I don't have cable right now so I'm rewatching old shows and movies. A lot of them are animated. Such is my way. I'd like to have a nobler reason for rewatching them--something like when James 
Former Comics Editor, Guy Leshinski
has very kindly given us permission to reprint a prophetic interview
with Bryan Lee O'Malley in 2005. Will Bryan Lee O'Malley attain the
Holy Grail of cartoonists? As Bryan says, "We'll see..."
Results tagged “Arthur C. Clarke” from The Cultural Gutter
Hammering Away at the Here and Now
Let's say you're the newly-sentient internet. How would you decipher
the meaning of all the bits and bytes whizzing past you? And what about
the real world outside your electronic realm?
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Sequelitis
You'd think that writing a sequel would be down to a science, considering how many get cranked out every year. Three parts more-of-the-same to two parts brand-new-adventure or some such recipe. I recently read two sequels, one that was fantastic, the other not so much. The difference? As far as I could tell, it was because of the books that came before.
Continue reading...
An Engineer and a Dreamer
Sad news: Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer and inventor/scientist, died recently - at the age of 90, he had a full life, but it's still a great loss. To mark his passing, I picked up my favourite of his books, Childhood's End, and gave it a re-read. Some of his other accomplishments, like his work on 2001: a space odyssey, might be more famous, but Childhood's End has always hit me hardest.
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Even When They're Wrong, They're Right
What is science fiction good for? One answer: to speculate on what the future might be like. But I would argue that the game of science fiction is only sometimes about predicting the future. Sure it's fun to invent flying cars and moonbases, but as even these two examples show, the predictive track record of the genre is notoriously bad. The real year 2001 had relatively little spaceflight but rather astonishing advances like the Internet that even Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke didn't imagine when they made their little movie nearly 40 years ago. In another famous example, Ray Bradbury's book-burning society of Fahrenheit 451 has not yet come to exist (fingers crossed).
It's Bradbury's book, as a failure of prediction, which precisely illustrates why I think that science fiction is so important.
Continue reading...
Hammering Away at the Here and Now
Let's say you're the newly-sentient internet. How would you decipher
the meaning of all the bits and bytes whizzing past you? And what about
the real world outside your electronic realm?
Sequelitis
You'd think that writing a sequel would be down to a science, considering how many get cranked out every year. Three parts more-of-the-same to two parts brand-new-adventure or some such recipe. I recently read two sequels, one that was fantastic, the other not so much. The difference? As far as I could tell, it was because of the books that came before.Continue reading...
An Engineer and a Dreamer
Sad news: Arthur C. Clarke, science fiction writer and inventor/scientist, died recently - at the age of 90, he had a full life, but it's still a great loss. To mark his passing, I picked up my favourite of his books, Childhood's End, and gave it a re-read. Some of his other accomplishments, like his work on 2001: a space odyssey, might be more famous, but Childhood's End has always hit me hardest. Even When They're Wrong, They're Right
What is science fiction good for? One answer: to speculate on what the future might be like. But I would argue that the game of science fiction is only sometimes about predicting the future. Sure it's fun to invent flying cars and moonbases, but as even these two examples show, the predictive track record of the genre is notoriously bad. The real year 2001 had relatively little spaceflight but rather astonishing advances like the Internet that even Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke didn't imagine when they made their little movie nearly 40 years ago. In another famous example, Ray Bradbury's book-burning society of Fahrenheit 451 has not yet come to exist (fingers crossed).
It's Bradbury's book, as a failure of prediction, which precisely illustrates why I think that science fiction is so important.
Continue reading...