"Twas the night before Christmas."

In spite of its religious origins, Christmas has ended up as the ultimate fantasy holiday, an odd blend of wish fulfillment, time travel and good will. Santa Claus somehow fills innumerable stockings overnight - but how? Tachyon reindeer? Teleportation technology? Cloning? Sorry, no, none of those options are ever mentioned, which indicates that the tradition of Saint Nick defies scientific explanation. NORAD's annual announcements about Santa's progress around the globe just seem wrong, somehow - one would expect that Kris Kringle's exploits are taking place on a plane removed from that of radar and tracking satellites.

The holiday season occupies an interesting role in the SF/fantasy canon, with several prominent examples to demonstrate the extremes. An often overlooked (or miscategorized) example is Dicken's A Christmas Carol, a ghost story mixed with time travel that sets the standard for the concept, as witnessed by the countless adaptations and reworkings of the character of Scrooge and his Christmas Eve experience. Doctor Who pays tribute to Dickens' contribution in the episode "The Unquiet Dead", which coincidentally takes place on Christmas Eve, 1869. And, given C. S. Lewis' almost militant Christianity, it's always surprised me a little that Father Christmas makes an appearance in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, although to be fair the history of the original Saint Nicholas is a deeply Christian one.

The oddest entry in the canon would have to be Harlan Ellison's short story, "Santa Claus versus S.P.I.D.E.R", which portrays Santa Claus as a James Bond-influenced superspy whose red suit makes him into a walking armoury. The second oddest may be Clive Barker's "The Yattering and Jack", wherein a demon reanimates the Christmas turkey as it sizzles in the oven. (Anyone planning to cook a turkey tomorrow, imagine if the damn thing battered its way out of the oven and attacked you.) H. P. Lovecraft's "The Festival", a quietly horrifying description of "traditional" holiday celebrations, runs a close third.

Terry Pratchett gives us one of the best long-form tributes to the season in Hogfather, which deals with the Discworld version of Santa Claus. It's easy to take Pratchett's pork-dispensing character as a simple parody, but, as with all of Pratchett's creations, the underlying elements that he references provide a fascinating perspective on the evolution of mythic figures.

However, when I started this posting, one work came immediately to mind as the most memorable seasonal piece: Arthur C. Clarke's short story, "The Star", an uncharacteristically somber piece for Clarke. A Jesuit scientist, part of an expedition to the Phoenix Nebula, discovers that the supernova which produced the nebula destroyed a civilization not unlike our own. His other discovery shakes his faith:

There can be no reasonal doubt: the ancient mystery is solved at last. Yet, oh God, there were so many stars you could have used. What was the need to give these people to the fire, that the symbol of their passing might shine above Bethlehem?

- Sid

Three thousand tubes of what?

I'm currently reading Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Space, written in 1947 and set in 1978, which describes a first mission to the Moon. Clarke points out in his introduction to the 1977 reprinting of the novel that, "On July 20, 1969, all the countless science-fiction stories of the first landing on the Moon become frozen in time, like flies in amber. We can look back on them now with a new perspective...for we know how it was really done and can judge the accuracy of the prediction."

Clarke's description of the mission varies considerably from the final result, but not so much that the novel has the anachronistic feel of Jules Verne or H.G. Wells. (Actually, I find that Wells holds up much better than Verne over time, but that's another topic.) However, the part that really jumped out at me, sixty years in Clarke's future, was the following conversation after a tour of the ship's cockpit:

"It's a bit overwhelming, but not so very much worse than a transcontinental jet's cockpit."

"It is if you know what goes on behind all those panels," said Matthews grimly. "Arnold Clinton - that's the electronics king - once told me that there are three thousand tubes in the computing and control circuits alone. And there must be a good many hundreds on the communications side."

Three thousand vacuum tubes? I almost laughed out loud - relying on a system like that to go to the Moon would be like having someone say that a battleship would only be able to sail if none of the light bulbs on board burned out. Now, admittedly, when Clarke was writing the book, state-of-the-art computing was represented by ENIAC, which had close to 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighed 27 tons. The next time that you have a problem with your computer, remember the gentleman in the image at the left of this paragraph, who is troubleshooting a problem in ENIAC by looking for a dead tube - see, Vista's not that bad after all, is it.

Coincidentally, the needs of the Apollo program for a more reliable system for use in the Apollo Guidance Computer led to concentrated research into the development of the integrated circuitry that replaced the vacuum tube and which is now used in virtually every piece of electronics in existence. Sadly, the AGC crashed five times - only in the computer sense, fortunately - during the landing approach to the Moon by the Eagle module.

- Sid

"I suppose I'd rather die as a hero than as a meal."

Torrell: Well, I could kill you. But you strike me as the type of man who, despite being weak and cowardly on the outside, harbours a strength of character he doesn't even know he has.

Dr. Rodney McKay: I'm sorry - was there a compliment in there?

Living in Vancouver is a bit of an SF geek's dream, because so many science fiction series have been shot in and around the area. X-Files, Highlander, Andromeda, Smallville, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Flash Gordon - one could probably create one of those strange drinking games that would have people take a drink every time they identify a piece of local scenery in an episode.

If someone is playing that game, then the Stargate franchise has probably led to a few advanced cases of alcoholism, given the amount of location shooting that they've done here. Stargate Atlantis pays tribute to its real location by the inclusion of a unique character, that of Rodney McKay, the ascerbic Canadian scientist, brilliantly performed by Canadian actor David Hewlett.

McKay was originally introduced as a foil for Samantha Carter in Stargate SG-1, acting as someone who was (in theory) as smart as her and as such was able to suggest alternatives, or more often to shoot holes in her solutions. Sadly, he was usually proven wrong. In addition, he had a sort of smarmy sexual interest in Carter, which was completely unreciprocated.

However, as the resident genius on the Atlantis mission, the character of McKay has developed in a fashion unique to television science fiction characters of his stamp: he has, however slowly and reluctantly, become a hero. It is as if Lost in Space's Dr. Smith had developed into the saviour of the Robinson expedition instead of regressing from the cold saboteur of the first episode into a mincing, shrieking coward that seemed to be the cause of every problem that the crew faced.

I admire the writers' decision to develop McKay's character in the fashion that they have. TV science fiction is packed with heroic figures, but their heroics are a given: really, how much of a surprise is it to have the starship captain of your choice save the day? As a group, they're accomplished figures: scientists and diplomats, lovers and warriors, blessed with audacity, brilliance, cunning and determination.

McKay, on the other hand, is frightened and horrified by the situations in which he finds himself, without the training or the inclination to seize the moment and save the day. Nonetheless, he does just that on more than one occasion, and his reluctant heroics are accompanied by the sort of reactions that any ordinary person would likely have under those circumstances: he sweats, he hyperventilates, he stammers, and even passes out in one episode.

The only criticism I have of the manner in which McKay has been developed is that, after all that he's been through, you'd expect that he'd be getting a little bit more used to it by now! That aside, full points to the Atlantis writers, and I look forward to seeing how the new Rodney's relationship with Samantha Carter will develop now that she's been put in command of the Atlantis mission.

- Sid