I Miss The Ewok Song... :(

And so do these guys:



If you'd like to sing along here's the lyrics.

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Three Science Influences

Steven Hill from the Testing hypotheses… blog wrote about his three science influences in a post titled, "Science inspirations." Alerted to this post by my one of my Twitter Profs (See my Mashable.com article), Andrew Maynard on Twitter (he's @2020science), I immediately wanted to comment. Although I am not a scientist in any way whatsoever, my deep love of science is evident to many who know me. Below I list the comment I made to his post about my three influences. I can't tell you how many more should be added to this list and I've probably forgotten a few that may or may not deserve to be in the top three besides these but I can annotate the list or do another one in the future.

I'm not a scientist at all but have a deep interest of science in all forms from the sidelines. That said, I was influenced by these three people in my love of science:

1) Carl Sagan - When I was in high school I read Contact and it's still one of my favorite books & I think a decent movie despite the flaws. Then I found out that Sagan was not only an author but a real astronomer and that "Cosmos" guy. It started lifelong love of learning about science that continues to this day.

2) Steven Spielberg - OK. Don't kill me for not picking all scientists for this list. But Spielberg's movies instilled in my a sense of wonder about the natural world. Jaws made me love the ocean animals, both scary and benign. Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. - The Extra-Terrestrial made me wonder what was really out there in the canopy of the stars overhead as a kid. Indiana Jones made me think about cultures, myth and archeology. Fiction may not always get the scientific facts all right, but they do provide a great jumping off point for young minds to go further and find out about the physical world and sciences in real life.

3) My mother - My mom has always taught me the importance of education. She kept the house well-stocked with books that I discovered at appropriate times growing up (including the Carl Sagan book mentioned at #1 on this list.) She also was a bit of a Star Trek and Sci-Fi fan herself so I grew up with a parent who encouraged both critical thinking and fantastical imagining. She influenced me to aspire to many of the things I am today (for better or for worse) but one thing I know is that it is because of my mom that I love to read and learn as much as I do. Both are endeavors that bring bring me great joy and satisfaction no matter what.

Alternate: My high school Marine Biology teacher - This guy was funny and his passion came out in a way that I never expected. He was so into his science that he would crack bad jokes and puns about the subject even if he was the only one to get the joke. Everyone got a good grades in his classes because he really made learning about science fun, not rote.

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WolframAlpha

The search engine created by Stephen Wolfram author of "A New Kind of Science" has gotten much media attention. It launched on Friday, May 15, 2009. I am still playing around with it to find its utility besides simple curiosity. I am confident I will eventually find a real world use for it.

The website about page says that "Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone." Sounds good to me.

Stephen Wolfram is a pretty smart guy so I am sure this website can be put to good use. In the meantime I proposed this question:

"answer to life, the universe and everything"

To which Wolfram|Alpha responded:

"42"

So far, so good.

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Star Wars Deserves A High Place In Science Fiction

Keith Olexa, whose LinkedIn profile says he’s a Managing Editor and Contributing Writer at Starlog. He started a discussion on the Science Fiction readers, writers, and collectors Group. The below is my long winded answer to what he called “a saucy send up.”

A saucy send up: STAR WARS is the farthest thing from Science Fiction...

... and IMHO, has been the most damaging influence on the genre... agree? disagree? Discuss.

And here is my answer:

Star Wars Deserves A High Place In Science Fiction
by Lon S. Cohen

Seems that the bigger a franchise becomes the harder or less reluctant fans and writers are to bring it into our little ghetto of a genre. We Science Fiction fans are a fickle bunch. We bristle at any perceived criticism of our beloved worlds. We try to make geekism an exclusive club only open to those who truly get it. If there is anything that we fans have in common with religion it’s that we’re fanatical in our beliefs sometimes to the point of extremism. The masses don’t truly understand that Science Fiction is not just about laser swords and ray guns and flying rockets. It’s about possibilities and the human condition. What will or might be.

But you have to admit, it’s really cool if it also has an evil sentient computer thrown into the mix, right?

So where does Star Wars fit in? Both vilified and glorified, this little film that almost didn’t get made starts a lot of fights around fandom. In my opinion, Star Wars is Space Opera. It spans an entire galaxy, bringing us to worlds chock full of furry, scaly creatures with any number of eyes, limbs and skin tints. There’s good versus evil. We have all the elements of the classic tales from Sword and Sorcery to Westerns. The characters are archetypical and the themes are grandiose. It has become a behemoth franchise at the box office. Coming on the heels of Jaws it didn’t invent the summer blockbuster so much as put a definition to it. It has become the model for almost every whiz-bang popcorn flick since the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred seventy-seven. It has invaded the culture, the language and even the politics of everyday life. For this reason people tend to want to tamp down its importance, pushing it out of the Science Fiction realm.

Here’s why: Star Wars is dumb.

Don’t get me wrong. I am a true Star Wars geek. I have all the figures stashed away. I can probably recite every line from both the original trilogy as well as the much-maligned prequels. Like every other fanboy, I expected the second coming when Episode I came out and when I didn’t get it I made up excuses why it was going to one day be justified as a true work of genius. Yes. I know I’m wrong. And I don’t care.

Because the reason we fans love Star Wars is not because it’s smart. Not because it says something about mankind and our place in the universe. It doesn’t even pretend to be speculative. We love Star Wars because it’s cool. The themes are simplistic, easy to grasp and uplifting. The story is trite and pedestrian but it’s wrapped in a really rich universe. The characters are sexy, familiar and dangerous. The designs are complex and exciting yet functional. The sounds are bold, exotic and inspiring. The milieu of Star Wars appeals to a wide swath of the public. But in the end, it is not overtly intelligent.

Have you ever sat down to learn the origin myths of some foreign culture and been utterly floored by their simplicity and seeming lack of originality? The world is held on the back of a turtle and was germinated by a woman who fell from the sky in the religion of natives from the northeastern portion of the Americas. God got mad at people so he instructed Noah to build an ark to save two of every animal. This is not high literature worthy of the Nebula, the Pulitzer or even the Mann Booker. These are not stories that strike us as particularly deep or telling of man’s nature. Yet they endured through the centuries, even the millennia. Why? Because they tell a simple story, one that many people can imagine and take something away from without investing too much mental capacity. They are direct and to the point. Does this make them good? Not necessarily. Are they important? Absolutely. Why? Because the people have held onto these stories for a reason. They are simple and they speak to a simple childlike part of our soul.

This is something of what Joseph Campbell was getting at when he wrote his book on comparative mythology, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces.” A simply told tale that speaks to the deepest part of our psyche will always grab the attention of the masses and has throughout time if you look at the myths developed in cultures around the world. It also explains why Star Wars is an important and worthy contribution to Science Fiction.

That is what storytelling is all about. It occurs in every genre. Star Wars has not damaged Science Fiction. Some will always see Star Wars as a screen that hides the true nature and richness of Science Fiction. Because this is what people who don’t like Science Fiction hold up as an example of the generic Science Fiction story. Star Wars has been accused of perpetrating the stereotype of the outsider’s view of SciFi. It has all the elements after all: Lasers, robots, aliens and space travel. But what some people don’t understand is the inclusiveness of the broader genre.

Some people love classic Science Fiction but hate the hard stuff. Others like a good near future tale while others want a story set as far away from planet earth as the universe will allow. What Star Wars does well is resurrect the classic elements of SciFi from days gone by. It is, dare I say, homage to the golden years when pulps and movie reels featured the space explorer du jour for the young ones. (The oft-told tale is that George Lucas wanted to remake the story of Flash Gordon for the screen but stymied by the copyright sought to make his own version. A few years later we ended up with a version featuring a Queen soundtrack—though that’s a story for another day.) Many of those young ones become inspired by these broadly painted themes. With an education in basic plotting, character development and wonder, they are free to take their own Science Fiction story making to the next level.

So the answer to the question of whether Star Wars has been the most damaging influence on Science Fiction is no, it is not. I make my case that it is more likely the inspiration for a whole generation of Science Fiction stories of high quality. Star Wars is also firmly in the realm of the Science Fiction genre.

And anyone who says different is probably a Trekkie. IMHO. ;)

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Free Road Trip On Neil Gaiman's American Highway

I heard from Big Dumb Object, a Science Fiction Blog, that he heard from Neil Gaiman’s website that Neil Gaiman’s book American Gods will be available as a free PDF download for about a month or so.

If you’ve wanted to read this book but the $6.99 cover price for the soft cover version is just too big of an obstacle, get it for free.

I started the book (bought it, own it) and the first chapter is gripping. Gripping, I tell you. It shows much promise in the way of entertainment. Problem was that I got sidetracked by some reading that I had to do for pay, so that takes precedence.

Sorry Neil. I'll get back to you.

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Essays By Science Fiction Authors On Amazon.com

SF Signal has the following post. Thought it was pretty cool:

18 Non-Fiction Essays by Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers

Amazon has had these non-fiction essays available for a while now, but these 18 shorts just popped up in feeds. I didn't realize there were so many, and there are probably more...but for now, here's a list of 18 of them with their descriptions. They are available in full for fifty cents each from Amazon.

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Bionic Woman. On Again, Off Again, On Again?

Now that the writer’s strike is over and people are probably comfortably back at their computers typing away the next exciting season of BLANK, I am combing the web for updates on the status of my favorite shows. I admit, I took a couple of trips in January so I was out of the country for two weeks but how did I miss the news that one of my most promising favorite shows was rumored to be cancelled?

I could hardly believe it. I gave Bionic Woman a great review of the premier for the BSFA, so you could imagine my disappointment. The final version that appeared on television was not the one I actually saw. It was re-edited for some rather ridiculous reasons but still, I liked the televised version even if it was watered down a bit and made some of the characters a lot less interesting and deep than I’d have liked to see them.

Then, the roller coaster ride took a dramatic turn. I found the next result on Google showed that TV Guide reversed course. Bionic Woman had not been cancelled at all. According to the article a source at NBC said that, “Bionic Woman has not been cancelled. Production was shut down due to the WGA strike. In addition, we have not completed the initial 13-episode order, which will be the first order of business when the strike ends.”

I am happy again. First, the characters have been going through the usual, first season paces, with thin storylines that feel a little rote. But I had (have?) faith that the snippets of secondary story line were (are?) going to make the shows much more interesting at time goes on.

With the strike over, we’re going to need to be patient since everything has been on hold for month and now we have to reinvest our time into getting to know the stories and characters again.

It may be a little daunting, but I think Bionic Woman has some life left in her yet.

If this news saying that the other news was not true turn out to be true.

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Interview With A Scif-Fi Editor

I had the pleasure of interviewing Lou Anders over at PYR, a Science Fiction and Fantasy imprint. Check out the edited version that appeared on the British Science Fiction Association's website, below. I tagged my questions "Me" because "Lon" and "Lou" just starts looking the same in a Q&A like this.

Lou Anders is a pirate in the sense that not only does he look like one, but he displays his buccaneering ways by looting the English speaking world’s best Science Fiction and Fantasy authors for his booty at Pyr, the imprint that he currently helms as editorial director. Fortunately, pirate Lou Anders is a formidable and likeable hero, champion of expert writing, great cover art and highly crafted anthologies.

In our interview, Lou Anders was accommodating and loquacious. When Lou talks people should listen, because he has a lot of good stuff to say about the industry from books to movies to television to art, he’s got it all covered.

Me: What is your earliest memory of this genre be it a movie, book, game, etc. and can you tell me when you realized that you were a lifer?

Lou: I'd say that my involvement with SF involves a three-stage connection/initiation.

First, one of my earliest memories period is standing in front of the big, black & white television at my grandfather's house and my mother saying, "Yes, that's a man walking on the moon." That's pretty close to the first thing I remember.

Then, when I was an adolescent, I was captivated by Sid & Marty Krofft's original Land of the Lost. I was raised fundamentalist Christian in the Deep South, so the presence of missing link Philip Paley as Cha-Ka the ape boy did NOT go over well with my parents. As a result, Land of the Lost was something I had to sneak glimpses of, and you know what they say about forbidden fruit. It wasn't until years later that I discovered how many SF writers had been associated with it.

Finally, when I was 12 or 13 my father pushed a copy of Edgar Rice Burrough's A Princess of Mars into my hands and said, "Here, you need to read this."

And I did, followed by the rest of the Mars series, the Venusian series, the Pellucidar series, the Tarzan series, and everything else by Burroughs that was in print. That lead to Michael Moorcock and Fritz Leiber, and from there to the Science Fiction Writers of America Hall of Fame series, and from there—well, you know the rest.

Me: What was the book that sucked you into the potential and possibilities of this genre in terms of literature?

Lou: That's a difficult question. I largely stopped reading SF&F in high school, and in college, I read things like John Irving or Tim Robbins when I read for pleasure at all. In the 90s, I was very involved professionally with SF television (Star Trek, Babylon 5)—I was the liaison between Los Angeles and London for several Titan Publishing magazines—and so my return to SF was to its media aspect. This in turn lead to involvement with a dot com online publishing start up, which reintroduced literary SF to my life.

So around the time Star Trek was beginning its slow degeneration and Babylon 5 was ending, these shows being replaced by Hercules & Xena and the various god-awful offerings of the SciFi Channel, I was reading Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age and Michael Swanwick's The Iron Dragon's Daughter and Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time and Geoff Ryman's The Child Garden and William Gibson's Idoru and Mike Resnick's Kirinyaga and Philip K Dick's Valis and becoming increasingly disgusted and infuriated with the dichotomy between filmic and literary SF&F. So there was no one book.

Me: In the interview with China Miéville for The Believer magazine he mentioned an “embattlement mentality” in genre literature. With the success of the SF&F genre in movies (see multi-BILLION dollar success of the LOTR trilogy) and genre bending authors like both Vonnegut, Clarke and others, (that Miéville mentioned) don’t your think this conversation is moot?

Lou: Yes, it is moot, but it wasn't at the time of that interview. We are right now living through a very rapid swing of the pendulum of mainstream perception. I would date its inception from the moment Stephen King was chosen as recipient of the National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters—which seems far less absurd now than it did to many in the mainstream at the time (remember the outcry?)—but that was the crack in the damn that is just bursting now.

You mention Lord of the Rings, but equally important to its box office (because when do critics care for box office?) is the moment when Return of the King took all eleven Oscar awards for which it was nominated. When Michael Chabon wrote The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay he was still clothing his generic elements via a narrative-within-a-narrative, but in the wake of his Pulitzer, he has moved further and further into unabashedly genre territory, first with a YA fantasy, then with a Sherlock Holmes narrative, then with an alternate history and now, with Gentlemen of the Road, an outright sword & sorcery adventure, dedicated to Michael Moorcock no less, and following its New York Times serialization with a novel from an outright genre publisher (Del Rey). Throw in Susanna Clarke's novel being chosen as the #1 book of the year by Time magazine, Entertainment Weekly and TV Guide both proclaiming Battlestar Galactica as the number one drama series on TV, and the profusion of quality science fiction series and films being celebrated in the mainstream, and yes, it begins to look like we have overcome. Not to mention Bradbury's recent Pulitzer.

Me: How much of this “embattlement mentality” is self-perception and self-conciousness in our field and how much is true?

Lou: There are still stigmas attached. I tried to hand a guy at my (martial arts) dojo one of our Pyr catalogs and he recoiled like I was handing him a Four Spiritual Laws tract. But again - SF doesn't need to attempt 100% world domination. We're not a religion, simple an extremely relevant branch of literature with a lot to say about 21st Century life.

Me: Also, in your Q&A with Miéville you spoke about golems. What do you thing the golem/cyborg character says about human nature/society/etc. in the works you have come across?

Lou: Science fiction is the literature of estrangement. It is a literature of subversion. It is a literature of the open mind. That's what the alien is - it's literalizing the ability to see from other eyes than the ones you were born with. And the cyborg - well, that's the stage at which you're halfway there, one part your old self, and one part something other. That can be a terrifying position to occupy - ask anyone who ever kicked off the religion of their parents. But it's also the place where enlightenment occurs.

---

These are select excerpts from our interview. We went on and on. Anyone interested in reading the full interview go to The BSFA - Matrix website or download the PDF here.

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Say It Ain't So Joe...

Joe Murphy was a podcaster on the Dragon Page family of podcasts. One of the first podcasts I ever discovered was Wingin' It. Joe Murphy was an irreverant personality who liked to use the term "Brilliant" whenever something impressed him. He passed away April 1, 2007 of a rare cancer. I never knew him but listened to his voice every week for a long time. I was surprised to find out about his death as I had not been listening to the podcast for a long time.

Just one word about Joe: "Brilliant"

From a Wikipedia entry on Joe Murphy:

Joe Murphy (July 10, 1972 - April 1, 2007) was an American book reviewer, XM Radio Personality, and podcaster. His other profession was that of a speech pathologist and audiologist, having received his MA from Western Illinois University.

He started out on the Dragon Page Cover to Cover podcast as a book reviewer. His comments were so concise and pithy that he quickly became a fan favorite. From there he joined with Summer Brooks as co-host of the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninjas podcast and became one of the main contributors to the popular Slice of SciFi podcast and XM Satellite Radio show. He was also a frequent guest on the Wingin' It podcast and established himself as an integral part of the Farpoint Media family.

In 2006 the Kick-Ass Mystic Ninja podcast - its hosts being Joe, Summer Brooks and David Moldawer - was nominated for a Parsec Award for Excellence in Podcasting in the category of Best Fan Podcast. The award ultimately went to The Scapecast.

His contributions to the Wingin' It podcast inspired the Beatnik Turtle Song, Mason Rocket: Spy Extraordinaire, which was their Song of the Day on April 2, 2007.

Joe was diagnosed at the end of 2006 with Leiomyosarcoma, a very rare form of cancer that attacks the smooth muscles of the body and the inner lining of blood vessels, and passed away on April 1, 2007.

Go to Joe's Memorial Page for More info...

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Astronaut charged with attempted murder

ORLANDO, Fla. - She was the Robochick. He was Billy-O. According to police, her obsession with him led her to drive 900 miles from Houston to Orlando, bringing with her a trenchcoat and wig, armed with a BB gun and pepper spray, and wearing a diaper to avoid bathroom breaks on the arduous drive.



read more digg story

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The British Are Coming! The British Are Coming!

OK. So they aren't really coming, but I went to them and guess what? They like me in jolly ole England. So much so that I write regularly for the British Science Fiction Writer's Association. They have a few magazines.

Check out my latest article here.

Subscribe to the magazine here.

See a picture of a Claudia Christian.

See a picture of me.

See me and Claudia Christian. (You have to do that yourself, I do.)

L.S.C.

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