Thursday, October 27, 2011

Games: Desert Moon

Day 1
[Excerpt from Post-Incident Report]
"There were no firearms.  We're salvagers... engineers.  Not soldiers.  You couldn't even see anything out of that escape suit.  But something was killing us, eating us.  We had to fight back.  The wreckage was full of components, components [that] we put together... and we fought back."

So begins one of my favorite new Flash games of this last year: Desert Moon.  It's well-designed, fast-moving, and has well-chosen music and sound effects.  This is sort of a science fiction combination of shooter and tower defense.  Place defenders with different weapons types in front of half of your crashed spaceship, facing increasing hordes of aliens of different types... and the re-animated corpses of your friends from the separated other half of your ship.

I enjoy games that, once you've picked up the mechanics of it, aren't too hard to master.  It seems I'm not the only one, because I've found a lot of Flash games are that way.  As I've said before, I hardly possess mad skillz, but I've finished all five "days" at all three skill levels with top marks.  For some people, mastering it takes all the fun out of the game.  For me, it makes it something relaxing to come back to now and again.  If you can call being besieged by aliens and zombies relaxing.

(click here to get to the game)

Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Forrest J Ackerman on Early Science Fiction Authors He Knew

Remember when I said there was more yet of my interview with Forrest J Ackerman to be turned into micro-documentaries?  Well, I didn't have to do much work at all to produce this one.  When I was moving files from my dying hard drives to my new one, I found to my surprise that I'd had one ready to go all this time, but had forgotten about it in the wake of Forry's death.

So I just added a picture of Francis Flagg that I saw recently in the November 1931 issue of Wonder Stories (and used it for cover to cut out a mid-sentence pause), and there we are.



Text:

At the time I had 127 correspondents around the world, I was also in correspondence with a number of the early authors, like Jack Williamson and Edgar Rice Burroughs.  And finally, in 1939, at the first World Science Fiction Convention, I met in person authors I had been corresponding with, called Ray Cummings, and, 'course, the fabulous artist Frank R. Paul.

David H. Keller?  He was one of my favorite early authors, and at one time I visited him in his home in Pennsylvania, and I stayed overnight.  And I noticed, at each meal, he was including a handful of different vitamins.  And he said he was attempting to lengthen his life with these.  He did indeed live to a ripe old age.

My wife didn't believe in vitamins.  She said, you eat a healthy diet, and that's sufficient.

Well, Francis Flagg was a well-established name author, but he began to run out of ideas.  And I was overflowing with ideas, but I did not have any stature yet as an author.  So I began supplying plots to Francis Flagg, and he wrote up—the first one was called "Earth's Lucky Day."

Well, I remember at one time, when I was temporarily living in San Francisco, I found that an author of a series of stories called "Tani of Ekkis"—he had the name of Aladra Septama.  And I found that actually, he was a lawyer, Judson W. Reeves, living in—having his office in downtown San Francisco.

So one day, I went to his office and met him, and he took me to lunch afterwards, and out to his home.  And there I was staggered to see the first six issues of Amazing Stories on display.  I had not been aware of it in April 1926 when it began, and I only began collecting it in October.  And to my undying gratitude, Aladra Septama—boy, I—always fascinated by that pseudonym.  I never—I regret I didn't ask him how he created such a name.  But Aladra Septama took the six copies of Amazing Stories that I had missed, and gained by undying gratitude by making me a gift of them.

Winston: I'll bet you still have them, too.

Liz (louder): Do you still have them?

Ackerman: Of course I still have them!  I never threw away a science fiction magazine in my life!

Monday, October 24, 2011

Radio: The Hole in Empty Space (Space Patrol)

It occurred to me that every radio episode I've ever posted here has been an adaptation of a published story.  But there was a lot more to radio science fiction than that.  So this time, I bring you the earliest surviving radio episode of Space Patrol, aired about 13 months after last week's Dimension X finale.


Although largely forgotten today, Space Patrol was something of a multimedia blockbuster in its time.  It started on March 9, 1950, as a 15-minute show, broadcast every weekday on a local Los Angeles television station.  The ABC radio network picked it up as a twice-weekly radio program in the summer of that year.  Then the ABC television network began a half-hour weekly show that December 30.  Since the local show continued for some time, and the radio show continued twice a week for the first few weeks the network television version was on, that means stars Ed Kemmer (Commander Buzz Corry) and Lyn Osborn (Cadet Happy) were briefly doing eight shows a week.  And they did frequent publicity appearances as well.  It's a wonder they didn't go space happy.  (As it was, Kemmer referred to Osborn as "Hap" to the end of his life, in 2005.)

The radio show returned in a once-weekly timeslot on August 18, 1951, continuing until March 19, 1955—three weeks after the TV show was discontinued.



0:30 Did they actually have to say, back then, if a show was "transcribed" (i.e., pre-recorded)? Reminds me of when sitcoms began with, for instance "All in the Family was recorded before a live audience." (Did they have to say that? Was the FCC looking out to protect the public against shows that they might otherwise mistakenly think were live?)

Incidentally, the television show was broadcast live through almost all of its life (1950-5), so it's kind of funny to think cast and crew had more latitude for error in making their audio-only adventures than they did with their far more complex audiovisual ones.

0:35 That should be "phenomenon." "Phenomena" is the plural. I mention that for the 95% of the Internet that's also unaware of this.

0:42 It seemed to be up to the individual actor whether Terra V was pronounced "Terra Five" (as Buzz Corry does at 6:59) or, as here, "Terra the Fifth." It amazes me that, more than two and a half years since the TV show premiered, someone hadn't definitively decided it one way or the other. Judging from the TV episodes I've seen, they seem to have agreed on the former sometime in 1953.

1:30 "Sounds just like a walkie-talkie" was pressing the truth more than a little. According to "Cadet Hanzo's Guide to Space Patrol Merchandising" in Jean-Noel Bassoir's Space Patrol book, the Space-o-Phones were "a futuristic version of the tin can telephone that worked about as well."

5:17 "D.U.'s" is short for "Distance Units," Space Patrol's measure of distance. I don't think they ever pinned down what, exactly, one amounted to. Confusingly, they also used it as a unit of speed (as at 7:16).

8:49 Again, trust your editor. "Phenomenon": singular. "Phenomena": plural.

14:31 "Spun out of shredded wheat." As you can see on the television show, Rice Chex looked substantially the same in the early '50s as they do today, but Wheat Chex were tiny shredded wheat biscuits. Beats me what Instant Ralston was like, but the fact it isn't around today probably says something.

20:10 The mention of superconductors inspired me to look them up on Wikipedia and in my Langenscheidt's New College Merriam-Webster. Turns out the word was coined all the way back in 1913. Writer Lou Houston, who read science magazines for ideas and background, may have read about the then-recent Ginsburg-Landau Theory, the first mathematical modeling of superconductivity. "Black hole," incidentally, wasn't coined until 1968, hence this episode's "cycloplex." (Granted, the cycloplex isn't a black hole—its effects are electromagnetic rather than gravitational—but you just know that after 1968, they'd have called it one anyway.)

26:06 If you're wondering about the distinction between "Terra" and "Earth," Space Patrol's Terra was an artificial planet, assembled between the orbits of Earth and Mars, which served as the capital of the United Planets.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Classic Serials: Undersea Kingdom, Chapter Eleven

Undersea Kingdom made a name for "Crash" Corrigan.  As it happens, the name it made for him was "Crash" Corrigan.  Before this serial, he was credited—when he was credited at all—as Ray Benard.  (And even that wasn't his real name.  It was Raymond Benitz according to IMDb, and the closer Raymond Bernard according to Wikipedia.)  But it was under his character's name from this serial, with his own "Ray" appended up front, that he was known for the rest of his career.

And while it wasn't one of Hollywood's great careers, it was, at least, a career, stretching from an uncredited role as an ape in 1932's Tarzan the Ape Man to the title character of 1958's It! The Terror from Beyond Space.

There are several different stories as to how Benitz/Benard came to be called "Crash."  IMDb claims it "derived from his powerful physique and willingness to undertake dangerous stunts."  Wikipedia notes that when he appeared on Groucho Marx's game show You Bet Your Life, he ascribed it to "the way he tackled other players in football and the way he fought."  But they also point out a far more likely, though prosaic, possibility: since Undersea Kingdom came out in the wake (no pun intended) of Universal's hit Flash Gordon, "Crash" may well have been invented at Republic for its similarity, and the actor simply adopted the character's name as his own.  (It happens now and again.  Doctor Who's Sylvester McCoy—né Patrick Kent Smith—also adapted the name of an early character he played for his stage name.)

After getting his first lead role in Undersea Kingdom, Corrigan co-starred as Tucson Smith in 24 features in the "Three Mesquiteers" series before leaving Republic in a pay dispute.  He then starred in a long western B-picture series of his own.  Really his own: again, "Crash" Corrigan was his character name as well as his stage name.

But at beginning and end of his career, what made ends meet was costume work.  He owned his own gorilla suits, and got a lot of work out of them.  He appeared as apes in two of Johnny Weissmuller's Tarzan films, in Murder in the Private Car (1934), and in Darkest Africa (1936).  And he even appeared as an "Orangopoid" in the original Flash Gordon serial.  After his westerns petered out, he played the title roles of The White Gorilla and White Pongo (1945), and other apes in numerous other movies.  Even while in the height of his career, he played the occasional gorilla—including a second role in one of his Three Mesquiteers pictures.  As Bugs Bunny would have it, "Eh, it's a livin'."

In 1948, Wikipedia says, he sold his gorilla suits to another actor, Steve Calvert.  I guess, at 46, he was getting too old for these monkeyshines.  Which would mean IMDb was wrong in assigning Corrigan the role of the gorilla in the infamous would-be comedy Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla.  Which is too bad, in a way; it would be kind of neat if two former serial stars were abasing themselves in that disaster.

Besides gorilla suits, Corrigan made another film-related investment, buying his own ranch, Corriganville, which he converted into a combination full-service film location and Western-themed tourist attraction.  He sold it to Bob Hope in 1966, at which point it became Hopetown.  It's a shame he didn't sell it to Zazu Pitts.  She could have named it Pittsburgh.



7:14 "Gah!  The submarine again?!  Are you sure there isn't anything else you're going to need from there?  Heart attack pills?  Your iPod?  Change of underwear?  I swear to you, we're not going back one more time."

8:11 It kind of ruins the illusion that the submarine is fairly wide below the waterline when it's so close to shore.

12:15 Hey, they're got a big locker full of dander in the sub!  I wonder why they'd... oh.  It says "Danger."  My mistake.

13:41 "Oh, boy, oh, boy!  Field trip!"

14:00 That's an unusually short Volkite.  Did Republic run out of tall extras?

17:57 "Control disc"?  Sounds like there was a miscommunication between the script and prop departments.

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Classic Serials: Undersea Kingdom (Faster-Paced Version), Chapter Eleven

(originally posted January 24, 2009)

After two weeks off for finishing up Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 (that's the requisite Google spider-bait out of the way), we're back with the penultimate chapter of Republic's classic 1936 serial Undersea Kingdom, edited for YouTube's ten-minute video limit and the limited patience of the modern viewer. (I include myself in that category, by the way. I watch something like this, and I'm firing up Final Cut Pro in my head.)

Incidentally, "penultimate" means "second to last." That's one of those things I'd like to electronically insert into the brains of everyone on the Internet, along with the difference between "its" and "it's."

For some unfathomable (no pun intended) reason, the feature version of this serial was titled Sharad of Atlantis. Viewers were no doubt perplexed at how little the title character appears. And after the events of this episode, they might well have thrown up their hands and quit.

The compilers of the feature could have found a much better title in the text introducing the characters every week. (That would be the text you haven't seen, because I edit it out every week to save a whole minute.) Mad Tyrant of Atlantis! Grabs you, doesn't it? And when you read it aloud, you don't have to guess how to pronounce it.

And how about Diana's radiant compassion, huh? The Sacred City has just been destroyed around her, Lord knows how many casualties there are, and her first thought? The recapture of Professor Norton jeopardizes her escape! Fortunately for her, she doesn't make this observation in front of any natives of the Sacred City.



We're really racing to the end, here. This chapter started out at 19 minutes, 25 seconds, and is now 9 minutes, 53 seconds. I could have just cut out a couple of minutes, and split it into two parts, but you know me, I'm not a quitter. (People reading this who actually know me laugh heartily.)

Yet another cheat cliffhanger hit the virtual cutting room floor this week. Since we've now reached the final cliffhanger of this serial, maybe I'll produce a compilation of all the cheats. Later.

Oh, and there never was a scene to explain that Moloch is in the other empty Volkite. As you probably did, I wondered for a while how Billy became the same height as Crash.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Games: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (N64) Part 12

You'd think, having just come up from the sewers, I wouldn't be able to sneak up on guards so well.  At any rate, now it's time for Xizor's drastically under-furnished palace!  This is a level you really need a guide for— or, ahem, a video walkthrough —what with all the fiendishly hidden challenge points.  Enjoy them while you can: in the next (final) level, challenge points are awarded automatically.



0:54 Here's yet another place where the auto-targeting just will not lock onto flying droids to save its life, hence some cheap hits.

1:39 See, that switch not only opens the door on ground level across the room, it also opens the small alcove I'm now backing into.

1:53 As you can see, this door doesn't stay open for long, which is why I concentrated on jumping and running, and left shooting the droid for once I was past the door.

3:06 If it's not obvious here what I'm doing: the switch sends the lift back to the first level.  Then, by hovering here until it goes red, I can click it again, and send the lift down to a secret level.

3:49 I'm just moving over here so you can see the drawbridge coming down.

5:18 Nothing happened when I ran through the pulse pack (purple) because I'm already full up.  The same deal with the extra 5-health pack.

5:55 Yes, another alcove where you wouldn't expect it.

6:41 This is my favorite devious hidden challenge point of the level: a hidden passageway behind an alcove.  That window I fly past, by the way, is the control room I was in a minute ago.

7:13 I'm sure there's some way to time this so you don't get pummeled by the giant gear, but I haven't managed to figure it out.

7:24 Oh, nice jump, me.

8:06 I'm going back this way instead, just to make sure I don't get pummeled by those gears I dropped between.

8:44 Again, auto-targeting and those damned flying droids.

9:36 I fired that stunner a little high, and it wasn't effective.

10:22 I can never remember which corner of this shaft is which, so I end up checking them all until I find the right one.  It's the same story with the exit hatch shortly.

11:45 I've switched to seekers because I only have so many disruptors.  It's fairly easy to hit the first stage of the Gladiator with seekers... not so much the next two.

12:46 If I had better aim, and hit the Gladiator itself more often instead of the wall behind it, this would probably go a lot quicker.

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Watching You Tube: Crash Corben: Last of the Rocketmen

(originally posted November 4, 2008)

While we're having fun with Undersea Kingdom, here's a new retro-styled production emulating the serials of the 1940's—Crash Corben: Last of the Rocketmen.








Man alive, I seriously covet that rocketship set.  Part 3, by the way, is, as the YouTube description has it,  an "[a]ctual newsreel from 1944 which acts as an intermission between chapters."  I've excluded it here.

Monday, October 17, 2011

Custom Wars

Frankly, there's a fair amount of stuff that's appeared here that I learned about via the Nerd Approved site.  In one case, I got the picture of a Star Trek cat tree from there.  Soon, I found pictures of a TARDIS cat fort in my jealous trolling of the TARDIS Builders forum.  And I thought, hey, here's something Nerd Approved hasn't done.  So, for some unfathomable reason, I waited a little while before doing a post that featured both cat trees.  And then it turned out they did the TARDIS cat fort the same day.  As Charlie Brown would say, *sigh*.

But this time, I feel pretty safe.  Back in August, Nerd Approved did a post featuring some gorgeous custom action figures of characters from the original Star Wars, re-imagined with the sensibility of the '30s and '40s science fiction serials which inspired George Lucas in the first place.

But they really only scratched the surface.  Sillof, who created those figures, is multitalented, and didn't stop (or start) with the idiom of classic serials.  Behold, with his kind permission, not just Cecil-3000 from Serial Wars...

If this were a Republic serial, of course, they'd just have painted a Volkite gold.

...but Rust-bucket from Steam Wars...

I'm imagining a 16mm projector noise when he shows the Princess's message.

...Detective Dante Victor from Noir Wars...

"I find yer lack'a fait' distoibing."

...Boran Fayne of Long Ago and Far Away...

"Ni!"

...Hank Solomon from West Wars...

"Damn those beans.  I've got the Kessel Runs."

...Princess Layu Oganata from Samurai Wars...

"Take one more step, and this goes right in my stomach."

...and 1st Lt. Chuck Backer of World Wars!

"I ain't gettin' in no plane, Murdock!"

Hell, and this is just one from each set.  He even has a set where he doesn't restrict himself to one idiom, but mixes and matches to create his own new take on the classic designs.

And besides all this, he has custom dioramas of classic scenes from the original trilogy, beautiful yet frugal re-creations of props from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and Star Trek.  And much, much more, as the commercials say.  If you want to ooh and ahh, and feel really, really jealous (although that may just be me), you owe it to yourself to check out this site.

All images above copyright © 2011 Sillof.  Used by permission.  All characters and related materials are trademark, copyright, and/or registered trademarks of their respective license holders and/or owners.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

Classic Serials: Undersea Kingdom, Chapter Ten

If anyone's getting into this serial like I am, and has at least $57.95 to blow (as I don't), there's currently an original 11x14" lobby card for this very episode available on eBay, pictured here.  (You can also get a wood resin model of a Juggernaut for $96.00.  Ah, to be rich.  And not care what people think of your interior decorating.)

No kidding, I really am getting to enjoy "Crash" Corrigan in this serial.  Perhaps it's the Stockholm Syndrome from going through this serial in exhaustive detail twice in the last three years.  But for all of Corrigan's... modest talents as an actor, there's a sort of unassuming matter-of-factness about him that I find appealing in an action hero, especially in such outlandish surroundings.

He doesn't quite succeed in getting the audience's identification the way Buster Crabbe did as Flash Gordon.  As I've mentioned before, Crabbe's Flash frequently projected a sense that even he wasn't sure his luck would hold out much longer.  His courage was the sort that's defined as being frightened to death, but proceeding anyway.

By contrast, Crash is more of an old-school pulp hero who's courageous and possessed of many physical skills almost as a matter of course, who doesn't seem really to consider the possibility of failure.  He approaches his adventure in Atlantis with the same straight-ahead determination we saw him apply to football and wrestling in Chapter One.  He'd be insufferable if he weren't so darn nice, so utterly lacking in self-congratulation.  But maybe you get that way when, by the looks of him, you've been a cadet at Annapolis for about fifteen years.

I find it kind of funny how Diana is the sort of character who's thrown in as a romantic interest for the hero, and yet there's no sense that adversity is heightening any sexual tension between them.  Crash seems to have noticed she's a woman, and he may be attracted to her (maybe most noticeable in his smiling reaction to her brashness in inviting herself onto the expedition in Chapter One), but I guess he just figures this isn't the time or place to be making moves on her.  When this is all over, maybe he'll invite her to a dance, and they can get properly acquainted.

And no, I won't stand for any jokes that he's more interested in Billy.



2:00 I suppose "himself" in "in spite of himself" must refer to Professor Norton, although it's amusing to read it as referring to Crash.  "Damn!  I was hoping not to rescue the Professor, but..."

3:26 That's funny, I could have sworn the Volplane was blown to pieces last week.  But Republic wouldn't lie to us, would they?

4:03 I love how abashed Ditmar is.

9:10 Watch the one Black Robe almost lose his balance as he swings around.

14:02 You know, I keep seeing those guys roll that rock, but I never see them use it.  Maybe, as MST3K suggested, they're dung beetles.  Or maybe they're Sisyphus' cousins who didn't piss the gods off as much.

15:20 I don't think I've mentioned this before, but damn, these are the woodenest-sounding swords in all creation.  What's especially silly is that Republic almost had to have Foleyed them in that way.  Surely they didn't pick up the actual sound at that distance?

16:41 Say, what happened to not being able to bomb the Sacred City for fear of rupturing the dome?

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Classic Serials: Undersea Kingdom (Faster-Paced Version), Chapter Ten

(originally posted January 3, 2009)

Let me just interrupt my usual spiel about how this is a quicker-paced edit of the classic 1936 Republic serial to say, Gaaaahh! The Great Projector?!?


Everyone after me: Why didn't Unga Khan use it against the Sacred City until now?!!?!

Incidentally, is it me, or does it sound like that line (at 8:12) was dubbed by someone else?



Frankly, this chapter has the least plot of any so far. So really, it was less a matter of what to cut out than what to keep in. Apart from the usual cutting of the mini-bios of the characters, and trimming the recap so that we're into new stuff before the two-minute mark, this week I made exactly four cuts:

1) Hakur* goes down to the stables and repeats Unga Khan's orders.

2) Khan's men (again) fruitlessly pursue Crash as he hightails it for the Sacred City. They report their failure to Hakur. Khan and Ditmar walk across the damn room (again) to answer Hakur's call on the Reflecto** Plate.

3) Khan's men (again) assemble their forces and set out for the Sacred City.

(Then there's the scene I left in where Crash tries (again) to reason with Prof. Norton, and Sharad says the effects of the transforming machine will wear off. I put it before Hakur's call because the story flows around the edits better that way. The beats become: Crash et al go off in the chariot, Crash et al think they're safe in the Sacred City, Unga Khan calls for an all-out attack on the Sacred City, and the attack commences.)

4) The Black Robes arrive. Crash and the White Robes marshall their forces. Hakur decides (again) to wait for nightfall, just as he did at what I called "the Battle of Helm's Really Deep" six weeks ago (and which I also cut out on that occasion).

All in all, this chapter makes me wish, for your sake, that I'd watched the whole serial before starting to edit it. I realized that Prof. Norton's escape from the Sacred City pretty much defeated the point of everything that had happened since about the 2:30 point of Chapter Eight. I could have saved two whole chapters, like so:



(I could have put back three and a half minutes of marshaling forces, etc., to bring it closer to ten minutes, but I think I've made my point.)

*- According to IMDb, this is how it's spelled. I'd think "Hakur" would have the stress on the second syllable, or at least be "HAH-ker" but hey, I didn't make this thing. As to how I've managed to call him "Hacker" all this time when I've actually consulted IMDb about other names, check out my all-purpose explanation from last week. 

**- It sure sounded like "Reflector Plate" earlier, but this week, Unga Khan clearly calls it "the Reflecto." See explanation cited above.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Radio: Nightfall (Dimension X)

Although the announcement at the close of the episode shows they were hoping to come back at some point, I wonder if there wasn't some consciousness, in the choice of "Nightfall" as the last story of the season, that this might, in fact, be the end.  But then, I suppose "Requiem" would have worked for that, too.

"Nightfall" is one of the all-time classic science fiction stories.  Sometimes, though, I wonder if a story's classic status isn't perpetuated and amplified simply by the fact that everyone always calls it a classic.  Not that I don't like "Nightfall"; it just strikes me as a very good story rather than One of the Greatest Science Fiction Stories Ever Written.  For what it's worth, Asimov agreed.  In 1979, he wrote that he considered "Nightfall" only the fourth best of his own stories, never mind of all time.

For one thing, it's mostly concept and not enough story.  This story was famously inspired by Astounding editor John W. Campbell reading Asimov the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson which opens both story and episode.  Campbell felt Emerson was wrong: "I think men would go mad," he said.  And the resulting story is more a dramatized explanation of why Campbell was right than it is about characters actually doing things.

Also, the world-building is pretty feeble.  There are several references to "days"-- surely a meaningless concept on Lagash, which almost always has at least two suns in the sky.  And what function does an observatory serve on such a world?  I suppose it could be a solar observatory, but I don't think it occurred to Asimov that photographic plates designed on a planet where it's always daytime would almost certainly be far too weak to capture images of stars.

It beats me how the solar system in this story works.  It seems to me that all the population of Lagash must be on the same hemisphere for there to be universal darkness-- unless the suns could perfectly line up, one behind the other, with an eclipsing object in front.  And that's not the case here, where Asimov writes of suns setting, and only the last sun being eclipsed.  Further, the cities would probably have to be fairly close together for the eclipse to be total in all of them.  Humans on Lagash may have evolved on an Australia-sized continent, so far separated from the others (if any) that they all still live there.  It would be nice if Asimov had dropped some clues in this respect.

Asimov violates his point of view at the end.  Up until then, the story had Theremon 762 as its point-of-view character, and kept itself to what people on Lagash would know.  But in order to explain that Lagash is in a cluster, Asimov has to step back suddenly to an omniscient viewpoint, explicitly contrasting Lagash and Earth.

Finally, I find it tough to believe that any civilization that can build enclosed spaces could go so long without developing artificial light, eternal day or no.  How did they build the Tunnel of Mystery, for instance, without it?  And presumably they have darkrooms to develop their photographic plates.

It's so easy to pick holes in this story that I find it far more difficult to determine why it is that the story works, regardless.  Asimov does a good job gradually building a pervasive sense of doom, to the point that there's almost pathos in how under-prepared the scientists turn out to be.  He brings in the pieces of the puzzle one at a time-- the collapse of past civilizations, the story of the Tunnel of Mystery.  He presents the conflict between science and religion, making both sides prideful and dismissive of the other.  (Similarly to Heinlein in "Universe," Asimov presents religion and tradition as having some answers, however garbled, that science would do well to pay heed to.)  In short, he makes us worry that we're watching a society circling the drain, not quite aware how much danger they're in.  Which makes the whole story a little tragic.

So what about the "Best Science Fiction Story Ever" thing?  Remember that this story was written in 1941.  It's been fashionable since at least the 1960's to ride Asimov down for having a flat, utilitarian writing style.  But all you have to do is read some science fiction from the 1930's, as I've been doing lately, and you'll gain a whole new appreciation for style that's clear, simple, and straightforward.

And for similar reasons, the readers of 1941 may have appreciated exactly what I dunned the story for above-- being all concept.  At least Asimov took a concept and saw it through to its logical bitter end.  I've been reading eighty-year-old back issues of Wonder Stories (for a blog feature that I've never gotten around to writing), and I can't tell you how many times the stories have frustrated me by taking a halfway interesting idea, and just using it as background for some mind-numbingly rote action-adventure-romance involving giant bugs, or gangsters, or fleets of eighty grazillion spaceships blasting away at each other.

Before we get to the episode, sorry about the audio quality on this one.  It's pretty rough.  Moreover, that sort of glassy persistent background noise shows that it was over-compressed at some point in its digital history.



Ernest Kinoy took a different tack in adapting "Nightfall" than he did with "Requiem" the previous week.  As you may remember, he stuck pretty close to Heinlein's story, scene by scene, exchange by exchange, mostly just rephrasing the story's dialogue into something more natural to hear actors say.  By contrast, Kinoy retains very little of Asimov's text, and freely juggles events to improved dramatic effect.  As I said, the story is something of a dramatized thesis; it frequently errs on the side of over-explaining.

Kinoy rearranges this information to make it a bit snappier, and to add some drama to the story.  The story is essentially one continuous scene.  Kinoy breaks it up a bit.  He has Theremon's interview with Aton turn out to be abortive.  Then he has Theremon go to Sor, the leader of the Cult, to get his point of view.  Similarly, Kinoy later has Theremon interview an engineer from the power station, and an old cultist.  This improves the story dramatically in several ways.  It increases the pace, it opens up the story, it puts more of a face on a group that, in the story, we hear about mostly second-hand from the scientists, and it also makes Theremon a better reporter.

Later in the story, Sheerin, the psychologist, tells Theremon about the unfortunate people driven mad in the Tunnel of Mystery.  Kinoy dramatizes it a little by introducing us briefly to Latimer, one of the victims.  (In the story, Latimer was a completely different character: the cultist who destroyed the photographic plates.  Kinoy assigns that action to Sor himself, and so he was able to recycle the name here.)

In a couple of places, though, Kinoy loses a little in the process.  He fails to explain the significance of the photographic plates: they're to be used to photograph the stars for later study.  And he condenses the dialogue about the scientists belatedly inventing the candle.  Whereas Asimov had Sheerin talk of "the pithy core of coarse water reeds," Kinoy has the animal grease "packed around a wick."  If they haven't had candles or lamps up to now, would they even have a word for "wick" in this sense?

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Games: Bloons Tower Defense

(originally posted January 26, 2009)

And now for a bonus science-fiction-themed Monday Game: Bloons Tower Defense!

...

Oh, like monkeys throw darts to destroy an onslaught of balloons in real life?! Besides: monkeys? Throwing darts? To pop balloons? Entertainment gold, I tell you, solid freakin' gold!

(click here to get to game)

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Watching You Tube: Space Adventure, Episodes 13 & 14 and Jim Troesh

And now it's time for two more episodes of one of my all-time favorite web series, Space Adventure!

Episode 13: Double Cliff Hanger!

It looks like "lukku cairi AKA Alice AKA leucocephala" has the same laptop I do.  Of course, since this was four years ago, she probably has a different one now, whereas I don't.

Episode 14: RCK Chain of Command

The "robot clown kid" footage comes from the (ostensibly) educational film The Self Image Film (If Mirrors Could Speak), which Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett covered for RiffTrax.

* * *

I'm going to leave it there this week and share another video with you.  I don't keep up that much with Hollywood news, so it's kind of odd that I should happen to check out The Hollywood Reporter's news site yesterday and catch out of the corner of my eye a Breaking News sidebar item that put a cold shiver through me.  Actor/writer Jim Troesh has died.

That name might not mean much to you; his highest-profile role was a recurring one as a lawyer on Highway to Heaven.  But I knew him from an entertainment industry networking group, the Hampton's Table, that I was a member of when I lived in Los Angeles.

He was cheerful, irrepressible, and always working on something, which is more than I can say for myself.  And this was despite spending more than forty years of his life from age 14 as a quadriplegic.  There's a line from one of my favorite bands, Optiginally Yours, that always puts me in mind of him.  In "Beebo," they give you this advice on how to shake it to their boogie: "If you can move one limb, that's all you need to begin.  And if you can't, relax and just be groovy."  Jim was a relaxed and groovy kind of guy.

I mention all of this in a "Watching YouTube" post because the best way I can think of to remember him is with the first episode of his web series from a few years ago, called The Hollywood Quad, in which he addressed his own personal elephant in the room with his usual grace and good humor.  I remember seeing it the first time when he unveiled it to laughter and applause at the Table.  It even has a science fiction connection, of sorts, as we see him start on a science fiction script.  (In real life, he wrote a comedy pilot script with the wonderfully bent premise of Earth's first alien visitor having to make his way in the world once his novelty-based fifteen minutes of fame are up.)

Friday, October 7, 2011

Classic Serials: Undersea Kingdom, Chapter Nine

One of the great things about the old studios is that they never threw anything away.  Old costumes, props, sets, music, decoration... all of it was apt to reappear in some future production.  It gets so that, plopped down in the middle of a movie you've never seen, you can identify which studio it comes from just from what it re-uses from other films you have seen.  If you watch Mystery Science Theater 3000, for instance, you quickly come to see how much mileage Universal-International got out of its score from This Island Earth, its office set, and a bizarre painting that (as Tom Servo observed) looks like a burger.

Considering that Republic, producer of Undersea Kingdom, was one of the "poverty row" studios, you can bet they took as much advantage of their inventory as they possibly could.  Sound effects introduced here recur all through their serials (for instance, the sound of the Juggernaut in motion was used for the atomic gun sixteen years later in Radar Men from the Moon).  The Juggernaut itself was refurbished slightly in that same serial to become the Moon men's vehicle.

But the rampant re-use of Undersea Kingdom's Volkites so dramatically identified Republic serials that they came to be known as the "Republic Robots."  They appeared in Mysterious Doctor Satan (1940) and Zombies of the Stratosphere (1952), to name two.  Here's a still from the latter, lifted from chud.com's review:

Cash machines: You're doing it wrong

Much, much later, the Republic Robot also had an affectionate and closely-observed parody in Tom Paris's serial-based holodeck fantasy in Star Trek: Voyager.  I wish I knew enough to give you a complete (or even just longer) list.  Actually, what I really wish I knew is why, in Undersea Kingdom, they appear to have torsos decorated with handlebar mustaches.


Notes:

1:57 Sentenced?  I don't think the threat to kill him would work too well if he were already as good as dead.  Granted, it didn't work anyway, but...

2:53 I wonder if the kids in the audience stood up and booed these cheat cliffhangers.  I might have.

4:08 Uh, Hakur?  Not to tell you your job or anything, but this is a situation that normally calls for "drop your weapons, then get on the ground and put your hands behind your head" or something.

4:37 Advice for filmmakers: if you want to have your hero look heroic, don't have him squinting into the sun.  Well, unless he's Clint Eastwood.

5:35 "[M]y undersea kingdom of Atlantis."  It's funny, that's exactly how Unga Khan described it back in Chapter Two.  The recurrence gives me reason to ponder what, exactly, distinguishes Holy Sharad as a good guy.  I mean, yes, he doesn't want to conquer or destroy the upper world, and maybe that's the important thing to Crash et al, but his rule seems as arbitrary as Khan's.

7:43 You know, when you think of it, this plan depends for its success on Unga Khan's not having followed the battle with his magic television.

9:12 How does he know what priming powder is supposed to smell like?

10:05 "And why the hell are you dressed like that?"

15:23 Love the Volplane.  This serial has great production design.  I'd love to see more science fiction that shows what modern technology would look like if it had been invented in the '30s, with that great art deco/Frank R. Paul look.  Radiumpunk, anyone?

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Radio: Requiem (Dimension X)

Well, thanks to my hard drive troubles, I missed the actual sixtieth anniversary of the last two episodes of Dimension X, but I'll go ahead and finish out the series before we move on to other things.

* * *

A few weeks ago, I pointed out the similarities between "Vital Factor," the 1950 story by Nelson S. Bond, and the 1950 novella "The Man Who Sold the Moon," by Robert A. Heinlein.  Dimension X adapted the former.  Then, ironically, they went on to adapt the story to which "Sold" was a prequel, "Requiem," which hit the newsstands near the end of 1939.

(Yes, Internet, "prequel" means "a story created later which takes place earlier," not merely "a story created earlier."  The Phantom Menace (1999), for instance, is a prequel to Star Wars (1977), but it is not a prequel to Attack of the Clones (2002).)

Now, I'm not an expert on Heinlein, but it seems to me that he (like the huge majority of his contemporaries in the field) wasn't all that strong on characterization.  The heroes of his juveniles, for instance, always struck me as being distinguished by their hyper-competence, self-interest, and willingness to take a lot of crap on the way up-- not for any real quirks of personality.  And this is one of Heinlein's earliest stories, so it's not as though the characterization here were something he learned from experience.  Perhaps it's that Heinlein employed perhaps the best way to make a reader care about a character, which is to give him a motivating need that the reader can sympathize with.  No doubt many of the readers of this story-- or listeners on the radio --also had dreams of going to the Moon.  And that Heinlein no doubt put some of his own background and dreams into Harriman, as we'll see later.

The focus on character isn't the only reason I find it somewhat surprising this story was written in 1939.  It's remarkably matter-of-fact about rocket travel to the Moon.  And it fits in so well with its prequel that they almost seem of a piece.  There's no feeling in "The Man Who Sold the Moon" of straining to fit the circumstances of "Requiem."  You could almost believe "Sold" was written first.

But perhaps they should be read in the order they were written.  Knowing the more sympathetic Harriman at the end of his life goes a long way, I think, to making the brash, impatient, self-interested S.O.B. of the prequel easier to take.

By the way, probably the best sign that "Requiem" was written in 1939 is that the pilots, flying their run-down rocket at carnivals, were so obviously based on the post-World War I barnstormers who were still active at the time.  Heinlein even uses the word.  (The radio version, nearly twelve years later, does not.)


I don't have a lot of fancy stuff to say about the episode this week.  The story, it appears, was just the right length for Dimension X, because Ernest Kinoy was able to write a pretty straightforward adaptation with only a few short additional scenes.

He expands a bit on Harriman's past.  We're there as he's served with a subpoena.  Harriman is shocked to realize that the judge may rule against him.  We witness their approach to the Moon.  But most of these come naturally out of the story, and don't feel like padding.

Oddly, although he had to expand elsewhere, Kinoy deletes one of my favorite bits.  Charlie asks Harriman how he got so rich, and Harriman says he didn't try.  "I just wanted to live a long time and see it all happen. I wasn't unusual; there were lots of boys like me-- radio hams, they were, and telescope builders, and airplane amateurs. We had science clubs, and basement laboratories, and science-fiction leagues--the kind of boys who thought there was more romance in one issue of the Electrical Experimenter than in all the books Dumas ever wrote. We didn't want to be one of Horatio Alger's Get-Rich heroes, either, we wanted to build space ships. Well, some of us did."

To me, that line gets right to the essence of Harriman as a character.  It also describes many of the readers of science fiction in the generation leading up to 1939. Like, say, Robert A. Heinlein.  It was a shame to lose it.

(Also, as someone who picked up the tradition of Thrilling Wonder Stories, I enjoyed the two references to Hugo Gernsback. He published science fiction in Electrical Experimenter years before creating the first specialty science fiction magazine with Amazing Stories. And his later magazine, Wonder Stories, established the Science Fiction League, which helped fandom organize.)

He also deletes a cute bit where Harriman, realizing their ship has no name, suggests the Lunatic.

By and large, Kinoy uses Heinlein's dialogue as the basis of his own, but renders it a little more naturally.  For instance, in the story, Mac says, "Well, what if I did take a couple o' drinks? Anyhow, I could have squared that--it was the darn persnickety regulations that got me fed up." On radio, it's "All right, all right, so I took a few drinks. I-- I could have squared that. Too many regulations, red tape."

There's a little added emphasis on Harriman's infirmity, in the added bit of the driver helping him out of the limousine.  And what Harriman is able to pass off in the story as a "heart flutter," the doctor correctly identifies on radio as a "cardiac condition."

Kinoy later adds a little tension by changing "We've got enough fuel, I think" to a more uncertain "If we've got enough fuel."

And now, a nitpick.  In the story, the rocket is "the ACTUAL TYPE used by the First Man to Reach the Moon!!!" In the episode, it's "The actual type used by the first men to fly it," which is not only less impressive-sounding, it's a tautology. (How could it not be the same type as used by the first men to fly that type?)

However, the price for the ride in the story was 50 cents. Here, it's $25, which is, at least, fifty times less absurdly cheap. Now, for 50 cents, you just get to go inside and look.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Games: Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (N64) Part 11

I'm still trying to find out if there's any way for me to continue to post larger videos on YouTube with their new system, so Undersea Kingdom is waiting for that.  In the meantime, here's something that came in at a perfectly uploadable 1.97GB.


Time to get down and dirty with my playthrough of the classic Nintendo 64 game Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire as we make our way through the sewers of Imperial City.  There are only two more levels after this, so yes, this is coming to an end someday.



Notes:

0:21 You can, of course, also walk the path, but this is much faster.  And if you're lucky, you can get away without damage from the flying droid you can briefly see at 0:25.

2:10 You can barely see it at this distance, but I'm shooting at a Dianoga.  I'll shoot another one underwater in a moment.  You'll get to see them better later.

3:23 Honest to God, it's much, much more difficult to shoot these droids than it looks like it should be.  The auto-targeting is pretty much useless on them, for some reason.

4:26 I can't tell you how many times I've found myself stumbling around this dark room, trying to find the exit.  This time, I got off easy.

4:59 The laser cannons and droids in here are easier to avoid than they are to shoot.  You take a lot less damage this way, believe me.

5:13 Whoops, pressed the wrong button, there.

6:28 Now you can see a Dianoga a little better.

7:50 All of this fuss is about one of the flying droids.  They can see you easier than you can see them.  And they can shoot you much, much easier than you can, them.  Honestly, if I came out into the open, it would be cheap hit after cheap hit.  I see an explosion at one point, but I'm not certain I got him, hence all the extra shooting.

10:52 Now I'm not entirely certain the disruptor shot got both Xizor troopers who are up there.  It's important not to take cheap hits at this point, so you go into the boss battle with as much health as possible.

12:13 It's also important not to get smacked by the damn blades, but you can't have everything.

12:49 And now, the mother of all Dianogas!  It took me quite a while to find the best way to do this.  As you can see, I'm keeping low, and shooting up.  The thing is to destroy the eye.  If you stick around up top, the tentacles (which grow back, by the way) will pound the hell out of you all through the process, as opposed to just when the eye is destroyed.  When keeping low, be sure not to touch the Dianoga's mouth.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 3!

Before searching for the Season 1 and 2 bloopers on YouTube, I didn't even know for sure that these existed.  I recall some source saying as a fact that there was no third season blooper reel, because, since they knew the series would almost certainly not be picked up for a fourth season, there was nothing to celebrate.  (Which sort of misses the point of a "wrap party," but never mind.)

I once had a record album of third season Star Trek bloopers, salvaged from the original studio tapes.  I don't remember them being that funny, but I wish now I hadn't given it away... if for no other reason than people are selling them for $20 on eBay.

As I recall, Allan Asherman mentions a couple of third season bloopers in The Star Trek Compendium.  But since I never heard about them anywhere else, I thought maybe these were bloopers that someone remembered, but that never made it into an end-of-season reel, per se.

But here it is... I guess.  I can't say for sure that the cast and crew saw these, in this form, when the series wrapped up production at the end of 1968, but they're more than I ever expected to see.

As to the end... I don't know if this was part of the same reel, but it's footage from the pilot version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before."  It looks like it's here just to set up a pretty lame voiceover gag (which may be a new addition, seeing as it's pretty clearly a video pause, not a film one.)

My theory is that someone noticed it in the editing room (it is, after all, exactly the footage that they cut out in 1966 to make the broadcast series version), and added it for nostalgic reasons.  As the series was coming to an end, cast and crew could look back on where it all began (not counting the rejected first pilot, of course).



0:14 This is what you call "gallows humor."  To be greeted with a hollow laugh.

0:28 Beats me what this text says, at this resolution.  Get used to seeing it several times a minute, though.

1:26 This and the next one (in the transporter room) are the ones I remember Asherman mentioning.

4:55 I've had this cue (and the end theme, which we'll hear in a minute) for 20 years on CD, and cassette tape before that.  I once used both of them (and other pilot music) in a not at all Trek-related student film.  It's nice finally to hear them in context.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

When It Changed

Well, now that I have a brand new Iomega Prestige 1.5TB external hard drive (two of them, actually, so I can finally start keeping proper backups), we can soon get back to normal operations around here.

It's at times like this that I gain a new appreciation for how quickly technology advances nowadays.  My last drives before this one, I bought in 2007.  They were four Western Digital USB 2.0 drives with about 450 GB each.  In other words, three of them held about what the new one holds.  And each of those drives is more than twice the physical size, and cost at least half again as much when new.  (My new drives cost $99 each, with free shipping.  I don't think my last floppy drive even cost that little.)

Should I mention that my first hard drive was an Apple ProFile, held 5 megabytes, and had a volume somewhere north of a cubic foot?

So, does this mean it's time for Undersea Kingdom, Chapter Nine?  Well, not so fast, my fellow Crashites. I put together the file for Chapter Nine, then found I had a little problem uploading it to YouTube.

Turns out that during the couple of weeks I was reluctant to use the Thrilling Wonder drive for fear of finishing it off completely, YouTube made some changes.  Such as, now, in order to upload something, you need to use one of their approved browsers... all of which only run on Macs with System 10.5 or higher.  My eight-year-old G5 is currently running 10.4.11.

Fortunately, I do have a System 10.5 "Leopard" update disk, but I'm copying everything on my main drive before I do anything.  Apparently the folder with my iTunes files will take 7 hours all by itself.  Sometimes, technological change is a bitch.

So, what can I say?  Hold in there, folks.  Crash is coming.

UPDATE: I was worried about some aspects of the change to 10.5, so I re-installed one of my spare internal drives, and installed 10.5 on that, keeping 10.4.11 on my main drive.

So, from my new 10.5-running drive, I went to the websites of Firefox and Google Chrome (YouTube's approved browsers for files over 2GB)... and found I should have read them more closely the first time.  Because, you see, what they require is System 10.5... and an Intel Mac, which mine is not.

So it looks like I'm stuck.  The files I've uploaded since returning in July have ranged up to 5.5GB.  But no more.  In their wisdom, YouTube took a system that worked adequately (if not perfectly) for PowerPC Macs, and junked it for no particular reason.  So when you see my videos, and they're lower in resolution than they used to be, or chopped into two or three pieces, thank YouTube.

My file for Undersea Kingdom, Chapter Nine, was 2.16GB.  So looks like I'm going to have to knock down the quality a tad before trying again.