Reading Room 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY "Wheels of Death" Conclusion

When Last We Left Our Protaganist in 2001...

...Space Station Liberty I, orbiting Mars, is facing destruction by a meteor swarm!

Commander Herb Marik, perhaps a distant descendant of the barbarian of the same name from pre-history, acts to save his crew...

For the first time, we see what happens when a human doesn't transform into a "New Seed"!

And, that he posesses many of the same characteristics and traits of his apparent ancestor, who also encountered a Monolith!

Note: We already ran "Norton of New York 2240 A.D." and its' sequel "Inter-Galactica" HERE and HERE, so next Friday we re-present the only never-reprinted 2001: a Space Odyssey tale that explores what happens when a human goes to the "next level"...

...the New Seed!

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Simon & Kirby Library

Science Fiction

Friday Fun 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY "Wheels of Death!" Part 1

We Have Already Seen...

...somewhen in unrecorded pre-history, barbarian king Marak encounters a Monolith which compells him to find a woman named "Jalessa"!

To be concluded...TOMORROW!

We finally meet the Marak of the future, but whether he's related or not to the barbarian is, as yet, unknown,though he certainly does resemble the warrior king!

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Simon & Kirby Library

Science Fiction

THE ORVILLE Just Provided the Final Episode for An EARLIER TV Series!

Tonight's The Orville "If the Stars Should Appear"...

...provided a series finale for the 1973 show The Starlost!

Let's look at the similarities...

A domed generation ship!

People in the dome don't realize they're on a ship since they've been isolated and sealed in the dome for generations!

They use comparatively-primitive tech, compared to the vessel's tech.

Rulers use religion to control the populace.

Ship had an accident about a hundred years after leaving home.

Ship on collision course with a star.

Sound's like Harlan Ellison's disowned tv series (described in detail by Ellison himself in "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto!", available in the book listed below!).

Now some of you might claim the ep is actually based on Star Trek's "The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" or Space:1999's "Mission of the Darians", and there are elements of both, but most of the "appropriating" is clearly from The Starlost, down to the dome itself!

Agree?

Disagree?

Let me know!

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The Starlost #1

Phoenix Without Ashes

by Harlan Ellison and Edward Bryant

(novelization of the unfilmed, award-winning, pilot script, plus Ellison's behind-the-scenes autopsy of the series' corpse, entitled "Somehow, I Don't Think We're in Kansas Anymore, Toto!)

Reading Room MODNIKS "Noel Talent: the Most Unkindest Cut"

By the early 1970s, Jack Davis was an established, successful, and busy, commercial artist...

...so when was this weird filler piece, published in 1970, created?

Written by Gary Poole and illustrated by Davis, this one-off tale appeared in the second (and final) issue of Gold Key's Modniks in 1970.

But here's the weird part...

The previous issue of this title appeared three years earlier...in 1967!

That's a loooonnng time between issues!

Plus, Davis had never done any work for Gold Key, and it had been years since Jack had done any work for Dell (which Gold Key split off from)!

And, Poole didn't start working in comics until the mid-1960s, after GK had split from Dell, so this wasn't inventory from that period!

Did Davis know Poole (who had been a radio/tv writer for years before coming to comics) and illustrated this as a favor for a friend entering the field?

We'll never know...

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Jack Davis

Drawing American Pop Culture: a Career Retrospective

Reading Room TIME WARP "Survivors"

Even in the future, there's one inviolable rule about volunteering...

...never, ever, do it!

I love switch-endings.

Writer Mike W Barr and illustrator Tom Sutton do a bang-up job worthy of the classic EC comics Weird Science and Weird Fantasy!

The late Tom Sutton was both extremely versatile and extremely under-rated!

He did everything from humor (Not Brand Echh!) to sci-fi (Star Trek, Planet of the Apes) to romance (Haunted Love), to horror (Werewolf by Night) and did them well.

There's a wonderful interview with him HERE that gives real insight into him and why he, sadly, never became a superstar.

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Mystery in Space

Best of DC Science Fiction