Tuesday, June 7, 2011

The Generic Science Fiction Story of the Future

I've been watching episodes of the old Buck Rogers serial, on TCM. Not regularly, but I've caught a few of the installments of the old Saturday matinee short feature.

The acting and cinematography are not up to Citizen Kane standards - but I've gathered that the 1930s Buck Rogers serial was more of a potboiler, than conceived as a great work of the cinematic arts. Special effects are, all things considered, pretty good.

Yes, they show Saturn appearing out of the clouds of outer space, spaceships sound like they're run by lawnmower engines, and we haven't had control systems that big and unwieldy for decades. But then, today's on-screen science fiction is - no, I am not going to get off-topic.

Been There, Read That

I know what "The Future" is supposed to look like: Buck Rogers' version; the Logan's Run effort; Escape From New York; A Boy And His Dog; and Escape From L.A..

Where, oh, where does Hollywood keep coming up with these new ideas? And that's yet another topic. Sort of.

The point is, we've got a fairly small number of standard-issue, generic, plug-in-your-character, science fiction "futures" by now. Nothing wrong with that, I think - as long as a writer - and readers - remember that science fiction/speculative fiction/whatever is a quite - mature? - genre by now.

I've been playing with a setting of the Buck Rogers/Star Wars flavor. (Yes - George Lucas knew about B.R., I've got fans in my family) I've mentioned Galaxy Cadet before. I'm fighting my OCD tendencies, successfully for the most part, and trying to remember how much fun I had, decades back, with the Star Trek universe. Pre-movies.

It's a good excuse for me to dust off my ambition to do a readable comic book.

These days, happily, I don't have to try to kid some publisher that it'll be the next [fill in your favorite series]. Yet one more topic.

Sort-of-related posts:

Products Have Names

A utility van - a Klaxon-6, made by Baden-Baden Auto and Gravel Sifter Works

Now, doesn't a name like that make you want to go out and buy one?

Probably not. But that's not the point in this case.

Not-completely-unrelated posts:

Privacy Policy

Nothing spooky here.

These days it's important to have a "privacy policy" available: so here's mine.

I do not collect information on individuals visiting this blog. If you leave a comment, I'll read what you wrote: but I don't keep a record of comments, apart from what Blogger displays. (In other words, the only record of what you write or who you are will be what people see at the bottom of the post.)

I do collect information about how many hits this blog gets, where they come from, and some technical information. I use the WebSTAT service for this purpose - and all that shows is which ISP you use, and where it's located.

You can stop most of Webstat's data gathering by disabling cookies in your browser. I don't know why you would, but some folks do.

I'm also an AdSense affiliate, so Google collects information on what I've written in each post: but that's mostly my problem.

I'm also considering starting an affiliate relationship with DAZ Productions. You should be able to keep DAZ and Commission Junction, their provider of affiliate services, from collecting information by - again - disabling cookies in your browser.

And you can keep DAZ Productions from finding out anything about you, by not buying any of their products.

Again, I don't know why you would: but some folks do.

Or, rather, don't.