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I saw a few moments of a movie where Sandra Bullock has a magic mailbox that allows her to correspond across time with Keanu Reeves or something, on television not long ago.
Yet here I sit, trying to imagine a *good* idea. I think all the money and heat is in really stinky ones.
What's worse is that Lake House is a remake of a Korean film (Il Mare).
Biran, I don't mean to hijack your thread,,,, BUT
Isn't there some statistic somewhere that Romance pulp novels sell more, and make so-o-o much more profit than Science Fiction and Fantasy paperbacks combined? Like lots and lots more books sold.
And there are new combinations coming on the market place like Chick-Mystery (Romance novel with murder to be solved) Main Steam novels that are almost all character and 'feelings' with almost no discernible plot (conforming to the 'herd' type conflict.)
Don't think 'Clone-Wars' think ladies who refuse to nurture implanted clones and attend underground "conception" parties (with males) and an un-approved one-on-one relationship evolves during pregnancy. Just oozing with slop and tenderness and chick stuff. Just be sure to add a female bureaucratic evil witch (or spelled like witch) who wants to force the abortion.... It will sell!!!
Ok, Ok I'll take my tongue out of my cheek.
Phil
It will not come as a surprise to aspiring authors that Analog puts a list of 4 Evil No-no topics on their rejection forms that are:
1. Scientific retellings of biblical tales
2. UFOs (from a mag with a UFO on every other cover)
3. Accidentally messes up the present by traveling to the past
4. Alien world turns out to be Earth.
I am determined to put these together and make the greatest science fiction cliché story ever.
An Ultimate No-no Mash-up!
So stay tuned for that in '10, right?
Hey! How did you get a copy of the script for MARS ATTACKS 2!!!!
(you acking ack ack you!)
have u seen mars attack2....is there any url from where i can download that..
I think it was back in the 1970s that the late Alfred Bester used the top 15 or 20 SF cliches in a single story, by way of illustrating to newer authors what not to do (though Bester made quite a little story out of it, if memory serves). It was published in Andrew Porter's semipro newszine ALGOL.
If anyone thinks ANALOG's sensible guidelines are out of line, wait until you check out the fiction guidelines for this magazine:
http://www.strangehorizons.com/guidelines/fiction-common.shtml
What Bester story is it? I'd love to read that. I really enjoyed The Demolished Man
I'm sorry, but I can't remember the title of the Bester story. It was a -long- time ago and I don't have that issue of ALGOL (which morphed into STARSHIP, and then the news magazine SF CHRONICLE, which I *think* went defunct in the past couple of years after a long and successful run).
I wonder if Gordon knows, and if it's been collected somewhere in paperback form?
The person to ask about the Bester spoof/story would be Andrew I. Porter, long time publisher and editor of Algol/Starship. It won a number of Hugo awards, btw, in the 70s, for best fanzine and/or semiprozine, and even one in the 1990s.
Andy might turn up on a google search, I don't know. Heck, if you google Algol SF Magazine it might turn up something there, too. Wait, here's the Wiki entry on Algol and Andy:
Might this be a story called "5,271,009" mentioned in Bester's Wikipedia biography? First published in March 1954 FSF and various places since then (though not Algol) according to:
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?40432
See also:
http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview/id/563475.html
--the google kid
Hey, good going, Kyte! I wouldn't have remembered the title, but I'm sure that's the story. Evidently it was reprinted in Algol; I know it was definitely there.
Sorry Khareneha20, as far as I know Mars Attacks 2 is just something I made up: a dream... a terrible terrible dream...
David Truesdale almost gets it right, but not quite. I started ALGOL in 1963, and in the mid-70s changed the name to STARSHIP. The mag folded in 1984. Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, I started SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE, which had one proto-issue appear in STARSHIP before beginning monthly publication with the October 1979 issue. SF CHRONICLE continued until I sold it to Warren Lapine's DNA Publications in 2000; he fired me in 2002, and the mag folded in 2006, a victim of the internet. Who, after all, needs a monthly news magazine when there are so many SF-oriented news websites?
The Alfred Bester story I published, "Here Come the Clones", subtitled "A Complete Short History of SF Writing With Fifty All-Purpose Footnotes", appeared first in the June 14, 1976 issue of PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY, and it was in the Spring 1977 issue of ALGOL (as it then was) on page 35-37.
However, the story, "Oh, Those Trepidatious Eyes!" by R.A. Lafferty, in the same issue on pages 38-40, was an original, never before published piece of fiction. I don't know whether it ever appeared anywhere else. And yes, I have a copyright notice from the Library of Congress on the issue...
Oh, btw, ALGOL aka STARSHIP received exactly one Hugo, in 1974. Although it was one of the reasons the semi-prozine Hugo was created, and although lots of people remembering it dominating the Hugos in the 70s-80s, that didn't happen. Nope, it was Dick Geis's variously named zines, plus LOCUS, that dominated the fanzine Hugos.
SCIENCE FICTION CHRONICLE won the Semi-Prozine Hugo twice, in 1993, by, incredibly, one vote — the year that Charlie Brown didn't vote because he was too busy planning LOCUS's 25th anniversary celebration — and in 1994.
Thanks for clearing all that up, Andrew. Nice to see you here, by the way.
So, was the Bester story "A Complete Short History..." the one where he used all of the SF cliches he could think of? If so, that's the story I was referring Brian to above.
I'm still laughing every time I think of Charles losing the Hugo in 1993 by one vote--his. Twas fine by me though; was tired of Locus winning automatically every year. :-)
--Dave
Just another example of my amazing ability to create great threads and bring people together.
Slapping myself on the back with my Elephant Man flipper-arm.
I saw Charles in the bar shortly after he lost that Hugo in '93 and he was bemused by the outcome of the voting. I forget exactly what he said, but if he was upset in any way about losing, he sure fooled me.
By the way, it's nice to see you here, Andy.
---Gordon V.G.
Good spot about "Here Come the Clones." I found a description online: "A short, rather nonsensical science fiction story, filled with cliches, each one footnoted to give a satiric history of science fiction."
I actually liked The Lake House, Brian. Enough so that I arranged for you to send me a letter from the future with the answer to the question of whether there's anything you will ever do to get Mr. Van Gelder to acknowledge your presence. Let's just say that movies have happy endings more often than real life.
BrianJackson - invisible man to just one person.
Interesting.
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