SF&F encyclopedia (Q-Q)Q (vt The Winged Serpent; vt Q: The Winged Serpent) Film (1983). Larco. Prod and dir Larry COHEN, starring Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, David Carradine. Screenplay Cohen. 92 mins. Colour.In this witty MONSTER MOVIE - which subverts our expectations about how both society and B-movies work in almost the same breath - "Q" represents on the one hand Quetzalcoatl, a giant winged serpent (thus sf) and Aztec god (thus not sf) that terrorizes New York, possibly called up by the city's violence, and on the other hand Quinn (Moriarty), a small-time jewel thief and opportunist who discovers the monster's lair atop the Chrysler Building (where there is, naturally enough, an Aztec pyramid). The likable human monster Quinn metaphorically coalesces with the literal monster. But Quinn plays Judas to the incarnated god, thus laying himself open to retribution from a ritual mutilator, one of Q's disciples. He is saved by cool policeman Shepard (Carradine), to whom monsters are just one more story in the Naked City. Moriarty is superb and, in its confident mounting, its sophistication, and its higher-than-average (for Cohen) production values, Q may be its director's best film. [PN] QERAMA, THANAS [r] ALBANIA. Q: THE WINGED SERPENT Q. QUANDRY US FANZINE (1950-53), 30 issues, ed from Georgia by Lee HOFFMAN. Though undistinguished in appearance, Q was noted for the quality and humour of its writing; along with HYPHEN, its influence on fan publishing is still strong. Contributors included Walt Willis (1919- ), Robert SILVERBERG, Wilson TUCKER, Robert BLOCH and James WHITE. Hoffman still publishes, but no longer edits, Science Fiction Five Yearly, the fanzine holding the record for the longest gaps between regular issues, founded 1951, #9 in 1991; it shares many contributors with Q. A single-issue reprint collection of Quandry #14-#17 was published in 1982 by Joe D. Siclari. [PR/RH] QUANTUM LEAP US tv series, (1989-1993). Universal/MCA for NBC. Created and prod Donald P. Bellisario. Supervising prod Deborah Pratt. Writers include Bellisario, Pratt, Beverly Bridges, Paul Brown, Chris Ruppenthal, Scott Shepherd, Tommy Thompson. Dirs include David Hemmings, Aaron Lipstadt, James R. Whitmore, Gilbert Shelton, Christopher Welch, Joe Napolitano, Michael Watkins, Michael Zinberg. Five seasons to May 1993, 95 one-hour episodes in all. Colour.QL is an unusual TIME-TRAVEL series, with Scott Bakula as Sam Beckett (!), a scientist lost in time, helped only by the projected hologram of Albert (Dean Stockwell), an eccentric colleague trapped in the future. Unlike the heroes of The TIME TUNNEL (1966-7), who were physically dumped into historical situations, Beckett travels mentally, his consciousness inhabiting the bodies of other people at any time between the 1950s and the 1980s (the time visited has to be after his own birth). As in Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941), the audience sees the hero as himself while those around him see the person he is possessing. Although the premise is gimmicky, the series reached a surprisingly high standard. Highspots from 1989 have Beckett suddenly in the bodies of a test pilot about to step into an experimental plane Beckett can't possibly fly, a mobster required to sing in Italian at a wedding, an old Black man in the South in the 1950s during a civil-rights demonstration, and a pretty woman being pursued by a lecherous suitor. Only notionally sf, this is a shade grittier, funnier and cleverer than it has any right to be, and benefits strongly from the two relaxed, witty central performances. [KN] QUANTUM: SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY REVIEW THRUST. QUARBER MERKUR Austrian FANZINE; ed Franz ROTTENSTEINER since its inception in 1963. In the argot of fans, QM is a "sercon" (serious and constructive) fanzine, one of the longest-running and most impressive of its type. It publishes critical, bibliographical, sociopolitical and historical studies of sf, UTOPIAS, weird fiction and FANTASY. Averaging 90 large unillustrated pages per issue, QM has now published around 3 million words of serious criticism; it had reached #74 by the end of 1990. Contributors have included most of the major German sf critics, and writers such as Herbert W. FRANKE and Stanislaw LEM; many contributors have been from Eastern Europe. A collection of some of the best contents is Quarber Merkur (anth 1979 Germany). [PN] QUARK US ORIGINAL-ANTHOLOGY series from Paperback Library, ed Samuel R. DELANY and the poet Marilyn Hacker (1942-) - they were married 1961-80 - subtitled "A Quarterly of Speculative Fiction". It was the most overtly experimental and NEW-WAVE of the ANTHOLOGY series of the early 1970s, and provoked some hostility in the sf world. It attempted an ambitious, graphically sophisticated package; but some illustration was substandard and the design was irritating rather than innovative, with such counterproductive features as the appearance of authors' names only at the end of each story and, for #2 (because of a production oversight), the omission of a contents page. Although Q featured good work by Thomas M. DISCH, R.A. L AFFERTY, Ursula K. LE GUIN, Joanna RUSS and others, it lasted only 4 issues: Quark 1 (anth 1970), #2 (anth 1971), #3 (anth 1971) and #4 (anth 1971). [MJE/PN] QUASARS BLACK HOLES. QUATERMASS (vt The Quatermass Conclusion) UK tv serial (1979). Euston Films/ITV. Prod Ted Childs. Dir Piers Haggard, starring John Mills, Simon MacCorkindale, Rebecca Saire. Written Nigel KNEALE. 4 60min episodes. Colour. Version for film release (but receiving general release only on videotape) titled The Quatermass Conclusion, 102 mins.This fourth and weakest of the Quatermass tv serials (see below for details of the others) was written in the late 1960s for BBC TV, rejected as too expensive, and finally made for commercial tv a decade later. The delay rendered out-of-date the sequences about hippie adolescents lured to neolithic sites to be harvested by aliens. The other part of the plot, dealing with near-future breakdown of law and order in a London becoming a wasteland, is stronger; but the two halves never properly meld, and Q lacks the narrative thrust of its predecessors. John Mills's Quatermass is rather old and sad, and, though there is much to enjoy, there is a faintly querulous, elderly air about the whole production. The cut version, though planned from the beginning, is semi-incoherent. Kneale's obsessive, 30-year repetition of the science-meets-superstition theme is altogether jollier in his screenplay for HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1983), also featuring a stone circle. [PN] QUATERMASS AND THE PIT 1. UK tv serial (1958-9). BBC TV. Prod and dir Rudolph Cartier, starring Andre Morell (as Quatermass), Anthony Bushell. Written Nigel KNEALE. 6 35min episodes. (Released on video 1988 at 178 mins.) B/w.As in QATP's two predecessors, The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT and QUATERMASS II, Kneale's theme is demonic possession, dressed up ingeniously as sf. Morell was the best of the BBC's three Professor Quatermasses, and most critics judge the tv serial better than the film version. The published script is Quatermass and the Pit * (1960) by Kneale. For details of the story see below.2. Film (1967; vt Five Million Years to Earth US) Hammer/Seven Arts. Dir Roy Ward Baker, starring Andrew Keir (as Quatermass), Barbara Shelley, James Donald. Screenplay Nigel KNEALE, based on his BBC TV serial. 97 mins. Colour.Hammer's third Quatermass film, a decade after the second and the only one with an English actor (Keir) in the title role. The first two were The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955) and QUATERMASS II (1957). Workers excavating a tunnel find an apparent unexploded bomb; it is actually a Martian spaceship. In a plot-turn deftly blending sf with speculation on Jungian archetype, it turns out that racial memories have been coded in our brains by Martians during our prehistory: our image of the Devil is a distorted "memory" of the Martians' appearance (antennae equalling horns), and our irrational belligerence reflects the Martians' ritualistic culling of the weaker members of their species. The spaceship's power source is merely dormant, and as it comes to life (poltergeist phenomena being the first effect) it reinforces ancient nightmares. In the disturbing climax panicked Londoners begin an orgy of destruction as a Devil's head rises above the streets and paranormal powers are let loose. QATP is surely the inspiration for Stephen KING's novel The Tommyknockers (1987).Kneale's characteristic blend of GOTHIC and science is intelligent and entertaining. Although inferior to its tv original, which had more time to develop its irrational but mesmerizing thesis, the film is still above average. [PN/JB]See also: SUPERNATURAL CREATURES. QUATERMASS CONCLUSION, THE QUATERMASS. QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, THE UK tv serial (1953). BBC TV. Prod and dir Rudolph Cartier, starring Reginald Tate (as Quatermass), Isabel Dean, Duncan Lamont. Written Nigel KNEALE. 6 30min episodes. B/w.Before the first episode, the BBC warned that the serial was "thought to be unsuitable for children or persons of a nervous disposition". For 6 Saturday nights the UK tv audience watched a genuinely unsettling story unfold - an ingenious combination of sf and the traditional horror theme of possession. It was a milestone in televised sf. The script was published as The Quatermass Experiment * (1959) by Kneale. For details of the story The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT . [JB] QUATERMASS II 1. UK tv serial (1955). BBC TV. Prod and dir Rudolph Cartier, starring John Robinson (as Quatermass). Written Nigel KNEALE. 6 35min episodes. B/w.This was the sequel to The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT ; for details of the story see below. The script was published as Quatermass II * (1960) by Kneale.2. Film (1957; vt Enemy from Space US) Hammer/United Artists. Dir Val Guest, starring Brian Donlevy (as Quatermass), Bryan Forbes, John Longden, Sidney James. Screenplay Nigel KNEALE, Val Guest, based on the BBC TV serial by Kneale. 85 mins. B/w.This was #2 of the 3 Quatermass films produced by Hammer, and the first coscripted by Kneale; it is the most difficult to judge since Kneale, who disliked Donlevy's US performance and Guest's tampering with his script, withdrew the film from circulation in 1965 when rights reverted to him. Many critics think it the best of the Quatermass films, and some deem it the greatest of all UK sf movies (though astonishingly similar in theme to the US film INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS [1956]): disturbing, intense, unrelenting, paranoid and especially nightmarish in its depiction of figures in power conspiring with aliens capable of entering and controlling human bodies. Much of the action takes place in the brooding landscapes of the North of England, where a mysterious technological complex turns out to be the alien power base. The strong political allegory of ordinary people cruelly exploited by a cold-blooded (and in this case literally inhuman) ruling class was very adventurous for the time.The tv ending (Quatermass goes into space to destroy the asteroid which is the alien base) is dropped in the film. The film's predecessor was The QUATERMASS XPERIMENT (1955) and its successor was QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967). [PN]See also: MONSTER MOVIES; PARANOIA; QUATERMASS. QUATERMASS XPERIMENT, THE (vt The Creeping Unknown US) Film (1955). Hammer. Dir Val Guest, starring Brian Donlevy (as Quatermass), Richard Wordsworth, Jack Warner. Screenplay Richard Landau, Val Guest, based on the BBC TV serial by Nigel KNEALE. 82 mins, cut to 78 mins. B/w.It was this film version of the BBC's tv serial The QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT that convinced the Hammer company there was money in horror. (The spelling "Xperiment" referred jokingly to the X certificate Hammer correctly expected the film to be given because of what seemed in those innocent days its alarming horror content.) An astronaut returns to Earth infected by spores from space that slowly take over his body, finally transforming him into an amorphous blob that retreats into Westminster Abbey, where it is electrocuted by Quatermass. (The original tv serial ends with Quatermass talking to all the three astronaut psyches lingering within the monster, thus convincing the blob to self-destruct.) Richard Wordsworth's shambling, pitiful performance as the afflicted astronaut is quite moving, communicating (though he barely speaks) a sense of something utterly alien to human experience. TQX is a minor classic. [PN/JB]See also: MONSTER MOVIES. QEBEC CANADA. QUEEN OF BLOOD Roger CORMAN. QUENEAU, RAYMOND [r] FRANCE. QUESADA, ANGEL TORRES [r] SPAIN. QUESTAR US sf magazine; large- BEDSHEET slick format; 13 issues, Spring 1978-Oct 1981; published by M.W. Communications Inc (William G. Wilson and Robert V. Michelucci), Pittsburgh; ed William G. Wilson Jr. The final, redesigned issue, had a new title: Quest/Star, subtitled "The World of Science Fiction".Questar began as a media SEMIPROZINE largely devoted to talk about COMICS and sf CINEMA, with a sprinkling of not very good stories. #3 introduced interior colour illustration, and a greater concentration on movies and interviews. Though glossy, it remained insipid. Only with #13 - for which, astonishingly, H.L. GOLD was dragged from retirement as fiction editor - did Q begin publishing reputable fiction. This was too little, too late. Undercapitalized - and undersold, despite its patchy national distribution from #7 - Q sank, lamented by few. Publication was irregular, though approximately quarterly. [PN] QUEST FOR FIRE Film (1981). ICC-Cine-Trail (Montreal)/Belstar Productions/Stephan Films (Paris). Dir Jean-Jacques Annaud, starring Everett McGill, Ron Perlman, Nameer El-Kadi, Rae Dawn Chong. Screenplay by Gerard Brach, based on La Guerre du Feu (1909) by J.H. ROSNY aine. 100 mins. Colour.This Canadian/French coproduction dramatizes the 1909 French classic prehistoric romance by J.H. Rosny aine, trans as The Quest for Fire: A Novel of Prehistoric Times (cut trans 1967 US). Great care (possibly misplaced, since who can know?) was taken to make it all seem authentic, from positions adopted for love-making (body language credited to Desmond Morris) and an imaginary agglutinative language with a vocabulary of about 200 sounds (linguistics credited to Anthony BURGESS). The tribe's fire has gone out, and three tribesmen go on a quest to find fresh fire (it is a kind of Holy Grail), confronting a more primitive cannibal tribe and then the more sophisticated Ivaka, who know how to make fire. As an exercise in imaginary ANTHROPOLOGY it is mildly impressive (though it has its cod aspects, its 1909 original not being the last word in prehistoric insight); as story-telling, it covers familiar generic ground, but is all very enjoyable - especially the arbitrary herd of mammoths (elephants wearing rugs) - and rather touching. The Kenyan and Scottish highlands, beautifully photographed, stand in for prehistoric Europe. [PN] QUEST FOR LOVE Film (1971). Peter Rogers Productions. Dir Ralph Thomas, starring Tom Bell, Joan Collins, Denholm Elliott, Laurence Naismith. Screenplay Terence Feely, based on "Random Quest" (1961) by John WYNDHAM. 91 mins. Colour.Romance about a physicist (Bell) accidentally transferred to a PARALLEL WORLD, where he falls in love with the wife (Collins) of his alter ego, a playwright and cad, whose place he has taken. She dies. On being sucked back to our own world, he desperately quests for her counterpart, hoping to save her and have a second chance at love. He does. Good performances, so-so as sf, with the differences of the new world (Kennedy not assassinated, etc.) established only perfunctorily. Wyndham's original story is one of his weakest. [PN] QUESTOR TAPES, THE Made-for-tv film (1974). Universal/NBC. Dir Richard A. Colla, starring Robert Foxworth (as Questor), Mike Farrell, John Vernon. Teleplay Gene RODDENBERRY, Gene L. Coon. 100 mins. Colour.This was the rather good pilot episode for a tv series that never sold. Questor, the last of a series of ANDROID guardians deposited on Earth eons ago by a beneficent ALIEN race, has been faultily programmed, and the story involves his search for information that will explain his origin and mission. Little is resolved, since the film was designed as an introduction only. The novelization is The Questor Tapes * (1974) by D.C. FONTANA. [JB] QUESTS FANTASTIC VOYAGES; FANTASY. QUEST/STAR QUESTAR. QUICK, W.T. (? - ) US writer who began publishing sf with "Rest in Pieces" for IASFM in 1980, but who came to more general notice, after several 1980s stories in ASF, with the Dreams sequence of sf adventures: Dreams of Flesh and Sand (1988), Dreams of Gods and Men (1989) and Singularities (1990). The tales are clear-cut and taut, but the huge corporations dominated by AIs were unsurprising fare for readers familiar with the rapid explosion of the CYBERPUNK subgenre. Yesterday's Pawn (1989), also an adventure tale, takes its adolescent protagonist through space and time as he attempts to decipher the importance of an ancient artefact; but Systems (1989) returns to cyberpunk territory in the fast-paced story of a "data hunter" simultaneously grieving for his pregnant wife and solving the mysteries surrounding her murder. [JC] QUIET EARTH, THE Film (1985). Cinepro/Pillsbury. Dir Geoffrey Murphy, starring Bruno Lawrence, Alison Routledge, Peter Smith. Screenplay Bill Baer, Bruno Lawrence, Sam Pillsbury, based on The Quiet Earth (1981) by Craig HARRISON. 91 mins. Colour.This New Zealand film tells of a scientific/metaphysical DISASTER, perhaps consequent upon a secret project in energy transmission, in which all people disappear from the Earth except those who coincidentally die at the moment of the disaster: these are resurrected. A guilt-ridden scientist plays solitary games in a deserted city; he meets a woman survivor and then a tough Maori, with the usual male rivalry ensuing. The scientist realizes the fabric of the Universe has become unstable and tries to put it right, with interesting results. A small, low-key, honest film, suffering from a derivative storyline and rather pedestrian direction and performances. [PN] QUILL, JOHN [s] Max ADELER. QUILLER, ANDREW Kenneth BULMER. QUILP, JOCELYN Pseudonym of UK writer Halliwell Sutcliffe (1870-1932), whose Baron Verdigris: A Romance of the Reversed Direction (1894) features a 12th-century knight cast into confusion by being able to remember both the past and the future, but not to distinguish between them. [JC] QUINN, DANIEL (1935- ) US writer who began publishing work of genre interest with Dreamer (1988), a dark fantasy, and who came to wide notice with Ishmael (1992), which won the first Turner Tomorrow Award of $500,000. The novel is a quietly told but elegantly unrelenting indictment of Homo sapiens's lethal tenure as rulers of the planet, spoken through the consciousness of a melancholy, didactic great ape ( APES AND CAVEMEN) who attempts to teach the human protagonist what must be done: you must (he insists) change your lives; or you will all die. [JC] QUINN, GERARD A. (1927- ) Northern Irish illustrator. One of the "grand old men" (with Brian LEWIS) of UK sf illustration in the 1950s, GAQ did hundreds of illustrations for UK sf magazines, beginning 1951, including 36 covers for NW, 24 for Science Fantasy, 3 for Nebula Science Fiction, 2 for Vision of Tomorrow and, in a minor 1982 comeback after largely disappearing from the scene in the mid-1960s, 2 for EXTRO. Specializing in alien landscapes, his astronomical paintings were often compared to those of Chesley BONESTELL, though his use of colour was less photographically realistic. His interior black-and-white work was intricate. [JG/PN] QUINN, JAMES L(OUIS) (? - ) US editor whose Quinn Publishing Co started the magazine IF in 1952; JLQ became editor after the first 4 issues. Its circulation gradually declined, and in 1958 JLQ appointed Damon KNIGHT in his place. The magazine's fortunes did not revive and JLQ suspended publication, subsequently selling the title to the publishers of GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION. With Eve Wulff he ed 2 anthologies drawn from the magazine: The First World of If (anth 1957) and The Second World of If (anth 1958). [MJE] QUINN PUBLISHING CO. IF. QUINTET Film (1979). Lion's Gate/20th Century-Fox. Dir Robert Altman, starring Paul Newman, Bibi Andersson, Vittorio Gassman, Fernando Rey, Brigitte Fossey, Nina Van Pallandt, David Langton. Screenplay Frank Barhydt, Altman, Patricia Resnick, from a story by Altman, Lionel Chetwynd, Resnick. 118 mins. Colour.This strange film, crucified on release, is perhaps better than the then-consensus suggested. Newman is the seal-hunter in an (apparently) post- HOLOCAUST frozen future, a new Ice Age, who with his pregnant wife joins a dying but still crowded city, where corpses are left in the snow for the dogs to eat, where nobody is born any more, and where anomie is held at bay only by obsessive playing of the game Quintet. This is played either on a board or in real life; in the latter case 5 people must be killed: only 1 will survive. Newman's wife (Fossey) is accidentally killed during a game attack (along with Earth's last foetus), and Newman vengefully joins the game, wins, killing his new lover (Andersson) in the process, and vanishes back into the snow. The obvious reading is that of the still vigorous, romantic hero destroying a corrupt society. Another plausible reading is that the death-focused game is all the real life that is left, and that the hero's despising it is itself a sterile act of turning away: the hero as lost fool. The imagery is strong, the pace glacial and the theme overintellectualized; the deliberately international cast sounds most of the time very uncomfortable with English (though the very alienation that suggests is appropriate to the story). Q bores the watcher, yet lingers for years in the mind. [PN] |