Tag Archives: Top Five

Top 50 Science Fiction Books

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Michael Heilemann of Binary Bonsai posted a list of The 50 Most Significant Science Fiction & Fantasy Books of the Last 50 Years, as compiled by the Science Fiction Book Club. Following his example, I’ve put the books that I’ve read in bold, and italicized the ones that are still on my to-read list. Nice to see that I’ve got six out of the top ten.

  1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien
  2. The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov
  3. Dune, Frank Herbert
  4. Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert A. Heinlein
  5. A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin
  6. Neuromancer, William Gibson
  7. Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke
  8. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Philip K. Dick
  9. The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley
  10. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
  11. The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe
  12. A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter M. Miller, Jr.
  13. The Caves of Steel, Isaac Asimov
  14. Children of the Atom, Wilmar Shiras
  15. Cities in Flight, James Blish
  16. The Colour of Magic, Terry Pratchett
  17. Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison
  18. Deathbird Stories, Harlan Ellison
  19. The Demolished Man, Alfred Bester
  20. Dhalgren, Samuel R. Delany
  21. Dragonflight, Anne McCaffrey
  22. Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card
  23. The First Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Stephen R. Donaldson
  24. The Forever War, Joe Haldeman
  25. Gateway, Frederik Pohl
  26. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, J.K. Rowling
  27. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
  28. I Am Legend, Richard Matheson
  29. Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice
  30. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin
  31. Little, Big, John Crowley
  32. Lord of Light, Roger Zelazny
  33. The Man in the High Castle, Philip K. Dick
  34. Mission of Gravity, Hal Clement
  35. More Than Human, Theodore Sturgeon
  36. The Rediscovery of Man, Cordwainer Smith
  37. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
  38. Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke
  39. Ringworld, Larry Niven
  40. Rogue Moon, Algis Budrys
  41. The Silmarillion, J.R.R. Tolkien
  42. Slaughterhouse-5, Kurt Vonnegut
  43. Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson
  44. Stand on Zanzibar, John Brunner
  45. The Stars My Destination, Alfred Bester
  46. Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
  47. Stormbringer, Michael Moorcock
  48. The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
  49. Timescape, Gregory Benford
  50. To Your Scattered Bodies Go, Philip Jose Farmer

Top Five Things You Don't Know About Me

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  • I went to Japan when I was 13 as part of an exchange program. Sapporo is Portland’s sister city, and they were holding an international art festival. I got an application from an art class I was taking at the time, and before I knew what was happening, I was on a plane with several other teenagers from the Portland area. We went to the festival, did a home-stay and generally just bummed around Sapporo, and managed to avoid experiencing any real Japanese culture or learning much of anything about the country. Still, it’s a fun pin to have on my map.
  • I don’t have my driver’s license. Growing up in Portland meant access to one of the best public transportation programs in the nation, and I never had any difficulty getting around. Of course, it’s one of those things where the longer you wait, the harder it is to do, because there are less opportunities, and it’s embarrassing. I’m currently taking lessons from a friend, and plan on taking the test in the next month or so – much to the relief of my family, who have all been horrified about it since Annie got pregnant.
  • I high school I was on the cross-country team. I did this when I found out that I sucked at the shorter races in track, but I sucked marginally less at distance running. I only weighed 130 pounds at the time, and I remember being concerned with how scrawny I looked in the tiny shorts and tank tops our team wore.
  • In the late 90′s I ran KillingMachines.org, a small community blogging site which really was only popular among a group of high school students from Omaha, Nebraska. I also helped out from time to time with the creation and maintenance of hatelife.org, a much more popular site, “where teen angst, sad things and bad poetry come together to suck.”
  • In 2000, while Annie was going to college at CWU in Ellensburg, I was a DJ for the college radio station, The ‘Burg. The station had virtually no listeners and a broadcast radius of about 10 feet, which sucked for the school, but worked out great for me, since most college stations will only allow students to be DJs. My radio name was Obeso the Pirate, a reference to a horrible story some friends wrote in high school.

Andrew tagged me with this meme, and now I’m passing it along to Sean, Urn, Pat, Mike, and Sig.

Top Five Songs You Can't Hear Without Thinking Of The Movie

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  1. “Stuck in the Middle With You,” Stealers Wheel – Reservoir Dogs
    Annie hates it when I play this song. How can anyone who saw this movie not think of a cop tied to a chair getting his ear cut off when this song plays? It helps that the lyrics are oddly appropriate.
  2. “Where is My Mind,” Pixies – Fight Club
    I’m sure this doesn’t qualify for people who had listened to any Pixies songs before Fight Club, but that was the first time for me, so “Where is My Mind” is forever branded with the images of Jack and Marla watching office buildings collapse.
  3. “Golgatha Tenement Blues,” Machines of Loving Grace – The Crow
    Really, anything on the first soundtrack qualifies, but especially this track, since it was early enough in the CD that I heard it all the time, but it was by a band I’m not very familiar with, so I don’t know any of their work outside of the context. I always picture Brandon Lee running along rooftops to this song.
  4. “Halcyon & On & On,” Orbital – Hackers
    I had probably heard the song once or twice before I saw Hackers, but it was used to perfection in that movie, during the flyover of the digital city. To this day, I can’t hear this song without getting a desire to open up a terminal window and start dorking around on a Unix system.
  5. “Dry The Rain,” The Beta Band – High Fidelity
    “I will now sell five copies of The Three E.P.s by the Beta Band.” And they played the finale to the song, and everyone in the store is nodding their heads. Annie and I both love this song, and playing it gives me the feeling that I’m in a warm friendly neighborhood music store.

Ground Rules
What I’m talking about here is songs that you can’t hear without thinking of the movie that you first heard the song in. In your head, the scene from the movie and the song are permanently linked, for better or worse. The obvious example is “Also Spake Zarathustra” from 2001. There are some exceptions, however. No Musicals: Songs used in musicals like The Blues Brothers or Evita are exempt because it’s not clever usage of a well-chosen song by the director to nail the scene, it a scene written around the song. No Songs Written For The Movie: Obviously, if the song was written specifically for the movie, like “The Crying Game,” it’s exempt. And lastly, No Theme Songs: You can’t say that the “Theme From Mortal Kombat” always makes you think of Mortal Kombat – it was designed to do so. Now, let’s make this an audience participation sport! Everyone leave a comment with your top five!

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not so shabby after all

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As my faithful readers will remember, I ordered Burn from Threadless a little while back, and got gypped ’cause their “active stock list” isn’t really designed to handle hundreds of people buying at once, and they had a big sale, and thus a run on tee-shirts.

But . . . being the nice guys that they are, they sent me a $5 off coupon for my next purchase, and I got put on the mailing list for any reprints of Burn they might do.

Which they just did. For which said update e-mail I just received. Thereuponwhich I ordered the shirt, forthwith.

With the discount.

Yee-haw!

Sean and Scott's Top Five Movies That Will Never Be Made (but should be)

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  • Brotherhood of the Wolf prequels – We want more! Take the pace and styling of the first half of the movie, and produce more stories about these characters taking place prior to the events in the movie. More kung-fu, more monsters, less of killing off the only character who was any good.
  • Titanic: The Series – The Titanic falls through a “time hole,” and every week, Jack and Rose must solve a Quantum-Leap style historical problem in order to advance to their next adventure. All “jumps” would be set pre-1900, so they are all in the character’s past. There will be NO modern-day-crossover episode, which both Sean and I agree is the bane of nearly every sci-fi series. Only Star Trek ever pulled off visiting the 20th century, and even they didn’t do it very well.
  • Hollow Army (alt. title: Hollow Men) – After seeing Hollow Man, Sean came to me and said “If I had made it, there would have been a team of hollow men, and half of them would have gone bad, leaving the other half to hunt them down. Of course, all the fight scenes would have to take place in special areas like underwater, or a steam room, or a dusty attic so the hollow men would be visible.”
  • Half-Life: The Movie – Sean and I have always thought a movie based on this game would be great, but there are a few conditions we would lay down. 1) No love interest. Hollywood, take note: Not every movie needs a romantic sub-plot. 2) Casting is important. Ted Raimi would play Gordon Freeman, but more importantly, Bruce Campbell would play Barney, the security guard. Not one Barney, who survives every scene, but many Barneys, as in the game, where just about every time a Barney gets killed by a horrible monster, you’ll find another, also played by Bruce Campbell around the corner. 3) Directing is important. Sam Raimi would do this game justic, with minimal expansion of the already decent plot, and a good sense of humor throughout.
  • Scud the Disposable Assassin – Based on the popular comic book, this film would be produced using stop-motion animation (like those christmas movies) using injection-molded models by Eric So and the other guys in this Wired article about toys.