Monday various

  • It probably should come as no surprise, but I’m pretty much in complete agreement with Noel Murray about last night’s Lost finale. “These are the new myths. Now it’s up to us to misinterpret them.” I liked the episode a whole lot.
  • Meanwhile, Terry Pratchett is maybe a little harsher than I would be about Doctor Who and the title character’s deus ex machinations. I’m not entirely convinced there’s real value in rigidly defining science fiction and fantasy this way. (And, unlike him, “Small Worlds” is one of my least favorite Torchwood episodes.) But he makes some good points, while still happy to enjoy the show for what it is. [via]
  • Speaking of Doctor Who, here’s an interesting take on The Comparative Lives of the Doctor.
  • Here’s a scary thought from the New York Times:

    Ask a first grader to identify Bugs Bunny and the response more likely than not will be a blank stare.

  • And finally, Neil Gaiman on Ray Bradbury [via]:

    So when the wind blows the fallen autumn leaves across the road in a riot of flame and gold, or when I see a green field in summer carpeted by yellow dandelions, or when, in winter, I close myself off from the cold and write in a room with a TV screen as big as a wall, I think of Ray Bradbury . . .

2 thoughts on “Monday various

  1. “These are the new myths. Now it’s up to us to misinterpret them.”

    That’s a great quote. And a really great article. Thanks for linking to it.

    I have weird mixed feelings about the Lost finale, myself. There are things about it that I feel really should not work, and I’m also not at all sure how well the series works as a cohesive whole. And yet, I’m not at all unhappy with it. In fact, I enjoyed most of it a heck of a lot. And I’m cool with not getting more answers than we got.

    Oh, and I’ve read Pratchett’s thing about Doctor Who before. I have immense respect for Pratchett as a writer, but from what I recall of that piece, I really do think he’s just arguing pointless semantics. I’m not big on trying to pin down specific genre definitions, either, and I’m definitely not big on trying to pretend that they really mean something once you’ve settled on them.

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