Five Faves: SF/F/M Movies or Shows I Love Because of My Grandma
A little over a year ago, we lost my grandmother, Merle Crawford. She was a quirky and jovial lady. The kind of person who could meet anyone at a grocery store and turn a chance encounter into a meeting between old friends. You can read a bit more about her life in the obituary I wrote for her in the Mountain Democrat, the local newspaper for Placerville, California. One thing that I often mention about my grandmother is the impact she had on me as a geek. While I certainly watched a lot of genre programming as a kid,1 there are two things that led to my passion for SF/F (and related genres): My mother giving me VHS tapes of Star Wars. The ones with Leonard Maltin’s interviews with George Lucas at the front. My grandmother’s insistence that I watch certain programs. So to celebrate the massive influence my grandmother had on my life in a very specific way, here’s a list of 5 SF/F/M (for mystery) movies and TV shows I love because of my grandma: Let’s be real. A lot of programming for kids is genre TV by default. G.I. Joe and TMNT are both SF/F. Dinosaurs is fantasy. Winnie the Pooh is fantasy. Most Disney films are fantasy. DuckTales is SF/F. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters and The Secret World of Alex Mac and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers are SF/F. A lot of programming for kids also falls under the mystery umbrella. I just don’t think I ever thought about genre when I was a kid. Looking back? It almost seems inevitable that kids born in the 80s and 90s would turn out to be unintentional SF/F nerds in the 2010s. ↩