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Four Inducted Into SF Hall of Fame
maxentius writes "There are four new members of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame: Chesley Bonestell, Philip K. Dick, Ray Harryhausen, and Steven Spielberg. The Hall, once located in Lawrence, Kansas, is now a part of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle. This brings to 40 the number of inductees; the newest members will be officially welcomed May 6. According to the SF Museum site, "The event will include a cocktail hour, seated dinner, induction ceremony, and after-party." The ceremony will occur in the middle of the Eaton Conference, a three-day presentation co-sponsored by the museum and the University of California Riverside's Eaton Collection. This year's topic is "Inventing the 21st Century: Many Worlds, Many Histories.""
Lord knows there's a heck of a lot of authors who have done more for Sci-Fi than his films.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
I'm no expert and don't recognise most of the names, but thought Olaf would be there?
What the heck has he done for Sci-Fi?
What? No Douglas Adams? He was my favourite
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Tell me about it. I used to work in a library and had to look after the sci-fi section for months. What about Clifford Simak? Ben Bova? Alice Sheldon (aka James Tipree)?
at least not L. Ron Hubbard
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
An excellent point, further, because of his success a smattering of other authors, such as Michael Stackpole (who languished at FASA for a while, doing some pretty damn good BattleTech novels) got some real exposure.
Love or hate Star Wars, he's had a great impact.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
(Note: I love Harryhausen's movies (I have the 3 DVD Sinbad set for a start) and one or two of Spielberg's. My gripe is only with which Hall of Fame they're being placed in.)
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Spielberg would make a dog's dinner out of it and call it a movie. (Not so much a knock at Spielberg as at most attempts to capture PKD on the screen: much the same as the way a killing jar captures butterflies.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Really. Rather see Ridley Scott up there for Alien and Blade Runner, further he's bringing back Andromeda Strain.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That's Dikkens with two k's, the well known Dutch author.
Seriously, though, what about Python animator and accomplished director Terry Gilliam? 12 Monkeys? Time Bandits? Brazil? Cripes, that one scene in Life of Brian?!? Now, that's science fiction. If we're nominating directors now, Gilliam is high on my list.
Do not touch -Willie
The presence of the recently deceased Andre Norton on the winners' list rather argues against that explanation. I suspect that since they've only been at it since 1996 they have a lot of catching up to do, and the self-imposed "2 living, 2 dead" rule probably complicates things as well.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
because of a high fan-boy index, shame on you.
He has no business getting in ahead of (in alphabetical order):
J.G. Ballard: Not all of his is writing is SF. But his Vermilion Sands type work certainly qualifies.
William Gibson: Only created Cyberpunk.
Frank Herbert: As others have mentioned, should have a ballot for Dune.
Stanislaw Lem: Not seeing him in the HoF is a fucking embarassment, and shows how shallow the average American SF reader is. He has far better material than Solaris.
Larry Niven: Big Iron stuff like Ringworld earns him a slot, along with his humor (Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex).
G. Harry Stine: If you don't know who he is, shame on you again. Go back to school. He's as important as Shelley.
That said, I find his work a mixed bag. From absolute total brilliance (Ubik, Three stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Martian Timeslip) to some pretty lame crap (Clans of the alphane Moon, We can build you). He was a very prolific writer but he also has his share of crap.
On average though he's probably #1 in Sci-Fi in my opinion. Oh, and his short stories are totally mind blowing.
Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
belongs in the scifi hall of fame now! "The X-Files" has been to TV scifi what "Amazing Stories" was to magazine scifi. The exploration of the conflict between skepticism and faith, demonstrating the use of science to solve crimes, in general consistently excellent storytelling, development of complex characters, high quality musical scoring, mixing individual stories with a lengthy unifying background plot, a healthy willingness to not take the characters and the story too seriously, are all attributes of this series that contributed to it being one of the all time greatest television series. IMO, "X-Files" is far superior to Star Trek.
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
I think the grandparent is quite correct. It is difficult capturing PKD on film. First off, his stories are usually very dense and character driven. That means a long film and being able to do character development.
For instance, Blade Runner has only the setting of the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep and the most basic plot elements. Its missing Deckerd's marital problems, Mercerism, the little existential crisis, lots of important scenes and ideas, etc. Scott pretty much took the story and turned it into an action movie, albiet a moody and gorgeous sci-fi action movie.
This review has an interesting quote: The film version, on the other hand, was shaped along the lines of a mean-streets detective novel by Raymond Chandler. In it the pervasive confusion is a puzzle to be solved, not an exercise in mind-bending.
I just saw Blade Runner again at a late night viewing and am blown away by how well made of a film it is and how it captures the vision of a near-future dystopia, but it has very little in common with the book.
The other PKD stories turned movies have been mostly short-stories, as a short story is pretty much the size and scope of a typical movie. But even Minority Report was trimmed down and the politics from the story were removed and replaced with more action sequences.
How about John Brunner?
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck