Headline Bloopers: PBS NewsHour and Heavy Negotiators

More Harry Potter – or Just Pottermore?

There's a new J.K. Rowling website, and no, no one knows what the heck it means.

Magazine News: Hef Solves the Cover Problem

So what do you do when you feature your bride-to-be on the cover of your magazine, only to have her call off the wedding five days before the ceremony – and after the magazine has already been printed?

Hugh Hefner added a sticker to the cover of the July Playboy. See image below. Kudos for quick thinking – and cheekiness.

See the full cover here.

Bunky, Safe at Last from Stupid Space Aliens

In April 1975, while inflation raged, Vietnam waned, Mao reigned in China, and the U.S. economy sputtered, a small Wisconsin newspaper called The Farmer's Friend debuted a new black-and-white comic strip, Bunky.

The titular star of the strip was a farm boy who, over the next several years, had a range of wild and humorous adventures that involved rocketships, the People's Republic of China, and space aliens. The comic was the creation of Lyle Lahey, an award-winning daily political cartoonist for the Green Bay News-Chronicle, which was published by the same company as The Farmer's Friend. (Lahey is also the author of The Packer Chronicles, a collection of his cartoons about Green Bay's football team through bad years and good.)

Watch for a special retrospective of Bunky in a future issue of Galaxis (the first edition is still available free here in digital form or you can buy a print copy here). And in the future ... maybe a Bunky book collecting the entire run of the strip? Wouldn't that be nice?

Methodist Church Trial in Wisconsin

The United Methodist Church in Wisconsin is "in turmoil," I'm told, over the upcoming trial of a lesbian pastor who officiated at the wedding of two other lesbians. She's doubly in trouble, because the Methodist church believes that gay men and woman shouldn't be pastors, and it doesn't think gay men and woman should equal rights to marriage.

Attitudes toward gay marriage are changing at a very fast pace in this country, with it headed for almost certain passage in New York state, for just the latest example. Even young evangelicals increasingly are supporting it. It is only a matter of time before it becomes a "so what?" topic, but until that happens, political parties are making whatever hay they can out of it. In the process, they are willing to destroy and harm a great many careers and families.

Which makes it all the more ridiculous to have Rev. Amy DeLong go through a trial. Just as John Kerry asked about the futility of being the last person to die for a mistaken war, is Rev. DeLong going to be the last pastor to be tried for a mistaken and unchristian policy?

The only thing that should create turmoil among Wisconsin Methodists is who is going to staff the kitchen during the potluck lunch following the worship service. Now that's the Methodist church I remember from my youth in Wisconsin.

Read more here on LoveOnTrial.org and a newspaper report here.

Digging in the Archives: College Speech Rules

While digging through a box of old files yesterday, I discovered a lot of old articles by and about me. No, I'm not necessarily vain; if I were, I wouldn't have stuffed them in crummy old folders that I then put into a box I forgot about for nearly 10 years.

The articles range from editorials and columns I wrote at The Badger Herald student newspaper (when I was a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) to letters I wrote to magazines and newspapers, guest columns for various publications, and articles in which I was quoted.

Most of it will not interest you any more than it (dis)interests me any longer. But a few items were pleasant surprises, including the article above (click on the image to see a bigger version). The article, which appeared in the October 21, 1990, Chicago Sun-Times, reported the reactions of some UW students to the then-hot topic of hate-speech rules. As a columnist and former editor of the Herald, I had written quite a bit about the attempts of the UW chancellor to implement severe restrictions on campus speech. (I won't go completely into it here, but suffice it to say that I think hateful speech thrives in the underground, and it's better that good people take on such statements head-to-head; the average person should be educated enough – or should get educated enough by their university – to be able to refute hateful and ignorant statements; in addition, the proposed rules were so vague that I thought it endangered professors who taught concepts and ideas that offended students; if you're a fundamentalist of any religion and you take a class on biology, that's your problem – I believed and still believe – so prepare to be offended and don't bother me with your offendedness.)

Anyway, the Sun-Times talked to representatives of the conservative and liberal daily student papers, finding both of us opposed to the speech restrictions. That should have been a sign to the UW administration. Years later, when the chancellor was profiled by The New Yorker, she said she had pushed the speech rules because it's what the campus wanted. Untrue.

But that was 21 years ago. Forgotten and placed in a box.

The best news is that in all of that archival digging yesterday, I was successful in finding what I was seeking: my complete collection of Bunky comic strips, the cool but short-lived comic produced by my stepfather, Lyle Lahey, back in 1975. It will play a role in the second edition of my science fiction and science magazine Galaxis (first issue still available free here or for print-on-demand at cost here). Stay tuned.

Fangoria Censored in 1980?

I had known that Fangoria #9 was one of the best horror film magazine covers ever (along with the previous Zombie cover on Fangoria #8). I had not known, until some serendipitous googling this evening unearthed it, that #9 was censored on American newsstands.

But The Daily Beast, the pop-y news and opinion site run by the legendary Tina Brown, includes Fango #9 in a photo essay of 10 magazine covers that were censored. It says Fangoria #9 was pulled from newsstands because people were disturbed by its cover imagery.

The poor dears.

Fangoria, of course, is a horror film magazine, and it is still the leading magazine in its field. So one would expect that it would cover, well, horror movies. It is amusing to me that back in 1980, when Fango was finally hitting its stride after an uneven start, that it would have to clear the hurdle of people freaking out over a cover that frankly isn't particularly graphic. Look at it below. There's no actual violence on the cover; there's some fake blood on a chainsaw being wielded by a pig-headed human, which is not something one sees everyday on a magazine cover, not to mention the streets of Dallas.

I remember that the magazine became a coveted (and expensive) collector's edition, costing several times what any other issue of the magazine cost. I had always assumed that it had either sold out or that the print run hadn't been adequate, so remaining copies were sold at a premium. But if The Daily Beast is correct, then we know that it was all due to the never-ending American strain of hypocrisy and fear.

Still, it's a damn cool cover. Speaking as a magazine professional, of course.

From WEIMAR WORLD SERVICE

The German Example: The Economy

The New York Times gets it.
.

Battlestar Galactica Comes to BBC America

This weekend I was pleasantly surprised to see a commercial announcing that BBC America was going to begin airing the entire Battlestar Galactica series, the 2003-2009 drama that originated on Sci Fi Channel (later redubbed Syfy). The award-winning series was a critical and fan darling, for good reason. It had great writing and fantastic actors; it was one of the most mature dramas ever to air on TV, not to mention as a science fiction program. And unlike many series that tried to have multi-year story arcs, it did a great job keeping the storyline fresh and tension-filled, without stalling (I'm talking to you, X-Files).

The announcement was especially pleasing to me, because my head has been stuffed full with Galactica lately. That is the result of a long article on the Ronald Moore-produced Galactica series that I've been compiling for the second edition of my digital science fiction & science magazine Galaxis. (The first edition of Galaxis is already available – free – online for reading and downloading.)

Galactica begins airing Saturday, June 11, 2011, at 10 p.m. Eastern time on BBC America. If you missed this show during its first airing on Sci Fi/Syfy, then be sure to catch it on its new home and see how it earned its high reputation.

The Next Generation’s Best: The Starlog Project, Starlog #195, October 1993

This issue, Starlog presents the results of a reader poll of the best episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. This, despite the fact that the show wouldn’t end for another six months or so (and with a highly regarded finale, at that). Nonetheless, I am surprised to see that I agree with many of the choices, including the top two episodes: “Yesterday’s Enterprise” and “The Best of Both Worlds, Part I.”

“Yesterday’s Enterprise” was the episode that made me a viewer of Next Generation. I had been turned off by the suffocating political correctness of the first season, not to mention Captain Picard’s penchant for abandoning ship at the drop of a hat.

But then one day I was with some friends at one of their apartments. She was a big Next Generation fan (and a Starlog reader, for what it’s worth), and she never missed an episode. So she made us watch the episode, which turned out to be “Yesterday’s Enterprise.” I quickly saw that the show had matured brilliantly, that it was willing and able to tackle complex issues of morality and duty, that it allowed its storylines to follow the logic of their plots to their conclusions, without trying to tidy up everything by the end of the episode, and that Captain Picard had become a wise and powerful leader.

After that, I rarely missed an episode of the series.

So, Starlog’s readers were smart with their selections. You’ll have to dig out a copy of the October 1993 issue to see the other 23 selections – and whether you agree.

Starlog #195
92 pages (including covers)
Cover price: $4.95

In the realm of Starlog merchandising, this issue includes an ad on page 73 heralding the newest product: Starlog trading cards. You can buy them in packets, like baseball cards, at stores, or you can buy a complete commemorative set of 100 cards in a binder covered in “Corinthian leather.” It even comes autographed by the company's publisher and editors. Or you could buy a set of the cards on uncut press sheets, or uncut hologram sheets. You can still find packages and boxes of these Starlog trading cards on eBay, which is how I finally got a hold of a complete set.

The rundown: The multi-photo cover highlights the Star Trek reader’s poll, while the contents page features the Trek art of David Mattingly. In his Medialog column, David McDonnell notes that Land of the Giants and Lost in Space are both headed for the big screen, and he writes that that leaves only two major Irwin Allen science fiction series awaiting revivals, The Time Tunnel and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, “an area soon to be visited by Steven Spielberg’s new TV series seaQuest D.S.V.” That’s an interesting comment, considering that one of the best (well, snarkiest) cracks made by a critic after seeing the eventual pilot for seaQuest was that it should be called Voyage to the Bottom of the Ratings. And in Gamelog, Michael McAvennie reviews Batman Returns (a Super Nintendo game, not the eventual motion picture), King of the Monsters, Traveler: The New Era, and others.

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms is featured in Mike Fisher’s Creature Profile, and Communications’ letters to the editor include comments on race and Star Trek, Jurassic Park, Lost in Space, and more. David Hutchison’s Videolog announces the release of Animation Legend Winsor McCay, among other videos. A four-page Booklog section reviews Harvest of Stars, The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Tenth Annual Collection, Core, Ring of Swords, Dream of Glass, The City Who Fought, Golden Trillium, Rainbow Man, Forests of the Night, High Steel, Testing, The Honor of the Queen, The Galaxy Game, Days of Blood and Fire, If I Pay Thee Not in Gold, Alien Bootlegger and Other Stories, Future Earths: Under South American Skies, First Action, and Burning Bright. And Scott Briggs’ directory of fan clubs and publications, plus the usual convention listings and some cartoons, fill up the Fan Network pages.

Joe Nazzaro interviews painter David Mattingly. Marc Shapiro visits the soundstage of Demolition Man to preview the Sylvester Stallone/Wesley Snipes science fiction action flick. Jean Airey talks with actor Michael Praed, who discusses his work in Robin of Sherwood, Riders, and other projects. Over six pages, Starlog reveals its readers’ choices for the 25 best Next Generation episodes. Ian Spelling inteviews Trek’s executive producer, Michael Piller, who says that at this point he and co-producer Rick Berman leave most of the day-to-day running of The Next Generation to producer Jeri Taylor (and there’s a sidebar by Spelling focusing on Piller’s work on Deep Space Nine).

Bill Warren profiles actor Roy Brocksmith, who discusses his work in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Total Recall, and “The Switch” episode of Tales from the Crypt, which was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s directorial debut.

Before Chris Evans made the role his, actor Jay Underwood suited up as the Human Torch in a 1994 Roger Corman produced The Fantastic Four film, which you’ve in all likelihood never seen. That’s probably all to the best, because Evans was great. But Underwood has quite a career under his belt, too, and he tells Marc Shapiro about his Fantastic Four duties, as well as his work in Not Quite Human, The Boy Who Could Fly, and other films. Tom Weaver talks with Ann Robinson about acting in George Pal’s classic The War of the Worlds, as well as in Space Ranger. In his From the Bridge column, Kerry O’Quinn discusses Sharyn McCrumb’s book Zombies of the Gene Pool. And editor David McDonnell wraps it all up in his Liner Notes column by chatting about the Trek top 25, and revealing what numbers 26 through 50 were.

"... I ran off to Mexico in 1957 and blew my career out of the water – I married a famous Mexican matador and had two children. When I got back home, Hollywood had passed me by. I blew it. I should have stayed around and paid more attention. Now I realize why they call it ‘the business’ – because it is a business. I thought it was all fun and games and glamour, and I didn’t take care of it as a business. … After my second son was born in 1963, I did a Gilligan’s Island and that was about it. Motherhood suddenly took over.”
–Ann Robinson, actor, interviewed by Tom Weaver: “In Martian Combat”

For more, click on Starlog Internet Archive Project below or visit the Starlog Project's permanent site.