached his [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Persona 4 Arena
January 4, 2013 By 2 Comments
WARNING: Completely uncritical raving ahead! When I saw that the Persona series was going to have its own fighting game, I was pretty skeptical; what's an RPG series going to do with a fighting game that makes it worth getting as such? But hey, I didn't have any fighting games for PS3, so I put it on my Christmas list; at least it would feature characters I knew, so that was a plus. Before I go on, I will state that as a fighting game, it's a solid entry. It's of the "Street Fighter" style, [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Airwolf
January 2, 2013 By 8 Comments
File A56-7W. Top secret. Subject: AIRWOLF, a Mach-1 plus attack helicopter. Sought by governments friendly and foreign, AIRWOLF has been hidden by test pilot Stringfellow Hawke - to be returned to the government only if his brother, St. John, an MIA in Vietnam, can be found… Backed by unmatched firepower, AIRWOLF is a weapon too dangerous to be left in unenlightened hands. Finding AIRWOLF is your number one priority. END OF FILE. The 1980s saw several "gadget as star" shows, with the most well-known probably being Knight [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: Clive Cussler’s “Dirk Pitt” series
December 31, 2012 By Leave a Comment
In the late 70s, I was wandering the stacks of our local library and came across a book with a dramatic title: Raise the Titanic! I had – like many other people – something of a fascination with the Titanic, so this, along with the cover showing the huge liner rising from the deeps, grabbed my attention. This was the first novel of the genre "techno-thriller" I remember reading; it's possible I read one such earlier, but I can't say for sure. What I can say is that Raise the Titanic grabbed me and held me riveted [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Nero Wolfe
December 28, 2012 By 7 Comments
In a timeless brownstone in New York City, on West 35th Street, there lives a very unusual man. He is moody, arbitrary, arrogant, quite rotund (over 300 pounds) and highly eccentric. He is also the best detective in the world ("Probably not. The best detective in the world may be a rude tribesman with a limited vocabulary.") – all right, one of the finest private detectives in the world… if you can afford him. He's expensive; has to be, as his fees must support his world-class gourmet lifestyle and the upkeep for the brownstone, his [ Continue reading... ]
Under the Influence: Star Trek: The Original Series
December 21, 2012 By 4 Comments
"Space… the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds… to seek out new life and new civilizations… to boldly go where no man has gone before." There is perhaps no piece of science fiction more well-known, more roundly mocked, and more completely loved, than Star Trek, the original series. Today it may often seem quaint, old-fashioned, sometimes even wince-inducing, but in its day it was a groundbreaking and shining example of what [ Continue reading... ]
On My Shelves: The Lords of Dûs
December 14, 2012 By 8 Comments
Some years ago, I belonged to a writer's group, one of whose members worked at a bookstore. On occasion he'd bring in a box of stripped (front cover removed) books for people to take home if they wanted. NOTE: This is an illegal practice, though I didn't know it at the time. "Stripped" books are recorded as "returned" by publishers and are supposed to be destroyed. There are aspects of this practice that I'm unsure of in terms of whether it really makes sense, but I just want to make clear I'm not promoting [ Continue reading... ]
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