Oh. So many choices. There's the transformation sound effect from the original Transformers cartoon, the scene transition card sound effect from Challenge of the Super Friends, the concussion rifle sound from Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight... pretty much all of the sound design from the Star Wars movies themselves... the Wilhelm... the repulsor sound effects in the new Iron Man film, which are so much better than what I went with when I wrote The Iron Age issue #1 (I think I had in mind something like the Star Wars blaster sound effect, a fine sound, but not nearly as "right" for repulsors as what Christopher Boyes came up with for Iron Man)... the Universal Studios standard telephone ring, which I have as the ringtone on my cellphone, much to the confusion of young people...

(True story, by the way. The other day I met up with Zoner at a movie theater about an hour from my house for Iron Man, and he got there a little sooner than I did, so he phoned me to see how far away I was. The answer was "about 20 feet", since I was just outside the theater's front door at the time. There was a small clutch of teenagers practicing skateboard tricks on the sidewalk outside, and when my phone rang, they were transfixed by the anachronistic sound, their tiny teenage brains unable to work out where the old-fashioned telephone could be. One of them even said to another, "That's, like, an old dial phone! Where's it coming from?!")

Overall, though, I think I'm gonna have to go with the Martian heat ray from the 1953 George P�l War of the Worlds. Though frankly all the Martian sound effects from the 1953 War of the Worlds own, and all have appeared again in one form or another (most famously the sound effect accompanying the green "wingtip" blasters, also heard in the above clip, which was recycled into the photon torpedo launch sound in the original Star Trek, another all-time favorite).

--G.
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On the other hand: Aquaman.... really isn't.

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

And as the SUPER FRIENDS fly up into the air to SAVE THE WORLD, Aquaman sits in the Hall of Justice and makes himself a sandwhich because he can't do shit!

Aww, cut him some slack BZ. Someone's gotta mind the store, so why NOT the guy who's pretty much the fish outa water?

True, it is. It's not really one of my personal favorite sound effects, in itself, though, and that's what I took the question to be, so...

--G.
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The symphonic score part is too close to call. There are so many worthy candidates - Batman, The Hunt for Red October, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Patton, The Empire Strikes Back, The Right Stuff, Tomorrow Never Dies, The Incredibles, The Last Starfighter - all had amazing scores, and those are just a few examples off the top of my head.

As for soundtracks, if you define that (as opposed to a motion picture score) as a collection of pop songs that appear in a film, either as background or source music? Gonna have to go with Real Genius, I think. "Number One", "I'm Falling", "One Night Love Affair", "Everybody Wants to Rule the World"... there's a lot to love there, at least if you're from the '80s.

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

As for myself, the scores I'd like to get a hold of are all the ones you mentioned, plus the ones for I, Robot, Hellboy, Akira, and Princess Mononoke.

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

Well, most of the ones I listed are films from before the Imminent Death of CD, when stores had wider selections (at least around here). (Hell, I originally had the Star Trek II soundtrack on cassette, and I think The Last Starfighter on vinyl.) Some of the others I either obtained the CD through mail order (The Right Stuff, for example, is, or at least was, available on a CD along with bits from another Bill Conti score, North and South, but I couldn't find that one in a store), or tracked the music down electronically. These days I get most stuff from the iTunes Music Store.

Sadly, the soundtrack to Real Genius was (AFAIK) never released in and of itself, though with a bit of hunting it's possible to assemble it from album tracks and singles.

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

You know, it's funny you mention that - the same situation exists for the good ol' Night of the Comet soundtrack (great songs, released vinyl and cassette only, no CD, and the collector market wants stupid amounts of money for it)

And while Saionji isn't exactly a Jedi, he's a Force-wielder with a lightsaber and a Lens. Seems to me that there's no conflict.

-- Bob
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

Your thoughts betray you. I can feel the conflict....

sorry, I just couldn't help it.

"A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week" - Gen George S. Patton, Jr.

As is Utena. Although it often seems that, when Utena wants something that violates the laws of reality, the laws politely apologize and get out of her way. So she might not be the best example. :)

<slaps forehead> Duh. I should have remembered that.

-- Bob
-------------------
I intend to be a freak for the rest of my life, and I shall baffle you with cabbages and rhinoceroses in the kitchen and incessant quotations from Now We Are Six through the mouthpiece of Lord Snooty's giant poisoned electric head. So theeeeeere...

And that is what has me scratching my head. Could it be just that Jedi Knights can't while other Force sensitive sentients can?

Perhaps the Jedi Knights know things that makes a Lens unnecessary?

Michael

	Michael C. Fortner RCW #2n+1 "I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time." -- Mark Twain

Same thing with the Ignatines, yes?

Not really... IIRC Neo is both a Lensman and an Igantine, and I'd expect that Geoff will be in time as well. Then again, with the Jedi, it might be a case of their relationship with the force is such that at a masters level they dont NEED a lens, as their relationship with the force is such that they can manage the same sort of feats a lensman would need his lens for...

Or may the Order didn't send enough Alderaan Crunch ice cream to Skuld. :)

As Len Hutchins thought, in Road Movie to Naboo, Part 3: Relics:

This was probably futile. Kei Morgan, like almost everyone at the highest echelon of the Experts of Justice, was a Lensman; if the others, even her own husband, couldn't raise her with those instruments' fantastic powers of communication, then what hope had he, without one?

No. He mustn't think that way; if he had such doubt, then his effort -was- futile. He didn't -need- a Lens. He had the Force.

Seems like a vanishingly small group of people - not impossible obviously, just small, perhaps almost another evolutionary playing field altogether.

"A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week" - Gen George S. Patton, Jr.

Authorially speaking, it's fairly rare because only under pretty specific circumstances does it not just feel like stupid overkill. In-story, there's no technical reason why it wouldn't work, but it doesn't come up often. Who gets the Lens and when is a very inexact science, depending on a lot of visible and invisible factors, but at least part of it has to do with how much the candidate needs such a thing, and most Jedi, especially Jedi Masters, don't really.

--G.
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Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

I posted some thoughts here when I first got it; it's still a reasonable summation.

Short version is: Doesn't suck, despite having been written by Adam Warren dragging along all his usual baggage.

Newly articulated thought: Maybe it works better because he's more honest about his Post-Human Bullshit Fetish than Warren "my cell phone? you're fucking with me" Ellis was in Extremis.

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

(If I find my name in the replies on that page, I am going to give myself such a pinch!)

Hmm... yeah, I guess that'd be all right. Artwork, right? Not just, like, screencaps.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
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Thanks! -n

Oh, well, always happy to see something by one of the Moy brothers.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
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Well, keep in mind, WorldWatch (and InfoFlash, another of pre-StarkWire Ben's employers) was just invented in rather sketchy form to provide some background color. I didn't think them through in detail any more than the streetfront sets in old Westerns have buildings behind them.

That said:

WorldWatch is - or was, one of Ben Stark's articles in "Weapon" implies that it's defunct in 2032 - a considerably larger and more corporate operation than StarkWire, to be sure. I picture it as being to the early-mid-21st-century infoscape what, say, the Associated Press and such-like wire services were in the days of teletypes, except, thanks to the direct distribution capabilities of the InfoWeb (which, as its name suggests, is a technological/thematic descendent of the World Wide Web), they don't sell their content to providers, as the AP does to newspapers and whatnot. (Indeed, as we've seen in one StarkWire post, the AP still exists, providing wider distribution for content not developed directly by one of the big feedsites like WW. StarkWire uses it to provide perspective on news concerning Stark Industries, in an effort to head off the perfectly understandable claims of bias that would otherwise arise.)

>Most critically: how do reporters interact with WorldWatch? How do
>they prepare, submit, and compete in a world in of instant data flow?

Well, not all that differently from the way the big news websites (such as those belonging to major newspapers like The New York Times) do it now, really, except that most of their people don't go to work in a big grey building somewhere; they exist right out in the field. The best correspondents move from place to place almost constantly, going to where the news is and reporting it back via uplink to their home feedsite's central server. Some type their material the way they did it in 1990s; others prefer to dictate their copy verbally over a telephone link, harking back to the great newspapers of the 1930s.

However the material comes in, editors - or, more likely, sophisticated editorial expert systems with human oversight - take a look at it to make sure there are no egregious errors and that it's actually a news article and not an ad for hard-on cream, and then out it goes to the subscriber base.

Oh, that does bring me to one thing that's different about the InfoWeb: a lot of the "immediate" content on it, like news feedsites, is push-oriented rather than passive like the real-life Web. Some news sites and the like have made steps toward pushing more content to mobile devices and whatnot in the real world, but the thing is really still in its infancy; most of the Web remains something you go to and search for what you're after. People subscribe to services like WorldWatch and get what they're interested in streamed to their device of choice as it's published.

WW itself was a highly respected feedsite, one of the pioneers of the concept, and evolved from a fictional indie news website of the Early Web Era. I'm not sure what brought it down; perhaps newer, smaller organizations developed specifically as full-speed feedsites from Day 1 just proved too nimble for it.

As for how any of these operations make money, well, I haven't a clue. As I said, I didn't develop the idea fully; it was really just intended as background scenery.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

That would indeed be the K-T Event.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
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carpe librum

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Sweet lord, are these for real? How do they get away with selling that? Where I come from, cosmic brownies are homemade.

	Chad Collier Smirking Kilrathi The Captain of the Gravy Train

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

You damn near made me blast my pizza all over my laptop.

Thanks for the laugh, though. ;)

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

Er, no, not so much.

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Symphony of the Sword assumes that the entire Revolutionary Girl Utena television series happened before Wounded Rose, though in some cases what happened either wasn't for entirely the same underlying reasons or didn't have quite the same ultimate effect in UF.

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

(Have refs to GG shown up in UF yet? I don't remember)

Only rather vaguely, as I have heard of it but not read it. (Kindly reserve the OH YOU HAVE TOs.)

--G.
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Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

        "Uhh... before we do, what's with the Agatha Heterodyne
goggles?" Greg wondered.
<snip>
        "I'm doing Science, Greg," she replied as if the answer were
self-evident.  He could hear the capital letter.  "It's required."

which rather proves his point. I'm sure that if G had read more of the series the GG riffing would have gone on a bit longer... And while I may thing you'd enjoy it G, I also respect that you have reasons not to read it.

Black Aeronaut Technologies Creative aerospace solutions for the discerning spacer "To the commissary we should go," Yoda declared firmly. "News of this kind a danish requires."

as an aside...what author would you most want to meet....and what author would you most like to kick...

I'm... not sure what this is, but it doesn't sound good. (For that matter, it doesn't sound as if it's legal in all 50 states...)

>waht do guys do?

I don't really know. I don't wander the outside world often (nor am I, I suspect, anything like famous)... the only time I can think of offhand that someone has specifically sought me out at a con and the like was a guy who wanted to tell me how much he hated Neon Exodus Evangelion and what a general waste of matter I was for having come up with it.

Well, no, I lie. There was also the guy who drove to Worcester from New Jersey just to get a look at Zoner and me. That was a long time ago, though, and I'm not sure whatever became of him. Eh, Geoff? :)

>as an aside...what author would you most want to meet

Tough call, that, if only because I don't particularly handle face-to-face meetings very well. I mean, you read The Professor and the Madman or Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded and you think you'd really like to meet Simon Winchester, but then if you did, what would you say? Or you think it'd be cool to hang with Jeremy Clarkson, and then you remember that he hates Americans, particularly fat ones, so there goes that idea.

Overall, I think the safest course is to stick to the old maxim, "Never meet your heroes."

--G.
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--rR

What I found most amusing about this was, after watching however the hell many seasons of Top Gear, and reading three of his books (a co-worker of mine owned them), I came to a realization:

Jeremy Clarkson hates Americans for the same reason that closeted ministers rant about gays. He realizes that he is, in fact, one of us, but he can't bear to consider that. Because we're stupid and evil, and make horrible cars.

Except the Ford GT.

--
-Pasha (Or maybe including?)
"I invented Warp Drive, whatta ya got?"
"I'm the Norse God of Mecha."
"Well, I guess you win then."

Actually, the GT gave him nothing but misery and more or less reaffirmed all the bad things he's ever said about American cars. He got rid of it last year and bought a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder, which is a similar car except that it can go around corners, gets better gas mileage and isn't in the habit of reporting itself stolen while he's trying to drive it to work.

--G.
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Yeah, whatever happened to that guy? :)

(It amuses me greatly that I have managed to share a meal with every member of the EPU staff except Martin Rose. And I will accomplish that eventually.)

--
Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

On the other side of the equation, I've only been recognized as "that Otaku Rising guy" a few times. In one case, the fan turned out to be a pretty cool guy, and we kept in touch (and usually eat dinner together at Arisia).

and not to be creepy but if i saw you at a con or something i would almost sqee and babble because i enjoy your stuff as much or more than most of the books i buy now adays.