A cover IS nice. (With apologies to Mary Poppins Returns)

Karli and I are spending the weekend in Victoria, and as part of our visit, we did a little shopping at Munro's, Victoria's excellent independent bookstore.  As I stood looking thoughtfully at the shelves in the science fiction section, I realized that in spite of conventional wisdom, I first judge a book by its cover.

As someone who works in the graphics industry, I appreciate a well-conceived book design, but outside of that, I have all kinds of memories and associations that go with particular books, which is one of the reasons that when I buy a replacement copy, I try to get the same edition - or at least, the same cover.*  As an example, I'm probably on my third copy of the 1965 Pyramid publication of E. E. Smith's Second Stage Lensmen and its unique Jack Gaughan cover artwork.  It's the version that my mother owned, and the one that I read first.

I feel that there's a time in the 60s and 70s when almost everything had a cover by either Jack Gaughan or Kelly Freas**, and a period in the 1970s and early 80s when almost everything had a cover by Michael Whelan - other times, other customs, as the Romans said. (I remember when Whelan generously withdrew his name from further consideration at the Hugos after winning 15 awards - 13 as best professional artist - and a SuperHugo at the 50th Annual Worldcon in 1992 for being the best artist in the last 50 years.)

My Edgar Rice Burroughs collection is all over the map in terms of cover art: green Martians by Gino D'Achille and Michael Whelan for the Mars books, the classic Roy Krenkel Jr. covers from the early 60s for the Venus series, Neal Adams' skillfully muscular take on Tarzan, and a couple of  Frazetta covers for Pellucidar - pretty much a who's who of fantasy art.  It's a little tempting to get some kind of consistent set of editions, but I bought all these books at different times in my life, and the covers all bring back different memories of those times.That being said, I'm a little tempted by the Michael Kaluta covers that I found while researching this posting, they have a great steampunk/art nouveau feel to them that's ideally suited to John Carter's adventures on Barsoom.

Burroughs, by Krenkel, Whelan, and Kaluta.

This posting could easily become a book on its own, there are so many memorable artists: Frank Frazetta's Conans, Josh Kirby's great work on Terry Pratchett's Discworld paperbacks, the Pauline Baynes illustrations that perfectly visualized Narnia and its inhabitants, the incredible mixed bag of Ace Double covers, and so on and so on and so on.

 

As with fans of vinyl and classic album artwork, I mourn the possible end of science fiction and fantasy cover art due to the switch to digital editions. I know that there will still be artwork - the cover artwork by Michael Gauss for the ebook version of my friend Annie's prequel novel, Children of Lightning, is brilliant - but somehow the impact of a 200 pixel thumbnail just isn't the same.

 - Sid

* I've never understood the surprisingly common habit of doing something strange with cover art in later editions of novels - borders, framing, and other little tricks that minimize the actual art.

** This mockup is a deliberate homage to Kelly Freas and his characteristic affection for red shadows on faces.
 

"Now boarding..."

I'm going to Mars.

Okay, not actually me, that would be a bit of a miracle, but my name is.

NASA has introduced a program that allows people to submit their names for the upcoming Mars 2020 mission.  The submissions* will be etched onto a microchip that will be on the Mars 2020 rover when it lands on Mars.

It's a fun idea, and I applaud NASA for the insight displayed in creating this opportunity.

For those of us who will never leave the planet, never have an asteroid or a crater named after them, and never set foot on another world, it's a cool little piece of personal involvement in space exploration.

However, I was saddened to see that I'd missed a couple of other opportunities to participate.  Given the distances involved, I feel that it's going to take a lot more than 300 million NASA frequent flyer points to even get off the ground, let alone qualify for a seat upgrade.

- Sid

* The submitted names are vetted before addition to the list, presumably to avoid Bart Simpson sneaking I.P. Freely or Mike Rotch onto the chip.

The Final Frontier.

“I wanted to do a Western. Everybody said, ‘You can’t do a Western; Westerns are dead; nobody will do a Western’. I remember thinking it was weird that this genre that had endured for so long was just gone. But then I woke up and came to the conclusion – obviously after other people – that it was actually alive and well, but in outer space. I wanted to make a film about the frontier. Not the wonder of it or the glamour of it: I wanted to do something about Dodge City and how hard life was." 

Peter Hyams on Outland

Every now and then, the Space Channel loses sight of its mandate.  I just can't get it to make sense - in my mind, if you're a science fiction and fantasy specialty channel, you show science fiction and fantasy content.

In spite of this obvious corollary, they have a well-established habit of showing movies that have NOTHING to do with science fiction or fantasy: Jaws, The A Team, Dead Calm, Treasure Island, and so on.  This actually puzzles me quite a bit - is it because of budgetary reasons or some kind of unfortunate contract for package purchasing of programming?  It's certainly not lack of more appropriate content existing.

The most recent example of this odd predilection is their showing of The Magnificent Seven, in the form of the 2016 remake of the classic 1960 western, which was in turn based on the 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai.  The 2016 version has a good cast and does an acceptable job of reworking the original, but with the best will in the world, it's certainly not science fiction.

 

What makes this an even stranger programming decision is the fact that there actually is a science fiction remake of the 1960s version:  the 1980 cult classic Battle Beyond the Stars, produced by Roger Corman, the king of B-movies.  Admittedly, calling Battle Beyond the Stars a B-movie is generous, it's probably a C+ at best, or maybe even a D, but it has the minor cachet of featuring Robert Vaughn, one of the actors from the original western version, playing essentially the same role as 20 years earlier.

The idea of remaking westerns as science fiction films is not as odd as it sounds.  It's easy to see the parallels between the Wild West and the colonization of outer space:  an unexplored frontier full of unknown dangers and potential riches, plagued by extended travel times, limited communications, enforced isolation and, in some situations, the perils of an indifference to civilized laws and strictures in the interests of money.

One of the best examples of this comparison would have to be Outland, a deliberate reimagining of High Noon, the classic 1952 Gary Cooper film.*  Outland, a 1981 release from writer/director Peter Hyams, features Sean Connery as Federal District Marshal William T. O'Niel**, who is charged with keeping the peace on an isolated mining colony on Io, Jupiter's fifth moon.  As in High Noon, O'Niel is abandoned by friends, family and colleagues and left to fight on his own when a corrupt mining administrator sends for hired killers to eliminate him.

Joss Whedon's space opera series Firefly owes a similar debt to the past - part of his inspiration for the concept came from John Ford's 1939 movie Stagecoach and its ensemble cast, as well as the situation facing Confederate soldiers following their loss in the United States Civil War.

All that aside, if they just had to show something with a Western feel to it for some reason, Space could have shown Westworld, this doesn't have to be complicated. Or Cowboys versus Aliens. Or, if they were really desperate, Wild Wild West.

Okay, I was bluffing - if Wild Wild West is my only other choice, Magnificent Seven it is. After all, have you ever noticed how much the exploration of the West is like the colonization of outer space...?

- Sid

* And the film's gritty art direction is heavily influenced by Alien, to the point where people sometimes think that the two movies are somehow in the same timeline.

** Or O'Neil, the name tag on his uniform actually changes from shot to shot.