I recently read Mike Treder’s Aug. 14, 2007, post at ieet.org about “Post-Millennial Malaise in SF?” and it got me to thinking about the link between future thinking and science fiction.
I can’t remember if I mentioned this before, but there is a pretty good theory about the rise of science fiction that says science fiction couldn’t exist until people realized that the future was going to be different than today. Basically, people’s lives were pretty much the same as the lives of their parents until the Industrial Revolution brought rapid change to society.
So, fast-forward to today where change is so fast, and so constant that people’s lives can change radically — several times even — within their own lifetime. Now its not just my grandchildren or children who will live their lives differently, but myself.
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Posted in: General Concepts, History.
Tagged: evolution of science fiction · future thinking
Sorry for the long break — long story that I don’t need to go into here. But I’m back now and hope to post much more regularly!
This Christmas I asked for and received the Starman DVD set. For those of you who do not know of which I speak, Starman was a Japanese superhero created in the late 1950s and based on Superman. In Japan, he was known as Supergiant and was the star of several 50-minute serials. In the early 1960s, Walter Manly Enterprises acquired the U.S. right and cut them together into six 75-minute films, dubbed in English for American television consumption.
These were the films I grew up on. I loved Starman — I think I had a pre-teen crush on him. I used to play Starman at recess and pretend that I was a part of the films I watched on the weekend.
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Posted in: 1950s, 1960s, Cinema, Television.
Tagged: Japanese Science Fiction · Starman
Hi there dear Yesteryear’s Future reader,
This will be my last post until sometime in December. You see, I’m moving to Phoenix at the end of the month and really need to focus on closing out my client’s open projects, getting packed, moving and then unpacking.
But never fear — I will be back!
Hey, while you’re here, would you do me a favor and jot down your thoughts, comments and ideas for what you would like to get out of reading Yesteryear’s Future? Would you like a forum? Are there products, services or resources you wish you could find here? Let me know in a comment to this post.
Posted in: Behind the Scenes.
Each Fall I eagerly await the new slate of TV shows. Which ones will I enjoy and keep up with? Which ones will I enjoy and they’ll get cut anyway? Which ones will I pass on in disgust, only to discover they are a big hit?
With each passing year, I’ve noticed an increasing number of science fiction and other genre-themed TV shows. But I’ve also noticed another trend — the “mundaning” of science fiction. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love Lost and Heros, but I also noticed that they are fairly stripped of their SF trimmings. They are science fiction for the mundane.
Is this a bad thing? I don’t rightly know. To some degree it is a good thing, because it introduces SF to a wider audience, some of whom may then go on to explore the real thing.
But then the really good quality SFTV is getting to fewer and farther between. For example, I am a big fan of Babylon 5, and in my opinion it is one of the best SF TV shows ever. It made #5 in Boston.com’s Top 50 Science Fiction TV Shows of All Time. But that show had a struggle because it wasn’t as accessible to the average Joe as a show such as Journey Man has.
Now that I’ve written this all down, I’m not really sure where I’m going with it. But I have this feeling in my gut that as reality catches up to SF, SF needs to keep pushing forward to maintain its edge — the edge that made me fall in love with it when I was 5 years old and has held me for the decades since.
Do any of you have those feelings? I know some people share my angst, for articles such as Mike Treder’s article, “Post-Millennial Malaise in SF?“, are still being written.
Posted in: 2000s, Television.
The concept of time travel has always fascinated me, but not necessarily for the obvious reasons. I’m not terribly interested in going back in time to change things — I’m quite satisfied with the way my life has been going and is going. But I would love to be a fly on the wall — heck, forget that, I’d like to make friends with the amazing people I’d admire throughout history.
Can you imagine what it might have been like to chum around with Abraham Lincoln? Budha? St. Mary? What if I could attend the very first World Con and meet my favorite authors before they became famous. How cool would that be?
Anyway, time travel has fascinated people for a long time. In his article, “A brief history of time travel, David Sapsted says, “for more than a century, the possibility has captivated both boffins and fiction writers – since H.G. Wells introduced the idea of a time machine in The Chronic Argonauts in 1888, and since Einstein’s theories gave the notion an awful lot of academic clout early last century.”
So I thought I’ll collect a list of links about time travel and present them to you here:
NOVA on Time Travel
HowStuffWorks.com’s How Time Travel Will Work
Time Travel for Beginners
The Time Travel Fund
The Time Travel Science Blog
Posted in: Time Travel.
