Check out this app: BookVibe

bookvibe.com

By Alex Dalenberg

July 28, 2013 

Here's an app that not only manages to make sense of Twitter, but also generates great reading recommendations: BookVibe.  

What BookVibe does is simple. It pulls together tweets about books from the people you follow on Twitter. Connect your account and BookVibe bubbles up tweets about new books, old books, any books really. What makes it more powerful than a search is that the app can tell when people are talking about  a book in way that implies a recommendation. Similar to LinkedIn, you can also follow thought leaders who are tweeting about books, like famous authors and business leaders. If you see a recommendation you like, a link takes you to more information about the book.

All in all, it's a pretty amazing way to surface conversations about culture. You can see how the technology could be applied to movies, plays, fashion and other products. Of course, the real business upside here is what BookVibe (developed by a company called Parakweet) can tell brands about social media chatter. I've seen a lot of low-cost tools that attempt to measure how actual humans are talking about a product or company (something called sentiment analysis) and this is one of the best by far.

But for our book blog purposes, BookVibe is just a neat way to tap into literary chatter on social media without having to spend time digging through lists or timelines. The other ingenious trick is the way it turns Twitter (at least while you're using the app) into a social network for discussing books. There are whole communities on the Web dedicated to this (GoodReads, for example), but they require setting up a new profile, finding your friends and then remembering to use it. BookVibe takes the social network you already have in place and helps you use it for something new. 

Check it out. 

Filmmakers: Please stop ruining classic franchises by throwing money at them

From the Dalenberg Library of Antique Popular Literature, this is the Ballantine paperback edition of A Princess of Mars that I cut my teeth on in my science fictional formative years. The Mars novels were reprinted in 11 volumes starting in 1963.  These covers (from the mid-1970’s printings) by Gino D’Achille have always been my favorite complete series of the novels.  The movie John Carter borrows a bit of its look from these particular paperback covers. 

By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.

July 15, 2013

Two eagerly anticipated films from Disney, two baffling box office flops: John Carter and The Lone Ranger.

So what went wrong? Both of them were highly entertaining films, both should have a long life on Netflix. But they polarized their audience, a few patrons loving them, and many either hating them or not bothering to show up. 

Why do we, at a blog about antique popular literature, care if Disney movies flop?  Because it isn’t that often that literature we are really passionate about (in this case, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars series) gets a shot at the big screen. And in the case of The Lone Ranger, we care because No. 1: it’s a western; No 2: it’s about an iconic American hero, star of radio, newspaper comics, and the silver screen; and No. 3: because it has Johnny Depp sans pirates, and we’ve loved him since he was Edward Scissorhands. 

We care because John Carter should have been a franchise, and now that Disney screwed it up, we won’t get to see more installments. We care because we’d like to see Johnny Depp get back to demonstrating his real dramatic talents (he used to do interesting art films, like Chocolat) and not just mugging for the camera in strange make-up and funny hats. 

In the end, it probably doesn’t matter to the individual filmgoer whether a movie is a hit or not. I met a woman recently who said that Howard the Duck, one of the more notorious flops in Hollywood history, was her favorite movie when she was 4 years old.  I personally have delighted in movies that my entire family hated. For instance, I happen to like Alicia Silverstone, and I was thoroughly enthralled by her film Excess Baggage—but my family felt like they had been dragged through a bad experience going to see it, and does anybody out there besides me even remember that movie these days? 

But it is sad to see a couple of good movies—these two Disney products in particular—get panned as flops, when they are actually pretty darn good. Trends in Hollywood are fickle. If you like Westerns, you are justified in your concern that a huge budget Western flop may have a chilling effect on Hollywood’s desire to do Westerns for awhile. If you are a pulp magazine era science fiction fan, it is painful to see an Edgar Rice Burroughs story that you’ve waited to be on the big screen since your childhoods go down in flames, financially speaking. 

So what went wrong? Three things, really.  No. 1: Trying to make blockbuster hits out of 80-year old material that most of the audience doesn’t know about or care about; No. 2: Failing to target the audience that does know about and/or care about the source material; and No. 3: Out-of-control production budgets that doomed the films to failure before they ever opened. 

Regarding No. 1: John Carter was based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “A Princess of Mars”, which would have been a better title for the movie. I met people who couldn’t remember the name of the film, because it was just some dude’s common name. If they’d kept Mars in the title, at least they could have attracted people who were interested in movies about outer space or Martians. The movie was released in the 100th anniversary year of the novel’s first publication. The last time it was revived to big paperback sales was during the Burroughs’ revival of the 1960s and early 1970s. How are you going to get teenage ticket buyers interested in that?  Likewise, The Lone Ranger was a radio show starting in 1933, and the last time he was popular was during his successful run on television from 1949 to 1957. Hollywood can make old action heroes cool for a new generation. Witness Sherlock Holmes and the X-Men, but it isn’t easy. 

Regarding No. 2:  I loved John Carter partially because I had waited for it all of my life.  When I read the books at age 14, I imagined how I would film it; who I would cast; what camera angles I would use. The costuming, the flying ships, everything in the film, are made to look like it was lifted from an old Buck Rogers movie serial. In every respect, the film is wonderful for the 40/50 year-old men who grew up reading paperback reprints of the Burroughs’ novels. Even the Princess herself, looking a little too old and little too dressed (Burroughs depicted her a bit more naked), appeals to middle-aged men and definitely not to a teen audience. And yet, the film was budgeted so generously that it would have had to be one of the biggest hits of the century to turn a profit, which of necessity requires a teen audience. The Lone Ranger has the same set of problems. He was already a memory when I was a kid, and I’m 52 years old. 

Finally, regarding No. 3:  Both of these films had rumored production budgets of about $275 million. Factoring in the cost of prints and advertising, that’s probably another $175 million. If you consider that a common rule of thumb in Hollywood is to regard a film as financially successful if it brings in two times the production budget, then the math clearly shows that both of these films were almost certainly doomed to failure before they even opened. Both of these films could have been made for easily one-third of their actual price tag and been just as good or better. The old silent movie comedians filmed exploits on trains that were every bit as exciting and fun as the shenanigans in this version of The Lone Ranger, and they did it on a shoestring budget.

The economics of Hollywood filmmaking is screwed up. Ever since the first Tim Burton Batman movie, which paid off with a big opening after a clever advertising build-up, Hollywood has been planning for the next huge blockbuster with the giant record-breaking opening. But there have been more miscalculations than hits. This notion, that every new event picture has to have the biggest opening of all time, has completely distorted the funding process of Hollywood movies, led to bloated budgets and cost over-runs and a string of major disappointments. The films would have been better if they hadn’t been made to collapse under the weight of trying once again to be the biggest event of all time. It simply doesn’t make any sense to have a production budget so high that a film needs to make a half billion dollars before it breaks even. 

Still, I like these two films. They may be maligned today, but they’ll probably have long afterlives streaming on the Web. The crazy thing is that, despite being a huge embarrassment for Disney financially, millions of people have already enjoyed John Carter since its release in June of 2012. The bizarre economics of Hollywood declared it a failure, but according to www.the-numbers.com it’s already made $280 million worldwide. If a book sold that much, it would be a huge bestseller. If a music album sold that much, it would be a multiple platinum release.  Is there hope yet for a sequel? 

This still from the 1956 Warner Brothers movie of The Lone Ranger features Clayton Moore as The Lone Ranger and Jay Silverheels as Tonto, the duo that has been most identified with the roles.  Interestingly, the movie was in theaters while the series was still on television.  

Not easy being Superboy

manofsteel.warnerbros.com

By Dale D. Dalenberg, M.D.

July 2, 2013

The new film Man of Steel (Warner Bros., 2013) gives us a re-imagined Superman who is entirely welcome in the already crowded universe of fine interpretations of this most super of all super-heroes. Henry Cavill as Clark Kent/Kal-El fills the shoes of the great Christopher Reeve more than anyone could have predicted. He is innocent, honest, buff, and he leaves us wanting more. 

The film does suffer from the malady that cripples most science fiction epics these days— namely, a surfeit of special effects, flashing lights, and explosions that are so far over-the-top they would make most films mind-numbingly dull. But in this case, the film is saved from decaying into mere glitz because there is a great science fiction rationale for most of the mayhem (Kryptonian exile General Zod finding his way to Earth and attempting to terraform our planet into a new Krypton, a storyline that definitely calls for noisy devastation on a world-wide scale).

The new Superman is portrayed with an emphasis on the fact that he was originally a space alien. This Superman grows up disturbed with the emergence of his powers, trying to reconcile his alien-ness with the fact that he was raised up with a wholesome childhood on a Kansas farm. Classic Superman comics don’t spend much time on this aspect of Superman. But myths evolve.  Man of Steel was made for a generation that is accustomed to the travails of the X-Men as they developed from freak teenagers to super-heroes, a generation who watched Superman grow up during a decade of Smallville on TV. 

DC Comics came late to an exploration of the inner psyche of super-heroes. This used to be the sole province of Marvel Comics. Peter Parker as Spider-man always doubting himself; the Incredible Hulk as Jekyll & Hyde anti-hero; the Thing from the Fantastic Four hating what he had become. When it comes to the DC Universe, one could argue that Batman needed to be on the psychiatrist’s couch before any other super-hero.  Batman’s entire existence is based on a vendetta over the death of his parents. He is profoundly disturbed, and at times disturbing.  Comic writers began to figure that out in the 1970’s, and finally, today, many Batman stories are very dark, even to the point where the police can’t ever seem to figure out whether he is a good guy or not. By comparison, Superman has always been a good guy. Ok, so there was that one Superman movie with Christopher Reeve where he got unshaven and ran around the world doing bad things, like straightening the leaning tower of Pisa — but he went good again and put everything back right in the end. With Man of Steel (fresh on the heels of the Smallville saga, and borrowing liberally from that perspective of the young Superman), the young Kal-El gets a very well fleshed-out backstory, and the take-home lesson is that being Superboy is not all that much fun. 

This portrayal of Superman in his childhood as an X-Men-style child-freak learning to adapt to his super-powers, tormented by having to keep them secret, is definitely a modern take on the legend.  It is fun to look back at previous interpretations of the Superboy aspect of Superman.  To that end, we at the Dalenberg Library of Antique Popular Literature offer up a few Superboy depictions from the past, all from the collection:

 Adventure Comics #200 from 1954 below shows Superboy running off to Africa to save the apes from illegal trappers.  In these classic comics, Superboy stories were supposed to be “the adventures of Superman when he was a boy.”  But there really wasn’t much to distinguish the adult Superman from the boy Superman except how he was drawn by the artists.  He was just a miniature Superman.  He got a little more boy-like in a few more issues, when they introduced Krypto the Super-Dog in Adventure Comics #210.

Later, Superboy left the pages of Adventure Comics to appear in his own title.  Superboy #148 is a typical storyline, with Superboy once again saving his adoptive parents Jonathan and Martha Kent from certain death. 

This is the splash page from The Adventures of Superman #500 (1993) that introduced the modern Superboy.  He debuted as a brash and generally unlikable teenager who was one of the 4 pretenders to the Superman identity after the famous Death of Superman storyline.  This Superboy was a clone of Superman produced by a secret government laboratory, although various storylines over the years have given various accounts of where the genetic material came from and added further complexities to the story. 

This 1903 story paper gives a rare look into basketball's early days

Tip Top Weekly No. 361 (March 14, 1903) – Dick Merriwell’s older brother Frank was the flagship character of this long-running weekly, but this issue features Dick as captain of the Yale basketball team.  In the course of the story, Dick saves the day (and the game) when he discovers that the water in the training room has been drugged with a mysterious white powder that is causing his players to play drunkenly.  When everybody stops drinking the water, they sober up enough to claim a victory.  

By Dale D. Dalenberg, MD

June 2, 2013 

Tip Top Weekly was a popular five-cent story paper for boys published by the venerable Street & Smith, which was just beginning its run as the preeminent powerhouse of pulp magazine publishing when this dime novel came out in 1903. Tip Top Weekly ran from 1896 to 1912, and then with various title changes survived until 1916. The Dalenberg Library of Antique Popular Literature owns a couple hundred of the over 800 issues that were published. The stories run the gamut from school intrigues to detective stories to wild west adventures, but a majority of issues feature the fictional Merriwell brothers, Frank and Dick, in their sporting exploits.  

A large number of Tip Tops feature baseball or football covers, a smaller number feature hockey or boxing or fencing or a kind of polo played with hockey-like sticks on roller skates. The rarest sports covers in the Tip Top series are basketball covers. These are especially priceless because they depict the sport in its infancy, but already established as a major collegiate enterprise.  

Basketball was invented by James Naismith in December, 1891. This 1903 dime novel cover provides a glimpse into the game as it had evolved over 11 years and 3 months. The original game used soccer balls and peach baskets that were tacked to the railing 10 feet high (the same height as today) under the gym balcony. The backboard was created to prevent fans in the balcony from interfering with the ball in play. The original backboards were made of chicken wire. Many of the online sources we found name 1904 as the year colleges adopted wooden backboards, but this Tip Top cover clearly shows a wooden backboard being used by March, 1903. Otherwise, this cover demonstrates the placement of the basket that had been standard since 1891. The rectangular target on the backboard didn’t come in until later. Also, the practice of placing the backboard on a pole 2 feet in from the end of the court was adopted later.  

Our Tip Top cover, both the color cover (if you look closely) and the back cover, demonstrate the stitching on this early basketball, much like the lacing on a football. The ball depicted on this cover is a regulation Spalding basketball. Spalding removed the stitching and gave the ball more bounce in 1929. At the time of this Tip Top cover in 1903, dribbling was not part of the game of basketball yet, and therefore the bounce in the ball wasn’t as important. The game in 1903 relied mostly on passing and shooting. Colleges had amended the basketball rules in 1901 to allow the player to bounce the ball once, but if they bounced it, they had to pass it before anyone could shoot it.  Dribbling and shooting from the dribble didn’t come in until 1909.

The back cover of Tip Top Weekly No 361 clearly demonstrates how far basketball had come as a sport in the 11 years and 3 months since it was invented by James Naismith.  If your team won this contest they could be outfitted with all the gear—a ball, running trunks, armless jerseys, basketball shoes and stockings.  

The most obvious thing on the 1903 Tip Top cover that stands out as a difference from modern basketball is the closed net.  The original nets were peach baskets, and someone had to climb up a ladder to retrieve the ball after every basket. With the advent of wire or nylon nets, you could poke a pole through the net and knock the ball back out. Nylon nets with open bottoms became standard in 1912. After the ball could fall through the net, it greatly speeded up the game.

In fact, one of the things that stands out in the story-line in Tip Top No. 361 is how low-scoring the basketball game is. If you look at the history of basketball, one thing that stands out is that many of the rule changes have been designed to make the game more exciting, speed it up, eliminate stalling tactics. There’s actually a monument to the 24-second shot clock in Syracuse which held the first scrimmage game to feature the new rule in 1954.

School for Speculative Fiction

By Alex Dalenberg

June 16, 2013 

Sure, we touch on science fiction and fantasy here on the blog, but if you're interested in some rigorous backgrounding, I came across an interesting looking class that just got started at  Coursera.

It's called Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World, taught by University of Michigan professor Eric Rabkin who has published extensively on the topic.

If you're not familiar with Coursera, it's one of a handful of education startups that follows the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) model. For no charge, you can sign up and digitally sit in on university classes from the likes of Stanford, Yale and others designed for a Web audience.  

Interestingly, Rabkin — at least according to his online bio — was the first professor to offer a writing-intensive MOOC.

Here's the course description.

Fantasy is a key term both in psychology and in the art and artifice of humanity. The things we make, including our stories, reflect, serve, and often shape our needs and desires. We see this everywhere from fairy tale to kiddie lit to myth; from "Cinderella" to Alice in Wonderland to Superman; from building a fort as a child to building ideal, planned cities as whole societies. Fantasy in ways both entertaining and practical serves our persistent needs and desires and illuminates the human mind. Fantasy expresses itself in many ways, from the comfort we feel in the godlike powers of a fairy godmother to the seductive unease we feel confronting Dracula. From a practical viewpoint, of all the fictional forms that fantasy takes, science fiction, from Frankenstein to Avatar, is the most important in our modern world because it is the only kind that explicitly recognizes the profound ways in which science and technology, those key products of the human mind, shape not only our world but our very hopes and fears. This course will explore Fantasy in general and Science Fiction in specific both as art and as insights into ourselves and our world. 

Might be worth checking out.