Thanksgiving leftovers

1) everything that’s already in the world when you’re born is just normal;

2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;

3) anything that gets invented after you’re thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it’s been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really.

I was reminded of that as I read this essay in the New York Times about “the Joy of (Outdated) Facts” — and not just because the essay name-checks Adams (and his amusing idea of recreating the human race through The Guinness Book). I think it’s important to remember that the certainties of an age can very quickly turn quaint and misguided when viewed through the eyes of the ages that follow it. As Nicholson writes:

With hindsight, we can always see through the dubious “authority” of such historical sources. Few things look as unstable as the rock-solid certainties of previous ages. Since encyclopedias are supposed to be balanced and disinterested, the bias often seems even more naked. Sometimes I wonder if the editors of my 1952 Encyclopaedia Britannica ever regretted their assessment of William Faulkner: “It is naturalism run to seed, for it means nothing. . . . In the hands of Faulkner brute fact leads to little but folly and despair.” Certainly the current editors of the Britannica reckoned some serious updating was required. In the online edition, we now read, “Some critics . . . have found his work extravagantly ­rhetorical and unduly violent, and there have been strong objections, especially late in the 20th century, to the perceived insensitivity of his portrayals of women and black Americans.” Note, however, that instead of a lofty judgment, we’re now given the opinion of these shadowy “some critics.”

The SEC said the 47-year-old Draper resident represented to investors that their money would be used for loans secured by commercial real estate.

Instead, it said he used funds for such things as a loan for Candwich Corp to develop a canned sandwich to be sold in vending machines, an investment in a company he owned with his brother to distribute a film about the Pinewood Derby, investments in companies that sell watches online and rose petals that carry printed sentiments, loans to friends, and an investment in a UBS AG brokerage account.

But for me, as a viewer, the question isn’t whether a filmmaker uses the same basic ideas as one film or borrows other ideas from another film and outright steals them from a third. The question for me is what the filmmakers do once they start putting those ideas together as a film. Do it poorly as a filmmaker, and you’ll be told you’ve created a cheap knockoff. Do it well, and you’ll be told you’ve breathtakingly reinvented the concept.

It’s funny. As much as I enjoyed Inception (and I did), I can’t think of another film that so cried out for reinterpretation, that almost immediately left me wondering, “Okay, that’s Nolan’s Inception. I wonder what so-and-so’s Inception would look like.” I no longer remember, though I think it was Todd VanDerWerff who said he’d have loved to see Christopher Nolan direct Shutter Island and Martin Scorcese direct Inception. Having seen and enjoyed both movies, I think I can see how that would work.

• Dollhouse
• Doctor Who
• Sherlock

I don’t always agree with her, but always find what she has to say interesting and insightful. And she was recently named the new Senior Reviews Editor for Strange Horizons

I vaguely remember reading a story once about a creature who was forced to sleep after a lifetime of wakefulness. It’s played for laughs here, but it would be a terrifying experience, wouldn’t it? “Okay, for eight hours, you’ll pretend to be dead, and you might hallucinate.”