A speculative mind

  Seems like I have been reading a lot of classic science fiction lately. The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham is another one. I remember something like 50 years ago seeing the movie, or part of the movie. It did not leave much of an impression with me. All I remember was something about attacking plants. It seemed par for the course for 1960’s horror movies. But I heard someone recommending the book and decided to give it a try. What I found was that this was not so much an attacking creature kind of book, as it was post-apocalyptic fiction. Most of the tropes we have come to associate with post-apocalyptic fiction are there. But this book (written in 1951) predated most science fiction books in that subgenre. The Day of the Triffids did not invent post-apocalyptic fiction, but I think there were many books which copied aspects of it. Figuring out how to start over after civilization suddenly came to an end. How to organize a workforce, grow crops, fashion tools and weapons...

  Solaris is a classic science fiction novel By Stanislaw Lem that has been made into three different movies. Solaris is one of those mind-bending experiences that leave you wondering what is real and what is hallucination. When we meet our protagonist, Kelvin, he seems a perfectly ordinary kind of fellow. He is on a mission to join the crew on a legendary station floating over a world that is almost certainly a living organism. When he arrives at the station, things are not as he expected. One man is dead and the other two are acting strangely. The book becomes a psychological thriller for the remainder (though “thriller” is perhaps too strong a word). But it does keep you guessing. Is he really seeing other people, are they ghosts, or is the planet manifesting them? Is the planet trying to communicate with them in some way, or are they all going insane? This is not a quick or an easy read. The pace moves agonizingly slow at times, and there is too much exposition about the h...

  Every once and a while I revisit an old TV show or movie that I loved as a child or a teen, to see if it is something that would still appeal to me as an adult. Usually, I am disappointed. Sometimes I am disappointed because the show was childish, and never was very good. Other times the show might have been okay for the time, but now is very dated or has cheap production values. With this in mind, I recently rewatched the pilot episode of My World and Welcome to it which aired in 1969. I remember liking the show and remember being disappointed when it was cancelled after only one season. The show was loosely based on the life of James Thurber and starred William Windom in the lead as a cartoonist named John Monroe.   Monroe has a vivid imagination which is displayed for the audience as Thurber cartoons. My wife was watching the episode with me (she remembered it too and also liked it back in the day). At one point in the episode, my wife and I uttered at the same time, “...

  Sunstorm By Arthur C. Clark and Stephen Baxter is the conclusion of the duology that began in Time’s Eye . The duology is a first contact story. In Time's Eye , our characters have been put through a ‘discontinuity’ where different pieces of earth have been scrambled into different times. For example, the helicopter gunship crew we have been following, find themselves trapped in time with people from other time periods.   The only clue to what is behind it are metallic spheres that hover over the ground. Our characters have taken to calling them “eyes,” and they do seem to watch events as they unfold. As far as we know, only one person gets back to her own time period. That is Bisesa from the helicopter gunship. Before she is taken to her own time, she is allowed to glimpse a far future Earth. A dead future Earth. As she returns to her own time at the end of the first book and the start of the second, Sunstorm, she knows something bad is about to happen to Earth. We so...

  Well, this is sure to stir some controversy. Rank ordering my favorite actors who played James Bond. No mine fields to be had there. People have very strong opinions about James Bond. Some don’t care for the character at all, but I suspect they won’t be reading this. Again, as I have said in other lists, this is my list. You don’t have to agree with it. And you probably won’t. You are entitled to your opinion. I am entitled to mine.   I am first going to start by mentioning a few that don’t qualify for the list. Barry Nelson played the first Bond on screen: a television version of Casino Royale in 1954 on the Climax anthology series. I can’t say Barry Nelson would ever come to mind if I were casting James Bond. And this was before most people had ever heard of Bond. The second actor not on my list is David Niven who played Bond in . . . wait for it . . . Casino Royale . The 1967 movie with Peter Sellers. But this was a spoof so it doesn’t really count.  Now the count ...