Bradbury, Sheckley, Ballard

The official promotional site for the late Ray Bradbury.

Bradbury's New York Times obit.

A nonacademic but detailed Bradbury fan site.

Waukegan, Bradbury's home town.

But he writes Martian Chronicles in southern California:

The arid and expanding metropolis of midcentury L.A.

The California desert. People settle there.

Mars is our dying planet, says Robert Markley.

Where a lot of sf really takes place. A place for you in it.

A place beyond it.

That Teasdale poem. A Longfellow poem.

A poem about a ruin that you guys might know. A poem about a ruin that you might prefer.

A military rank.

Some funny aliens. Some funny body parts.

A scary big institution. Another scary big institution.

But maybe we should be more afraid of this. Or of this.

A very good and very serious nonacademic Ballard journal and fan site.

An important word. A once very famous poem.

Obsolescent tech. Also these. And this?

Would you rather build these, or live in these?

Thinking about television: Firefly

An active Firefly fan site. Joss Whedon fandom.

Several generations of sf on television.

One thing that sets TV apart.

Another thing that sets TV apart.

One consequence of serial form.

Visual forms can make explanations harder.

A lot of televised sf might as well not be.

This episode, though, has to be.

The planet and its buildings look new. Mal & company not so much.

Fans debate Jayne's motives, as well as Mal's decision to "forgive" him. Other fans recap & debate.

Other fans look out for your amygdala.

Where the sf is. What's in there?

SF in visual media alludes to other visual media, and to its genres.

Three kinds of Weberian authority: this one and this one and this one, which would also be this one.

Still liking that one. SF characters who are living in there.

A total institution. And another. Some, though not I, would allege another.

Here's looking at you.

Better to look at you.

Philip K. Dick: QOTD + Extrapolation Reactions

Futures with telepaths: this or this or this.

Futures with no pregnancy: this; not this??

Futures with corn: apparently, this!


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1. What??

2. Who's dead? What happened?

3. Why would you want to disorient your reader or leave a major plot point unresolved?

4.What was up with cryogenics and corpse-preservation in the years that Dick wrote? (A lot, though it didn't include Disney's head.)

4.5 Why so much about these?

5. Why are there telepaths when the plot revolves around cryogenic stasis?

5.5 (w/ ref to Dick and to Asimov) Why not more of this?

6. Why involve Pat? isn't she dangerous? Is she a clichéd femme fatale?

7. Is UBIK (the substance, not the novel) a religion?

8.Is this guy on drugs?

Heinlein and Asimov: Questions of the Day

1. For whom are these works written? Is it difficult for works "written for teenage boys" to command respect?

2. What is Heinlein's opinion of women? Where are the women in the story, why are there so few, and what does this mean for gender issues in this story overall? Were the women presented in such a misogynistic way in order to prove a point about the fictional society presented, or due to the author's actual beliefs? Is this misogyny unique to Heinlein? We see Hugh take two wives, one of whom is clearly a victim of domestic assault; is there any way to redeem this narrative construction? Why is such a sexist asshole one of the most famous American science fiction writers?

This is a problem not unique to this text, with several explanations, some bad anthropology, but no excuse.

3. Are the "logical" thinkers in Heinlein and Asimov (who use deductive reasoning correctly but reach ridiculous conclusions) satires of something? Of what? Is there a tension here between observation and "pure" reason?

Or between induction and deduction? Between a literature for engineers and a literature of first principles? What would Hume do?

4. Cutie's reasoning could be interpreted as a parody of how religious thought develops. Was Asimov anti-religion? Does Heinlein think of the Bible as a fiction created by man, just as the "holy scriptures" of the novel are simply the works of NASA-like exploratory scientists? Does SF, in general, mock or oppose religion?

What's up with the Shahada??

5. Why is the Ship spinning? Are the physics plausible?

Actually, yes! Here's why.

6. What do you call one of these?

Gilman: questions of the day

1. What does Gilman's opinion of women reveal about [her] opinion of men? Are they fundamentally different?

2. How well does Herland stand up as work of modern feminism, especially considering the focus on motherhood (simplifying language for children, considering motherhood the “one great personal contribution" of a woman)?

3. Was Gilman a proponent of eugenics? Herland seems to be a utopia where the less desirable individuals don't breed.

4. Is the novum in Herland really cognitively explicable? The explanation given for the evolution of the parthenogenetic race seems more like magic than science. I could understand if Gilman meant this development to be explained or supported by Darwinism, but such a significant change as asexual reproduction would have to take place over millions of years.

Not sf. By most standards, sf, but not hard sf. Hard sf.

5. A lot of the latter part of the book revolves around the three characters' marriages—in particular, the different ways they deal with the question of sex... Does [Gilman] think there's a place for sex, or consider it outmoded?