cience fiction and pop music go together like Lennon and McCartney, like Martians and invasions. Both are 20th-century inventions, upwellings of non-academic creative impulses meant to appeal to a wide range of consumers in a flourishing marketplace of trends and ideas. The practitioners of both forms are often self-taught, and sometimes geniuses. Both modes of expression paradoxically advocate ceaseless change while at the same time endlessly reworking older tropes and styles. And both pop music and SF go through boom-and-bust cycles, golden and silver ages alternating with leaden ones. It's no surprise to find plenty of SF writers who love popular music, and scads of popular musicians who embrace SF.
Documenting this connection has never occupied many scholars. In John Clute's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, you'll find a pretty good section on this linkage, under "Music." But for an even more complete catalog of musical works influenced by SF, why not turn to Rich Kulawiec's SF References in Music list? (The corresponding catalog of musical references in SF awaits its creator.) This is the most bare-bones site you can imagine: simply a long scrollable file of alphabetized band and performer names. Under each entry are listed relevant works of SF-tinged music, along with insightful and often witty commentary by Kulawiec. Of course you'll encounter such well-known items as Jefferson Starship's Blows Against the Empire. But did you ever run across the Swedish band Adolphson & Falk, with their hit "Control is Flashing Blue"? Or what about National Health, whose "Tenemos Roads" is about "a war on Mercury"?
Be warned, however: This site could easily bankrupt you, as you scramble to add hundreds of intriguing CDs to your collection!
— Paul Di Filippo
Site of the Week—December 16, 2002
celebration of B movies on the Web, Badmovies.org is an almost overwhelming source of information on flicks with a high cheese factor. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of the detailed film summaries on this site cover SF and horror pictures, giving genre fans a long list of delights to
explore, from The Abominable Dr. Phibes to Zarkorr! The Invader.
The bulk of Badmovies.org's content is composed of what it calls movie reviews, but the term review is something of a misnomer. The site's creators do not content themselves with offering their bluntly honest opinions of cinematic greats like Fiend Without a Face or Humanoids from the Deep. In addition to detailed write-ups on the characters and plot of a film, they provide screencaps, sound clips, a minute-by-minute account of things to watch for and sometimes theme songs, too. For most films, there is even a tongue-in-cheek list of things the reviewer learned from watching the movie. (A sample lesson derived from The Angry Red Planet: "If it looks like a man-eating plant, then it probably is a man-eating plant.")
Badmovies.org also has interviews with a number of B-movie directors and actors, a lively message board, a beautifully indexed links area and even a T-shirt for site fans. Its news section is up to date and provides inside dirt on upcoming B-flick releases, studio gossip and more. Truly a labor of love, the site will absolutely delight any B-movie fan who isn't already a devoted visitor.
— A.M. Dellamonica
Site of the Week—December 9, 2002
osted by artist Slawek Wojtowicz, The Ultimate Guide to SF Art on the Web is just what it claims to be—a listing of Web pages and artwork for over 1,100 SF artists, from John Abrahamson to Yasuhiko Yoshikazu.
In addition to offering an easy one-stop gateway to the home pages of individual artists working in SF, fantasy and horror, this index includes studios, galleries, collections and reference sites. One such site is Dreams of Space, which discusses SF art for children's books. Another non-traditional site—one which should definitely not be missed—is Urbicande, a French graphic arts project about obscure cities. The range and style of the various art up for view on these pages varies considerably, offering something for every aesthetic palate.
The featured pages in the guide do not all focus on SF paintings, though. Alaska Dreamer Studios is a jewelry site, while The Beautiful Decay features illustrated poetry. The Cyberplayers offer a unique hybrid of picture book and fantasy-themed theater on the Web. There are also sites on dinosaur model-building, fantasy knives, animation and the storyboards of some major
SF films.
There is nothing to The Ultimate Guide to SF Art on the Web beyond its list of links—and naturally a small proportion of those are out of date—but the treasures compiled at this site are considerable, providing enough beauty in various media to satisfy any SF art lover caught between
the most recent convention and the next.
— A.M. Dellamonica
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