You know who really had a case, but apparently didn't pursue it (not too hard anyway)? Richard Matheson wrote a Twilight Zone (he wrote many, actually) called "Little Girl Lost" that is the exact plot of "Poltergeist" (suburban daughter disappears into other dimension; frazzled parents wander around in their pajamas hearing her cries for help) just without all the ghosts. It's a physicist who helps them figure out what's going on, but the rescue of the little girl is almost identical, if lower budget. Years later, when Spielberg was a producer on "Real Steel," the boxing robots movie, he actually called Matheson to see if he thought it was too close to his short story and Twilight Zone episode "Steel," about a boxing robot. Matheson said "Yep" and that time he got paid.
If you want the whole story about the dead gopher, hunt down either the 35th or 50th year retrospective “The Essential Ellison,” and go to the back for the essay “Driving In The Spikes.” That essay goes into detail on why the situation happened in the first place, all the steps of escalation against the comptroller of the publishing company (which included, among other things, packages of bricks, a Lithuanian hitman, and Donny Osmond Fan Club stationery), and where he got the gopher. I even have a copy of the imprint of “From the Land of Fear” that set it all off, including the cigarette ad that directly violated the contract stipulation that cigarette ads not appear in his books. If the ad insert were for the Science Fiction Book Club, which was another standard ad through the 1970s and early 1980s, none of this would have happened in the first place.
Glad to be of service. (Harlan was a friend, and I actually managed to top one of his big tales: he had his tale about how he got fired from Disney after four hours for joking about an animated Disney porno film, and I responded by telling him the absolutely true story of how I got an FBI record for allegedly selling government secrets to the Daleks.)
The Pluto TV app is free! There's a lot of weird old TV on there. like a channel that just shows Johnny Carson episodes of The Tonight Show. I think TZ is the best weird anthology show, but the Outer Limits is still fun.
Yes I have it! Find myself reminiscing watching shows like Laverne and Shirley and happy days. I can still remember nick at nite like it was yesterday! I was pretty hooked on watching rescue 911 for awhile watching it with my kids. Cool they can at least see some old tv shows.
Between these kinds of old reruns and the various cheap paperbacks at the drugstores of my (our: we’re about the same age) youth, it seemed to me that anthologies used to be way more commonplace than they are now. Am I just unaware because I’ve aged out, or did something change that made them less popular?
The American paperback came into its own in WW2, when they were made to be the size of a GI's pocket. It turned out to be a very cheap form of portable (and disposable) entertainment. Anthology fiction, namely short story magazines that then became digest-sized rather than full magazine size, did really well. Think about what kind of entertainment you could carry around easily before the Walkman.
Well, over the years, portable entertainment has increased to the point that we can watch live sporting events from anywhere. In San Francisco, when I rode the bus to and from work every day, I read one or two books a week just on my commute. In the last of my commuting days of 2016, I was listening to podcasts. My overall reading has dropped noticeably.
These cheap anthology digests have just given way to other forms of entertainment. Those mags, though, were really profitable then. They existed to sell ads. Relative to today, there was a shortage of short stories. Authors like Philip K Dick had an agent just for his short stories before he ever wrote a novel--it was profitable enough that an agent would get involved. PKD was hesitant to write Time Out of Joint because it would be a pay cut to be paid for one novel rather than the amount of short stories he could write in the same amount of time.
Basically, the best writers of the time were contributing to those anthologies. Now, it's only beginners, really, and a few weirdos (in the literary world, TC Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates continue to crank them out and win awards every year).
Go look at an old anthology that you remember, and I bet you'll see it's all bangers. I'm thinking of the Mirrorshades cyberpunk anthology, and the book High Risk, which was an early LGBTQ collection. And books like Ellison's Dangerous Visions. Holy crap. It's nearly impossible to get this kind of talent together today.
This all makes tons of sense. It’s got an interesting rhyme with the relationship between musical artifact lengths (singles, LPs, CDs, then back to singles) and the dominant media consumption habits and tech of each era.
You know who really had a case, but apparently didn't pursue it (not too hard anyway)? Richard Matheson wrote a Twilight Zone (he wrote many, actually) called "Little Girl Lost" that is the exact plot of "Poltergeist" (suburban daughter disappears into other dimension; frazzled parents wander around in their pajamas hearing her cries for help) just without all the ghosts. It's a physicist who helps them figure out what's going on, but the rescue of the little girl is almost identical, if lower budget. Years later, when Spielberg was a producer on "Real Steel," the boxing robots movie, he actually called Matheson to see if he thought it was too close to his short story and Twilight Zone episode "Steel," about a boxing robot. Matheson said "Yep" and that time he got paid.
I loved both the movie and the episode of Real Steel.
If you want the whole story about the dead gopher, hunt down either the 35th or 50th year retrospective “The Essential Ellison,” and go to the back for the essay “Driving In The Spikes.” That essay goes into detail on why the situation happened in the first place, all the steps of escalation against the comptroller of the publishing company (which included, among other things, packages of bricks, a Lithuanian hitman, and Donny Osmond Fan Club stationery), and where he got the gopher. I even have a copy of the imprint of “From the Land of Fear” that set it all off, including the cigarette ad that directly violated the contract stipulation that cigarette ads not appear in his books. If the ad insert were for the Science Fiction Book Club, which was another standard ad through the 1970s and early 1980s, none of this would have happened in the first place.
Oh wow! Thank you!
Glad to be of service. (Harlan was a friend, and I actually managed to top one of his big tales: he had his tale about how he got fired from Disney after four hours for joking about an animated Disney porno film, and I responded by telling him the absolutely true story of how I got an FBI record for allegedly selling government secrets to the Daleks.)
Terminator 2 will always be one of my favorite movies of all time. I’ve seen lots of twilight zone episodes never outer limits now I’m curious
The Pluto TV app is free! There's a lot of weird old TV on there. like a channel that just shows Johnny Carson episodes of The Tonight Show. I think TZ is the best weird anthology show, but the Outer Limits is still fun.
Yes I have it! Find myself reminiscing watching shows like Laverne and Shirley and happy days. I can still remember nick at nite like it was yesterday! I was pretty hooked on watching rescue 911 for awhile watching it with my kids. Cool they can at least see some old tv shows.
Between these kinds of old reruns and the various cheap paperbacks at the drugstores of my (our: we’re about the same age) youth, it seemed to me that anthologies used to be way more commonplace than they are now. Am I just unaware because I’ve aged out, or did something change that made them less popular?
The American paperback came into its own in WW2, when they were made to be the size of a GI's pocket. It turned out to be a very cheap form of portable (and disposable) entertainment. Anthology fiction, namely short story magazines that then became digest-sized rather than full magazine size, did really well. Think about what kind of entertainment you could carry around easily before the Walkman.
Well, over the years, portable entertainment has increased to the point that we can watch live sporting events from anywhere. In San Francisco, when I rode the bus to and from work every day, I read one or two books a week just on my commute. In the last of my commuting days of 2016, I was listening to podcasts. My overall reading has dropped noticeably.
These cheap anthology digests have just given way to other forms of entertainment. Those mags, though, were really profitable then. They existed to sell ads. Relative to today, there was a shortage of short stories. Authors like Philip K Dick had an agent just for his short stories before he ever wrote a novel--it was profitable enough that an agent would get involved. PKD was hesitant to write Time Out of Joint because it would be a pay cut to be paid for one novel rather than the amount of short stories he could write in the same amount of time.
Basically, the best writers of the time were contributing to those anthologies. Now, it's only beginners, really, and a few weirdos (in the literary world, TC Boyle and Joyce Carol Oates continue to crank them out and win awards every year).
Go look at an old anthology that you remember, and I bet you'll see it's all bangers. I'm thinking of the Mirrorshades cyberpunk anthology, and the book High Risk, which was an early LGBTQ collection. And books like Ellison's Dangerous Visions. Holy crap. It's nearly impossible to get this kind of talent together today.
Dangerous Visions was so rad!
This all makes tons of sense. It’s got an interesting rhyme with the relationship between musical artifact lengths (singles, LPs, CDs, then back to singles) and the dominant media consumption habits and tech of each era.
The short fiction market has definitely shrunk since then. I’m literally lying in bed right now, but tomorrow I will write out some theories