The premise of this collection seems to be that Science Fiction can provide remedies for the ills of the world. I donât believe it can. (SF can warn and inform while it entertains us but what we do with the information is up to everyone – and mostly to those who donât read any SF.) My view is perhaps best illustrated by the fact that some of the prescriptions outlined in the book are mutually contradictory. For example one posits a Middle Eastern society where female children are selected against, another, a US where men are about to be eliminated. Others eradicate racism or religion, one suggests that clubbing together to have an annoying or threatening person killed might have benefits though there is a twist to the operation of the mechanism whereby that would happen. There is a logical flaw in the revelation of that twist, though.
Most of the stories are, not surprisingly, told from a USian perspective – which is an observation, not a criticism. My complaint is that the overwhelming majority of these stories are schematic and lacking in literary quality. Their styles are resolutely perfunctory, concerned with the idea rather than the illustration of that idea through the dilemmas of characters bound up in it. They read like the SF I remember from my youth when I devoured the early stuff from the 1950s and 1960s. It is almost as if characterisation is something to be afraid of. Iâm prepared to exempt Lawrence Watt-Evans from this stricture, though, but in their joint effort Jerry Pournelle and Charles Sheffield in particular set up a straw man merely so that they can knock him down.
How To Save The World slips past easily enough but this is not one to be read if you like well-drawn characters in your fiction.
If we’d won today East Fife could not have overtaken us and we’d be absolutely safe from relegation.
As it is, the fact that Arbroath and Stenny both lost means only an almighty series of cataclysmic results for us would lead to the relegation play-offs but I’d have preferred we did it under our own steam.
The Branch Manager at my workplace had the thought that we workers weren’t having enough fun (thank you David Brent) and came up with the glorious idea of having a competition. We were to name our favourite 1960s hit – that is no purely album tracks were allowed – and pay £1 for the privilege of entering it.* A committee was formed to adjudicate the results. The winner was announced and played over the tannoy – wait for it – after work on the day we broke up for Easter. Some fun!
Runner-up was the now ubiquitous but at the time relatively ignored Hi-Ho Silver Lining as by The Jeff Beck Group. It came second to Daydream Believer by the Monkees. You’ll have guessed I wasn’t on the committee. I will admit to a softish spot for the Monkees but Daydream Believer is a bit twee.
Anyway this all got me to thinking which song I would have considered. I soon realised that choosing just one is impossible but if I had to it would probably be Rupert’s People’s Reflections of Charles Brown but really it depends on the mood I’m in.
I’ve already featured a lot of 1960s songs here and any of them could have been contenders. So pick one from Rainbow Chaser, Tiny Goddess or Pentecost Hotel by the true Nirvana, the real Nirvana (see my category and scroll down.)
Or there’s America by The Nice, with which I started off my prog rock musings, plus their The Diamond Hard Blue Apples Of The Moon – even if it was a B-side – and The Thoughts Of Emerlist Davjack,
The Electric Prunes’ I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night and Get Me To The World On Time (both here,)
The Small Faces’ Tin Soldier,
The Who’s I’m A Boy,
Python Lee Jackson’s In A Broken Dream,
Procol Harum’s Homburg,
R Dean Taylor’s Gotta See Jane and Indiana Wants Me.
I would also have included Nights In White Satin by The Moody Blues if it hadn’t been turned into a cliché by excessive re-releasing and overplay.
That’s most, but not all, of the 1960s songs I’ve mentioned before.
But there is a host more, of which I have fond memories and which I might have chosen.
So to start what may be a regular series this is The Easybeats and Friday On My Mind.
*Edited to add:- The money collected was to be split two to one between the respective submitters of the winner and the runner-up.
Due to Human Interface Technology, HIT, people known as Watchers can pay to experience the lives of others via head implants. Unlike with run of the mill plants, though, Adrien Reyesâs Watcher, known as C, can talk back to him. Adrien suffers a near fatal beating while on an errand for C to try to procure an improved version of the interface, called only I, which leads to him linking up with a Croatian woman, Sabina. When C disrupts their growing relationship by taking Adrien over at an inopportune moment, so scaring Sabina off, Adrien resolves to rid himself of his plant. He returns to the US to achieve this.
As a result C instead fixes his designs on Sabina – who has become interested in the experience of being watched – and utilises another of his watched, Tomaj, to entice her to him. Meanwhile, the shadowy figure of Max wishes to gain I for himself as a means of accessing the Deep, the environment where HIT becomes more of a mixing of minds.
Thereafter we move more into thriller territory as the novel runs to its denouement and Adrien seeks to protect Sabina from the forces surrounding her.
I’m not moved to seek out more of Sullivan’s work after reading this but it is an unusual – intermittently violent – telling of what is, in the end, a love story.
Okay. Charges of gingerism dropped for the moment since no new mention of it was made. Plus the latest companion (like Catherine Tate before her) is a redhead.
Except… The child she was when she first met the doctor was not redheaded. Now how is that exactly? I know this is loosely Science Fiction but usually hair colour diminishes on ageing.
As a setter-upper the episode was passable but no more. A bit harum-scarum. And what is it with Who and creatures with fangs?
I’m not yet convinced by Matt Smith in the role. Full marks for the new assistant’s Scottishness, though.
The acting of the wee lass playing the young Amelia was excellent. Don’t suppose the doctor could have such a callow companion, though. Not nowadays anyway. (The original Doctor had his granddaughter, Susan, An Unearthly Child, with him, of course. She was supposedly of school age but was played by someone much older than that.)
The BBC has been showing trailers for the series – some scenes appeared before the end credits of Episode 1. I was tickled by the khaki Dalek (complete with canvas webbing belt) emerging from the sandbag enclosure.
Pity it can’t carry a swagger stick. That would have been even funnier.
Get out of jail free card played. Yet one more illustration that my crystal ball is defective.
Yes, we made their keeper make two good saves in the first half; once from a close-in Wyness header and once when Kieran Brannan was through but I couldn’t see this coming when we went one down.
We rode our luck more than once when defending corners. We have eleven men back and they still manage to get efforts in; plus we don’t then have an out ball. Just after they scored Ross Clark saved on the post at a corner.
Ross Clark at right back? Not the disaster it could have been but he’s more effective in midfield, surely? He was as exposed as Chissie there btw.
A route one ball gave us the equaliser. Dennis Wyness’s “powerful shot into the bottom corner” was a lob over the keeper into the middle of the goal and was so slow in coming down I thought he’d missed the goal completely.
The second was an exploitation of Carcary’s pace; he then squared the ball to an unmarked Wyness who looked to scuff it a bit, but who’s complaining?
Kieran Brannan started but seemed to lack enough pace to get past a man and a bit of confidence. He probably needs more development time. White was solid between the posts and had no chance with their goal.
The midfield was totally lacking in imagination and ideas. How we scored twice is a mystery to me but three points gratefully accepted
This might be true of British politics but in the area of popular entertainment an argument could, instead, be made for the film Headfrom which the song I’m featuring comes and which was, perhaps, deliberately designed to alienate the following the band which recorded it had accrued. Along with the bad publicity for apparently not playing instruments on their hits, it more or less did for their pop career, though over-exposure also had a lot to do with it. Head as a title, of course, has many resonances and connotations I needn’t go into and which no doubt contributed to their demise.
The film itself is now, of course, regarded in some quarters as something of a masterpiece. In the time since their heyday the group has also been critically reappraised. They did bang out some cracking pop tunes in their time (including a disguised ditty about the Vietnam War.)
Though apparently out of their normal oeuvre the film’s theme, Porpoise Song, was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. It has overtones of the Beatles – naturally – but also of the 1960s Nirvana and manages to prefigure some of the prog rock which was to come in the 1970s.
On You Tube The Wondermints have a (reasonably faithful) cover while this does have the single but someone talks for a while before playing it.
Below is a clip from the first last few minutes of the film itself. Porpoise Song does not appear till some way into the clip and finishes about three minutes in.
This is in Bank Street, Lochgelly, just over the road and up a bit from the Lochgelly Centre which is being upgraded at the moment. The cinema was opened in the 1930s and was used for bingo for a while. It now houses a building contractor’s. Pity about the derelict unprepossessing shop fronts which make up the rest of the picture.
The towery bits (chimneys?) are very deco and unusually are at right angles to each other.
The entranceway is also strikingly deco as is the fenestration throughout.
The shade of blue is possibly a bit too dark, though.
Some of the internal fittings are still there apparently (see link above.)
In the late 1970s whle it was still a cinema it looked like this and this.
Since most of the building is set back from the road it’s actually quite easy to miss noticing it when driving through the town. (Despite the shade of blue.)
