Author Archives: Steven Howell Wilson

Don Jon – Losing it

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Explicit Language Warning!

Yeah, that’s my second warning in as many weeks, isn’t it? Of course, you only know that if you’re still here after last week, right? Are you still here? I promise, this time out, not to say anything that will offend the sensibilities of my left-wing readers. Oh, except this observation: Miley Cyrus is a lot prettier when she’s trying to look like Michele Bachman than she is the rest of the time these days. There. That’s done. You’re safe now. On with the show. Which may offend the sensibilities of everyone not offended last week.

don-jon-posterJoseph Gordon-Levitt is an actor I admire a lot, ever since I first saw him play David Collins in Dan Curtis’s 1991 primetime remake of Dark Shadows.  He’s one of the most talented performers of his generation, taking on roles that are sometimes provocative, sometimes downright bizarre, but, even when he’s doing a comedy like 3rd Rock from the Sun or a blockbuster like The Dark Knight Rises, never pedestrian.

Recently, he broadened his career horizons by making his debut as a writer-director with Don Jon, a film in which he also starred. This film is laugh-out-loud funny, insightful and daring. I recommend it wholeheartedly… but… It may make you uncomfortable. It is very, very explicit. The opening line, narrated by Gordon-Levitt as Don Jon, contains the f-word and describes the state of his genitalia. It gets more explicit from there. So be warned. It made a lot of viewers in the theater where I saw it uncomfortable, even as they enjoyed it. Continue reading →

Of Robots, Sex and Good Intentions (Warning: Here be libertarianism!)

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robots-of-dawn-isaac-asimovI’m currently re-visiting an old favorite, untouched on my shelf since I received it as a Christmas gift the year it was published, 1983. The Robots of Dawn is a sequel to The Caves of Steel, which I’ve reviewed previously, and The Naked Sun. These are the first three of Isaac Asimov’s “robot novels,” which eventually became precursors to his more famous Foundation series. This particular novel was written some 25 years after the books it sequelizes. Times had become more liberal, allowing Asimov to openly discuss topics in human-robot interactions that he hadn’t been able to visit within the confines of 1950s SF. Specifically, The Robots of Dawn prominently features the complications which result when a human woman marries a robot. Lots of author before had probably speculated on robot sex, and many have since; but this was speculation on robot sex by the master of the robot story. Continue reading →

The Contact eArchive – A Work in Progress

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Contact was a creature of its time, a Star Trek fanzine which focused specifically on the friendship between two characters: the intrepid Captain James T. Kirk and his First Officer, the alien Spock. Today we have fanfiction archives where stories live forever, where fandoms live forever, and where even the most obscure TV show, film, comic book or novel is immortalized in a very special way: by its fans trying to add to its fictional universe. Add to that that we no have DVD and Blu-Ray, Netflix and Hulu… we can watch just about any show or movie anytime we want to. And there’s now a glut of new shows and movies made to cater to an audience which likes Science Fiction, Fantasy and adventure.

In 1975 it just wasn’t so. Syndicated re-runs, badly edited to fit more commercials, were the best you could hope for if you wanted to see your favorite program. No TV show had come back from the dead or been remade as yet (except for Perry Mason, and that clearly didn’t take.) There was no Internet to distribute the labors of love which resulted from writers and artists being inspired by their favorite shows. And so fans turned to Fanzines, photocopied, mimeographed, (the really high-end ones were offset printed!), hand-lettered with prestype, paid for with checks and money orders and sent through the U.S. Mail. Continue reading →

Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who Is John Galt? – Making the most of Social Media

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Screen Shot 2013-09-23 at 7.04.01 PMSo, in case you didn’t know, I’m a huge admirer of Ayn Rand. (And a few of you who did not know may have just defriended, unfollowed and generally banned my name from being spoken in your presence. I’m prepared to live with that.) Agree or disagree with her views, I don’t think you can claim that anyone in popular discourse (and certainly no other bestselling novelist) has quite so clearly presented the argument against collectivist thought as Ms. Rand. That’s why so many people dislike her work so intensely.

But I grew up being told that joining the herd, or letting others control you, is a bad thing. The herd mentality provided the motive force behind movements like Nazism and Soviet Communism. When I was growing up, everyone around me accepted that those philosophies were wrong. They were the philosophies of people who wanted to harm us. As I grew and developed my own personal moral philosophy, I concluded it was both sensible and moral to resist any attempt by others to make me conform to their ideals of what made a good person, or to make me live to serve their ends. When I discovered Ayn Rand’s powerful arguments, which supported what I believed, I became a fan. I especially loved Atlas Shrugged.

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For Your Review – No Seriously

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Upfront — this is an appeal. I’m asking you to do something. It’s not a favor. I hate favors. It’s something I think is a critical part of the writer/reader relationship. It may be something you don’t always think about, but it’s really, really important.

First, let me ask you a question.

How do you hear about books? Stop and think about it. What’s your favorite book? How did you first discover it? If it’s a lifetime favorite, probably a parent, librarian or a teacher read it to you when you were little. If it’s a favorite from your teen years, probably a friend recommended it, or some adult told you not to read it. (The Catcher in the Rye syndrome, I call that.) My all-time favorite book, I’m pretty sure, is Time Enough for Love by Robert A. Heinlein. One of my best friends in high school (and still one of my best friends today) turned me on to Heinlein. As an adult, you probably found some favorites just by looking on bookstore shelves. But somewhere along the line, if you’re a serious reader, you started asking, “What else is out there that I’ve missed?” And to answer that question, you did one of two things: you asked your librarian or bookseller to make a recommendation, or you read book reviews. Continue reading →

Remembering A.C. Crispin

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ysonOkay, I promise not to turn this blog into a collection of eulogies, but it happens that it’s been a bad year for my extended SF Fandom family. I’m sure most people who are connected on social media and also are fans of Star Trek or Star Wars are aware that celebrated author A.C. Crispin has died. Ann is one of those people who helped me (and a lot of other people) along the way. She was also indirectly a part of Baltimore’s “Contact Crowd,” a group of writers and artists who gathered regularly in the 1970s and 1980s to produce the fanzine Contact, and later to contribute significantly to the ClipperCon, OktoberTrek and Farpoint conventions. I am therefore cross-posting this entry to the Contact blog.

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The Arbiter Logs #4: The White Lady

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TheWhiteLady2Only 99 cents! 

Visiting the colony of New Rhineland, the Arbiters are lured into the centuries old German ghost story of the White Lady, a harbinger of death and spirit of vengeance. Metcalfe is confronted by the most haunting spectre of all — that of his sister, Lydia.

The White Lady is the fourth adventure of the crew of the CNV Arbiter, adapted from the Mark Time and Parsec Award-winning audio drama series, The Arbiter Chronicles. Library Journal calls the Arbiters “a cast of compelling characters,” and Analog calls the Chronicles “a fun romp… like a cross between the funniest episodes of the original Star Trek and Monty Python.”

Buy it for:
All formats at Smashwords | Kindle | Nook  | iBooks

 

Carter Hall is one bloodthirsty guy… A Review of The Golden Age Hawkman Archives, Volume 1

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gahaHawkman has been one of my favorite comic characters since I first heard of him back in the early 1970s. You might rightly ask if there’s a comic book character I’ve heard of who is not one of my favorites. A fair question. I don’t like Lobo or the Punisher. Wolverine wears on me after a while. He’s a great supporting character on a team, but I have little desire to read a whole book (or see a whole movie, even starring Hugh Jackman) about him. But if you were to ask me if there was a character created before 1975 who isn’t a favorite, well, probably no. I love them all. Each for different reasons.

In Hawkman’s case, I loved the fact that he came from another planet. I loved that his wife Hawkgirl was his equal partner in adventure. (She was later Hawkwoman, when we became socially aware, and then Hawkgirl again, when social awareness, um… took a cruise? I’m not sure.) I loved that he dressed in red, yellow and green. Not everyone can pull that off. There’s definitely not enough green in the superhero spectrum. If recent films are to be believed, there’s little color at all. Isn’t it sad that, after they went to all the trouble to invent Technicolor, that our films (superhero and otherwise) are now effectively in black and white again, they’re so drab? No, that’s not fair. Black and white films of yesteryear had far more color than many of our films do today.

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LSH RIP

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LSH_Cv23_ecyo86666t_And so it ends… With issue #23 of The Legion of Super-Heroes, the ninth American series from DC Comics to bear that title, the Legion is no more. Does anyone care? Seriously, call out if you do, but I’m really wondering. Well, it’s clear that Paul Levitz cares. He’s been writing the title for the past few years, and wrote it from 1977 – 1989.

Come to think of it, it’s a toss-up as to whether or not I care. I waited several days to read the damned thing, and I believe I let the penultimate issues pile up into a stack of about six before I read them, all in one sitting. (I skimmed.) Was a time I would have read the new issue the day it came out, probably in the car on the way home. (I should point out I refer to a time when I did not drive. My mother drove, whilst I perched in the shotgun seat with a lime Slurpee. I learned early not to drink and drive, and certainly not to read comics and drive.) Nor did I skim in those days. Indeed, I told everyone around me to shut up, because I was reading. Or I hid in my room where the TV somehow never distracted me, because the comics were so good. Continue reading →

Review – The Tarzan Collection (Well, the last half, anyway)

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TarzanCollThis DVD collection include six movies: Tarzan the Ape Man, Tarzan and His Mate, Tarzan Escapes, Tarzan Finds a Son, Tarzan’s Secret Treasure and Tarzan’s New York Adventure. These comprise all of the MGM Tarzan films, filmed between 1932 and 1942, which starred Olympic Gold Medalist Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan and Maureen O’Sullivan as Jane Parker. (Ms. Parker was an Englishwoman, unlike her namesake from the books, Jane Porter, who was a Balmer gal, the daughter of a Hopkins professor, as I recall.)

I’ve had this sitting on my shelf for a while, and had only watched the first three films. I stopped short of Tarzan Finds a Son some months (probably years) back. I suck at time sense. My kids tell me all the time. Or are they my grandkids? Hmm… Continue reading →