Thursday, March 20, 2014

The Genre and the Medium

When it comes to exploring science fiction and fantasy, I have a pretty narrow focus: I read. I gamed a bit in undergrad and got a bit into X-Men comics around the same time. And yes, there was a time when I even watched movies and TV. But as I got older, gained more responsibilities, and lost a lot of my free time, I had to cut back some of my activities to free up time for writing. (Besides, it's a lot harder to game when your college friends are in another state. Sure, there are local stores where I could probably meet gamers if I had the time, but it might be more uncomfortable joining them, especially if there's a lack of other female gamers.) Since I read pretty quickly and can bring a Kindle with me everywhere, that's my medium of choice. That said, sometimes I wish I could make time for Dr. Who or go see some of the X-Men movies. I've never even gotten around to watching the Harry Potter movies, even though I've read all the books.

Other than reading/writing (which I assume is a large part of what draws people to this blog), what are your other favorite ways to enjoy science fiction/fantasy, and why? What are your favorite and least favorite translations of a story to a new medium?

5 comments:

  1. Oh... that's such a question, and it makes me want to rant about Peter Jackson again and the crimes against humanity he is guilty of when he touched The Hobbit.

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  2. I average a movie a day so that's my other medium. Netflix has been instrumental in that by making content more available. It's hard to imagine now that up until the turn of the century if you wanted to rewatch an episode of a TV show you had to hope you could find someone who had a videotape of it. And back in the early 80s a VHS copy of a movie was like $100! We've come a long way baby.

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  3. I used to do D&D and other RPGs when I was a kid. While I like movies, I tend to not watch as many movies or TV shows as I could, for a variety of reasons. I find them not as much fun as reading, plus it's harder to watch a movie in installments than to read a book, and finding 2 hours of uninterrupted time is hard.

    That said, scifi movies are great.

    I used to REALLY like comics, but I've grown away from them. I checked out a couple of anthologies from the library to see if I'd missed anything, and was unimpressed. ("Blackest Night" and "The Flash" were the anthologies. They were okay but nothing I'd go out of my way to get or pay for.)

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  4. Andrew: It makes no sense to me to turn the Hobbit into a trilogy. I guess it's supposed to make a lot of dollars for the box office now, though.

    Pat, yes, we've come a long way in having content available whenever we want it.

    Briane, it is encouraging to see books being made into movies. Now, when will Hollywood come after our books?

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  5. I like trolling Deviantart for images. I can validate my fangirling, because I end up interviewing a lot of the artists for my cover artist blog series, but it's still just playing and relaxing in my head.

    Alex Hurst, fantasy author in Kyoto, participating in Blogging A-Z April Challenge

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