founding-father or amazing wonder stories of the imagination

From now until the end of October, there is a special exhibition hosted by the Centre for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe on the work and lasting influence of author, tinkerer and entrepreneur Hugo Gernsback. The namesake of the Hugo literary prize for science-fiction was born in Luxembourg and received training in a German military signals unit in Bingen, establishing his enduring interest in ham radio and helping to grown the network of amateur and hobby radio operators world-wide, before immigrating to America. Settling there, Gernsback entered into the publishing industry, first distributing a catalog-magazine hybrid for wireless accessories and several other popular mechanics-type publications following his interests in emerging technologies and feeding his sense for speculation.

Soon afterwards, Gernsback ventured into specialising in hosting works of science-fiction, first with classic works and then new authors.  Though his stingy business-model tended to stiff his contributing writers—much like some modern day content-mills, gave Gernsback a certain reputation, his move, similar to fostering a social network among radio operators, to include the names and addresses of subscribers, however self-promoting, helped immeasurably to promote the genre and create a fan-base who could reach out to one another. Gernsback was directly responsible for several thoroughly modern and forward-looking novel aspects that are taken for granted, and I would like to visit this exhibit.

sunday drive: barbarossastadt gelnhausen

Fearful of the shadows cast over the beating rays of the sun which acted with this strange and
uncertain periodicity though I was, I did stop off at a place we had visited once a few years ago, lured by an antique market on the upper and lower market squares of the imperial city of Gelnhausen, which was accorded this status by Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa for its location at the intersection of important trade routes between Frankfurt and Leipzig and interestingly the geographic centre of the European Union by  more contemporary measures and vetting. Aside from the medieval city centre, Gelnhausen's chief draw is its imperial palace grounds, which although were rich with nice ruins of masonry work and well-curated history, was not quite the palatial scene H and I were expecting at the time, and it seemed afterwards we gravivated towards a series of Pfälzer that did not live up to out expectations. There was a lot to explore, I found in the old town, and I except it is well worth another visit. The market, incidentally though a bit top-heavy with porcelain and furniture (larges as opposed to smalls) was the genuine deal, but I did not find anything that might find a home at ours.

rain dance

While I am not certain if historic records were broken all over Germany this weekend as predicted, it was certainly more than hot enough.

The weather was absolutely oppressive during the past weeks and humid by turns (but probably not enough to illicit much sympathy from readers used to such temperatures), punctuated with brief spells of dramatic but taunting storms. Pink heat lightening was on the horizon many mornings and few drips of rain came down, not as if due to the migration of weather from elsewhere but rather as a consequence, it seemed, of some physical imbalance locally as if Sol Invictus had managed to ring and wither every last drop of moisture out of the land and was obliged to give back a little. Now there's signs that some relief is coming, and while I hope that summer is not called in the coming weeks due to rain, that sort of weather was becoming unbearable, especially for those not on holiday.

double-feature

Usually under the heading It Came from the Cineplex, blogger Bob Canada regularly features some really astute and comical movie reviews. It one of his latest installments about derivative blockbusters, since those who don't learn the history of cinematography are doomed to repeat it and some studios use this to their advantage in subjecting audiences to paired-films, many times within the same season. There's a pretty clever list of twins (plus some of my own), generally one more original and the other noisier and less thought-through:

• Whitehouse Down and Olympus has Fallen
• Armageddon and Deep Impact
• The Prestige and The Illusionist 
• The Abyss and Leviathan
• The Truman Show and EdTV
• The Descent and The Cave
• After Earth and Oblivion/WALL-E
• The Road and The Colony (or any number of post-apocalyptic movies) 
• United 93 and World Trade Center 

This is surely not a new phenomenon—including self-plagiarism, and such coattailing was probably even more widespread in the past. What other movies, classic and contemporary, would you add to this list? Be sure to check out Bob Canada's Blog World for some other funny observations about the entertainment industry and keen, original artwork.