Friday, November 25, 2011

The Muppets

The Muppets is either a charming, sweet movie brimming with the best kind of nostalgia, or a rather disturbing look into Jason Segel's mind.

Either way, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Sad

Anne McCaffrey 1926-2011

Anne McCaffrey was without doubt one of the five writers who most influenced my reading of science fiction and fantasy. Where many people see Pern as fantasy dressed up as science fiction, (with an implicit sneer, as if that's a bad thing) I see fantasy transformed into the science fiction idiom, with all the necessary rigor that entails.

This is particularly true in the earliest Pern stories and books, which feature not only science, but sophisticated politics and characters who need cunning, not magic, to save themselves. If you start with the The Dragonriders of Pern, you find yourself plunked into a medieval society sorely in need of scientific advancement and, dare we say, enlightenment. Just look at how poor Menolly is treated at the beginning of the Harper Hall trilogy.

Along with the Pern books, I most fondly remember Crystal Singer and Killashandra, two lovely and original science fiction romances.

She will live on in the pantheon of the greats.

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Quote

"Fantasy, unlike science fiction, relies on a moral universe: it is less an argument with the universe than a sermon on the way things should be..."

Rhetorics of Fantasy
by Farah Mendlesohn
2008

Friday, November 18, 2011

Quote (Classic)

"What color are their hands now?"

Beauregard and Miss Piggy
The Great Muppet Caper

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Quote (Classic)

"I'm not bad. I'm just drawn that way."

Jessica Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
1988