Words From Vaish

The Hunger Games Suzanne Collins Scholastic 2008                                                374 Pages            Dystopian post-apocalyptic science fiction used to be a staple of the heyday of the Cold War during the 60s and 70s when nuclear Armageddon seemed to be a very real possibility. As one of SF’s great humorists, the late Robert Sheckley (1928-2008) saw the satirical possibilities in such scenarios – and explored them in a loose trilogy; Hunter/Victim, The 10 th Victim and Victim Prime . Sheckley posited a future Earth ravaged by man’s thoughtless greed, where the spectre of all-out total war is kept in abeyance by televised violent to-the-death hunts in which teams of sponsored...

Judging Dredd As a child, I didn’t much care for the few British comic books we did get in India . The condescendingly simplistic stories, burdened with a lot of explanatory exposition, talked down to us and seemed to be mostly about schoolboy football heroes or jingoistic World War 2 action (I found the histories of the actual conflict far more interesting). The art was usually a dreary black-and-white and pretty static, too.  The British comic strips’ art lacked the quality, color and fluid dynamism of the American imp orts. Honorable exceptions were the comic book adaptations of the Gerry Anderson sci-fi TV shows; Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL5… The optimistic 1960s view of the future that those TV Century 21 comic strips had, with all their glamorous high technology, has now dated somewhat. Ironically, what was once futuristic has now become nostalgic.  The Anderson stable did serve to get me hooked on science fiction, though. A l...