And so one year ends and another takes its place. Happy New Year!
I feel that this would be a great year to diversify my material. There's a lot of great speculative fiction out there that hinges on the fantastic, and I've been talking about doing it, so let's start now! It gives me more to work with, anyway.
Reading: The Martian Chronicles (1950) by Ray Bradbury
More of a short story collection than a straightforward novel, this sci-fi classic details the future history of Earth and the colonization of Mars with all the sociological changes it entails. It's a highly sentimental work made up of all the interconnected Mars stories Bradbury wrote over the course of the 1940s, edited and arranged for publication and later adapted into theater, television, graphic novels, and especially radio. As one of the last true imaginative explorations of the possibilities of an undocumented planet, it's a treasure worth putting on anyone's shelf.
Trade: https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Chronicles-Ray-Bradbury/dp/006207993X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1546318601&sr=8-1
Mass Market: https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Chronicles-Ray-Bradbury/dp/1451678193/ref=tmm_mmp_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1546318601&sr=8-1
Hardcover: https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Chronicles-Ray-Bradbury/dp/0380973839/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1546318601&sr=8-1
Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/Martian-Chronicles-Ray-Bradbury-ebook/dp/B00CKOQC9C/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1546318601&sr=8-1
Viewing: E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg, 1982)
It's the story that touched the world. In one of Spielberg's most recognizable and iconic films, a small, inquisitive alien is separated from his expedition and unintentionally marooned on Earth, where he befriends the young son of a recently divorced mother; together with his two siblings, the boy must keep his new friend safe from the prying government and find a way to transmit a distress message back to the other world. Everything about this film is legendary, from the design to the effects and the cinematography and the music, and each new generation is introduced to it at some point in their life. Once it outsold Star Wars as the highest-grossing film of all time, and it even made its way into the Library of Congress's National Film Registry. See it and fall in love with it all over again.
DVD: https://www.amazon.com/T-Extra-Terrestrial-Henry-Thomas/dp/B073WYD3CH/ref=tmm_dvd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Blu-Ray: https://www.amazon.com/T-Extra-Terrestrial-Blu-ray-Henry-Thomas/dp/B073WZXBQT/ref=tmm_blu_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
4K: https://www.amazon.com/T-Extra-Terrestrial-4K-Ultra-Blu-ray/dp/B073WYP73T/ref=tmm_frk_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Amazon Video: https://www.amazon.com/T-Extra-Terrestrial-Henry-Thomas/dp/B00BP4W3WI/ref=tmm_aiv_swatch_1?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
So how's that to start the new year? Let me know what you think, and I'll keep it coming!
Interesting choices for the month. I must say, I'm hard up for time right now and struggling to finish a book I started quite a while ago (I'm almost there). I'm actually in the process of building a physical location to house my library, most of which is packed up, so I've been more occupied with hammers and nails than reading, but I hope that will be changing before long.