Three Young Rats and bugs in fancy footwear.

Hi Carolyn,

I'm back after a brief involuntary  exile to the land that wifi forgot. I guess I'm halfway to becoming inextricably tethered to the digital realm ( a la The Matrix !?), since I did feel pointedly out of touch, in one sense. If I hadn't been able to hoof it over to a city park a few blocks away where there's public  wifi, to peck out the odd terse message, I might even have gone into some sort of connectivity withdrawal  or gotten the digital delirium tremens  or something.

 

 

We did learn from this experience that the big cable companies are just as insidious, implacable and cavalier here in Mexico as they are where you and I live. The ISP here is "Cablemas" and it might as well be Time-Warner or Bell or Rogers because the m.o. is the same.  Communication is a bit more interesting because of the language thing, though. "Cablemas", when spoken by the locals is so abrupt that it sounds like a  turkey gobble rather than an actual name.


 Fortunately there were lots of things to take up the slack. Some of which I'll get to in this entry and the next blog or two.






First and foremost, being semi-incommunicado did make it even easier to catch up on reading that  got overlooked or knocked  aside in the everyday state of affairs. The five part Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy got polished off plus more of David Halberstam's thoroughly engrossing non-fiction - this time looking at the classic rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Socks in the forties and fifties and an in-transit look at the emerging realities of the post-cold-war era in international relations.

Plus a number of documentary items squirrelled away on my tablet could be, and were, consumed. I even went back and revisited a couple of personal movie absolute favorites - Airplane and Airplane II  - ah, the joys of puerility! 
 
 Paramount among these finished up items are the last three novels in Harry Harrison's  Stainless Steel Rat series. I had downloaded these only a few months after Harrison died and just a  couple of months before initially getting involved in this editing and blog scenario at Wormhole Electric  some two plus years ago. I may even have remarked at the time that it might be awhile before  I get to them. Boy, was I not kidding - two years an eleven months worth of " awhile " is what it adds up to.



" If Harry Harrison had only created "Slippery" Jim DiGriz, the roguish hero of the Stainless Steel Rat books, " reviewer Charlie Jane Anders noted on the 109 website at  his passing,  " he would deserve a high place in science fiction history. But he also wrote dozens of other novels, including the hilarious Bill the Galactic Hero saga, the proto-Steampunk classic A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!, and the novel that became the movie Soylent Green, Make Room! Make Room!."


Considering where they fit into the Stainless Steel Rat chronology ( i.e right at the beginning ) it was somewhat of a surprise to see them appear after seven previous novels had been published ( and translated into no less than 23 languages ), and the character was well and indelibly established.



Harrison addresses this right off in the intro:

" .... you will be introduced to James di-Griz, sometimes called Slippery Jim, as a young man, perhaps even a callow youth, because I realized, as the number of these books grew, that I was intrigued as to where this brash and very successful character had come from. How had he grown up among peaceful, law-abiding citizens and become, what many might call, a crook?
     As the author, I thought that I knew. But I wanted these thoughts amplified on paper, then expanded into a novel. After all, if I care, certainly the readers would be concerned as well. They were! They greeted the first prequel with happy cries. "
 " I wanted to flesh out my character," Harrison continues, " to know him a bit

better. Therefore A Stainless Steel Rat is Born ( a title that won a prize from the London Times Literary Supplement readers as the most incredible book title of the year.) And what jolly fun it was to explore my hero's youth. The only problem was that I could not get all the new material into one book.

     So, The Stainless Steel Rat Gets Drafted followed soon after. The draft, a fate that befell me during World War two, filled me with a great deal of empathy for my character. That the future will recreate the past , I do not doubt. Nor that the military, as long as they are in existence, will be stupid, arrogant, bull-headed, wrong-headed, and all the other wholesome adjectives. So Jim has survived birth, survived the army, and is ready to march into his picaresque future.
     Well ...not quite. He still has not gained his complete rattish personality, was

still incomplete in certain ways. What was to be done? Fill in the gap, of course, with The Stainless Steel Rat Sings The Blues. "

" So here you are:," Mr. Harrison concludes, " three novels neatly bound inside a single cover so that, if the weather is bad, this volume will enable you not to leave the house for a week or more. Depending, of course, on how fast you read.


In my case, he was just about right.

I've read about binge watching wherein one gets a complete season of a series and just watches consecutive  episodes in the manner that the name implies. Well, I was binge reading and the time just flew past, it seems. I did leave the house regularly  of course, but each time I locked the front door and left I was sure hoping that things beyond would unfold promptly so that I could get back and return to Slippery Jim's world.



I'm thinking that Harry Harrison could be one of those people who Rush sing about in Tom Sawyer.

No, his mind is not for rent

To any God or government.

Always hopeful yet discontent
He knows changes aren't permanent 


 

Alas, I have not yet finished any more limericks. For some reason writing limericks seems more like a cold weather, in front of the fire, shtick. I have the feeling that even though we have almost two weeks left here it will still be frigid and numbing when we land in Canada again. Hmmmm what rhymes with Canadian, and frozen.

 

 

Whew! I do believe I have spent a big chunk of my space here on Mr. Harrison, so I won't go into my other most enjoyable reading experience thus far. Besides I'm about a chapter or two away from the end still. It's a biography that I've been waiting to tie into and I can certainly say the wait was justified. More on that later.

 

 

 

 

 

On the local front... this weeks bugs of the week are plain beetles in fancy shoes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The black one might just be a bit of teutonic posing or wishful thinking, as those are BMW wheels underpinning that humble bug.

 

 

Speaking of Beatles - with an "a". On our way back from the beach at Progreso we passed a brand new huge entertainment complex on the outskirts of Merida. One of its attractions in early March, before we leave, is Ringo Starr and his All Starr Band. Cheapest tickets, if there are any left ,are close to 200 dollars (U.S.) Taxi plus all of the etceteras could make it into a Donald Trump-ish outing. Besides, I'm afraid seeing a mid-seventies aged Beatle might make me feel strange.  hmmmmm.  I'm torn on this one.


 

 

 

We seem to have left the unseasonably cool Yucatan weather behind finally. One evening when the cold snap was at its peak ( mid to high teens in the evenings ) we actually saw a waiter for one of the outdoor patios sporting a toque and puffy insulated jacket.

Daytime now hits the mid-thirties (Celsius ) and is sticky. The nights are cooler but  stick to the sheets humid as well. That air-conditioning that lay dormant for the first few weeks has been put into action at night lately.  No complaints here however, since a quick check of where we live for the rest of the year immediately readjusts our outlooks.



So, that  be the name of that tune, for the moment. Catch ya later.

 



 

 

Don

 

 

 

All images itemized herein sourced from Google Images

 

Fig. 2 - guide.alibaba.com

Fig. 3 - kulpararsenal.blogspot.com

Fig. 4 - www.goodreads.com

Fig. 5 - www.isfdb.org

Fig. 6 - express.uk.com

Fig. 11 - www.stevelukather.com 

.

5 Million children stand to loose health insurance and the Ins and Outs of Marketing

Good evening everyone,

Don lost his internet service so I'm pitch hitting this week. 

I took the time to peruse the news and I must say I do not understand the Republican Party. They are willing, and they admit it, to let health insurance slip away from 5 million children… That is 5,000,000 children that live here in the United States. If they want to be the party of the future, my recommendation is that they learn how to hear and act on what the majority of the people want instead of taking the word of a few as the truth as to what everyone wants. They are myopic when it comes to doing what is right and it appears they still firmly believe in revenge.  Too bad. 

I realize that five members of the Supreme Court got their jobs due to a Republican president. However, I did not realize that these five members of the Supreme Court still owed the Republican Party for their jobs. I thought once they had the job of Supreme Court Justice, they had it for life and were no longer obligated to the Republican Party; they could make rulings that were right for everyone regardless of race, political party or financial status. If they vote after the upcoming hearing about the Affordable Care Act along party lines, they will be taking away health insurance from up to 10 million people. Instead of helping and supporting, they are aiding and abetting a small number of politicians who, so far, appear to be unconcerned with the majority of the people living and working in the United States.

And what is up with the Democrats? They gave up and became background - afraid to stand up to the Republicans. Why? Who is going to stand up for what is right? And the Republicans are bowing to a few who are making decisions that will affect in a negative way, in the long run, over 10 million people. Now I remember why I quit the Republican Party and why I'm not in any hurry to become a Democrat.

On to other more interesting topics!

I started a class in online marketing this week. One of the questions that I had to investigate in this last lesson was who is my target audience? This has led to a most interesting research into who reads what? And I have to say that the answers are so much different than they were five years ago when we started Wormhole. Five years ago, science fiction fantasy was read by over 10% of the population, particularly the age group between 45 and 65. Those are not the same numbers now. Market share for science fiction fantasy remains 10+%, but the target market has changed. The target market now is young adult. Those good folks between 45 and 65 are claiming that they are reading nonfiction if they are males, and romances and crime/mystery/thriller's if they are women.

I read an interesting blog by Carol Pinchefsky entitled "Why do people not read science fiction? Reading from only one side of the brain." Even though the blog was put out in 2006, she does present some very interesting concepts: the use of the word "science" and the fact that as a society the word science implies school and work, and leads to dull and boring people. She also contends that people are more interested in reading about here and now instead of "future" in places beyond imagining. Another concept that she presents is that "a number of science fiction fans are left-handed..." She also suggests that many people already read science fiction/ fantasy, they just don't call it that. Since Wormhole started out as a science fiction/ fantasy, action adventure publishing company, this news is a little startling.

According to Nielsen Books and Consumer Tracker, science fiction fantasy has a market share of $590 million a year; Religious books come in at $720 million; crime/mystery/thriller at $728 million; and the over-the-top genre is romance/erotica at $1.44 billion a year. So I no longer have any idea who my target market is and what I should be writing!

The one thing that I've discovered is that e-book reading is picking up! It looks like an average of about 40% of the population has read some kind of e-book on an e-reader in the last year. That is up from the 20% of readers reading e-books five years ago.

Does this mean that we are giving up publishing science fiction fantasy? I don't think so. I think we're going to call it something else. Even the term speculative fiction carries some interesting baggage. Right now I'm tending toward publishing "fiction and nonfiction". I think that should cover just about everything that we would want to publish.

 As to our target audience – that's a really good question. I know that some of the stories that we publish are good action adventure military type stories that are very definitely fantasy; Tammy writes absolutely incredible young adult; Colby writes for a more mature male audience with his speculative fiction; Jeff and Ariel write phenomenal fantasy for anyone; currently I am writing more for women over 45.

As we venture into a new website, I'm wondering if our focus should be more on relationship building between author and reader. Or at least that should be one of the key points to the new site. We want to sell books, and maybe one of the ways to do that is to build a better relationship with readers. Everyone keeps talking about the ideal customer, and I think that that's going to depend on who the writer is for that month. This might make marketing individual months a bit more of an adventure, but I think in the long run it will make it easier to market individual writers.

Have a great week everyone,

Carolyn 

All images downloaded from Google Images

Fig 1 – Health care retrieved from  affordable-care-act-timeline.png

eldercareadvice.wordpress.com

Fig 2 -- The Plight of American Politics: Hyper-partisanship | The McDaniel retrieved from www.mcdanielfreepress.com

Fig 3 – SciFi Fantasy flow chart retrieved from lostbetweentheletters.wordpress.com

Fig 4 – SciFi Fantasy diagram retrieved from www.riverdell.org

Fig 5 – Target Audience retrieved from conceptad.co.uk

The Older Things in Life and Camp Nanowrimo

Don,

Time seems to have gotten away from me – I'm sorry it has taken me so long to get back to you. I loved your entry about the iguanas! They have always had such a fierce-some look to them but I know that they are probably very gentle. Your picture of Fast Eddie from one of your previous blogs makes me believe that they are larger in real life than I expected them to be.

You are right about the CGI effects – a lot of my students are learning how to be animators and they are quite literally tied to their keyboards. In many ways it's sad because they are not getting the knowledge that comes from experience. Yes, CGI effects are faster to do, more cost-effective, less stressful, create a more realistic picture... But I believe that a set builder is a builder – they've rubbed elbows with splintered wood and have the smell of sawdust all over them. 

Without that, they are bunch of kids with a lot of experience moving the mouse. Real size and shape escapes them.

I had to laugh at your description of a "scruffy shop" filled with typewriters. I took my granddaughters to one of the museum here in town and they had a display of typewriters, old television sets, remote devices, and telephones. My granddaughters had no idea what any of those things were. They were able to identify a record player because their grandfather has yet to give his up. We even have a collection of vinyl records. We've never played them for the kids because the kids bounce around a lot and we don't want to scratch and skipped the records. Maybe someday they will have an appreciation for the "older things " in life.

I know that when we talk to Zack and Honey, now living in China, in the background we always see the 20 L bottle of water. There was actually one talk that was interrupted by the water delivery service. We have taken to using a pitcher/Brita system here at the house. It sure has taken the aftertaste out of the water. It amazes me that we did not realize that water had an aftertaste until we started using the filtered water. It sure does make the coffee smooth.

Mayan ruins butting up next to a golf course! Fantastic! Your description of it and how the light shines through the doorways and the windows reminded me of lot of Stonehenge. It fascinates me that civilizations halfway around the world from each other will build monuments that accomplish the same thing.

The natural spring fed "cenote" sounded like something I could use at the end of every day. I'm not sure I would like the idea of little fish eating the dead skin on my feet – I guess it would be okay as long as they just stuck to the dead skin. I wonder if it tickles? I've been reading about the Yucatán Peninsula being a scuba diver's haven. I have seen some impressive underwater pictures of the underwater caverns, rivers, and caves. I would love to see them – not sure I could be a scuba diver.

Here at home I've been busy with midterms – getting the tests ready and then grading them. That seems to be the bane of teaching – the grading. But it's done for now. I have a slew of research papers coming in early next week which will keep me busy. I've also been cleared for a pilot program through my remedial class. I'll be working with a gentleman who is completing his doctorate and we will be setting up a weekly one half-hour program that will help students establish organizational techniques and monitor them through the rest of the quarter. The Dean was excited about the program and rubber-stamped it. Now I have to do is get him to pay for the supplies that we need…

I've also been working on the background research for my next nonfiction book: Financing a College Education and Paying It Back. I'm not sure about the title as I have not done a word effectiveness search yet. But I do have some fascinating information that I'm working my way through. I also joined the April Camp Nanowrimo. This is a takeoff on the November Write a Novel challenge. The camp starts in April and I will have one month to write my goal of 20,000 words in 30 days. This is equal to two pages a day. If I've got my research done and my outline is completed, I should be able to do this. I am really looking forward to the challenge.

 If it works, I will join the July Camp Nanowrimo and start writing my new Tracker book. I've been pulling a lot of the old individual Tracker stories that I have and they will become the first chapter of this book. I have one Tracker story that will be the first chapter in the second book. I think I can write this series in two books. I'm not sure I'll join the November Nanowrimo. I think I need to see how I do with the April and July challenges.

So on Tuesday I delivered a 4 pound cast – it was cut off my arm, and my left thumb was free! And it was stiff, the wrist has hurt all week, and I have to say that physical therapy hurt a lot. But the waiting is over, I am back to using my hand – probably more than I should – so I'm trying to temper myself. But it does feel good to be able to wiggle my fingers and touch my thumb to my little finger!

I've been thinking about the limericks and I've decided to work off of the punchline word at the end of the fifth line. Not sure exactly how this is going to work, but I'll give it my best shot.

Using your quote from Mark Twain, this is what I came up with:

Though he was tired,

God worked hard and wired

The creature he called man.

Lacking an attention span,

Man went his own way and got fired.

Is every line supposed to start with a capital? I didn't find anything that suggested punctuation and capitalization. Any ideas?

Have a great week!

Carolyn

all images downloaded from Google images

Fig 1 -- retrieved from Iguanas Eating And Way Of Living Pictures and Images

www.free-extras.com

Fig retrieved from 2 -- Iguana Care Salem MA | All Creatures Veterinary Hospital

www.creaturehealth.com

Fig 3 -- Retrieved from Building Theater Sets: Benches | Andrew Seltz: The Go-To Guy!

www.andrewseltz.com

Fig 4 -- retrieved from  record players | CNN Travel

travel.cnn.com

Fig 5 -- retrieved from  Old Typewriter image - vector clip art online, royalty free ...

www.clker.com

Fig 7 -- retrieved from   National Novel Writing Month - Joel Goldman

www.joelgoldman.com

Beaches, ruins, fishy pedicures, bugs and more....

Hi Carolyn,



The last while has seen some gallivanting about down here on the Yucatan. Merida is about 25 minutes from the coast and the resort town of Progreso. We did the day at the beach thing a few days back. It's pretty garish in spots and some of the beachfront Restaurants actually include a charge for "renting" those thatched umbrella tables and beach loungers. etc.  It's no where near as frenetic as Cancun, however, which is about three hours due east along this same shoreline. Apparently there are a significant number of Canadian ex-pats who call it home either in the winter or full-time. 





If you fly straight out across the water just about where that para-sailer is in the pic above you'll end up in Louisana and the Mississippi Delta  area, which segues nicely into  the  next highlight. A performance we attended at a downtown square in old Merida a bit later in the week by a Zydeco band known as " Mo'mojo ".  Zydeco music is basically music from that part of the southern states. It shows influences from a variety of sources including Spanish/Mexican, delta blues, Cajun, Motown, soul and French. My first exposure to it was on Paul Simon's Graceland  album. It's addictively toe-tapping, good-time stuff  sometimes loosely referred to as " Parti-Gras music"

This accomplished band has been spreading the Zydeco word both in the U.S. and throughout the Western hemisphere for over two decades. It's  fronted by two women, each playing a variety of instruments and both having excellent expressive and sometimes downright overpowering voices. Another good time experience, for sure!



Best outing over our stay thus far has to be our very recent visit to Dzibilchaltun - which is pronounced pretty well as written except the "D" up front isn't fully enunciated but is used to add a little scratchy sound to the "z" it preceeds.

 Took me a couple of days just to get it right.

It's another Mayan ruins site that has been partially excavated and restored to something that partially resembles its former glory. The city itself first appeared in the third century B.C. and really reached it's zenith in the four hundred years before the Spanish Conquistadors came to spoil the party in the 1500s. At that point it covered about 15 square km and the population was close to 50 thousand.

It's located quite literally on the outskirts of Merida and as the city is growing ( just cracked the one-million mark, unofficially ) its spreading out and around this site. As soon as you leave Dzibilchaltun you see a golf club, a polo club, a country club and the beginnings of good old surburban sprawl as the burgeoning middle class move in to new developments being built. 






Entering the site brings you to a long boulevard leading what is known as The Temple of the Seven Dolls. AS well as being the focal point  for the whole area its actually a seasonal calendar, too. At sunup, the sun will shine directly through the central opening at the fall and spring equinoxes and will shine through from the rear door to the front windows on either side when it is the first day of winter or the first day of summer. - Cool!








At the opposite end of this central area is what was once a Mayan sports stadium ( for want of a better term ) It would easily be the size of an NFL stadium today and must have been impressive in its prime. 

 

The Spanish domination of the Mayans took over a century. With the Conquistadors came the Church. This also brought the worst aspects of missionary zealotry including that myopic sense of presumption and conceit that compels one culture to feel it is "saving" another by imposing its spiritual  creed and systematically obliterating that of the conquered race.

 

 

 

 

This, our guide pointed out, is why in the middle of this once impressive stadium one finds the remains of a Christian Chapel  and a corral area for the horses and livestock. The Spanish even took the building blocks of the Mayan temples to various of their deities, that also dotted the area, and used them to construct these invasive structures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I found I had the same feeling while walking this site  as I've had in all of the others we've visited over our last four years here. There is always that kind of spiritual sense that once, long ago, this was an area teeming with life and vitality. Closing your eyes easily brings to life a scene of busy grandeur. It's almost always accompanied by a feeling that ancient eyes are upon us. 

That part however comes more from the presence of the many descendants of Fast Eddie that populate these ruins in abundance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
  

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Easily the coolest part of this whole complex, both architecturally and physically was the natural spring fed "cenote " at the opposite end. It was about the size of an Olympic pool and was shallow except for one end which apparently extended diagonally downward under the rock for approximately 140 ft where it joined one of the underground rivers that underpin most of the Yucatan Peninsula. At the shallow end and around the sides were rock ledges where people sat and put their tootsies into the water so that the small fish could nibble at and strip their feet of the dead skin - a natural pedicure. My better half tells me that it was quite effective, too.

 

 

I did lament earlier that the bugs were not as plentiful as before but I offer the following visual evidence that they are still about both at work and at play. This weeks bugs of the week were both green and both very well-maintained and turned out. The one at the bottom is a delivery vehicle for the paintstore that it sits in front of.

 

( Yes, that's my pinkie in there trying to photobomb all three pics ... )

 

 

Long live das beetle!

 

 

 

Okay, the tour is over for now. Back to more pedestrian pursuits. I have managed to attempt the limerick thing in the midst of all of this cavorting. They are not nearly as easy as they look, especially when there has to be a SF angle.  I can see why Mr. Gerrold had spent six years at them - I wonder if his collection has expanded since then?

 

 

 So far I have one to offer :

 

 

 

My wife caught me cheating on Venus

I swore there was nothing between us

She called her attorney

To court went our journey

Where the judge sent me off to the cleaners

 

 

There will be others, though.

 

Now, to close with some words from one Samuel Clemens.

  BTW, A walk through the children's section one of the bigger bookstores in the centre of the old city yielded evidence that Mr. Twain's influence indeed has crossed The Rio Grande. This one is  a fitting observation dovetailing in well with my earlier pontificating on organized religion.




Man - a creature made at the end of the week's work when God was tired. 





Buenas noches.


Don

All pics courtesy of my erratic photographic efforts.

Gloom and Dune plus Fast Eddie and the tinfoil universe

Hi Carolyn,

Seventy degrees in Denver in January and temperatures here in Merida, next-door to Central America, in the low teens lately, plus persistent rainy days in the off-season - do you suppose that climatically something truly is afoot?



Okay, on to part two of tripping through the pages of the past in Starlog. Some incidental observations off the top. Firstly, it's interesting how quickly |I noticed that there was nary a URL or Facebook, Twitter, Google, Reddit or other social media icon in sight on these pages. Further info etc. was  invariably to be obtained by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope  (SASE) to a given address in snail-mail land and allowing " six to eight weeks for delivery ".  Occasionally there was a 1-800 number available.  Hard to believe we did business that way, isn't it.






I thought of that earlier today as we were making our way across town in the old part of Merida and turned a corner to behold a scruffy shop displaying almost 20 used typewriters and offering repairs. I've seen more than one small hole-in-the-wall type business where an old Remington Rand or Olympia perched where one would expect to find a CPU, keyboard and monitor, and was obviously in daily use. 

A couple of shops further on sat one of the many, dingy "Internet cafes" that dot the retail landscape here in the old city. Like the song says : " Let's do the time-warp again!"



The cover stories for the Feb. 1985 issue dealt with Dune, the movie and V the TV series. At the time this issue went to print the movie was about to be released.  Two "sneak previews" in Los Angeles had been less than encouraging. " Boring" and " confusing" had been the most frequent responses.


  I count myself among the legions of devotees of the print series, who were underwhelmed by the movie adaptation. Perhaps, I figured,  the novel was just so grand and all-encompassing in its sweep that it couldn't have been expected to make the jump to the screen without losing a great deal in translation. Only two of the many reviews I read were positive and both took a serendipity angle - i.e.  the movie, which they saw first, led them back to the books, which they were enthralled by.

 

 

 

 

In his "Lastword" column, editor Howard Zimmerman related that he had suspected possible serious trouble as far back as the previous summer when the magazine had spoke with Frank Herbert about the just completed screenplay.

 

 

Herbert announced, as Zimmerman tells it, " that the script had his unqualified approval  - and that audiences would be leaving theatres trying to figure out what parts of the novel had not been included. The author was positively ecstatic about this development. "

 

 

At that point Zimmerman admitted to having been " really worried"  He felt " that the task of the screenwriter would be to streamline the story, to eliminate some of the plot threads which enrich the book, so that the film would be understandable - and accessible - to non-Dune freaks."

 

 

We know how things eventually played out, alas.

 

 

 

Finally, on the Dune front, we're in somewhat of a  Dune-ish  scenario as we blog. Bottled water is a way of life here and all our drinking, cooking and smaller hygiene related water needs are accomplished with  water that is most conveniently utilized in 20 litre bottles. The neighborhood store  or "bodega"  we use is literally around the corner but is out of water until the end of the week. So we are conserving until then. It reminded me of just how valuable water was in the Dune world and how lives were lost and battles fought for control over it. And in just a small way it makes me realize how utterly spoiled I am, water-wise, having spent my life, thus far, in the bosom of The Great Lakes.

 

 

 

Alrighty then, back to Feb., 1985. The other cover story, from David Hutchinson, looks in depth at the SFX behind V in both its TV miniseries and weekly TV series incarnations. " Big SF/fantasy films, " Hutchinson points out up front, " require millions of dollars and years to produce; however, a TV movie and especially a series does not operate on anything resembling that scale. " The rest of the article looks, in some depth at "...how big-budget effects were being produced... without the big budget."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The key to getting champagne SFX on a gingerale budget is to use people who are the best at what they do. In this case that's Director of Photography David Stipes and Effects supervisor Richard Bennet. The article details a number of the processes used to create the effects including liberal use of stop-motion animation, matte photography, motion control and high speed cameras. Here in 2014 I'm thinking that most of these tactile and mechanical means have been superceded by CGI and accomplished by a phalanx of animators tied to their keyboards.

 

 

 It's kinda cool to read about some of the hands-on processes including building miniature sets to be populated by a python with stage fright and, in one instance, an adventurous iguana known as " Fast Eddie ". Alas, Eddie's best scene ended up on the cutting room floor for the episode in question but he was a pro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who knows, any one of the iguanas I've seen slowly waddling along the roof of an old building hereabouts could be the grandson ( 80 times removed ) of  Fast Eddie from Hollywood.

 

 

 

 

Sometimes the sheer simplicity involved in setting up some parts of a composite shot is surprising. The starfield that appears in the opening montage for each week of the series, wherein the pull back eventually reveals the saucer fleet of the "Visitors" hiding behind the moon  (see article  above ) was created as follows:

 

 

" An eight-foot-high by fifteen-foot-wide frame was covered with heavy duty aluminum foil and painted black. Tiny pinholes were punched through the foil, which was then backed with tracing paper and lit from behind with stage lights. "

 

 

 

 

Today,  I'm thinking, a CG technician at the keyboard would  just open a stock file for a starfield and then populate it with other images. It would look as effective but it wouldn't have been nearly as much fun to create.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I see that you took a wee trip to the Starlog trove at The Internet Archives as well, Carolyn. You may have noticed as you flipped through that your favorite Doctor was well represented on the pages. I saw a couple of full pages and some partial pages offering various item including a Leatherbound edition of "Dr. Who :  A Celebration - Two Decades Through Time and Space", a twenty year commemorative gathering of all things related to the series. It was available for $75.00 ( that's 75 1985 dollars ! ) I'm thinking here in 2015 its appreciated in value significantly.

 

 You may even have this book on your wall at home or at the college!

 

 

 

Okay, I believe it's time to take my leave of Starlog issue #91 But first one more item - I wonder if Tom Selleck includes this image ( from another fairly forgettable flick - Michael Crichton's  " Runaway " ) in his C.V. ?   Don't think it would go too well with a Hawaiian shirt and a Ferrari, though. Plus, I'm thinking Higgins would have  certainly released Zeus and Apollo on him if he appeared at the estate in this quasi- S&M getup.

 

 

 

 

 

 I did enjoy this wee adventure in 1985 but it's time to get back to the future here.

 

 

"Wormhole Digital Publishing" certainly has a presence as well, Carolyn. Oddly enough, when you mentioned a bit back that "Electric Wormhole" had already been taken I googled it and, son of a gun, it presented me with Wormhole Electric as one of my first choices.

 

 

 

I intend to try on a limerick or three in the next little bit. After all, I'm on " Mexican time" now.

 

 

 

Finally, eighteen words from Mr. Twain about, oddly enough, words and more specifically the lack thereof.

 

 

 

 

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

 

 

'Til  next time.

 

 

Don

 

 

 

 

 

All images of Starlog magazine pages sourced at The Internet Archives.

 

All other images sourced from Google Images

 

 

Fig. 1 - www.beliefnet.com

Fig. 3 - www. refinedguy.com

Fig. 4 - www.moongadget.com

Fig. 6 - periodicoensuma.blogspot.com