Pat Berry dot net

After learning of Arthur C. Clarke's death, Bruce Webster wrote: "He was the last of the Big Three -- Isaac Asimov, Clarke, and Robert Heinlein -- to pass away, and we shall not see their like again." He's right, but not in the sense that today's science fiction writers are inferior. No, the differences are qualitative. Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein all started their writing careers during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, the period during the late 1930s and early 1940s when legendary editor John W. Campbell was remaking the field into something more that a category of swashbuckling adventure stories. Campbell insisted on the use of real science, logical plots, and rational aliens in his stories: "Write me a creature that thinks as well as a man, or better than a man, but not like a man."

Campbell's role as the leading editor of science fiction waned after the 1940s, and he died in 1971 -- but he continued to exert a profound influence over the field through the authors whose careers and writing styles he had shaped, especially the Big Three. Only now, with the death of Arthur C. Clarke, does the Golden Age really come to an end.

Bruce Webster is right in another sense; the Big Three will not be replaced. Writing in 1990, Isaac Asimov laid that notion to rest:

Now that Heinlein has died and Clarke and I are increasingly decrepit, one is bound to ask, 'Who will be the next Big Three?' The answer, I'm afraid, is that no one will ever be. In the early days, when the Big Three were chosen by general consent, the number of science fiction writers was small and it was easy to choose the outstanding examples. Nowadays, however, the number of science fiction writers, and even of good science fiction writers, is so great that it is simply impossible to pick three writers that everyone will agree on.

4:40 AM in Pop culture
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The London clock known as Big Ben will soon be shut down for maintenance, depriving the city of its sonorous chimes for four to six weeks. But I'm puzzled about one detail. According to the AP article about this event, the last time the clock was shut down for repairs was 1990. Well, that can't be right! Has the AP forgotten about the 2006 incident involving an alien spacecraft? It took a lot of repairs to get Big Ben running again after that.

5:16 PM in Pop culture
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James Lileks reminds us that Star Wars premiered thirty years ago this week. If you saw that movie in a theater, you are old.

UPDATE: Argh. The Star Tribune site forces you to log in before allowing you to read that article. Use BugMeNot to bypass registration if you don't want to create an account.

7:53 AM in Pop culture
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On March 4, I wrote that I had never heard of Jonathan Coulton before the previous week. But that turns out to be untrue. I listen to Jim Van Verth's Vintage Gamer podcast, and in his Halloween 2006 episode, Jim played a Coulton song called "Creepy Doll". I remember being impressed by the song, although my memory didn't retain the musician's name (which Jim did mention). But it's the same guy who did "Code Monkey".

By this point, you're probably tired of reading about "Code Monkey" here. But I can't resist pointing out this video of it, starring actual geeks. You don't have to play it.

UPDATE: After posting this entry, I discovered that Coulton was mentioned in today's episode of Buzz Out Loud (another podcast I listen to) because he recorded a song called "First of May."

8:19 AM in Pop culture
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If you read a lot, you'll probably have the same reaction to "The Seven Stages of Falling in Love With an Author" that I did -- which was "That is so true!" I've gone through that process many times, especially the Worry and Denial stages. (For me, the Denial stage is mostly Withdrawal.)

Tamara has clearly discovered another aspect of the Acceptance stage. If you can't read any more books by your favorite author, you can at least try to get your friends addicted to the stuff. That's almost as much fun.

7:27 AM in Pop culture
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If you liked the song "Code Monkey", check out this music video that Mike Spiff Booth made of it.

12:44 AM in Pop culture
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If you're wondering how Babylon 5: The Lost Tales is coming along, take a look at these photos. They include the new B5 logo and numerous pictures of sets and costumes.

Incidentally, if you read the Wikipedia article about The Lost Tales, you may notice that the Notes section includes a link to this Usenet article from 1996. In it, B5 creator and executive producer J. Michael Straczynski (JMS for short) answered the question "What would it take to convince you not to retire from television after B5?" (Retiring was his stated intention at the time.) JMS gave three answers to that question:

1. An anthology show.
2. A B5 spinoff that would complement the original series and not just capitalize on it.
3. Something revolutionary for TV.

So who asked JMS that question in the first place, anyway? Well, actually, I did.

4:43 PM in Pop culture
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Star Trek is forty years old today. At 8:30 p.m. on September 8, 1966, NBC aired "Man Trap," the first episode of the original series.

9:53 AM in Pop culture
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Here's amazing music video from a band called OK Go (the song title is "Here It Goes Again"). Notice that there are no edits at all -- they did this in a single three-minute shot. (Thanks to Best Week Ever for making me aware of this video!)

4:38 PM in Pop culture
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No wonder I find the tone and perspective of Instapundit to be so compatible with my own! Glenn Reynolds, the author of that blog, recently wrote: "I was influenced a lot by Robert Heinlein, Arthur Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, but more by their entire body of works than by any particular book." That describes me almost perfectly. During my formative years (junior high and high school), I was influenced by those men far more than by any teacher or subject I encountered in a classroom.

I should mention, though, that I was able to immerse myself in the works of Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov because the public-school libraries were so well stocked with them. The inescapable conclusion is that my school librarians had more influence on me than the teachers did. I wonder: is this typical of my generation?

2:52 PM in Pop culture
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If you came of age during the 1980s, this Flash video is guaranteed to push your nostalgia buttons. And even if you weren't, how can you pass up a chance to see Donkey Kong sing the classic Van Halen song "Jump"? As you watch the video, keep track of how many '80s video games you can identify. Give yourself a bonus point for each game you actually played.

3:19 PM in Pop culture
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Darth Vader can read your mind. And he'll prove it, at Burger King's Sith Sense page. Think of an object and Lord Vader will tell you what it is . . . in twenty questions or less.

7:08 PM in Pop culture
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I saw Revenge of the Sith last night, and it did not disappoint me in any respect. I don't feel motivated to write a review, so I'll just point to the one Ben wrote.

I will say that my essay from 1999 turns out to be somewhat less appropriate for this movie. Revenge of the Sith is a grim and violent film, but that was inevitable given the ground that it had to cover (the annihilation of the Jedi, the horrible disfigurement of Anakin and his transformation into Darth Vader, the fall of the Republic and the dawn of the Empire). So my inner child did not come out and play this time because playtime was over in the Star Wars universe.

5:31 PM in Pop culture
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It's now after midnight. Along the East Coast of the U.S., audiences are watching the premiere of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I'm eager to see the new film myself, of course.

I've experienced this particular state of mind -- Star Wars Premiere Anticipation, you might call it -- before. But this is the last time. Never again will I see a Star Wars film that I haven't seen before.

I tried to describe the experience six years ago, in an essay written the day Episode I: The Phantom Menace premiered. I didn't have a blog back then, but if I had, that essay surely would have appeared in it. Well, it's relevant today, so I'm posting it now. Here it is.

An Associated Press article (posted to the Web at 5:00 a.m.) describes the reactions of fans exiting a midnight showing of the new Star Wars movie: They love it. Typical comments included "Excellent!", "Fantastic!" and "The best of the bunch!" This is remarkable in view of the generally lukewarm reception that Phantom Menace has received from film critics, who complain that it lacks character development and human relationships.

I think I know what's going on. It dawned on me as I was discussing the upcoming premiere with Ruth, who turns 13 in a couple of weeks. "You may have been waiting for this movie for 16 years," she said, "but I've been waiting my entire life for it." She has a point. Ruth has never had the experience of going into a theater and seeing a new Star Wars movie. I've done that three times, so what right do I have to complain about how many years have gone by since I did it last?

In some ways, though, 16 years is a lifetime. When I walk into the theater tonight, I'll be doing so as a 39-year-old husband and father of two. The last time I did this, I was 23, newly graduated from college, and not yet married. To say that I'm a different person now is putting it mildly. It's not just the years, as Indiana Jones said; it's the mileage. After all that I've been, done, and seen in the last decade and a half, I doubt that I have much in common with the person I was at age 23. Certainly my views and tastes have changed a great deal since then.

So, should I be worried that I'll react the way the critics did? Will I find that the sort of movie that thrilled and captivated me in my youth come across today as a shallow, superficial collection of special effects? Instead of leaving the theater with stars in my eyes, will I do it with a scowl of disappointment?

I don't think so. Some things defy time, and Star Wars is one of them. It's true that I'm a decade or two older than the kids who've been camping in line for the last month, and they're the ones who are raving about this film. But think about what that means! These kids were raised on Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, and Titanic. They take cutting-edge visual effects for granted, and it takes more than that to impress them. Yet they love Star Wars, a movie made over twenty years ago. They loved it even before George Lucas refurbished it and rereleased it two years ago. How many other science fiction films from the 1970s get that kind of response from today's teens and twentysomethings? These movies are timeless.

I learned that in 1997, when I saw Star Wars: The Special Edition. As the theater lights dimmed and the words "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away . . ." appeared on the screen, the years melted away and, for two glorious hours, I was 17 again.

That's where the reviewers went wrong: they went into the theater as film critics, ready to analyze The Phantom Menace and measure it against the standards by which all films are judged. This is their job -- but Star Wars films defy that sort of analysis. Roger Ebert understands this. "Call me a hopeless innocent," he writes, "but I don't go to a Star Wars movie to see human relationships, not even when they involve aliens and androids. I go to see amazing sights, real big and loud, one after another." One cannot experience the Star Wars universe as an adult. You have to leave your maturity, your wisdom born of experience, your jaded cynicism at the door, and become a wide-eyed child again.

And I know that's what will happen to me tonight, as those house lights dim. The middle-aged technical writer with the receding hairline will quietly fade away . . . and for 133 minutes, his inner child will come out and play.

12:23 AM in Pop culture
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With the premiere of Revenge of the Sith only hours away, there's no escaping the image of Darth Vader. You see him on billboards, cereal boxes, and magazine covers. But on the roof of the National Cathedral? Yes, he's visible there too, if you know where to look.

4:53 PM in Pop culture
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In a stunning preemptive move, the Galactic Empire has invaded France. Triumphant Imperial troops marched through the Paris streets yesterday, as weeping French citizens watched helplessly. Observers reported seeing hundreds of Darth Vaders, indicating that the Empire is now using Kaminoan cloning technology to create copies of the Dark Lord of the Sith. "Very disturbing news this is," commented a high-ranking Jedi source. "Contain armies of Sith we cannot."

10:59 AM in Pop culture
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This T-shirt ordering page made me chuckle -- not because of the shirt itself, but because of the way the description is written. Notice that it never actually explains what the shirt's design is. Glarkware assumes that you will instantly recognize it, and the phrase "moment of triumph" as well. (In fact, you should be able to quote that entire scene from memory.) If you have to have these things explained to you, you aren't the kind of person who would wear this shirt anyway.

11:41 AM in Pop culture
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The second verse of "The Ballad of Jed Clampett" has never quite made sense to me. It describes the events that follow Jed's discovery of oil on his property.

Well the first thing you know, old Jed's a millionaire.
The kinfolk said "Jed, move away from there!"
They said "Californy is the place you oughta be,"
So they loaded up the truck and they moved to Beverly.

Hills, that is. Swimming pools, movie stars.

To answer this question we have to consider who, exactly, is urging Jed to move. Who are these "kinfolk"? They're not Jethro, Elly Mae, and Granny. If those people were suggesting the move, they would say: "Jed, move away from here. Californy is the place we oughta be." The wording of the song establishes that the kinfolk are not members of Jed's household, and they don't expect to go with him to Beverly Hills.

Why are they so keen to convince him to move? This isn't the reaction you would expect from people related to a man who just became rich. Shouldn't they be sucking up to Jed in the hope that he'll share his wealth with them? Urging him to move across the country doesn't fit that pattern. I can only think of one thing that explains this odd behavior: Jed and his kinfolk are not on good terms. They know that they don't stand a chance of getting their hands on any of his money -- and therefore, they see his newfound wealth only as an opportunity to get rid of him. And Jethro and Elly Mae and Granny as well.

So we know that Jed's kinfolk are not close relatives (or they'd be living with him) and don't like him much. What kind of kinfolk does that suggest? In-laws, of course. Notice that Jed's wife -- Jethro and Elly Mae's mother -- is nowhere to be seen in the series. Presumably, she is dead. Her family may never have been fond of Jed in the first place, but tolerated him while she was alive. Now that she's gone, that tolerance is at an end.

This is pure conjecture, but here's what I think happened: Jed and his wife were members of families on opposite sides of a feud. When they married, their families declared a truce. After his wife's death, the old grudges reasserted themselves. Jed's transformation into a millionaire inspired only envy and resentment among his kinfolk, who were only too happy to goad him into moving away and taking his blood relatives with him. And he was quite willing to oblige them.

So he loaded up the truck and moved to Beverly.

3:53 PM in Pop culture , Unfinished
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Who would you pick to make a movie about a butt-kicking woman with super powers? The obvious choice is Joss Whedon, creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So it should come as no surprise that Warner Bros. Pictures has hired Whedon to write and direct Wonder Woman.

2:08 PM in Pop culture
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As long as I'm pointing out movie trailers, a new one for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith is now available for viewing at starwars.com.

2:17 PM in Pop culture
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The first full-length Wallace & Gromit movie, Curse of the Wererabbit, is on its way to theaters. A three-minute featurette is available for viewing, and the movie will make its U.K. debut in October of this year. No word yet on when it will arrive in America.

4:00 PM in Pop culture
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The scrolling text from the beginning of Star Wars Episode III has been revealed. Here's what it says:

Episode III

REVENGE OF THE SITH

War! The Republic is crumbling
under attacks by the ruthless
Sith Lord, Count Dooku.
There are heroes on both sides.
Evil is everywhere.

In a stunning move, the
fiendish droid leader, General
Grievous, has swept into the
Republic capital and kidnapped
Chancellor Palpatine, leader of
the Galactic Senate.

As the Separatist Droid Army
attempts to flee the besieged
capital with their valuable
hostage, two Jedi Knights lead a
desperate mission to rescue the
captive Chancellor....

The movie premieres on May 19.

10:52 AM in Pop culture
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Yesterday was Elvis Presley's 70th birthday. If he had actually lived to be 70, what would he have looked like? Scientists at St. Andrew's University (wherever that is) decided to find out and used computers to artificially age a photo of Elvis. Looking at the result, I have to say that I hope I look that good when I'm 70.

12:25 PM in Pop culture
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Merriam-Webster has announced its list of the top ten words of the year for 2004, and the number one word on that list is: blog.

12:33 PM in Pop culture
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These are the items from the list that I do remember:

Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water. You could find these in any convenience store when I was a kid. They seem pretty pointless to me in retrospect, but at the time I bought and consumed them like all the other kids.

Candy cigarettes. Of course! They still exist (Ben brought some home a couple of weeks ago), but to satisfy the demands of political correctness, they are labeled as "candy sticks." The boxes still look exactly like cigarette packs, though, and everyone knows what they're supposed to be.

Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles. I remember the machines that had a tall, skinny door behind which the tops of the bottles were visible. You could open the door at any time, but the bottles were firmly gripped by the machine -- until you put your money in the slot, you couldn't pull a bottle out.

Home milk delivery. I know that we had home delivery when I was a child, because I distinctly remember a milkman who came through our neighborhood on horseback. He gave me a ride once; I must have been six or seven years old. I don't remember milk in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers, but it's certainly possible that that's what we were getting.

Party lines. Yes, we had one when I was a child. We shared a phone line with another household, and sometimes when I picked up the phone to make a call, I would hear the voices of strangers talking. I would have to hang up and wait until later to use the phone.

P.F. Flyers. Sneakers! Back in those days, we didn't associate rubber-soled canvas shoes with sports. They were just the shoes you wore when it wasn't Sunday. And they weren't a big business with celebrity endorsements, because they were marketed to kids, not adults. I remember brands like P.F. Flyers and Keds that came with toy prizes inside the box, like breakfast cereals.

S&H Green Stamps. My mother used to have a kitchen drawer where she kept the strips of stamps that she got every time she went grocery shopping, and the books she pasted them into.You could trade filled-in books for merchandise at an S&H Green Stamps store. (The stamps don't exist anymore, but the program has been revived as S&H Greenpoints.)

Metal ice trays with levers. These didn't work very well. You had to pull up on the lever to pop the ice cubes out of the tray. I don't miss them. Flexible plastic ice trays are better, but icemakers are best of all.

Blue flashbulbs. My first camera (a Polaroid Swinger, circa 1968) used these. You had to plug a fresh flashbulb into the socket before every shot (unless you were outside), so it was necessary to carry a box of them around with you.

Roller skate keys. Yeah, whatever happened to those roller skates that clamped onto the soles of your leather shoes? You had to have a skate key to tighten or loosen the clamps, if you lost your key, your skates were useless. That's why we put them on chains and wore them around our necks. And you could buy replacements in toy stores, of course.

Cork popguns. Actually, I don't remember the wooden guns that fired corks, although they must have been commonplace when I was a kid. What I remember was a red rubber gun that fired ping-pong balls. You jammed the ball into the muzzle of the gun and then squeezed the grip until the pressure forced the ball to shoot out with a POP! Much more fun.

So what's my score? I remember eleven items out of 25 -- just barely enough to put me into the "Don't tell your age" bracket, but nowhere near the sixteen required for true Older Than Dirt status. Oh, well.

5:21 PM in Pop culture
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The following quiz is making the rounds, and it rang enough bells with me that I thought it would be fun to write about.

Older Than Dirt Quiz

How many of the following items can you remember? (From your own firsthand experience, that is. Things you remember being told about don't count.)

1. Blackjack chewing gum
2. Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
3. Candy cigarettes
4. Soda pop machines that dispensed glass bottles
5. Coffee shops or diners with tableside juke boxes
6. Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
7. Party lines
8. Newsreels before the movie
9. P.F. Flyers
10. Butch wax
11. Telephone numbers with a word prefix (Olive-6933)
12. Peashooters
13. Howdy Doody
14. 78 rpm records
15. S&H Green Stamps
16. Hi-fis
17. Metal ice trays with levers
18. Mimeograph paper
19. Blue flashbulb
20. Packards
21. Roller skate keys
22. Cork popguns
23. Drive-ins
24. Studebakers
25. Washtub wringers

If you remembered 0-5 = You're still young
If you remembered 6-10 = You are getting older
If you remembered 11-15 = Don't tell your age,
If you remembered 16-25 = You're older than dirt!

Another book meme is circulating through the blogosphere. To participate, you post a copy of this list of 101 Great Books to your blog, and indicate which of them you have personally read. Okay, I'll play. In the following list, the works that I have read are listed in bold.

Achebe, Chinua - Things Fall Apart
Agee, James - A Death in the Family
Austen, Jane - Pride and Prejudice
Baldwin, James - Go Tell It on the Mountain
Beckett, Samuel - Waiting for Godot
Bellow, Saul - The Adventures of Augie March
Beowulf
Bronte, Charlotte - Jane Eyre
Bronte, Emily - Wuthering Heights
Camus, Albert - The Stranger
Cather, Willa - Death Comes for the Archbishop
Chaucer, Geoffrey - The Canterbury Tales
Chekhov, Anton - The Cherry Orchard
Chopin, Kate - The Awakening
Conrad, Joseph - Heart of Darkness
Cooper, James Fenimore - The Last of the Mohicans
Crane, Stephen - The Red Badge of Courage
Dante - Inferno
Cervantes, Miguel - Don Quixote
Defoe, Daniel - Robinson Crusoe
Dickens, Charles - A Tale of Two Cities
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor - Crime and Punishment
Douglass, Frederick - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Dreiser, Theodore - An American Tragedy
Dumas, Alexandre - The Three Musketeers
Eliot, George - The Mill on the Floss
Ellison, Ralph - Invisible Man
Emerson, Ralph Waldo - Selected Essays
Faulkner, William - As I Lay Dying
Faulkner, William - The Sound and the Fury
Fielding, Henry - Tom Jones
Fitzgerald, F. Scott - The Great Gatsby
Flaubert, Gustave - Madame Bovary
Ford, Ford Madox - The Good Soldier
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang - Faust
Golding, William - Lord of the Flies
Hardy, Thomas - Tess of the d'Urbervilles
Hawthorne, Nathaniel - The Scarlet Letter
Heller, Joseph - Catch-22
Hemingway, Ernest - A Farewell to Arms
Homer - The Iliad
Homer - The Odyssey
Hugo, Victor - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Hurston, Zora Neale - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Huxley, Aldous - Brave New World
Ibsen, Henrik - A Doll's House
James, Henry - The Portrait of a Lady
James, Henry - The Turn of the Screw
Joyce, James - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Kafka, Franz - The Metamorphosis
Kingston, Maxine Hong - The Woman Warrior
Lee, Harper - To Kill a Mockingbird
Lewis, Sinclair - Babbitt
London, Jack - The Call of the Wild
Mann, Thomas - The Magic Mountain
Marquez, Gabriel Garcia - One Hundred Years of Solitude
Melville, Herman - Bartleby the Scrivener
Melville, Herman - Moby-Dick
Miller, Arthur - The Crucible
Morrison, Toni - Beloved
O'Connor, Flannery - A Good Man is Hard to Find
O'Neill, Eugene - Long Day's Journey into Night
Orwell, George - Animal Farm
Pasternak, Boris - Doctor Zhivago
Plath, Sylvia - The Bell Jar
Poe, Edgar Allan - Selected Tales
Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
Pynchon, Thomas - The Crying of Lot 49
Remarque, Erich Maria - All Quiet on the Western Front
Rostand, Edmond - Cyrano de Bergerac
Roth, Henry - Call It Sleep
Salinger, J.D. - The Catcher in the Rye
Shakespeare, William - Hamlet
Shakespeare, William - Macbeth
Shakespeare, William - A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare, William - Romeo and Juliet
Shaw, George Bernard - Pygmalion
Shelley, Mary - Frankenstein
Silko, Leslie Marmon - Ceremony
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander - One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
Sophocles - Antigone
Sophocles - Oedipus Rex
Steinbeck, John - The Grapes of Wrath
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Treasure Island
Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Swift, Jonathan - Gulliver's Travels
Thackeray, William - Vanity Fair
Thoreau, Henry David - Walden
Tolstoy, Leo - War and Peace
Turgenev, Ivan - Fathers and Sons
Twain, Mark - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Voltaire - Candide
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. - Slaughterhouse-Five
Walker, Alice - The Color Purple
Wharton, Edith - The House of Mirth
Welty, Eudora - Collected Stories
Whitman, Walt - Leaves of Grass
Wilde, Oscar - The Picture of Dorian Gray
Williams, Tennessee - The Glass Menagerie
Woolf, Virginia - To the Lighthouse
Wright, Richard - Native Son

Not a very impressive showing, and it would be even less so if I indicated which works I read only because I was required to in school. But with a few exceptions (such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Don Quixote), I'm not terribly embarrassed by the number of these books I haven't read. This looks to me like a list compiled by professors of English and comparative literature, and it reflects what books they consider important. But it's not clear to me why it's imperative for non-professors to read The Mill on the Floss or Vanity Fair.

This leads to the part of this meme that quite a few bloggers are having fun with: critiquing the list, and suggesting what books they think should have been included. There's some lively discussion of this in the comments at Damian Penny's blog. In particular, I agree with Tony, who points out that this list completely ignores nonfiction works, and that any list of Great Books that excludes Euclid's Elements and Newton's Principia Mathematica cannot be taken seriously. Well, okay, it's not reasonable to expect that everyone will actually read those books, but they should understand (a) what those books are about and (b) why they are important. In other words, we should all at least have a Cliff's Notes familiarity with these books.

On that basis, and with the stipulation that I'm only attempting to address Western culture, I would also expect to see the following books on any sensible list:

The King James Bible
Plato - Republic and Dialogues
Herodotus - Histories
Thucydides - History of the Peloponnesian War
Sun Tzu - The Complete Art of War
Macchiavelli, Niccolo - The Prince
The Declaration of Independence
The Federalist Papers
The Constitution of the United States of America
Smith, Adam - The Wealth of Nations
Darwin, Charles - The Origin of Species
Marx, Karl - The Communist Manifesto
Gibbon, Edward - The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
Bulfinch, Thomas - Mythology

That's just a quick list off the top of my head, with only minimal Web-surfing to make sure I'm listing the titles and names correctly. I'm tempted to do some more research and expand this list, but I'm trying to keep my blogging habit under control, remember? So instead, I'll ask you. What other works do you think are important enough to be include in this list? Post a comment, or write about it in your own blog.

Before I let go of this, I have one other complaint. Even if we limit the scope of a Great Books list to fiction, I cannot accept a list that contains none of the following titles:

Verne, Jules - Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Wells, H.G. - The Time Machine, The Invisible Man, or War of the Worlds (at least one!)
Heinlein, Robert - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Starship Troopers, or Stranger in a Strange Land
Asimov, Isaac - The Foundation Trilogy, The Caves of Steel, or I, Robot
Tolkien, J.R.R. - The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings (yes, both!)
Clarke, Arthur C. - 2001: A Space Odyssey or Childhood's End

Science fiction and fantasy are mainstream literature now. It's time for the ivory-tower academics to take notice of this fact. If they continue to tell us with a straight face that Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth is more important than Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, that will just demonstrate how out of touch and irrelevant the professors are.

9:33 AM in Pop culture
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In my second post to this blog (written 3 October 2001), I tried to identify some of the astronauts who appear during the title sequence of Star Trek: Enterprise. Tonight I discovered that the Startrek.com website has a page that explains most of the images in the sequence. Does that mean I can now find out whether my guesses were correct? Well, not entirely. The Opening Credit Sequence Timeline doesn't cover every single image in the credits, and some of the ones I tried to identify are among the missing ones. But let's take another look at my list anyway. My guesses were as follows:

• A test pilot in front of his plane -- maybe Gus Grissom, maybe Chuck Yeager. The timeline doesn't mention this image, so the pilot's identity remains a mystery for now.
• A close-up of Alan Shepard, suiting up for Apollo 14. Correct!
• An Apollo crew during launch, probably on Apollo 13. Wrong! This shot does show three astronauts experiencing a launch, but they're in the mid-deck of a space shuttle.
• An Apollo crew walking down a corridor, possibly from Apollo 11. It's an Apollo crew, but the timeline doesn't say which one.

11:01 PM in Pop culture
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Bit by bit, I'm emerging from my Cinderella spider hole. Over the weekend, I started to chip away at my movie backlog by watching a couple of DVDs (I'm so far behind that some of the films in my backlog are already available in disc form). Ruth has been pestering me to watch Pirates of the Caribbean ever since that DVD came out, and she finally screened it for me on Christmas Day. I like swashbuckling adventure films, and this one definitely fits that description. I think the sword duel in the blacksmith's shop may well end up on everyone's lists of classic action scenes, along with the shootout at Marion's tavern in Raiders of the Lost Ark and the gun battle on the riverboat in The Mummy.

The next day, my nephew Jason dumped a half dozen of his newest DVDs on the table in front of us and said we were welcome to watch anything we wanted. I immediately latched onto Finding Nemo, which I missed when it was on the big screen. There was no question that I would enjoy it; Pixar never disappoints. As Bob has pointed out, what most people notice about Pixar is the superb computer-generated graphics, but that's not what makes all Pixar films huge successes. People of all ages love Pixar movies because of the quality of the writing. Nemo is no exception. I find the movie's theme -- the triumph of hope over fear -- very moving. I would try to explain why, but Iain Murray has beaten me to it; his article on the subject was published today at National Review Online.

I still have a lot of movies to watch before I'm caught up. Some of them aren't out on DVD yet, so I'll have to go to one of those buildings with lots of seats and a great big screen on one wall. It's been so long since I've been to one that I forget what they're called. It's a word something like "theatre," but I know that's not right; "theatre" is the place with dressing rooms and a stage where I spent the last two months of my life. Oh, well, it'll come to me eventually.

3:27 PM in Pop culture
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The BBC has announced that it plans to bring back Doctor Who. (This blog was named after a classic episode of that show.)

4:23 PM in Pop culture
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Steven Den Beste sometimes posts essays on his blog that began as comments on other people's blogs, but got out of control. This occasionally happens to me, too. I realize that I've written a thousand words and still have more to say. At some point you have to admit that you're writing an essay, and you should be posting it on your own blog.

This piece originated in that fashion. The GNO bulletin board site currently has a discussion thread about this fall's crop of new TV shows (and who likes which ones). I initially posted a laconic response that just said I don't have time to watch TV anymore. But then Ben posted his take on some History Channel shows (including Conquest) and I felt that I needed to amend my previous statement. Before I knew it, I was writing an essay. So here it is.

Like Ben, I've become addicted to Conquest. Fortunately for me, new episodes don't seem to come out very often.

I should clarify my previous comments. It's not that I don't watch TV any more; it's that I really don't have time for much TV and I try not to watch very much, but I often succumb to temptation and watch when I really should be doing other things. For me, TV shows fall into four categories:

1. Shows that I officially watch and that I'm keeping up with. I have Season Passes for these and I watch each new episode as soon as possible. Conquest and Teen Titans are in this category. (So is Futurama even though I don't think many new episodes are being shown these days. I either managed to miss a number of episodes when they were new or have forgotten them, so I'm recording and watching most reruns of it because they are new to me.) All of these are half-hour shows, enabling me to watch them while eating and pretend I'm not really spending any time on TV.
2. Shows that I officially watch, but have fallen behind on. I have Season Passes for these and I transfer them to videotape for later viewing, creating a horrific VHS backlog that I'll probably never entirely deal with. Star Trek Voyager used to be in this category, but I finally made a herculean effort and finished watching all the episodes about a year and a half after the show ended. Several other shows that have ended their run are in this category for me: Dark Angel, Firefly, Buffy, Tremors: The Series. Enterprise is also a Category 2 show -- I'm over a year behind on it. From time to time I recognize that some particular show is so far down my list of things to watch, and has such a large backlog, that I will never catch up with it. When this happens, I admit defeat and recycle the videotapes. Sliders, JAG, Andromeda, and Odyssey 5 all fell by the wayside in this fashion.
3. Shows that I don't officially watch, but I like them and sometimes end up sitting down to watch if someone else has them on. Guilty pleasures, in other words. State of Grace was one of these until we ran out of new episodes, and Gilmore Girls still is. So are Trading Spaces and several of its imitations. And yes, Ben, Mail Call is a Category 3 show too.
4. Shows that I officially don't watch, have no interest in watching even furtively, and will actually leave the room to get away from if someone else turns them on. All "reality" shows fall into this category, including American Idol in all its forms (sorry, Jen). Sports, news, and game shows (except for Jeopardy, of course) are also in Category 4.

It's a popular affectation in our society to exclaim that there's nothing worth watching on TV. But when someone says that in my presence, I can't help responding with an incredulous stare. Do these people have that much spare time? Are their standards so high that nothing satisfies them? Or are they just saying that in order to pretend that they're that discriminating?

Sure, there's a lot of worthless dreck on TV. So what? Theodore Sturgeon once observed that 90% of science fiction is crud. But, he added, 90% of everything is crud.

2:39 PM in Pop culture
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The moment I noticed today's date, I immediately said to myself, "Hmm, it's the twenty-third anniversary of the premiere of The Empire Strikes Back." Now, how did I know that? Sure, I'm a world-class geek, but I don't normally have information that obscure at my fingertips. In fact, I can't tell you the exact premiere date of any other Star Wars movie, even the one that came out last year. So what's the explanation?

It's the result of a clever marketing ploy by Lucasfilm. Movie studios are keenly aware that to maximize interest in a soon-to-be-released movie, their promotional campaign should gradually reveal tidbits of information about it as the premiere date approaches. Nowadays, the most effective way to do that is with an official Web site, but that wasn't an option back in 1980. So the studio made use of another network: the telephone system. Lucasfilm set up a toll-free phone number that fans could call to hear plot teasers about The Empire Strikes Back, delivered in character by the voices of the cast. The messages were rotated on (as I recall) a weekly basis, encouraging the fans to call the number repeatedly to make sure they heard each one. And in a stroke of marketing genius, the phone number was the release date of the movie: (800) 521-1980. This ensured that, having memorized the number, Star Wars fans were also committing the date to memory.

I still have that number memorized, even though the line was disconnected over two decades ago. I can't dial my wife's office number without looking it up first, but I'll remember Darth Vader's phone number until the day I die. Such is the power of fannish obsession.

1:51 PM in Pop culture
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So who is tougher, Jango Fett or Alton Brown? To answer this question, I watched several episodes of Brown's show, Good Eats, and I think I'm hooked on it. Me, addicted to a cooking show? It seems impossible, but Good Eats isn't just about recipes; it's also about science.

For example, the latest episode ("The Fungal Gourmet") focuses on mushrooms. This would appear to be a pretty dull topic: explain what the different kinds of mushrooms are, demonstrate how to cook a couple of dishes with them, and you're done. Boring. But that's not how Alton Brown operates. I learned all kinds of cool things from this show. For example, did you know that mushrooms will last longer in the refrigerator if you keep them in a paper bag? (They need to breathe, but in an open container they tend to dry out.) Also, I've been washing my mushrooms as soon as I open the package, but Alton suggests waiting until you're ready to use them (so they don't get soggy). And whole mushrooms last longer than presliced ones. Previously, I would have dismissed that idea because slicing them by hand is such a hassle. But thanks to Alton Brown, I now know the secret of cutting a mushroom into perfectly uniform slices in one second: an egg slicer.

The really cool thing about this show, however, is what you learn that has little or nothing to do with the actual topic. After watching "The Fungal Gourmet," I know how to sauté properly, which isn't something you just do with mushrooms. I also know how to clarify butter, and why I would want to. (Clarified butter has a higher smoke point than regular butter.) Alton doesn't just tell you the best way to prepare foods; he also explains why -- the physical and chemical processes that are going on while you're mixing and cooking. Demonstrating how to thicken sautéd mushrooms into a paste, he explains that parmesan cheese aids this process because as it melts, "the proteins uncoil and reach out for other things." And bread crumbs make a good binding agent, because (in addition to absorbing excess moisture), they have "an abrasive shape; they've got . . . pitons that go off in every direction, and that kind of sticks into the food and holds it together." Fascinating stuff.

The show is funny, too. Discussing why it's dangerous for anyone but a trained mycologist to forage for mushrooms, Alton ends his explanation by tossing a basket of wild mushrooms over his shoulder and beaning the Grim Reaper, who is standing behind him. He livens up the procedure for clarifying butter by reciting the whole thing in one breath (with only a little hyperventilation beforehand, and just a momentary loss of consciousness afterward). Even if you're not planning to do any actual cooking, Good Eats works as pure entertainment, in the same sense that Bill Nye the Science Guy or Junkyard Wars does.

So I would have to say that Alton Brown is tougher than Jango Fett. Alton can explain how to clarify butter without inhaling, slice mushrooms at super-speed, and knock Death unconscious without even realizing it. Whereas Jango just lies there, because he's a headless corpse. Not very impressive, really.

10:34 AM in Pop culture
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The buzz about Star Wars: Episode 2, The Attack of the Clones is gradually building. I only wish that professional critics and fans alike didn't feel compelled to use this as an opportunity to bash Phantom Menace by saying that they hope Attack of the Clones is better. I have never understood why Phantom Menace is the target of so much derision; I was and still am delighted with it. I have had difficulty articulating what I think is so wonderful about it, however. Now I find that I don't have to, because I can simply point people to this article by Dr. Kelley Ross.

11:03 AM in Pop culture
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I won't post any spoilers about the Buffy season premiere, but I don't think anyone will be surprised to hear that (a) it revolves around Buffy's return from death, and (b) magic is involved. We all knew that ahead of time; the question was, how would this be handled? Bringing back dead characters is a very tricky business that can undermine the credibility of any show if it's done wrong. Dallas ran afoul of this hazard back in the '80s. The problem wasn't that Bobby was resurrected, but the way he came back. Declaring an entire season of the show to have been a dream was a cop-out and a cliche, and Dallas never really recovered.

So I was curious to see how Buffy would avoid the pitfalls of raising its main character from the dead. Very well, it turns out. The spell that brought her back had so many conditions and qualifications that I'm sure we'll never see it used again: it was only possible because Buffy had been killed by mystical forces, it was extremely dangerous for the caster, its material component was a rare and irreplaceable artifact, and it has severe consequences for everyone involved (which we'll see next week). Nicely done.

4:38 PM in Pop culture
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Traffic on I-40 was exceptionally horrible this morning, leaving me with plenty of opportunities to read the messages on the back of other people's vehicles. As usual, most of them made me say "huh?" For example, this one is my pick for Most Unnecessary Advice Ever: BE AS YOU ARE. And can someone explain to me what A COUNTRY BOY CAN SURVIVE is supposed to mean? But I liked the upside-down one that said IF YOU CAN READ THIS, PLEASE TURN ME OVER.

The most baffling bumper sticker I've seen recently was not on a car, but stuck to the inside of the sneeze shield at a food court serving line. It said "GOD" BLESS AMERICA. Apparently "God" is not His real name, just a pseudonym.

10:45 AM in Pop culture
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Who are those astronauts that appear in the titles of Enterprise? I've been having fun trying to identify them. The title sequence includes these shots:

• A test pilot in front of his plane, walking toward the camera. His face isn't terribly clear, but it could be Gus Grissom. (On the other hand, this may not be an astronaut at all. Maybe it's Chuck Yeager. Hard to tell.)
• A close-up of a smiling astronaut wearing the characteristic "Snoopy cap" of the Apollo program. I'm almost certain it's Alan Shepard, suiting up for Apollo 14.
• An Apollo crew during launch. The helmets make faces hard to identify, but I believe the one closest to the camera is Jim Lovell. He flew on two Apollo missions, but in this shot he's in the commander's seat, and that means Apollo 13.
• A fully suited Apollo crew walking down a corridor on their way to the launch pad. It's impossible to make out faces, but I'll bet this is the crew of Apollo 11.

9:59 PM in Pop culture
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