Ashley Clifton

Science Fiction’s Latest Utopian Dream

When I was a kid, my parents bought me a book called A Pictorial History of Science Fiction by David Kyle, which covers the history of science fiction illustration from Jules Verne all the way through the 1970s. (The book was printed in 1976.) I still have it. I remember being especially enthralled by covers from pulp magazines in the 1930s like Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories. Many of these covers were devoted to some artist’s vision of The City of The Future—usually some towering, high-tech, hive-like metropolis.

It makes sense that sci-fi nerds of the 1930s would imagine a vertical, urban future. At the time, the most sophisticated places on earth were the great western cities of Europe and America. Paris. Berlin. And especially New York—Manhattan—with its great skyscrapers reaching ever higher. The obvious extrapolation of this trend was that someday everyone would be living in some vast, super-tall version of New York or Los Angeles, with buildings hundreds of stories high and millions of people living in close proximity. Ramps and walkways would connect these towers in the sky, allowing residents to hardly ever venture down to street-level. Airplanes, blimps, and elevated high-speed trains would speed residents from one end of the city to the next.

For most of these sci-fi artists and writers, this was going to be a good thing. A utopian vision, in fact. Future cities would be paradises of high technology, dense but egalitarian. Robots would do all the dirty work, and everyone would be rich. For others, though, the City of the Future would be a capitalist hell, with the decadent rich living high above the exploited poor. These upper-classes would hoard resources and technology, either out of fear or greed or sheer meanness. It is this dystopian vision that informs works like Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, as well as every instance of the cyberpunk genre from William Gibson’s Virtual Light to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner.

Despite this dark side, however, the vision of an artificial, high-tech utopia has long existed in sci-fi, and it still does today. But the vision itself has changed. Relocated. These days, the City of Future is almost invariably depicted as being in outer space—”off-world,” in the lingo of movies like Blade Runner—either on a nearby planet or the moon or on a station floating in space.

Space stations, in particular, have captured the imagination of science fiction fans for the past four decades, ever since Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill published The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Outer Space. In that landmark book, O’Neill explained the advantages of living on a space colony as opposed to a land-based colony like Mars or the moon. These include the fact that one could spin the colony to produce the same gravitational pull as Earth, thus avoiding any physiological problems the colonies might suffer from living on a smaller world. Unlimited solar power is another plus, as is the fact that, living outside the gravity well of a planet or moon, travel between colonies would be vastly cheaper. Trade would thrive, fueled by a steady flow of cheap, raw materials from the asteroid belt and various moons throughout the solar system.

Artist’s Depiction of Stanford Torus Interior, c. 1970s

O’Neill was the first, legit scientist to take the idea of people living in outer space seriously, and he was able to back up his ideas with hard data, including actual blueprints for working stations. Namely, he invented the O’Neill Cylinder, a tube-shaped world the size of a city with its residents living on the inner surface. Other designs were created by a diverse group of like-minded theorists. Of these, the most compelling is the Stanford torus (named for the university where the plan was cooked up). Instead of a tube, it’s a giant wheel. For whatever reason, it’s this ring-like design that has dominated most sci-fi stories of recent decades. Larry Niven’s Ringworld is basically a humongous Stanford torus (large enough to encircle a star). And the design is also represented in the wheel-worlds of the Halo videogame franchise and the fabulous Orbitals of Iain Banks’s The Culture novels.

As was the case with the high-rise super-cities that were imagined of the 1920s, the space-colony vision isn’t always utopian. In the 2013 film Elysium, for example, the titular space station is an exclusive haven for the ultra-rich, desperate to escape an Earth ravaged by global warming and end-stage capitalism. Perhaps this is why many people become uneasy when billionaire tech-bros like Jeff Bezos openly embrace the idea of building giant colonies in space. They seem to be confirming the dystopian side of the space colony coin.

I have very little in common with Jeff Bezos. But, like him, I must confess to be completely captivated by the idea of colonies in space. They are not only fun to imagine, but I believe that they probably do represent the best possible, long-term vision for the future of humanity. I don’t know if they will happen, but I hope they do.

Recent Artistic Depiction of Stanford Torus

Why do I harbor this hope? Lots of reasons. For one, space colonies offer our best chance of surviving as a species into the far future. Even if we somehow avoid the worst consequences of global-warming, there will always be some other looming disaster that threatens to exterminate life on Earth, from planet-killer asteroids to super-volcanoes to the next pandemic. With space colonies, there would soon be more people living in space than earth—perhaps trillions of people within a few centuries—thus making us a lot harder to wipe out.

For another, the quality of life on space colonies would probably be much, much higher for the average citizen than it is likely to ever be on Earth. This is due to the advantages I listed above, like abundant solar power and cheap resources for asteroids. And overpopulation would never be a problem—at least, not for long. Whenever a colony got too crowded, any citizens who craved more elbow-room would simply build a new space colony and move into it.

Of course, many people will never be disavowed of the idea that space colonies represent nothing more than a “Plan-B” for the ultra-rich. That is, after all the rich people trash the earth with their greed and unfettered capitalism, space colonies give them the ultimate chance for escape from the consequences of their actions.

This is, I think, a real possibility for why space colonies might eventually be built. But it’s not the only possibility, nor even the most likely. Rather, my guess is that space colonies will be built for the positive reasons that I mentioned—abundance, room, and quality of life. Indeed, one could imagine an era—in the three or four-hundred perhaps—when so many people choose to emigrate to space that Earth could become a giant Hawaii. That is, an ecological and historical preserve, with less than a billion people on the entire planet. People who are born on space colonies might endeavor to make a pilgrimage down to Earth at least once in their lives, the way many Irish-Americans eventually take a vacation in “the Old Country” of Ireland.

One thing Bezos and I vehemently disagree on (one of many things, actually) is the time-table for when space colonies will eventually be built. It won’t happen any time soon–not in Bezo’s lifetime (unless he has a store of some immortality drug stashed somewhere), nor in mine, nor in the next generation. But I think it will happen.

Artistic Depiction of a Roofless Bishop Ring

Which leads to the question: Will space colonies really be utopias? That depends on your definition of utopia. If a citizen of mediaeval Europe were to be magically transported to a modern, western city, they would probably perceive it as a utopia. I mean, running water? Toilets? Central heating? All the food you can eat? How much more utopian can you get? Such a person would probably dismiss any argument we might make to the contrary—that people in the 21^st Century have as many problems as those in the 13^th. Bullshit, they would probably say. And they’d be right. For, while modern western civilization isn’t perfect (and it seems to be getting less perfect by the day, alas), it’s still pretty freakin cool. Yes, we still have evil and stupidity and greed. And all of those human failings will find their way onto space stations.

But still, we will be making progress. It’s a worthwhile vision, and exactly the kind of dream that good sci-fi can deliver.

And should. At least some of the time.

R.I.P. Bill Moyers

If you were a nerdy poor kid growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, you probably watched a lot of public television. Starting with kid shows like Sesame Street and the Electric Company, you graduated in your teens to science shows like Nova and edgy entertainment shows like Monty Python and surreal action series like The Prisoner, which PBS stations played late at night.

As for myself, I also watched a lot of PBS news, especially The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. And Bill Moyers. Lots of Bill moyers. If MacNeil and Lehrerwere the Kings of PBS news, then Bill Moyer was the high-ranking courtier. Moyers, who passed away last week, specialized in thoughtful and intelligent interviews with brilliant people of various stripes. As a would-be teenage intellectual, I really loved and appreciated these shows, and they introduced me to a lot of very smart artists, politicians, and writers. Chief among these was the iconic scholar of world mythology Joseph Campbell. Moyers’s now-famous interviews with Campbell, conducted at George Lucas’s Skywalker ranch (Lucas was inspired by Campbell’s writing when he penned the Star Wars saga), were probably the pinnacle of both men’s careers.

I’ve been a fan of Campbell ever since, and also of Moyers. A one-time Baptist preacher, Moyers was a gentle, kind-spirited man who never descended into sentimentality or fatuous optimism. He was, rather, a first-rate journalist. And God knows there are very few of those these days.

Moyers has been the subject of many on-line tributes in the past few days, including this one by the excellent historian Jonathan Alter.

Godspeed, Mr. Moyers….

What I’m Reading: “Rebbe”

I’ve read a lot of biographies in my time. Some of my favorites have been about great monarchs (Catherine the Great by Robert Massie), presidents (Truman by David McCoullough), scientists (Oppenheimer by Kai Bird), architects (Frank Lloyd Wright by Meryl Secrest). Now, I can finally add religious leaders to my list. Or at least one religious leader, the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

It’s taken me this long, I think, because while I am fascinated by the study of various religions, I am not very interested in the life-story of most religious leaders. This is, in part, a consequence of the vexed historicity of such figures. Usually, they lived in the distant past, shrouded in veils of myth, with the actual, living person being lost to time. But this is not the case with Rebbe Schneerson. After all, he was not only a very recent figure, having passed away in 1994, but he spent most of his life right here in the United States—Brooklyn, in fact, that modern locus of Hasidic Judaism, and especially the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty, which Schneerson led since 1951, succeeding his father-in-law.

As Joseph Telushkin recounts in his excellent book, Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History, Schneerson was essentially appointed to the position by general acclimation, bypassing the previous Rebbe’s son who had been the heir apparent. Community leaders and other rabbis in the movement were simply awed by Schneerson’s considerable intellect—he spoke half-a-dozen languages, had an Engineering degree, and was considered a “genius” in Talmudic study from the age of seventeen—and pressured him to take the job.

Which, thankfully, he did. I never thought I would ever read a book about an orthodox Jewish rabbi and, at the end, think to myself: “Wow, he seems like a really cool guy.” After all, I’m used to being utterly repulsed by most “leaders” in my own religious sphere, Christianity, with the exception of the current Pope and his immediate predecessor. But the more I read about Schneerson, the more impressed I was, not only by his general wisdom in matters of religion and morality, but also in his endless, practical concern for the well-being of ordinary (often poor) people, both Jews and Gentiles.

One example Telushkin provides involves Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress. Racist creeps in the House refused to appoint her to any high-level committees and instead stuck her on the Agriculture Committee, which, considering Chisholm represented a section of New York, seemed absurd to most observers. Yet, the snub also presented an opportunity that she, herself, never suspected. As Telushkin writes:

She soon received a phone call from the office of one of her constituents. “The Lubavitcher Rebbe would like to meet with you.” Representative Chisholm came to 770. The Rebbe said, “I know you’re very upset.” Chisholm acknowledged both being upset and feeling insulted. “What should I do?” The Rebbe said: “What a blessing God has given you. This country has so much surplus food and there are so many hungry people and you can use this gift that God’s given you to feed hungry people. Find a creative way to do it.”

And she did, creating one of the first federal food-aid programs in the history of the United States, in which surplus food was bought by the government from American farmers and distributed to poor people, thus helping the recipients, the farmers, and pretty much everyone else.

On a more personal level, Schneerson always emphasized the importance of kindness and compassion over religious stricture. In one of his drashas (sermons), he famously told the story of how his predecessor, the Alter-Rebbe, once stopped in the middle of his Sabbath observations to attend to a young woman who had just given birth and who had been left alone by her family so that they could attend synagogue. Telushkin writes:

That day, the Alter Rebbe, having somehow learned that the new mother was alone, was suddenly overwhelmed with the certainty that the woman required someone to attend to her needs immediately; it might well be a matter of life and death. And since no one else was taking care of her, he concluded that he should be the one to do so.

This story apparently shocked his followers in way that most modern, secular people like myself cannot really appreciate. The idea that a rabbi might 1.) forsake the Sabbath observations in order to 2.) do menial work on the Sabbath like chopping wood and 3.) do so for an ordinary woman was radical in the extreme.

Such was Schneerson’s boundless respect and love for ordinary people that he was always concerned about inadvertently embarrassing or insulting anyone, especially those who were most vulnerable. Decades before the so-called woke movement (a bad name for a very noble cause), Schneerson refused to use the word “handicapped” in reference to battle-maimed Israeli soldiers. Telushkin writes:

Referring to the fact that such people are designated in Israel as nechei Tzahal, “handicapped of the Israel Defense Forces,” the Rebbe addressed the men as follows: “If a person has been deprived of a limb or a faculty, this itself indicates that G-d has also given him special powers to overcome the limitations this entails, and to surpass [in other areas] the achievements of ordinary people. You are not disabled or handicapped, but special and unique as you possess potentials that the rest of us do not. I therefore suggest”—the Rebbe then interspersed with a smile—“of course it is none of my business, but Jews are famous for voicing opinions on matters that do not concern them—that you should no longer be referred to as ‘disabled veterans’ but as ‘exceptional veterans’ [metzuyanim], which more aptly describes what is unique about you.

In addition to being a genuinely good and wise person, Schneerson also seemed to have what can only be described as superpowers. He worked eighteen hours a day, six-days-a-week, for most of his life. Being busy with his primary duties during the day, he met with people seeking advice in the evenings, often as late one or two o’clock in the morning. Some of the people seeking advice including future and former Prime Ministers of Isreal such as Menachem Begin, as well as many other powerful and influential figures. But, more of than not, they were comprised of ordinary men and women in his congregation. I was especially impressed with Telushkin’s story of a young woman, Chana Scharfstein, who often came to his office seeking academic as well as personal (dating) advice:

The Rebbe clearly knew his agenda for this meeting, and the conversation quickly turned in a personal direction. At a certain point, he asked Sharfstein if she felt ready to get married. Sharfstein told him that she had begun dating—in Chasidic circles, young men and women date only for the purpose of marriage—and the Rebbe asked her about a specific young man. She recalls being taken aback and thinking to herself, That’s interesting that he should ask about somebody that I had met. Sharfstein told the Rebbe that she had met the young man he mentioned, that he was clearly a fine person, but not for her. The Rebbe said all right, and then mentioned another name, and again it was someone to whom Sharfstein had been introduced. Here, too, the young man was very nice but not for her. Then the Rebbe mentioned a third name, and a fourth, “and I became really uncomfortable then. How did the Rebbe choose all the names of young men (bachurim) that I had met? I was just absolutely overwhelmed that he should mention people that I had actually met.” Only later did she learn that prior to going out with a girl, each bachur in Chabad would write to the Rebbe to inquire if the girl seemed suitable for him, and so the Rebbe, who obviously had responded in each case that Chana Zuber was suitable, had a very precise idea of all the people with whom she had gone out. But even taking all this into account, Sharfstein still remained staggered at the Rebbe’s recall. After all, he “was [already] a world leader at this time, and to keep track of each person and who had been dating whom, it’s really mind-boggling.”

As this story relates, Schneerson’s remarkable memory and formidable intelligence were often sources of awe among those in congregation. Another example involves a young student, Irving Block, who came to discuss philosophy with the Rebbe:

At the time, Block, who was studying for an MA in philosophy, was immersed in the study of the great Greek thinkers, Plato in particular. And that’s the direction in which the Rebbe led the discussion. Only Block didn’t realize at first to whom the Rebbe was referring, because it was a man named Platon about whom the Rebbe started talking. It finally struck him that Platon is how the name of the Greek philosopher is written in Greek, though in English his name is always pronounced as Plato. It’s not that the n is silent in English; it isn’t written at all. This was Block’s first surprise of the day. The man seated in front of him, dressed in the garb of a Rebbe, obviously knew about Plato, or Platon, from the original Greek and pronounced his name as it was supposed to be pronounced.

Block was not only amazed by the Rebbe’s deep understanding of the “Platon’s” philosophy but by his utter rejection of it. (Plato believed that the nuclear family was an evil institution and should be abolished, an idea that was in direct contradiction to all humanist values, including those of Judaism.)

In recounting such stories as these, Telushkin’s book is really more of an appreciation or tribute than an in-depth biography. And yet he manages to relate the primary facts of Schneerson’s remarkable life with grace. Born in Imperial Russia, Schneerson moved with his family to the US in the spring of 1941. Thereafter, he served as Rebbe for over 50 years, finally passing away in a time when the world was much changed.

One might say that he was born in the time of Tsars and passed away in the time of the internet. And, in all that time, one thing remained constant: his steadfast commitment to the practical well-being of all the people, rich and poor, high and low, in his community and around the world. Truly a person worth reading about. Check it out…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Never Say Never”

Let’s face it. New Wave music has a bad rap. It’s associated with bad 1980s movies and “Old Wave” nostalgia night at your local dance club.

Having grown up in the era of both punk music and New Wave, I can say with some authority that New Wave music, at its best, was every bit as powerful—and a lot more meaningful—than punk. In fact, New Wave gave us some of the best music of the 20th Century. The Talking Heads. Blondie. Gary Numan. And on and on.

One of my favorite songs of the era is this little number by Romeo Void. You might remember it from an obscure (but not bad) 1980s movie called Reckless starring Aiden Quinn and Daryll Hannah, who dance to the song in one surprisingly effective scene.

I like the song because it’s like a mash-up of The Sex Pistols and a San Francisco poetry-slam. It hits.

Rock on…

BONUS: Here is that scene from Reckless…

Yes, the Marvel Movies Are “Real” Cinema

Having once been an art student (well, a creative-writing student; close enough), I know from experience that the quickest way to start an argument among a bunch of art majors is to ask them what the definition of “real” art is. Similarly, the best way to start an argument among a bunch of cinephiles is to ask them what “real” cinema is.

That is essentially what the great director Martin Scorsese did in 2019 when he suggested that Marvel superhero movies (in their zenith, at the time) were “not cinema”. He stated:

Honestly, the closest I can think of them, as well made as they are, with actors doing the best they can under the circumstances, is theme parks. It isn’t the cinema of human beings trying to convey emotional, psychological experiences to another human being.

Scorsese thus not only managed to make himself sound like a bit of a snob—not to mention a grumpy old man—but to also start an internet flame-war that continues to this day. Ultimately, the whole affair was a tempest-in-a-teapot. Of course, the Marvel films are “real” cinema. That is, they are fabulously well-crafted motion pictures that, at their best, have an emotional and even a physical impact on their viewers. And—again, at their best—they also make important philosophical and political points. However, they are a different kind of cinema than what Scorsese works in. In other words, what we’re really talking about her is the difference between literary cinema and popular (that is, genre-based) cinema.

This is the same distinction one must make between literary fiction and genre fiction. The purest and simplest definition of genre fiction is that, for the most part, the reader knows what they’re gonna get. A mystery is going to have a murderer and a sleuth. A horror story is going to have a monster and hero/heroine fighting it. A rom-com is going to have two people who should get together romantically but just can’t, for some reason, until the very end. And a superhero movie is going to have, well, a superhero with some kind of superpowers who is fighting some equally superlative evil.

The devil, of course, is in the details. We consume genre cinema for the same reason we consume genre literature—because we want to see how they pull it off. “They” in the case of cinema, being the director and the writer and the actors. How do they change-up the old formula, make it interesting and somehow new?

That is how genres evolve and adapt to new time periods and new zeitgeists. Daniel Craig’s interpretation of James Bond was different from Sean Connery’s or Roger Moore’s—it was more brutal, more bloodthirsty, and yet somehow more vulnerable, too. Just like us, the American film-viewing public.

In the same way, Marvel superhero movies are different from superhero movies of the 1970s (think Superman) or the 1980s. The characters are more believable, as well as being more complex and even vulnerable. I am, again, thinking of the very best Marvel movies: the first Ironman starring Robert Downey Jr. and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This latter film, which came out in 2014 (yes, it’s been that long), is probably the best film of the entire series. And, yes, it is “real” cinema.

Robert Redford in “Three Days of the Condor”

In fact, as very few people have realized, The Winter Soldier is almost a remake of a 1975 film that most film snobs would agree is “real” cinema: Three Days of the Condor.

The only obvious similarity is that both films feature Robert Redford. In Condor, Redford plays a brilliant but very bookish CIA analyst named Turner who works in a New York City branch office. One day, he comes back from lunch to find everyone in the office dead, murdered by professional assassins. Turner goes on the run. Unsure of who he can trust, he kidnaps an unsuspecting, beautiful woman (Faye Dunnaway) and hides in her apartment. From there, he gradually figures out that the assassins who killed his work-mates were sent by a rogue faction inside the CIA itself. Apparently, Turner’s branch had stumbled upon a secret plot by the faction to invade the Middle East and capture all the oil fields (how very far-fetched, right?). Turner eventually confronts the leader of the faction, as well the head assassin, a Zen-Master-like Frenchman named Joubert (played with brilliant, icy effectiveness by Max von Sydow).

On the surface, Condor might seem like a very different film from The Winter Soldier. But the closer you look, the more The Winter Soldier seems almost like a remix of the earlier film. That is, it has all the same elements. The good-guy-betrayed-by-his-government figure is Steve Rogers (a.k.a. Captain America) who, like Turner in Condor, discovers a vast conspiracy within U.S. intelligence (S.H.I.E.L.D, in this case, rather than the CIA). Like Turner, Rogers finds himself on the run with a beautiful woman (Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow). He confronts the leader of the conspiracy (played by none other than Robert Redford himself). And of course he confronts the lead assassin, Barnes, who (like Joubert in Condor) turns out to be far more complicated than he appears.

Even some of the individual scenes in The Winter Soldier are eerily reminiscent of those in Condor. Take the now famous elevator sequence, which is not only the best in the film but one of the best in the entire MCU series. On his way out of the high-tech and vaguely fascistic H.Q. of S.H.I.E.L.D., Rogers steps into an elevator and rides down. As the elevator stops at successive floors, more and more men step on, each menacing but seemingly disinterested. The scene works so well because everyone—that sense of unease we all fell when forced into close proximity with strangers. We begin to wonder: what if some of these people were evil. They could hurt us—maybe even kill us—before we could react. And yet, despite this unease, we do nothing because we have no real evidence of evil intent. We’re playing a social role. And that’s just what Rogers—a good-natured man if ever there was one, willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt—does.

I love the moment when Rogers notices sweat streaming down the face of one of the men next to him. He knows—as we, the viewers, know—that this is really, really bad. But there is nothing he can do about it…yet. It’s still in the future. Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t have done it any better. Nor, for that matter, could Sidney Pollack, who has an almost identical scene in Condor, in which the hapless Turner finds himself in an elevator with Joubert, the master assassin. Each man knows that the other man knows who he really is, but neither can take any action…yet.

Ever since I read Mark Crispin Miller’s landmark essay “Hollywood: The Ad” many years ago, I’ve been fascinated the way in which the tropes and elements of an early “classic” movie can end up rearranged and transformed in a later pop film. Miller gives the example of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Star Wars (1977). If you look closely, many of the components of the former get transmogrified in the latter. The apes of 2001 become the loyal Wookie Chewbacca. The cold, robotic voice of HAL the computer becomes that of C3PO the droid. The white, sterile interiors of the spaceship Discovery become the stark, sterile halls of the Death Star. And so on and so forth.

That’s just what has happened here, with Condor and The Winter Solider. They’re practically the same movie, but shaken up by time and changing purposes. That is, The Winter Soldier is every inch a pop film, with the full intention of stimulating the audience with all the action and explosions and kung-fu fights that we’ve come to expect from a Hollywood blockbuster. But, on some level, the kernel of Condor is still there. The Winter Soldier is also a story about evil, rapacious men seizing control of government, and also the creeping power of America’s military-industrial complex. It’s also about the dehumanization the soldiers like Rogers and Barnes undergo as pawns in the hands of callous leaders and ruthless institutions.

In short, despite all its roller-coaster-ride thrills and spectacle, The Winter Solider is a “real” movie.

And, yes, it’s “real” cinema.

Shamus Award Nom

I am very happy to announce that I am a finalist in the Best First P.I. Novel category for this year’s Shamus Awards! Many, many thanks to the good people of The Private Eye Writers of America for this great honor.

Good luck to all the other nominees, especially my friends Alexis Stefanovich-Thomson and Henry Wise. I hope one of us wins. And I really hope it’s me.

R.I.P. Harris Yulin

American cinema and theater has lost another great character actor this week, Harris Yulin. With his lumpy face and gruff demeanor, Yulin was an everyman—one of those actors that you recognize from countless roles but whose name you never knew.

He was one of the most respected stage, film, and TV actors in the country. And yet, ironically, most viewers today will know his work from two unlikely sources: the TV show Frasier on which he played an affable crime boss and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, for which Yulin appeared in one famous episode, Duet. It was this particular gig (yes, a frickin episode of Star Trek) that gave Yulin one of his few chances to really show-off his acting chops to a mass audience. I still think he should have gotten an Emmy nomination for it, but oh, well.

In all his performances, Yulin was one of those actors who exude a kind of intelligence, presence and grace that make them stand out a mile on the screen or stage.

The world is a little less interesting today without him in it.

Godspeed, Mr Yulin.

Classic Sci-Fi Book Cover: “Something Wicked This Way Comes”

Okay, let’s get this out of the way: Something Wicked this Way Comes is not a science fiction novel. It’s dark fantasy, and, in my opinion, a precursor to many famous books in that genre from the likes of Stephen King, Anne Rice, Erin Morgenstern, and others.

However, Ray Bradbury’s books were always sold in the science fiction aisle when I was a kid. And I read all his books thinking they were science fiction. (I didn’t read fantasy back then.) So, I’m shoe-horning him into my classic sci-fi book covers thread.

Having said all that, let me add that this is one of my favorite novels, not to mention Bradbury’s best. It’s the tale of two 13-year-old boys, Will and Jim, who have grown up next door to each other in 1930s Illinois. Will and Jim are almost exactly the same age, with Will being born one minute before midnight on October 30th and Jim being born one minute after midnight on October 31st. Yes, one boy is born a minute before Halloween begins and the other born a minute after. (Guess which one is the “bad” kid?)

It might seem like clunky symbolism, but in Bradbury’s prolix hands, it works. The duality between the introverted, good-natured Will and the adventurous, mischievous Jim—that is, between light and dark sides of our being—is repeated throughout the novel. Both boys are forced to confront their darker impulses when a demonic carnival arrives on the edge of town in the middle of the night. Will and Jim soon discover that the carnival is a vehicle for a bunch of malevolent, vampire-like beings who want nothing more to lure innocent people onto the midway and tempt them into evil.

The only person who believes the boys when they tell what they’ve seen is Will’s father, an older man who doubts his own strength and courage. Together, they challenge the men who run the carnival, Mr. Cougar and Mr. Dark (another light/dark duality) for the soul of the town.

I really like this cover—created by veteran illustrator David Grove—because it captures the nostalgia, magic, and dark wonder that are the great strengths of the novel. Specifically, it refers to a moment in the story when Mr. Dark wanders through the town looking for Will and Jim. He has the images of the boy tattooed on his palms, and he shows them to passersby to see if anyone recognizes them. It’s an extremely creepy scene in an amazing book. (It’s also the first moment when Will’s father shows his courage and guile in besting Mr. Dark.)

My appreciation for the cover is in no way diminished by the fact that it appears to be a poster tie-in with the film adaptation produced by Disney in 1983, depicting the likenesses of some of the actors (most notably, the great Jonathan Pryce, who performance as Mr. Dark is worth the price of admission all by itself).

Also, not long after Mr. Grove passed away, Tor.com published a tribute to him and his career. You can see it here…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Listen to Her Heart”

Of the hundreds of kids who graduate from Gainesville High School every year, relatively few (I’m guessing) are aware that they attended the same school as the late, great Tom Petty. (My son Connor definitely was aware because I was constantly reminding him of it, to his annoyance. LOL.) Petty is still Gainesville’s most famous native son, and with good reason. He was one of the greatest rock musicians of his generation. In fact, I think of him as America’s version of David Bowie—brilliant, inventive, always changing and yet always the same.

(Fun fact: one of Gainesville’s other famous sons, Don Felder, taught Petty how to play piano, or guitar, depending on who you ask.)

My favorites of Petty’s songs are the early classics like this one, “Listen to her Heart.” If you’ve ever feared losing a lover to a rival with a lot of money and cocaine (and who hasn’t?), this song is for you.

Rock on…

Synchronicity for Bookworms: Sherlock Holmes and George Eliot

It’s time for another entry in my ongoing series Synchronicity for Bookworms. In this episode, I will describe the incredibly tenuous and yet undeniable connection I found between the great stage and film actor Jeremy Brett and George Eliot’s classic Victorian novel Middlemarch.

As you might recall, I recently did a blog post on Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic mystery novel, The Hound of the Baskervilles. In that post, I mentioned that my favorite actor to ever play the role of Sherlock Holmes was Jeremy Brett. While I was writing the post, I browsed various Internet pages pertaining to Brett. Brett was primarily a brilliant and prolific stage actor, appearing in everything from Shakespearean Tragedy (check out his performance as Macbeth on YouTube) to comic theater.

On one page, I found a photo of Brett standing in front of a billboard advertising a play in which he was appearing. As I looked closer at the image, I saw that Rex Harrison was also in the play. (As I later discovered, the production was a revival of Frederick Lonsdale’s “Aren’t We All?” that ran on Broadway in 1985.) This revelation made me smile because I am also a fan of Rex Harrison, ever since I read a biography of him a decade ago.

Naturally, I immediately went to the Wikipedia page for Rex Harrison and browsed through his biography. This included his great filmography. One of the more famous films he starred in was Blithe Spirit, a supernatural comedy based on a play by Noël Coward. I clicked on the link to the Wikipedia page for Blythe Spirit (the play) and discovered that Coward took the title from a poem by the great British romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley.

Naturally, I then clicked on the link to Shelly’s Wikipedia page and browse through his biography. Reaching the bottom of the page, I saw to my amazement that George Eliott had based the character of Will Ladislaw from her great novel Middlemarch on Shelley.

And there you have it, a cosmic filament connecting two of my recent topics—Sherlock Holmes and George Eliot. When my eyes settled on this last reference to Middlemarch, a little spark of amazement ran down my spine. That’s the sensation one gets when stumbling upon the sublime, hiding in the common-place.

Note that this was not some Six Degrees of Seven Bacon thing. That is, I was not looking for any connection. In fact, Middlemarch wasn’t on my mind at all when I started Googling Jeremy Brett. And yet, there the connection was.

I don’t know if it means anything or not. But it made my day.