The Confabulator Cafe

Tag: comic books

  • The Genre Protocol

     

    While I'm not as fluent as the average protocol droid, I am constantly stating my positions on channels that more people seem to be tuning in on.
    While I’m not as fluent as the average protocol droid, I am constantly stating my positions on channels that more people seem to be tuning in on.

    The witness will take the stand. Do you swear to tell the truth the whole truth, so help you God?

    I will.

    Please say “I do.”

    I do.

    Be seated. Mr. Arnett you’re testifying today about your preferred genre. Do you understand your rights as they have been explained to you?

    Thank you, your honor. I do.

    The prosecutor approaches the witness box. He’s older than me, his hair grayer, and he’s clean-shaven. Respectable-looking. Good suit.

    Mr. Arnett – I understand you consider yourself a — Science Fiction writer. Is that true?

    Yes.

    And why is that?

    The prosecutor is prancing back and forth in front of me like he’s on TV or something. I can see him puffing his chest up and out for the benefit of the jury. He seems to be making a lot of eye contact with the forewoman. She’s definitely hot, not my type but she’s good-looking.

    I guess it’s probably because I grew up watching TV like The Six Million Dollar Man, Time Tunnel, and Star Trek. Going to movies like Star Wars and special matinees of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. I read a lot of SF, too. Heinlein, Asimov, and the like. Lots of Twilight Zone reruns, too. (more…)

  • Out of the Box

    I’ve never been one to go with what’s necessarily popular or even mainstream. I like my entertainments to challenge me a little bit, to be outside my comfort zone.

    Monsters and mutants! How can you go wrong with that? Art by John Byrne. Copyright owned by Marvel.

    That’s weird, I think. At least it’s weird to the thinking of the rest of the world.

    Well, that and the fact that I want to be a full-time writer sooner or later.

    (more…)

  • Time Again

    “Each time is true, but the truths are not the same.” ~ Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

    As I type this, it’s my present and I’m writing to you in the future about my past. You will read this in your own ‘present’, which will still be my past, so I am traveling in time. Or at least my words are.

    I’ve often thought my favorite book was supposed to be  a classic SF tome like Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land or Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars. I’ve read and loved them both multiple times (and discovered connections between the two), but Lightman’s book affected me more than they did. I’ve read Einstein’s Dreams, essentially a meditation on Time, by Alan Lightman a dozen times since it was recommended to me (and others) by the writer Mark Waid at a comic book convention in Kansas City sometime in the 90s.

    (more…)