Cainanite (imported) wrote: Sat May 14, 2011 10:49 pm The one that stands out is Robert A. Heinlein's Job: A Comedy of Justice

Over the years I have read everything Heinlein wrote, but I just can't put a finger on this one, I know I read it, I just don't remember it, guess I should look in the book case and see if I still have a copy.

The Heinlein books that I remember the best is Starship Troopers, The Moon is a harsh mistress, The rolling stones, Time enough for love, Stranger in a strange land, Number of the Beast. Revolt in 2100, and Farmer in the Sky.

There are others and a lot of his short stories like our fare city, and they walk with elephants.

River

I've recommended Job: A Comedy of Justice to many friends and co-workers over the last thirty years. Obviously, none of those were the type of people to cry "Blasphemy!" and they all appreciated the book very much.

Yep I need to read it again.

River

TMC and RETRO, two cable channels showed George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD this weekend and if you watch that movie real close, you can pick out all of the taboo-breaking and genre creating portions.

...

To step beyond the "ordinary" zombie. That is the zombie that eats living flesh, the zombie that is created by blood contact, the zombie without humanity, the zombie created by science gone mad, the zombie effect spread by incompetent authorities, and all that we have seen in the various incarnations of Matheson or Romero or 28 days or the more recent comedies.

To step beyond the ordinary is what the story or novel has to do.

AMC's THE WALKING DEAD does so many wickedly evil things in the first episode to entertain -- they kill a child brutally, they have a man contemplating killing his wife. These are horrors that satisfy the fans of zombie books and movies.

Why is that?

I don't know how many people actually saw NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD in a theater, I did. It scared the crap out of people. They screamed and cried in ways that never happened in any other movie.

Not that the audience was jaded (like today) WAIT UNTIL DARK came out the year before. Audiences yelled at the screen and screamed instructions for Audrey Hepburn at the climax of that movie.

PSYCHO opened before NOTLD and that scared audiences like never before.

But Romero and NOTLD put new scares onto the screen and left people in tears. There is no happy ending, no relief. I don't remember the movie for the iconic scene of the zombies in the graveyard, I remember the daughter turning in the basement and the cement trowel. I remember the black hero being thrown on the funeral pyre as the credits roll.

And there is the challenge of zombies. Step beyond the exiting and write either horror (like the dead farm couple thrown in a makeshift double grave casually mentioned) or make it silly fun like "Married with Zombies" or set it in weird locations, or dig deep into the minds of characters.

BTW - if this sounds a little odd, I originally wrote it as a comment on another blog and twitched it a little...

One of the favorites was and is "Monday starts on Saturday" (by Strugatski borthers).

Another favorite "The Star Diaries" by Stanislaw Lem.

Too many to count, really.

If you're willing to stretch the term, one of the more recent would be the ending of Portal 2. ("I'm in space! SPAAAAAAACE!")

More traditionally, almost the entirety of the final Babylon 5 episode, Sleeping in Light. To me, this is the single-best final episode of any science fiction series. Then again, Babylon 5 would probably have an unreasonable proportion of my favourite moments, so I'm probably biased here.

It may not be the highlight of the series, but hearing the line "He's dead, Dave. Everybody's dead. Everybody is dead, Dave," still brings a smile to my face. Red Dwarf may not be everyone's cup of tea (or plate of vindaloo, or beer milkshake...) but it works for me.

Don't even get me started on moments from books...