Calendar: September 21

A Year: Day to Day Men: 21st of September

Green Drawstring Shorts

September 21, 1866 was the birthdate of English author Herbert George Wells.

In 1890 Herbert George Wells earned a Bachelor of Science degree in zoology from the University of London External Program and began teaching science.. Wells’ first published work was a “Text-Book of Biology” in two volumes in 1893. After leaving his teaching position, H. G. Wells began to write short humorous articles for journals such as “The Pall Mall Gazette”, which he later collected and published in two volumes, “Selected Conversations with an Uncle” in 1895 and “Certain Personal Matters” in 1897. His success with these shorter pieces encouraged him to write book-length work, leading to his first novel, “The Time Machine” in 1895.

H.G. Wells married Amy Robbins, one of his former students, and moved to a rented house in Woking, Surrey where they stayed for a short time. It was during this eighteen month period of time in 1895 to 1896 that he was perhaps the most productive and creative in his writing career. While staying there, Wells wrote “The War of the Worlds”, completed “The Island of Dr. Moreau”, wrote and published “The Wonderful Visit” and “The Wheels of Chance”. He also began writing two other books, “When the Sleeper Wakes” and “Love and Mr. Lewisham”.

Wells’ approach to science fiction, with his personal rules of writing, was one of the major contributions to the genre. In his opinion, the author should always strive to make the story as credible as possible, even if the reader and the writer knew certain elements were impossible, thus causing a suspension of disbelief. Wells also thought there should be a sense of realism to the concepts and the story should contain only a single extraordinary assumption. Detail was imperative and adherence to the hypothesis of the story should be rigorous.

Prior to 1933, Wells’s books were widely read in Germany and Austria, and most of his science fiction works had been translated shortly after its publication. By 1933, he had attracted the attention of German officials because of his criticism of the political situation in Germany. On May 10th of 1933, Wells’s books were burned by the Nazi Youth in Berlin’s public square, and his works were banned from libraries and book stores.

Wells, as president of Poets, Essayists and Novelists International, angered the Nazis by overseeing the expulsion of the German PEN club from the international body following the German PEN’s refusal to admit non-Aryan writers to its membership. At a PEN conference in Ragusa, Croatia, Wells refused to yield to Nazi sympathizers who demanded that the exiled Ernest Toller, a German left-wing Expressionist playwright, be prevented from speaking.

Near the end of the World War II, Allied forces discovered that the Schutzstaffel (SS) had compiled lists of people slated for immediate arrest during the invasion of Britain in the abandoned Operation Sea Hunt, with Wells included in the alphabetical list of “The Black Book” to be placed into the custody of the Gestapo.

Calendar: May 10

A Year: Day to Day Men: 10th of May

The Lava Field

Olaf Stapledon, the British science fiction writer, was born on May 10, 1886.

Olaf Stapledon was educted at Abbotsholme School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a BA degree in Modern History in 1909 and an MA degree in 1913. He was award a PhD degree in Philosophy from the University of Liverpool in 1925 and used his doctoral thesis as the basis for his first published prose book “A Modern Theory of Ethics” published in 1929. He, however, soon turned to fiction in the hope of presenting his ideas to a wider public.

In 1930, Stapledon wrote a future-history novel entitled “Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future”. It was a work of unprecedented scale in the science fiction genre, describing the history of humanity from the present onwards across two billion years, involving eighteen distinct human species, of which ours was the first.

Stapledon’s conception of history is based on the Hegelian Dialectic, following a repetitive cycle with many varied civilizations rising from and descending back into savagery over millions of years, but overall progressing, as the later civilizations rise to far greater heights than the first. The book anticipates the science of genetic engineering, and is an early example of the fictional supermind; a consciousness composed of many telepathically-linked individuals.

Stapledon followed that epic work with a sequel, the far less acclaimed “Last Men in London” published in 1932. The 1937 novel “Star Maker” could also be considered a sequel to “Last and First Men”, briefly mentioning man’s evolution on Neptune; but this novel is more ambitious in scope, being a history of the entire universe. He followed up these novels with many more books of fiction and philosophy.

After 1945, Stapledon travelled on lecture tours, and in 1949 spoke in Poland at the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace. He attended the Conference for World Peace held in New York City in 1949. In 1950, he was actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement. After a week of lectures in Paris In August 1950, he cancelled a projected trip to Yugoslavia and returned to his home in Caldy, England, where he died very suddenly of a heart attack in early September.

Stapledon’s writings directly influenced Arthur C. Clark, Brian Aldis, Betrand Russell, John Maynard Smith and indirectly many others, contributing many ideas to the world of science fiction writing. None of Olaf Stapledon’s novels, however, have been presented as films.

Calendar: March 12

Year: Day to Day Men: March 12

Gazing into Space

The twelfth of March in 1925 is the birth date of Harry Harrison, an American science fiction author. A longtime resident in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, he assisted in the founding of the Irish Science Fiction Association and was co-president with author Brian Aldiss of the Birmingham Science Fiction group.

Born Henry Maxwell Dempsey in Stanford, Connecticut, Harry Harrison was drafted into the United States Army Air Force upon graduating from high school in 1943. He served during World War II as a gunsight technician and as a gunnery instructor. Harrison eventually became a specialist in prototypes for computer-assisted bomb-sights and gun turrets. After leaving military service in 1946, he enrolled in New York City’s Hunter College and later operated a studio that sold illustrations to both comic and science fiction periodicals.

Harrison initially worked in the science fiction field as an illustrator, primarily with two comic anthologies, “Weird Fantasy” and “Weird Science” published by William Gaines’s “EC Comics”. His illustration work was mostly done in collaboration with comic book artist Wally Wood; Harrison’s layouts would usually be inked by Wood. The two men freelanced together for several publishers until their partnership ended in 1950.

Harry Harrison worked under several pseudonyms during his career including Philip St. John, Wade Kaempfert, Felix Boyd and Hank Dempsey. He was hired to write the 1964 “Vendetta for the Saint”, one of the long mystery series featuring novelist Leslie Charteris’s character The Saint. Harrison also wrote for syndicated comic strips, most notably for the “Rick Random: Space Detective” series created by Conrad Frost and Bill Lacey. His first short story was 1951 “Rock Diver”, a classic Western plot with a sci-fi twist that described the effect of passing through matter.

Harrison was the main writer during the 1950s and 1960s for the “Flash Gordon” newspaper strip. His most popular and best known works are his later satirical science fictions and his reconstructions of the traditional space-opera adventures. Harrison’s twelve volumes of “The Stainless Steel Rat” series featured the futuristic con-man and thief, James Bolivar diGriz. This series ran from 1957 to 2010. He published “Bill, the Galactic Hero” in 1965. This was a satirical science fiction novel of Bill, a farm boy on a small agricultural planet who is shanghaied into the Space Troopers to fight a reptilian race named Chingers.

Harry Harrison wrote many stories on serious themes. The best known is his novel about overpopulation and consumption of the planet’s resources, the 1966 “Make Room! Make Room!”. This novel provided the basic idea for the 1973 science fiction film “Soylent Green”, written by Stanley R. Greenberg and directed by Richard Fleischer.

Harrison and author Brian Aldiss collaborated on a series of anthology projects and, in 1973, instituted the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. They also published the first of two issues of “SF Horizons”, the world’s first serious journal of science fiction criticism. Harrison and Aldiss edited nine volumes of “The Years Best Science Fiction” anthology series as well as three volumes of the “Decade” series that collected stories from the 1940s to the 1960s.

Although he did not win a major award for any specific work, Harry Harrison was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2004. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers named him the 26th Grand Master in 2008. Harrison became a cult hero in Russian with the winning of the 2008 Golden Roscon Award for lifetime achievement in science fiction.

Harrison spent most of his later years residing in Ireland, having gained citizenship through his Irish grandparent. He had also kept apartments in London and Brighton, England. Upon the death of his wife Joan Merkler Harrison in 2002 from cancer, Harrison made his Brighton home his permanent residence. He died in his Brighton apartment in August of 2012.

Calendar: February 11

Year: Day to Day Men: February 11

The City’s Pier

The eleventh of February in 1938 marks the first televised broadcast of a science fiction program. The British Broadcasting Corporation, BBC, adapted Karel Čapek’s seminal play, “R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots)” into a thirty-five minute production which aired at 3:30 in the afternoon.

Born in January of 1890, Karel Čapek was a Czech writer, playwright and journalist. He became best known for his science fiction works, most notably the 1936 “War with the Newts”, a satirical work of exploitation and human flaws, and his “R.U.R.”, a three-act play with prologue that introduced the word robot to the English language. Although nominated seven times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, Čapek never received the award. Several awards, however, commemorate his name among which is the Karel Čapek Prize that is awarded to those who contribute to the reinforcement and maintenance of democratic and humanist values in society.

The robots in Čapek’s 1920 “R.U.R.” are not robots in the popularly understood sense of an automaton or a mechanical device. They were artificially biological organisms that were similar to humans. These robots more closely resembled more modern conceptions such as replicants ( 1982 Blade Runner ) or android hosts ( 2016 Westworld television series ). Their skin and brains were produced in vats, their bones in factories, and their nerve fibers, arteries and intestines were spun on factory bobbins. The robots, themselves living biological beings, were finally assembled on factory lines as opposed to grown or born.

“R.U.R.” had its first theatrical premiere on the twenty-fifth of January in 1921 at Prague’s National Theater. English writer Paul Selver translated the play into English and sold it to St. Martin’s Theater in London. The translation was adapted for British theater by actor Sir Nigel Ross Playfair in 1922. Performance rights for the United States and Canada were sold in the same year to the New York Theater Guild. The American premiere of “R.U.R.” took place in October of 1922 at New York City’s Garrick Theater on 35th Street in Manhattan where it ran for one hundred and eighty-four performances.

In April of 1923, actor and director Basil Dean produced “R.U.R.” in Britain for the Reandean Company at London’s St. Martin’s Theater. This version was based on Playfair’s adaptation and included several revisions from the New York Theater Guild. During the 1920s, the play was performed in several British and American theaters. In June of 1923, Karel Čapek sent a letter to translator Edward March with the play’s final lines that had been omitted from previous translations. A copy of this final and complete translation of Čapek’s play later appeared in the 2001 journal of “Science Fiction Studies”.

The BBC airing of Čapek’s “R.U.R.” occurred just two years after England launched the broadcasting service; it is unclear whether any recordings of the event survived. The play’s effects, though very rudimentary by today’s standards, made it very suitable for showing on the new television medium. Although its popularity peaked in the 1920s, Čapek’s “Rossum’s Universal Robots” became the foundation of many of science fiction’s modern franchises, both film and television.

Tron Legacy

“Tron Legacy”, Directed by Joseph Kosinski, 2010

“Tron: Legacy” is a 2010 American science fiction film produced and released by Walt Disney Pictures. A sequel to the 1982 film Tron, it is directed by Joseph Kosinski, produced by Tron director Steven Lisberger and written by Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis, based on a story by Horowitz, Kitsis, Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. The cast includes Tron veterans Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, who reprised their roles as Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley, as well as Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Beau Garrett, Michael Sheen and James Frain. The story follows Flynn’s son Sam (Hedlund) who responds to a message from his long-lost father (Bridges) and is transported into a virtual reality called the Grid, where Sam, his father and the algorithm Quorra (Wilde) stop the malevolent program CLU from invading the human world.

Interest in creating a sequel for Tron arose after the film garnered a cult following. After much speculation, a concerted effort to devise Tron: Legacy began in 2005 when producers hired Klugman and Sternthal as writers. Kosinski was recruited as director two years later. As he was not optimistic about Walt Disney Pictures’ Matrix-esque approach to the film, Kosinski opted for a loan which he used to cultivate a prototype and conceptualize the universe of Tron: Legacy. Principal photography took place in Vancouver over 67 days, in and around the city’s central business district. Most sequences were shot in 3D and ten companies were involved with the extensive visual effects work. Chroma keying and other techniques were used to allow more freedom in creating effects. The film score was composed by French duo Daft Punk, who incorporated orchestral sounds into their electronic music.

Alex Proyas, “Dark City”: Film History Series

“Dark City”: Director’s Cut: 2008; Directed by Alex Proyas

“Dark City” is a 1998 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Alex Proyas. The screenplay was written by Proyas, Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer. The film stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, and William Hurt. Sewell plays John Murdoch, an amnesiac man who finds himself suspected of murder. Murdoch attempts to discover his true identity and clear his name while on the run from the police and a mysterious group known only as the “Strangers”.

The majority of the film was shot at Fox Studios Australia. It was jointly produced by New Line Cinema and Mystery Clock Cinema. New Line Cinema and New Line Home Video commercially distributed the theatrical release and home media respectively. The film premiered in the United States on February 27, 1998, and was a box office bomb, but received mainly positive reviews. The film was nominated for Hugo and Saturn Awards, and has become a cult classic. A director’s cut was released in 2008, restoring and preserving Proyas’s original artistic vision for the film.

A classic film: science fiction thriller in the style of film-noir. This film is a must see for sci-fi fans; the director’s cut is the version to watch.

Frank R Paul, “Amazing Stories”

Frank R Paul, “Amaing Stories” Cover Art

Frank R Paul was an American illustrator of pulp magazines in the science fiction field. His early architectural training is evident in his work. A discovery of editor Hugo Gemsback, the founder of “Amazing Stories”, Frank R Paul defined what both cover art and interior illustrations in the nascent sci-fi pulps of the 1920′s looked like. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009.

Pierce Brown, “The Red Rising Trilogy”

“The Red Rising Trilogy” by Pierce Brown

Red Rising is a dystopian science-fiction novel trilogy written by Pierce Brown. As of current, it consists of Red Rising, Golden Son, both of which have already been released, and Morning Star, intended for release spring 2016. These are published by Del Rey books, an imprint of Random House.

The books take place at around 736 P.C.E (Post Conquering Era) in the Society.

Each book has a timeskip in between. The titles of each book pertain to the development of the main character, Darrow. Darrow was the Red rising, a part of the Rebellion. As he became more involved with Golds, and was part of House Augustus, he was a Gold. In the final book, he becomes a leader, just like the star sailors look at to point their way. The theme of the first book was revenge and justice. The second book was about trust. The last book was about hope and faith, and reveals two interpretations of Darrow: as a hero or a villain.

It has an official website at redrisingbook.com though sonsofares.com (coincidentally, the official fan club’s Twitter account hand is SonsofAres_) also redirects there.