Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea

Volcanoes are Cool…at Least From a Distance

Linda Maye Adams

Volcano erupting

Volcanoes are one of those things that are kind of cool.  At least as long as you’re not near them when they’re erupting.

They’ve been a staple of many TV shows, like on Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea’s “And Five Were Left.”  Five men from World War II are stranded in a cave under a volcano that’s about to explode.  Lots of explosions, steam vents venting, and rocks falling.

And of course, the heroes escape as the volcano blows up.

The show had two other episodes with volcanoes, “Night of Terror” and “Fires of Death.”  Gilligan’s Island had a volcano episode, too.

Oh, and my personal favorite, Airwolf.  The helicopter got caught in the ash cloud of a massive eruption and had to set down.  It put them in the middle of corporate greed and corruption from a mining company.

Hawaii’s volcano has been erupting for at least a month now, making more of the island with lava.  The people there generally have a lot of warning, since it’s not the kind of volcano that blows its top like Mount St. Helens.

The scientists are busy studying the eruptions.  One of the fascinating things from the eruption is olivine being brought to the surface.  They’re green gems.  They’re the same gems that make up the Green Sand Beach, also on the Big Island.  This link has a close up of the green crystals.

The science of nature is pretty cool.

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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT

Crying Planet, the first book in my GALCOM series was accepted for a military science fiction bundle from Story Bundle.  It will be coming out on June 27.

 

Classic Car Sightseeing at the Kennedy Center

Linda Maye Adams

Last weekend, I went to see the opera, Barber of Seville, at the Kennedy Center.  If the title’s not familiar, you’ve probably heard some of the music:

“Fieguro!  Fieguro!”

It was a fun production.  The title character helped a count who had fallen in love with a woman from afar.  The problem was that she was ward to a doctor who wanted to marry her for the money.  It was a comedy, and the actor who played the doctor did a lot of comedic stunt work.

During the intermission, I wandered outside and got an extra treat: Classic cars were on display.

Front view of a metallic blue 1964 Chevy Impala
1964 Chevy Impala

This is a car that makes me feel old.  When I was growing up, the first car that I remember that we had was a 1964 Chevy.  It was white and had what we called the “seat monster.”  The hooks holding the backseat in place broke, so when my father stopped suddenly, the seat slid forward. Needless to say, when my best friend and I were riding in the back, we squealed with fun terror at the monster.

The car got stolen from a parking lot and used in a holdup.  The police found it, so it hung around until we got the first of two Volkswagen buses (pumpkin and chocolate).

 

1957 Light olive green Chevrolet with fins
1957 Chevrolet

I was a fan of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. The submarine Seaview and the Flying Sub both had fins inspired by cars like this.

 

A black Chrysler with wings
Yes, those are wings on that Chrysler

There wasn’t a placard for this car, so I have no idea why it has wings.  Can you imagine driving your car and taking off like a plane?  Speed Racer had some elements of that, and later on with Knight Rider, with both their jumps.

It was a lot of fun checking these out.  DC doesn’t have the kind of culture for these types of cars, so I don’t see anything like this very often.

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STORY UPDATE:  Progress is slower than I want–I’m guessing it will be 60 days.  Part of it is that it’s a new genre in novel form for me, but also the historical aspect is very different for me.  Some of the things that it’s made me think about:

Milk used to be delivered to your house in glass bottles by a milk man.

People did not lock their doors.  We always did in Los Angeles, so I found very strange that my grandparents in San Francisco and later Morro Bay never did.

And a look at a place that was built in 1946, called The Pink Motel.  There are a lot of great photos to look it.  The hotel is closed to people staying there, but it’s been used in a lot of films.

Why The Orville is my SF Fix

Linda Maye Adams

When I was growing up, I hit the TV Guide every week to find out what science fiction shows were airing this week.  Then, it was digest-sized and had very short summaries of the shows.  I had to look up one word “ensues” because the description for the Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea episode “Nightmare” used it.  I still don’t have a clue why that particular word was used for that particular episode.

And when the big season premiere issue came up, it was a big event, because I was checking out what new SF shows were premiering.  Most of them didn’t last long.  But there were shows like:

  • Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.  Gil Gerard was in that one as title character
  • Battlestar Galactica.  The original with Lorne Green.
  • The  Bionic Woman.  Spy/tennis star Jamie Sommers becomes essentially a superhero through technology.

There’s been other SF shows throughout the years, like Star Trek The Next Generation and Xena, Warrior Princess, but it’s been a while that I’ve found one I wanted to stick with. Most of them have been getting darker and darker.  Especially since I was able to shake lose some of that dark I got from Desert Storm, I can’t even watch Xena any more.  It’s too dark for me now.

Then The Orville with Seth McFarlane showed up last year.  I saw the commercials and was cautious, because the humor was kind of, well, dumb.  But from all my time enjoying Hollywood TV shows, I know one thing is always true:

Pilots tend to be horrible.

The writers haven’t settled into the show yet or figured out what they want to do.  They’ve written this single episode for the purpose of selling a series to the men with the money.

The actors also haven’t really gotten into the characters yet.  If you’ve ever attended a theater performance, it’s best to see it near the end.  The actors will have refined their roles.

And then I tuned in.  Humor was still awkward.  But the show had something I hadn’t seen for a while.

It was bright.

It was hopeful.

Whoa.

I didn’t realize I’d been missing something hopeful until I had it. We’ve had way too much dark, way too many anti-hero characters, and way too many unhappy endings.

The show has its critics.  A lot of people seem to want it to be a comedy or a drama, so when it blends the two, they don’t know what it is.

But, even with only 13 episodes, it had some very thought provoking episodes, especially towards the end of the season.  Yet, they also stayed on lighter end with the humor, so thoughtful didn’t become dark.

And they treated the women characters as characters, not eye candy.  The women are dressed in the same uniforms as the men, fitted both both genders.  The women also have had some important roles, and even some story lines.  I particularly like the doctor, and at least she had normal kids–not the super-intelligent ones SF shows tend to have (Star Trek The Next Generation, SeaQuest DSV).

But I’m in withdrawal!  The show is not going to premiere until 2019.  It’s for a good reason–more time for the scripts, and also because of the special effects requirements.  Robert Picardo is coming back again (yay!), and they will be adding two new cast members.  Check out the news about the show over on TV Guide.

If you saw The Orville, what did you think of it?

The Evolution of Space Opera

Linda Maye Adams

When I was growing up, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea aired at 4:00 on KTLA, and then Star Trek followed it.  We also had Lost in Space. I also had this big yellow book of the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century comic strips.

All of these started with the pulp magazines in the 1930s, which introduced space opera.  They paved their way for the shows above.  But Star Trek did something different:

Another popular sci-fi show with a strong space opera flavor to emerge during the Swinging Decade sought to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Star Trek differed from the fare that came before as it coupled the action-orientated characteristics that were commonplace within the genre with philosophical, thought-provoking themes. For a brand of science fiction that was introduced to pop culture discourse as “hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn spaceship yarn,” Star Trek proved that this type of accessible entertainment could contain substance as well as pure entertainment.

In “The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction,” Westfahl notes that Star Trek was the first on-screen space opera to successfully combine the classic pulp adventure elements with “Ruritarian” themes. The Ruritarian space opera is distinguished by sophisticated characteristics which often entail romance sub-plots and solar systems governed by their own political establishments. In these stories, alien lifeforms tend to be three-dimensional and driven by their own personal motives — such as greed, thievery, etc.

There’s a lot of interesting history that starts with the pulp and how it goes not only into our reading of books, but also TV and movies.  We move so fast forward that we sometimes forget how things originated and what we can learn from it.

Read the rest at Film School Rejects: https://filmschoolrejects.com/adventure-awaits-brief-history-space-opera/#ixzz51Rioo5Ri

Adventures Around the Web Octber 21-26

Linda Maye Adams2 Comments

This week, the colder temperatures marched in, and then bounced around.  Pretty typical for DC, but it’s hard when your sinuses are going, “I’m not happy”…

Lulu the dog flunked out of CIA bomb-sniffer school because she just didn’t care

Spy dog fails classes at CIA!  Lots of very cute dog pictures for Friday.  Labs have a gentleness about them that’s just fun to look at.  Link courtesy of Day Al-Mohamed.

Serialized television has become a disease

I’ve of mixed feelings about serialization.  Early on, I did think it gave shows a continuity they desperately needed.  On the show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, it was like the writers hit a reset button each time they wrote a new episode.  If aliens invaded the ship, it was treated as if it was the first time, even when it wasn’t.  Characters come into our lives and become something more, just like in books.  But serialization does not allow episodes to stand out.  What if the serialization for the year is poor?

Adding Tags in OneNote

This one’s a software tool I’ve been using for my research library.  I was on Evernote, but I switched over over because I don’t need extra software to confuse things.  I already had OneNote as part of the 365 subscription–why pay for a second program?  I know Scrivener had notes for projects, but I always thought research notes should be available for reuse. That’s a little hard if it’s done by project.  I also heard someone say that OneNote doesn’t have tagging.  I don’t use it myself, but the link explains to to tag.  And a photo of my research library …

A screenshot of my index pages showing headers for Ocean Liners and links underneath.

 

 

Twilight Zone Origins in War

Linda Maye Adams

Being a Science Fiction fan, I grew up on reruns of Star Trek, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and Twilight Zone, just to name a few.  Probably the most memorable Twilight Zone episode is the one with William Shatner and the monster on the wing.  I couldn’t help it; I put a nod to that in my last novel.

But one of things I really like is the behind the scenes of how shows were made.  The stories behind the creations.

Twilight Zone originated from Rod Serling’s war experiences and his way of dealing with it in the story:

While taking a picture with a friend during a lull at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific, an Air Force plane dropped a box of extra ammunition that landed on Serling’s friend and flattened him fatally. This event would give him inspiration in many of his scripts and stories.

I remember when I came back from Desert Storm.  It was such a big experience that really, I couldn’t put words to it.  I felt like I needed to bleed off some of the poison of it but my stories turned very dark.  The weird part was that I couldn’t see how dark they were … took someone else to point it out to me.

Though I still couldn’t see it.

About the same time, I did a review of Phil Clay’s Redeployment, a collection of short stories.  I’d committed to the review, opened up the first page, read the first line, and wasn’t sure I could do it.  I didn’t want to go back and say I couldn’t do it, so I skipped to the next story, which was less dark and read it in pieces.  I doubt if many people read the entire book because it was so dark.

But I could see the undercurrent of this anger running through the book–I doubt if the writer knows he has it, but he will eventually.  It was in mine, and I had to back away from it if I wanted to sell anything.

So I had to consciously shift away from dark stories, and even ideas that looked like they were going to veer dark.  I don’t have to think so much about it now, though every now and then it catches me off guard.

And I still write about my time in the military, but it’s very different.

A Dearth of Reboots

Linda Maye Adams

Every time I turn around, it seems like there’s another reboot of something.  Like MacGyver.  I remember the show when it first aired, and it was a fun action show with an unconventional hero.

The new version?  Meh.

It just isn’t the same.

Josh Whedon talks about reboot fatigue.

You bring something back, and even if it’s exactly as good as it was, the experience can’t be. You’ve already experienced it, and part of what was great was going through it for the first time.

I think there’s a lot of truth in that.  Movie, TV, and even books are affected by what’s going on in the culture and even the news.   Some of the ideas develop out of that, because that’s what the audience is wanting to see.  So a show rebooted after twenty years would be very different than the original, not to mention not having the original actors, which also influences the series.

I get why the studios are doing reboots.  They think that if the series was successful once, it will be successful a second time.  When I was Voyage to the Bottom of Sea fandom, I wanted the series to be revived because I wanted to see more stories.  That’s, in fact, why people write fan fiction stories.  But in hindsight, that show was very much a product of the 1960s, starting out with spies because James Bond was hot, and then when that died, they went to aliens and monsters.  If someone recreated it today, it would have the same name, but that’s probably all it would share.

Better still would be if they stole ideas from the past and used them, rather than reboot.  I’d be disappointed at a reboot of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  I’d watch a show that took the basic idea and went in a direction suitable for today.

Please, no more reboots.