The Top 50 greatest SF pioneers.
Moderator: Spectrum Strike Force
1. George Lucas
2. HG Wells
3. Gene Roddenberry
4. Steven Spielberg
5. Stan Lee
6. Ed Catmull & Steve Jobs
7. Chris Carter
8. Terry Nation
9. Gerry Anderson
10. Tim Burton
11. Philip K. Dick
12. JRR Tolkien
13. Stanley Kubrick
14. Joss Whedon
15. Sydney Newman
16. HR Giger
17. Osamu Tezuka
18. The Wachowskis
19. James Cameron
20. Douglas Adams
21. Arthur C. Clarke
22. M Night Shyamalan
23. Stan Winston
24. Jack Kirby
25. JK Rowling
26. John Carpenter
27. Isaac Asimov
28. Peter Jackson
29. Russell T. Davies
30. Sam Raimi
31. JM Straczynski
32. Nick Landau
33. Terry Pratchett
34. John Wyndham
35. Stephen King
36. Bram Stoker
37. Gary Gygax
38. Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster
39. Ridley Scott
40. Jules Verne
41. William Gibson
42. Bob Kane
43. Pat Mills
44. Fritz Lang
45. Neil Gaiman
46. David Lynch
47. Ray Harryhausen
48. Michael Moorcock
49. George A Romero
50. Mary Shelley
Webmaster and administrator of http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com
"This is an operational base, not a rest centre!"
-
chrisbishop
- Colonel
- Posts: 1773
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 1:00 am
- Location: Canada
1. James O'Barr
2. Frank Miller
3. John Williams
4. Quentin Tarantino
5. Delia Derbyshire
6. Terry Gilliam
7. Paul Verhoeven
8. Irwin allen
9. David Cronenberg
10. Albert R. Broccoli
11. JJ Abrams
Webmaster and administrator of http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com
"This is an operational base, not a rest centre!"
-
chrisbishop
- Colonel
- Posts: 1773
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 1970 1:00 am
- Location: Canada
And I have to admit to never having heard of some of them
What was their criteria for 'greatness'? I mean I love Douglas Adams's work - but is he a 'greater' pioneer than Arthur C Clarke? And J.K. Rowling - SF? I remain to be convinced on that one. No quibble with H.G. Wells - he knew Mars was a dangerous place all right!
Good to see Gerry up there with the best - and well deserved, of course.
-
Marion
- Cloudbase Captain
- Posts: 2964
- Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2004 10:21 pm
-
shaqui
- Major
- Posts: 530
- Joined: Sun Nov 21, 2004 9:35 pm
- Location: UK Japan!
What was their criteria for 'greatness'?
That is the important question.
If it was down to quantity of work, I think I would put Gerry ahead of Terry Nation. Check out Terry Nation's biography of work at http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/N/htmlN/nationterry/nationterry.htm and compare it with what we know our Gerry has achieved since the late 50's up until now.
I would even put Gerry ahead of Chris Carter for the same reason. Although he has made a few TV series, it is still The X Files (excellent though it is) that he will be most remembered for. Gerry, on the other hand has quite a few series that can be rolled of our tongues.
As for Ed Catmull and Steve Jobs (Pixar) well I guess the worldwide success and sheer brilliance of their CGI animated movies over the last 10 years puts them in a league of their own.
So I would put Gerry in 7th position. Nevertheless, even being officially 9th means he has made it into the Top 10 which is no mean feat out of 50.
-
Lieutenant Green
- Cadet
- Posts: 49
- Joined: Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:26 pm
- Location: London, UK
Serious theoretical physicists may or may not accept the science fiction presented in Star Trek, but they don't laugh at it - and a lot of them will have chosen the field as a career as a direct result of having watched Star Trek during their formative years. I've just been reading "The Fabric of the Cosmos" by Brian Greene, and found an entire chapter devoted to the concepts of teleportation and time travel, leading to a serious and utterly absorbing discussion of quantum entanglement, parallel universes and wormholes - and that chapter begins with a homage to Star Trek. So Gene Roddenbury's definitely up there too, I'd say.
I confess I'm as much of a Doctor Who aficionado as a Gerry Anderson fan, but for different reasons. The former's appeal comes from the mathematical issues of transdimensionality that the concept of the TARDIS raised: the one about being bigger on the inside than the outside being at least as interesting as the time travel aspect. I think I'd suggest that Doctor Who is something of a mathematician's TV show for that reason, whereas Star Trek is more of a theoretical physicist's show. But in the same vein of thinking, I'd mark Star Wars as being a philosopher's show: personally, I reckon it's more about religion and mysticism than science - so no, I don't feel George Lucas deserves top place, and like Marion, I wouldn't see J.K. Rowling as being in there at all. Magic may be fun, but science - real or fictional - it ain't, unless you define "science" in very general terms indeed.
So where does Gerry Anderson fit in? I think he created a fantasy genre for engineers - at least up until Thunderbirds. Does anybody remember an "interview" with Brains some years ago (one of the "Lively Arts" shows on BBC2, I think it was) in which he told us of a rumour that the U.S. Army used to watch Thunderbirds for ideas? If that's true, I think that alone qualifies him for a place up with the best of them, though Scarlet added a theoretical physics element too that prompted any amount of discussion about the nature and capabilities of the Mysterons both at the time and since. And bearing in mind that the concepts we'd use to try to explain such things have undergone a revolution in the years since the show was first transmitted in 1968, I'd say that was a very impressive achievement indeed!
-
Clya Brown
- Cloudbase Captain
- Posts: 239
- Joined: Fri Jun 25, 2004 2:47 pm
- Location: United Kingdom
Return to Supermarionation - General board
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests