"breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit"

[eldritchhobbit]

My baby sister Margret (see these posts for more about her) is getting married this weekend, so I'm off to Oklahoma to be the matron of honor in her wedding.

I will be online while I'm away, but I want to go ahead and wish all of you who celebrate it a happy Fourth of July. Also, happy early birthday to archaic_angel; may you have a fantastic day and wonderful year to come!

A few quick notes before I go:

* AMC has announced casting news for the six-part mini-series remake of The Prisoner (with ITV Productions and Granada International) slated for 2009.

* R.I.P. Don S. Davis (1942-2008), veteran of such genre series as Stargate SG-1 and Twin Peaks, who will always be Captain William Scully from The X-Files to me.

* The livelongnmarry fandom-sponsored auction starts today and closes on July 15. Items up for auction include autographed books by marthawells, Peg Kerr, Pamela Dean, and Steve Berman, fan fiction, original stories, handmade custom jewelry, knitted clothing, baked goods, original art, fan art, and story critique services, among other things.

* Thanks to new suggestions and discoveries, I have updated my working list of recommended young adult dystopias. (Please let me know if you know of other titles or series that I have missed that were written specifically for YA readers. Many thanks!) Those with asterisks I've already read and highly recommend. FYI!


Recommended Young Adult Dystopias

Bad Faith by Gillian Philip
The Bar Code Tattoo by Suzanne Weyn
The Books of Ember by Jeanne Duprau
The Compound by S.A. Bodeen
The Declaration by Gemma Malley
The Far Side of Evil by Sylvia Engdahl
Feed by M.T. Anderson
The Fire-Us Trilogy by Jennifer Armstrong and Nancy Butcher
* The Giver Trilogy by Lois Lowry
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
I Am The Cheese by Robert Cormier
The Last Book in the Universe by Rodman Philbrick
Life As We Knew It and The Dead and the Gone by Susan Beth Pfeffer
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
* The Missing Person's League by Frank Bonham
Rash by Pete Hautman
The Shadow Children Sequence by Margaret Peterson Haddix
* Surviving Antarctica: Reality TV 2083 by Andrea White
The Secret Under My Skin by Janet McNaughton
Sharp North and Blown Away by Patrick Cave
The Silenced by James DeVita
Stolen Voices by Ellen Dee Davidson
* The Time Quartet by Madeleine L'Engle (dystopian elements)
The Tripods Series by Samuel Youd
* The Tomorrow Series by John Marsden
The Uglies Series by Scott Westerfeld
Z for Zachariah by Robert C. O'Brien


"Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit."
– Henry David Thoreau

Comments

[scribblerworks.livejournal.com]

A remake of The Prisoner?? (Clutches her DVDs of the original close.) Well, maybe. Caveziel isn't a bad choice, nor McKellan. Still.... not Patrick McGoohan, and that's a big thing to get past.

On other fronts, have fun at the wedding!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm with you. The Prisoner is my all-time favorite TV series (ever, ever, ever!), and I look at any possible remake with suspicion. Everyone involved seems to be Not Patrick McGoohan. ;)

I do think it's interesting that much has been made of McGoohan's Catholic faith and theology as one of the inspirations for the series, and now AMC has cast one of the (to my knowledge) few present-day outspoken, highly visible Catholic actors to reprise the role of Number Six. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I do hope McGoohan's hand is somewhere in the creative mix, if only in a purely advisory way.

And thanks for the kind wishes about the wedding! :) It was lovely, and my sister and her new husband were both very happy.

[groovekittie.livejournal.com]

OMG! I can't believe he's gone! I'm just so ... shocked. I'll miss Don. I never got the opportunity to meet him, but he sounded like a lovely man. :(

I hope your sister's wedding goes splendidly! :)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the good wishes for my sister's wedding! It was a total success. :)

I never "met" Don Davis one on one, but I did see him when he appeared at a convention (TrekExpo in Tulsa), and he seemed like a genuine gentleman and true professional. What a sad loss.

[estellye.livejournal.com]

Enjoy the wedding, my dear. I am sure it will be a wonderful day.

Yes, very sad loss in Ron Davis.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thank you so much! :) It was wonderful to see my sister and her new husband so happy. I think everything went just as they hoped.

And yes, it is a very sad loss. :(

[agentxpndble.livejournal.com]

Congrats to your sister!

Hmm... It's hard to grumble about Ian McKellen but I'm still a bit skeptical about this remake... But Ian McKellen is a good start.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! OMG, I feel so old. !!!

I agree with you, that the casting could've been much, much worse, but wow, I am skeptical too. Just as an aside, I do think it's interesting that much has been made of McGoohan's Catholic faith and theology as one of the inspirations for the series, and now AMC has cast one of the (to my knowledge) few present-day outspoken, highly visible Catholic actors to reprise the role of Number Six. Perhaps I'm reading too much into it, but I do hope McGoohan's hand is somewhere in the creative mix, if only in a purely advisory way. Still, no matter what they do, the fact It's Not McGoohan will suck like a giant sucking thing.

[theladyrose.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to your sister!

Thanks for passing on the news from the Village! As interested as I am in a Prisoner remake, I have to admit I'm going to remain skeptical about such a project coming to fruition until I see previews as rumors have been swirling around for ages. Ian McKellen's an inspired choice for number 2, but I'm not so sure about Cavaziel.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for your congrats! Despite the fact that she's now married makes me feel impossibly old (!!!!), I am very happy for her. I think the day went just as she and her new husband had hoped.

I agree about remaining skeptical about the remake. (Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me... Didn't we just hear a year or so ago that Christopher Eccleston would be Number Six in a different production?) Besides, anyone they choose will be Not McGoohan, and this is a problem. I do think it's interesting that McGoohan at the time was (and, of course, still today is) an outspoken, highly visible Catholic, and admitted that this influenced his worldview in a significant way, and now AMC supposedly has cast one of the few outspoken, highly visible Catholic actors around to reprise the role. Hmmm.

[thepirateship.livejournal.com]

Enjoy the wedding!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! It was a great success.

[euclase.livejournal.com]

Gah, Tripods <3

Congrats to your baby sister! Have fun!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Run away! Run away! :)

Thanks for the congrats for Margret. She's radiant with happiness, so I'm glad for her, even if the fact she's married makes me feel impossibly old. LOL!

[greenhoodloxley.livejournal.com]

Congratulations to your sister! I hope the wedding goes splendidly!

On the subject of dystopian novels, I just finished The Declaration by Gemma Malley and it was pretty good. It's newish YA...

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much! It was a great success.

Oooh, I appreciate the recommendation for The Declaration. I hadn't heard of it. There's a copy at Bookins, so I'm going to grab it right now! Thanks so much.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

PS. I've also added The Declaration to my list (above). Thanks again!

[sittingduck1313.livejournal.com]

TV remakes are a tricky beast. Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica show that it can be done, even (or especially) if you change the tone. But then there's tripe like Night Stalker. The only good episode in that one was Timeless, mainly because of Mira Furlan and the allusions to the Night Strangler TV movie. There was also the idiotic decision to cast the anti-charismatic Stuart Townsend as Kolchak. Further evidence of his blandness can be found in League of Unextraordinary Gentlemen and One Woman as well as Queen of the Danged.

There's a short story with a dystopic tone in the CthulhuTech Core Book entitled Questionable Merchandise. It concerns two agents from the Office of Internal Security (an agency which regulates the practice of sorcery) who have come to arrest a man believed to have purchased an illegal summoning tome. At one point, as the suspect is demanding to see a warrant and insisting he has rights, one of the agents tells him, "You have no rights, Mr. White, because we aren't sure if you're still Human." While their precautions are understandable (for all they know, he could have made an attempt to contact Nyarlathotep which went very wrong), it's still a trifle unnerving.

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I agree 100% about the trickiness of TV remakes. I will remain skeptical about this - especially since The Prisoner is my favorite series of all time.

"Questionable Merchandise" sounds really chilling. I'm going to have to read it! Thanks for the heads up.

[abbie (from livejournal.com)]

Congratulations, again, to your sister and best wishes! I remember you mentioning her a couple times in class. Exciting!!

Um, I was in your state a few days ago, and I waved at you from the coast. I'm not sure if you were home then or not. :o) But my grandparents, mom, and I had a nice time at the beach!

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you had a good time at the beach! It sounds like I was away while you were here - hopefully next time I'll be in town, and we can wave hello in person!

Thanks for the kind wishes for my sister. They are most appreciated! :)