A Bit Of Whimsy

What would a presidential election campaign look like in the Star Wars Universe?  Maybe something like this -

I’ve made no secret of my endorsement of the Obama campaign, but it wouldn’t be an election if there weren’t at least two sides involved -

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Off to (another) Fair

I’m still wrestling with the comments issue at the new COF site.  I take an enforced break today to visit another county fair.  Pics later.  (I won’t be deliberately seeking out shaved llama butt, but if it’s there, you know I’ll take a pic…)

Discover magazine runs a ‘top 5 space operas’ list today – a list SURPRISE! I mostly disagree with.  Sadly, I don’t have the time right now to rant about it.  No, I do have time to rant.

You can’t mix movies, tv and literature in a list like this – different standards apply.

YOU may think that there’s no difference between Space Opera and Hard SF, but there is.  Unless you want to make the (false) connection between Space Opera and THE NEW space opera. 

Any fan worth their salt ought to be protesting loudly about a list that gives parity to Doc Smith’s Lensman series and Star Wars…

And Frank Creed and I are discussing sub-genres over at the RayGun Revival forum.

He wants to create a comprehensive list of all “speculative fiction” sub-genres.

I’m playing the purist stick in the mud: speculative fiction is just another name for science fiction, therefore, science fiction should reside at the top of the list; drop all of this namby-pamby pseudo-literary hoity-toityness and get real.  Science Fiction is a genre unto-itself which is capable of encompassing elements of all of the other genres (not sub-genres, genres) and if those genres don’t like it, that’s just too darned bad.

My posts over there are starting to be guilty of looking serious, but no one should take it that way. The ankle-biters are going to make up their own words and definitions no matter what Robert A Heinlein, the first SFWA Grandmaster of Spectulative Fiction Science Fiction had to say.

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Crotchety Old Television and Radios. Oh. And a Car Too

I finally got across the street to take those pictures at Piexx, the electronics repair shop in Hillsboro, NH.  Their inventory of antique radios and televisions is not to be believed.

What you’ll be seeing below are some of the pictures I took during a quick outing.  I’m looking for image art I can use on The Classic Science Fiction Channel.  The idea is, instead of clicking a menu entry, you’ll turn on the TV or the radio, wait for it to warm up, get a test pattern and then, by turning the dials, you’ll be able to tune in on the show you want to watch or listen to.

(Actually, I’m hoping to put a whole living room scene up on the screen that will also let you operate a reel-to-reel for audio books or pull a volume down off the bookshelves.)

Here’s the television I’ve selected.  Imagine it with the following voice over: “We control the horizontal…from the inner mind to THE OUTER LIMITS”

You’ll notice that this TV does not even have a UHF dial.  If you’re asking – ‘what’s that?’, or of you’re wondering why anyone would need a dial for a TV (or better yet, wondering how the heck they can fit 999 channels on a dial), you’ve probably wandered into the wrong place.  Go back to kicking whores in GTA and leave your betters elders alone!

Now when it comes to radios, I needed something with a lot of dials and ‘tunability’.  There are a lot more radio programs than there are TV (at least on TCSFC) so I need a lot more buttons and dials.  There are quite a few contendors (I haven’t even begun to mine the depths of Piexx), but I’m pretty sure that the following is what I’ll be using -

I think I remember Pilot radios. I’ll have to ask my dad about it – it just might be the same company, if different model, that I listened to The Shadow and The Lone Ranger on.

That’s probably the radio I’ll use, but there are certainly some other ones I’m considering, such as this one.

That rotary tuning dial is so old skool it looks like it belongs in a B52, not sitting in the living room. The toggle buttons on the side are pretty nifty also and would probably be fairly easy to photoshop and animate.

Unfortunately the storage location for this (and a couple of the other items) was so cramped that I couldn’t fit the whole thing into the shot.  This radio is a floor model and stands about four feet tall.

Here are some others:

 This is a Gundig Master.

Before the Sith and the Jedi, there were the Gundig.  They were all trapped by the evil Edsels in their horrific Dashboard of Timelessness device, which is why Lucas had to go with Sith and Jedi. There’s a little bit of Star Wars pre-history you probably didn’t know about.

 

 This is the Meteor. Good name and the design is perfectly dreadful 50s kitsch, but there’s no display unfortunately.

 

 

 

These next two are also floor models. The fancy woodwork was required because the radio used to be a central feature of most household living rooms or dens. They’re also pretty ‘blah’, because the designers didn’t want to distract you from the visions that were going on inside your head. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These next two are REALLY old.  You can tell because they look REALLY REALLY old. Ancient. Decrepit. Aged. Antique. Obsolete.  CLASSIC.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is a Westinghouse Home Entertainment Center in a Box. This thing has so many dials and that really cool handle. I think its actually a camouflaged portable power supply for Frankenstein’s monster.

Note the handy-dandy installation guide pasted into the lid.  

 

 

 

Here’s a blow-up:

It identifies this as an Aeriola Receiver, from the Westinghouse Radio Corporation. Note that it illustrates how to hook the thing up and attach it to your antenna.

 People have obviously been in mess-o-cables hell for a looong time.

It looks like it might actually have been put together to compete with product that our good friend Hugo Gernsback used to market.  Hugo offered kits that you assembled yourself. Westinghouse seems to have been after the non-geek side of the market.

 

Here are a couple more:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(This space reserved for humorous segue)

Speaking of cars, SUVs and vans, here is a pic of my all-time favorite vehicle. I want one badly.  Problem is, the company that made them has been out of business for so long hardly any information about it has made it to the web. It was manufactured by the Linn Coach & Truck Corporation. Those folks made a half-track for logging in the woods, but that half-track is about all you can find on the web.

 

The plow isn’t part of the vehicle.  This one is parked about two blocks over from my house in an outdoor museum called the Kemp Truck Museum.  Mr. Kemp died a few years back and no one else seems to be too motivated about doing anything to preserve the enormous collection of Mack and other trucks he collected.  (Hint:  I’d be happy to curate and fund raise for the price of a Linn…).

Here’s another pic of a few (very few) of the other vehicles at Kemp’s:

If you’re into old fogey stuff, New Hampshire sure looks like the place to be, huh?

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Grandmaster Heinlein

Science Fiction Classics - a yahoo group I belong to – recently said ‘lets talk about Heinlein’.  The group unfortunately suffers from under-participation, despite the moderator’s herculean efforts at generating interest (perhaps its because those into the classics are not into the internet).

He did give me something to talk about though. 

I’ve been ‘into’ Heinlein since the very first science fiction novel I ever picked up.  It was, in fact, Heinlein’s Starman Jones, a novel that I’ve probably re-read on average once a year for the past forty years.

My friends obviously picked up on my infatuation; in high school we filmed a 16mm spoof of Star Wars and during the garbage disposal scene, our caricatures of Han, Luke, Leia and Chewbacca were showered with Heinlein books… I’d written the script for the film, but was caught completely unawares by the ad lib changes, much to the amusement of everyone.

Since picking up Starman Jones, I’ve dutifully read every last shred of fiction (and most of the non-fiction) that ever rolled out of RAH’s typer.  Much like Mel Gibson’s character in Conspiracy Theory, I have an uncontrollable compulsion to purchase any first edition of his books that I happen to run across – whether I already own one or not.  I’ve literally worn out copies of Starman Jones, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Time Enough For Love, Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers (not figuratively, no, the ink on the pages has faded into illegibility).

I was fortunate enough to be able to meet the man (and his lovely wife Virginia) once (during and preceding the blood drive at WSFS SunCon in 1977) and have been equally fortunate to have acquired several editions of his books that are autographed.

To say that I have a passion for Heinlein is a gross understatement.  Let’s put it this way; pick a social issue, pick a libertarian character from one of his stories and you’ll know where I stand.  (Its probably NOT a good idea to let young, impressionable minds read Heinlein. They’ll get all kinds of contrarian ideas about ethics and morals and freedom and responsibility.)

Over the years folks have taken great pains to discuss, analyse (and in some cases find fault with) one of my favorite authors.  For the most part, they’ve gotten it all wrong.     He had his own personal views on things, but you can find plenty of contradictions in his published work.  More than enough to prove that he wrote his stories to both entertain and explore, and he wasn’t afraid of adopting unpopular viewpoints while doing so.

 When discussing Heinlein with people who’ve yet to read anything by him, the discussion inevitably turns to which novel to recommend.  The four most popular suggestions seem ‘any of the juvenovels’ (Heinlein wrote a fair number of YA novels from the late 40s to the mid 50s), The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers.

There are good and bad reasons for each of those recommendations, and I won’t get into debating them, but what I can do is give you a list of his novels and story collections with a bit of a twist. I’m going to list them by ‘frequency of re-read’.  Maybe taking a look from the perspective of someone who’s read everything by the man – and much of it multiple times – you’ll get some ideas about where to start yourself.  (Where appropriate, I’ve added a note or two.)

 Most frequently re-read

 Starman Jones

The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

Starship Troopers

Stranger in a Strange Land

The Door into Summer

Time Enough for Love

Farnham’s Freehold

Glory Road  - everything up to this point has been re-read on the close order of once every two or so years, at least

Tunnel in the Sky

The Puppet Masters

Orphans of the Sky

 

Frequently re-read

 

Have Space Suit—Will Travel

The Past Through Tomorrow – short story collection it incorporates most of the other collections

Between Planets

Space Cadet

Methuselah’s Children

Farmer in the Sky

The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag

The Star Beast

Citizen of the Galaxy

 

Infrequently Re-Read

 

Time for the Stars

Expanded Universe - short story collection that is, again, very comprehensive

The Man Who Sold the Moon

Friday

The Rolling Stones

Rocket Ship Galileo

The Green Hills of Earth

Red Planet

Sixth Column

Waldo & Magic, Inc.

 

Re-read a few times

 

Revolt in 2100

Podkayne of Mars

The Menace From Earth

Double Star

Beyond This Horizon

Three by Heinlein

The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein

 

Re-read three or fewer times

 

Assignment in Eternity

The Number of the Beast

Job: A Comedy of Justice

The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

I Will Fear No Evil

To Sail Beyond the Sunset

For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs

Variable Star - shouldn’t really count as its Spider Robinson completing RAH notes.  Sorry Spider, I know how much you love Heinlein, but this thing was pretty awful.

 

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