heinleinblog

I was utterly unimpressed with the last Riverworld project that appeared on the SciFi channel. This clip gives me the impression the channel’s second attempt will be a little more faithful to the spirit of the series of science fiction novels written by Peoria’s own Philip Jose Farmer:

Cross posted to Peoria Pundit.

So, I was watching the Star Trek episode “Who Mourns for Adonais”  tonight and fell in love again with the lovely Leslie Parrish.

Here is an early publicity still:

And here is one of her wearing that crazy outfit from the show:

It’s my second favorite Star Trek costume. First favorite: Yvonne Craig’s Orion slave girl costume.

RAH gets a mention TWICE in this Los Angeles City Beat article describing how the city’s celebrity obsesses culture affected the work of so many science fiction writers. Generally speaking though, other writers are discussed more than Heinlein.

“Nothing,” as Neil Gaiman put it, “ages harder and faster and more strangely than the future.” The SF comic-book Proust was going on about Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, but that quip might just as well reference the mandarins of SF themselves in the utopia-incinerating years since 9/11. The eventual triumph of Philip K. Dick over Robert A. Heinlein is mainly due to the fact that, while both writers invented intricate immediate futures based on Cold War ideology, the one imagined by the deranged drughead who saw God turned out to be a lot truer than the can-do rationalism posited by a libertarian Rear Admiral.

Really?

I offer no apologies. Robert Heinlein was fond of Star Trek. And this site is about science fiction in general, and RAH in general. So here’s a HD version of the latest trailer for the upcoming J.J. Abrams directed Star Trek prequel. Woo Hoo!

And the New York Times has a pretty good article about the trailer and four scenes that Abrams is showing to select audiences.

What I learned from the clip and descriptions of the scenes is that in some respects, Abrams isn’t exactly following cannon in the strict sense of the word. We’ll see how much this makes it hard for me to enjoy it. I am such a fanboy.

Via Livescience.com:

The concept of a superlens came originally from Sir John Pendry in 2000 – although Milton and his colleagues Nicolae Nicorovici and Ross McPhedran conducted closely related studies back in 1994 – and the concept has been studied extensively. Yet no one had realized the cloaking properties until they were discovered through the research by Milton’s team.

The concept of a superlens cloak is a long way from a workable device, but the integrity of the mathematical concept has sent some experimentalists into the laboratory to try and turn the theory into reality. So far, the groups working in this area are not ready to publish papers, but they’ve accomplished enough to keep trying.

“We’re along way off from the Star Trek* device but some of the experimental results achieved so far are surprising and exciting,” Milton noted.

*RAH was a Star Trek fan, making this on topic.

You can’t mention  Arthur C. Clark without mentioning Heinlein (and some other dude who’s a tad overrated in IMHO)

British sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke turns 90 on Dec. 16. Clarke penned the novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was adapted into Stanley Kubrick’s big-screen freaky fav.

Clarke is also the last surviving member of the “Big Three” of science fiction authors (the other two members of the geeky coterie were Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein).

Jeff Soyer of Alphecca fame has created an online novel called Colony. I’m just now starting to give it a read. It looks to be packed with stuff.

[tags]Alphecca,Colony,Heinlein[/tags]

This writer I think overstates Stanislaw Lem’s influence on R.A.H.:

Funny thing, then, that the best science fiction writer in the world, the least predictable and most innovative, the writer who is to Robert Heinlein and Roger Zelazny what Shakespeare is to, say, Stephen King and Rod McKuen, was Polish. He’s never been particularly popular in America, but much of the world, especially Europe and his native Poland, knows Stanislaw Lem as the genius his work so clearly proclaims. He was often curmudgeonly in his openly disdainful opinions of his peers, but his work reveals many more sides of a mind that explored science, philosophy and fairy tales with equal abandon.

Phobos Books has posted a list: 100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have To Read.

I find the list short on any real insight into why these paritcular books were chosen or why they are ranked as they were.

[tag]Robert A. Heinlein[/tag] made the list three times. Peoria native [tag]Philip Jose Farmer[/tag] made it twice.

As I read the list, I was as first struck by how many of these books I’ve read. But then I realized that some of them I haven’t, but simply say too many movies based on them.

NOTE: An interesting discussion just getting underway on this topic on alt.fan.heinlein.

SyFy Portal has a decent interview with George Lefferts, a Hollywood writer and producer who once worked on Dimension X radio program:

Between them, [Ernest] Kinoy and Lefferts wrote over 40 scripts for “Dimension X.” Many were adapted from works by well-known science fiction writers, including Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Kurt Vonnegut. Lefferts made a point of calling the authors to get their feedback. He also tried to stick as closely as possible to their original work.

Hmmm … can anyone tell me which Heinlein work was adapted to radio on “Dimension X?”

And isn’t it a shame someone like this guy wasn’t put in charge of “Stormship Troopers?”

[tags]George Lefferts,Dimension X,Ray Bradbury,Robert Heinlein,Isaac Asimov,Kurt Vonnegut[/tags]