Nov 26, 2010

Kotaku

If there's one thing that actually sorta makes sense to buy on Black Friday, it's an HDTV—many are crazy discounted. But picking out an HDTV can be a big ball of suck. That's where this guide comes in.

The 3DTV cheat

Want to buy a set knowing that it'll have excellent performance without having to do a ton of poking and prodding? Buy a 3DTV. The thing about 3DTVs, says HD Guru's Gary Merson is that in order to do 3D competently, they "have to do certain things really really well." 3D sets are, generally speaking, the best performing sets in the product line. So even if you never intend to watch a single piece of 3D content, it's worth considering a 3DTV.

Because the set's delivering different images for the left eye and the right eye (here's a refresher on how 3D works) it has to be able to switch the image it's displaying "very completely and very fast," says Gary. The end result is a TV with better processing power and better performance.

The main issue to look out for in 3DTVs is cross talk. Basically, cross talk is leakage—when the image for left eye shows up in the right eye, or vice versa, and you see ghost images. Depending on how much cross talk there is, you might even see two distinct images. And when it comes to no crosstalk, plasma sets beat the LCD competition. In fact, when it comes to 3D performance, plasma wins overall.

Plasma vs. LCD

For the money, plasma tends to beat LCD from a pure picture standpoint. Blacks are usually better, contrast is better, motion resolution is better, while the older issues like burn-in aren't really problems like they used to be. The flipside of plasma sets are that they're more power hungry, and they're not as bright.

LCD sets, on the other hand, are brighter (watching them soaps at lunch again, eh?) thinner (design snob) less power hungry (hippie) and straight out cheaper (cheapskate). If you're going for a set that's under 42 inches, LCD is probably where you wanna go. The best kind of LCD TVs are LED backlit models (explained in-depth here) that typically deliver better color, better blacks and better contrast, though they're pricey than the average LCD.

Do you really need 1080p?

The dirty secret about 1080p is that you don't need it if you're TV's not big enough and you're sitting too far back to see it. If a set's under 40 inches, you don't need 1080p—unless you're going to be wiping snot streaks off the glass. The Lechner distance, named for this guy, is the optimal viewing distance at which your eye can fully process all the detail offered by an HDTV's resolution. It scales, based on how big your TV is. (In English, it's how far away you should sit from an HDTV.) An example: The average viewing distance in an American home is 9 feet from the set. In order to fully see all of the details 1080p offers at that distance, you'd need a 70-inch set. So if you're sitting more than six feet away from your TV—or just buying a smaller set—considering saving some cash by going 720p. You literally won't be able to tell the difference.

A few things to look for

Here are a few of the basic qualities to look for in sets that you can spot check—though be warned, most TVs on the showfloors at Best Buy or Home Theater Emporium aren't going to be optimally tuned. But if salesmen wanna make the sale, they should let you mess around with the settings.

• Contrast ratio While the printed contrast ratio is a bullshit spec of the highest order, you can definitely see it on the set. Just look at the blacks. Today's sets are plenty bright, so don't worry about white. Load up a dark scene, cup your hands around a section of the screen and evaluate it. Is it glowing? Or is it inky? The darker the better. How smooth is the transition between light and dark areas?

• Viewing angle If you buy a bigass new TV, you want everybody to enjoy it right? That's why viewing angle matters. To check it, just stand in the center of the TV and move to the right or left, noting if the colors start to get funky or desaturated. You want the widest viewing possible, so that the picture looks dandy no matter how off-center your viewing angle is. This is a bigger issue with LCDs than plasmas.

• Static and motion resolution Getting a little nerdier here, 'cause serious dorks evaluate this stuff with test signals, but ultimately, this is all about details. To check static resolution, try to count the number of hairs on somebody's head in a closeup, or a player's name on a jersey in a sports game. What about in motion? Are a running player's legs just a blur? How well are details preserved when there's a lot of movement going on.

That should more or less get you through Black Friday, especially if you arm yourself with a handful of reviews and narrow down the sets you're looking at before you walk in the store.

Nov 26, 2010

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: A Pulp Primer, Pt. 2

Kotaku

In the second of historian Jess Nevins' series on science fiction pulps, he takes us through the Golden Age of science fiction, from the late 1930s through the "last efflorescence of the pulps" in the mid-1950s.

The 1937-1941 period was the high point of the science fiction pulps. There were nine science fiction pulps published in 1937, and 26 in 1941, the apex for the genre. 1941 was the high point for the pulps as a whole, with more pulps being published in that year than at any time before or since, and it was the high point for the content of the science fiction pulps.

This was largely due to John W. Campbell taking over as the editor of Astounding in 1937, beginning what is often called "the Golden Age of Science Fiction." Campbell was editor of Astounding until 1960, and of Analog, Astounding's successor, from 1960 to 1971. His personality and eccentric beliefs alienated writers and made Astounding a third-rate magazine after the mid-fifties, but for the first ten years of his editorship he was the most influential figure in the history of science fiction. He insisted on clear prose and reasonable characterization, he disallowed what he called "mysticism," and he demanded that his writers take a far more rigorous approach to both a story's technology and how its characters behaved. The result was a set of stories which have aged less and remain more readable than the stories of any other science fiction pulp of this era. Among Campbell's discoveries were Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, and A.E. Van Vogt.

The boom in science fiction was somewhat delayed. There were no new science fiction pulps in 1937, and in 1938 only two appeared: Captain Hazzard (1 issue, 1938), a mediocre hero pulp about a telepathy-wielding copy of Doc Savage, and Marvel Science Stories (15 issues, four title changes, 1938-1941, 1950-1952), whose usually trite material was occasionally leavened by stories of sex and cruelty unusually erotic for the science fiction pulps. This down period in science fiction pulps is peculiar; during these years the other major genres (with the exception of the spicy pulps) either held steady or grew.

The boom begins

In 1939 nine new science fiction pulps appeared, and the boom had begun. Only a handful of the new pulps were in any way significant. Like every other pulp genre, most of what appeared in the science fiction pulps was undistinguished in every way. Some science fiction pulps, like Comet (5 issues, 1940-1941) ran nothing of worth whatsoever. In others, like Fantastic Novels (5 issues, 1940-1941), the only notable material was the reprints from earlier pulps. Only six of the pulps which appeared in 1939, 1940, and 1941 are worth singling out.

Astonishing Stories (16 issues, 1940-1943), the companion pulp to Super Science Stories (see below), had an unusually high number of stories by writers who would later become famous in other venues. Astonishing ran works–some lesser-known, and some merely lesser–by Isaac Asimov, Clifford Simak, Alfred Bester, Manly Wade Wellman, and E.E. Doc Smith, among others.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: A Pulp Primer, Pt. 2 Captain Future (17 issues, 1940-1944), while bearing the same subpar writing as most other hero pulps, is notable as the most aggressively science fictional of the science fiction hero pulps. The pulp is set in the future, the titular hero's assistants are a sentient robot and a brain-in-a-jar, and the plots are pure space opera.

Fantastic Adventures (129 issues, 1939-1953) came into its own much later in life, after 1950, when Howard Browne became editor. In the early years, much of its content was trash, but it did also publish stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Nelson Bond, Robert Bloch, and Manly Wade Wellman.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: A Pulp Primer, Pt. 2 The Octopus (1 issue, 1939) and The Scorpion (1 issue, 1939) The Scorpion was the sequel to The Octopus in all but name–are wonderfully excessive in their Mad Scientist Tries To Conquer The World stories, with the added bonus of a "hideously malformed," tentacled protagonist.

Planet Stories (71 issues, 1939-1955) is in many ways the quintessential science fiction pulp. The issues were hodgepodges of planetary romances, space operas, and offbeat stories that might not have found a place anywhere else. Stories with titles like "Asteroid of the Damned" and "Queen of the Blue World" appeared alongside Carl Jacobi's "Grannie Annie" stories (about a septuagenarian writer of science fiction novels in the future) and Fredric Brown's "Mitkey" stories (about a mouse sent into space and altered by a race of mouse-like aliens). Quality was uneven, of course, but at its best Planet Stories could be both entertaining and literate.

The content of Super Science Stories (16 issues, 1940-1943) is generally unremarkable, but the pulp did serve as an early market for material by members of the New York science fiction writers group the Futurians, whose members included Asimov, James Blish, C.M. Kornbluth, Robert Lowndes, Frederik Pohl, and Donald A. Wollheim.

World War II and the Post-War Boom

As might be expected, the United States' entrance into World War II had a deleterious effect on the science fiction pulps, as it did on the pulps in general, and the 1942-1945 period is one of contraction and cancellation. Wartime publishing restrictions on the use of paper affected every pulp publisher, and while the drop in numbers of science fiction pulps was more severe than what other genres suffered, they also lost titles.

Only three major science fiction pulps were canceled during the war years: Astonishing Stories and The Spider ended in 1943 and Captain Future ended in 1944. Fans of science fiction could still get their pulp fix at regular intervals during the war. The following science pulps regularly appeared throughout the war years: Amazing Stories (bimonthly in 1943, 1944, and 1945); Amazing Stories Quarterly (quarterly 1941-1945); Astounding Stories (monthly 1941-1945); Doc Savage (monthly 1941-1945); Fantastic Adventures (bimonthly 1943-1944, quarterly 1944-1945); Planet Stories (quarterly 1941-1945); The Shadow (biweekly 1941-1943, monthly 1943-1945); Startling Stories (bimonthly 1941-1943, quarterly 1943-1945); and Thrilling Wonder Stories (bimonthly 1941-1943, quarterly 1943-1945); and Weird Tales, which was still regularly publishing science fiction stories (bimonthly 1941-1945).

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: A Pulp Primer, Pt. 2 Only two new science fiction pulps appeared during World War II. Stirring Science Stories (4 issues, 1941-1942) was a would-be companion to Cosmic Stories, a three-issue failure from 1941. Like Cosmic Stories, Stirring is best-known for the stories from various Futurians, although it published equal numbers of science fiction and fantasy, and its best stories were Clark Ashton Smith's fantasies.

The Shadow Annual (3 issues, 1942, 1943, 1947) reprinted the "best" stories from The Shadow which had appeared the previous years. A significant proportion of these stories was fantastic, though of course badly written.

The 1946-1949 period was the time when the death of the science fiction pulp become apparent as a phenomenon of the near-future rather than the distant future.

As a medium, the pulps rebounded quickly from the war, and most genres held steady during these years. Science fiction's recovery was slower than most of the genres. No new science fiction pulps appeared in 1945 or 1946. In 1947, Fantasy Book (8 issues, 1947-1950) appeared, but it was an amateurish production of bad quality during this time period. In 1948, Fantastic Novels (20 issues, 3 issues) appeared. It was a new edition of the 1940 pulps but only contained reprints. And in 1949 Captain Zero and Super Science Stories appeared. Captain Zero (3 issues, 1949) was the last of the hero pulps, featuring a protagonist who turned invisible at night, but its stories were primarily detective with an overlay of the fantastic, rather than primarily fantastic as Doc Savage' s and The Spider's had been. Super Science Stories (15 issues, 1949-1951) was a new version of the Super Science Stories published from 1940-1943 and featured entertaining and occasionally excellent material.

The situation in the mainstay science fiction pulps was somewhat better. Amazing Stories was in the hands of editor Raymond Palmer, who had begun stressing adventure over science from when he took over, in 1938 but who in 1945 began regularly publishing gibberish by Richard Shaver, which increased the pulp's circulation at the cost of making the venerable pulp a laughingstock among professional science fiction writers. Astounding was the undisputed leader among science fiction pulps and was at its height under John W. Campbell. Fantastic Adventures remained of decent quality, and Planet Stories continued to regularly publish good work.

The biggest change among the pulps was in Startling Stories, which changed editors in late 1945. New editor Sam Merwin, Jr. changed the magazine's slant from juvenile material to more adult fare, and by 1949 Startling was regularly challenging Astounding and was publishing stories from the top writers in the field.

Rise of the Digests

A much bigger change for the pulps took place outside the pulps entirely. The minutiae of magazine publishing during the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s are of little interest to non-specialists, and for the purposes of these columns the differences between "bedsheets" (8.5" x 11.75") and "standard" pulps (7" x 10" or 6.75" x 9.75) and "small" pulps (6.5" x 9") are unimportant. They were all pulps, despite their varying sizes. (Again, "pulp" is about magazine size and paper quality and story content and amount of advertising).

The shift from the pulps to the digest (roughly 5.25" x 7.5") is important because the digests would ultimately become the next stage in the history of science fiction magazines–the digests were the Cro Magnons to the pulps' Neanderthals.

The digest was hardly new in the 1946-1949 period. It had been introduced to the mass market with Readers' Digest, which began in 1922, and the first science fiction pulp to switch to digest size was Astounding, in 1943. But in 1949 The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction debuted, in digest format, and it was aimed from the beginning at the adult market which had until then been the province of Astounding and more recently Startling. F&SF was a near-immediate success and substantially ate into Astounding's market share.

Decline of the Science Fiction Pulps

1950-1953 was the last efflorescence of the pulps. The number of pulps published hit a five-year-high in 1950–162 titles were published that year–and then began a slow decline, so that, although new pulps appeared in every genre over the next three years, especially in romance and westerns, the pulps were obviously dying. This death was a gradual rather than sudden thing, however: in 1955 there were 48 pulps published, and as late as 1960 there were still 11 pulps being published. As with the dime novels, the transition between forms took place over the course of several years rather than abruptly.

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: A Pulp Primer, Pt. 2 During the 1950-1953 period thirteen new science fiction pulps were published: Fantastic Story Quarterly (23 issues, 1950-1954), containing mostly reprints; three incarnations of Future (Future combined with Science Fiction Stories (10 issues, 1950-1951), Future Science Fiction (17 issues, 1952-1954), and Science Fiction Stories (2 issues, 1953-1954)), always pedestrian whatever its name; Marvel Science Stories (3 issues, 1950-1951) and its sequel Marvel Science Fiction (3 issues, 1951-1952), run-of-the-mill; Out of This World Adventures (2 issues, 1950), featuring poor or bad stories by good authors; Two Complete Science-Adventure Books (11 issues, 1950-1954), a lesser companion to Planet Stories; Wonder Story Annual (4 issues, 1950-1953), all reprints; Ten Story Fantasy (1 issue, 1951), remembered only for publishing Arthur C. Clarke's "Sentinel of Eternity," the source of 2001: A Space Odyssey; Dynamic Science Fiction (6 issues, 1952-1954), mediocre; Fantastic Science Fiction (2 issues, 1952), horrible; Space Stories (5 issues, 1952-1953), thoroughly average; and Tops in Science Fiction (2 issues, 1953), reprints from Planet Stories.

This would seem, despite the poor quality of the content, to indicate a medium in good health. However, all of these new pulps were canceled by 1954. Amazing made the switch to digest form in 1953, as did Weird Tales. Fantastic Adventures was canceled in 1953. Galaxy Science Fiction, another digest, appeared in 1950 and immediately became close competition for Astounding and F&SF, which diluted Astounding's market share further and, because Galaxy emphasized adult, literate material, put further pressure on those pulps which specialized in the juvenile and low-quality.

Most importantly, in 1950 Fawcett Publications introduced Gold Medal Books, the first line of original paperback novels to the mass market. Before Gold Medal Books, paperbacks had been reprints of hardcover originals, but the Fawcett began turning out paperback originals under the Gold Medal imprint, and this more than anything else killed the pulps, as the content of the paperbacks was usually much better than what was in the pulps. SF paperbacks began as reprints of pulp stories but by the mid-1950s were usually originals, and the emphasis on publication shifted from magazines to books.

Next time I will discuss the science fiction pulps of Europe.

Jess Nevins is a librarian, pulp fiction historian, and comic book annotator. You can find out more on his blog.