Older Movies You Should Watch: Pleasantville

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Pleasantville is a tricky movie and can barely (if at all) be called science fiction.It has characters going into a TV universe, so it’s close enough for blogging. The movie starts off looking like it might be a wacky comedy about modern teens getting stuck in a 50s TV series, but it smartly moves out of that territory and gets into an interesting view on freedom and sexuality. The nods to classic movies are only the cherry on top for making Pleasantville a must-see movie.

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Peter and Max by Bill Willingham

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Peter and Max by Bill Willingham is a novel based on Willingham’s Fables comic book series (which if you haven’t read, then you should).  The basic concept is that the characters that the fables are based on are real and have had to relocate to our Earth from their original homelands due by The Adversary who has taken over all their homelands. The comic book series is the ongoing adventures of these Fables (Snow White, Prince Charming, Big Bad Wolf, Beauty and the Beast) in their hidden neighborhood known as Fabletown. Peter and Max is the first prose novel based in this world and ABC is working on a TV series.

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Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller

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Daredevil: Born Again by Frank Miller is one of the under publicized comic masterpieces of the 1980s. Everyone knows about Miller’s original run on Daredevil which gave Miller the opportunity to do The Dark Knight Returns. But Miller came back to Daredevil for a couple issues (219 and 226) before working with his Batman: Year One artist David Mazzucchelli to create an amazing Daredevil story that redefined Daredevil and his supporting cast.

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Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey

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Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey is a fun ride. It’s about a man who goes to Hell and back (literally) with a vengeance for the people who sent him there.  William Gibson is quoted on as calling it “The best B movie I’ve read in at least twenty years” and I’m not sure that I could describe it better. It’s a paranormal(ish) book that has more in common with noir movies than Twilight.

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A look back at The Sarah Connor Chronicles

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Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles was a wonderful flawed, exciting and ultimately disappointing show. It had two great performances from it’s actors, but two disappointing ones as well. It lasted two seasons, which was about one and half seasons more than most people expected. The show was one of the few explicitly religious shows on television and mixed it wonderfully with a science fiction premise, but there were too many stretches of seasons where the show seemed to drag and that ultimately doomed the show.

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In the Presence of Mine Enemies

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In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove is yet another one of Turtledove’s alternate history books. This is a one shot that doesn’t tie into any of the other books. It deals with a WWII where the US was isolationist and the Axis was able to win. Turtledove has made a career with alternate history novels and he puts his style and themes to good work here.

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Five Fists of Science by Matt Fraction

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Five Fists of Science by Matt Fraction is a steampunk comic about a fight between historical figures. Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain are on one side and Thomas Edison, JP Morgan and Andrew Carnegie are on the other. It’s a wonderful idea that immediately grabs people’s imagination and makes them want to read the book. Unfortunately the execution is lacking and the great idea is the only thing worthwhile about the book.

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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow

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Little Brother by Cory Doctorow is part novel, part manifesto. It’s been called an updating of 1984 or a call to arms for openness in the digital world. But it’s mostly an above average novel, that is designed as a primer on internet technology and security systems. Doctorow is a big believer in these things and it shows through in his novel. The novel is aimed at a high school age audience and uses many pages to explain the whys and hows of the internet era.

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Older Books You Should Read – The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein

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The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein is a futuristic tale about the past. Heinlein was well into his libertarian phase as a writer and this book was a look back at the American Revolution. It put the past into the future and talked about a similar revolution with moon colonies playing the part of the Americas. It’s an interesting view of a small group leading a revolution.

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The Collected Stories of Phlip K Dick

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The CollectedStories of PhilipKDick are an essential read for any science fiction fan. Starting in the 1950’s, Philip K Dick was a successful science fiction short story writer and a failed mainstream novelist. His success as a short story writer is in his ideas. Philip K Dick was always one of the best idea writers of the 1960s. And in the short stories, his ideas are the focus and they truly shine through.

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