Science fiction nerds are well aware of the existence of The Star Wars Holiday Special, the spectacularly ill-advised 1978 two-hour television event in which viewers were exposed (like a virus!) to the Wookiee celebration of Life Day, the comedy antics of Harvey Korman, and the musical stylings of both Jefferson Starship and Bea Arthur. No less a personage than George Lucas has said that he wishes he had a time machine and a sledgehammer to rid the universe of its existence.
I, on the other hand, think the problem is not that The Star Wars Holiday Special exists but that it is all alone in its terribleness. There are so many other classic science fiction films just waiting to reach out and sully the season with awful holiday specials of their own. And why shouldn't we have them? No reason! No reason at all! And with that in mind, please find below six proposed Truly Terrible Science Fiction Film Holiday Specials. They could happen.
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A couple of years ago, when I wrote up my list of the best science fiction films of the first decade of the 21st century, I included on my list what I think most people would have considered a dark-horse candidate, the 2006 movie V for Vendetta. This is what I wrote about it at the time:
"My vote for the Most Underrated Science Fiction Movie of the Decade, this is the Wachowski Brothers' best script of the decade, and the best Alan Moore adaptation -- the author's outright contempt for Thatcherite England is successfully ported into our own turbulent political era, making for a dystopic movie that I think people will eventually see as wholly representative of the frustrations and paranoia of its era. I could be wrong. Let's check back in a decade."As it turns out, we haven't had to wait a decade.
Quick! Settle a bar bet for me. What was the cheapest yet most financially successful science fiction movie ever? Beer is riding on your answer!I write a weekly column and you want your answer quickly? I think you are fundamentally misapprehending the nature of the column, my friend.
Today's e-mailed question is a practical one:
I've been invited to a Halloween party and my fiancée and I want to go as something science fictional. What do you suggest?
I'm glad you asked! Science fiction films offer a rich vein of characters to dress up as. The secret is not to go with the usual -- to dig a little deeper and come up with something fun that people aren't expecting from you, or from anyone else.
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Hello. This is John Scalzi. I'm not here right now, because I am in Germany, doing a book tour. Germany is lovely and filled with wonderful people who hardly ever point and laugh when I try to speak their language and end up sounding like a monkey strangling a cat. I can ask for nothing more.
As I am away, I thought this week would be a fine time to do something a little different; instead of giving you something to read, I'm going to encourage you to do a little writing.
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