Tuesday, May 31, 2011

A Re-evaluation of Farscape's place in the science fiction canon

I've been re-watching Farscape over the last several weeks. I still love the show and still think it's one of the best sci-fi shows ever, but I no longer rate it quite as highly as I used to. Before, I saw the series as the second best space opera ever made, after Babylon 5. I also would have given it high marks for its anti-fascist message and its general attention to story detail. While I think these elements still hold, they are definitely not as present in the first two seasons, as they later became in seasons 3 and 4. Although I personally like Farscape better than the Twilight Zone, Star Trek, or the new BSG, I don't know that I can any longer defend it as an overall superior series, now that I'm watching it as a whole. Then again, I would rank it just outside the top 10 science fiction series, behind only a very few of the top shows. But tell me your thoughts.

Monday, May 23, 2011

The many assassinations of Adolf Hitler

I'm more in writing mode than blogging mode lately, so I'm working on several story ideas. One short story I may potentially write is called the "Many Assassinations of Adolf Hitler" (copyright 2010 John Weaver, not that I think any regular readers would steal an idea . . . and a poor one at that). In this story, an alternate universe Hitler (who is also a Jewish rabbi) goes through each progressive parallel universe, trying to assassinate his alter egos. When assassination proves untenable, he tries to substitute himself for the original and put his alter-ego in a concentration camp. Basically, the story is talking about the whole ethical relativism of the multiverse ideas championed by Michael Moorcock and company.

I'm also trying to question the whole morality of the alternative history genre, which holds that it can imagine any person being anything, given the right historical circumstances. Because people can write stories like the one above, I find the whole idea repulsive ultimately. But tell me, should I write this story or not?

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Firebird Anti-Semitic debate heats Up

I got into a very interesting debate about whether the Firebird series was anti-Semitic. Evangelical fans say it isn't, while others aren't so sure. Check out the debate and tell me what you think. Frankly, the whole tone of anti-Semitic literature within evangelicalism, I find tremendously dissapointing. Novels like Obsessed, with vampiric Nazis sucking the blood of Jews, or Left Behind, where Jews are merely pawns in Satan's end game, disappoint me with their inability to deal with the needs of post-Holocaust Christianity to dialogue.