Where is the time you could be mine?

[austin_dern]

There's some curious new symptoms regarding the Airport problems -- specifically, it's most prone to blinking out around 10-11 pm. In the mornings and early evenings it doesn't fail. This suggests some kind of interference with something, and xolo had the interesting suggestion it might be the new fluorescent light bulbs, although since the problem happens when I turn the lights off too, that doesn't seem to be it. I've tried alternate channels, too, suggesting ... I don't know what. But it stopped being amusing a long time ago.

ABC television back in the United States has ordered six episodes, with an option for up to 13, of a ``Masters of Science Fiction'' anthology series for 2007. The series is intended to call on the rich legacy of great science fiction stories, and producers are hoping to adapt Isaac Asimov's ``The Last Question'', Harlan Ellison's ``The Discarded'', and hope to get Ray Bradbury to write the adaptation of his ``Dark They Were, And Golden-Eyed''.

Or they could just save time and cancel it now, and we can get on with the sad yet pathetic letter-writing campaign to fail to bring it back, and take the entire project as read into the record. I want to be optimistic, but if I were put in charge of a project to get a network TV show cancelled within three episodes I'd say, roughly, ``Let's make it science fiction ... oh, and an anthology show ... oh, heck, and let's wind up Harlan Ellison some and set him rattling off in some random direction. Hey, do you have any stories, however great, published a half-century ago by anyone who's been dead a decade and a half?''

Trivia: Architect George B Post's initial design for the Columbian Expo's Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building had it capped by a dome 450 feet high, which would make it the largest and tallest building in the world. Source: The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson.

Currently Reading: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G Burrows, Mike Wallace.

Comments

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

On the good side, ABC could always resell the unused bits to Sci-Fi network, where it'd be watched and crittically acclaimed. Or, this could be a DVD project- where the actual TV show makes little money, but they'll make it up on selling a DVD collection of the episodes.

--Chiaroscuro

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There is that. Probably the network airing will end up being a three-hour commercial for the other three episodes on DVD. If it is any good I'd be interested; it's been years since classic written science fiction was given that sort of general adaptation.