Tell me something you love about SF/F

[marydell]

Books, comics, teevee, movies, games, artwork - what's something wonderful - a work or a moment -  you've seen or read that makes you feel good?  What did you love about it?

Here are a few of mine: 

In Elfquest, the Hidden Years, when Cutter and Rayek have a big fight, Cutter forces Rayek to face the damage he's done by sharing a mental image of his family when it was intact.  It's Cutter, Skywise, Leetah, and the kids Ember and Suntop (or whateverthehell his name was/is), all asleep naked together in a heap.  It's a beautiful image of love and a family that's entirely comfortable with each other and functional.  I love this because my world and my life are so much not about being comfortable.

In Larry Niven's story Neutron Star, the narrator escapes a certain death by smart analysis of his circumstances.  I read this story when I was an adolescent and it helped me to understand the value of thinking carefully when the situation is particularly dire.

Francois Schuiten's amazing book-related poster series. I ran across "The Last Pages" in a comic shop and snapped it up; it's now got a central spot in my living room. It's evocative of so many stories and questions about stories.  How did he get up there? What is the book? Is civilization over? Etc.  I'm also deeply intrigued by "Vol de Nuit." 

In The Matrix, when Trinity runs around the walls and then kicks the shit out of everybody. I love me some badass women.

Speaking of which, Princess Leia came into my life when I was 12.

In Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man, there is an advertising jingle so catchy it's illegal.

In Neuromancer, Molly's glasses are implanted into her face.  Wearing glasses can be badass! WOO!

In They Live: "I'm here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass, and I'm all out of bubblegum." 

In Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In The Sky, the moment where we discover [jung gur genafyngbef unir ernyyl orra hc gb] is extremely awesome.  So is the concept of focus.

Donato; Just...everything, but the link goes to a page where you can see a painting go through its stages.

Neil Gaiman's Sandman.  I like most things about this, but the overall feeling of gloom and beautiful woe is what I really love.

Speaking of woe: Sephiroth.  Aeris. The first time a game left me gaping in disbelief. (Spoiler video here--Final Fantasy VII)

Beauty by Ruth Thomson. Per the artist's husband, who works the booth at Wizard World, this image is a portrait of Sleeping Beauty after her long-sleep ordeal; now she's too freaked out to sleep so she wanders around her overgrown castle in a daze. I have a print of this in my bedroom. 

What about you?  (Avoid spoilers! - rot-13, hide, or vague 'em up, please.)

Comments

[alasdair1076.livejournal.com]

In The Abyss, the moment where, having temporarily stopped the rig from collapsing, Lindsay sits down next to Bud, who is fast asleep. He starts snoring, she, absently, says 'turn over Virgil' and he does so.

In The Day The Earth Caught Fire, the opening where Peter Stenning arrives at work to file what may be the last story ever written.

In The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the dolphin musical number.

In Dark Season, the reason why Marcie carries a paddle.

In Sneakers, the entire closing scene but in particular the line 'The young lady with the uzi...is she single?'

[gailmom.livejournal.com]

I love Ruth Thompson's Howl (it's actually pictured below Beauty in the link you gave). I collect art, and I could list pages, but I won't. :P Basically, if it has a woman who gives me the impression she is strong and independent, esp if she is in the woods, I'm all over it. :D

I also really loved the Pern series as a pre-teen and have the entire collection now (including the choose your own adventure books and the People of Pern etc books that go with it--and the board game) I can't wait till my kids are old enough to read them.

I read Romance of Atlantis so many times it fell apart and I had to search used book stores till I found another one. The philosophy and loneliness of the Empress always cause my heart to ache and brain to start whirling.

MJ Engh's Rainbow Man blew off the top of my head. The concept of what makes a woman and the treatise on religion, the distopia of this utopian world, and so many more concepts I can't comment on without leaning toward spoilers....there was a lot to think about for a book with only 253 page book.

The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman. I can't comment, it would all be spoilers, but this one is WELL worth reading. *shivers*

Child of the Northern Spring by Persia Woolley. The first "let's take another look at a woman of history" book I ever read. It's Guinevere, but as we don't usually see her, a child on her way to womanhood, before she became part of the Camelot legend. This one I'm shoving in my daughters' hands as soon as I think they can focus long enough. :)

I was just recently introduced to The Kushiel series by Jacqueline Carey. Wow!! The language is so beautiful....

I love me some Spider Robinson (Lady slings the booze!) and Terry Pratchett (discworld!). I adored Lord of the Rings (and learned to write in one of the languages while in high school...wish I still had that skill--lol).

I worked my way through tons of scifi/fantasy as a kid (and continued the process as an adult) but I always love one that turns out to be more than I expected. More beautiful, more thought provoking, more engaging, more intelligent. I'm sure I could go on for pages, but those are the few that popped into my head as soon as I started reading your list.

I like to think that what one reads, even as brain candy to distract you from the bruises of reality, shapes you. If that's the case, I've been shaped by strong women, small people on adventures, and witty characters who aren't afraid to speak. I like to think that's been a good thing! :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

In Galaxy Quest, the bits with the fankids. "I knew it!" and the blonde girl's happy bounce at the end. And the way they are taking pure ridiculousness and making goodness and meaning out of it: that is what we do.

All of Terry Pratchett's Wintersmith. He doesn't know me, but everyone who knows me and knows that book sees how it is mineminemine.

Octavia Butler's "The Evening and the Morning and the Night" rang my heart like a bell, and not everyone who knows me sees that right away.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

In Stephen Brust's The Paths of the Dead, when the Mica, the servant of one of the first generation of heroes, explains to Lar, the servant of one of the second generation of heroes, how useful a barstool can be in combat (in language reminiscent of Dumas, which was the intent of the entire series).

The denouement of Watchmen, and Ozymandias really cool genre-savvy speech.

The history, weight, nostalgia, and sheer awesomeness that is summed up in the word "Shazam!".

The moment in "The Orphanage," when the ghosts show up to play Red Light, Green Light (not the actual game, but the Spanish equivalent) with their friend who is now an adult.

In Aaron Allston's Doc Sidhe, the fight between the main character, Harrison Greene, and the mastermind's main heavies, and how the willingness to break a genre convention makes one fight really cool and how a little preparedness makes the other fight an excellent revenge for an earlier death.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

The central relationship in The Left Hand of Darkness. Le Guin can write about love in a way that few manage.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Just a few...

In Turtledove's How Few Remain, when Lincoln walks into Sorge's printshop.

In LeGuin's A Wizard of Earthsea, the moment when I figure out exactly what Vetch looks like.

In LeGuin's The Dispossessed, when the crowd around Shevek falls silent to listen to him singing the revolutionary anthem.

In Tobias Buckell's Crystal Rain, because he names a coastal village Brungstung, and my first job out of university was in Brown's Town (pronounced locally Brungstung), Jamaica. The actual Brown's Town is inland, however.

And, I had to add the black servant, Stephen, in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, achieving the unusual position he ends up in, and beginning the task of setting matters in that place to rights.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Do you mean Vetch or Ged? His appearance is the first thing you learn about him, but it's how Ged's physical appearance gets mentioned for the first time. I love that as well, it's a really masterly way of handling the subject. And are you as infuriated as the rest of us about how that issue was treated in the films (which I steadfastly refuse to watch)?

[marydell.livejournal.com]

Le Guin wrote a good essay (http://slate.com/id/2111107/) about how pissed off she was about the whitewashing of her characters.

I couldn't watch the miniseries because it started off with some kind of ridiculousness about priestesses keeping an ancient power confined, or something. I bailed before the first scene was over, because it obviously had nothing to do with actual Earthsea. Also, Lana Lang as Tenar.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I know, I've read it, she's got it on her website. Basically, she got screwed. I bet they buggered up the love story, too. It's great to see a writer speaking out against that sort of thing, especially a writer who handles it so sensitively in her work and is completely aware of her position as a white author speaking for non-white peoples. I love the way that in The Left Hand of Darkness Genly Ai is black, which on the earth we live in is what would make him stand out and be disadvantaged in many societies. But on Gethen, it's his gender - completely normal to us - which makes him the alien, and the simple matter of his height that makes him stand out in a crowd. I've occasionally talked with elfbystarlight about what a wonderful film LH would make if it was done really well, with the fabulous eis und schnee setting and the oral tradition of myths and the exquisite subtlety of the relationships, and how unutterably appallingly it would most likely get treated. Hermaphrodites from outer space having monthly orgies!

I now have to stop and squeal a great deal, because my mother has just sent me a photo of me, aged about seven, dressed up as a mermaid for a fancy dress competition, including a plastic lobster on a lead. Also I have to scan it in and show it off, and then perhaps leave it on ghost_of_a_flea's noticeboard for him to find when he gets in from work.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Not Ged, I'd worked out early enough that people in the Archipelago weren't white. Vetch, however, is black.

I was deeply angered at the way the SciFi Channel handled the series. Nothing but white people in a world the author specifically made predominantly non-white -- so much so that the white Kargads stood out for their whiteness -- that was more than a bit much.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I was just a bit confused as you said "figure out", which made me think it was something you need to deduce, and we're explicitly told that Vetch is black within a line or so of meeting him. I honestly can't remember when I worked out that Ged wasn't white, whether it was the Kargad attack early on (and I envisaged them as Vikings, who would stand out against a number of ethnic groups, not just those with darker skin), or more likely when Le Guin drops it in that he's red-brown and starts creating a background for the pattern of skin colouration in the Archipelago.

The way the SciFi channel handled the series sounded appalling in so many ways, but the whitewashing must undoubtedly be the worst. OK, she didn't make the series specifically about race in the way that Left Hand is about gender, but it's still an important feature and one that should not be screwed with. I bet they'd make Genly Ai white if they filmed Left Hand, too, come to that, and it would be on a similar level of unacceptability. I've a feeling the Gethenians in Left Hand most closely resemble Inuit from the descriptions, but I could be extrapolating from their lifestyle by mistake.

It's not so much that race is a non-issue in many of Le Guin's worlds, it's that she's deliberately showing us a society in which it is a non-issue, instead of assuming whiteness as a norm. In the one book of hers that I can think of offhand where it's a major issue, Four Ways to Forgiveness, she reverses the hierarchy so that the "dusties" are the slaves and the darker-skinned you are, the higher your status. Also she makes their skin tones blue-tinged instead of pink-tinged, which leads to some odd cover art.

[fledgist.livejournal.com]

Sorry for causing confusion.

LeGuin has fairly consistently been good about making race either irrelevant, or, when it is important, reversing our expectations.

[viorica8957.livejournal.com]

The sense of family and community in Firefly

The gorgeously evocative language in Waking the Moon

The celebration of female strength in Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters Trilogy

The sense of whimsy in Doctor Who and the bisexual representation in Torchwood

The worldbuilding in Perfect Creature

Kitty's character arc and the cliche-avertion in Carrie Vaughan's Kitty Norville series.

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

The characters I've loved: Spock, Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, everyone in Firefly

Avon's acid tongue in Blakes Seven ("I'm not expendable, I'm not stupid, and I'm not going") Clever writing and story arc a generation before Babylon 5.

The way T2's face comes out of the back of his head in a fight, when bouncing off that wall and turning around would have been slower.

Morpheus' choice of messenger to Lucifer, and the way the King of Dreams gets out of Hell again later. Gentle Death.

The way that all of the landscapes I read about influenced my view of the forests I spent time in as an adolescent. At times it was Lothlorien, at times Mirkwood, at times the Land by Steven R Donaldson, at times Sherwood Forest.

The people I've met reading it, watching it, discussing it.

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

Thank you, by the way, for posting this thread.

[marydell.livejournal.com]

You're welcome! A bit of bread-breaking, I hope.

[etumukutenyak.livejournal.com]

The Frank Frazetta covers on the old Conan books -- I used to stare at them and drink in the details before I read the books.

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Shattered Chain trilogy, for opening my eyes when I needed to see.

The very first Star Wars movie, in 1977, from the opening credits onwards.

Fallen Angels, by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Michael Flynn, for recreating the sense of wonder that space flight brought, and the interconnectedness of Fandom.

*points to icon*

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima!

"In Western lands beneath the Sun, the flowers may rise in Spring..."

"I am no man!"

"We are starstuff, the universe made manifest." and the entire speech leading up to "God sent me." But I could quote Babylon 5 all day.

"I aim to misbehave."

"Tenar!"

"Big lush women and small slight men in our society go through life wrapped around a softball-sized chunk of pain; it breaks some of them and makes others magnificent." (More the sentiment than the moment, but yes.)

"You're all clear kid, now let's blow this joint and go home!"

[kouredios.livejournal.com]

The Classics geek references in Tam Lin.

The notion that one could Impress a dragon.

The Litany against Fear.

The Dream of a Thousand Cats

That Ten is a Harry Potter fanboy.

[jry.livejournal.com]

The bit in, I think, Heavenly Breakfast where someone gets taught how to focus past the bushes and see the world beyond from all the visible fragments.

Also Delany, from The Fall of the Towers with the game of tossing rocks or coins or something so that they land in a specific location and how it was hard for the humans and trivially easy for the aliens with their different flavor of perception.

Almost everything about the Borderlands books.

The poetry of A Wizard of Earthsea

The way Spider Robinson unfailingly persists in having the most unlikely people save the world in the most unlikely ways.

The protagonist of Emma Bull's Bone Dance

The appalling first couple of chapters of Fledgling

Kids building a spaceship in their back yard in Eleanor Cameron's The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet

Kids building a spaceship in their back yard in John Varley's Red Thunder

China Mountain Zhang

and a million other things.

[sysrae.livejournal.com]

The epilogue to the first Assassin book by Robin Hobb, where we learn how Fitz survived drowning and paralysis in the mountain pools: because Nosy, the beloved dog he'd thought dead for years, had remembered they were puppies together, and saved him, sinking his teeth into Fitz's hand to pull him out and bursting his old heart with the effort.

The fact that it's Neville, and not Harry, Ron or Hermoine, who wins Gryffindor the house cup at the end of the Philosopher's Stone.

'I am a leaf on the wind. Watch how I - '

The letter/prison sequence in V for Vendetta.

At the end of the Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex TV series, the sacrifice of the Tachikomas to save Batou.

Mowgli crying, and asking Bagheera if they mean he's dying, and Bagheera replying, 'No, they are only tears, such as men make.' And then, when he's grown into adulthood, Mowgli farewelling blind Baloo, Bagheera, Grey Brother and old Kaa, while they sing the Outsong of the Jungle.

Wu Shengyang in The Gone-Away World, and the victory of the Voiceless Dragon.

The scenes between Sansa Stark and Sandor Clegane in A Song of Ice and Fire.

To name but a few :)

[readinggeek451]

The sheer goofiness of so much of Doctor Who: "Be careful, he's not as foolish as he seems." "My dear, no one could be as foolish as *he* seems."

The treatment of religion in Babylon 5, especially G'Kar and Delenn.

All of Babylon 5.

I once read a review of Tam Lin that complained, among other things, that college wasn't really like that. To which I reply, no but it should have been.

And many more too numerous to mention (or even remember).

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

The religious stuff, more specifically how it applied to the Minbari, in Babylon 5 would have impressed me a lot more if they hadn't failed to show a single member of the worker caste in a whopping five seasons. The G'Kar thing was better.

[readinggeek451]

I was thinking more of (Delenn's explanations of) the Minbari view of the universe. Which I can now not quote a word of.

Yes, the absence of worker caste (except as members of the Grey Council) is problematic.

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

We were told that they were members of the Grey Council, but I don't think one of them ever lifted their hood, let alone spoke. Which made it worse. I really can't respect any culture practising that level of oppression. Yes, Delenn was nice, but going on about "we stand between the candle and the star" while gazing at a perspex triangle just didn't do it for me, I'm afraid.

G'Kar got rather Jewish at times, which interested me since it's the last thing I expected.

[readinggeek451]

Not the "we stand between the candle and the star." Something about us (sentient beings) being bits of the universe trying to figure itself out? (Told you I couldn't quote it. But it made a big impression on me at the time.)

We're obviously not going to agree. Which is fine. I just wish I felt as if I were explaining myself better. :)

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

I'm probably making it sound like I hated Delenn. I didn't, I mostly really liked her, and while the low-budget mysticism irritated me from time to time, there were a lot of things she said and did that I definitely approved of and enjoyed. It was more that I felt a growing dissatisfaction with the Minbari culture, which they often presented as if it were a model of perfection, especially the religious caste. The worker caste was an absence, and that's harder to talk about and judge, but compare it to the absence of Asian actors in Firefly. Both clearly should be there from the context that's been set up, so they don't really have an excuse for not being there.

It gave me that sense you get in SF novels where someone has created a world but not thought through all the practicalities, such as in Woman on the Edge of Time where they show a culture with three parents per child, don't appear to have more than one child per triad, and don't appear to have any problems with plummeting population levels. (Also they have optional military service, to be undertaken when you felt emotionally ready for it, despite being at war long-term, which was just plain loopy.) I'm a practical person, and I like my imagined worlds to be complete and to hang together. You first get introduced to the religious caste in B5, and they're interesting but they can't all be like that, so you start wondering who's actually running the planet. Then the warrior caste pops up, mostly as a foil to the religious caste since the Minbari are not involved in continuous warfare. The worker caste are mentioned somewhere along the way, but you never see anything of them, they're completely invisible. And this troubled me. It's even odder because B5 examined the issues of assumed privilege and systems of oppression with the Narn/Centauri situation.

Also I was pissed off by what happened with Lennier, but I'm getting spoilerific now so should shush. Let me just say that the knight pining after the unattainable lady trope always rubs me up the wrong way.

[readinggeek451]

To clarify, now that I've had more chance to think about it, I wasn't talking about the religious caste. That's political, and I agree with you about the political setup.

But the Minbari view of the universe as explicated by Delenn really got to me--in a good way--when I heard it. Maybe I'm just susceptible to low-budget mysticism. :)

(And I agree with you about Lennier, on all counts. I guess we're not so far apart after all.)

[klgaffney.livejournal.com]

you quoted They Live! *flaps hands at you* we used to quote that all the time, but nobody we used it on knew what the hell we were talking about. =D

*ahem*

wow, i don't even remember exactly what age i was when i saw star wars in the theater, but i remember darth vader's entrance and just staring up at him in complete and total awe. [i really wish i'd never seen the prequels.]

the princess bride: for being the single most quotable movie outside of the holy grail. "anybody want a peanut?" and the book too, for being not better or worse than the movie, merely different, and still lovable, in it's bitter and cynical, and blatant abuse of parenthesis.

pan's labyrinth: *flail* that movie is indescribable. the story itself, the setting, the use of color editing, framing, the creativity involved. the ending. Oof.

the riddick chronicles: "i will kill you with this teacup."

aliens: "get away from her, you bitch!" i loved ripley so, SO much in that movie.

...and robocop. just because. "i'll buy that for a dollar!"

hmm. i'll add a few books too. harry harrison's hammer and cross series introduced me to the concept of AU, altho i did get a bit tired of his hero.

this was followed up by a distinctly feminist treatment of a similar idea in donna gillespie's the light bearer, which, while slightly less of a big splashy AU, is still filed under AU in my brain, because of the idealization involved. i did love tho, that the romans were not held up as superior--which was pretty revolutionary in fic, given western civilization's tendency to put all things greco-roman on an unexamined pedestal.

vinge's cat books: the first one, cat's paw, in particular--which featured a mixed street kid as an mc, that i didn't feel unduly glamorized the issue, or glossed over the hard and broken parts. i GOT him.

charles de lint's short stories: *flail* the way they stand alone, the way they interweave slightly, as a narrative, the way you can see the city they take place in. he does not write a generic urban fantasy novel. there is so much love for his city and his characters, and he seems to know a thing or two about the myths and folklore he's re-spinning, too. again, it's hard to pick anyone thing out without context.

madeleine l'engle's a wrinkle in time series: for being an indispensible part of my childhood and making my love of science the most reasonable, natural, and normal thing in the world. every time i see the word mitochondria, something that vaguely resembles a cross between a chinchilla and a gerbil comes to mind. =p

sir terry: inspiring in that he does his writing all in one universe and he manages pointed satire that also works on a pure sympathetic story level. again, having trouble singling out a single moment, per se.

u k guin's the dispossessed, for picking up where "brave new world" left off in my head and poking at utopia. whose idea of utopia, exactly...?

but yeah, i think most of the things on your list and most on the comments were pretty formative and/or awesome moments for me too, so i'm going to go down the route of animation:

i have distinct memories of being very young and sitting thru fantasia gleeful with anticipation just to get to "night on bald mountain/ave maria" [the whole concept of fantasia pwned me, but that was my absolute favorite bit.]

akira: which absolutely blew my mind and showed me life outside of disney and warner's. oh, the bike scene. i stared, i rewound it, i watched it a few more times. i'd never saw anything like it previously.

cowboy bebop: which reminded me that the ante could always be upped a bit. the homage to warner's batman: the animated series was amazing, but overall, again, the marriage of animation, music and characterization was FTW.

miyazaki's princess mononoke: with its gorgeous imagery and complex morality. "i will show you how to kill a god."

avatar: which managed a world that was both asian-based, that dispensed with the concept that there had to be a white teenage insert "to enable the american audience to relate," that lived and breathed in its own context and was AMAZING and showed that american entertainment can get actually deliver quality and still profit. [we won't discuss the live action movie, tho. ugh.]

[rikibeth.livejournal.com]

The actual Stardance scene in Spider and Jeanne Robinson's Stardance. It was glorious and soaring and gave me hope in bleak times when i was a teenager.

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

"Undeclared their little war".

"The Eagles are coming!"

"Why do you think we call him Skullsplitter?"

"I have a slight flaw in my character." (Or, "The worst damn mongrel in the history of the world.")

Tigana. All of it. Faith and commitment and a bone-deep love beyond all reason.

The moment in The Gates of Noon when we find out jub Ncr ernyyl vf.

"We are the Great Old Ones now."

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

May I ask what that last one's from? (I think I need to read/see whatever it is.)

-Nameseeker

[mirrorshard.livejournal.com]

That's from Ken MacLeod's Newton's Wake - refers in context to uploading/re-instancing, and the difficulty of predicting who might turn up in the memory banks. (Cf. The City and the Stars, of course.)

[tsubaki-ny.livejournal.com]

Oh my god, you just referenced my favorite ElfQuest panel -- one of the things that made that comic my lifelong favorite.

Not just the comic, but the exact PANEL. ;-D

[redrose3125.livejournal.com]

"All these moments, lost in time, like tears in the rain..."

"No man am I, but a woman"