Tag: 1980s

A Glorious Mess

I like a clean, focused narrative as much as the next person, but there’s an undeniable entertainment value in the messy and sprawling kind too. Science fiction has a long history of welcoming the second kind of book, and David’s Brin’s Earth, an ecology epic from 1990, is […]

RIP, Ken Russell

Filmmaker Ken Russell has died at the age of 84. The extremely prolific Russell’s films include:  Tommy; The Harry Palmer film, Billion Dollar Brain; Women in Love; The Music Lovers;  The Devils; Altered States; Crimes of Passion; and Lair of the White Worm.  The Guardian has an obituary […]

Anne McCaffrey

R.I.P, Anne McCaffrey (lots of great tributes online today: at Whatever, Io9, and Tor among them). Update: everyone seems to be using those fantastic Michael Whelan covers, but McCaffrey had her share of not-so-wonderful covers.

RIP, John Neville

Actor John Neville has died. Gutter readers might be most familiar with his work in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of  Baron Munchausen and in The X-Files.  According to the Guardian’s obituary, he was seen as a successor to John Gielgud and performed Alfie on the British stage before […]