Archive for Television

Interesting Things…

Posted in Gene Wolfe, New Arrivals with tags , , , , , on July 20, 2011 by Aaron

I picked up another copy of Address: Centauri by F.L. Wallace a couple of weeks ago and it arrived yesterday.

Some interesting things surround the circumstances of this.  I asked the seller, Tim, to send me a couple of images so I could see the condition of the book a bit better.  The condition seemed to be indeed better (but not much) than my copy, and I directed Tim to the Close Up so he could see for himself the comparison.  Tim, it so happened, had previously learned of Gnome Press through this website!!

Interesting.

In addition, the jacket is in slightly better cosmetic condition than my copy, the pages are less GP age-toned, and… the binding is different.  This surprised me.  F.L. Wallace has no listing in Currey and there is no binding info anywhere else I have seen.  My original copy has tan boards and this one from Tim has navy blue boards.  This is something for the Trivia section.

Interesting.

Anyway, many thanks for the book Tim.

I received an email from a gentleman who is apparently working on a show for the Discovery Science Channel entitled ‘Prophets of Science Fiction’.  He was wondering about obtaining the rights to use some GP cover art in the show.  It’s an interesting question as to who actually has them these days.  I don’t know of course, but suggested he contact Brian at Red Jacket Press and also try First Edition Library as a couple of their books were GP reproductions.  I imagine these two companies would have had to secure the right to use original GP cover art somehow for their reproductions, and they could probably advise him better than I.  He was particularly interested in Heinlein and Asimov.  I imagine any cover art would now belong to the artist or their estate.

We’ll see what becomes of this.  Interesting.

In other slightly interesting news, It hasn’t arrived yet, but I picked up Gene Wolfe’s latest book Home Fires in limited edition, tray-cased form.  From the same publisher and very similar to The Sorcerer’s House which I got a few months ago.  I followed that up by putting bids on a couple of Hugh Walters books, Destination Mars and Expedition Venus.  I have so badly wanted to get some of his YA books as I enjoyed them so much when I first started reading SF out of the old Napier Public Library.

Also have a bid on another book which fired my imagination and scared the hell out of me when I was about 8 or 9 years old.  I enjoyed reading it again and again way back then.  A 1st edition A Book of Ghosts and Goblins by Ruth Manning-Sanders.  I really hope I pick this up as well.  It’s one of those books that you think about often over the years.

Interesting.

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Battlestar Galactica is now ‘Lost’ in space

Posted in Television with tags , on February 16, 2009 by Aaron

When I first heard that there was a remake of BSG I thought “Oh no. They are going to take a treasured television memory of mine and turn it into garbage.” Well, I was wrong. They happened to turn out one of the finest television series I had ever seen. But now we are nearing the conclusion, I am concerned. This post over at True Science Fiction got my wheels turning and brought into better focus some things that had been kicking around back there for several weeks.

Now, I’m not talking about what’s actually going on in the show, but more how things are being presented.  When BSG began, for the first three series actually, it was a show that you could really sink your teeth into.  The story was solid, it was being presented in a measured and well constructed fashion, it was well paced, ergo it was easy to follow.  There was even scope for kind of ‘interlude’ episodes like the ‘Scar’ installment where Starbuck was chasing her Cylon nemesis around.  Just as an aside, that episode might be worth watching again – was there something in there that had relevence to Starbuck’s now ambiguous position?

Anyway, now things are different.  I know that the show is coming to a head and events are unfolding rapidly, but hang on.  Why?  The only reason I can see is that they have to wrap this thing in season 4.  The pacing of the show isn’t being driven by the story, it’s being hussled along by the deadline.  As a consequence, we now have many plot threads that I, at least, find difficult to keep straight in my head.  I can’t, as I could after each episode in the previous seasons, carry a full picture in my head and savour the experience.  There is too much going on.  I made the observation earlier that I could really sink my teeth into the show.  Now it’s like a nibble here, run over there and have a brief sample, and scurry over to another location for another little nibble.  I don’t enjoy that as much.  I still enjoy the show, don’t get me wrong, but the experience isn’t what it used to be.  Am I making sense?

As I alluded to in the title of this post, I can’t help drawing a parallel with Lost.  The show started out solid, a great experience.  A show to dwell on and enjoy until next week.  Now it’s a whole week of “WTF!?!?” until next time, then repeat.  BSG isn’t quite in that league yet, but the comparison is unmistakeably there.

Come to think of it, Galactica cracking up the way it is is an excellent metaphor for the show.  And like Adama, I just hope they can patch it up and hold it together until the end.

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