Steven Howell Wilson's Blog, page 42

Many Thanks

Seriously, a lot of "thank yous" are in order. When I wrote last week's piece about our departure from the Farpoint science fiction convention's committee after twenty years of service, I felt it was a bit rushed and scattered. There were things in it that maybe I shouldn't have said, there were things I should have said and didn't, and there were things I could have said better.

But so many of you reached out to me, via Facebook and email, to support my decision and...

Letting Go

Twenty years ago, give or take some days or months, I decided to start a convention called Farpoint. Back then, it was a Star Trek convention. That was what there was. No one had heard of a Lost in Space convention, or a Battlestar Galactica convention. Dark Shadows had its own series of conventions, but Trek had cornered the market on media conventions where actors appeared to greet their fans. There were lit cons, there were comic cons, and, most noticably, there were Trek cons. Farpoint wa...

"War and Christianity Are... Opposite Ends of a Balance" by Jonathan Dymond

In my research for my last two novels, both of which concerned Quakers (more properly called the Society of Friends) and their beliefs, Jessamyn West's The Quaker Reader was an indispensable resource for me. Leafing through it again last week, I was reminded how much this one particular essay struck a chord with me. It pretty much sums up my own feelings on war.

I'm not going to review it, or really summarize it. Mr. Dymond, a Quaker who only lived a very few years (1796–1828), e...

You go, JoCo

Just a brief entry this week. Glee is an often-funny show which has energized a lot of people in its few years on the air, causing young men and women to flock to their school's choir classes and clubs in record numbers, and generally driving a lot of music sales. You'd think anything that drives interest in the arts would be a good thing, right?

Well, mostly. Trouble is, Glee is backed by the Fox network, and the Fox network hasn't the least little interest in the arts. The only i...

Review: Metal Men Archives Volume 1

I'm addicted to the DC Comics Archive Editions, and it's all Howard Weinstein's fault. Back in the 1990's Howie had a contract with DC to write their monthly Classic Star Trek title. The coolest thing about that was that I was his backup-writer of choice. Back in the day, when a regular comic writer missed a deadline, the comic was not delayed for one to fifty-two weeks, as it is today. The issue always came out on time. If the writer or artists did not deliver on deadline, an...

REVIEW - Dark Passages by Kathryn Leigh Scott

I first discovered the lovely Kathryn Leigh Scott when I was twelve, watching reruns of Dark Shadows. Remember that twelve is the golden age of science fiction? It's a pretty good age for boys to start noticing pretty girls, too. And Kathryn Leigh Scott is one of the prettiest damsels who ever suffered distress on the screen of my black and white TV. She wasn't only pretty, she was smart. She had guts. As Maggie Evans, she could take care of an absent-minded, alcoholic father, resist...

Review - Tom Hooper's Les Miserables

Okay, right up front - SPOILER WARNING. If you don't know the story of Les Mis, I'm totally gonna blow it for you. So, before you read, go see this excellent filmed rendition starring Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried and lovely newcomer Samantha Barks. And then you might be interested in what I have to say in the spoilerific paragraphs ahead.

If you haven't seen this film, though, I have to ask... where were you the day after Christmas? Because I'm pretty sure the p...

The Social Philosophy Aspects of Capra & Riskin's Lost Horizon

Utopia is an old idea. From Plato's Republic to Moore's Utopia, from the Book of Revelation to Candide, authors and philosophers have long speculated on what the perfect human society might look like. Shangri La, created by James Hilton in his novel Lost Horizon, and further developed by Robert Riskin in his screenplay for the film of the same name, is a Utopia, and perhaps the one with which modern audiences are most familiar.

The two principal utopias of the 20th Century were Shangri...

One Last Day...

...of 2012. Tomorrow, I'll post my regular blog entry, but today I'm setting up for a party and reflecting on the year. (I'm also noticing that LJ's new interface doesn't work very well -- it won't load on Firefox on my iMac!)

But I would like to note the passing of two members of the SF Community in recent days:


Gerry Anderson created Space:1999, UFO, Thunderbirds and many other SF series during the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. His stylish productions inspired the li...

Ten Films for Christmas

So today is way too busy to do a 5,000-word essay on film themes, and I'm still reading the section of In Capra's Shadow about the writing of the screenplay for Lost Horizon. So here's something easy and fun: my top ten Christmas films, in loose order based on when my family and I watch them.

White Christmas - Thanksgiving weekend while putting up the Living Room tree.

Favorite Quote: "When what left of you gets around to what's left to be gotten, what's left to be gott...