For those of us who like to know where things came from, the BBC Archive Project has posted some amazing memos and reports revealing the thought processes that led to Doctor Who. Typewritten pages with skeptical scrawls reveal conversations with Brian Aldiss and Kingsley Amis. (Imagine such a consultation today.) Wondering if sf could work on tv at all, the network looked at stories like Poul Anderson’s Guardians of Time and C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” as possible projects. They almost went with “The Troubleshooters,” about a consulting firm that dealt with otherworldly events. The archive also includes the initial proposal for the series, as well as the (mixed) audience reaction for the first episode of the series that (some of us) know and love.
[Story tip: SF Signal; William Hartnell as the first Doctor, BBC]
Given that the bulk of Futurismic’s readers are US-based, I doubt we’re going to get much sense out of you for a few days while the smoke clears… and if you’ve come here looking for a respite from the election topicality, please accept my apologies and this uber-cute box of puppies. [No, for real, live webcam feed! Via MeFi, of course.]
TV is over. If people are interested, they’ll watch. On their time (or their boss’s time). They’ll watch online, and spread the idea. You can’t email a TV commercial to a friend, but you can definitely spread a YouTube video. The cycle of ads got shorter and shorter, and the most important ads were made for the web, not for TV. Your challenge isn’t to scrape up enough money to buy TV time. Your challenge is to make video interesting enough that we’ll choose to watch it and choose to share it.
Zing! Of course, most of us know that already, but hey - it’s nice to feel ahead of the curve sometimes, ain’t it? [image by Scott89]
NEW FICTION: WILLPOWER by Jason Stoddard: Michael Delgado frowned, the chant of the taxpayers echoing in his head. WE pay your salary, so you do what WE want. We want you to cut our grass, you get out here pronto! And Congress agreed. Needed for a smooth transition to a post-scarcity economy, they said. Allows them the dignity of productive work,
For those of us who like to know where things came from, the BBC Archive Project has posted some amazing memos and reports revealing the thought processes that led to Doctor Who. Typewritten pages with skeptical scrawls reveal conversations with Brian Aldiss and Kingsley Amis. (Imagine such a consultation today.) Wondering if sf could work on tv at all, the network looked at stories like Poul Anderson’s Guardians of Time and C.L. Moore’s “No Woman Born” as possible projects. They almost went with “The Troubleshooters,” about a consulting firm that dealt with otherworldly events. The archive also includes the initial proposal for the series, as well as the (mixed) audience reaction for the first episode of the series that (some of us) know and love.
Given that the bulk of Futurismic’s readers are US-based, I doubt we’re going to get much sense out of you for a few days while the smoke clears… and if you’ve come here looking for a respite from the election topicality, 
[image by 
On this date in 
