A new TV show with Ridley Scott. One episode is about Heinlein.

It seems clear from the photos at the link that this production is using actors to portray Asimov, Dick, Clarke, et al. No photo of the Heinlein actor yet. I wonder whether they'll be speaking roles, or just visuals with voiceover [from the same actors, other actors, or (for authors who were captured on audiotape) the real thing].

Thanks, Bill. That looks like something I want to see.

the science channel isn't a part of my cable package- sounds like a road trip to see my son

An shows an initial spike in 1899-1910, small hump around 1920, then taking off for good around 1945.

As far as I can tell though, these are all due to misattributed dates. In fact, the dates in Google ngrams appear completely untrustworthy. cites the OED saying Asimov coined it in 1941. Robot, of course, dates to 1920.

At first I thought I had found a reference in 1938 journal, "The Aeroplane", but it is a false OCR of badly printed "aerobatics".

I have heard it claimed that in Czech, the word robota means forced labor or slave. I don't know if this is true or not. My English-Czech translator doesn't recognize it, but that's no proof.

Wikipedia asserts this:
In its original Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands, and is derived from rab, meaning "slave".

I don't dispute this translation, but I am dubious of the claimed derivation. rab was possibly derived from robota not the other way round as robota is cognate with other Slavic languages such as Russian which has the word работа which simply means work.

Of course, I could be wrong and rab with or without the meaning given here is older than the current Slavic cognates and provided the derivation for all of them.

Robota in all its modern forms is cognate with German Arbeit as in the infamous death camp slogan Arbeit macht frei and English labor. the 'ra' of Slavic is a metathesized version of 'ar' in German, a common occurrence in all languages with words using the liquids 'r' and 'l' with a vowel as old English 'brid',(chick or fledgling), became modern 'bird'.

A better link for my own blog entry about Ngram Viewer, with links to reference material and a bunch of amusing example plots, would be:
http://beamjockey.livejournal.com/166102.html

Sorry I released my previous posting into the wild without realizing this.

Watched the first two of these (Shelley and Dick), hoping for something better than the usual fast-cut light and shadow show with semi-famous-name talking heads byting one sentence at a time and filled out with indifferently acted tableaux using nonspeaking actors. ("My god, Shelley and Byron said natter-grommish, too!")

Was disappointed. I don't see how anyone can watch these History/Mystery/Sci/Eddication programs any more. MTV for the forebrain.

Right after Heinlein is George Lucas. How serious can this series be?

Dear Ghod, Punkin Chunkin is a real program.

I think there's a frog-in-boiling-water thing going on with perception of TV quality. Those who watch it on a more or less continuous basis, no matter how lightly, quickly become acclimated to the downward spiral of intelligence and quality.

Those of us who only peek in at multiple-year intervals are badly shocked each time at the devolution.

I think a lot of it traces to the now-lack of any pretense to the contrary that their aim is to hook you and hold you for the next commercial block, with absolutely every other consideration omitted or consigned to a subsidiary level. We're in a Spinrad/Dick nightmare where mass communication is the blunt-trauma tool of marketing, surrounded by stygian void.

I've seen several (all?) episodes of this to-date. There's a clear set of repeating elements, as Mr. Gifford points out earlier in this thread. One of those elements is the sound-bite interview with the subject's biographer.

Is it too much to hope that Bill Patterson is interviewed in the Heinlein episode? Or that someone from Team Heinlein(tm) here was at least involved in some way in the production?

I think there is two chances that there will have someone who really knows much about Heinlein. Slim and none.

There's a nod to RAH here: http://geekout.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/15 ... ?hpt=hp_c2


Does anyone know if this series can be downloaded? My PVR has had trouble recording it in Canada.

You didn't miss much. It was about what I expected, a slicked up and dumbed down show that ignored everything except robots. Nothing about the Foundation trilogy or his years working for the Navy in WWII. I was surprised that Cambell was even mintioned and there was nothing about Heinlein getting him a job in the navy.

Same impression. It was all to Ridley Scott's agenda, which had nothing to do with the reality of IA and/or his work. Concentrated entirely on his "robot" stories, and featured innumerable extracts from the Will Smith I, Robot travesty along with a detour through the Robin Williams Bicentennial Man travesty. They devoted all of two minutes to IA's immense body of non-fiction in his "the Great Explainer" role.

I fully expect the RAH chapter to be equally flawed. Remember, Verhoaxer is also involved in this project, so expect a lot of shots from ST-The Travesty.

Maybe I should be glad I can't get it. Sounds like I'd likely be disappointed. Thanks.

Same here. After reading the first half of Patterson's bio of Heinlein, I doubt that anything the mainstream news or entertainment industries could produce would interest me, and suspect the same is true of Heinlein fans in general.

Hope: noun
1. a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen

http://www.heinleinsociety.org/2012/02/ ... e-fiction/

Zero hour is 10:00 pm tonight [ET-US, repeat at 1:00 am] on Science cable channel for the RAH episode of "Prophets".

I feel like that guy at the start of the first Dirty Harry movie; even though I'm expecting a train wreck, "I gots to know" how many rounds Dirty Scott and Dirty Verhoaxer have left in those pistols. Sigh. Prolly catch the second airing, another show that I really want to watch airs at 10:00 tonight on another cable channel.

It was as bad as I expected. No mention of his medical retirement from the Navy, his service as an aeronautical engineer in WWII, and his Juvinile books that had such an influence in the astronauts and engineers of our space programs.

I think your expectations were in the wrong direction. This series is not a biography of the authors, but a review of items they “invented” in their stories that have come to be. As such they made some interesting choices as they only had 46 minutes and there are inventions in every story that you could point at.
Let’s discuss it within the parameters of what they are trying to do.
Ed

I noticed one thing: they mentioned Between Planets as showing the use of wireless phones. True: "Don reached for the pommel, removed the phone and answered". My impression was that it was part of the saddle, but it could be that it was simply a place where the phone could be stored while riding.

However, Space Cadet mentioned portable phones even earlier than Between Planets
Tex:"Say, your telephone is sounding".
"Oh.!", Matt reached in his pouch and got out his phone.*

This sounds to me much more like our current phones.

*Seems to me that I recall there was a fashion for a while for some men, (and maybe women), to wear something like pouches. What were they called?

I rather like the numerous commercials. At each commercial break I now mute the TV and have time to get up and do something else. Then I return in time for the program. I just filled out a Nielsen TV rating form for one week, and I mentioned that in the comments section.

There's a vivid scene in a one of Heinlein's novels about terrible mind assaulting advertisements in a taxi. The driver can't turn them off, but for a large tip he can dim the sound and volume.

Did I make a nice on-topic switch or what?

Google "Star Wars Prequel Reviews" and look at the multipart reviews on YouTube. Crudely offensive, wildly funny, deadly accurate.

I was surprised that they didn't mention:

"The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Distinguished
Public Service Medal. Through dozens of superbly written novels
and essays and his epoch-making movie “Destination Moon,” he helped
inspire the Nation to take its first step into space and onto the Moon"

Citation accompanying Distinguished Public Service medal awarded
posthumously by the NASA to Robert Anson Heinlein, 1988.

By which he helped make some of his prophecies come to pass.

Deb Houdek Rule has created a reviews page for the episode: http://www.heinleinsociety.org/category ... s-reviews/ .

If you want to submit a review you can create a WordPress account for the site via:
http://www.heinleinsociety.org/ths/wp-l ... n=register

BTW, if you haven't seen the show yet the cheapest way is via Amazon Video. Through their Unbox player you can have a downloaded copy. I think if you use the link on the Society's page they might get a cut. It's also on iTunes.

Quote: Lucas has been in the opening credit sequence since the first show - and the parallel credit is for "energy weapons." Gosh, I dunno how sf got along without energy weapons until 1977. Poor Doc Smith had to sit around waiting for over 40 years, I guess. End Quote.

Gosh, I'm just finishing the last novel in the old Lensman series for the umpteenth time. Still wonderful, though now I'm more aware that much of his technology (and social mores) are from, what, the 1950's? His own time. Wouldn't a lens be wonderful?

Wouldn't the lensmen emotionally castrate all other human males? I don't see how that could be avoided.

At some point, I read that Smith and Heinlein were friends, and Smith, planning one more novel, told Heinlein the plot. However he 'could never publish it'. I assume the siblings, ultimate in the human line, would end up in a group marriage. Does anyone know if Heinlein ever did write down or tell anyone about Smith's last proposed novel?

I have watched 2001 several times and still enjoy the back story. 2010 was so bad I have never watched it again and haven't even been tempete to watch the later versions (20??).

I can't help but think there's an opportunity for a retrospective commentary to be made with a voiceover: " Coming soon: the 1972 congressional budget for NASA. And you'll see why 2001 won't be like '2001'."

I saw the 2001 movie in 1983--went down that psychedelic flashing light tunnel scene and when I woke up it was December 31, 1999. I don't know how they did that but I need the kind of help Dan Davis got in Door Into Summer.

I finally got to see several episodes of this series this weekend and I was
very disappointed. The only high point was the brief clip of RAH talking
to Cronkite.

POS(F) was an immense disappointment, but then, the 'history' and 'science' and 'sf' channels have all bombed out big time when it comes to delivering what they originally promised. 90% or more of their programming is glorified by calling it drivel.

Let's start with the feyly renamed SyFy, which, from what I see from a distance, appears to a be a spindle for an endless number of ghost-hunter shows.

Everything else has fallen for endless iterations of these formulaic 'history' shows which are comprised of a slightly silly take on a person or topic and filled out with equal parts cheezeball 'reenactment' and bottom-scraping talking-head time. In the end, we've seen 22 minutes or so of moving images and about three paragraphs of content. And it's EVERYWHERE.

I just would have expected more from Ridley Scott. Guess nott.

I just saw the show after it was posted online . I think it was about as sensitive a portrayal as one could expect on television, with some less well-known events and photographs portrayed, and a decent budget. Several of the nonfiction excursions were a bit too lengthy and tangential, being rather opportunistic. Nice to see Bill and Robert doing their thing.

This 'series' [it only lasted for a half-dozen or so weeks when first aired] has gone into sci channel's 9 am - 3 pm block of 'old series' rotations. Given that Ridley Scott was involved, all of the shows relied heavily on film clips from movies made of the subject author's works. So, while I did appreciate the chance to see Bill and Robert expounding on RAH, the meat of the the Ridley Scott's concept failed because I never found any of the movies made from any of the Prophets of Science Fiction works to be satisfactory renditions and hate to be reminded of that fact anytime I stumble into one of the PoSF repeats. Sigh.

Also on Netflix instant watch. POSF runs about 45 mins, which is about two miles on the treadmill if I'm watching it on a tablet and briskly walking. (a 30 min Twilight Zone is actually about 22 mins, or a mile or so).

They also have Amazing Stories, which I will check out and see if it is as good as I remember it being.