Man, I gotta read "SciFiWire" more often.
Someone is actually making a movie of one of the classic SF novels of all time, "A Princess of Mars"!
We may have the makings of a franchise here. On par with The Lord of the Rings, too.
"A Princess of Mars" is the first of 14 "John Carter of Mars" novels by Edgar Rice Burroughs (you know, the guy who also crreated Tarzan, Pellucidar, etc.) Not to be confused with that other thrice-named British author, Arthur Conan Doyle (Sherlock Holmes), or the quadruply-named John Ronald Reuel Tolkien...
I've actually got a 1910 edition of this novel in excellent shape. Looks like it was a Christmas gift from "Horace" to someone back then, too. I've read several of these books, but haven't finished the whole series. Gotta do that soon. (If you've never read it, I've got to tell you the style is NOT like current literature. It's rather breathless.....but oddly it's actually PERFECT for a modern Hollywood action/sci-fi movie. What goes around comes around, I guess.)
And my favorite artist, Michael Whelan, did the book covers for a reprint series a few years back. I've bought a number of his book covers for my walls.
And once they're done with the John Carter books, they could make a movie of one of my favorite Robert Heinlein books, "The Number of The Beast", whose main characters are (intentionally) named "Zebediah JOHN CARTER" and "Deety (short for DEJAH THORIS) BURROUGHS". This could be a franchise on par with Riverworld and John Carter of Mars, too. Either this book and it's related followups, or the whole Heinlein Future History or Lazarus Long cycles.
2004-04-06
Pinch me, I must be dreaming - FARSCAPE returns!
Good heavens....I must be dreaming. The SciFi channel, who killed off one of the best and most innovative science fiction shows, Farscape, a few months back because they apparently couldn't have all the control they wanted, is actually bringing it back, at least as a miniseries.
THANK YOU, SCI FI.
And they picked up the excellent re-make of the campy old TV series Battlestar Galactica....and have kept Stargate going and are making a sequel series, Stargate Atlantis. And just picked up Andromeda. They had Earth: Final Conflict for a while too....but it mysteriously vanished. That series was ok for a while, but kind went downhill fast. Watchable, but not excellent.
Oh, and they tried to keep Babylon 5 going (but didn't have the guts to keep Legend of the Rangers going despite bad ratings due to the world's most horrible example of scheduling ever seen....opposite a major sporting event on another channel.)
How amazing that virtually everything ELSE they beyond the above mentioned items and the occasional movie or miniseries such as the two Dune ones show is utter trash! Some of it is HORRIBLY BAD (and I'm talking about new/exclusively-made-for-SciFi stuff, not ancient old stuff that's just campy/dated.) Even Spielberg's "Taken" minseries was pretty bad (not to mention about twice as long as it needed to be.)
Amazing....especially from the channel that actually had the gus to make a movie/miniseries out of Phillip José Farmer's RIVERWORLD (which would make an excellent TV series. I think their Riverworld was a pilot for a series, but not sure.)
I think the SciFi channel staff must be collectively bipolar or schizo or something. Such extremes of trash and treasure give ME mood swings just thinking about it!
I guess this is an example of Sturgeon's Law in action: "90% of everything is crud."
THANK YOU, SCI FI.
And they picked up the excellent re-make of the campy old TV series Battlestar Galactica....and have kept Stargate going and are making a sequel series, Stargate Atlantis. And just picked up Andromeda. They had Earth: Final Conflict for a while too....but it mysteriously vanished. That series was ok for a while, but kind went downhill fast. Watchable, but not excellent.
Oh, and they tried to keep Babylon 5 going (but didn't have the guts to keep Legend of the Rangers going despite bad ratings due to the world's most horrible example of scheduling ever seen....opposite a major sporting event on another channel.)
How amazing that virtually everything ELSE they beyond the above mentioned items and the occasional movie or miniseries such as the two Dune ones show is utter trash! Some of it is HORRIBLY BAD (and I'm talking about new/exclusively-made-for-SciFi stuff, not ancient old stuff that's just campy/dated.) Even Spielberg's "Taken" minseries was pretty bad (not to mention about twice as long as it needed to be.)
Amazing....especially from the channel that actually had the gus to make a movie/miniseries out of Phillip José Farmer's RIVERWORLD (which would make an excellent TV series. I think their Riverworld was a pilot for a series, but not sure.)
I think the SciFi channel staff must be collectively bipolar or schizo or something. Such extremes of trash and treasure give ME mood swings just thinking about it!
I guess this is an example of Sturgeon's Law in action: "90% of everything is crud."
2004-04-05
Freaky number coinky-dinks
I was checking my cell phone timers today (I couldn't remember if I'd reset the resettable one last month when the billing cycle changed). Sure enough, I hadn't (gotta set up a reminder in my PDA to do that). The freaky thing was that all three timers started with "43". The last incremental (per-call) timer was 43:16. The Resettable (monthly total) timer was 432, and the Cumulative (lifetime) total was 4332. If the incremental timer was 43:2x, I'd have gotten worried....too many coincidences. (Actually, I'd have been worried about a bug in the cell phone software.....) And when was the last call I made on my cell phone? On Saturday, 4/3. AHHHHH!!!!!
Two other cell phone thoughts:
The anniversary of another odd numerical coincidence is coming up, too. Next Tuesday, April 13th, is the 34th anniversary of the problem on the Apollo 13 moon flight. (Can't recall if that's the day it was launched or the day the actual problem occurred. Perhaps the same day, but I don't think so...I think they were more than a day along in the mission.) At least the problems wasn't on a FRIDAY the 13th (4/13/1970 was a Monday). Triskadekaphobes would've had a field day. As I recall, the launch time for the mission was 1:13 pm. Another 13! And of course, NASA uses 24-hour military time, and 1:13pm is "13:13". ANOTHER 13. Spooky. not sure if the seconds weren't :13 too. Hope not, that'd be too freaky for words.
Can you believe it's been 30+ years since we've walked on the moon? The last man walked on the moon on Dec. 14, 1972. 32 frickin' years ago.
Like Jerry Pournelle has said: I figured we'd go to the moon in my lifetime. I just didn't figure we'd go there then STOP.
Can you imagine where we'd be if NASA hadn't screwed the pooch for the last 30 years of manned spaceflight (pork, pork, pork!)
Oh well, at least JPL and a few other places are doing interesting things. Pity that all the really interesting (to non-science type) missions are being done by robotic probes.
Man, I hope the X-Prize is successful....and the winners and some of their competitors are commercially successful thereafter, because the space program is too important to leave to the government (pork, pork, pork).
Of course, they guv'mint is about the only one who seems to be able/willing to pay for it. Unless the X-Prize does for the space program what similar prizes did for aviation (can you say Charles Lindbergh?)
Hey, at NASA's $15 billion a year budget (a paltry figure for all NASA does)....maybe we should get Microsoft interested. They've got several years worth of NASA's budget in CASH lying around. So does Apple, for that matter. You can be darn sure that EITHER of 'em would be making a profit. They're about the only ones in the computer industry who ARE making profits these days.
Man, if we could get Microsoft to fund a Mars mission, I'd never say a bad word about 'em again. I'd buy a PC. (There's a nifty Gateway model that's a "media center" PC too....and beleagured Gateway could sure use the help right now....)
Better yet...maybe NASA needs to stop giving away all it's research and charge license fees instead. Our investment in NASA R&D pays us back many-fold each year in new technologies that "spin off" from NASA....commercial companies make beaucoup bucks from NASA R&D without paying a cent to the government to use it. No one remembers that, of course....they just piss and moan about all this money spent on "Buck Rogers and a buncha moon rocks". That ALWAYS comes up in the Letters to the Editors or other Opinion page articles in the newspapers each time NASA has a controversy or problem. Short sighted fools.
You know what I say? "No bucks, no Buck Rogers".
Two other cell phone thoughts:
- The first cell phone call was made 31 years ago yesterday (1973).
- Here's a great joke, from the "Blue Collar Comedy Tour" DVD I watched last night, from comedian Jeff Foxworthy: "If your father's cell number doesn't have anything to do with his telephone number....you might be a redneck." Great comedy "concert", by the way. They only other two comedy shows that've had me laughing so hard I cried are Bill Cosby's "Himself" and anything by Robin Williams. Recommended (any of 'em).
The anniversary of another odd numerical coincidence is coming up, too. Next Tuesday, April 13th, is the 34th anniversary of the problem on the Apollo 13 moon flight. (Can't recall if that's the day it was launched or the day the actual problem occurred. Perhaps the same day, but I don't think so...I think they were more than a day along in the mission.) At least the problems wasn't on a FRIDAY the 13th (4/13/1970 was a Monday). Triskadekaphobes would've had a field day. As I recall, the launch time for the mission was 1:13 pm. Another 13! And of course, NASA uses 24-hour military time, and 1:13pm is "13:13". ANOTHER 13. Spooky. not sure if the seconds weren't :13 too. Hope not, that'd be too freaky for words.
Can you believe it's been 30+ years since we've walked on the moon? The last man walked on the moon on Dec. 14, 1972. 32 frickin' years ago.
Like Jerry Pournelle has said: I figured we'd go to the moon in my lifetime. I just didn't figure we'd go there then STOP.
Can you imagine where we'd be if NASA hadn't screwed the pooch for the last 30 years of manned spaceflight (pork, pork, pork!)
Oh well, at least JPL and a few other places are doing interesting things. Pity that all the really interesting (to non-science type) missions are being done by robotic probes.
Man, I hope the X-Prize is successful....and the winners and some of their competitors are commercially successful thereafter, because the space program is too important to leave to the government (pork, pork, pork).
Of course, they guv'mint is about the only one who seems to be able/willing to pay for it. Unless the X-Prize does for the space program what similar prizes did for aviation (can you say Charles Lindbergh?)
Hey, at NASA's $15 billion a year budget (a paltry figure for all NASA does)....maybe we should get Microsoft interested. They've got several years worth of NASA's budget in CASH lying around. So does Apple, for that matter. You can be darn sure that EITHER of 'em would be making a profit. They're about the only ones in the computer industry who ARE making profits these days.
Man, if we could get Microsoft to fund a Mars mission, I'd never say a bad word about 'em again. I'd buy a PC. (There's a nifty Gateway model that's a "media center" PC too....and beleagured Gateway could sure use the help right now....)
Better yet...maybe NASA needs to stop giving away all it's research and charge license fees instead. Our investment in NASA R&D pays us back many-fold each year in new technologies that "spin off" from NASA....commercial companies make beaucoup bucks from NASA R&D without paying a cent to the government to use it. No one remembers that, of course....they just piss and moan about all this money spent on "Buck Rogers and a buncha moon rocks". That ALWAYS comes up in the Letters to the Editors or other Opinion page articles in the newspapers each time NASA has a controversy or problem. Short sighted fools.
You know what I say? "No bucks, no Buck Rogers".
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