"Bromeliad" Michael Newberry

I just watched the now-classic movie The Dark Crystal again for the first time since it was released in 1982. Conceived by Jim Henson, the fantasy adventure features a cast consisting entirely of puppets and animatronic creations. A cutting edge achievement for its time, while it does suffer from just a little bit of muppety mawkishness, it also excels in one of the essentials of fine art, integrated stylization. Visually, the film is a cinematic benchmark.

A critic of the director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M) said of his 1924 silent film Siegfried that the director's insistence on the use of man-made sets, where entire forests were created from papier-maché, lent the film a stylistic perfection where virtually each of the movie's frames could be appreciated as if it were a painting, complete unto itself.



The same can be said of the lovingly crafted works of Jim Henson and crew in The Dark Crystal. The movie is set on a world, Thra, orbiting three suns, where an alien race of wingless vultures, the Skeksis, have wiped out the indigenous human-like race, the Gelflings, whom they enslaved for labor and sustenance. The orphan, Jen, believing himself the last of his race, sets off upon the death of his master to find the lost shard of the Dark Crystal in order to end their rapacious tyranny. Not only do Hensosn and his crew create several human- and beast-like alien races. They create and entire landscape and an alien ecosystem with which to populate it. The effect is marvelous. While a few real but exotic plants such as papyrus sedges are used, almost all of the plants and funguses and indeed all of the animal species are creations of the human imagination. The filmmakers' performance as creator gods results in a visual feast that leaves the audience of this 93 minute film only wanting more. While the film was a success, especially overseas, it was unfortunately viewed as too dark for its target audience. Henson's followup work, Labyrinth, with David Bowie was a silly, saccharine, derivative flop. His death in 1990 prevented a followup.

But Henson's vision lived on in the Jim Henson Company. Purposefully designed with an adult audience in mind, their science fiction show Farscape, with its lavish designs and ingenious alien creations, was the artistic heir to The Dark Crystal. While Farscape did resort to the expedient of CGI for scenes such as ship maneuvers in outerspace, once again its use of puppets and puppetwork to portray aliens gave the series a unique stylistic feel. Farscape as art is comparable, perhaps, only to the earlier episodes of the original Star Trek before budget cuts required its producers to replace lovingly crafted matte paintings with obscure red skies and innumerable episodes shot on the Vasquez Rocks. At its best, the visually dense and highly layered imagery of Farscape achieved, as an act of will made real, the level of fine art of The Dark Crystal and the manmade forests of Fritz Lang.

Primed by such thoughts, seeing the painter Michael Newberry's recent work, Bromeliad (below), my first impression was as if once again I was viewing an alien landscape, created not by nature, at random, but by the focused mind of an otherwordly demiurge. I am particularly fond of Newberry's still lifes. His Big Fish, Little Bird (left), is cool, sleek, modern, technological. In startling contrast, Bromeliad is warm, textured, intimate, organic. Color and form are emphasized visually. But the effect is tactile. Newberry the shaman induces synesthesia. We can feel the mineral sand dollar shell like some delicate skeleton. The waxy leaves of the sharrp-bladed bromeliad are like the cold, thick, scaly flesh of some caged reptile. The softness of the cloth is rivaled only by the erect carnality of the blossoms, like blood-flushed lips, both Hermes and Aphrodite, inviting our embrace.



While the bromeliad is green, the painting itself is quite warm. The outcome of having nothing beside the foreground leaves in actual green tones is to give the plant an almost animal-like vibrancy. Theoretically, dark cool colors retreat. Here, paradoxically, they pounce. Like the serpent heads of the hydra or the tendrils of some alien man[eating plant we can see the bromeliad reaching out of the canvas. The effect is savage. The plant is not located in space. There is no horizon. It is reaching out into space. And we are its prey.

Visit Michael Newberry on line at MichaelNewberry.com

Watch the trailer for The Dark Crystal:



Watch the teaser for the 2011 sequel, Power of the Dark Crystal:



Watch a clip from Fritz Lang's classic, Siegrfried:

"Alice" — Syfy's retake of Wonderland

"It'll be just like the old days — justice, reason, and the rule of law!" If you've ever wanted to hear that phrase belted out by the smooth yet stentorian Tim Curry, one of the greatest voices of our time, then that's just one more reason to check out Alice, the new miniseries by Syfy, cable's rebranded Sci-fi channel. Alice is a two-part four-hour miniseries set in a modern-day Wonderland. Written for adults (the show is sponsored by Kay Jewelers) the retelling is hip and visually stunning with some dark but mostly comedic edges that make for a quite satisfying retelling of the Carroll Lewis classic.



In this version, Alice (Caterina Scorsone) is all grown up, and a karate instructor to boot, even if she has some issues, a father who abandoned her at age ten and a problem committing to mister right. When she brings home her latest, Jack, to meet mom, he offers her a ring out of the blue. She turns down his proposal, but he slips the ring in her pocket. Trying to return it she shes him dragged off through a dark alley by thugs, and chasing after she falls through the looking glass to an alternate dimension.



It turns out that Jack is the Jack — the Jack of Hearts, son of the casino-boss Queen of Hearts, Kathy Bates and her put-upon King, Colm Meaney — and the leader of a resistance trying to overthrow his mother's tyrannical rule held in place by a drug economy that refines the emotions of kidnapped earthlings into chemical elixirs.

With its battles, beasts and betrayals (Beware the Jabberwock, my son!) the story is your standard fantasy adventure fare, sometimes light in the plot, but quite pleasant. We meet the roguish Hatter, played by British heart-throb Andrew-Lee Potts. He and the White Knight, played by the delightful Matt Frewer, whom you may recognize as the former Max Headroom, set off with Alice to find her father and return to her own world, even if she has to overthrow the Red Queen to do it. The show is full of familiar faces and the visual art blends iconic images from the classic book illustrations with quirky and sexy modern effects that recall Twin Peaks and Farscape. The show will be replayed on Syfy, Sunday December 13 from 5pm til 9pm Eastern. Set your DVR.

Here is the intro at YouTube:

Greg Bear "The Forge of God"

President Crockerman asked, "Do you believe in God?" Without a moment's hesitation, the Alien replied "We believe in Punishment."

Greg Bear, born in 1951, is a Hugo and Nebula award winning author of some three dozen novels and short story collections. A writer of hard science fiction, he often focuses on biology, especially diseases and microbiology. His Nebula winning Darwin's Radio and its sequel Darwin's Children explore political repression, retroviruses and speciation. Vitals deals with bacteria as communal organisms, as well as devling entertainingly into conspiracy theories. (You will never guess who the KGB has kept alive in a fishtank in the middle of modern Manhattan.) His Hugo winning Blood Music (expanded from a Nebula Winning novella) portrays an apocalyptic transformation of the nature of the self brought on by the escape of genetically enhanced human blood cells down a bathtub drain.

One of his best reviewed books, The Forge of God, deals not with microbiology, but with the Fermi Paradox. If the galaxy is full of alien life, then why aren't they here yet? Why have aliens not yet visited the earth? The answer quickly becomes evident. First, the Jovian moon Europa disappears. Then mountains appear overnight where there was none before in Australia and in Death Valley. Robots promising a golden age emerge from the Australian mountain. In America an enigmatic alien is found near death, apologizing for bearing bad news, and telling the president its simple punitive theology.


Bear is not only a great story teller, he is an artist of literary caliber. His works feature complex interwoven plots with twists that surprise the reader yet fit seamlessly together without resorting to the arbitrary deus ex machina. His characters are well developed, strongly individuated. In Forge of God, the president, a likeable man, is driven to the edge of insanity by the revelation that the world will soon end. His response is religious in form, but Bear does not portray him as some mindless religious stereotype, and, in a touch of sophistication, the populist preacher that Crockerman summons to advise him in fact doubts the appropriateness of a religious response to the physical threat and turns to the president's science advisors to admit that he is out of his league and that the Presdient could perhaps use some more conventional strategic advice.

Whether likening squiggles of toothpaste to little blue tadpoles in the sink or graphically comparing the City of Los Angeles, its citizens transformed into blobs of jelly and sentient fungal growths by a plague, to a vision from a Max Ernst painting, Bear uses vivid concrete images that often approach the poetic in their evocativeness. One can form a detailed mental image of his characters' physical traits and their bearing and gestures. Conflict is well motivated, antagonists act not just out of opposition, but because of an alternate, if mistaken view of the good. Psychology is made apparent through telling thoughts and dialog. Yet facts not known to the characters are not revealed to the reader until they become clear to the protagonists. This maintains a sense of realism and especially of suspense. Is the dying alien in league with the supposed robot benefactors? Is the earth truly at risk? The aliens provoke paranoia in some and disbelief in others. What, we ask, are the plots within the plots?

If you have not read Bear, you can think of him as combining the fast-paced plots of Larry Niven and his knack for contemporary social commentary with the analytic depth and literary quality of Frank Herbert. While I have not been able to get into his The Way, Queen of Angels, or Songs of Earth and Power series, I have thorougly enjoyed all the books of his which I have read past the first few dozen pages. The apocalptic Forge of God, with its epic and very differrent but highly complimentary sequel, Anvil of Stars, is a good place to start.



Read the excellent article on Bear at Wikipedia. Check out his official website. And pick up one of his books, today. The painting above, Into The Forge of God, by Alan Gutierrez depicts the launch of a NASA probe into Jupiters atmosphere and was used on the cover of Bear's novel.

From Lovecraft to Roerich on the WorldWideWeb

Glancing through the news the other day, my eye was caught by the headline "The Mountains of Madness." The article was about an expedition to the Gamburtsev Mountain Range in central Antarctica. The mountains were discovered 50 years ago in the International Geophysical Year of 1958. This year (2008) is the International Polar Year, and a team of scientists has returned to the Gamburtsevs to try, among other things, to explain their formation. But the headline itself, "Mountains of Madness," is an allusion to a novella by science fiction author H. P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains of Madness, written in 1931.



Lovecraft is at best an acquired taste. He is generally described as a writer of horror or Gothic stories. His style is clear and his imagery quite visual, if his subject matter tends toward the alien and demonic. I read many of his stories as a teen, but hadn't revisited them since. After seeing the headline though, I thought I would try him again and see what I thought. His works are available for download at Project Gutenberg Australia.

First I read The Colour out of Space, a Gothic tale about an asteroid which crashes to earth in a small New England town, bringing with it a malevolent alien influence. The story was not very enthralling. Told as a flashback, and with no human conflicts, it lacked any real drama. But one thing was of interest. Lovecraft was apparently fascinated with science, and he mentioned several phenomena with which I was unfamiliar, including Widmanstätten patterns, which he mentioned were revealed when a cut section of the meteorite was treated with acid. Unfamiliar with the term, and suspecting he might simply have made it up, like some technology out of a Star Trek episode, I checked with Wikipedia. It turns out such beautiful fractal patterns do indeed exist, and I have pictured them here.

Next, I decided to read the longer work, At the Mountains of Madness, to which the headline had alluded and which I had remembered particularly liking as a teen. The story involves an expedition to a massive mountain range in the central wastes of Antarctica. Journeying inward the adveturers discover the remains of an ancient, alien civilization, finding to their horror that even after millions of years there is still some living presence in the cyclopean ruins. Once again I was struck by an allusion of Lovecraft's. Upon first encountering the alien habitations in the mountains, his protagonist describes them as "like the old Asian castles clinging to steep mountains in Roerich's paintings." Who was Roerich? Curious, I again checked Wikipedia, and came across an interesting artist, Nicholas Roerich, seven of whose works I have reproduced here.

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) was a painter, archeologist, philosopher and Orientalist from St. Petersburg, Russia. An accomplished illustrator and folklorist, he suggested the subject, collaborated with the composer, and did the stage designs for the riotous Paris debut of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, subtitled "Pictures from Pagan Russia." He was thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for his work to preserve cultural artifacts. He was a noted theospohist and painted on Buddhist, Pagan and Eastern Orthodox Christian themes. His life and work are featured at the Roerich Museum (here is their website) here in Manhattan. I hope to visit it soon. Here we see an accurrate depiction of a Pagan shrine, probably in the Altai Mountains of Greater Mongolia.

Roerich travelled through Asia and the Russian Orient. He documented the area's geography and cultural artifacts and painted real, historical, and mythological landscapes and events. His style is notable for its stylization, color, clarity and dynamic themes. He is not a great figurative artist. His human figures are simple. Nature, rather than man, plays the central role in his works. But he does depict themes which evoke wonder and awe, and subjects of epic beauty. Here in Ashram we see his typical combination of the contemplative individual set in a monumental landscape of brilliant color. Note the Hindu religious iconography on the rocks.



Visitors from Overseas, directly above, depicts the Varangians, Norse Vikings who explored the waterways of Russia, travelling as far as Constantinople and the Caspian. The Varangians or Varyags are mentioned in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as a people decieved by Sauron, and Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead (adapted as the movie The Thirteenth Warrior) tells the tale of Beowulf from the perspective of an Arab adventurer who travels with Varangians from Baghdad to Denmark and back. (In an interesting twist in light of this essay, Crichton actually cites Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon in the biography to his book.)

The Arcadian painting For Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) is a set design for an Operatic adaptation of the Tale by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Of a similar theme to The Little Mermaid, Snegurochka is the subject of Russian fairy tales, where she is depicted as the granddaughter of Father Christmas, or as a creation out of snow. Longing to love a mortal man she is granted her wish but at the cost of her immortality.

Descent into Hell is one of Roerich's religious works. Here we see Christ after his crucifiction but before his resurrection descending into Sheol. According to Christian belief, Christ takes upon the suffering of man, not only on the cross, but also in the afterlife. He travels to hell, throws open the gates, and allows those in the grace of God to depart. Here, in place of devils, Roerich uses deep sea angler fish, a recently discovered demonic denizen of the deep.



Battle of the Heavens, directly above, depicts a theme common to the Eurasian Steppe. The vast plains of Central Aisa, like the Tornado Alley of the American Midwest, are an area of dramatic meteorological phenomena. The worship of Father Sky has roots in the fascination of the Hyperboreans with great storms and standing cloud formations that exist where the Jet Stream, passing over the high mountains of Central Asia, causes animated hovering storm clouds to condense.

You can read about Nicholas Roerich at Wikipedia and check out Roerich's artwork the Nicholas Roerich Museum.

Alexander the Great "Reign: the Conqueror"

The wisdom of the Greeks in a Saturday-morning-style cartoon? Reign: the Conqueror is a Japanese animation series based upon the mythological life of the real historical figure Alexander of Macedon, also known as "The Great."

"All things of the world are numbers. We have nothing against you, but your number is the problem. Set your mind at ease. Your soul will be reincarnated. We bring you deliverance. Your death will be swift." - an assassin of the Pythagorean cult to his would-be vicitm, the young Alexander.

Animation in Japan is a prestigious adult genre. Its subject matter can run from science-fiction to the comic to the erotic to the surreal. Reign: the Conqueror combines slash-and-hack violence with mythologized Greek history, surreal lanscapes, sex, and science-fiction. The series depicts or alludes to Pythagoras, Plato, Diogenes and Aristotle. We see Alexander's mother couple with a god in snake form. We hear his famous exchange with Diogenes the Cynic, who, when Alexander offered him any gift that Diogenes could name, famously asked Alexander to step aside and stop blocking the sunlight. We see him conceive the city Alexandria as a futuristic capital to an empire "worthy of his soul." The battle scenes are stylized but brutal. The animation satisfies the adult and the boy within the man. This is not proper entertainment for young children.

The series is available on DVD and runs on the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim. The series is available in English as well as Japanese on YouTube. Here is the trailer-style episode opening:

James Blish, "A Case of Conscience"

Mankind has made first contact and among the four researchers sent to investigate the garden-world Lithia and its reptilian inhabitants is Father Ramon Ruiz-sanchez, SJ. The Jesuit botanist and doctor is the only member of the research team to oppose opening the world up for human intercourse. The Lithians, he suspects, may be too good to be true. Indeed, with their peaceful and proseprous society, more advanced in many ways than man, and in their total lack of any idea of faith or the divine, they imply that a sentient species can live the good life without religious revelation. These "unfallen" beings are not angels. Indeed, he fears, they may be a creation of the Devil, meant to tempt man into abandoning religion in light of their enlightened example.

But this belief is heresy. Only God has the power of creation. The Devil merely perverts. If these beings are good, they cannot be a creation of the Devil. Yet why would God create them perfect without religion, while making man imperfect in His image?

Father Ruiz-Sanchez returns to Earth with a precious and frightening cargo, the unhatched egg of a Lithian. Blessed with a genetic memory, his passenger will hatch and mature without Lithian care. But what will happen to an alien raised among men?

The result is horrific; a brilliant, cynical, conscience-less creature who wreaks havoc on human society, manipulating men like a demonic puppet-master plying his craft. His presence on Earth provokes riots and incites murder. Meanwhile, it appears that Lithia is largely made up of weapons-grade lithium, an unimaginable source of thermonuclear munitions. And now the human-raised Lithian has outsmarted his hosts and is on his way back to Lithia, perhaps to cause a fall from grace among his kin akin to the kind that the serpent brought Adam in Eden.

This vivid, imaginative, fast paced, and often poetic work is a book of ideas. The characters are three-dimensional and the situations are quite topical in a timeless way certainly still valid fifty years after it brought its author a Hugo Award for best novel. If you haven't read Blish start here.

The painting is "Lilith" by John Collier.

Doctor Who "Scream of the Shalka"

In 2003, in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of its long running science-fiction show Doctor Who, the BBC commisioned an animated story, Scream of the Shalka, to be distributed as a webcast. That story featuring Richard E. Grant (see here) as the Doctor, Derek Jacobi as his nemesis, The Master, and future Oscar nominee Sophie Okonedo as his assistant Alison is available in full at the BBC's website and you can watch episodes one and two (of six) at YouTube, see the clip at below.

This wittily written and beautifully drawn animation shows the promise of such a medium for science fiction. With the cost of animation being an amount per animated frame, the special effects possible are limited only by the writer's imagination, not by the price of real-world set design. But after commisioning this new story and two previously written but unproduced shows he BBC eventually opted to reinstate the live-action series.



Grant's performance here is brilliant. His delivery is perfect for the benevolent but put-upon explorer who is willing to help, but who doesn't want to be reminded that the Time Lords are controlling his destination according to their needs for hero-on-the-spot. Grant had long been rumored as a possible cast to portray the Doctor. And he did so as well in the charity spoof, The Curse of Fatal Death, also available on YouTube. The BBC ended up casting Christopher Eccleston and then David Tennant to play him instead. But the live action series is thriving, and once Tennant concludes his run, we can only hope that Grant will reprise the role.

Scream of the Shalka 1.1

Frank Herbert "The Santaroga Barrier"

Why do people born in the peaceful California wine valley of Santaroga seldom leave, and always return? Why do passers through rarely stop, and visitors never stay? Why do outside business interests find it impossible to establish a beach head? What makes Santaroga's wine and cheese from the Jaspers Co Op so special, yet immune to analysis? Why have the last two market researchers sent there died under mysterious circumstances? And why is the latest, Gilbert Dasein, the victim of three near fatal accidents within his first 24 hours in the valley?

The Sanataroga Barrier is science fiction, witty social commentary and detective novel all rolled up in one. For those who only know Herbert from his Dune books, this, and his recently reprinted White Plague, show that the master was no one-trick pony. This book involves ideas that touch upon corporatism and cult dynamics, but it is not a novel written merely as an excuse for exploring such ideas. Rather, it is simply an incredibly good story, with all the intricate and multilevel subtleties and wordplay that you would expect from the author of Dune, yet set in a little California wine-town.For example, the hero's name, Dasein, is German for "existence" or "presence" (literally "there-being") used famously by Martin Heidegger in his Being and Time. According to Wikipedia:

For Karl Jaspers, the term "Dasein" meant existence in its most minimal sense, the realm of objectivity and science, in opposition to what Jaspers called "Existenz", the realm of authentic being.

So long as Dasein is an "objective" outsider, his being will lack authenticity in the Santarogan sense. Remarkably the townfolk discuss philosophy and psychology over breakfast in the way that one would expect the residents of a farming town to ruminate about crop prices and the recdent drought. The local paper reads like an in house think tank newsltetter.

This town and this book are not what they seem at first. Herbert integrates, extrapolate and speculate in ways to which no other science fiction writer can compare, and his non-Dune books have been far too long neglected. This is one of the best. Sit down with a nice glass of beer and a plate of cheese and dig in. And don't ruin the suspense by reading any spoilers!

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog

Created by Joss Whedon (of Firefly and Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame) during the 2008 Writer's Guild strike, this three-act 43 minute musical comedy starring Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Hauser fame) as the eponymous evil villain was designed for internet distribution and has earned a well deserved cult following since its release in the Summer of 2008. Dr. Horrible is an evil yet sympathetic underdog determined to get the credit his genius deserves at any cost. He competes unsuccesfully with the bumbling, crude and egotistical Captain Hammer for fame and the love of Penny, a kind-hearted worker with the homeless. The production is both humorous and poignant. We laugh at, yet sympathize with Dr. Horrible in his quest to defeat the undeserving "hero" Captain Hammer. The story ends with a cliff-hanger, and I for one would pay good money to see it resolved. You don't have to pay money to see it the story unfold. Here is the article at Wikipedia, and here is the first installment at YouTube:

She Dove Off! "Leeloo" The Fifth Element

Having just escaped from a government laboratory in Manhattan of the distant future, our heroine Leeloo (Mila Jovovich) literally drops into the life of Corben Dallas (Bruce Willis) our hero sky-taxi driver. This is shot is rivaled only by Sharon Stone's leg-crossing performance in Basic Instinct and the final chase of Thelma and Louise as the iconic movie moment of the 1990's. The car-chase music (not on the released soundtrack) is "N'ssi N'ssi" by Cheb Khaled.

The Tripods

The Tripods is another childhood favorite of mine. Writing as John Christopher, Samuel Youd authored three novels in the 1960's, The White Mountains, The City of Gold and Lead, and The Pool of Fire. A pre-quel, When the Tripods Came, was written in 1988.

In the late 20th Century an alien civilization invades and conquers the earth. Breathing a poisonous atmosphere, the aliens (the Skloodzi) are confined to the mechanical tripods which most of humanity believes to be the aliens themselves. Humans are controlled by capping, the implantation of a control chip in the skull at age 16 which removes curiousity and initiative.

Will and Henry, residents of a small British town decide to flee their home when they witness their older friend siezed and capped by a tripod, losing all interest in the world at large, happy to stay and chop wood in his mediaeval setting. They are befriended by a so-called vagrant, "Ozymandias," who is not, like others, a victim of a failed capping, but a wanderer with a false cap who uses his vagrant status as camouflage in his quest to recruit young men for the resistance, based in the French Alps.

Will and Henry voyage to France, where they meet a tall "inventor" named Jean Paul who has managed to remain uncapped at age 17. Together the boys travel to the Alps to join the fight to overthrow humanity's alien masters.

The books are juvenile, but quite good for children. The story adopts the common conceit of children fighting an adult world controlled by some secret or alien force. Baffled by the world of adults who seem to come to an accomodation with some unspeakable evil - or just some bland gray mediocrity - this plot device appeals to the young and embarrasses those who sell themselves out to the establishment.

The books were adapted into a miniseries by the BBC and the Seven Network of Australia. While an adaptation of all three books was written and budgeted, The series was cancelled by the new BBC head who, according to Wikipedia, was opposed to science fiction programs. The two extant seasons have a cult following. The show can bee seen in twenty five half-hour episodes here on YouTube. The filmed episodes actually tell a better story than one finds in the books, with an expanded tale and love interests for the heroes. With the current market in DVD releases of old telvision series, one might argue that the BBC shortsightedly capped itself in refusing to film the entire series until its heroic climax.

Here is Episode One, Part One:

Frank Herbert "The White Plague"

In the near future, a mild-mannered geneticist sees his family murdered by religious terrorists in cold blood. Deciding to take revenge on the parties involved, he begins working in a basement. But his weapon has unintended consequences... Hard science, strong characterization, poetic language, this is one of my top 10 books. Many people only know Herbert from his Dune books, and if you've only seen the movies, he's been very poorly adapted. All of Herbert's books are brilliant, he has the most multi-layered backstory and widest range of real-world knowledge of any Hard SF writer I know. The White Plague has Yeatsian lyricism and antiseptic Orwellian style. The plot line should give you nightmares, because it could already be under way in Lebanon, in London, in Pakistan, in Iraq, in Albuquerque. The picture is from www.arrakis.co.uk Here is the Amazon listing. The book had been long out of print, which, given its timeliness, speaks volumes about the publishing industry. It has been re-released in an oversized paperback edition. You can find it at your local used book store, or for cheaper than bottled water at abebooks.com.

Robert Heinlein "Starship Troopers" 1997

After world anarchy, order is restored by a government along the lines of the Roman Republic, or perhaps a better analogy would be modern Israel. Those who serve in the military earn "citizenship" and can vote. The rest who reside in this republic are perfectly free to bitch all they like. Then alien contact is made, and the aliens are not all that warm and fuzzy. Sex, politics, pacifism, war, ESP, personal growth and responsibility, Heinlein addresses it all. The book is a perennial favorite. Released uncut in 1987 it is reviewed here at Amazon. The movie version, criticized very unfairly upon its release for being "tits and fascism," was quite good, but disappointed some fans for leaving out much from the book. The spirit of the book adapted well to the movie. The movie is directed by Paul Verhoeven of Basic instict and Total Recall. It stars Casper Van Dien, Denise Richards, Michael Ironside and Neil Patrick Harris.

Ultraman Lives!

The live action Sci-Fi series Ultraman was a staple of my childhood, surpassed in esteem only by Star Trek and Doctor Who. The U.S. English Language release stopped airing around 1980. I was overjoyed to find that it was finally available in a non-bootleg release. Although some of the original footage has been replaced with black and white (very minimal) and the English language version occasionally drops into Japanese due to the loss of portions of the dubbed release, the quality of this production is quite excellent.

The story involves Hayata, the hero, (pictured in blue, below) and the other members of the "Science Patrol" the damsel Fuji, the clownish Ito (Ide), Captain Mura (Muramatsu), dependable Ayashi, and boy sidekick Hoshino. The Science Patrol is called in to investigate strange phenomena, natural and scientific disasters, and, of course, monster sightings. In the first episode, Hayata is accidentally killed by a benevolent alien who merges with Hayata in order to restore him to life. Hayata is normally human, but when danger calls (almost always in the form of a 200ft Godzilla analog, but with ingenious variations, including lobster-clawed bug men, carnivorous space algae, and abominable snow men) Hayata transforms into Ultraman, (above, shooting his signature hand ray) a giant bug-eyed red and silver bio-mechanoid, who can shoot various death rays, fly, "Shuwach!" and do amazing Sumo moves. On watching this show again as an adult after 30 years, I am struck by the show's refreshing lack of political correctness. The contrasts between the English dialog (often cynical) and the Japanese (overblown and exaggeratedly technical) are striking, and show the difference between the post-60's anti-intellectual attitude of the U.S. compared to the earnest sincerity of the Japanese.

I strongly recommend that English speakers listen with English audio and the subtitles (which show the contrasting original Japanese dialog) simultaneously.

This show is certainly intended for children or those nostalgic for things of their childhood. As such, it is a wonderful addition to my library. I have watched all the episodes again, recalling the joy which they brought me as a child, and can't stop singing the theme song. I hope this would translate to present day children. The special effects are done with blue-screen imaging and men in plastic monster suits, but, as with Doctor Who, the plot (however minimal) and the monster concepts drive the series. Many scenes have a spookiness or poignancy which one wouldn't expect from today's merchandise-driven shows.

This is one of my least favorite episodes. The monster is meant to be clownish, the product of the imagination of a deranged man. But there are almost no other clips of the show to be found on the internet.



The series of 39 episodes is available in a two volume release, here at Amazon.

Citizen of the Galaxy

While usually considered one of his "juvenile" books, Citizen of the Galaxy is one of Robert Heinlein's best. A boy sold into slavery is purchased by a legless mendicant who teaches him what amounts to the rational egoism of a Stoic, a Jesuit, or perhaps a Randian. The beggar is more than he seems, and so is the boy.

Leaving the slave planet, a world of Levantine decadence, the hero becomes a passenger on a family-owned trading spaceship where the crew speak what happens to be Finnish and live according to a two clan phratry system divided as well from outsiders, the "Fremdi." The social rules are very complex, one may not fraternize with the other clan, but when it comes time to take a wife, one may not marry within one's own clan. Heinlein does not make the fact that the ship members are Finns living according to ancient folk custom explicit, and I only figured this out after I had studied archeology and anthropology and then re-read the book after about a decade.

Having lived under a Middle Eastern-style despotry and aboard a clannish trading vessel with a gypsy-like attitude toward strangers, the hero then makes a transition into an British style navy where again he must learn a totally new way of life. He not only learns Western values, he learns his own birth identity and the role he can play, should he choose to, as a citizen of the galaxy.

The book is quite a broadening experience, for its hero and for the reader, and Heinlein's research and fidelity to the systems he describes is impressive. Except for the space element, the story might have been set on 19th century Earth. One of the best aspects of Heinlein "science-fiction" is that it is not alien or technology driven, but plot and character driven. Some of Heinlein's books have the flaw that they lack endings. Yet this story is fully integrated and does not disappoint. Do not be put off by the fact that the main character is an adolescent. The book is fully suitable for adults and I have read it three times. Heinlein's love for humanity, his cosmopolitan sophistication and his nevertheless unending advocacy for the superiority of universal liberal values show that Heinlein himself most assuredly deserved the title Citizen of the Galaxy.

Walter M. Miller "A Canticle for Leibowitz"

Walter M. Miller Jr.s' magnum opus, constantly in print since its publication in 1960, this work is considered by many to be the most beautifully artistic work of science-fiction ever written. In three parts, Fiat Homo, Fiat Lux, Fiat Voluntas Tua, it traces the future history of man from a post-thermonuclear dark age, through the re-invention of electricity, and back to the brink of self destruction. Written as an explicitly Roman Catholic and pre-Vatican II novel, the Hugo Award-winning story revolves about a monastery named for the titular character, Saint Leibowitz, who never appears live. A basic knowledge of Latin and a willingness to look up a term every other chapter (or to reference the wonderful cheat-sheet of Latin phrases fromn Canticle at Wikipedia) and an ability to suspend any anti-Catholic bias will benefit the reader.

The work is one of worship for heroic effort, of principles upheld, and values passionately pursued. Miller's sense of history and discerning psychological skill lead to vistas and characterizations of Herbertian depth. With the wry dark wit of a Cold War culture that produced Strangelove and Planet of the Apes, irony wrestles with ecstasy. Leibowitz is a Jew, canonized by the Church for accidental reasons. With its span of centuries, another strand woven throughout this epic is the apocryphal Christian mythological persona, the Wandering Jew, condemned to walk the Earth 'til Christ return.

Miller's language is unsurpassingly poetic, his words evoking imagery of Randian clarity. I have read this book three times through. Miller was known primarily as a writer of short stories, often, as in Dark Benediction, of great skill and originality. He led a troubled later life, and never finished another novel. The posthumous, disillusioned and anti-climactic Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was finished by a ghost writer. But this masterpiece has all the pathos and beauty of a great mediaeval cathedral, crucifix included.