The Cassutt Files
The Sound of Silence

Imagine there's no Heroes
It's easy if you try
No Battlestar to steer by
Above us only sky

Well, this is what happens when you give a writer too much free time. He starts penning pathetic parody lyrics to classic songs. But this, alas, is where I find myself as the Writers Guild strike reaches its third week. Between commitments to picketing, teaching and obsessing about the future, I compose silly ditties.

It's a reaction to looming silence. And silence—especially silence in the form of no new television—has always been a personal phobia. I live where airplanes start taking off at 7 a.m. If I am home alone, the television is on. I won't be watching, and I don't require this background noise to be loud, mind you. But I need it to be present. ...

I have no idea where this arose, though I suspect it was a childhood trauma. My parents traveled frequently in the less-populated regions of our great land, and I remember being freaked out at my inability to find a book, a newspaper, a favorite TV channel—or, for that matter, a TV—when stuck in a remote village some Thanksgiving night.

(Is there a name for this phobia? I anticipate a corrective e-mail from some perceptive reader.)

The dispute between the Writers Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers has already resulted in the shutdown of producing on Bionic Woman and Heroes. Soon, all too soon, viewers and phobic writers will be faced with either "reality" programming or blank screens.

The sound of silence.

Of course, even if first-run sci-fi series start vanishing like dying soap bubbles, I can still soothe my unease with reruns of Lost in Space or Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea on American Life Network. There are British imports, too—Doctor Who and Torchwood.

But there are so many hours in the day to fill. If there's no sci-fi on television, where do I find it?

Where there's a Web, there's a way

Since the main area of contention between the WGA and the AMPTP is the future of Internet-based programming and digital delivery, and since I've been awaiting the arrival of this new form of sci-fi for about 15 years, let's look at what's available on the interwebs.

A quick Google search with the words "YouTube" and "sci-fi" returns 3 million hits ... obviously more than even a striking writer has time to view. Some are promotional material. The SCI FI Channel's marketing team has done its work well: Its viral promotional video "Human Suit" shows up first, followed by fan-made Star Trek. Then you get Sci-Fi Ninja Theater, which is actually some convention and music footage.

There are links to journalistic pieces. Refining the search by adding the word "original" to the search gets you promotional video blogs. I see a link to Venus Rises, an original vidcast of four episodes starting this month.

OK, to actual video. Here I find many, many musical pieces.

I need to be a better searcher, or I need more time if I'm going to locate that new programming (chances are I'll need to speak a language other than English, too).

Of course, for years there have been sci-fi series designed for the web and offered by names and entities we would all recognize. My colleague Rockne O'Bannon (Farscape, Alien Nation) worked on one at least a decade ago—and, of course, is now part of SCIFI.com's web version.

First to loom into view is Sanctuary (www.sanctuaryforall.com), a Web-based series about the potential horrors of stem cells, gene therapy, transplants, cloning ... leading, in some combination, to the creation of monsters that are unleashed on our world. Sanctuary was created by Damian Kindler (Stargates SG-1 and Atlantis) and is produced by N. John Smith (Outer Limits), Marc Aubanel (Marvel Nemesis and other games) and Amanda Tapping (from the cast of Stargate SG-1). Tapping stars as Dr. Helen Magnus, who gathers a small team to search out and deal with these creatures.

This is an ambitious project, produced in high-definition video and offering eight webisodes. (A subscription is required.) It is reportedly the highest-budgeted web series produced so far—and from the clips, it shows. So I'm bookmarking this one.

Then there is Afterworld: A Second Life. This series went online earlier in 2007, from Electric Farm Entertainment and producer Stan Rogow, who is a very experienced television producer (Nowhere Ma, Lizzie McGuire and the fondly remembered Shannon's Deal), and writer Brent V. Friedman (Enterprise, Twilight Zone). This web serial—130 episodes, each running about 3-4 minutes—tells the tale of Russell Shoemaker, a New Yorker who survives an unexplained disaster that renders technology useless while also making 99 percent of the population vanish. The stories deal with Shoemaker's journey from New York toward Seattle.

This is a worthwhile sci-fi premise, a much happier version of Cormac McCarthy's recent Pulitzer winner The Road—not that telling a happier story is much of a challenge.

Of the two web series, Afterworld: A Second Life strikes me as better designed for the digital medium. It has more linked content, more episodes. In fact, instead of using live-action, TV-style segments, as Sanctuary does, its visuals are CGI.

I do wonder how Afterworld supports for itself. Perhaps there are pay-per-view options I haven't discovered. The only ads are Google banners. (So far Web-based sci-fi seems to support the belief that everyone can make a program and no one can make any money. ...)

Should my series go dark and silent, I'll be checking these sites. And no doubt many others. This is, as we say, far from a comprehensive survey.

And I will discover whether sitting at a computer, even with music playing, is enough to overcome my fears of silence

Big words beyond the small screen

Of course, there is an alternative source for sci-fi during these quiet times. There is traditional storytelling, found at Baen's Universe (www.baensuniverse.com), an online magazine edited by Eric Flint and Mike Resnick and now in its second year. Baen's offers a fine mix of traditional sci-fi stories and related nonfiction.

There are several other sites—e-zines—offering stories, too, such as Clarkesworld (www.clarkesworld.com) and Heliotrope (www.heliotropemag.com). I know I'm leaving out half a dozen others.

So here's an option: I can sit in my backyard as the commuter planes from Bob Hope Airport zoom overhead, letting the roar of their engines provide the background noise.

And I could pick up one of the genre magazines, like Asimov's (represented online at www.asimovs.com), The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (www.sfsite.com/fsf) or Analog (www.analogsf.com).

I could even buy a book, like Jonathan Strahan's new anthology, Eclipse One (Night Shade).

Crazy talk. Maybe we should settle this dispute instead.