What are you reading in 2024?

[Wofano Wotanto]

Calculators were banned from schools in the school board in which I attended high school. They were new tech and board members wanted to make sure that students were actually able to do the work, themselves. As a result I taught myself how to use a slide-rule, aka "guessing stick." This was in the '70s.

I was in HS a little later (79-84 - we were a freakshow district with no middle school back then, so 7-12 was all "high school" for me) and by then Texas Instrument calculators were everywhere. I knew how to use a slide rule from gramps, but at this point I'd need a refresher course just for the math involved, much less the tool itself. Hasn't been much call for anything beyond some simple geometry in my life since college, and those skills really do get faded with time and lack of use.

 

[Ryujin]

I was in HS a little later (79-84 - we were a freakshow district with no middle school back then, so 7-12 was all "high school" for me) and by then Texas Instrument calculators were everywhere. I knew how to use a slide rule from gramps, but at this point I'd need a refresher course just for the math involved, much less the tool itself. Hasn't been much call for anything beyond some simple geometry in my life since college, and those skills really do get faded with time and lack of use.

Same. I haven't used one since the late '70s and would have to learn all over again. I dumped Probabilities from my brain as soon as I was out of college and Calculus before that. Basic Geometry was needed for stuff like AC Circuits, so persisted a little longer. I can at least do that stuff today.

 

[ART!]

Alternating between About Time 1 and About Time 2 - these are in-depth, story arc by story arc analyses of Doctor Who. Volume 1 covers series 1-3 (1963-1966), and 2 covers 4-6 (1966-1969). I'm currently watching series 4 - I'm committed to making my way through from the very beginning. God help me...

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Alternating between About Time 1 and About Time 2 - these are in-depth, story arc by story arc analyses of Doctor Who. Volume 1 covers series 1-3 (1963-1966), and 2 covers 4-6 (1966-1969). I'm currently watching series 4 - I'm committed to making my way through from the very beginning. God help me...

Out of curiosity (and being too lazy to look it all up) how much of those early series are lost media at this point?

 

[ART!]

Out of curiosity (and being too lazy to look it all up) how much of those early series are lost media at this point?

From series 1-6, 97 of the 253 episodes are partially or completely missing.

Audio for most or all of those exists, and then there are stills and snipets of video. Most of that is due to A/V nerds at the time, recording what they could from live tv. Those stills are often photos taken by a camera pointed at a tv screen.

There are fan reconstructions of most of the missing stuff. Most just show stills and whatever bits of video exist, synced to the sound. Others do the same, but add bits of clever effects and rudimentary animation (like a figure cut and pasted from one still, moving across another still of a background.

There's also some official animated versions, that use the sound recordings combined with the best animation that a little money can buy I don't know when these were made, but I assume the '90s and more recently.

The reconstructions can be kind of agonizing to watch, especially when I'm making my way through a stretch of them. It's fascinating, though!

 

[overgeeked]

There's also some official animated versions, that use the sound recordings combined with the best animation that a little money can buy I don't know when these were made, but I assume the '90s and more recently.

They even did an animated version of Shada, the Fourth Doctor story that was only partially filmed due to the strike. I like the animation of the lost episodes. I really hope they use some of that Disney money to finish off the project soon. So many episodes to go.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

The reconstructions can be kind of agonizing to watch, especially when I'm making my way through a stretch of them. It's fascinating, though!

It is indeed. Thankfully I'm old (and American) enough to have started on the Pertwee/Baker divide, so "my Doctors" are intact, but I find the earlier episodes (especially Troughton's) captivating - what's left of them.

 

[Richards]

Ditto. And I got to meet all three of those particular Doctors at a Dr. Who convention in Chicago in 1983, the 20th anniversary of the show. Patrick Troughton was a fascinating man.

Johnathan

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The Douglas Adams Doctor Who novels of recent years, including Shada, are excellent, btw. There are three or four of them, as I recall.

 

[Mercurius]

Just finished Robert Silverberg's Downward to the Earth - was hooked immediately, then paused for a week or two, then re-upped and found it to be one of those rare books that got better and better and, by the end, probably ranks in my top 20 all-time for sf. Now reading Tanith Lee's Electric Forest. Really good so far - if you like neo-gothic, quasi-erotic, pseudo-body horrific scifi with feminist underpinnings.