There’s a discussion on Newsarama as to whether comic books were responsible for reversing the alleged Red Sox curse.
Allow me to submit for consideration “Fallen Angel” #14. In that issue, we see a desperate Boston Red Sox fan running through the streets of Bete Noire, seeking the aid of the titular character. Instead the fan encounters Benny the Snake and is devoured. Much like, say the Red Sox encountering the Yankees and being swallowed into a pit of 3-0.
But wait! The Fallen Angel, realizing what had transpired, grabbed Benny and forced him to disgorge the fan. Benny (representing the Yankees?) was forced to choke on the surrogate of the team traditionally accused of choking themselves. The fan survived the encounter and Benny slunk away into the darkness. Granted, the fan was left in shock…but then, so were many Red Sox fans when, given an unexpected lease on life, the Sox came back to beat the Yankees.
Keep in mind, this is the same comic that featured an entire issue of the supposedly heroic lead character torturing a captive for information and featured an entire discussion about how easy it is for even the most well-intentioned individual to dehumanize prisoners for the purpose of torturing them…several months before the Iraq prison scandal broke.
Cue “Twilight Zone” music.
PAD
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Ah you’re just ripping off buffy again 😉
cute though.
You’re a regular Nostradomus. One hundred years from poeple will create fake Peter David books to ‘prove’ that the world is going to end and that you predicted WWIV.
PLEASE NEVER USE THE TERM: U-DECIDE! Brings back bad memories 😉
This reminds me of the time Peter wrote a novel for Star Trek Deep Space Nine called The Siege which was published in the early nineties. In that novel, through the character of Bashir, Peter predicted that in the future everyone would be using the internet to communicate with each other instantly to receive the latest news regarding major news events. This was back 93 when most of us hadn
So, PAD, will you promise to use your power only for good?
So Peter,how about that comic book I proposed you write about Jessica Alba and Salma Hayek kidnapping me and having their way with me? Any word on that? 🙂
Lester, Peter hardly predicted the Internet. It was already around in 1993, and Peter, I believe was on it using Usenet.
Of course, USENET-style network bulletin boards were an element of Vernor Vinge’s 1993 Hugo-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep, and Vinge and other science fiction authors had been writing about a fully-wired world since the early 1980s (at the latest; I think Vinge’s “True Names” was published in 1980).
Back around ’80 for True Names is correct. And, of course, being a CS professor at UCSD, Vinge would’ve been familiar with the ARPAnet and possibly Usenet when writing True Names. See David Brin’s Earth for an example of a global net with a publication date in-between the two Vinge works.
And Peter’s Usenet background dates back to the mid- to late- 80s.
Tom:
Vernor Vinge was a professor at San Diego State University during the 80’s. Strangely enough, he did not teach sf while I was a student there(Class of ’84).
Just to add another data point…
Peter was certainly around Usenet since at least ’88 or so — that’s about when I showed up, and he was certainly an entrenched presence by then. (Granted, he was using a Portal account, but one must start somewhere. 🙂
TWL
Earliest USENET post I find by Peter in Google’s archives is from late 1989. I mention it only as a point of information (Google’s archives are incomplete), not to prove anything. 🙂
Weird to see old bang-path addresses in those old posts. I’m sure average consumers would not have cottoned to those at all, once the net went mainstream!
Earliest post in the archives by me is around the same time (I didn’t have access to USENET before that semester). Earliest post by Tim therein is from about a year earlier.
The Google Usenet archives are particularly weak in the non-comp. and sci. groups in the mid-to-late 80s. The archives from that period came from Henry Spenser, and he’s told me that by that point traffic was so high that they’d run out of budget for tapes. So they only saved the important groups in the comp. and sci. hierarchies for the most part. Ends up that we’re missing a lot of fascinating sociological data, but darn but we know a lot about the Amiga.
I never claimed peter foresaw the internet before the internet was developed. In order to do that he would have had to have been writing before world war two. My point, which I still contend, is that Peter predicted everyone would be using the internet years before everybody started using the internet.
Interesting, but if we are making comic book comparisons to the ALCS, I found the following Identity Crisis argument more compelling.
The first few issues are all about the bad guys playing with our superheroes, much as the Yankees jumped to a 3 game lead over our intrepid heroes. Sue Dibney’s death is the first blow struck, much as the Yankees struck first in this series. Things didn’t get much better in the secon issue as both Red Sox and the Justice League deal with past baggage. The Curse, the Power Pact, its all the same thing.
Game 3 is the most demoralizing issue as or heroes have their keisters handed to them by Deathstroke much the way they Yankees manhandled the Red Sox, scoring 19 runs. And, much like Roy Palmer’s ex-wife, it doesn’t look like this team is going to survive much longer.
Suddenly game four, Roy Palmer comes flying in and snatches victory litterally out of the teath of death, saving his ex-wife at the last minute. Much as David Ortiz snatched victory from the Yankees in 12 innings. The first stirring of life and hope can be sensed from our heroes.
Game 5 is a bittersweet moment as the Red Sox and the Heroes seem to be moving closer to a victory. 14 innings, but Pedro is once again inneffectual against the Yankees and Tim Drake loses someone close to him. But the bad guys take a blow on this one as well.
Game 6 is the Schilling gut check performance. Batman has been around since issue 1, but he has been inneffectual. There seem to be indications that he just isn’t going to contribute much to this series. But he comes back in issue 6 to sift through the clues and help our heroes close in on the killer in a gritty, gutsy, performance reminiscent of Curt gutting out 7 brilliant innings on an ankle that is bleeding through its bandages
Game 7 is the capper of this entire series. Our heroes and their fans have been through the emotional ringer. They are nearing the end of one of the most emontional contests in our lifetimes. The heroes have reclaimed and improbably lead after getting slapped around early in the series. But, like Johny Damon, someone is going to come up with the grand slam to put the evil empire in its place.
Btw, a substantial part of Game Four will be played during totality of a total lunar eclipse. Should go well with the New Madrid fault letting go and the Earth swallowing up Busch Stadium as the Great Old Ones return in celebration of Boston winning.