h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'll stand by my *most* SF tv as garbage comment because it is either made by SF fans who don't understand tv (the unending tedium of the last few Trek franchises was a fine example of what happens when s take over the asylum) or by TV execs weo don't understand SF, resulting in the most awful 'cargo cult' tv such as 'Dark Skies' and 'Primevil'.

As for the term 'ghetto', it has nothing to do with financial clout but the attitude of 'serious' critics and markets to SF as a genre. It was never helped by the attitude of such 'sympathisers' as Amis snr whose credo on SF was virtually that if it was at all well written then it couldn't be SF, an attitude that persists to this day in some circles if you read what people say about Terry Pratchett. I've also detected a pendulum swing against Ballard in recent years as he continues to spurn the 'mainstreams' attempts to claim him for themselves.

Can't argue with you with there about Ballard. The mans a gem and has been for more years than I care to recall, his works from the (Gasp) early seventies, while not quite watersheds, were enough of a bastion to enable him to go off in different tangents later on.
You can stand as long as you wish alongside your 'garbage' comments but it takes nothing away from 'The Invaders' and other not half bad T vee attempts at something outside the square (Relevant to their times).

As for Amiss senior, well his right wing bias along with the almost deified Larkin as highlighted in their correspondence does them little favour or service. It's a common prejudice and any number of postings in these hallowed Beeb halls attest to the kind of snobbery associated with it.

I agree totally with you about Pratchett and indeed I could count off many more, but the task is usually an irksome thing and best left to those habitue's of specialist web sites(and book shops) and the attendant devotees therein trying to make out they don't wear anoraks.

"Can't argue with you with there about Ballard. The mans a gem and has been for more years than I care to recall, his works from the (Gasp) early seventies, while not quite watersheds, were enough of a bastion to enable him to go off in different tangents later on."

Okay, then, tell me more about Ballard -- like his first name!

Which themes does he tend to work in, if not mainly SF?

Hey, lookee what I found! Here's an RSS feed from John Scalzi (can't remember who his big fan is here, but just in case you didn't know). http://syndicated.livejournal.com/scalzifeed/

I think I'm definitely going to look into his stuff -- he also covers some interesting things about writing in the feeds...and fixing my deficiencies in English is one of my current projects.

Well Space Cad (May I call you SC for short?), his christian names are James Graham. He was a prominent member of the New Wave in science fiction. His best known books are the controversial Crash, and the autobiographical novel Empire of the Sun, both of which have been adapted to film.

The adjective "Ballardian", defined as "resembling or suggestive of the conditions described in JG Ballard's novels and stories, especially dystopian modernity, bleak man-made landscapes and the psychological effects of technological, social or environmental developments", has been included in the Collins English Dictionary.

Now I pinched some of above from Wiki (I'm lazy) and if you go here>>>http://www.jgballard.com/airports.htm you will read an article and find other 'stuff' about this rather odd fellow.


Which 'themes' you ask, well I can't really do justice to his ideas in a short post or describe them apart from the fact that he presents a peculiar sense of non-typical SF, a British sense if you will and it does read differently than many, many other scribblers in the field and he is a bit like Asimov in that he cuts across literary boundaries in his writing and that can only be a good thing.

hope this helps

And he's contrary enough to describe the blatantly semi-autobiographical Empire of the Sun, and it's sequel The Kindness of Women, as SF books.

Much of his imagery is drawn from his own childhood in war time Shanghai, his time as a pilot (in Canada?) and the surrealists. I'm pretty sure he also has some medical training.

Many of his early novels are very early 'eco-warning' type fiction - The Drowned Worned, The Drought, The Wind From Nowhere all being prime examples. Later he became fascinated by the breakdown of the middle classes and began to deal with the effects of 'modern living' on civilisation. His early novels place 'normal' people in extreme situations not necessarily of their own making. As his work has progressed he has focused more on what happens to normal people in situations that are seen as normal by society but actually are completely artificial - this started with his short story The Atrocity Exhibition, and continued with his trilogy Crash/Concrete Island/High Rise. Later works have dealt with gated-communities, ex-pat paradises in exotic locations and housing developments on the Thames.

Not sure exactly what difference knowing his names makes, mind...

Interestingly, thinking about it, he reamins one of the very few 'new wave' authors of the early 60's who is regularly in print and still writing what they describe as 'SF'. Moorcock, Aldiss, Disch, Delaney and many others have abandoned SF and Ellison seems to have disappeared off the face of the planet in recent years.

Mind you, knowing Harlan that just means he's plotting world take over. Or finally going to publish The Last Dangerous Visions. Either is equally probable...

Yes you've mentioned some seriously weird authors there and Samuel.R.Delaney is not the least amongst them. Now I wonder if there might not be a good idea for an entry somewhere in all this.
Tom Disch wrote some funny stuff and I never quite reckoned Moorcock's fascination with Hawkwind.
Aldiss deserves much more recognition as he really is a deep and thoughtful writer and is in another league altogether compared to some.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/6517155.stm

There it is! Joss Whedon rules! Firefly is fantrastic SciFi series, I recommend it SO highly... And then watch the film as it ties it all up, that's if you havent already... Which you should have!

Such a shame they cancelled it. Yet another reason to hate Murdoch.....

yup. I wish Whedon had been given the chance. When you watch the series you can just feel the potential, all the stories and ideas starting to coalesce and become important... It should have run at least as long as Farscape... The man has so much to give, and is willing to give it too, so why on earth do people cancel his work? The film is stinted and certainly doesnt fulfil the storie's needs for space and time to truly blossom and fruit naturally, but it's better than nothing. And proof that on the big screen, small screen AND on paper he's a genius of dialogue, story, characterisation and atmosphere.

Definitely preaching to the choir here, about Firefly! There are some serious layers to the characters in those stories...TV series or not. It's truly a shame that Joss Whedon wasn't allowed to build on that created universe.

Some of my friends are major obsessed (more so than moi), and my space group did a Firefly themed-party at WorldCon last year. We raffled away space Tschotkis all night, and I think we were the most popular party there Friday! Good nibbles and free stuff, can't beat it!

Thank god for Roy Thinnes and the sooner they bring him back the better.

Seminal TV.

René Barjavel write some very intelligent book, I can name (in french): Ravage, le Diable l'emporte, la nuit des temps and l'enchanteur (it's more fantastic than SF, but it's really fun too).
His books are generally very introspective indeed and reflect, normally, a world who will collapse because of the humans...

4me

Rene Barjavel is one of my favorite authors, but finding his work in English is a bear! I've got The Immortals, and one other whose title escapes me (but I don't think it's strictly SF). Do you know the titles you listed in English, please?

Translate to english: Ravage (Ashes, ashes), le Diable l'emporte (not translated), la nuit des temps (The Ice People) and l'enchanteur (not translated). The french critism love The Tragic Innocents (Tarendol) considere it for the best novel of Barjavel.
But it's always better to read Barjavel in french, i've found one time a translation and it was not very good...

4me

I'm still waiting for the translation into Australian

Oops! It's the Ice People I have, not the Immortals, don't know where that came from...

That book is part of the reason I'm so against the use of rfid tags, and "national ID cards". Barajavel makes some good points, as to what it would mean to a free society.

*jumps of soapbox, trips and bloodies nose*

More of a public service announcement than a comment, but we seem to yhave a number of Whedon/Buffy fans here who might be interested to know that Dark Horse have just started publishing (issues 1 and 2 out now) the Whedon scripted 'Buffy: Series 8'.

I KNOW!!!!!! According to SFX (other scifi genre magazines are available) it's rather good too (planning on getting the whole lot in one volume with any luck, eventually...)