Month / July 2017

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Falling to Earth Again

Every so often, a contribution gets spiked or falls into limbo, and the text hangs around not being read on the harddrive. I ended up writing about The Man Who Fell to Earth in Solar Flares, “Unimportant Failures: The Fall and Rise of The Man Who Fell to Earth”, Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/Novelisation and “The Man Who Fell To Earth: The Messiah and the Amphicatastrophe”, Heroes, Monsters and Values: Science Fiction Films of the 1970s. I discuss the more famous, 1976, version here.

The Man Who Fell to Earth (David Gerber Productions/MGM Television, 1987)
Adapted from Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

(Dir. Bobby Roth; Sc. Richard Kitter; Pr. Christopher Chulack; Cin. Frederick Moore; P.D. John Mansbridge; SFX. Charles E. Dolan; starring Lewis Smith (John Dory); James Laurenson (Felix Hawthorne); Robert Picardo (Agent Richard Morse); Bruce McGill (Vernon Gage); Wil Wheaton (Billy Milton); Beverly D’Angelo (Eva Milton))

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The Falling Man

Every so often, a contribution gets spiked or falls into limbo, and the text hangs around not being read on the harddrive. I ended up writing about The Man Who Fell to Earth in Solar Flares, “Unimportant Failures: The Fall and Rise of The Man Who Fell to Earth”, Science Fiction Across Media: Adaptation/Novelisation and “The Man Who Fell To Earth: The Messiah and the Amphicatastrophe”, Heroes, Monsters and Values: Science Fiction Films of the 1970s. I review the 1987 TV movie remake here [You’ll have to wait a few hours].

The Man Who Fell To Earth (British Lion, 1976)
Adapted from Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth (1963)

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Sprayting

Sidney Nolan (Ikon, Birmingham, 10 June—3 September 2017)

I usually say to students that there are no stupid questions. But I fear that I asked one on Saturday — but in defence I’d done battle with Google Maps twice and had gone in exactly the wrong direction, in search of coffe, and then the gallery. “How old was he when he painted these?” I asked.

Given this year marks Sidney Nolan’s centenary, it ought to be basic maths. Mid sixties or older. The gallery attendant had suggested that Nolan painted these canvases whilst hanging from a harness — although the catalogue doesn’t mention this. A photo of him shows him with a flat canvas, which would make sense given the way the paint seems to bleed, but I am sceptical about his acrobatics.

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Speech for Arthur C. Clarke Award, 27 July 2017

My speech as Non-voting Chair of JudgesTM at Foyles, 27 July 2017.

I’m not sure that it is smart or wise to say this.

I am feeling haunted.

There are voices in my head and I’m not sure whose head it is.

There is the voice in my head of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, who would have been a hundred in December. Without him, we wouldn’t be here today, and as we look at the short list for the 31st Clarke Award, I wonder what he would say.

Meanwhile we’ll find out at the conference I’m coorganising.
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Approaching Millennium

Tony Kushner, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes:
Part One: Millennium Approaches (National Theatre, live relay, directed by Marriane Elliott)

When I was unclear that I would get to see Angels in America live, I bought a ticket for a live relay of Part One. Part Two I was uncertain about, given it clashes with the Clarke Award — for that matter I was going to have to give up the Thursday night of the Kent Beer Festival to see Part One. But even when I did get to see Part One and Two, I decided to rewatch.

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Morning Munch

Eventually I’ll write about characteristic Edvard Munch, but I’m very struck by this (to my eyes) French-flavoured portrait, Morning (1884), in the Rastus Meyer Collection. We have a young woman, sat on the edge of a bed, mid dressing, gazing towards the window. The sitter is Thora Emilie Dalen (b. 1868) and she was painted by Munch when he was renting a room in Haugfoss. This was the painting that Munch was to exhibit in Paris and marks a breakthrough.

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The Ape with No Name

War for the Planet of the Apes (Matt Reeves, 2017)

The original Planet of the Apes franchise is a good example of the way in which sf film moved from radical to conservative between the late 1960s and late 1970s. Whilst the original Pierre Boulle novel presumably needs to be read in terms of French political history and colonialism, or in terms of class, the films seemed to offer an allegory for America in the civil rights era, with the apes standing in for whites, African Americans and Jews. Certainly we have the spectacle of Charlton Heston, old Moses and Ben Hur, and fellow white astronauts being subjected to the slave experience. As a sequel gave way to prequels, the films seemed to become more anxious about the politics (and there is something frankly racist about the allegory).

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Peter Parker’s Day Off

Spider-Man: Homecoming (Jon Watts, 2017)

I can remember standing in a queue for the Spider-Man reboot, worried that it would be rebooted again before I got to see it. And here we are, a new Spider-Man, now part of the Marvel Comics Universe, after what I assume is a cameo in a Captain America movie.

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What Pride Comes Before

Plot details will be discussed and possibly mocked.

Doctor Who: “The Doctor Falls”

So, let’s see: what do we know about Bill? I don’t think there’s any mention of her father and we know her mother is dead — the Doctor got her some photos as part of her recruitment. The memories of her mother were part of defeating the monks, as preserving her self identity.

What will survive of us is lurve, it turns out.
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To Boldly Go…

There is a moment in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (Nicholas Meyer, 1991) when the Klingon Chancellor Gorkon toasts “The undiscovered country—the future.” Captain kirk later repeats the chancellor’s words, firstly to Gorkon’s daughter—“Your father called the future the undiscovered country”—and then in the film’s closing voiceover:

    This is the final cruise of the Starship Enterprise under my command. This ship and her history will shortly become the care of another crew. To them and their posterity will we commit our future. They will continue the voyages we have begun and journey to all the undiscovered countries, boldly going where no man—where no one—has gone before.

While Spock notes that Gorkon has quoted Hamlet he does not note that he has misinterpreted the line.

I’d never really thought of writing about the Star Trek franchise — there’s too much it to get on top of, but I did write about the first film in Solar Flares.

But Simon Bacon invited me to write for his collection, To Boldly Go: Essays on Gender and Identity in the Star Trek Universe, co-edited with Nadine Farghaly, and the ghears began grinding.

I remember shouting at the screen for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country that the Hamlet was being mangled, and that the undiscovered country was death rather than the future.

When I read Emmanuel Levinas, during the PhD, I’d read and stored his ideas on patriarchy, filiality, the future and death, and this returned to mind. I’d also been reading Robin Wood and Andrew Britton on 1980s sf movies — for two other projects — and this joined the dots.

How does the avidly liberal and feminist Star Trek represented fatherhood in the future — and how does that relate to death?