Reckless Forum

Off topic, but new forum "look" looks good!

I know I said it elsewhere but it bears repeating: congratulations!

Sorry, haven't seen Moon yet.

We just saw "Sleep Dealers." It's an sfnal movie--a REAL SF movie about ideas, not just blowing things up (although, if you need it, things do get blown up)--set mostly inTijuana. Most of it is in Spanish with subtitles. We thought it quite good, a kind of "Neuromancer" meets &qu...

Spoiler-free review The new Star Trek movie is, to me, an excellent "reboot" of the series that had gotten increasingly creaky with age. It captures much of what worked in the original, in particular the optimism and brightness of spirit, and still manages to make some clever tweaks to the...

200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. (Also Lincoln's 200th birthday, as well.) Darwin's theory of natural selection (which is not "just" a theory, but a theory with overwhelming evidence behind it and don't you forget it) is arguably the most important and influential scientific idea, ever...

And I have to disagree with you on this. What is most wrenching is not a struggle between good and evil, but between two ideals of good. Internal dissension, unless one side is clearly deluded or malevolent, falls under the rubric of irreconcilable ideals and can make for gripping action and charac...

Very interesting article. I have noticed in my own travels in SF circles a strong, and to me surprising, trend towards conservative and authoritarian ideals. This is especially true in the US. I guess I am surprised because my own training comes from Kim Stanley Robinson and Joanna Russ, who write f...

Peter Jackson was a shlockmeister before LOTR. Except for Heavenly Creatures , a disturbing, beautifully done movie that showed Jackson could combine drama, fantasy, and allow actors to act. Knowing that film allowed me, ahead of release, to believe that LotR might not be a travesty. I would say th...

I read a fair amount of Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke, though not Smith. Their characters are too cardboard to be considered heroes. Sorry to be argumentative here, but you seem to excluding these works from being "epic" merely on the quality of the execution. If I write a sonnet with the b...

SF between the sixties and the eighties was the real golden era by my definition -- combining interesting plotlines with complex characters and important questions. The forties/fifties SF is more a geek's definition of epic than the real item.. I agree with the first part. As to the second..., well...

I think the prevailing taste does run against the epic mode. These preferences are encouraged by several developments in popular culture, which is increasingly geared towards adolescents. Adolescents have limited life experience, are self-centered, love angst and gizmos and their prevailing fear is...

Contemporary Western audiences like to have outer conflicts mirrored by inner ones. Does this taste tend to run against the epic mode, at least in its purest form? Do you think editors are receptive to the epic mode? Do they even recognize it when they see it? Hmm. Of the prominent SF/F magazines o...

Hi Lisa! Welcome to Starship Reckless! Hmm. Do all epics require a hero? Are all heroes epic? I'm thinking here about superheroes and comics. We have Superman, who is the classical superhero, noble, perfect, not a whole lot of introspection otherwise he might not long for Lois Lane who is pretty awf...

So... some of the elements seem to be (please correct!): a focus on the external, rather than the internal*; a focus on narrative and action, rather than on explicit characterization**; larger than life narrative. ---------- *Of course, a skillful writer can show the internal through the external. S...