sci fi short stories

i read sentinel of eternity by a.c.clark, we can remember it for you wholesale by p.k.dick and the unreal mccoy by j.blish. film fans among you will recognise the first two titles as great films under different names. the geekier ones will recognise the third.

i put the above list in the order i read them and they also happen to be the order of worthiness to be read. a few years ago i had a really low opinion of short stories. i thought they were lesser novels. skidmarks to a grand dung heap of wordy wholesome-ness. then that harold bloom (that bastard) invaded me and things all changed. i also had a low opinion of sci fi. bloom did nothing to change that, but arthur.c.clark did.

the film version of sentinel of eternity is, as you already knew, 2001. it's very different to the film and not in a way that is good or bad but different. i didn't like the film. then it grew on me. then i read this short story. and i like the film some more.

there's lots of bad sci fi out there. we can remember it for you wholesale's film version was called, can you guess? total recall. i loved that fricking movie! it's just so damn clever. and had cool mutants with 3 tits. suck on that prof. X. the book is also different. the first part is the same, then it's very different. i didn't like it. it has a twilight zone ending. i don't want a twilight zone ending. i want michael ironside to have his arms ripped off in an elevator accident.

last one. can you guess from the title? it's a short story inspired by star trek. yes, one of those. mccoy. you know, the doctor with the catchphrase. i've always liked the series, and new generation. the films are passable. this short story isn't. it plays like a badly written comic book with no pictures. the story is total bollocks. an alien (for some reason) can take on any form. and kills people by sucking the salt out of people. how does kirk kill this alien? he (and i'm not joking) distracts it with a handfull of salt and then they shoot it. what do we learn from this? bad sci fi sucks. phasors on stun indeed.


absence

when people disappear for ages on their blogs they always write down why, followed by an apology. you know, they say "i've been busy" or "i haven't been inspired" or something like that. fuck that shit. as someone famous said: "demand from me nothing, you know what you know."