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- Welcome to the Archive for January, 2008
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- January 1
Chronological Overview of 2007
January saw Boston traffic snarled over a guerrilla ad campaign for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. Epic Movie, with satires of Narnia, Superman, and more, was a hit at the box office. The Dresden Files (TV series) debuted on The Sci Fi Channel. Two icons of 60s TV passed away: Yvonne "Lily Munster" De Carlo, and Sydney Sheldon, the man behind I Dream of Jeannie. El Chupacabra was suspected in attacks on farm animals in Mexico, and Gord Johnson photographed possible Bigfoot tracks in British Columbia.
In February, Heroes continued its ground-breaking first season on NBC. The Ghost Rider (movie) cast Nicolas Cage as Marvel Comics' motorcycle-riding hellion, Johnny Blaze. Ships of the Line brought together the acclaimed illustrations of Star Trek vehicles from the calendars into one hardback volume.
March had two big UFO news stories, with the . . .
- January 2
Algis Budrys began writing science fiction in the early 1950s and continued to be quite prolific for the next two decades, although his output began to falter during the 1970s and his byline only appeared intermittently during the 1990s. His most famous single work is perhaps Rogue Moon (1960) in which an enigmatic and deadly object is discovered on the moon, left by an alien race for unknown reasons. The artifact, essentially a maze, is explored by the various duplicates of the protagonist, whose fascination with death and its effect on his interaction with others gives the novel a depth that was rare in SF up until that time, and not common since.
The novel Who? (1958), which was transformed into an adequate movie in 1974, would probably be marketed as a mainstream thriller today. An American spy is recovered from the Soviet Union, but he has been altered in such a way that it is unclear whether he is in fact the missing man or actually . . .
- January 3
The Loch Ness monster is a creature (or creatures) that has (or have) been reported to inhabit Loch (lake) Ness in Scotland. While there were earlier reports, the monster (or Nessie as it came to be known) became an international sensation in March 1933, when new road construction created increased visibility.
Along with Bigfoot and the abominable snowman, the Loch Ness monster has been one of the most popular creatures in cryptozoology.
There are a number of photos that are purported to contain at least partial evidence of the monster, although none of the images are regarded as conclusive evidence of the existence of the creature by more skeptical observers and researchers. There have also been several relatively recent research expeditions that have . . .
- January 4
Emma Caulfield (b. April 8, 1973) is an American actress born Emnma Chukker in San Diego, California. She is best known for her role as former demon Anya Jenkins on the series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Caulfield studied drama in high school and later at the La Jolla Playhouse and the Old Globe Theatre. She attended San Francisco State and UCLA where she studied psychology. She continued her drama studies at The American School in Switzerland in London.
She has made guest appearances on several series including Saved by the Bell, Weird Science, Silk Stalkings, Nash Bridges, and Robot Chicken. She appeared regularly on Beverly Hills 90210 as Susan Keats and her film appearances include Darkness Falls . . .
- January 5
Dawn of the Dead is a horror film from writer and director George A. Romero. The film is the second in Romero's "Dead" series, preceded by the classic Night of the Living Dead. Made on a budget of only $500,000 the film has since grossed over $55 million worldwide. The film was remade in 2004, directed by Zack Snyder.
Following a zombie apocalypse, a group of survivors herd together in an abandoned Philadelphia shopping mall. They arm themselves and prepare to . . .
- January 6
Colonel Abe Ellis is a fictional character on the series Stargate Atlantis portrayed by Michael Beach. Ellis is a United States Air Force officer with the rank of Colonel. He is captain of USS Apollo. Ellis first appeared in the episode "First Strike" where he was assigned to gain the cooperation of the Atlantis team in coordinating a preemptive strike against the Asuran homeworld.
Ellis quickly established his authority and disregard Dr. Weir's objections to the plan, prepared well ahead by the military without informing her or Sheppard. She became concerned that the the military did not respect . . .
- January 7
Deep Core is a 2000 sci fi disaster film directed by Rodney McDonald. The film did not receive a theatrical release in the united states and was released directly to video.
Craig Sheffer plays scientist Robert Goodman, who is fired after confronting his boss about their Deep Core project, a digging machine able to tunnel through rock with the aid of lasers. Some years later, while working in the oil industry he learns of an island transformed into a volcano thanks to the use of the Deep Core Machine. He believes the instability caused by the machine will continue to spread causing volcanic eruptions on larger scales. Naturally, the only way to stop disaster is with the use of nuclear weapons set to explode deep underground.
Gaining access to nuclear weapons proves remarkably easy and Goodman undertakes a plan to save the planet with backing by Chinese financiers and the help of a team of experts which includes womanizing explosives expert Rodney Bedecker (Wil Wheaton) and scientist Allison Saunders (Terry Farrell). He suspects the . . .
- January 8
The Andromeda Strain (1971) Oscar-winner Robert Wise (1914–2005), a former film editor and a master craftsman who consistently excelled in many genres, directed this faithful adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1969 bestseller The Andromeda Strain, scripted by Nelson Gidding. Their five collaborations included I Want to Live! (1958), which earned Gidding an Oscar nomination, and the seminal ghost story The Haunting (1963).
Wise cast seasoned character actors Arthur Hill, David Wayne, and James Olson instead of recognizable stars, so that viewers would more readily accept them as scientists. At Gidding's behest, he made one of Crichton’s male protagonists a woman, albeit a decidedly unglamorous one . . .
- January 9
Wildcat is a fictional comic book superhero owned by DC Comics.
Ever wonder what kind of superhero Rocky Balboa or Muhammad Ali might have made? Wildcat is interesting because his story seems like the most logical and actually possible of any comic book superhero. As the heavy-weight champion of the world, Ted Grant would be expected to have some amazing boxing skills. Since his fists have achieved the legal status of a lethal weapon, it makes sense that he couldn’t use them to help people in the open. So creating a costumed identity to do so seems a (relatively) practical solution.
Ted was one of the members of the Justice Society of America (JSA) during the Golden Age of Comics. This makes him decades older than you would expect a practicing superhero to be. Various bizarre circumstances related to his adventures with the JSA have retarded his aging, so that he is as vital and fit as he was in the 1940s. This is also true of Jay Garrick, the original Flash, and Alan Scott, the original Green Lantern. Together, these three represent . . .
- January 10
Joe Flanigan is an American actor best known for his role as Lt. John Sheppard on the TV series Stargate Atlantis. He was born in Los Angeles, California on January 5, 1967. He grew up on a ranch in Reno, Nevada and at age 14 attended a boarding school in Ojai, California, where he was introduced to acting in a school production of A Streetcar Named Desire. He attended the University of Colorado and majored in history and also studied in Paris, France. He continued to act while in college and appeared in the play Corianus.
Flanigan became a writer and worked in New York in magazine publishing. He also studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse and eventually moved to Los Angeles to become . . .
- January 11
Michelle Claire Ryan (b. April 22, 1984 Enfield, Middlesex, England) is an English actress, best known for her role as Zoe Slater in the BBC1 soap, EastEnders. Ryan expanded her audience, taking on the role of American cyborg, Jaime Sommers in the upcoming NBC series Bionic Woman.
Ryan began acting when she was a child, participating in local theater since age 10. She landed the role of Zoe Slater at 15 and appeared on the series from 2000 to 2005. She also guest starred on The Worst Witch and in 2007 appeared as Katherine Reimer in Jekyll. Her other notable roles include . . .
- January 12
Vincent Price was an American actor, gourmet cook, and art expert who, after a brief flirtation with the genre in the late 1930s and early 1940s, reinvented the modern horror film with his portrayals of madmen and villains from the mid-1950s onwards, most notably in House of Wax (1953), The Fly (1958) and its sequel, William Castle’s The House on Haunted Hill (1958) and The Tingler (1959), and Roger Corman’s series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for American International Pictures. Although he often allowed his performances to topple over into self-parody (both self-consciously and inadvertently), roles such as Verden Fell in The Tomb of Ligeia (1964) and . . .
- January 13
David Twohy is an American director and screenwriter with several genre credits to his name. Twohy attended California State University, Long Beach where he minored in theater arts and earned a degree in radio/television/film. Twohy was named one of Entertainment Weekly's "100 most creative people in Hollywood" for his work in genre films.
Twohy's early writing work includes the scifi-horror feature Critters 2: The Main Course, 1989's Warlock and Grand Tour: Disaster in Time which he also directed. He gained significant attention for his screenplay The Fugitive, which starred Harrison Ford and garnered an Edgar Award nomination. In 1994, he wrote the screenplay for Terminal Velocity which starred Charlie Sheen and Nastassja Kinski. His next film, the dystopian adventure . . .
- January 14
D-war (aka D-War) also known as D-War: Dragon Wars, is a 2007 film from Korean director Hyung-rae Shim. The film is based on the Korean legend that creatures will one day return to devastate the planet. Jason Behr stars as Ethan Kendrick, a reporter investigates a series of inexplicable disasters and becomes drawn to a young woman, Sarah Daniels (Amanda Brooks), who may be connected to the occurrences.
Five hundred years ago in a small Korean village, a girl, Narin is born with the Yeoujio (dragon symbol able to grant wishes) within her. The mark indicates her future as a sacrifice to the predetermined good Imoogi. To ensure her protection and the certainty of the sacrifice, the Heavens send a Bochun and Haram to protect . . .
- January 15
Cordwainer Smith (b. Paul. M. A. Linebarger, July 11, 1913 – August 6, 1966) is an American author. Linebarger lived a life nearly as remarkable as his series about the far future now generally referred to as the "Instrumentality of Mankind." Linebarger's father was a retired judge, one of the principal financiers of the Chinese republican revolution and remained an advisor to the Chinese leader Sun Yat-sen (who was, in turn, the younger Linebarger's godfather).
Raised mainly in Europe and Asia, Linebarger was fluent in four languages and read others. He completed a Ph.D. in political science at Johns Hopkins University when he was 23. Despite being blind in one eye, he served as an officer with the U.S. Army in East Asia during World War II. His work in military intelligence during the war led him to produce a training manual on psychological warfare . . .
- January 16
Jack Kirby (b. August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) is one of the great superhero comic book artists of the 20th century.
Since the "Golden Age" of comics in the 1940s, Kirby has drawn and co-created some of the greatest superhero characters and concepts through history, many of whom are still popular today. Among his creations in the 40s are The Newsboy Legion, The Boy Commandoes, and Captain America with Joe Simon. In the 50s he created The Challengers of the Unknown. In the 60s he created the Fantastic Four with Stan Lee, and was among the first to co-create and draw many of today's most popular Marvel Superheroes like The Mighty Thor and the X-Men. In the 70s, he created the . . .
- January 17
Nicole de Boer (b. December 20, 1970) is a Canadian actress born in Toronto, Ontario. She is best known for her roles as Ezri Dax on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Sarah Bracknell Bannerman on the USA Network series The Dead Zone.
Early appearances include The Kids in the Hall, Sweating Bullets, and The Kissing Place. Boer's first genre role came in the horror film Prom Night IV: Deliver Us from Evil. She then guest starred on Forever Knight, and had a recurring role on Beyond Reality. Other genre appearances include The Hidden Room, Tek War, Poltergeist: The Legacy, The Cube with David Hewlett, Deepwater Black, The Outer Limits . . .
- January 18
Rachel McAdams (b. October 7, 1976, London, Ontario) is a Canadian actress who gained popularity appearing in the film Mean Girls opposite Lindsay Lohan and increased status as the lead actress in the film adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel, The Notebook. Adams grew up in St. Thomas, Ontario and as a child competed in figure skating. In her adolescence she became more interested in acting and performed in summer productions at theatre camp. Though intending to be cultural studies major, at the urging of a teacher she auditioned for drama and later studied theatre at York University where she earned her BFA.
Adams made her screen debut on television, appearing in Disney's The Famous Jett Jackson. She also guest starred on Earth: Final Conflict. She made her feature film debut in the Italian film My Name Is Tanino and had a recurring role on the series Slings and Arrows. Her notable films include The Hot Chick, with Rob Schneider and Anna Farris, Wedding Crashers with Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn . . .
- January 19
Sacrifice is episode 16 of Battlestar Galactica Season 2.
Fleet-wide paranoia reaches a new peak when word leaks out that the Cylon Sharon is secretly being kept alive aboard the Galactica.
Sesha Abinell, a civilian who is grieving her husband's tragic death during a Cylon raid several weeks earlier, is incensed by the thought of a Cylon agent being trusted to provide intelligence to the officers of Galactica. She is convinced that the Cylon is manipulating Admiral Adama and leading the fleet to its destruction.
Assisted by three sympathizers, Sesha takes drastic action. She pulls a weapon in a bar aboard the luxury ship Cloud Nine and holds its occupants hostage—among them Ellen Tigh and the uneasy romantic triangle of Lee Adama, Anastasia Dualla and Billy Keikeya. Sesha's demand is simple: Turn over the Cylon spy Sharon Valerii to be executed, or else the hostages will die.
Lee is at first able to avoid detection; he tries to undermine Sesha and her accomplices by triggering mechanical malfunctions. He is soon . . .
- January 20
Production will be completed on Doctor Who, Season 30 in early 2008. As with the previous two seasons, season 30 (also known as series 4) began with a 71-minute Christmas special, which aired in the UK on December 25, 2007. A regular season of thirteen 43-minute episodes will follow in the spring of 2008. The SCI FI Channel has not yet given a specific date for the US broadcast of this season. However, it has begun advertising that this season will air in 2008.
David Tennant will be continuing in the title role for the entire season. Companion Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman), however, will be absent for the first half of the season. Instead, Agyeman's character will guest for three episodes on popular spinoff series Torchwood before . . .
- January 21
A paranormal travel guide is a publication, often in the form of a book, that lists and describes sites where ghosts and legendary creatures, such as Bigfoot and the chupacabra, have been sighted. It also relates the accounts of the sightings. Many focus on either hauntings or creatures of cryptozoology.
Paranormal Travel Guides
United States
Alabama
- The Face in the Window and Other Alabama Ghostlore by Alan Brown. University of Alabama Press (1997). ISBN 978-0817308131
Illinois
Indiana
- Haunted Hoosier Trails: A Guide to Indiana's Famous Folklore Spooky Sites by Wanda Lou Willis. Emmis Books, Guild Press of Indiana (2002). ISBN 978-1578601158
Iowa
- The Iowa Road Guide to Haunted Locations by Chad Lewis, Terry Fisk, and Mike Whye. Unexplained Research . . .
- January 22
Bill Mumy (b. Charles William Mumy Jr., February 1, 1954, San Gabriel, California) is a prolific American actor, songwriter, and recording artist. Mumy has released three solo albums and plays a variety of musical instruments including guitar, bass, harmonica and keyboard. He may be best known to genre fans as Will Robinson on the 1960s television series Lost in Space and Lennier on Babylon 5. Mumy also co-created the children's series Space Cases and has appeared in a variety of films and television series including The Twilight Zone, The Munsters, I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, The Adventures of Superboy, Captain America, The Flash.
Bill Mumy is also half of Barnes & Barnes, a music group that has had some genre based songs (including Cemetery Girls, which . . .
- January 23
Space Pirate Captain Harlock is an anime series produced by legendary Leiji Matsumoto for Toei Animation starting in 1978.
Captain Harlock is a typical Matsumoto Romantic Hero lead. He is always shown with a patch over one eye, jagged scar on a cheek, and a flowing black cape over his uniform. He normally carries some sort of laser sabre weapon. And when not engaged in combat, carries a glass of wine.
When once asked by crewmember Tadeshi what he fought for, Harlock replied "I fight for no one's sake, I only fight for something deep in my heart."
As Harlock's first apperance was in 1953 manga, and he has had continued anime and manga appearances since then up to and including 2002's The Endless Odyssey Outside Legend continuity between series is not rigid and the character is more . . .
- January 24
The Justice League of America was a comic book series created in the late 1950s/early 1960s during what is referred to as the "Silver Age of Comics". At the time, DC (or National Comics, as it was known then) was recreating new versions of many of its more successful super-hero characters that were popular in the 1940s, such as the Flash and Green Lantern. Paying homage to the classic of the 1940s, The Justice Society of America, (the original "mystery man" team comic book series), a similar idea was tried with the Silver Age versions of the heroes, and The Justice League of America was born.
The first appearances included Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash, Martian Manhunter . . .
- January 25
Jonathan Pryce (June 1, 1947 Holywell, Flintshire, Wales - ) is a Welsh actor born to coal miner Isaac Price and retail worker Margaret Ellen. He is a graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London.
A well-regarded stage performer, Pryce has not shied away from the movies and genre work. He plays Elizabeth's father, Governor Weatherby Swan, in the wildly popular Pirates of the Caribbean movies. However, genre fans got to know him twenty years earlier as Mr. Dark in . . .
- January 26
Seth is a Goa'uld and the brother of Osiris in mythology. The character is portrayed by Robert Duncan on Stargate SG-1. Seth is the Egyptian god of chaos and evil incarnate.
He managed to capture Osiris and his queen, Isis and imprisoned them in canopic jars for centuries. An enemy of the Goa'uld System Lord's, Seth attempted to overthrow them but failed and hid out on Earth. He became trapped on Earth after the burial of the Stargate in Egypt following the uprising against Ra.
Unable to give rest to his lust for power, Seth continued to demand worship, taking on . . .
- January 27
Way Station is a 100,000-word novel by Clifford Simak, about a Civil War veteran who lives alone in Wisconsin, and who hides on his property an intergalactic way station, that allows aliens to travel from one planet to another, using Earth as an intermediate stopping point. Way Station was first published in 1964.
Enoch Wallace is a U.S. Civil War veteran, who lives alone on his Wisconsin farm. He is visited by a mysterious space alien he names Ulysses (after Grant). Ulysses explains that a galactic civilization is expanding into this part of the galaxy, and needs a way station on Earth. Enoch agrees to tend the station. When built, it looks on the outside just like an ordinary house, but on the inside the station contains all the advanced equipment provided by Ulysses and galactic central. As a bonus, the time . . .
- January 28
The Blob, one of the best-remembered and most beloved films of the '50s, in the SF or any other genre, gave the young actor then billed as "Steven" McQueen his first shot at stardom. It was the brainchild of Philadelphia native and childhood vaudeville performer Jack H. Harris, a film distributor who left an indelible mark on the cinema with this maiden effort as a producer.
Harris wanted to take the budget of two of the black-and-white SF films he was handling and make one in color, with an alien form of flesh-consuming mineral life as its simple monster. He then shared this formula with a friend of his, Irvine H. Millgate, a professor of humanities at Northwestern University, who . . .
- January 29
Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957) is an American sci-fi film, produced and directed by Roger Corman from an original story and screenplay by Charles B. Griffith. It was produced under the auspices of Corman's Los Altos Productions, and financed in exchange for distribution rights by Allied Artists Pictures, which released it double-billed with the original Not of This Earth.
The story involves an expedition stranded on an isolated Pacific island, where it has gone to study the effects of atomic radiation on island sea-life, and to follow up on a preceding expedition, which has vanished. The expedition eventually discovers the existence of giant-sized, mutated crabs, whose cellular organization renders them close to invulnerable to physical harm. In addition, they are capable of absorbing the contents of the minds . . .
- January 30
Here are the Pets, though not at their best.
The Legion of Super-Pets is a fictional comic book super-hero team composed entirely of animals, who sometimes came to the aid of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Of course, such a concept could only come out of the Silver Age of Comics, when Superboy and other DC Heroes were targeted towards a younger audience than today.
The Legion of Super-Pets were formed in Adventure Comics #293 (1962).
Origins
Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy, and Lightning Lad of the Legion of Super-Heroes were trying to rescue Superboy from the "Brain-Globes of Rambat." These Brains could control the minds of humans but seemed afraid of Superboy's pet, Krypto. Saturn Girl deduced that the aliens could not control the minds of "super-animals." The three Legionnaires used their time bubble to gather both Superboy's and Supergirl's pets into one time era. After the . . .
- January 31
Worf, son of Mogh, of the Klingon House of Martok, is a character in the Star Trek universe played by Michael Dorn.
In 2346 when his family was wiped out by Romulans at the Khitomer Outpost along the Klingon/Romulan border. Worf was thought to be the only survivor, and was soon adopted by Chief Sergey Rozhenko, a human engineer nearing retirement aboard the U.S.S. Intrepid, which was the first at the scene. The next year Worf lived with him, his wife Helena, and their son Nikolai, among 20,000 colonists on the farm world Gault and later on Earth.
Worf entered Starfleet Academy with Nikolai in 2357, but his brother . . .
2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.
