{"id":63,"date":"2006-11-13T15:11:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-13T22:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=63"},"modified":"2006-11-13T15:11:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-13T22:11:00","slug":"farewells-good-wishes-at-the-wheel-of-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/?p=63","title":{"rendered":"Farewells & Good Wishes at the Wheel of Pain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two more bright lights have sailed out of sight.<\/p>\n

Film composer Basil Poledouris<\/a> died last Wednesday, November 8.  And Jack Williamson<\/a> — writer and teacher, known as the Dean of Science Fiction<\/a> — died on Friday, November 10. <\/p>\n

You might not recognize Poledouris’ name, but you’ll probably recognize his music for John Milius’ two Conan<\/a> flicks, The Hunt for Red October<\/i>, the original Lonesome Dove<\/i> mini-series, or the 1998 film version of Les Miserables<\/i>.  His trademark sound embodied raw emotional power, loud or soft, in-yer-face or gentle moments of personal drama.  <\/p>\n

Jack Williamson had a greater impact on society than we give him credit.  Back in his day, the words “genetic engineering” and “terraforming” only appeared in pulp fiction magazines.  Yesterday’s nonsense words.  Today’s headlines.  Stem cell research.  Talk of colonizing Mars.  He invented the words and made those concepts tangible.<\/p>\n

And just so people wonder what any of this has to do with dark fantasy or horror, let’s play Six Degrees of Afterhell.  Basil Poledouris scored Conan The Barbarian<\/a>, based on the works of creator Robert E. Howard and, later, illustrator Frank Frazetta<\/a>.  They helped form the foundation for dark fantasy, a genre that brings horror out of the classic Gothic trappings. <\/p>\n

Jack Williamson was about innovation, extrapolation, following an idea to the next logical step.  That’s well exemplified in his dark fantasy classic, Darker Than You Think<\/a>.  He brought werewolves into a modern world of scientists, genetics, and fearful implications as we learned more about our past as a species.  And there, he played his ideas out to their most logical and disconcerting conclusion.<\/p>\n

We take a lot of inspirations.  Those guys offered us plenty.  And in their spirits, we’re willing to jump back and forth between dark fantasy and horror.  We’re not about to limit ourselves.  And we intend to provide a moving, intense experience that leaves you a little more thoughtful, a little more aware that you’re alive — a little more curious about the next logical step.<\/p>\n

Maybe it’s self-serving or self-indulgent to tie our fate to their legacies.  Or we’re just paying our respects, stopping at their shrines, before resuming our work on the next Wheel of Pain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two more bright lights have sailed out of sight. Film composer Basil Poledouris died last Wednesday, November 8.  And Jack Williamson — writer and teacher, known as the Dean of Science Fiction — died on Friday, November 10. You might not recognize Poledouris’ name, but you’ll probably recognize his music for John Milius’ two Conan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.afterhell.com\/news\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}