Film Challenge: 10 Underrated SF/F Films (1999-2019)
I have once more (and a very long time ago) been challenged by Ian Sales to join him in our un-named war to come up with the best arbitrary list of films within an equally arbitrarily selected category. You can find previous iterations of this absurdity here, here, here, here, and here. We have, alas, not done this in a long while, which we can both blame on being busy with many other things. But in the interest of rekindling silliness, I have been loosely challenged by Ian to come up with a list of 10 underrated SF/F films from the last 20 years, which is a direct response to this ScreenRant list. Since this list is in response to a link with a remarkably open prompt, I’ve opted to stick to the 10 item list format. Future challenges will go back to our favorite number: 5.
Picture Sunday: Poppies All the Way Down
Enjoy this delightful picture of the California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica).
On Space Opera: The Heart of Genre, Forgotten by Scholars
A few years ago, I taught an upper division literature course on American space opera. There were a couple reasons I chose that angle over many other possible science fiction topics I could have taught: It gave me an excuse to teach Ann Leckie, Tobias S. Buckell, and Star Wars. The course was marked as “American literature,” so I had to stick with U.S.-American writers. I snuck some other stuff in, though. It was a subject that I particularly loved (but, as I discovered, which scholars had largely ignored up to that point). It’s that last piece I will talk about here.
Quickly Ending the Evening with a Picture of a View
The new semester at Bemidji State University started just two weeks ago, and it opened with a brand new view of the lake. Yup. I got a new office! It’s a lot larger than the last one, and I get to look at this every single day:
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. ↩
Thoughts on Wikis, Responsibility, and Cultural Shifts
I’m currently re-reading Robert E. Cumming’s introductory chapter from Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom, entitled “What Was a Wiki, and Why Do I Care? A Short and Usable History of Wikis.” This is one of the readings for my class on digital rhetoric, and it serves as a handy introduction to the invention of wikis, the reactions to them in the “ancient times,” and some of the key concerns about their impact on knowledge production. Basically, it’s some nerd shhhhh. That said, it has got me thinking a lot about the role of wikis in our culture and, more importantly, just how much has changed since I was a kid. While there are still people running about saying you should never use wikis, for the most part, even academics have softened on them. A lot of you probably remember when that wasn’t the case. Hell, I remember when that wasn’t the case for me as a teacher. Mind you, I was never the type to outright fail a student for using Wikipedia, but I did strip away points.