Musing about SF and Fantasy; Culture Blogging
It’s weird, but I don’t remember my first experience with science fiction or fantasy. Large swathes of my childhood are a blank to me — blank, or all jumbled up together. I can remember discrete happenings, but not pinpoint them in time.
Fantasy’s easy for a kid — starting with Dr Seuss (Look what we found/in the park/in the dark/We will take him home/We will call him Clark.) and Saturday morning cartoons. I got A Wrinkle in Time and one of the Pern books from my elementary school library (I could even now tell you where they were on the shelves). I probably got a whole lot more from Scholastic book sales. I remember watching the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon and loving Wizards and Warriors (which I imagine was quite bad). I saw Labyrinth twice in the theatre. I own all the crappiest fantasy novels of the eighties and I still love them so.
I watched Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and possibly Battlestar Galactica.
I saw Star Wars at a friend’s birthday party, shown with an actual film projector.
I loved Battle of the Planets.
I remember watching Doctor Who as a kid, but I didn’t get to watch it every day–or even most days–because it was on at dinner time. That’s probably why I don’t have any memories beyond the vaguest impressions; I can’t have gotten much of a story out of it. I did, however, get an amazing shock of recognition when I first saw Tristan Farnon on All Creatures Great and Small much later.
Does Mork and Mindy count? Does Knight Rider? Was Polkaroo an alien?
Star Trek came on right after Who but it didn’t hold my attention at the time. I didn’t really get into Trek until I hit high school — one of my friends was a fan. This was probably 1987 or so. I watched through all of the original series. Every Saturday I’d get home from my riding lesson with just enough time to wash my hands before Trek would come on. Star Trek and the scent of that soap are linked indelibly in my head.
I discovered The Next Generation during season two. I immediately developed a crush on Marina Sirtis (her hair! her voice!) and was hooked.
I own all of the Blish novelizations, most of the Animated Series adaptations, most of the Bantam novels and short story collections, and a hell of a lot of the Pocket Books novels. I didn’t actually get to watch the Animated Series until last year, when it came up on my Quickflix queue.
Max Headroom was my favourite thing ever.
I watched Alien Nation and V and Quantum Leap. I watched whatever older stuff was in reruns — Lost in Space, The Twilight Zone, The Six Million Dollar Man. I watched every superhero show available. Superboy, Wonder Woman, The Flash…all of them.
I don’t remember when I got into written SF (you know, aside from Trek), just that at some point I got a subscription to Asimov’s and started collecting books from writers I found there. I also read everything I could find in the library, which wasn’t much; I lived in a pretty small town.
I wrote a post-apocalyptic story in grade eight. Or was it four? I remember the classroom, but I spent both grades there. More likely it was grade eight and I was still traumatized by The Day After.
All this is by way of saying I’m really damn excited about the new Trek movie.
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Culture Blogging – December and January
Read
Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow
Red Dwarf – Backwards, by Rob Grant
Much Depends on Dinner, by Margaret Visser
Buffy Season Eight, Volume Three, Wolves at the Gate
Devil Bones, by Kathy Reichs
Watched
Black Sheep – My god, this movie is hilarious, and has the most realistic movie gore I have ever seen.
Waitress – I was really, really bored.
Slings and Arrows, Season Three
Cloverfield
Thank You for Smoking
The Big Bang Theory
The Italian Job
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