The Trouble with Tribbles? Shore Leave? By Any Other Name? Q'pid? A Fistful of Datas? Trials and Tribble-ations? There are quite a few deliberately hilarious Trek episodes spread across all the series in the franchise.
They are little round furballs with no legs or visible sense organs. When given sufficient food (they are herbivores), they breed proliferately and rapidly, until constrained again by a shortage of food. They seem cute, until the population explosion. They purr and make other soothing noises around most humanoids, but around Klingons they hiss and become highly agitated.
Personally the best SF for me is Star Trek TNG. You can tell how successfull it is by the amount of seasons, 7. Also 27 million watched the opening episode, "Encounter at Farpoint" That is the gauge for me. ST ENT had only 4 seasons, shows the decline doesnt it. I thought it was bad, and so dd the US public with an average of 2.5 million viewers for the episodes of the final season.
I watched that episode today actually! Hilarious, great plot and the use of data for every character is fun.
The most hilarious thing about tribbles was how much money they brought in as Star Trek "action" figures. Imagine inventing a fluffy "toy" that has no head, no legs, no odd-shaped appendages of any kind and no special physical traits like "Stretch Armstrong". Then, sell those oval stuffed animals for $13.99 each! LOL http://www.starbase1.com/catalog/TRB3.html Wonder how many of the little buggers they sold in the first Christmas after that episode. Disclaimer: Yes, I bought a couple for my infant son back then.
Perhaps. I liked Enterprise, personally. But after TNG, DS9, and Voyager, the fans were pretty tired of the franchise. Also, a lot of the younger viewers were looking for more of a "shoot-em-up" kind of SF series, which was really not the Trek style - although DS9 approached it in the later seasons with the war against the Founders. Admittedly, near the end, the Enterprise writers seemed to stop trying. Anyway, this is really getting pretty far from the original question (and I'm as guilty of that as anyone).
Yesterday, I dropped by my local chain bookstore to pick up a cheat-book on Adobe's In-Design software. I took a few minutes to browse the sci-fi section's "New Releases" rack. Shocking! Out of forty coverpages, only one was what I would call true science fiction. All the rest had wizards, dragons, titles involving scorcery, witchcraft, vampires, etc. It's been a while since I did that and the contrast from the last time was surprising. One little positive note: Andre Norton's book are still on the shelf three years after her death. Star Born was one of my favorites and there were two copies waiting to start another generation of sci-fi enthusiasts.
Science fiction is a broad genre, NaCl. I mean, look at the Dragonriders of Pern series. The covers are adorned with dragons, but it's still more sci-fi than fantasy, because of the content. It brings back the old adage, don't judge a book by its cover.
OMG! Some of the very first stuff I ever read! Anne's books hold a special place in my heart. Would that I could impress a dragon!
Andre Norton passed away from congestive heart failure on March 17, 2005. She was 93 years old and had published over 130 novels during her lifetime. Her birth name was Alice Mary Norton and she wrote under Andrew North and Andre Norton. Since her early target market was boys and young men, she felt a gender neutral name would be a wise marketing decision...in those years, she was probably correct. She was the first woman to be a SFWA Grand Master and was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 1997. During her lifetime she received the Skylark Award (1983), Balrog Award (1979), the Phoenix Award (1976) and the World Fantasy awards, and she was the first woman to win the Gandalf Grand Master of Fantasy award. In addition, Andre Norton received the E. E. Smith Award (1983), The Fritz Leiber Award (1983), The Jules Verne Award (1984), and The Howard, World Fantasy Convention Award (1987), as well as two lifetime achievement awards; The Nebula Grand Master Award in 1984 and The Second Stage Lensman Award; as well as The First Fandom Hall of Fame Award in 1994. As I said earlier, I have her entire collection including several reprints of some titles with different cover art. Her death was our loss.
Thanks for the update. I had read a number of her books, under both names. Some of them I liked, some less so. I agree that she is one of the visionaries of the genre though, and I am sorry to learn of her passing.
I don't think that's a cheat, really. When I was a kid, the fictions that I watched (and read) I imagined were worlds that ran alongside ours, parallel worlds. (And decades later, found that Theoretical Physics was thinking along the very same lines!) Look at the early scenes in the 1968 Planet of the Apes. Notice the astronauts' uniforms: "ANSA" not "NASA" (subtle variations: parallel world! ). In building my near-future science fiction story, I'm considering, seriously, a parallel, fictional world. Close to ours, but not the same. Lost had little differences, details that suggested "not exactly our world"... Oceanic airlines, Apollo Bars, McCutcheon Whiskey.... not ONE recognizable brand that I recall. And oddly, I get more wrapped up in a story's world, despite its claim to fiction! Tellers of fairy tales, have a hypnotic opener to everyone of their stories, to trance their audience into belief, Once upon a time... I wish we science fiction storytellers had a counterpart to that. To open every story, perhaps, with "Once upon a world..."?
Likewise. I have read sci-fi before which would have descriptions like "the third frill on his starboard flange capacitor rippled denoting anger", or "the viewing device bubbled with three-dimensional images. A peak in the liquid metal within a concentricity of circles indicated that Dave was calling." These might be vaguely interesting the first few times you read them, but when you are on Chapter 15 and the "eye-stalk on the arse fuselage is whipping around wildly in amusement" all I'm thinking is, why can't he just laugh? In conclusion, I think you need to pick and choose what is fantastical and make it interesting and worthwhile; otherwise clarity and concision should take precedence.
