The Secret Lair

When I’m not engaged in the various activities my role as Chief Medical Officer requires here in The Lair¹, I am performing more mundane tasks² in the hospital setting. While it’s hard top The Lair in terms of the sheer oddity of both the Overlords and Minions, it turns out that my hospital has it’s own colorful cast of characters. Many of these are heroic, and others villainous, with a choice few attaining superhero/villain status. One such character may, in fact, be Tony Stark/Iron Man… at least in his own mind.

A new medical student recently started working with us, and from the beginning, he stood out as being a bit off. Naturally, I was drawn to observe his strange behavior, and quickly began to realize that he is either 1. Tony Stark made flesh and surreptitiously seeking The Mandarin in the bowels of my hospital, or 2. merely has delusions of Tony Starkhood. Being a good³ doctor, I have applied the scientific process to my observations, and so I present you my lines of evidence in this regard:

• A well-tailored, and accessorized, suit – We all know that Tony Stark likes to look his best, and is a fan of sartorial elegance in his public appearances outside of the Iron Man armor. Typically, medical students dress well and wear a white coat at all times, as a symbol of the profession they are growing into. Not this student. While wearing a white coat for clinical work, he is quick to stow it away at all other times in favor of an immaculately fitted suit, and hang out publicly to show off his be-suited body. This is easily a Stark-like trait.
• A Van Dyke of precise and unique grooming – Although it hasn’t always been this way in the comics, few things have defined the recent look of Tony Stark more than his loosely coiffed black hair and distinctively trimmed Van Dyke. Robert Downey, Jr. has epitomized this look in his recent portrayal of Stark in film. It should come as no surprise to you to learn that my medical student sports a very Downey-esque visage, complete with the distinctive angular Van Dyke seen in the Iron Man movies.
• Expensive, private schooling – Tony Stark is nothing if not filthy rich, and loves to focus that money on experiences that are expensive, exclusive, and beautiful. The student in question is training at an off-shore medical school on a tropical island that expensive, exclusive, and beautiful. Coincidence? I think not!
• Expensive, sporty cars – Another defining characteristic of Mr. Stark is a penchant for costly sports cars, both as a measure of wealth and for his interest in tinkering with all things mechanical. While he is with us in the hospital in the mainland US, my student is cruising about in a BMW. I need not say more.



• Tempted by a demon in a bottle – Perhaps the most well known of the classic Iron Man comic storylines is “Demon in a Bottle”, where Stark struggles with his addiction to alcohol. Knowing my interest in alcoholic beverages⁴, I am often quizzed by the student on the subject of extreme beers and gin varieties, which certainly establishes a particular interest in the topic. Much to my obvious pleasure but at the expense of this exercise, there is no evidence that he is an alcoholic.
• Buddies with the War Machine – One of Tony Stark’s best friends is James “Rhodey” Rhodes. My student once asked me if I was “Rhodey”. Actually, he may have just seen my long hair and have asked if I used to be a roadie. Work with me on this one, people.
• Carrying his costume in a briefcase – This is the final, and most convincing, piece of evidence. As most recently seen in Iron Man 2, Tony Stark has a suit of armor that can be portably contained inside a briefcase, in case of emergencies. My student is always carrying a briefcase, a habit which I didn’t originally think much of. Then, the following event happened: I was in a meeting with a group of residents, discussing patients. The medical student walked in without saying a word, and proceeded to sit down on a couch near me, just in the range of my peripheral vision. With deliberate movements, he set the briefcase on his lap, opened it, and in one swift motion, somehow removed his suit jacket, put on a white coat he had stashed in the briefcase, and smoothly stood up, all at the same time. He then proceeded to clench his fists and look the group over, as though he was basking in the power of just-donned armor. He then proceeded to leave the room swiftly, in order to fight crime. Or, see his patients. One of the two.

In conclusion, while the medical student in question may or may not really be Tony Stark, at the very least he certainly thinks he is. Why else would he come to do rotations at a hospital renowned for cardiac procedures, if not to remove life-threatening shrapnel from his chest? Perhaps there is a Mandarin plot afoot in our hallowed halls… or maybe Fing Fang Foom lies sleeping beneath the foundation of the new hospital building that’s under construction? These questions need answering, and so I shall engage in further scientific observations, for the chance to recruit Tony Stark’s resources and prowess to the side of The Secret Lair is an opportunity that the Overlords would be exceedingly displeased at me for missing. And I can guarantee you that the displeasure of the Overlords is something noone wishes to incur.

1. Between the crackpot schemes of Minister Lynn and the frisky enthusiasm of the shetland-bonobos, it’s a wonder I ever leave. That’s not even taking the ever-pressing requests of Overlords Johnson and Miller into consideration. [↩]
2. Such as curing syphilis, for one. [↩]
3. Or, in this case, Bad [↩]
4. Alcohol kills germs. Also, microbes are required for that whole fermentation thing. Also, I’ve taken care of a few people with serious infections due to brewer’s yeast… not pretty. [↩]

…the Need For Speed.

It’s been more than twenty years since I first played a racing game on a personal computer. That game was Test Drive, and I played it¹ on an Apple //GS. The Duel: Test Drive II, followed and many, many more hours of my late teens were spent behind the virtual steering wheel of various supercars, fleeing from Johnny Law. I was a high-octane rebel, racing at breakneck speeds and violating more motor vehicle laws than the entire Duke clan combined.

Shortly after I purchased my first PC, Test Drive 4 was released, but it was pretty much unplayable, and I didn’t buy another racing game until I joined the ranks of console gamers and picked up Burnout 2: Point of Impact for the Xbox. I’ve played every Criterion-developed installment² in the Burnout series since: Burnout 3: Takedown, Burnout Revenge, and Burnout Paradise.³

I’ve also dabbled with the Project Gotham Racing, Midnight Race and Midtown Madness series on the Xbox, but no racing games have consumed my time as much as the Burnout titles. As of this writing, Burnout Paradise on the PC has stolen fifty-four hours that could have been spent for the betterment of humanity.⁴

As much time as I’ve spent driving like a nitro-powered maniac through the streets of Paradise City, racing faster and faster cars from the marina to the ballpark, trying to beat the clock as I barreled toward the wind farm, and taking down dozens of cars, trucks and SUVs in aggressive Road Rage events, I’ve always felt that Burnout Paradise (and the entire Burnout series in general) is missing something; a mode of play I haven’t seen since I played that first Test Drive game way back in the late 1980s.

Enter Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit. Developed by Criterion, the same folks who have been serving me heaping helpings of crash-and-Burnout goodness for the past half-dozen or so years, NFS: HP (as the kids are calling it…or not) brings back the chase mode that I loved in Test Drive and The Duel,⁵ putting the player behind the wheel of a souped-up police interceptor or looking at that same interceptor in the rearview mirror.

I’ve only played NFS: HP for a couple of hours, but I did notice one fairly significant difference between it and Test Drive: my dashboard isn’t magenta.⁶ I’ve also unlocked at least a half-dozen cars since I began playing: Vettes and Beemers, Porches and Nissans and, yes, that yellow Camaro. Compare that to the original Test Drive, which featured a grand total of five cars. And while I seem to recall deploying a spike strip or two, I’m fairly certain that I wasn’t executing the PIT maneuver on my Apple //GS . Change is good.

What are your favorite racing games? Do you prefer an arcade style of play that allows for ridiculous, unbelievable driving, or a game that provides realistic physics and allows you to tweak your car (weight distribution, tire pressure, etc.) to shave fractions of seconds off your lap times?

1. …and played it, and played it. [↩]
2. Burnout Legends and Burnout Dominator were not developed by Criterion, and neither were available on the Xbox. [↩]
3. I own and play both the PC and Xbox 360 versions of Burnout Paradise. [↩]
4. I’ve only recently begun exploring the online multiplayer gameplay in Burnout Paradise with Minister Lynn and Commandant Moore. [↩]
5. Yes, I’m sure other games released in the intervening years have featured pursuit modes, but I haven’t played any of them. [↩]
6. In fact, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit does not feature a camera view in which the dashboard is visible, but as I prefer an external chase camera, I don’t mind. [↩]

Like many of us, I have a tally of geek sins on my soul. These are, typically, sins of omission: a seminal movie unwatched, a classic game never played, a canonical tome not read. Some of them are out of blatant disinterest or avoidance,¹ but I do admit that many require penance on my part.² I have just redeemed myself of one of these sins, however… I have finally played The Orange Box.

Despite being a first-person shooter junkie from the moment I started tinkering with PC hardware,³ I just never got around to playing Half-Life 2. The game came out in 2004 during my medical residency, when I had no PC capable of running it, and by the time I rectified that, there were newer and shinier things crying out for my attention.⁴ Subsequently, the Half-Life 2 sequels Episode 1 and Episode 2 emerged, along with this other little game called Portal, but the obsessive-compulsive side of me⁵ refused to touch them until playing the first game, and so I remained roundly mocked by my gamer friends and blissfully unaware of what I was missing out on.

Then, a few weeks back, I heard tell of Portal 2 coming out. My wife Laura then presented the following Chain of Logical Reasoning: 1. Portal, we hear, is quite the fun game. 2. We should find it and play it, especially since the sequel is almost here, and man would that ever net us some geek cred, baby!⁶ 3. I bet, somewhere between the PS3 and our Macs, we have the technology to run it.⁷ And so, we found ourselves picking up The Orange Box for the PS3 in order to snag Portal, and as such I found myself in possession of Half-Life 2 as well.

At this point, here’s what I remembered about these games. Half-Life 2 – a stupid number of game of the year/decade/all time awards, great shooter gameplay, a badass gravity gun and physics system, and cool scripted sequences. Portal – interesting physics-based puzzles, something about cake and lies, and Jonathan Coulton wrote the end credits song that’s pretty damn catchy. Then, I finally played the games 7 and 4 years late respectively, and absolved my geek sin in this regard.

Here is what I learned:⁸

• Portal really is all that and a bag of chips. For some reason, I had been led to believe that Portal was mainly about using the first person shooter perspective to create interesting and challenging physics puzzles, with a bit of a story slapped on top of it. Much to my delight, the story is at turns engaging and hilarious, is extensively fleshed out for an experience that has ony about two hours of gameplay, and is integrated fully into the Half-Life universe. One of my favorite in-game moments was coming across an office where a Powerpoint presentation is playing, detailing Aperture Science’s⁹ strategy for competing with Black Mesa¹⁰ for United States Department of Defense contracts. I must say that the character of GLaDOS as the controlling intelligence of the Aperture Science facility is brilliantly conceived and executed. And Still Alive by Jonathan Coulton now makes quite a bit more sense…
• That noted, what really wins the day is the game design. Portal strikes a nigh-perfect balance of leading the player to intuitively figure things out on a level by level basis, allowing previously learned skills to build on each other as the game progresses, and giving just enough freedom to fail spectacularly to make the ultimate completion of each puzzle that much more satisfying. On that subject, if you’ve never played Portal with the developer’s commentary on, I highly recommend it. Not only are Ellen McLain’s anecdotes about voicing GLaDOS delightful, but the programmers’ notes on how they had to modify the game’s physics engine to make the portal mechanics work are intriguing, and the developers’ insights into how aspects of certain levels were changed based on the behavior of game playtesters gives some fascinating insight into game theory.
• Half-Life 2 also happens to be all that and a bag of chips. The core shooter gameplay is damn fun, and the roster of weapons is satisfying.¹¹ The level design is focused on an excellent mix of scripted sequences that never leave you feeling like you are wandering from area to area, killing random enemies. Instead, you have a sense of urgency moving you along – such as being hunted by superior forces across broken city rooftops, or racing against time to complete an objective – which results in you being propelled through the game organically, with opponents appearing in natural ways as the action calls for it. There are also a healthy number of puzzles to break things up, all of which are intuitive and make sense in the context of the situations they arise in.
• There are key elements in gameplay between Portal and Half-Life 2 that elevate them as superior gaming experiences. Especially after playing Portal first and hearing the developers’ insights, it’s obvious how attentive the game designers were in terms of balancing challenges and rewards in level construction, especially with feedback from playtesters.¹² Beyond any other first-person shooters I’ve played in recent memory, these two succeed because they’ve been tweaked to hit all the right notes – the combat is a blast, the puzzles are inventive and not difficult to the point of frustration, the atmosphere from the art and sound direction is engrossing, and the writing and voice acting are top notch.

My sin is expunged! My soul feels lighter already. Now, if only Half-Life 2: Episode 3 would see the light of day sometime soon… Meanwhile, there’s this little plastic box labeled Portal 2 that’s sitting next to the television as I type this. Perhaps I need to take that for a spin, lest my soul fall further into perdition.

1. I don’t care how much a part of geek (or, arguably, mainstream) culture World of Warcraft has become, I haven’t played it and never will. Mainly because if I start it, I may find myself playing at the expense of important things, like employment and food consumption. [↩]
2. Two easy examples that some find particularly egregious: I have never watched any version of Blade Runner. I have never read A Game of Thrones. [↩]
3. I cracked the case on my first PC, a 386, to install a video card so I could better run Wolfenstein 3D. [↩]
4. Doom 3 for one, which is a gorgeous and visceral game, but no Half-Life 2. In hindsight, my priorities were way off. [↩]
5. All doctors, no matter what personality type, are required to have a bit of OCD in their makeup or else they won’t survive the training process. [↩]
6. It’s possible she didn’t actually say that last bit. [↩]
7. We do have an Xbox 360, but my extensive history with PC’s means that when at all possible, I must slather hate and scorn upon Microsoft at every turn, up to and including supporting their platform as little as possible. [↩]
8. You, very likely, already know these things. Just give me a chance to catch up here… [↩]
9. The company that owns the facility depicted in Portal, if you somehow didn’t know that. [↩]
10. The research facility in Half-Life – again, if you somehow didn’t know that. [↩]
11. Gravity gun! YES. [↩]
12. One truism mentioned was that in the midst of an action sequence or time pressure, it’s surprisingly difficult to get gamers to look up at the ceiling/sky in the game world, so specific design decisions were made to make people do just that. [↩]

During a recent conversation with our Secretary of Artistic Propaganda, it occurred to me that vampires have been cropping up in an awful lot of the books I’m reading lately. I haven’t been making any kind of conscious effort to read vampire stories, but a quick glance through my reading list from the past year puts me at just shy of one bloodsucking tale per month. Granted, vampirism isn’t always front and center in these novels, but here’s a list of books I’ve read in the past twelve months that feature vampires in major and minor roles:

1. Fool Moon by Jim Butcher. The second Dresden Files novel is really about werewolves (as if you couldn’t guess from the title), but it’s Dresden and I’m sure he must have had dealings with vampires at some point.
2. Soulless by Gail Carriger. I really enjoyed the first outing of Alexia Tarabotti in Victorian England, which features both vampires and werewolves. I only wish the cover model bore more of a resemblance to the main character.
3. Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith. Vampires abound in this secret history of the 16th President of These Here United States.
4. Bloodsucking Fiends: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. The first of Christopher Moore’s San Francisco Vampire Trilogy, which tells the tale of Jody, the newly-befanged Countess of the City by the Bay, and her boyfriend, Tommy. I listened to the excellent audio edition, narrated by Susan Bennett.
5. Grave Peril by Jim Butcher. The third Dresden Files novel is likely the last one I’ll read for the foreseeable future. But there are vampires. Yup.
6. You Suck: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. Yes, it’s the continuing adventures of Countess Jody and her boyfriend, Tommy. This time out, they’re joined by goth chick and nosferatu-wannabe, Abbie Normal.
7. The Buntline Special: A Weird West Tale by Mike Resnick. The vampire in this steampunk/fantasy retelling of the showdown at the O.K. Corral isn’t really a major character, but…he’s still a vampire.
8. Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore. The third and final (for now) installment of Moore’s San Francisco Vampire trilogy has most of the bloodsuckers from the first two novels, plus vampire cats. Meow!
9. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch. Usually, urban fantasy takes place in These Here United States, and fantasy in Jolly Olde England tends to be set in the Victorian Era. The adventures of Probationary Constable Peter Grant take place in an era of smart phones and high-definition television. Vampires play only a minor role…for now.
10. Dead Until Dark by Charlaine Harris. Overlord Miller’s better half tore through the entire Sookie Stackhouse series in a matter of days. I’m about halfway through the audio edition of the first in Harris’ Southern vampire novels.
11. Changeless by Gail Carriger. I’m just over a third of the way through the second volume of The Parasol Protectorate. Vampires, werewolves…and dirigibles. That’s what it says on the cover, and so far Alexia has encountered all three.

Honorable Mention: Zombies

• The Affinity Bridge by George Mann.
• Feed by Mira Grant.
• Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry.
• Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.

What sort of common threads are running through your recent literary choices?

Let us pretend for a moment that I’m not an Evil Overlord living in a Secret Lair based on an uncharted island somewhere in Lake Erie. Let us further pretend that, instead of plundering secret gold caches and skimming funds from electronic transactions a la Gus Gorman in Superman III, I must hold down a day job. In this day job, hypothetically, I could have a coworker…let’s call him by a name that is charmingly common yet holds the promise of great depth of thought.

The Entirely Hypothetical "Mike"

Let us call this coworker “Mike.”

Now, this Mike is probably a geek of some fashion, else we would not be speaking of him. More, he is probably cultured, but somewhat younger than I am, having come of age just as console gaming was becoming popular and supplanting the Library as a source of mainstream entertainment. Mike knows there are gaps in his Book Geek pedigree, and one day, while having lunch in the hypothetical cafeteria in the hypothetical office, Mike asks me to recommend five good books.

I answer with these:

• [amazon_link id="0553382578" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Foundation [/amazon_link] by Issac Asimov: We start with Asimov, as all good science fiction should. Asimov was a singular mind, and reading these short stories about his psychohistorical Foundation, set to safeguard mankind’s knowledge against the ravages of the Galactic Empire’s fall still rings with that genius. It is fresh, relevant, and still fun to read after 60 years in print.
• [amazon_link id="1585867985" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Deathbird Stories[/amazon_link] by Harlan Ellison: This is Ellison’s collection of short stories about the New Gods, the rough beasts and harrowing creatures that spring to life in the modern age to replace the more archaic gods of thunder and the sea. These stories range from “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs,” a tale inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese, to “Shattered Like a Glass Goblin” where a young army private learns about transformation the hard way, to “The Deathbird;” a rewrite of Genesis. This is a book that counsels the reader not to read all the stories in one sitting…then lives up to that danger.
• [amazon_link id="0451062833" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]Jack of Shadows[/amazon_link] by Roger Zelazny: On a world that is tidally locked so that one side of the planet is always light, and the other is always dark, science rules day, while magic rules the night. Jack, sometimes called Jack Shade, sometimes Shadowjack, is unique in that he draws his power not from the light or the dark but from the shadows themselves. This is an interesting tale of how those who walk between extremes can influence the course of a world. He searches for a lost Key, and finds the Power is not what he thought it was.
• [amazon_link id="0062059882" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]American Gods[/amazon_link] by Neil Gaiman: One of the major touchstones of modern fantastic fiction and some (myself included) would argue Gaiman’s finest work to date. Gaiman, like Ellison, explores the birth of new gods, but Gaiman’s touch is subtle and light where Ellison’s is blunt. Gaiman’s tale of what has become of the old gods in the new world pulls you along as Shadow travels with the odd Mr. Wednesday across the heartland of the United States. There is deep magic here; a tale of wonder, delight, and horror — much like the old mythologies themselves.
• [amazon_link id="0756405890" target="_blank" container="" container_class="" ]The Name of the Wind[/amazon_link] by Patrick Rothfuss: Rothfuss is one of a handful of authors bringing significant writing talent to fantasy fiction, breathing new life into a stale and moldering genre. His writing is simply so very good, his characters so engaging and realistic that is hard to stop reading once you’ve started. The tale of the sometimes hero, sometimes villain Kvothe as told by the man himself is nothing less than one of the best novels in the last decade.

The Hook: The most powerful member of a superhuman team created to fight organized crime and civic corruption decides that he must must fix the most corrupt system in the United States – the federal government – and assassinates the President, ostensibly giving freedom back to the citizenry. Chaos ensues.

The Details: The core of any superheroic tale is justice, whether it be for a specific group of people, or merely the heroes themselves. The allure of the superhuman is that they have the power to right the wrongs of the world where the average human cannot. Most injustice in superheroic worlds is represented by obvious, tangible villains – the evil and the misguided, who despite their nefarious plans, are something that heroes can take up arms against and definitively fight.

Were that only the case in real life.

What if there were superheroes in a world without massive, colorful villains? A world more like our own, where the greatest threats to justice often result not from any one person, but rather the dark side of a system of politics and greed? Confronted by this complex, less tangible threat, how far would a group of powerful superhumans go to see justice done? And how would the rest of us react? Black Summer is an answer to those questions.

Black Summer is a graphic novel collected from an eight issue comic series, written by Warren Ellis and illustrated by Juan Jose Ryp. It tells the story of The Seven Guns, a group of technologically enhanced superhumans who originally formed to fight regional government and corporate crime when traditional law enforcement could not, or would not, or was party to the crime itself. Although a true extralegal vigilante group, their continued positive exploits in the name of justice eventually earned them the trust of the public of the United States. That is, until the most powerful of The Guns, John Horus, assassinates the President and his advisers, and calls on the nation to hold immediate elections supervised by him to ensure impartiality and freedom of choice.

The resultant narrative focuses on how he and the remaining Guns (who were unaware of Horus’ intentions or plan) deal with the aftermath of that act, which forces each of them to confront their own beliefs about their role as superhumans in a society that suddenly views them as the enemy. In The Guns, Ellis gives us a complex group of individuals united by a common desire, but who otherwise hold very different beliefs about how the world works, and in some cases dislike each other. The story deftly flips between current events and flashbacks to the formation of the group, which serves to both drive the plot and provide some challenging explorations on power, justice, and responsibility. If all of that sounds like it might be too cerebral, rest assured that there is plenty of crazy violent action to balance things out – not only are The Guns hunted by the military, but it turns out that they face superhuman opposition after all.

Ellis’s narrative is tight and, for the most part, well-paced. There are a couple of points where the story pauses to accommodate an extended philosophical tirade that is just long enough to be mildly distracting, but this is a minor quibble. The flashbacks focus more on the relationships and motivations of The Guns than on the specific details about their powers or original missions, which fits perfectly with what Ellis was accomplishing with the story, although I must confess that the comic geek in me was craving a bit more fiddly detail about the world. All that noted, the tale succeeds as a thought-provoking and exciting read.

Ryp’s art here is focused on clean, detailed inkwork that is well matched to the tale at hand. Mark Sweeney and Greg Waller’s coloring does an excellent job of enhancing Ryp’s style. The story doesn’t skimp out on the violence of the combat involved, and everything from gore to explosions is drawn with almost mesmerizing intricacy. Unfortunately, this leads to several instances where it’s difficult to figure out what is precisely is being done to whom in a particular panel; this is also hampered by the fact that the main antagonists all have similar costume designs, which makes picking them out occasionally problematic. Despite that, the visuals are otherwise gorgeous and effective.

The Bottom Line: If you want a well-crafted and thought-provoking post-modern superheroic tale about power and justice, and looks great¹²³ in the telling, Black Summer is for you. Recommended.

1. Also includes gory. [↩]
2. Also includes explodey. [↩]
3. Also includes Bamm-Bamm. Just look for it. [↩]

• 1970: Liquid crystal watches go on market
• 1971: CAT scan
• 1972: Pocket calculator
• 1973: Car airbags
• 1974: Barcodes on supermarket products
• 1975: Birth of the home computer (various now-extinct manufacturers)
• 1976: VHS and Betamax
• 1977: First complete genetic structure of an organism found (Great Britain)
• 1977: First flight of the Space Shuttle
• 1977: First commercial flight of supersonic Concorde between New York, Paris, London
• 1977: USA admits testing Neutron Bomb
• 1977: Trans-Alaska Pipeline starts oil flowing Prudhoe Bay to Valdez
• 1978: Louise Brown born (first In Vitro Fertilization “Test Tube” baby)
• 1979: Graphical User Interface developed at XEROX PARC (led to Macintosh, Windows)

At the Drive-In:

• 1970: Colossus, the Forbin Project
• 1971: A Clockwork Orange
• 1972: Silent Running
• 1973: Soylent Green, West World
• 1974: Young Frnakenstein, Zardoz
• 1975: A Boy and His Dog, Rollberball, The Stepford Wives
• 1976: Logan’s Run, King Kong
• 1977: Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Wizards
• 1978: Superman: The Movie, The Lord of the Rings
• 1979: Alien, Mad Max, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Time After Time

On Television:

• 1970: Jon Pertwee becomes the Fourth Third Doctor
• 1971: All in the Family and The Electric Company debut
• 1972: Sanford and Son, Emergency!, M*A*S*H*, and Are You Being Served? debut
• 1973: The Six Million Dollar Man debuts
• 1974: Happy Days, Shazam!, Little House on the Prarie, Chico and the Man, and Nova debut
• 1975: Barney Miller, Welcome Back Kotter, Space: 1999, Fawlty Towers, Wonder Woman, and Saturday Night Live debut
• 1976: The Olympics draw one billion viewers
• 1977: Eight is Enough, The Amazing Spider Man, Soap, CHiPs, and The Love Boat debut
• 1978: Blake’s 7, The Incredible Hulk, Dallas, Battle of the Planets, Taxi, WKRP, Mork & Mindy, and Battlestar Galactica debut
• 1979: The Dukes of Hazzard, You Can’t Do That On Television, The Facts of Life, Benson, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Scooby and Scrappy Doo, Spider-Woman, and This Old House debut

Nebula Award Novels for the 1970s:

• 1970: Ringworld by Larry Niven
• 1971: A Time of Changes by Robert Silverberg
• 1972: The Gods Themselves by Issac Asimov
• 1973: Rendezvous with Rama by Arther C. Clarke
• 1974: The Dispossessed by Ursula K. LeGuin
• 1975: The Forever War by Joe Haldeman
• 1976: Man Plus by Frederick Pohl
• 1977: Gateway by Frederick Pohl
• 1978: Dreamsnake by Vonda K. McIntrye
• 1979: The Foundations of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

1. The type of perspective made infamous by the Total Perspective Vortex [↩]