Harlan Ellison, he’s a writer. He saddles the language up and rides it like a bronco that needs to be broken. He whips it like a dominatrix on steroids. He seduces it, plays with it, gets drunk on it, and wails on it like George Harrison showing how a guitar can weep. What he does with language is what Picasso does with paint. Okay?

Me, I strive for simple precision. You know how Hemingway would write a sunrise: “The sun rose.” That’s what I do. Simple, easy, direct, to the point.

Okay, now look — I’d love to be able to write something like this: “As the planet turned majestically toward the east, the first intimations of light became a glow on the horizon, the first fingers of brilliance stretched sideways across the landscape carving shadows out of the night. … Read More 

I wrote this paragraph as part of something else. I want to follow it up with some additional thoughts:

Science fiction got important by accident — because just enough of it contained useful nuggets of prediction or thought-provoking philosophical notions about how the universe might work that other people took notice. Science fiction also became cancerous — with its conjoined twins, fantasy and horror, it has taken over mainstream literature, television, movies, comics, videogames, and every other form of entertainment except possibly masturbation — and I haven’t been into a sex shop recently enough to confirm or deny that latter assertion.

Here are the additional thoughts:

The movie industry has devolved. Part of the problem is that the new generation of film-makers grew up enthusiastic and excited about summer movies and they all want to make their own. So we … Read More 

I loved the first movie, I enjoyed the next two, but after that … no.

Star Wars is a triumph of special effects over logic. Thought has been sacrificed to action and eye-candy.

It’s fantasy with spaceships and light-sabres and a mish-mash of stuff that ultimately defies logic.

By contrast, classic Star Trek was about exploring the universe, about finding our place in it, about discovering what it means to be a human being. Yeah, TOS was quaint, under-budgeted, and squeezed out through the filters of 1966-style television. But despite that, it was the most ambitious series in American television, because it invited the audience to think about ideas.

At its best, classic Trek was a faint intimation of what real science fiction could be — the books, the stories, the sense of wonder — but at least it aspired … Read More