This guy has clearly loved Commando Cody since he was a kid.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who is still working on his flying suit.
SF, Fantasy & Horror
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Friday, October 07, 2011
Project Orion
I first heard about Project Orion in college when I read John McPhee's "The Curve of Binding Energy. Launching 200-ton spaceships by dropping atomic bombs out of the bottom. Oh man!
Jerry Pournelle, who is still a supporter of it, once wrote a novel, "King David's Spaceship," about it.
If we had gone with it, we'd have colonies on the Moon...Mars...spacestations. But as usual, the people in the government are idiots.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who is still annoyed he has no flying car and a blaster.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Trekkers infographic
Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration
posted By Tom Novak who says, "who says I don't post anything here anymore"
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Science Fiction Writers Should Rule the World
I’m not a science fiction writer but I am a fan, and have been since a few months before I turned 12. So I’ve been familiar with the genre and the writers for a quite a while, and so have decided that science fiction writers should be in charge of the government. I’m not kidding about that, either.
I hold nearly all politicians in contempt and suspect most of them are intelligent psychopaths (dumb psychopaths end up in prison). There are some exceptions, of course. Ron Paul is one of them. But most politicians are self-aggrandizing liars, murderers and thieves. Oh, I forgot – they’re also drunks and sexual perverts.
Is there anything lower than a politician? A serial killer? A child molester? The damage they’ve done is a drop in the ocean compared to the millennia of wreckage left by politicians.
Government has killed more people in history than everything else put together. I’ve read estimates that in the 20th Century anywhere from 177 million to 200 million people were killed by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – another name for the State.
All governments are based on force and fraud, without exception. Force and fraud, the two things that sent most people straight to Hell in Dante’s Inferno.
Why should science fiction writers rule? Because they are far more intelligent, sensitive, imaginative and empathic than politicians or the average joe. Most of them have libertarian sympathies, which is a prerequisite for good rulers.
Libertarianism – or classical liberalism – believes in the smallest necessary government (except for the anarchist libertarians, who are leftist fools). If the purpose of government is to, as John Locke wrote, protect “life, liberty and property” then what automatically springs up is political liberty and the free market. And that maximizes the well-being of everyone.
Politicians always try to expand government, and for that matter, so does much of the Herd. The Herd, unfortunately, isn’t merely dim-witted. It has no brains at all.
This Blob-like growth of government is why it always collapses. It gets too big and destroys or absorbs everything in its path, like the Borg. There in fact hasn’t been a government that hasn’t collapsed.
The first science fiction novel I remember reading is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Fighting Man of Mars. It’s not exactly a libertarian novel but the Bad Guys are the power-mad rulers who want to conquer the planet and the Good Guys want freedom for everyone. I can’t tell you the effect this novel, with its swordfights and “radium pistols” and flying ships, had on my 11-year-old sensibilities.
There were other stories. Eric Frank Russell’s …and Then There Were None, a very funny story about a society that keeps its freedom by figuring out a fool-proof way to avoid being conquered: they just ignore their wannabe-be conquerors. In fact, they end up absorbing those who want to conquer them, just the way early America absorbed the Hessian mercenaries who wouldn’t go back to the Statist hell they came from.
There was A.E van Vogt’s The Weapon Shops of Isher, with its famous line: “The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right to be Free.” I still remember the frustration I felt that there were no Weapon Shop pistols, which threw up an impenetrable energy field about the owner and would not fire unless he was attacked. Imagine what that did for crime. Most especially, the crimes committed by the Empire, which, not surprisingly, hated and feared the Weapon Shops.
There are many others. James Hogan. Jerry Pournelle. L. Neil Smith. Neal Stephenson. I’m sure there are others I’ve never read, maybe even heard about.
When people are imaginative they have the ability to empathize with other people, to put themselves in their shoes. That’s why Stephen King is so popular: he can put himself in all of his character’s shoes.
I doubt a literal-minded person could easily sympathize with others, especially the more different those others are. I am reminded of something I read: the stupid don’t learn from their mistakes; the more intelligent do; and the smartest of all learn from other people’s mistakes. And you’ll certainly have a very difficult time learning from others unless you have some imaginative empathy.
Imagination, when united with reason, is my definition of creativity. And creativity is what advances all societies. And no society can go anywhere unless it has small government.
And who else besides science fiction writers are imaginative, reasonable and libertarian?
The world has given other types of government its chance. Kings, constitutional monarchies, republics. They’ve all degraded. It’s time to try something different. Just don’t ask me what kind of government we should have, because I don’t know. I just know who should be in authority.
It’s too bad those damn Weapon Shop pistols don’t exist. We wouldn’t need anyone to rule.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who should be Benign Dictator.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thomas M. Disch, R.I.P.
Thomas Michael Disch (February 2, 1940 Des Moines, Iowa – c. July 4, 2008 New York City, New York) was an American science fiction author and poet.[1][2][3] He won the Hugo Award for Best Related Book (previously entitled "Best Non-Fiction Book") in 1999, and he had two other Hugo nominations and nine Nebula Award nominations to his credit, plus one win of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, a Rhysling Award, and two Seiun Awards, among others.
In the 1960s, his work began appearing in science-fiction magazines. His first novel, The Genocides, appeared in 1965. He soon became known as part of the New Wave, writing for New Worlds and other avant-garde publications. His critically acclaimed novels of that time included Camp Concentration and 334. In the 1980s, he moved from science fiction to horror, with a series of books set in Minneapolis: The Businessman, The M.D., The Priest, and The Sub. His latest novel The Word of God was published by Tachyon Publications in the Summer of 2008.
In 1999, he won the Nonfiction Hugo for The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of, a meditation on the impact of science fiction on our culture, as well as the Michael Braude Award for Light Verse. Among his other nonfiction work, he wrote theatre and opera criticism for The New York Times, The Nation, and other periodicals. He also published several volumes of poetry.
He committed suicide on July 4, 2008 or July 5, 2008
Disch was born in Des Moines, Iowa, on 2 February 1940. Because of a polio epidemic in 1946, his mother Helen home-schooled him for a year. As a result, he skipped from kindergarten to second grade. Disch's first formal education was at Catholic schools; which is evidenced in some of his works which contain scathing criticisms of the Catholic Church. The family moved in 1953 to the Twin Cities in Minnesota, rejoining both pairs of grandparents. In Minneapolis public schools, Disch discovered his long-term loves of science fiction, drama, and poetry. He describes poetry as his stepping-stone to the literary world. A teacher, Jeannette Cochran, assigned 100 lines of poetry to be memorized and Disch wound up memorizing ten times as much[7] His early fascination continued to influence his work with poetic form and the direction of his criticism.
Posted by Bob Wallace, who heard there were attempts to kick him out of his apartment.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Outlander movie clip
Well here's another Retro Sci Fi/ Horror film that's being released in the next few weeks. April 24 in England.
Outlander!
It's about some huge killer alien that lands on earth during the Viking days. So there is sure to be a lot of fighting. Yay!
More about this movieposted by Tom Novak, who learned from Ernest Borgnine how to yell Ooooooodin! and leap into a pit of wolves.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Monday, April 06, 2009
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Friday, April 03, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Philip Jose Farmer, RIP (1918-2009)
Posted by Wally Conger, who appreciates everything about Phil Farmer, particularly his homages to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Conan Doyle.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Sunday, January 25, 2009
My new CON shirt
posted by Tom Novak who is a bricklayer not a doctor and was sporting this very t-shirt over the weekend at Chattacon 34. Stylish huh?.
Recent Comments