Notes on My General Movie-Watching in 2017

One of my favorite things about using Letterboxd is that it creates a nifty summary of your movie-watching for the year. So before I get into ranking the 2017 movies I've seen so far, here are some notes about the movies I watched from all the other years. After all, of the 389 movies I watched last year, 89% of them were from 2016 or earlier.

The first movie I watched was Buster Keaton's 1937 short, Jail Bait. The last one of the year was Office Christmas Party, sneaking in late on our holiday schedule.

My most-watched movie of the year was The Last Jedi, which I saw four times. Will probably watch it once more before we talk about it on Nerd Lunch.

The actors I watched the most were Vincent Price and Robert Mitchum, tied at 12 films each. Next was Boris Karloff (8 films), followed by a four-way tie between George Sanders, Sigourney Weaver, Milla Jovovich, and John Wayne (7 films each).

My most-watched director was Alfred Hitchcock with 7 films. After him there's a three-way tie between Paul WS Anderson, John Ford, and Ridley Scott (5 films each).

Alright, enough of that. On Monday: The worst movies of 2017!

45 Movies I Missed from 2017

Wow. This is my longest "missed" list since I started doing these posts in 2013. That's partly because this was a great movie year, but it's mostly because the way that I've watched movies has changed. I've gotten pickier about what I care to see in the theater, so I've only seen 39 so far of the 2017 films that interest me. Another factor is that some of these actually haven't been released yet, except maybe in festivals. That's always the case with some every year, but this year seems especially heavy in that category.

I tend to be about six months behind when catching up to these in home viewing, so I might try something new this year and revise my rankings around July when I've actually seen everything. In the meantime, this list will explain why some movies didn't make it into my rankings. And as usual, I'm listing them more or less in the order that they were released.

The Last Face



This one's mostly about the cast. Theron and Bardem play relief workers trying to help an area during a revolution and I'm curious to see director Sean Penn's view on that story.

Planetarium



This one's also about the lead actors, but they play sisters who claim to see dead people, so that sounds cool, too.

The Limehouse Golem



Bill Nighy in a Ripper-esque movie in which the murders may be the work of a golem. I really wanted to see this around Halloween, but couldn't get my act together.

City of Tiny Lights

Looks like a modern film noir with Riz Ahmed (Rogue One) as the detective. I'm not sure what Billie Piper's doing, but I'm betting that I'll love it, whatever it is.

The Big Sick

Kumail Nanjiani always makes me laugh and I've heard great things about this non-traditional romantic comedy written by him and his wife, Emily V Gordon. Plus: Holly Hunter!

10 Novels I Read in 2017

Happy New Year, everyone! Before I get into the last year in movies, I want to talk about some books I read this year. These aren't all from 2017; they're just ones that I read for the first time last year. And they're not the whole list of books I read, either.

According to my Goodreads log, I read 34 books last year. I'd set a goal for myself of 24, so I met that, even when you consider that six of those "books" were short stories. Thirteen were graphic novels or collections of comics (a lot of Tarzan, but also some '70s Batman and Marvel collections). Those totally count, but I'm not talking about them here. I also left off some re-reads (a couple of Burroughs' Tarzan novels) and a couple of books that would need more space to write about than I want to give here (those are Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Zorro: The Complete Pulp Adventures, Volume 1). If you're doing the math, that's a total of 23, but I'm going to talk about the 24th when I talk about one of the ten below, because they're thematically linked.

What's left are ten novels that I read in 2017, listed from least to most favorite.

10. On Stranger Tides by Tim Powers



You know I like pirates, right? I may have mentioned it. And Tim Powers' book was either an inspiration for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie or shared enough common elements with it that Disney paid for the title. Since I was disappointed by that movie, I thought I should read the book and get the original take on Blackbeard's search for the Fountain of Youth. Sadly, this was disappointing, too.

It's very well written in terms of craft. Powers knows how to create captivating characters and give them distinct voices. He's also great at period details and introducing a compelling mystery. Where the book lost me though was halfway through when the story's magical elements fully took over the nautical adventure. At that point, it becomes full-on fantasy and the villains might as well be wearing pointy hats with stars. It was also grating to realize that the one female character is actually nothing but a MacGuffin for the hero to chase after and try to protect. This is the only book on the list that I didn't finish.

9. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad



This was another disappointing book and a couple of things contributed to that. One was that its psychological terror had been hyped beyond its ability to deliver. But the other is that Apocalypse Now (which is a loose adaptation of it) had also raised my expectations about how disturbed I would be. The novel never got there for me.

Nor did it answer any of the questions I had about Kurtz or what went wrong with him. That's probably the point, but I was still looking for some insight that the book doesn't deliver. There's a lot of talking about how strange and wonderful Kurtz is, but I never experienced his profundity for myself or related to Marlow's intoxication with him. There are some great themes in the book, though (I love the warning about how thin and easily cast off the armor of civilization is), and some unforgettable scenes (particularly during the journey upriver and the arrival at Kurtz' camp).

8. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline



I'm not usually one to read a novel before seeing a movie adaptation. Generally, I prefer to see the film first and then enjoy the book afterwards. I tend to like both versions when I do it that way, instead of watching the movie and comparing it to the book.

But I was in the mood for some science fiction at some point last year and Ready Player One is so well spoken of by my friends that I chose it, even though Spielberg's adaptation is about to come out.

I very much liked the plot and the puzzle-solving and of course all the references to '80s pop culture. I didn't as much enjoy the trash-talking and posturing of the socially awkward main character and his friends. In fact, there was a point early on where I considered giving up. But I pushed through and was pleased that the arrogance lessened as the stakes increased, the characters' relationships deepened, and they all had to focus on other things.

If you want more detailed thoughts on the book, I highly recommend Nerd Lunch's discussion of it. I didn't participate in that, but they did an excellent job covering the novel's strengths and weaknesses.

7. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L Frank Baum



I've wanted to read this for years and finally pulled the trigger this holiday season. And I liked it quite a bit.

It's usually a drawback for me when a book's chapters are episodic like they are here, but it works in this. First of all, it's a children's story and easy to imagine Baum sitting in a nursery and telling these tales to a group of eager, young listeners. But also, the individual adventures work together to build towards the completed mythology of Santa as we know him today.

Baum's writing voice is pleasant and I enjoyed spending time in the world he created. It beats Rankin-Bass' version of Santa's origin story, Santa Claus in Coming to Town, in almost every way, though R-B did also adapt this novel and now I'm super curious to see that.

6. A Room with a View by EM Forster



The film version of this book is very solidly an '80s movie, but I always think of it as a '90s film, because it started two of my strongest '90s obsessions: period dramas (especially ones produced by Merchant Ivory) and Helena Bonham Carter.

I love the film version of A Room with a View so much that I have most of it memorized and when I finally read the book last Spring, I was surprised at just how faithful the movie is. It's so faithful that I experienced very powerfully the thing that most Read the Book Before Seeing the Movie people cite as their main reason for preferring that order: It was tough not to imagine the film actors in their roles as I read. Or read the dialogue with anything other than the inflections those actors used.

But there are differences between the two. Some things, the movie does better, like the ending. It's not drastically different, but it does make Lucy's climactic revelation more emotional and exciting. In the book's favor, though, I appreciate the additional insights it provides. For instance, I never picked up on why Lucy chose Schubert instead of Beethoven when playing for Cecil's family. Forster's still subtle about it, but he makes it clearer than the film does. And there's a whole subplot about George's mother that's left out of the film. All in all, it's a lovely book that made me want to revisit the movie as soon as I finished it.

5. The Monk by Matthew Lewis



After I spent Halloween 2016 talking about gothic literature, I've been slowly digging in and reading some. I'm a big fan of Castle of Otranto and have re-read it multiple times, but Mysteries of Udolpho was a slog and put me off the classics for a while. The Monk has renewed my interest. It's lurid and super spooky.

The trick I've learned with early gothic literature is to not grow impatient with the plot, but to immerse myself in the details of the moment. This is especially rewarded in The Monk (with the Bleeding Nun segment being an awesome sidebar to the main narrative, and arguably the best part of the whole novel). I'm also finding it working for me as I try The Mysteries of Udolpho again, though. I hated it on first reading, but am thoroughly enjoying it the second time around.

It was cool reading this alongside The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter by Ambrose Bierce, which I also read in 2017. Both stories go different directions from the same concept. They start with a virtuous monk, then put irresistible temptation in his way to see what happens. But while Lewis' character needs an outside influence to pull him towards sin, Bierce's falls all on his own.

Lewis has the more thrilling story, because it's so racy, but Bierce's (which does go to some ghastly places as well) is the more effective warning. Not just for religious people, but for anyone tempted to justify selfish, prideful activity in the name of trying to "help" someone.

4. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson



This got on my reading list when someone described it as Southern gothic and it does have creepy, gothic elements to it. What I enjoyed most though was the mystery of the Blackwood family and what exactly happened to make them such pariahs in their town.

It's not a difficult mystery to figure out, but getting to the solution is a hauntingly beautiful process as Shirley Jackson slowly reveals not just details about past events, but about the present mental states of the surviving family members. It's a lovely, unsettling book.

3. Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty



This is another one that I picked up because it sounded rather gothic. I was browsing at a book fair and liked the cover with the spooky house. The back cover blurb pulled me in further, talking about a young girl with a cryptic past who lives in the cellar of Biltmore House and is pulled into a mystery of disappearing children.

It's not really all that gothic, but it is a great mystery in a cool setting and with characters I got very fond of. There are supernatural elements, but the novel never crosses into true urban fantasy territory (a genre that's a tough sell for me). The supernatural bits are used sparingly and don't retread territory I've been over in other stories. Beatty is way more interested in the way that Serafina has been isolated her entire life and finally begins to connect with society. I liked that a lot and am looking forward to reading the sequel.

2. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame



My only association with this classic has been through Disney, first through Mr Toad's Wild Ride at Disney World as a kid, and later through their animated adaptation that's packaged with "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" in The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr Toad. I finally went back to the source and I'm glad I did. I loved it.

It's a beautifully pastoral book. The opening chapters read like a series of short stories about the same, recurring characters. Since I was mostly familiar with Disney's focus on the irritatingly hyper Mr Toad, I was surprised and pleased to find so much of the book concerned with Mole and Rat. They're pleasant characters who live in a pleasant place and Grahame's wonderful descriptions make me want to live there, too.

I love his prose and especially the observations he makes about human (or animal, I guess) nature. I was completely hooked as soon as I read Mole's thoughts about vacations: "...he somehow could only feel how jolly it was to be the only idle dog among all these busy citizens. After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working." Grahame gets me.

There are stories about hospitality and homesickness and curiosity and traveling and worship. They're all lovely. As they progress, Badger and Toad also enter the tales and the stories start to become more connected, so that there's a strong narrative pushing through by the end. That's the part that Disney latched onto, and it is entertaining, but it's not the best part to me. The earlier, quieter chapters are the ones that are going to stick with me for a long, long time.

1. Hope and Red by Jon Skovron



If you're looking for great book recommendations, I highly recommend following author Kelly Sedinger on Goodreads. His reviews have added several books to my reading list, including my favorite book I read in 2017. I hope to get to the others this year.

Jon Skovron is primarily known as a YA fantasy author, but with Hope and Red he breaks free from the restrictions of YA. That means that there’s sex and cursing, but unlike some other authors who’ve made the same transition, the adult elements in Hope and Red never feel gratuitous. The sex is hot, but emotionally real. And the language is the natural result of the story's being set in a seaside slum with its own particular slang. (I always get nervous when fantasy books include a glossary, because it’s always annoying to me to stop reading and go look up a word just to understand dialogue. But Skovron’s glossary is there for flavor, not homework. The slang in his world is largely based on ours and even when it’s unfamiliar, I’m still able to figure out meaning from context).

What Skovron absolutely brings over from YA is fast-paced adventure and compelling characters with strong, emotional cores. Hope and Red are the names of the leads and even though they don’t meet until deep into the book, their individual stories are equally fascinating. I never found myself wishing that Skovron would wrap one part up and move on to the other. By the time they met, I knew them both well and was eager to see how they would affect each other's lives.

What makes the whole thing especially palatable for me is that it’s set in a fantasy world of oceans and islands. This is the pirate fantasy that I wanted from On Stranger Tides. Hope begins her life living in a remote island village, but when something horrible happens to the rest of the community, she’s rescued and sent to live first with an even more remote group of warrior monks and then aboard a merchant ship. For his part, Red grows up in the aforementioned slums and spends some time as a pirate. You might expect them to meet from Red’s group attacking Hope’s, but Skovron has something else in mind. Which describes my whole experience with the novel. Skovron consistently twists and swerves around expectations and completely hooked me into wanting to know what’s going to happen next.

That's something that he does with the ending of the novel, too. He picks a great place to put a break in the Empire of Storms series, but it is a cliffhanger to be resolved in the next volume. I can't wait to read it. Not just because I have to find out what happens next, but because I really really want to spend more time with these people.

New Hellbent, Orville, and Mystery Movie Night podcasts

It's been a super busy week, podcast-wise:

Hellbent for Letterbox | Day of Anger (1967)



Pax and I talk about the 1967 spaghetti western starring our favorite, Lee Van Cleef! And in "Whatchoo Been Westernin'?" we briefly discuss the graphic novel Abbadon, the Pinkertons TV series, and the 2012 Wesley Snipes film, GallowWalkers.



Once you're done with that episode, stay tuned for a special Hitchin' Post where we recast Day of Anger with modern actors.



Planetary Union Network and Nerd Lunch's Orville Extra Helping

If you like The Orville, there are a couple of podcast episodes you should listen to.

Early this week, the latest Planetary Union Network came out in which Joe and I talked with The Orville's costume designer Joseph A Porro. Like everyone from the show whom we've talked to, Joseph was super nice. We talked about the special fabric used on the crew's uniforms, the inspiration for the departmental colors, and the challenges of designing clothing for an alternate version of 21st Century Earth.

Then yesterday, Nerd Lunch released an Extra Helping where Jeeg, CT, and I talk about the first season as a whole: why we started watching, why we kept at it, our favorite characters and episodes, and what we'd like to see in Season 2.



Mystery Movie Night | The Third Man (1949), The Muppet Movie (1979), and Ed Wood (1994)



And finally, Erik, Dave, David and I wrapped up the Mystery Movie Night year talking about sewers, Sweetums, sweaters, and the secret connection between them.

00:01:39 - Review of The Third Man

00:18:09 - Review of The Muppet Movie

00:50:56 - Review of Ed Wood

01:12:15 - Guessing the Connection



That's a lot to listen to, but you have a long weekend, so enjoy! And Happy New Year!

Guest Post | Clifford D Simak: The Beginnings of a Master

By GW Thomas

Clifford D Simak (1904-1988) had a writing career that ran for fifty-five years. He was one of the early SF writers who could adapt to changes brought about by John W Campbell at Astounding. The stories listed here are his early works before this transformation. Usually I lament the Campbell revolution (or at least oppose the snobbery that came of it), but in the case of Simak, I would agree that these early stories are not even close to what he would achieve later. These 1931-32 stories include four stories for Hugo Gernsback at Wonder and one for Harry Bates at the Clayton Astounding. After 1932, Cliff took a three year break, writing one tale for the short-lived semi-prozine Marvel Tales before taking another three year break. The new Simak emerges with this last tale that tackles religion head-on. When he returned in 1938, it was with "Rule 18" for John W Campbell. The old Simak was gone forever.

"The World of the Red Sun" (Wonder Stories, December 1931) was Simak's debut as one of Hugo Gernsback's growing stable of new writers. The story takes two time travelers, Harl Swanson and Bill Kressman, to Denver millions of years in the future. There they find the human race reduced to savages by a weird being calling himself Golan-Kirt. This entity from Out of the Cosmos can kill men with his mind. In an Edgar Rice Burroughs-style arena scene, the travelers take on Golan-Kirt armed only with their .45s and the knowledge that he kills with illusions. (The creature claims to be from space, but the travelers figure it is actually a mutated scientist from a scenario like that in Edmond Hamilton's "The Man Who Evolved" [Wonder Stories, April 1931]). The humans win the mental battle by ridiculing the monster; laughing at him (shades of Star Trek!). What might have been a happy Burroughsian ending turns sour though when the men try to return to their own time. Isaac Asimov noted the story in his anthology Before the Golden Age, because Simak wrote in a plain workman-like style, differing from many of the others in Gernsback's magazines, and because of the downer ending: one still mimicked in the final moments of films like The Planet of the Apes decades later.

"The Voice in the Void" (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Spring 1932) has Simak poking at religion for the first time, a theme he would tackle again and again in stories like "The Creator" (mentioned below) and in novels like Project Pope (1981). Two adventurers, Ashby and Smith, take on the Holy of Martian Holies when they steal the bones of Kell-Rabin. The Martians hunt the fugitives down and even place Smith's brain in a tube, a form of immortality. Ashby escapes with the tube as well as another - containing a Martian priest - and hides in the desert. There the three (one man and two tubes) discover an ancient pyramid from a religion that predated Kell-Rabin. Inside, Ashby finds an immense treasure and the means to exact his revenge: a vengeance that gives the story its title. Simak once again ends on a sour, ironic note, but does reveal the mystery that drives the entire story: What is in the coffin of Kell-Rabin?

Stories using amputated brains began as early as MH Hasta's "The Talking Brain" in Amazing Stories, August 1926, but really take off after Edmond Hamilton's "The Comet Doom" (Amazing Stories, January 1928), inspiring HP Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" (Weird Tales, August 1931), Hawk Carse's disembodied scientists in "The Affair of the Brains" (Astounding, March 1932) by Anthony Gilmore, Eando Binder's oft-reprinted "Enslaved Brains" (Wonder Stories, July-September 1934), and the classic novel Donovan's Brain (1942) by Curt Siodmak.

"Mutiny on Mercury" (Wonder Stories, March 1932) is the high-point of the early Simak. In this story, he describes a Martian rebellion from the point of view of an Earthman in a domed space station on Mercury. Besides writing a good action adventure, Simak describes the dangerous existence on the first planet along the strip between the hot and dark side: the only place living things can survive. When the Martians and their Moon Men stooges destroy the airlock on one of the domed stations, the author gets to tell what losing an atmosphere from a spaceport would be like. Simak does a great job of creating a Solar System of varied humanoids, like Leigh Brackett would do later in her Interplanetary mythos. Simak finishes the story with a space-flyer battle worthy of Edmond Hamilton. The only criticism I have of the story is its out-of-date (even for 1932) Imperialism. The Martians and other aliens are presented as inferior and conniving, but it is hard to identify with a race of men who would subjugate such people.

"Hellhounds of the Cosmos" (Astounding, June 1932) almost feels like a regression after "Mutiny on Mercury." Some of this may be the fact that Simak was writing for Harry Bates instead of Hugo Gernsback. The tale begins like so many others at the Clayton Astounding: a world under attack by alien invaders. Here Simak deviates from the usual story of a brave young scientist who saves the world (and a pretty girl) with an invention. His hero is a newspaperman, Henry Woods, who visits a scientist, Dr. Silas White, and discovers that the black terrors that have been attacking the world are creatures from the fourth dimension. Simak gives a rather convoluted explanation for how these creatures are actually less evolved than the beings in our three dimensional world. All goobley-gook aside, Dr White invents a machine that will translate humans into the fourth dimension to strike back at the invaders. Ninety-nine men go into the weird light, including our newspaper reporter, to find that in the other dimension they form a singular creature, named Mal Shaff. This weird brute has a knock-down fight with another monster named Ouglat, amidst a world of steel cliffs and red skies. Mal Shaff begins to lose because Ouglat is growing bigger. The invaders have been recalled from Earth and grow Ouglat to mammoth size. Dr. White saves Mal Shaff by sending in the Marines, allowing Mal Shaff to destroy his opponent. Once victorious, other fourth dimensional creatures invite Mal Shaff to stay and none of the men who went across ever come back. Simak, master of the downer ending, strikes again! How un-Astounding!

What I found most interesting about this story was comparing it to the horror fiction of Frank Belknap Long. His province of other-dimensional monsters can be seen in stories like "The Space Eaters" (Weird Tales, July 1928), "The Horror From the Hills" (Weird Tales, January-March1931), and especially "The Hounds of Tindalos" (Weird Tales, March 1929). Long's Cthulhu Mythos horror fiction centers on weird other-dimensions, attempting to create a Lovecraftian frisson of terror. Simak (who was probably familiar with Long's work) tries for something more SF and less horror, but it is certainly his closest to a horror tale in these early stories.

"Asteroid of Gold" (Wonder Stories, November 1932) has the Drake brothers mining a gold-rich asteroid when space pirates capture them. The leader of the pirates, the notorious Max Robinson, devises a cruel torture for the two. He places their ship on the twin of the asteroid, another rock revolving just out of reach, and leaves the two men only three air bottles. Max glories in the idea of the two close brothers fighting for that last canister of air. The Drakes settle down to die with dignity, but chance intervenes. A meteor hits the Twin, causing it to fly towards the asteroid. A desperate race begins, with the men leaping from rock to rock (seen in the illo) in an attempt to avoid being crushed. The plot almost feels like a Campbell puzzle story (like Asimov's "Marooned Off Vesta"), where the two men would have used the third tank to propel them through space to the Twin. This doesn't happen, but some Age of Wonder action and excitement does instead. If Simak had written this ten years later, it would have been a much different ending.

"The Creator" (Marvel Tales, March-April 1935) marks the final days of Simak's first apprenticeship. As F Lyall points out in The Creator and Other Stories (1993):

CDS was not always serene in his attitude to such questions [religious matters]. "The Creator" is very different. In its time it was notorious. CDS wrote it in 1933 or '34 after he had more or less decided that his dalliance with sf was over. The editor WL Crawford persuaded him to write one more... And, though it bears the stamp of its era, and though it is a product of a young writer, it stands as a stimulus to thought even today.

The plot of "The Creator" has two scientists, Scott Marston and Peter Sands, discover time- and space-travel through a combination of machinery, mediation, and dreams. One vision in particular is of a vast laboratory. When they finally transfer their physical bodies there, they meet the Creator, a being of glowing light. The Creator introduces them to three other time travelers from other worlds. He also shows them our universe, a mushy grey thing that the Creator made, then injected with life. When the men discover that the Creator is working on a method of destroying all matter and eradicate our universe completely, they join up with the other aliens and defy their master. Using a machine constructed by one of the other travelers (an alien that looks something like a stick bug), the time travelers flee with the universe in a bubble of purple force field. The Creator tries to destroy them, but is himself destroyed. The creatures from the universe have killed their god. When Marston and Sands return to Earth, something goes wrong and they end up lost in time.

Looking at the story, we can see that Simak has rewritten "The World of the Red Sun." He spends more time in explaining the time machine and its creation, but ultimately it is the same tale. Instead of Golan-Kirt, we have the Creator; instead of two men defeating him, we have five time travelers of different races. Again, there's the suggestion that the Creator is himself a lab experiment from some other, higher being, and finally, there's the unhappy ending with the humans lost in time. If Simak was leaving SF for good, perhaps he felt that repeating himself, enlarging on and improving his first effort, was not a bad way to finish off where he had begun.

The early parts of the story are quite Lovecraftian, similar in idea to HPL's "Beyond the Walls of Sleep," but like with "Hellhounds of the Cosmos," Simak doesn't use the device to produce creepy thrills. Instead, it's an SF means to tell his story. He would later in his career give a nod to Lovecraft in “The Call From Beyond” and in the episodic fantasy novel Where the Evil Dwells (1982), when the adventurers enter a temple inhabited by other dimensional monsters right out of Arkham. Perhaps in 1934, he had contemplated joining the Weirdies in Mythos-building and remembered that time fondly fifty years later.

All the stories mentioned above are worthy of reading, but when I look at them critically I see that most could be changed to ordinary adventure stories quite easily. "The Voice in the Void" could be a desert adventure with Arabs, "Mutiny on Mercury": an airplane adventure; "Asteroid of Gold": a pirate yarn. Despite these connections to other forms of pulp writing, Simak does play with some big SF ideas. His time travel story "The World of the Red Sun" throws off big ideas a little too quickly, never really developing some of them. Here was a young writer excited about all the possible stories to tell. But by 1935, Simak was dissatisfied with the field. As Lyall wrote, he "more or less decided that his dalliance with sf was over" and he was moving on. It took John W Campbell and Astounding Science Fiction to change Cliff's mind. With SF going in a new direction, Simak joined the ranks of Asimov, Heinlein, de Camp, and others in pushing SF forward. A necessary evolution, I suppose, but I have a fondness for these early stories. They spark with the possibilities of what is to come. Clifford D Simak was one of those early torchbearers and we can only thank him for all the great stories he wrote.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Guest Post | The Four Color Adventures of Frosty the Snowman

By GW Thomas

From just about the very beginning of comic books, publishers have realized that with the extra leisure and more generous spending habits of December, it’s a great time to sell more comics. Thus the Christmas Special. From Bugs Bunny to Superman, the Christmas comic became a seasonal surety on wire store racks.

1950 was the year Gene Autry tried for Christmas gold a second time. His first hit had been “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which had been Number 1 the year previous. His rendition of Jack Rollins and Steve Nelson’s song “Frosty the Snowman” proved almost as impressive (getting to Number 7), adding yet another entry to the pantheon of non-religious Christmas characters. The song would have to wait nineteen years to get a cartoon based on it, but in the meantime, the comic specials filled that void.

Dell had the popular anthology comic, Four Color, which alternated between familiar newspaper comic characters, Disney and Warner Brothers, to movie and TV adaptations. The year after Autry’s hit, readers saw the first Frosty the Snowman comic with Four Color #359 (November 1951). Written and drawn by Jon Stanley and Dan Gormley, it set the pattern for the next ten years. Gormley would draw seven of the eleven issues, each showing up in November or December.

Many of the stories are suggested by the original song. “Before I melt away” inspires several stories where Frosty needs to keep himself from melting, such as “The Heat Wave” (December 1961). “There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found” gives us several stories about the hat, whether stolen by evil snowmen or lost in a mix-up after being cleaned. Later, when the cartoons were done in the 1960s, they too latched onto these ideas.

The first full-length story, “The Evil Snowman,” features a villainous snowman with a black Russian beard. The story would get a second version (called “The Snowman Contest”) in the final issue where the evil snowman wears a checked vest instead. (After eleven years of stories, even Gormley had run dry.) This first issue also introduces some of Frosty’s sidekicks: a rabbit named Skeeter, Santa Claus (with his elves and reindeer), Jack Frost, the Straw Man, and a gang of kids who come to the rescue whenever Frosty needs them.

Most of the Frosty plots follow similar themes. There are a good number of stories in which Frosty loses his hat like, “Frosty the Snowman and the Old Top Hat” (November 1952) and “Magic Hat” (December 1958). He doesn’t turn into an immobile snowman, but he can’t walk around (or skip and dance, as he often points out) either, and it is up to kids or animals or mere chance to bring his hat back.

Other stories focus on Frosty as helper or hero, usually for a small child or animals, like the ducks and other forest creatures in “Saving Frozen Ducks” (November 1952), “Frosty the Snowman Makes the Forest Safe”(November 1953), and “Frosty the Snowman and Peter Polar Bear” (November 1954). In these tales, Frosty may go on a long journey, giving the story a grander scope than the neighborhood tales. Sometimes he is helping Santa Claus, like when the elves all come down with the flu or the toys are missing. Frosty encounters a number of witches in these stories, as they require a villain, like the one who has taken all the hobby horses in “Frosty the Snowman and the Crystal Castle” (November 1953). Wolves and foxes also show up as bad guys.

Frosty also acts as teacher sometimes to boys who have lost their way. “Bad Bobbie” (November 1953) has Bobbie tricking Frosty into shoveling the walk for him, but when Bobbie tries to get Frosty onto skis, the tables are turned. Frosty is an expert skier and causes a pile of snow to recover Bobby’s walkway. These bad boys usually see the error of their ways and become good with Frosty’s help.

And lastly, my favorite of the Frosty stories are mysteries, where Frosty acts as detective. The November 1954 issue had “Down on the Farm” where a “ghost” is playing practical jokes on the farm animals. Frosty, of course, uses his little white cells and figures out who is the culprit. “The Missing Page” (December 1960-February 1961) has Frosty help a girl find part of a missing book.

In 1964, Rankin-Bass' animated Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer would premiere. A perennial favorite, it featured a snowman named Sam, not Frosty (and modeled on the actor who played him, Burl Ives). In 1969, Rankin-Bass acquired the Frosty property and put out an animated cartoon of him that has also become a seasonal fixture, with Jackie Vernon as the loveable snowman. R-B did a crossover cartoon in 1979 called Rudolph the Reindeer and the Island of Misfit Toys. All of these animated shows remind me of material in the Dell comics, especially the idea of Frosty's becoming associated with Santa and the North Pole, though it is hard to say if they had any influence as many of the ideas can be found in the original song.

GW Thomas has appeared in over 400 different books, magazines and ezines including The Writer, Writer's Digest, Black October Magazine and Contact. His website is gwthomas.org. He is editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

“Your Reclamation, Then” | Patrick Stewart (1999)

Index of other entries in The Christmas Carol Project

In the TNT Christmas Carol, Scrooge went to bed not at all sure that he'd really seen Marley. The ghost's words had made Scrooge pause and think, but as far as he knew, he was going to be able to fall asleep and wake up the next morning completely the same.

He's snoring as this scene opens, but he's awakened by a distant chiming. "Quarter past," he notes, and grabs the newspaper he'd taken to bed with him. The chiming continues though and Scrooge gets confused. "Half past?" And on it goes through "quarter to it" and "the hour itself." By the end though, he's not trying to figure out why time has sped up; he's relieved. "Nothing's happened," he says confidently. He knew it was all in his head. Or rather, in his stomach.

But the "hour itself" chime was just the lead up to the actual tolling of the hour. When that sounds, a bright light shines in the room and a black-gloved hand pulls aside Scrooge's bed curtains. It's Joel Grey looking very bright and Christmasy in a white poofy shirt, silver vest, and gold cumberbund. He doesn't hold the holly branch, but - like a couple of other versions - wears a garland of holly around his neck to keep his hands free. He carries the cap under his arm and I almost want to ask him to put it on myself, because an extremely bright light is shining on him. So much so that it washes out the rest of the picture. This is intentional though and the film will correct it soon.

Scrooge has to shield his eyes with his hand just to look in the spirit's direction. As they get the introductions out of the way ("your past"), Grey plays his role impishly with a twinkle in his eye and a mischievous smile on his lips. He stands very still as he does it, letting his face do all the work. It's a lovely performance and I like his Ghost immediately.

Scrooge asks the Spirit to put on its cap and be covered. The conversation goes as Dickens wrote it, but when Scrooge respectfully says that he has "no intention of offending you, sir," the Spirit's glow dims to a manageable level. He does have Scrooge's welfare at heart.

When he says so, Scrooge gets cranky and complains that a peaceful night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. I still get the feeling that Scrooge doesn't quite believe what's going on. But whether it's real or not, he resents its intruding on his sleep.

However, when the Spirit changes his phrasing to "your reclamation, then," that makes Scrooge thoughtful. Marley said that he believed Scrooge needed saving and now this Spirit has repeated it. It's starting to sink in.

The Spirit holds out his hand to Scrooge and says very gently, "Come with me."

Scrooge makes some awesome excuses. "Some other time, perhaps. I'm not dressed. I have a weak chest. Monstrous head cold." He's trying to reassert some control over the situation, but the Spirit oh so mildly insists. His hand still outstretched, he nods and smiles. "Rise. And walk with me." I love Grey in this. It's probably my favorite Christmas Past.

And of course Patrick Stewart is amazing as well. He gets up and holds out his hand, but he's shaking his head the whole time and there's fear in his eyes. If he touches the Spirit, this is going to become real. And that terrifies him.

As the Spirit leads him toward the window, he becomes even more frightened. He says that it's because he's mortal and liable to fall, but I don't think it's about the height. It's about whatever he's about to experience. And it suddenly hits me that Scrooge's mortality and ability to fall is also a metaphor for his spiritual state. He's petrified at being confronted with his own fallibility. It took Stewart's performance to reveal this. Genius.

The Spirit reassures Scrooge that "all I have to do is touch you... there." And he gracefully puts his hand on Scrooge's chest. He doesn't have to say, "And you shall be upheld." It's all in the performances. Scrooge's fear. The Spirit's encouragement. It honestly puts a little lump in my throat.

And as if to not agonize Scrooge further, the Spirit doesn't fly out the window with him. Instead, the room dissolves around them and becomes a snowy forest.

“Your Reclamation, Then” | Michael Caine (1992)

Index of other entries in The Christmas Carol Project

The Muppets cut from Scrooge's going to bed to back outside where Gonzo and Rizzo are trying to get inside the house to continue narrating. It's some fun shenanigans, but nothing important to the story.

Back inside, Scrooge is asleep and still holding his poker. He's left a candle burning and it's lighting up the room pretty well; even shining through Scrooge's thin bed curtains. A clock shows that it's five minutes to one, so the film uses the time to visit Gonzo and Rizzo again as they're climbing a rope to get to Scrooge's upstairs window. Gonzo is back to narrating, talking about how Scrooge is in a dreamless sleep.

Inside once more, the clock finally chimes one and causes Scrooge to open an eye. His candle goes out and Gonzo, now on top of a tree branch right outside Scrooge's window, yells a repeat of the Marleys' warning, "Expect the first ghost when the bell tolls one!" And on cue, Scrooge's window fills with blinding light.

Scrooge is startled into getting up and - poker in hand - opens his bed curtains. The light gathers itself into a single point, finally taking the form of a small, floating child with gauzy robes that swim around her. There's no cap or holly and the only reference to fire is her flaming red hair.

Scrooge puts down the poker and comments on her apparent youth. She explains that she can remember nearly 1900 years, so she's the Ghost of All Christmas' Past, then; not just Scrooge's.

Scrooge is polite. He's probably a little freaked out, but she doesn't appear to be a threat. And when she says that she's there for his welfare, he's bold enough to suggest a night's unbroken rest might aid him better.

She changes her mission to his "salvation, then." If the story is about Scrooge's avoiding Hell, then words like "reclamation," "redemption," and "salvation" are relatively interchangeable, but I don't think that's the best interpretation. When we get to the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the focus will be on Scrooge's impact on this world; not his fate in the next. So in that context, "salvation" has to refer to Scrooge's being saved from his own misery. It basically means the same thing as "reclamation," where he's being reclaimed from Misery for the side of Joy. In both cases, it's a rescue mission and I like both words better than the Albert Finney version's "redemption." "Reclamation" is still the best word though, because "salvation" does carry a specific religious connotation that the story isn't really focusing on.

When she tells Scrooge to "take heed," there's no threat in it. She's too tiny and sweet. She just wants him to be careful and pay attention. She's clearly there for his own good, if only he'll let her help him. When she tells him, "Come," it feels like a request.

The windows open by themselves though (revealing Gonzo and Rizzo on the branch outside) and that worries Scrooge. He expresses his concern about going out that way.

"A touch of my hand," she responds, "and you shall fly." In so many of the last few versions we've looked at, the hand on the heart is ignored and the Spirit's touch is all about magically getting Scrooge where he needs to go. That's disappointing.

Scrooge does touch her tiny hand though and off they fly through the window. Gonzo chuckles gleefully and swings his grappling hook.

The Dragonfly Ripple Holiday Special

Ho! Ho! Ho! The latest Dragonfly Ripple is all about the Most Wonderful Time of the Year! Carlin and I start the show talking about Christmas movies and TV specials that we grew up with. Which have stood the test of time? Which are still annual must-watches?

Then, when Annaliese and David join in, we discuss with them a couple of specific Christmas productions from Jim Henson and Ernest P Worrell. And on a special Jetpack Tiger, Dashiell flies solo to talk about the experience of learning The Truth about Santa. There are SPOILERS about the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy as well, so be careful about listening around young ears.

Finally, we all talk about which nerdy Christmas ornaments we wish existed to hang on our trees.

I hope you'll listen and enjoy, but even more, I hope you're having a happy holiday season.

Photo from the Trammel's trip to Atlanta's Center for Puppetry Arts, mentioned in the episode

“Your Reclamation, Then” | George C Scott (1984)

Index of other entries in The Christmas Carol Project

After Scrooge goes to bed, director Clive Donner's TV movie cuts to a church steeple where the bell is tolling one. And back in Scrooge's bedroom, his little pocket watch is also chiming with a distinctive, merry little tune that becomes important later in the story. It's the bong of the church bell that seems to wake Scrooge up though. He sits up in bed, notices the time, and tries to remember, "What was it Marley said?" It's elusive though and nothing is happening in the room, so Scrooge concludes that Marley's visit and warning was just a dream. Of course, that's the Spirit's cue.

A wind blows through the room and into the curtained bed and then Scrooge notices a twinkling light. Maybe. It's really just a directorial flourish, because the twinking is inside the bed curtains and it turns into a bright reflection on the Spirit's large snuffer cap. The Spirit's not appearing on the bed though; this is just Donner's preferred way of communicating that spirits are transporting themselves. With Past, Donner will focus tightly on the cap as a way of transitioning from one scene to another. With Present, he'll use the Spirit's torch. So in this first instance, the large cap simply represents the first spirit's arrival.

Scrooge's bed curtains part and he sees the Spirit standing in the middle of the room. Like in the Albert Finney version, she's an older woman (well, middle-aged, anyway), but this one is trying to be faithful to Dickens. Her hair is long and - if not white, then at least very light, almost platinum blonde. The actor Angela Pleasence has an impish, mischievous look that gives a youthful quality to the character and she's dressed in archaic-looking robes and carrying the holly branch. She doesn't quite hold her cap; it just hovers near her.

Scrooge's attitude toward her is polite, but he's not at all afraid. It could be that he still thinks this is humbug, but he's at least willing to play along and see what happens. For her part, the Ghost is businesslike. That's probably the right approach to take with this Scrooge. She keeps it professional - at least at first - and he respects that.

Their conversation goes pretty much how Dickens wrote it, but with some nice changes. When he asks her to put on the cap, for instance, he expresses it in terms of "perhaps you'd do me the favor..." Her response is that she brings the light of truth. "Would you use this cap to put it out?" Scrooge is immediately and sincerely apologetic, but he's not nervous or frightened about it. He asks forgiveness from her like he would from a business partner or a peer.

The "light of truth" angle is interesting. I've written a lot this year about how this Ghost represents Scrooge's memories, but it's really more than that. She's going to show him things not as he remembers them, but as they really happened. The story doesn't make a big deal out of the difference between memory and reality, but she makes it clear up front that this is about objective reality. Her mission isn't to remind Scrooge of particular feelings; it's to show him factual events that cast light on the man he's become.

He continues to try to negotiate with her when they discuss his welfare. "I can think of no greater welfare than a night of uninterrupted sleep." But she shuts down the conversation by subtly reminding him that she has the power in this relationship. "Be careful, Ebenezer Scrooge. I speak of your reclamation."

He gives up. Even if he doesn't believe that she's real, he understands that this is something that he's going to have to go through with. "Well, if it's reclamation, then... let's get on with it."

She finally smiles and holds out her hand to him. "Come." As he gets out of bed and takes her hand, fog begins to engulf them. There's no window or fear of falling. Scrooge gets to hold onto his dignity in this one. And that means that there's no talk about touching his heart. As I've said before, this version is remarkable for making Scrooge relatable and grounded. Any change he undergoes is going to be relatable and grounded as well.

As they fade from view, she gives him some insight to what he's about to experience. "We shall be invisible. And silent as the grave."

“Your Reclamation, Then” | Albert Finney (1970)

Index of other entries in The Christmas Carol Project

The musical Scrooge made sure to show us Scrooge's setting his clock at the end of the last scene, so it was about 10:07 went he went to bed. This scene picks up straight from that one. He doesn't go to sleep, but immediately hears a clock chiming from somewhere outside. I can't tell any difference between the chimes, but Scrooge somehow realizes that time has sped up. He counts off, "Half past ten," and then, "Quarter to eleven?" That gets him sitting up and looking at his own clock, which now reads 1:00. As soon as he says the time out loud, there's a large BONG! from outside and Scrooge's curtains pull aside at the foot of his bed.

An elderly, finely dressed woman stands just inside his door; clearly the first spirit, but looking nothing like Dickens' description. This certainly isn't the first representation to take liberties, but the others at least put their versions in antiquated or fairy-like clothing to make them look otherworldly. This one just looks like she's visiting from a very nice neighborhood.

Scrooge - who went to bed not believing that he actually saw Marley's ghost - isn't afraid of this apparition. He demands to know who she is, but her reply is cagey. "I am the spirit whose coming was foretold to you."

He says what I'm thinking. "You don't look like a ghost!"

To which she replies, "Thank you." I'm not sure yet whether I like the contemporary look of her, but I do very much like her. She's haughty and aristocratic, which puts her in a similar category as the Alastair Sim version. She carries authority and isn't going to let Scrooge push her.

He's going to try though and insists on a more precise answer to his question about who she is. She declares herself the Ghost of Christmas Past and they go through the whole "Long past? No, your past" conversation.

When she says that she's there for Scrooge's welfare, he gets snotty about it. "To be awakened by a ghost at one o'clock in the morning is hardly conducive to my welfare!"

"You're redemption, then!"

I wonder if screenwriter Leslie Bricusse thought that "reclamation" was an outdated word and picked something more contemporary that sounded more or less the same. I like "reclamation" better, though, because it paints Scrooge as lost to his base, greedy impulses. He needs to be reclaimed for the side of good. The spirits are on a rescue mission. "Redemption" is similar, but it carries the additional idea of payment. Like when you redeem coupons. Nobody's paying for Scrooge in this story. They've come to reclaim him, but he's going to have to do the work of changing all by himself.

There's going to be a battle of wills between the Ghost and Scrooge. She's not taking any guff, but he's not backing down either. She holds out her hand to him and commands that he rise and walk with her. He grabs her hand, but snaps, "Where are we going?"

Her response is direct. "We are going to look at your childhood." And the scene immediately changes to a snowy forest.