The Sci-Fi Ghetto

Visiting Barnes & Noble the other day, I once again noticed the "Sci-Fi Ghetto" syndrome. Here are the publisher's descriptions of two novels; try to guess in which section of the bookstore I found each title:

THE LAST MAN ON EARTH IS NOT ALONE

Robert Neville may well be the only survivor of an incurable plague that has mutated every other man, woman, and child into bloodthirsty, nocturnal creatures who are determined to destroy him.
By day, he scavenges for food and supplies, desperate to find any other survivors who might be out there. But all the while the infected lurk in the shadows, watching his every move, waiting for him to make a mistake...

How about this one...

In an Arizona desert a man wanders in a daze, speaking words that make no sense. Within twenty-four hours he is dead, his body swiftly cremated by his only known associates. Halfway around the world archaeologists make a shocking discovery at a medieval site. Suddenly they are swept off to the headquarters of a secretive multinational corporation that has developed an astounding technology. Now this group is about to get a chance not to study the past but to enter it. And with history opened to the present, the dead awakened to the living, these men and women will soon find themselves fighting for their very survival - six hundred years ago...

The first book is Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend while the second book is Michael Crichton's Timeline. Clearly, both novels fall into the category of science fiction. But both books, along with just about every work by these authors, are located in the Fiction and Literature section rather than in the Science Fiction and Fantasy section. The label under the publisher's logo on the spines of both books explicitly states that these books are "fiction". This is ironic when Tor, the publisher of the most recent printing of I Am Legend, made its mark by being a publisher of science fiction and fantasy. Nearly every other novel published by Tor is labeled "science fiction" or "fantasy". The novels of Stephen King, who made his reputation writing sci-fi with elements of horror, are also labeled as simple "fiction" and are rarely to be found in the "Science Fiction and Fantasy" section.

This article about the Sci-Fi Ghetto (which specifically refers to television but is equally applicable to literature), best describes the phenomenon:

The Sci-Fi Ghetto reflects a long-lasting stigma which has been applied towards the science fiction genre, which frequently leads creators and marketers to shun "Sci-Fi", "Science Fiction" or "Fantasy" labels as much as possible, even on shows that have clear science fiction or fantastical elements. It also reflects the tendency for critics, academics and other creators to near-automatically dismiss or disdain works which cannot escape this label being applied, regardless of relative quality or merit.

This explains why I didn't know that Lost is a science fiction show until recently. I would have watched it had I known that.

I suppose this attitude bothers me because it seems to imply that sci-fi and fantasy fans are a less-than-desirable group (even though we spend plenty of money on our interests). The article also suggests that the term "graphic novel" was invented "to make people feel less ridiculous" when talking about comic books.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

The most effective way you could get me to read Jane Austin's Pride and Prejudice would be to modify it to better appeal to my interests. Maybe if the setting were moved from 19th century England to space... and add aliens and space battles. Or, as Seth Grahame-Smith has done with Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, you could make most of the major characters (e.g., the Bennet Sisters, Mr. Darcy) masters of the "deadly arts" (Chinese martial arts for the Bennet sisters and Japanese for Mr. Darcy) and add "ultraviolent zombie mayhem".

Most of the original novel is intact (hence Jane Austin is listed as the first author): Mrs. Bennet is still trying to get her daughters married off and Mr. Darcy still comes off as arrogant jerk until the last half of the book. Now, though, the British isles are overrun by the undead, who are hungry for human flesh. The Bennet Sisters' frequent visits to Netherfield are occasionally interrupted by skirmishes with zombie hordes, the ball in which the Bennet Sisters first meet Mr. Darcy and a dinner at Netherfield are interrupted by zombie massacres, and Elizabeth's friend, Charlotte Lucas, spends much of the book slowly being zombified while her husband, Cousin Collins, remains blissfully unaware.

Although I enjoyed the book, I'm not entirely certain what audience it was written for. I don't see most readers of Austin as the kind that would enjoy the addition of zombies and martial arts. And most who want to read about ninjas and the undead probably don't want to read anything by Jane Austin. There's not enough zombie content added to make someone who would dislike Pride and Prejudice enjoy Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Since I can enjoy both classical literature as well as offbeat sci-fi and fantasy (I prefer the latter), an oddity like this book works perfectly well for me. I would have liked to see Grahame-Smith add some sort of climactic zombie siege of Longbourn, though. I wouldn't have thought there were enough people out there with similar tastes to put this book on the New York Times bestseller list. 
B+

Wasted Weekend

I work the so-called 9/80 schedule, which means I work nine days over a period of two weeks for a total of 80 hours. Of course, this doesn't include a 25 minute lunch period or the two and a half hours of commuting, which keep me away from home for more than 12 hours a day. The 9/80 schedule, which gives me a three day weekend every other week, is meant to partially compensate for that. Well, since I've been working overtime on a project recently, this past weekend was my first three day weekend in a couple months. This meant that, in accordance with Murphy's Law, a good portion of the weekend was going to be ruined.

I have temporal mandibular joint disorder (TMJ disorder or sometimes TMD) in the right side of my jaw, meaning that the cartilage in the joint is damaged. Opening my jaw causes popping and grinding noises that are sometimes loud enough to be heard by people several feet away. It causes constant headaches and pain in the right side of my face, teeth, right eye, and neck. For the most part I've gotten used to it and have learned to appreciate the good days and tolerate the bad. This Saturday, though, was the first time I experienced another common effect of TMD; a full blown migraine complete with light sensitivity, nausea, and vertigo. The day went something like this:

7:00 AM:
I wake up and realize immediately that I'm not going to get far from bed. I retrieve the mp3 player and lay back down. There are rodents in my brain and they're trying to get out.

11:00 AM:
My wife brings soup and crackers. The soup calms my stomach but the act of chewing the crackers aggravates the TMJ, making the headache worse.

11:30 AM:
I take a shower, expecting the hot water to reduce the pain. It does, but only temporarily. The wave of nausea that hits me as I get out of the shower sends me right back to bed.

12:00 PM-1:30 PM:
I sleep through the score to 300 (one of my more energetic movie soundtracks).

2:00 PM:
Feeling a little better, I get out of bed just to end up sitting on the couch and staring straight ahead like a zombie. Someone please remove the rodents from inside my skull.

2:30 PM:
Not wanting to be totally useless, I help clean the house by vacuuming the living room. Did you know that physical exertion makes migraines worse? Now I do. The rodents have found little jackhammers and are working in shifts.

5:00 PM:
The rodents are getting tired and my stomach is calming down a bit. The Internet is my friend because it distracts me.

8:00 PM:
My wife runs to the store and brings back Excedrin.

9:00 PM:
The rodents go into comas from Excedrin poisoning and I return to my usual level of TMJ pain. I'm allowed back into the Land of the Living.

I'm sure the rodents are plotting revenge at this very moment...

Great Quotes: James Madison

Like other Founding Fathers, James Madison (the "Father of the Constitution") was a great source for quotes on government. This particular quote strikes me because, like so many other wise sayings, it still rings true today:

"All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree."

In a space of less than two years the Federal government has seized an unprecedented amount of power over the economy and Americans' health with the so-called Obamacare bill, is trying to gain even greater authority with a financial reform bill that would potentially allow the Fed to intervene in the affairs of any company it deems "too big to fail", and is committing our country to ever increasing deficit spending that will enslave our children with insurmountable debt.

Maybe it's time we took Madison's advice and distrusted the power-hungry politicians in our government enough to kick the bums out come election time.

Bachelor Movie Marathon, Part V: The Final Chapter

In the final few days before my family got back from California, I made it a post-work habit to make dinner and eat it while watching an MST3K episode. Because I had exhausted all the episodes in my new Volume XVII collection, I started rewatching the first volumes in the series. I  skipped Volume 1's The Creeping Terror since I had watched it only a few months before and because it's one of the most excruciatingly bad movies I've ever seen. Maybe even worse than The Blood Waters of Dr. Z.

Bloodlust! (1961)
A ripoff of The Most Dangerous Game (1932) with two teenage couples filling in the roles of Joel McCrea and Fay Wray as the ones who are pursued by a mad hunter across his private island. Not only does this movie "borrow" the overall premise of its inspiration, but it recreates such details as the soon-to-be-dead drunk character, the villain who hunts with arrows to be more sporting, and the not-so-dead-as-previously-thought character returning to defeat the villain. Really, beyond "inferior ripoff of The Most Dangerous Game", there's not much to be said about Bloodlust!  (although the crew of MST3K do a great job with this movie). One element that's missing is that, by replacing Joel McCrea's character with a bunch of teenagers, this movie lacks the irony of the intended victim being a world-renowned big game hunter who finds out the hard way how his prey feels.
C+

Catalina Caper (1967)
Much to our dismay, the movie forces us to follow a bunch of teenagers heading to Catalina Island by cruise liner (with a special musical number by Little Richard!). Immediately before leaving for Catalina, the well-meaning but not particularly law-abiding parents of one of the teenagers steal an ancient manuscript. They intend to counterfeit the manuscript, sell the copy to a shady antiquities collector, and return the original to the museum. In between scenes of teenagers being "groovy" on the beach and of villains trying to obtain the scroll without paying for it, we get "comic" scenes of an insurance investigator spying on the parents and trying to bust them for some form of insurance fraud.

This movie is the perfect example of why the MST3K guys stayed away from comedies. Unlike a purportedly serious movie, which can be funny without trying to be, a bad comedy is unfunny by definition. There was little Joel and the 'bots could do for this movie, making it agony from beginning to end. The only reason this movie doesn't get an "F" from me is because it predates today's notion of extreme skinniness being the ideal of feminine beauty. Thus, many of the movie's actresses are naturally attractive.
D

Skydivers (1963)
The title says it all. Really. Well, I guess there's some sort of plot going on. A couple having marital problems runs a small airport and makes a living by giving skydiving lessons. There's an unfortunate death when one of their regular students violates the rules and tries to open his parachute below the required altitude. Scratch one minor character. Then the husband's jilted mistress teams up with a disgruntled former employee to put acid in the husband's parachute just before the big public demonstration. Scratch one major character. As the murderers flee by car, the cops follow by light aircraft, shooting at them along the way. Although I don't remember the villains carrying guns, the cops shoot them down during the foot chase anyway. Scratch the two most interesting characters in the movie.

Unfortunately, most of this movie is padding (much of it stock footage of skydiving) with the murder plot taking up only the last 15 minutes or so. Mike and the 'bots don't have a lot to go on with this one.
D (it avoids a lower grade because I actually like stock footage of skydiving)

Pod People (1983)
Here's another movie that was released under a variety of titles. An odd, furry alien with a long snout leaves its eggs in a cave somewhere in a forest. A poacher who comes across the eggs and smashes all but one of them is killed by the alien. In the meantime, a band (and one unwelcome groupie) goes off camping in the same woods. When the groupie falls off a cliff (and is infected, or injured, or... I don't know... the alien does something to her), the band takes her to the cabin of a grumpy man, his sister, and his irritating nephew. The nephew has found the surviving egg and brought it home where it grows into another alien being the nephew names "Trumpy". While the nephew goes through sitcom-esque adventures trying to hide Trumpy from the humans, mommy alien goes around killing the cast. The method of killing is never really explained; the alien seems to simply touch the victim, leaving behind a corpse with four glowing spots on the forehead. It's very confusing.

The most bizarre thing about this movie is its tone. While Trumpy is supposed to be cute and to invoke a sense of wonder (he has goofy stop-motion powers that make a single appearance and have no bearing on the plot), the other alien literally kills the majority of the cast before she herself is killed. It seems like the makers of the film tacked a kid-friendly E.T. ripoff into the middle of a typical alien horror movie late in production (rumor has it that the producers demanded exactly that based on the success of E.T. (1982)). Joel and the 'bots make the movie a lot more tolerable.
C-

Bachelor Movie Marathon, Part IV

Just this and one more post should cover all the movies I saw while my family was in California. In addition to the movies covered in Part I and Part II, I saw two more non-MST3K movies:

Battlefield Earth (2000)
I covered this film in an earlier post, but I thought I'd mention it again. In light of movies like The Final Sacrifice and The Blood Waters of Dr. Z, you can see why this one isn't really that bad. I'd been expecting an utter disaster based on what others had said about this movie. It turns out that I've watched (and enjoyed) much worse than this. Really, the worst thing I can say about Battlefield Earth is that it screwed up too many things to be a good movie but didn't screw up enough to be a so-bad-it's-good movie. It actually had some fairly well-done scenes, the most effective of which being the capture of the hero, Johnny. At this point in the movie the aliens are an unknown and ominous menace. Johnny is chased through the ruins of a mall by an enormous shadow firing a weapon at him (the slow motion ruins the scene just a little here). After being stunned, Johnny wakes up to find himself in a cage suspended under an immensely loud gunship flying over the ruins of Denver. Unfortunately, we are soon introduced to the Psychlos and learn that they're essentially Star Trek's Ferengi with a Klingon physique.

As for Battlefield Earth being Scientologist propaganda as some opponents of that church have claimed, I'm just not seeing it. The story resembles that of Independence Day more than it resembles any unique teaching of Scientology. And although L. Ron Hubbard's distrust of psychologists is well-known, and even though it's probable that the name "Psychlos" is not coincidental, I didn't really notice the Psychlos doing anything that would make any rational person believe that the movie was anti-psychology.
C

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988)
A roommate of mine at BYU once told me that I should see this movie. At the time, although I enjoyed MST3K, I didn't really watch off-kilter or non-mainstream movies for their own merits. I simply enjoyed Joel/Mike and the 'Bots' jokes at the film's expense. In other words, I probably would not have liked Baron Munchausen. Years later, however, I found it very entertaining.

The movie opens with a French-held town being bombarded by the Turks. Even under siege the show must go on, so the troupe of traveling actors that recently came to town puts on its production of The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. The audience is greatly entertained by the exploits of the Baron (which are on par with America's Pecos Bill or Paul Bunyan legends) until the real Baron shows up and claims that all his stories are true. The Baron promises to gather his equally legendary companions to break the Turks' siege and sets off in a hot air balloon. The daughter of the acting troupe's owner stows away and soon discovers that the Baron's stories were accurate, although his companions appear to be too old or tired to be of much help.

The movie is generally whimsical but with occasional moments that are outright surreal (I'm still trying to figure out the ending). More than once the Angel of Death shows up to darken the mood. The only scene that just didn't work for me showcased Robin Williams, who spends most of his time on screen as the disembodied floating head of the King of the Moon. Come to think of it, I don't think Robin Williams is all that funny, especially when he's doing silly accents. Other than that, assuming you can tolerate its oddities, it's a fun movie.
B+

Bachelor Movie Marathon, Part III

During my short period of bachelorhood, I watched several MST3K episodes in addition to movies without Joel/Mike and the 'bots making fun of them. Specifically, I watched the four episodes in the newly released MST3K Volume XVII, three episodes from Volume 1, and one episode from Volume 2. Thanks to Volume XVII, I endured the following:

The Crawling Eye (1958) - as shown on MST3K
This was MST3K's first network episode (the show was previously aired on a local TV station in Minnesota). Unfortunately, the jokes during the first season of the show came few and far between. Unlike later seasons, the comments made during the movie seemed a lot more ad-libbed and are a lot less funny. What made up for this, though, was the fact that their first season featured some of the best movies.

People attempting to climb the Trollenberg mountain in Switzerland are disappearing left and right. Those whose bodies are found are inevitably headless. A U. N. agent in Switzerland on vacation realizes that these mysterious events are similar to those that occurred in the Alps a few years ago. His friend, who happens to be in charge of an observatory in the Swiss mountains, agrees. The astronomer's theory that this is the work of alien invaders is soon proven true, and the agent and his friend find themselves sheltering the residents from the nearby inn in the astronomer's avalanche-proof observatory. Outside, enormous creatures with a single eye and multiple tentacles are trying to get in. The '50s didn't get a whole lot better than this.
A-

The Beatniks (1960) - as shown on MST3K
After robbing a gas station, a rowdy group of "beatniks" (the way they're portrayed shows that the producers didn't really know what a beatnik was) stop by their favorite malt shop to hang out. One of the gang, Eddy, is asked to sing for his girlfriend, which gets the attention of a talent agent. Eddy's given the chance to perform on TV and becomes a sensation overnight. This causes a major rift in the gang and some serious trouble with Mooney, the psychotic member of the group. Just as it seems that Eddy has a chance for an honest and successful career, his past comes back to haunt him.

Although a fairly standard juvenile delinquent film, The Beatniks is pretty decent; I actually cared what happened to the characters. It's unusual for any MST3K subject to actually make me care about its characters.
B-

The Final Sacrifice (1990) - as shown on MST3K
The mad scientist who forces Mike and the 'bots to watch bad movies called this "the worst thing to ever come out of Canada". Hooded cultists chase some goofy kid and a former cultist named "Zap Rowsdower" around the wilderness of Alberta, trying to get their hands on a map leading to an ancient city built by some advanced race called the Ziox. The cultists' leader, Satoris, believes that a final sacrifice will raise the city and give his cult the power to rule the world. How this will happen when the cult consists of about two dozen guys with machetes and rifles is beyond me. Mike and the 'bots are hilarious as usual, but the movie is lousy.
D+

The Blood Waters of Dr. Z ( 1975) - as shown on MST3K
It's well-known by B-movie fans that the more alternative titles a movie has, the worse it is. According to IMDB, this misbegotten film has at least five titles.

Dr. Leopold creates a chemical intended to mutate sea life into his own personal army to "take over the Universe" (with mutant fish? Do these people even know what the Universe is?). The only apparent effect of the stuff seems to be that it makes fish able to breathe out of water and walk on land. This makes them a nuisance, not a menace. In the meantime, Leopold transforms himself into an ersatz Creature from the Black Lagoon and goes on a distinctly lackluster rampage. Mostly he's trying to transform a human female into a monstrous mate for himself. The end is pointless and confusing, the movie's characters are utterly lifeless, obscene amounts of time are spent watching characters drive around, and the monster suit is downright embarrassing. Mike and the 'bots do what they can, but this movie makes even B-movie fans question their choice of hobby.
F