Podcast: Why I don't (but do) watch 'Fringe'

Image via WikipediaHere's my latest SF Signal Podcast appearance, wherein I, Scott Shaffer, Fred Kiesche, Matthew Sanborn Smith, Lisa Paitz Spindler and Patrick Hester discuss why we don't (or, in my case, do) watch Fringe.

Listen for the other contributions, which are imminently more useful than my own. If for some reason you think my comments have redeeming value, you can hear my previous Sf Signal audiocrimes here.

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My various SF Signal podcast appearances

Image via WikipediaI have been frustratingly unavailable to participate in these of late, but suffice it to say, the SF Signal Podcast is audibly awesome. Should you have some perverse need to hear my spoken opinions on various sci-fi topics, you can do so via the following SF Signal episodes:

• Episode 9 - Sex in Science Fiction
• Episode 12 - When Genre Series Overstay Their Welcome
• Episode 13 - The Best Genre Shows on the Air and Why You Should Be Watching Them
• Episode 14 - Interview with Paul Levinson
• Episode 16 - A Geek Holiday Gift-Giving Guide
• Episode 22 - How Events of the Past Decade Have Influenced Speculative Fiction
• Episode 23 - Is social media good for the book industry, publishing and authors?

You can subscribe to the SF Signal podcast in its entirety (and it's way better when I'm not in it) via iTunes. If you like the work, check out the guys who produce it, the Functional Nerds.

'Internet TV and The Death of Cable' and 3 more must-read links

Image by NathanReed via Flickr
1. Internet TV and The Death of Cable TV, really
2. New Scientist announces flash fiction contest judged by Neil Gaiman
3. How Mint beat Wesabe
4. Top 10 Important Blunders of Ancient Science

What work of classic literature was Gene Roddenberry's inspiration for Star Trek? (Hint: It wasn't "Wagon Train")

A mere 44 years ago this week -- Sept. 8, 1966 -- the first episode of Star Trek aired on CBS. The debut of "The Man Trap" was the culmination of six years of work for series creator Gene Roddenberry, who had been developing and shopping his show concept since 1960.

Like all Hollywood pitches, Roddenberry had to relate his show premise to an already successful franchise in order to interest production studios. Thus, Star Trek was floated to TV houses as "Wagon Train in space" -- a description that many fans consider inaccurate, and perhaps even condescending.

In truth, Roddenberry was only citing the episodic, random-encounter-with-the-unknown aspect of Wagon Train. His inspiration for Star Trek, as he would later claim, was actually one of the most famous works of classic literature ever written.

What work of classic literature was Gene Roddenberry's self-professed inspiration for Star Trek?

Nerd Word of the Week: HOPA girl

Image mercilessly stolen from theChive.

HOPA girl (n.) - An internet meme that seems too good to be true, but becomes popular anyway. Also known as a dry erase girl, whiteboard girl, Jenny DryErase or HPOA girl. Named after a hoax perpetrated by theChive, a meme-centered website, in which a brokerage employee resigns by mass-emailing pictures of herself holding a whiteboard to her colleagues. The whiteboard details the employee's reason for the theatrical resignation: Her boss referred to her as a HOPA, a mangled form of the acronym for hot piece of ass.

I bring it up because: HOPA girl went down this week, and in so doing sparked a navel-gazing debate amongst the blogosphere about the nature of memes and the gullibility of traffic-starved bloggers. Basically, once one major site runs with a HOPA girl meme -- which by definition seems too good to be true and thus likely to be a hoax -- every other major meme site has to run with it too. All it takes is one high-profile sucker and the whole Internet is obligated to play along for fear of losing immediate traffic. Thus, expect to see more HOPA girls, not less --especially since the guys behind HOPA girl have done this before. So much for the web being the future of (serious) journalism.

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Nerd Word of the Week: Conlang

Conlang flag - Image via Wikipedia

Conlang (n.) - Slang term for constructed language, which is a language created for a specific purpose rather than one that evolves naturally from consensual public usage. Conlangs are often created for use in fictional settings, with classic examples including Tolkien's Elvish from the Lord of the Rings book series, or Star Trek's Klingon, created by linguist Marc Okrand. There are, however, conlangers -- creators and consumers of constructed languages -- that develop these fictional tongues strictly for amusement, separate from any attachment to a book, television, or movie series. Some geeks use conlangs to flesh out their favorite fictional worlds, and some conlangers are just fake language geeks.

I bring it up because: HBO has commissioned a conlang of the Dothraki language for its miniseries adaptation of George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire book series. Just chalk it up as yet another concession to the too-passionate-to-be ignored geek demographic.

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Truly Trivial: When was the first 3D television broadcast, and what program was shown?

Image via Wikipedia

For those of us fortunate enough to attend the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it has become glaring apparent that every major television manufacturer is desperate to shove 3D TV down our throats -- whether the consumer likes it or not. If you're among the millions of movie-goers (or Golden Globes judges) that saw James Cameron's Avatar, you know that Hollywood has also suddenly decided that 3D is the technology that will once again get consumers lining up at cinemas rather than queuing up on bittorrent. Piling on, ESPN and the Discovery Channel are committed to creating 3D HD television channels this year, and pretty much every major PC video game has a 3D expansion or sequel in the works (you couldn't throw a rock at CES without hitting a 3D version of Batman: Arkham Asylum).

Hope you like wearing dorky 3D glasses for several hours a day.

What's lost in all this sudden 3D hoopla is that 3D photography, motion pictures and television have been around for decades and that, while each has enjoyed a brief spark of popularity, the public has always swung back to familiar, comfortable two-dimensional media as its preferred viewing format. Some of this has been due to limitations in technology, some of it has been due to the paucity of good 3D content, but for this author's money the problem that killed 3D in the past remains the one that neither Silicon Valley nor Tinseltown have yet solved -- nobody wants to wear 3D glasses to watch TV. (Yes, there are 3D screens that don't require glasses, but those models demand a direct viewing angle; step a few degrees left or right of center and the image blurs, which is equally if not more inconvenient.)

Three-dimensional stereoscope photography dates back at least to the 1840s with Charles Wheatstone and David Brewster inaugurating the technology. A 3D photograph of Queen Victoria was displayed at the Great Exhibition in 1851. In 1855 the Kinematoscope 3D movie camera was produced, and by 1935 3D films started appearing in theaters. This technology didn't achieve a major commercial groundswell until the 1950s when classic films like Bwana Devil and the original House of Wax delighted movie-going audiences. But by the 1960s, the insatiable craze for 3D films had died out, partly because moviehouses couldn't afford, maintain, or properly operate the dual-projector systems required to show the films, and partly because the public fad of 3D movies had passed on.

That same fad reached television in the 1990s, when major networks offered special 3D episodes of primetime television programs -- including a particularly memorable episode of 3rd Rock from the Sun, "Nightmare on Dick Street" -- but again the craze died out by the end of the decade. This time, the passing couldn't be laid at the feet of the technology, as 3D TV was proven feasible over forty years earlier.

So, when was the first 3D television broadcast, and what program was shown?

Truly Trivial: Who is the original creator of Festivus? (Hint: It ain't Seinfeld)

Image via Wikipedia

Today is my daughters birthday and thus I have no plans to do actual work today, so enjoy a recycled Truly Trivial from my old Geek Trivia days:

On Dec. 18, 1997, the Seinfeld episode “The Strike” aired for the first time, introducing the world to the now infamous faux holiday, Festivus. Billed as a counterpoint to the perceived increasing commercialism of Christmas (even though said commercialism is vital to the economy), Festivus — the so-called “holiday for the rest of us” — struck a chord with audiences, and real-world celebrations of this fictional festivity have been on the rise ever since. ... 

Lost in all this Festivus revelry is the fact that, despite Seinfeld’s role in popularizing Festivus, the holiday is not original to the sitcom. In fact, Festivus was over 30 years old when “The Strike” first aired [more than] a decade ago. 

Ironically, for a holiday ostensibly devoted to denouncing commercialization, Festivus may have been commercialized to the point of obscuring its own origins. 

WHO IS THE ORIGINAL CREATOR OF THE FAUX HOLIDAY FESTIVUS?

Read the complete Q&A here.

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Truly Trivial: What non-sci-fi book was the original basis for the alien invasion series V?

Image by spike55151 via Flickr

The revamped version of the television minseries V just finished its initial four-episode "pod" run before embarking on a four-month (are you kidding me?) hiatus. When the series resumes in March 2010, it will have a new showrunner: Chuck's Scott Rosenbaum, who displaces the technically-not-fired-but-no-longer-in-charge Scott Peters, former  producer of The 4400.

In some ways this switchout is just another tribute that the 2009 V miniseries is paying to the 1983 V miniseries. Or, to paraphrase another sci-fi franchise: All of this has happened to V before, and all of this will (probably) happen to V again.

The Visitors were first brought to the small screen in 1983 by Kenneth Johnson, who at the time was riding high as creator of The Bionic Woman and The Incredible Hulk TV series. During its original two-episode, four-hour run, V garnered a 25 share and over 40 million viewers -- which meant that a sequel was all but assured. In 1984, ABC television rolled out a followup miniseries, V: The Final Battle -- a series produced without Kenneth Johnson.

Johnson cowrote the original Final Battle draft script but ABC decided that it would be too expensive to produce and fired Johnson prior to rewrites. Many of Johnson's ideas survived the transition and thus ABC wanted to credit him as a writer on the sequel series. Likely in protest, Johnson is instead credited under the pseudonym Lillian Weezer. (For the record, you almost never outright refuse a writing credit because refusing endangers your royalty position.)

Thus, firing your showrunner prior to a cliffhanger is a V tradition. So is, apparently, the network wanting to "change the direction" of the series -- a tradition that started before the series even began production. Johnson, you see, originally pitched V without the Visitors as a non-sci-fi miniseries based on a non-sci-fi book. It was ABC's idea to "Star Wars" it up, which may be the only time in history that a TV network has asked for a series to be more sci-fi.

WHAT NON-SCI-FI BOOK WAS THE ORIGINAL INSPIRATION FOR V?

Introducing the Nerd Word of the Day

Image by Dunechaser via Flickr

In what can only be categorized as an act of insane hubris, I've decided that the Written Weird is going to in fact host a follow-up to my late, lamented Geek Trivia column called the Nerd Word of the Day. It will be a small hybird of my previous trivia work and my glossary of science fiction words.

My initial goal is to make these entries brief, timely, snarky--and to do them every weekday. Whether I can pull that off remains to be seen, but if ever I was to do a sequel to Geek Trivia, this would be it. It should start tomorrow, so stay tuned.

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The new Star Trek movie is the best possible Trek film--which is why they shouldn't make another one.

Image via WikipediaYes, I saw the Trek reboot on Saturday. Yes I liked it. No, it wasn't perfect, but that's not just me being a fanboy or an impossible-to-please critic (though I am both of those things). The movie had flaws, but they were outweighed by one inimitable factor that the film had in spades--and which almost every other Trek movie in the last 20 years has lacked--fun.

The new Star Trek is fun. It's funny. It has action. The characters are designed to be likable and interesting, not just allegories for whatever social group or psychological foil was necessary to drive the plot. There was no larger message about tolerance or human potential, it was just about the popcorn and the whiz-bang spectacle.

That, quite frankly, is the best we can hope for from a mainstream Star Trek movie. It's also why no mainstream movie can ever do justice to Star Trek.

I'm not talking about the bad science or the bad tactics or the plot holes (and more and more plot holes) you could fly a Klingon warbird through--those have been staples of all versions of Trek and, to a larger extent, nearly all filmic science fiction since day one. I'm also not talking about the inevitable (or imagined) knee-jerk fan backlash against anyone new taking on the classic Trek roles. I'm talking about what Star Trek stands for, and what is missing from this Trek movie--a moral.

Star Trek has always been a morality play dressed in sci-fi drag. The lessons were sometimes ham-fisted or cloying or maudlin, but there were lessons. Even as bad as Voyager and Enterprise got--and they got really bad--they still fumbled towards a moral or a theme in almost every episode (the dreadful series finales notwithstanding).

In the new Star Trek, the closest we get to a moral or a comment on the human condition is Spock's outrage at how racist the "logical" Vulcan leadership seems to be against humans and halfbreeds, or the notion that Kirk shouldn't let his father's death be an excuse for wasting his potential. These appear more as character inflections than social commentary.

Put more damningly, the new Star Trek is of closer kin to Independence Day than to "City on the Edge of Forever." That makes a real gee-whiz fun action ride, but nothing really approaching art. Many, many Trek episodes stand as some of the finest hours of television ever produced. No one would ever make the same claim about a Trek movie, except perhaps Wrath of Khan, which is really just a tightly scripted Moby Dick pastiche.

In fact, I'd argued that making Trek serve a mainstream cinematic audience is what killed it (and it certainly killed the Borg). Trek is at its best when it isn't trying to please such a wide swath of the viewing public, and is content--or, rather, not content unless--to tackle why and how the extraordinary artifice of science fiction can illuminate and instruct our own contemporary experience. That's the job of a television series, which has 20 or so hours every year to tell a succession of small or large stories focusing on one or more characters, as each best befits the moral and artistic goals of the show.

I'll leave it to greater minds than mine to determine whether Trek succeeding is good for science fiction as as a whole, but I will say that this Trek succeeding on the big screen could have disastrous consequences for the Trek franchise itself. It could turn Trek into solely a movie phenomenon, and widescreen is often a shallow medium. It seems financially unlikely that Paramount could afford to cast the current movie versions of Kirk, Spock et al as TV stars in a new Trek series, which is a loss. Trek belongs on television. (I'd argue the reverse is true of Star Wars; it functions best as a mainstream widescreen thrillride, and crumbles when stretched to navel-gaze at its own origins with prequels or TV series.)

The new Star Trek cast is fantastic, and the public's newfound demand for their takes on the characters will likely preclude an new Trek on TV. That means the look and feel and faces of the old Star Trek weren't the only casualties of this fun-and-fizzy new Trek reboot--so was Star Trek's heart. And that is a loss indeed.

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The difference between sports geeks and sci-fi geeks

The only problem is that I'm a sci-fi geek and a sports fan. There's quite a few of us, actually, which is why they make these. Personally, I prefer the baseball version, but it lacks the Mandalorian skull insignia. Out-dork that distinction, bitches.

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Steal This Mission Statement

Okay, so this is Clay Shirky doing a classic poke-the-blogosphere braindump at Web 2.0, but--in a fashion I reckon Shirky himself would appreciate--I'm hijacking it for my own nefarious purposes. See, folks keep asking what I'm doing at VuPal, the startup I joined shortly after I walked the CNet plank. Well, it's a little early to be showing all my cards as concerns VuPal, but I can appropriate some of what Shirky says here to my own ends, and basically hold up his speech as a mission statement for the venture. Hopefully, this will get some folks off my back.

Quote: "Here's what a four-year-old knows: A screen that ships without a mouse ships broken."

Put another way, there's an entire generation growing up with the notion that passive media is outdated, and that interactive media is the standard. Shirky touts the mission statement of Web 2.0 (and beyond) as a drive to make interactive what once was passive, to involve the audience and the consumer in every possible product--media particularly--that until now has been a broadcast-only proposition.

VuPal, to no one's surprise, is about video. Under Shirky's paradigm, video that you "just" watch is inadequate. So, that's what I'm trying to do at, for, and with VuPal: Convert video that was passive into video that is interactive. Moreover, we want to make the conversion easy, so that anyone can do it, and valuable, so that when you're done the end-product is worth the time it took to create and is worth more than the original video was by itself.

Now, where I'll mildly quibble with Shirky--and throw a splash of reality onto VuPal's world domination plans--is in his notion that we can convert all those passive TV-watchers into interactive post-sitcom era consumers. The average person is inclined against interaction (though there's probably an age skew there). In my old job, running an online community of computer professionals,--exactly the kind of people who are comfortable with technology and interactivity--only about one in 400 consumers ever explicitly interacted. One quarter of one percent.

That's a very slight level. Really successful interactive sites might get that up as high as one percent for actual text-based posting. For less overt acts--like simple voting--you might go as high as a third. NetFlix purports to have that percent of people rating movies on their site, which is nice, since people ostensibly come there to discover and consume movies, and the rating act is about as lightweight as interaction gets. So I'd say Netflix is the high end of the scale. And it's possible my community experience is too aggressive still, so let's slash that, too. Let's say a really demanding video-interaction system can at best hope to get one percent of one percent, or one in 10,000.

By Shirky's reckoning, Americans watch 200 billion hours of television a year. That's 2,000 times the amount of hours it took to write the entire Wikipedia in every language version it supports. Let's say we get one out of every 10,000 of those hours converted to watching Web video--plain, non-interactive Web video--simply as a shift in form factor and portability. That's 20 million hours. Now, of those passive lurkers, let's say we get the same conservative percentage of interactive participation. That's 2,000 hours of participation-enhanced video per year. That's a thousand completely remixed movies every year. That's 2,850 complete hour-long dramas remixed every year if you scrape out the commercials. About 130 complete seasons of those hour-long dramas made interactive.

Now, that's crude math, as most Web video is only about 3 minutes long, and the same video can be remixed an untold number of times. I also think those are aggressive goals for interaction, at least in the short term. But it is a model of the possible. There's a whole generation of people wanting to do more with video, and having the time to do it.

Our job is to make it easy--easier than the homemade music videos that people throw up on Youtube all day every day--and valuable. We've got a pretty good idea on how to do that. I'm excited about chasing down that possibility. When we're ready, I hope you will be, too.

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