an icepick through the keyhole

By way of the Paleo-Future blog.

"What May Happen in the Next Hundred Years", by John Elfreth Watkins, Jr., a piece in the Ladies' Home Journal of December, 1900. It's an interesting read just to see how many things he did get right, like wireless telephones, home delivery of meals, broadcast television, colour photography, and even MRI technology.

In case anyone in UK fandom hasn't glommed onto this yet, BBC4 is doing a project called "My Science Fiction Life" where people are invited to share their experiences about science fiction in Britain. Here's an excerpt from the site itself:

Since H G Wells published The Time Machine in 1895, science fiction has influenced how we see the world. This site aims to explore how the genre has changed individual lives.

Over the next months, share your stories and comments on the part science fiction has played in your life. In early 2007, contributions will close and the site will draw together the trends and experiences of all those who have added to it.

There are already very many places to talk about science fiction on the web, which are ongoing. This celebration coincides with the Science Fiction Britannia season on BBC Four and, like all celebrations, will come to an end.

How do I join in?
Tell the story of the works that have mattered to you. Whether your fond (or terrifying) memories are of a TV programme, book, film, comic or game, add your recollections to the story of science fiction as experienced in the UK.

What significance do particular works have for you? Where, when and how did you first come across them? Why and how have they stayed with you?

Add your recollections and stories about works which already feature on the site

Comment on the recollections of others

Add new works to the site

You can go to the site, register, contribute, etc. here.

At dinner Saturday night, myself, logam and Larry were talking about what television shows we remembered from our teenage years that we would buy on DVD. Popular shows, shows that were cancelled before their time, whatever. Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Wild Wild West and Mission Impossible (2nd season on) we would definitely get. A lot of the old Universal stuff, like Knight Rider, A-Team, Baa Baa Black Sheep have been released but Universal generally makes really crappy DVD releases. The less said about Buck Rogers, the better.

Randomly searching on Amazon.com today, I found two series that I grabbed almost immediately once I found that they were, joy of joys, releasing them. Alien Nation and Nowhere Man.

I'm sure you remember Alien Nation (1988), or at least the mediocre movie with James Caan and Mandy Patinkin, a thinly-veiled allegory about immigration in Southern California, using a newly arrived alien race as the new Hispanics (although the Tenctonese had more parallels with blacks due to their history as slaves). Kenneth Johnson, the man that elevated The Incredible Hulk to more than just a Fugitive knockoff, and was behind the incredible but horribly wasted at the end V and V: The Final Battle (and not, as I hasten to point out, the living abortion that was V: The Series), took over the reins of the television version of the movie for 1989, along with Rockne S. O'Bannon, who wrote the film and would go on to do Seaquest DSV (before it devolved into a Trek clone and then went completely psycho on us) and is probably best known now for Farscape.

Together, they made a fairly enjoyable and intelligently written science fiction/crime/family drama for Fox that made multicultralism its watchword. The slower pace of a television series worked much better for the concept, as we were able to take the time to take a deeper look at the Newcomers and their culture. The series lasted only a season for reasons which are still not quite clear, which was a damn shame for the first show to have a theme song sung in an alien language (oddly enough, both leads, Gary Graham and Eric Pierpoint, both eventually turned up in roles on Enterprise). Now it's coming out on DVD this January, and will be mine, all mine.

Nowhere Man had a rather inauspicious beginning — it was part of the freshman season for UPN in 1995, along with Voyager and a few other shows that were all cancelled and completely forgettable. If I had a choice of course, with hindsight I would've cancelled Voyager, but for pete's sake, we should have had a second season of Nowhere Man, if only to wrap up the story. The series was a cross between The Fugitive and The Prisoner. Imagine the mind-fucking plots of the Prisoner but instead of being confined to a village, the canvas is the lower 48. Thomas Veil, played by Bruce Greenwood, is a photojournalist who is having dinner with his wife, goes to the rest room and comes back to find that his wife is not at the table. When he goes home, Alyson doesn't know him, and she's married to someone else. His ATM cards don't work. Nobody else remembers him. His mother is a coma and can't identify him. The only clue, and he suspects the reason for the erasure of his life, is a photograph of a multiple execution called "Hidden Agenda", which he took in South America. So he sets off to find out why and who is doing this to him.

This was a show that took a while to pick up steam, but once the clues started coming in, it was riveting. What was this conspiracy? Was it even real, or was Veil completely nuts? Was he even who he thought he was? You wanted to find out more. You wanted to piece it together, and it actually was starting to come together. The last few episodes were one senses-shattering clue drop after another, and you could see the first half of the second season laid out in an instant... but we never got there, because despite excellent reviews, Nowhere Man got cancelled and replaced by Homeboys in Outer Space and Moesha. Not that we should be bitter or anything. It's not a brilliant series by any means, but it's one of those cult favorite things, and definitely worth checking out.

So, what shows are you waiting for to come out on DVD? I know that I'm desperately waiting for Cupid...