Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for May 12, 2015

I guess I was wrong. Today’s version of Jeffrey shows him as the little kid he was before. So he isn’t growing up…

I love the series when it’s Jeffrey and Danae….Always great stuff….Jeffrey is her Green Kryptonite…..

Gee, It looks like Wiley is a science fiction fan…..There’s a surprise…..

But they’re not the same – you can’t equate sci-fi literature with movies.… we took out most of the science and the new ideas and inserted fireworks, sex and violence and here you go, enjoy your movie.

once upon a time there was a big business that was fair and completely moral…oh wait that’s not science fiction…that’s a fairy tale…

In the early 1950s a new teacher at my school in rural Arkansas had a program where we could buy Science Fiction books at very low cost. Not the best quality book, but hardcover. Many of them were re-prints of stories from the great pulp magazines of the hey-day of real Science Fiction.. Real science, nary a sword, magic unicorn, wizard, or magic spell in sight. Some writers were real scientists some even writing under different pen names.Asimov, Niven, Clarke, etc., authors who actually knew some science and began wondering….What if? It is said that Isaac Asimov had a book in every category in the Library of Congress. Arthur C. Clarke worked out the three communication satellite orbits.After reading Larry Niven’s “Neutron Star” I knew exactly what a neutron star was. And so much more. L.Sprague deCamp, who is still in print. I was in the half price bookstore a couple days ago and newly printed copies of his “Ancient Engineers” was on the shelf.No, it wasn’t Sci-Fi or Sword and Sorcery. Please see Toonerific’s comment above.Some of it was just rollicking good fun. Occasionally something that seemed to be magic appeared, but it always had a cause. . A few days ago I saw a reference to “worm weather”, I forgot what the topic was, but it was straight out of The Witches of Karres. The nearest thing to real science fiction in years was the first and original “Star Wars”. Hokey and predictable, nothing but a Grade B western, but fun. Nope, your beloved Star Trek is not. Sorry.I still have some of those books.

I don’t consider comic superheroes and lots of explosions as true science fiction.

Tis best not to equate best films (or other forms of art) with top grossing films (or other forms of art).

except for 2014 Jeffery, it was American Sniper for the Domestic box office.Worldwide? Yeah, last non SciFi / Fantasy / Comic / Animated winner was Mission Impossible II in 2000 (have to add animated since TS3 won in 2010)

Now the question is: will Danae be a fantasy author? Or will a fantasy be writing her first movie script? Or something like that. Of course have always thought she was for real. It should be easy. All those adventures she had with Lucy.

We need all that fantasy to distract us from the horror of what’s going on in the world!

I somehow doubt that Wiley is being as “deep” here as many of the comments suggest — just having a good time with Danae. She’s my favourite character and, I believe, the strip’s central one. We get to see “inside” her more so than with any other character. In fact she thinks and acts more normally than anyone else but without the inhibitions that the others display (because we only get to see their outsides).She’s great.

Asimov did a good balance of science and fiction. Enough science to be believable without over-relying on it to make the story and fiction which is about people who seem to act pretty much the same on any planet at any time.

On of my favorite Sci-Fi movies: “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart. Sort of “Back to the Future” 1940’s style. It’s time travel to an alternative universe.

Wow – some of you old-timers ought to start churning out your OWN sci-fi adaptations. (I’ll take a whopping finder’s fee for suggesting it – contact me when your billions start pouring in.)

Danae and Eddie should collaborate on a book. (This, of course, would likely bring on the End Times, but I’d love to read it!)

As far as we can tell, all early literature was fantasy, although when people believe the fantasy we call it mythology instead. History and science were much later inventions, although in their earliest Greek forms it is impossible to distinguish them from historical fiction and science fiction. The real things depended on working out methods for winnowing out errors, a problem we are still working on with the science and history and general reality deniers like Danae and many others who appear in the strip from time to time.

The sock still hangs on the end of the bed, but where is Lucy?

From this discussion, I’m reminded of the science fiction/horror story “Jeffty is Five” (but I forget the author, it was a Long Time Ago).

fuzzybritches: Harlan Ellison. There’s also a pretty hair-raising story by Ray Bradbury, The Small Assassin, about a new-born that kills its parents. Read it while I was pregnant with my first. Not a smart move.

If it had been anyone but Jeffrey, he’d have started out by telling Danae that a large percentage of the Best SF Writers today are Women, negating the “Stinky Booger Boy” curse.But, Jeffrey knows Danae, so he went straight to her Prime Motivator: GREED.

Star Wars was a comic book before it was a comic book……

I don’t think it’s greed. I sense that Danae"s thinking process (often displayed externally) is quite typical of a precocious 10-11 year old. OTOH Kate sees and accepts reality. She’s a lot easier to handle than Danae and a wonderful kid in her own right but Danae is that special, lively child with a gleam in her eye.

Both “Star Trek” and the Movie “Alien” can be traced back Directly to A. E. Von Vogt’s book “Voyage of the Space Beagle” published in 1950. although parts of it date back to 1939. .A Science ship on a 5 Year voyage of Exploration & Discovery. The Viewpoint character is a practitioner of a relatively new mental discipline that emphasizes Logical Thinking. .One of the chapters deal with their encounter with an alien being that sneaks aboard the ship and begins Kidnapping crewmen so that it can Lay it’s Eggs in them and reproduce..