Star Wars, Star Trek and other Sci-Fi

[Graham1973]

Tim White (1952 - 2020) was one of the select artists who did covers for the novels of Terry Pratchett....

Attached is a scan of the pre-Discworld cover to 'The Dark Side of the Sun' and a cleaned up version.

 

[Graham1973]

And an unusual image by John Berkey, who much more often does spacecraft rather than humanoid figures...

 

[Orionblamblam]

Kathleen Kennedy has reportedly had her contracted extended by Lucasfilm for a further three years.

https://www.cbr.com/kathleen-kennedy-contract-extends-lucasfilm/

That's a relief. With my current financial situation, I thought I might have to worry about the added expense of going to the theater to see Star Wars movies. But that's a three-year extension on a lack of Star Wars movies worth seeing.

 

[sferrin]

Kathleen Kennedy has reportedly had her contracted extended by Lucasfilm for a further three years.

https://www.cbr.com/kathleen-kennedy-contract-extends-lucasfilm/

That's a relief. With my current financial situation, I thought I might have to worry about the added expense of going to the theater to see Star Wars movies. But that's a three-year extension on a lack of Star Wars movies worth seeing.

All the woke nonsense has certainly saved me money in the realm of entertainment.

 

[Graham1973]

A Jim Burns triptych for Jack Vance's Anome Trilogy

 

[Justo Miranda]

Ed Emshwiller​

​

 

[Justo Miranda]

Ed Emshwiller-2​

 

[Graham1973]

Peter Elson and a possible 'Raise the Titanic' cover...

 

[Graham1973]

Paul Lehr's Opus 1...

 

[edwest4]

And an unusual image by John Berkey, who much more often does spacecraft rather than humanoid figures...

In my opinion, one of the most compelling covers for a science fiction book. Add the title and it draws like a magnet

 

[uk 75]

For Brits of my age this artist was a weekly feast of future imagery

Mike Noble (1930-2018)

Mike Noble, one of the last surviving greats from the days of painted photogravure comics, died on Thursday, 15 November, aged 88. Bill St...

bearalley.blogspot.com

 

[uk 75]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Justo Miranda]

For Brits of my age this artist was a weekly feast of future imagery

Mike Noble (1930-2018)

Mike Noble, one of the last surviving greats from the days of painted photogravure comics, died on Thursday, 15 November, aged 88. Bill St...

bearalley.blogspot.com

 

[Justo Miranda]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Graham1973]

John Berkey's poster for the first (of two) films based off the works of Clive Cussler...

 

[edwest4]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Forbidden Planet. And before Leslie Nielsen made somewhat dumb comedies. That movie was incredible. The story was truly incredible.

 

[jeffb]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Forbidden Planet. And before Leslie Nielsen made somewhat dumb comedies. That movie was incredible. The story was truly incredible.

It's a reworking of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" so, good bones as they say.

Here's some Leslie Nielsen in "Police Squad!" to educate your palate.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_3rJqHWYjs&ab_channel=AshBowie

 

[Justo Miranda]

Shakespeare

 

[edwest4]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Forbidden Planet. And before Leslie Nielsen made somewhat dumb comedies. That movie was incredible. The story was truly incredible.

It's a reworking of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" so, good bones as they say.

Here's some Leslie Nielsen in "Police Squad!" to educate your palate.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyXxQ48XJY&ab_channel=neonpike

Well, I doubt Shakespeare considered energy weapons, interstellar travel, a robot, a highly advanced civilization and the spaceship, among other things.

As a working book editor, I doubt looking for historical comparisons would have been my first reaction on reading the manuscript.

 

[starviking]

By the way would I be right in thinking that some of the artists whose works from the seventies and eighties have been featured up thread have now passed away or are some still around?

I heard Tim White passed away a few years ago, but as far as I know the rest of the greats from the 70s and 80s are still around.

And foolish me, I forgot to mention Peter Elson! RIP

 

[1635yankee]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Forbidden Planet. And before Leslie Nielsen made somewhat dumb comedies. That movie was incredible. The story was truly incredible.

It's a reworking of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" so, good bones as they say.

Here's some Leslie Nielsen in "Police Squad!" to educate your palate.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyXxQ48XJY&ab_channel=neonpike

Well, I doubt Shakespeare considered energy weapons, interstellar travel, a robot, a highly advanced civilization and the spaceship, among other things.

As a working book editor, I doubt looking for historical comparisons would have been my first reaction on reading the manuscript

There are only so many basic plot lines out there.

The Tempest: Prospero, exiled to a deserted island with his daughter, Miranda. A useful (possibly enslaved) being, Ariel, helps Prospero with many things. Caliban, an enslaved (possibly monstrous) being kills visitors from a shipwreck that brings men to the island.
Forbidden Planet: Dr Morbius and his daughter, Altaira Morbius, are marooned on a deserted planet. A useful robot helps Dr Morbius with many things. A mysterious monster kills visitors from a ship that brings men to the planet.

I'm an engineer, not an English teacher, and I caught those parallels. Similarly, West Side Story is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, Clueless is a retelling of Emma, and

 

[Rhinocrates]

By the way would I be right in thinking that some of the artists whose works from the seventies and eighties have been featured up thread have now passed away or are some still around?

I heard Tim White passed away a few years ago, but as far as I know the rest of the greats from the 70s and 80s are still around.

And foolish me, I forgot to mention Peter Elson! RIP

Jim Burns is still alive and well, painting, cooking, drinking wine, and welcoming new grandchildren.

 

[Rhinocrates]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Damn it, I'm compulsively trying to imagine it in the style of Airplane! Robbie as that guy in the control tower cracking jokes, Morbius saying 'I am serious, and don't call me Shirley.'

 

[Graham1973]

A stunning Michael Whelan image of war machines that cries out for animation...

 

[sferrin]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

First time I saw that (only a couple years ago) it blew my mind how far ahead of it's time it was. When I think "science fiction" it's stuff like that: things you haven't seen before, far removed from the everyday. What passes for "science fiction" these days, modern tech with the dials turned up a bit, is mostly crap IMO.

 

[edwest4]

Everything you need in a Sci Fi film and Leslie Nielsen!

Forbidden Planet - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Forbidden Planet. And before Leslie Nielsen made somewhat dumb comedies. That movie was incredible. The story was truly incredible.

It's a reworking of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" so, good bones as they say.

Here's some Leslie Nielsen in "Police Squad!" to educate your palate.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyXxQ48XJY&ab_channel=neonpike

Well, I doubt Shakespeare considered energy weapons, interstellar travel, a robot, a highly advanced civilization and the spaceship, among other things.

As a working book editor, I doubt looking for historical comparisons would have been my first reaction on reading the manuscript

There are only so many basic plot lines out there.

The Tempest: Prospero, exiled to a deserted island with his daughter, Miranda. A useful (possibly enslaved) being, Ariel, helps Prospero with many things. Caliban, an enslaved (possibly monstrous) being kills visitors from a shipwreck that brings men to the island.
Forbidden Planet: Dr Morbius and his daughter, Altaira Morbius, are marooned on a deserted planet. A useful robot helps Dr Morbius with many things. A mysterious monster kills visitors from a ship that brings men to the planet.

I'm an engineer, not an English teacher, and I caught those parallels. Similarly, West Side Story is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, Clueless is a retelling of Emma, and

Respectfully - So What? Too many writers think that "I could just borrow this or that and produce a bestseller." I'm not an engineer but I can tell you with certainty that writing books or movies (fiction) is rocket science.

 

[Justo Miranda]

Spanish pulp covers
Spaceships, rayguns, bulging-eyed monsters and green blood!

 

[Justo Miranda]

Post-2

 

[Justo Miranda]

Post-3

 

[Justo Miranda]

Post-4

 

[Orionblamblam]

I'm not an engineer but I can tell you with certainty that writing books or movies (fiction) is rocket science.

Hardly. "Rocket science" requires years of study and work, and like all STEM endeavors, while there isn't always a *right* answer, there are infinite *wrong* answers. Writing a book? Ummm... the "Twilight" series, "50 Shades of Gray," even "Harry Potter" show that you don't need to have gone to a university for years to get the basic training to simply begin to understand your field. Steven King has written a library's full of stuff, and his training was to become a teacher, not an author. He started writing just cuz. I've read interviews where he went to see the movie "Cujo" just to find out what the plot was because he was so drunk when he wrote the book that he didn't remember it. I can assure you that drunk rocket science ain't a thing. Literature is full of authors drunk or stoned off their asses. Rocket science, and aerospace science and engineering in general, are *not* full of drunks and addicts whacked out of their gourds while on the job. Because "mind altering" is an immediate track to an infinity of "wrong" in STEM.

I have written a handful of novels myself. Writing is *easy.* Getting published is hard, but one can self-publish and if one is good, lucky and good at marketing, you can be successful in a way no rocket scientist ever could be.

 

[edwest4]

See the book, On Writing by Stephen King.

STEM, the creation of Leftist/Socialist/Communist meddlers.

"Getting published is hard..." Why would anyone think that? Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish anything. On a well-known print on demand site, I was allowed to view several pages of a fantasy novel. All of it contained the most common beginner mistakes. On an associated forum, the author wrote: "Why isn't my book selling?" I didn't have the heart to tell him.

A friend of mine was a script editor at a major Hollywood studio. We compared notes and out of 100 manuscripts, perhaps .05% were worth consideration.

Some think that writing only consists of putting one word in front of the other.

 

[Orionblamblam]

See the book, On Writing by Stephen King.

Did he write that before or after he'd made millions of dollars by drunkenly putting one word in front of the other?

STEM, the creation of Leftist/Socialist/Communist meddlers.

Ummm...

"Getting published is hard..." Why would anyone think that? Thanks to the internet, anyone can publish anything.

That's not "getting published." I have been "self publishing" my aerospace stuff since the 1990's, but "SR-71" was the first time that I was actually published in a meaningful sense. And still, rocket science is harder. Why? Because while "SR-71" is the pinnacle of human literary achievement, every word being not only 100% accurate but also a lyrical masterpiece, the fact remains that in theory it could be a pack of inaccuracies, slepping errors and outright lies... and the world would get along just fine. If it was an actual scientific or engineering effort and was that level of inaccurate, people could *die.* Science and engineering are vastly harder than art because they *have* *to* *be.* A civil engineering equivalent of a Picasso or Pollack would collapse into a heap of rubble, the interstitials filled with a red pasty jam what used to be office workers and tourists.

A friend of mine was a script editor at a major Hollywood studio. We compared notes and out of 100 manuscripts, perhaps .05% were worth consideration.

And yet Star Trek Discovery gets a season 4. Manifestly, obvious, objectively crappy and awful can score you big, big paychecks if you check the right boxes.

Some think that writing only consists of putting one word in front of the other.

That's pretty much the definition of it, yes.
[/QUOTE]

 

[edwest4]

Not seen on Monty Python:

The Ministry of Professional Writers

[Man in charge] Good day, sir. What can I help you with?

[Some guy] I just popped in to say all of this is a lot of rubbish.

{Mic} I beg your pardon.

[Sg] You heard me. A lot of rubbish is all this is. Save the common man a few coppers and close up shop I say.

[Mic] What prompted you to develop your opinion?

{Sg] My uncle had a guy who swept out the stables for 'em. Wrote a novel in his spare time. Anyone can do it.

[Mic] I assure you, my good man, that the ministry was established by professionals for the benefit of those who met certain standards.

[Sg] And what standards would those be? I'm tellin' you, anyone can do it.

[Mic] Based on years of personal experience, along with the experience of our members, I assure you that quality writing is a bit harder than that.

[Sg} Well then. How do you explain Star Trek: Discovery?

[Mic] That the Americans have decided to lower their standards has no bearing on what happens on this side of the pond. Good day sir.

 

[Orionblamblam]

The problem with that is that on this side of the pond the Department of Professional Writers is a division of the Department of Officially Approved Professional Art which has spent many millions to fund Piss Christ and Drag Queen Story Hour and Throw Paint At A Wall And Call It Street Art and Mostly Peaceful Pyrotechnic Civic Improvements. They gave us "Cats" and STD and STP and Terminator Dark Fate and Ghostbusters 2016 and vast steaming piles of utter rubbish while telling us that we need to toss out Huck Finn and Robert Heinlein. So... yeah. The Ministry Of Professional Writers can suck it, because they've not done any better for the Brits if the BBC is anything to go by. The way The Ministry sent it's agents to turn Doctor Who into Doctor Meh, turning what was once a source of pride for British people into a source of shame, something best left forgotten, is a travesty.

On that note: I'm not a big Doctor Who fan, and what fan-ness I had was wiped out years ago. But I have a suggestion on how the show can go forward successfully. This is apparently the last season with Jodie Whtitaker as the Doctor, a run that has been disastrous to the IP and wholly destructive to the whole canon. Here's how to fix it: Doctor Jodie has some random adventure, but halfway through things start going off the rails. The story becomes completely erratic and schizophrenic, as if reality is breaking apart around her. And at last, the universe begins to shatter, the screen goes static and white - then black and silent for a few seconds. Then the sound of breathing slowly returns and the screen slowly begins to lighten; the camera pulls back, initially on a single pupil, then an eye, then a pair of eyes, and finally revealing the face of Peter Capaldi. He's strapped to some sort of chair, plugs attached to his head, a large machine wrapped around him. You can hear the sound of cursing; as the camera pulls back, you see The Master running around trying to fix the machine, which is smoking and sparking. It turns out that Doctor Capaldi had been captured and was being tortured with a scenario being implanted directly into his brain, a scenario where his entire history was being re-written with complete garbage. The Master's evil idea was to destroy Doctor Who from within by trashing his legacy and muddling his backstory. Fortunately it failed and now things can get back on track.

 

[Justo Miranda]

In the 1963 film "The Price”, Nobel laureate Andrew Craig admits to journalists that none of his best novels sold well enough for the general public to know his name.

 

[edwest4]

I spent two years in college in an attempt to learn how to draw and paint. The first college made promises they did not keep so I transferred to a University. My advanced painting class lasted for 4 hours. The instructor did a head count at the start, left, and would pop in on occasion to see how we were doing.

I quickly learned that a cult had taken over the school, the local art museum and the local artists' group. If it made no sense at all, it was art. A spiral of duct tape on the floor, the guy next to me just running his brush in random directions across the canvas, then turning it on its side to do more. I said: "Pardon me. How do you know when you're done?" He told me a story about when he was just a lad and being surrounded by abstract art at home. Apparently, it was contagious.

So, I quit since what I wanted to do was "representational art" which was compared to prostitution. And work that only the artist understood, was heavily promoted.

 

[Orionblamblam]

If it made no sense at all, it was art. A spiral of duct tape on the floor, the guy next to me just running his brush in random directions across the canvas, then turning it on its side to do more.

And that's exactly how science and engineering *doesn't* work. And as much as the "other ways of knowing" tards try to infect engineering with that nonsense, they, and those dumb or deluded enough to hire such "engineers," will continue to find that the universe and its laws don't give a shit about feelings and intentions, only whether your engineering adheres to actual physics.

https://imgur.com/rFr7xF8

View: https://i.imgur.com/rFr7xF8.mp4


Facts don't care about your feelings in the world of science and engineering. In engineering, you can actually be *wrong* in a way you can't BS your way through the way you can in art.

 

[sferrin]

I'm not an engineer but I can tell you with certainty that writing books or movies (fiction) is rocket science.

Hardly. "Rocket science" requires years of study and work, and like all STEM endeavors, while there isn't always a *right* answer, there are infinite *wrong* answers. Writing a book? Ummm... the "Twilight" series, "50 Shades of Gray," even "Harry Potter" show that you don't need to have gone to a university for years to get the basic training to simply begin to understand your field. Steven King has written a library's full of stuff, and his training was to become a teacher, not an author. He started writing just cuz. I've read interviews where he went to see the movie "Cujo" just to find out what the plot was because he was so drunk when he wrote the book that he didn't remember it. I can assure you that drunk rocket science ain't a thing. Literature is full of authors drunk or stoned off their asses. Rocket science, and aerospace science and engineering in general, are *not* full of drunks and addicts whacked out of their gourds while on the job. Because "mind altering" is an immediate track to an infinity of "wrong" in STEM.

I have written a handful of novels myself. Writing is *easy.* Getting published is hard, but one can self-publish and if one is good, lucky and good at marketing, you can be successful in a way no rocket scientist ever could be.

It's hilarious that anybody would even try to argue this. Naked Lunch was written while the author was higher than a kite. No engineer, who wanted to stay employed (and/or out of potential prison) would try that.

 

[edwest4]

I'm not an engineer but I can tell you with certainty that writing books or movies (fiction) is rocket science.

Hardly. "Rocket science" requires years of study and work, and like all STEM endeavors, while there isn't always a *right* answer, there are infinite *wrong* answers. Writing a book? Ummm... the "Twilight" series, "50 Shades of Gray," even "Harry Potter" show that you don't need to have gone to a university for years to get the basic training to simply begin to understand your field. Steven King has written a library's full of stuff, and his training was to become a teacher, not an author. He started writing just cuz. I've read interviews where he went to see the movie "Cujo" just to find out what the plot was because he was so drunk when he wrote the book that he didn't remember it. I can assure you that drunk rocket science ain't a thing. Literature is full of authors drunk or stoned off their asses. Rocket science, and aerospace science and engineering in general, are *not* full of drunks and addicts whacked out of their gourds while on the job. Because "mind altering" is an immediate track to an infinity of "wrong" in STEM.

I have written a handful of novels myself. Writing is *easy.* Getting published is hard, but one can self-publish and if one is good, lucky and good at marketing, you can be successful in a way no rocket scientist ever could be.

It's hilarious that anybody would even try to argue this. Naked Lunch was written while the author was higher than a kite. No engineer, who wanted to stay employed (and/or out of potential prison) would try that.

Apparently, there is a "preferred list" of authors who wrote while stoned/high. And an "admiration society" here. None of the authors I know and have known did that. So, yawn.

My reference to "rocket science" alludes to the complexity of writing, so the term is used only in that sense. I don't know how many times I've spoken to beginning writers on the phone. Among the issues: the pacing is off, the tone, interlayering of story elements, and character development, among other issues. Spelling and grammar both come in at a distant 10th in importance. Amateurs are amateurs.