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.""

Comments

Philip K. Dick

[FunWithHeadlines]

Philip K. Dick would, of course, find something darkly paranoid about this honor and would have accepted with suspicion. :)

Re:Philip K. Dick

[ackthpt]

Philip K. Dick would, of course, find something darkly paranoid about this honor and would have accepted with suspicion. :)

Maybe he'd work it into a book which Speilberg could make a movie out of.

Re:Philip K. Dick

[AndroidCat]

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.)

Re:Philip K. Dick

[ackthpt]

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.)

Really. Rather see Ridley Scott up there for Alien and Blade Runner, further he's bringing back Andromeda Strain.

Steven Spielberg?

[ackthpt]

Man... The guy will have his version of War of The Worlds come out shortly afterwards. Why would this be? I don't especially associated him with Sci-Fi. Is this a ploy of some sort?

Lord knows there's a heck of a lot of authors who have done more for Sci-Fi than his films.

Re:Steven Spielberg?

[raitchison]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/

E.T, Jurassic Park Series, Back to the Future Series, Batteries Not Included, Men In Black just to name a few.

All of those are classics or wee massively popular, some are both (not going to categorize here)

Not the greatest contributor ot SciFi of all time but definitely certianly a candidate for the hall of fame.

Re:Steven Spielberg?

[ackthpt]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000229/

Pop stuff, mostly. JP series was horrible compared to the books. I'd give him a nod for close encounters, but that's about it.

What about the Michael Crichton, the guy who wrote the JP books?

Closer to the hearts of /.ers, what about Gene Roddenberry?

Re:Steven Spielberg?

[Anonymous Coward]

The bigger question to me is why they're honoring someone whos films are derivative of old school scifi, and ignoring (so far) the icons of new wave scifi of the 60s and 70s.

Chosing someone like Spielberg, involved only peripherally in scifi, as opposed to Harlan Ellison and Roger Zelaszny, who managed to help scifi stay fresh, interesting and relevant in a post-modern world really makes me wonder.

And where the hell is William Gibson? Anyone who says that E.T. had anywhere near the impact of Neuromancer needs to have their head examined.

Re:Steven Spielberg?

[Sanga]

Are you claiming SS wrote all this (/created all of this from scratch?). If rehashing pre-told SCIFI was fair game you can include AI and Minority Report.

That way, Kubrick has more of a claim to make it there -- he set the tone for many scifi (/fantasy) flicks to follow.

Re:Steven Spielberg?

[Babbster]

Closer to the hearts of /.ers, what about Gene Roddenberry?

Having looked at the member list, I can only conclude that they're not giving TV scifi any respect. I would certainly expect Gene to enter a scifi hall of fame before Spielberg, if for no other reason than Star Trek came out and had an impact long before Spielberg's stuff. It's certainly had more impact on the scifi culture over four decades.

A similar oversight in my view is Irwin Allen. He's created, produced and/or directed quite a bit of popular scifi material, most notably Lost in Space.

Bottom line is that the people are probably folks who are uppity and don't consider TV high enough art (yes, there have been ST movies but the TV was and is homebase for ST).

Re:Steven Spielberg?

[1u3hr]

Does the fact that they're finally inducting PKD tell you nothing?

It tells me it's a sop to literary SF, to cover up their sell out to Hollywood sci-fi's version, where directors of movies based on SF writer's books are honoured. And Ray Harryhousen?? For God's sake, he was a great special effects guy, but what the hell has that to do with SF? And most moves he worked on I can reall were straigh-out fantasy, animated skeletons, etc.P> If they are going to hounour contributors to movie SF they should have started with the Lumiere Brothers.

Anyway, this marks the end of any credibility of this so-called "Hall of Fame" in my eyes, call me a snob if you will.

No Frank Herbert?

[downward dog]

Besides Asimov and Bradbury, I would have thought for sure that he'd be there. The Dune series (and not just the first book!) is a serious contender for greatest work of SF/Fantasy ever written.

Someone correct me and tell me that I just missed him!

Re:No Frank Herbert?

[mustbepatient]

You're not the only one who thinks that highly of Dune - it's ranked #1 on the Locus list: http://www.locusmag.com/SFAwards/Db/LocusAT1975.ht ml#allnvl Given that, he should be in soon...

Re:No Frank Herbert?

[ackthpt]

Besides Asimov and Bradbury, I would have thought for sure that he'd be there. The Dune series (and not just the first book!) is a serious contender for greatest work of SF/Fantasy ever written. Someone correct me and tell me that I just missed him!

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 Tribute to Ray Harryhausen

[sheetsda]

For anyone with a taste for the bizarre (like me), I recommend checking out A Tribute to Ray Harryhausen. (Macromedia Flash required)

Adams

[schnits0r]

What? No Douglas Adams? He was my favourite

Re:Adams

[SlashThat]

He should definitely be on the list. It's hard for people to appreciate in year 2005, but Adams' understanding of where the computing world was heading, back in 1978, amazes me.

My favorite part of H2G2 is when Adams tells about the robots with "genuine people personalities". I.e. Marvin (the paranoid android), the doors that go "thank you" when you go through them and Eddie, the ship computer. What is amazing is that Adams not only visioned that computers will be user friendly (in 1978!), but also how annoying this will be!

Spielberg: Happy Ending Man

[handy_vandal]

What the heck has [Spielberg] done for Sci-Fi?

Given it happy endings.

-kgj

Slight typo

[GuyMannDude]

Sure, these aren't "hardcore" SF offerings, but its hard to imagine another guy, other than Lucas, who consistently churns out enjoyable Scifi fare.

I hate to nitpick but your sentence seems to be implying that Lucas makes enjoyable SciFi fare.

GMD

Harryhausen and Spielberg...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

...are excellent film makers but they've brought shame on science fiction by making "science fiction movie" synonymous with "action movie with dinosaurs and aliens 'n' stuff". Maybe someone should reserve some spaces in the Hall of Fame for film makers who actually make their audiences think as much as a well written science fiction novel or short story.

(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.)

Re:I hope that...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are a moron. It doesn't matter what the "fans" want or don't want. Lucas could release a 2-hour movie of himself taking a shit, call it "Star Wars Episode 3", and you would happily wait in line for 3 days for tickets. So STFU.

I am now eagerly anticipating

[Timesprout]

The slashdot explosion of rage when George Lucas gets inducted.

The first person to ask...

[uhlume]

what this headline has to do with San Francisco gets dumped in the Bay. That is all.

Never really was in Kansas

[L-Train8]

The Hall, once located in Lawrence, Kansas, is now a part of the Science Fiction Museum in Seattle.

The Hall was originally run be a group in Lawrence, Kansas, but there was no actual physical place. They would hold meetings to induct members, then send plaques to the new inductees. It wasn't until the Science Fiction Museum worked out a deal to house the place that it became a physical reality, some place that you could go visit.

Also, the Kansas group was the Sci Fi/Fantasy Hall of Fame, but the Seattle Sci-Fi Museum didn't want to include fantasy. Fortunately, all the members with a background in fantasy also had at least some sci-fi in their ouevre.

What About . . .

[White Roses]

Charles Dikkens?

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.

Re:No Shelley until 2004?

[Kiryat Malachi]

They've been at it since 1996, and induct 4 per year (2 living, 2 dead). So she was inducted after a grand total of 16 other people. Which other people?

Isaac Asimov. Alfred Bester. James Blish. Edgar Rice Burroughs. John Campbell, Jr. Hal Clement. Hugo Gernsback. Heinlein. Damon Knight. Fritz Leiber. Abraham Merritt. C.L. Moore (a woman). Eric Russell. Theodore Sturgeon. A.E. Van Vogt. Jules Verne. H.G. Wells. Donald Wollheim.

And if you look at the competition, Shelley was up against some tough competition. Was Frankenstein historically important to the development of sci-fi? Absolutely. But was Shelley more important than people like Asimov, Heinlein, Campbell? I'd even argue that inducting her before PKD was doing a huge disservice to the genre. Gender-friendliness is nice, but when you're talking about the best of the best, there's no shame in acknowledging that *due to historical and cultural reasons*, the majority of those are men. Going out of your way to induct a woman just because she's a woman makes a mockery of both the idea of an award, and of the body of work of the individual so "honored".

(Oh, yeah. LeGuin was inducted in 2001, Andre Norton in 1997, and CL Moore in 98. FOAD with your accusations of gender bias, please.)

If you are going to let Spielberg in...

[__aaasvk1266]

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.