On this day in music history:

Bookends by Simon & Garfunkel (1968)

La Cenerentola (1996)

Night Songs by Renée Fleming and Jean-Yves Thibaudet (2001)

Bookends

Album by Simon & Garfunkel,

released April 3, 1968.

Track list: Bookends Theme; Save the Life of My Child; America; Overs; Voices of Old People; Old Friends; Bookends Theme (Reprise); Fakin’ It; Punky’s Dilemma; Mrs. Robinson (From “The Graduate” Soundtrack); A Hazy Shade of Winter; At the Zoo; You Don’t Know Where Your Interest Lies; Old Friends (Demo).

La Cenerentola

An episode of the Great Performances TV series.

Directed by Brian Large.

Written by Jacopo Ferretti and Charles Perrault.

Released in the United States on April 3, 1996.

Music by Gioachino Rossini.

Cast: Cecilia Bartoli, Enzo Dara, Raúl Giménez, Alessandro Corbelli, Michele Pertusi, Laura Knoop, Jill Grove, Bruno Campanella, Houston Grand Opera Chorus, Spiro Winsett.

Night Songs

Album by Renée Fleming and Jean-Yves Thibaudet,

released April 3, 2001.

Track list: Debussy: Mandoline; Debussy: Apparition; Debussy: Chansons de Bilitis, L. 90 - La Flûte de Pan; Debussy: Chansons de Bilitis, L. 90 - La Chevelure; Debussy: Chansons de Bilitis, L. 90 - Le Tombeau des Naiades; Marx: Nocturne; Marx: Nachtgebet; Marx: Selige Nacht; Marx: Pierrot Dandy; R. Strauss: Ruhe, meine Seele, Op. 27, No. 1; R. Strauss: Schlechtes Wetter, Op. 69, No. 5; R. Strauss: Leises Lied, Op. 39, No. 1; R. Strauss: Leise Lieder, Op. 41a, No. 5; R. Strauss: Caecilie, Op. 27, No. 2; Rachmaninoff: Zdes’ khorosho, Op. 21, No. 7; Rachmaninoff: V molchani nochi taynoy, Op. 4, No. 3; Rachmaninoff: The Waterlily, Op. 8, No. 1; Rachmaninoff: Dreams, Op. 38, No. 5; Rachmaninoff: These Summer Nights, Op. 14, No. 5; Rachmaninoff: Ne poy, krasavitsa, pri mne, Op. 4, No. 4.

On this day in movie history - 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968 movie & books):

2001: A Space Odyssey

directed by Stanley Kubrick,

written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke,

based on the short story The Sentinel by Arthur C. Clarke,

was released in the United States on April 2, 1968.
Music by Aram Khachaturyan, György Ligeti, Johann Strauss and Richard Strauss.

Cast:

Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, Daniel Richter, Leonard Rossiter, Margaret Tyzack, Robert Beatty, Sean Sullivan, Douglas Rain, Frank Miller, Edwina Carroll, Penny Brahms, Heather Downham, Alan Gifford, Ann Gillis, Chela Matthison, Vivian Kubrick, Kenneth Kendall.

Recommended reading:

2001: a Space Odyssey

By Arthur C. Clarke.

Published by Ace.

First published 1968.

Paperback.

ISBN-10: 0451452739

ISBN-13: 978-0451452733

Description:

The classic science fiction novel that captures and expands on the vision of Stanley Kubrick’s immortal film – and changed the way we look at the stars and ourselves.

From the savannas of Africa at the dawn of mankind to the rings of Saturn as man ventures to the outer rim of our solar system, 2001: A Space Odyssey is a journey unlike any other.

This allegory about humanity’s exploration of the universe – and the universe’s reaction to humanity – is a hallmark achievement in storytelling that follows the crew of the spacecraft Discovery as they embark on a mission to Saturn. Their vessel is controlled by HAL 9000, an artificially intelligent supercomputer capable of the highest level of cognitive functioning that rivals – and perhaps threatens – the human mind.

Grappling with space exploration, the perils of technology, and the limits of human power, 2001: A Space Odyssey continues to be an enduring classic of cinematic scope.

The Sentinel

By Arthur C. Clarke.

Masterworks of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Published by Berkley.

Published 1986.

ISBN-10: 0425093891

ISBN-13: 978-0425093894

Description:

Arthur C. Clarke. The author of more than fifty books: with over 15 million copies in print, Arthur C. Clarke is one of the most distinguished figures in modern science and science fiction. He is the inventor of the concept of the communications satellite, a past Chairman of the Academy of Astronomics. His novel Rendezvous with Rama was the winner of science fiction’s three highest honors: the Hugo, Nebula and John W. Campbell awards. Arthur C. Clarke has covered the Apollo missions with Walter Cronkite and has lectured internationally on the peaceful exploration of space.

Here Arthur C. Clarke presents a magnificent collection of his finest work, spanning four decades. Included in this volume, along with revealing new introductions, are:

The Sentinel – The story that inspired 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Guardian Angel – The rarely-glimpsed work that gave birth to Childhood’s End.

The Songs of Distant Earth – A fantastic tale of first contact with an alien world, the basis for Clarke’s latest novel.

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek (1968)

Star Trek

Season 2. Episode 26.

Episode entitled: Assignment: Earth.

Released March 29, 1968.

Directed by Marc Daniels.

Written by Art Wallace, Gene Roddenberry.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Alexander Courage.

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, Robert Lansing, Teri Garr, Don Keefer, Lincoln Demyan, Morgan Jones, Bruce Mars, Ted Gehring, Paul Baxley, Barbara Babcock, Bill Blackburn, Robert D'Arcy, Frank da Vinci, Rudy Doucette, Roger Holloway, Bob Johnson, Ken Kane, Esther Ying Lee, Eddie Paskey, Edwin Rochelle, April Tatro.

Born on this day – Andrew Pyper:

Andrew Pyper

Writer

March 29, 1968 – January 3, 2025

Credits:

Books:

1001 Names and Their Meanings (2012); Breaking and Entering (2012); Call Roxanne (2012); Camp Sacred Heart (2012); Dime Bag Girl (2012); House of Mirrors (2012); If You Lived Here You'd Be Home By Now (2012); Kiss Me (1996); Lost Girls (1999); Magnificent (2012); Oracle (2021); Sausage Stew (2012); The Author Shows a Little Kindness (2012); The Damned (2015); The Demonologist (2013); The Earliest Memory Exercise (2012); The Guardians (2011); The Homecoming (2019); The Killing Circle (2008); The Only Child (2017); The Residence (2020); The Trade Mission / aka Dark Descent (2002); The Wildfire Season (2005); Toronto Noir / Akashic Noir (2008); Unnerving Magazine: Issue #14 (2020); X-Ray (2012).

Television:

Biology of Story (2016); Oracle (2021); Oracle 2: The Dreamland Murders (2022); Shock Docs (2021).

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek (1968)

Star Trek: Voyager (2000)

Star Trek

Season 2. Episode 25.

Episode entitled: Bread and Circuses.

Released March 15, 1968.

Directed by Ralph Senensky.

Written by Gene Roddenberry, Gene L. Coon, John Kneubuhl.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Alexander Courage.

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, William Smithers, Logan Ramsey, Ian Wolfe, William Bramley, Rhodes Reason, Bart La Rue, Jack Perkins, Max Kleven, Lois Jewell, Paul Baxley, Bill Blackburn, Frank da Vinci, Tony Dante, Chester Hayes, Roger Holloway, Shep Houghton, Jeannie Malone, Bob Orrison, Eddie Paskey, Gil Perkins, Paul Stader, Tom Steele, Joe Walls.

Star Trek: Voyager

Season 6. Episode 20.

Episode entitled: Good Shephard.

Released March 15, 2000.

Directed by Winrich Kolbe.

Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor.

Written by Dianna Gitto, Joe Menosky, Bryan Fuller, Michael Taylor, Robert Doherty.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Paul Baillargeon.

Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Jeri Ryan, Jay Underwood, Michael Reisz, Kimble Jemison, Zoe McLellan, Tom Morello, Majel Barrett, Tarik Ergin, Tina Kotrich, Nichole McAuley, Louis Ortiz.

Recommended reading - The Instant Enemy by Ross Macdonald (1968):

The Instant Enemy

By Ross Macdonald.

Published by Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

ASIN: B07R5PYF7Q

Published by Alfred A. Knopf.

First published 1968.

First Edition.

Hardcover.

Description:

“Moves fast and is full of surprises. . . . The best work Macdonald has done in years.” – The New York Times.

“A more serious and complex writer than Chandler and Hammett ever were.” – Eudora Welty.

“Archer has seldom been in better form, and neither has his estimable creator.” – The New Yorker.

“Lew Archer is back, careening down the bloody trail of women who were beaten to death, a murdered cop, and a dead hobo who is the key to a 15-year-old family secret that won't die. "(The) American private eye, immortalized by Hammett, refined by Chandler, brought to its zenith by Macdonald". – New York Times Book Review.

Lew Archer is hired by Keith Sebastian, a Los Angeles business executive, to find his daughter Sandy, a high-school senior who has run off with a homeless boy. Sebastian and his wife, living on the on the edge of affluent bankruptcy, seem unable to communicate with their daughter. Archer finds the runaways easily enough, but before he can return Sandy to her parents, she has participated in a violent crime. Archer’s efforts to save the girl from the consequences of her actions, and to understand those actions, involve him in a savage plot twisting deep into the past. At least one old murder and some new ones confound him and the police. Archer himself is very nearly killed by an ex-cop who wants to keep the case closed, but he finally manages to open it and let some daylight in. The Instant Enemy is Lew Archer at his toughest, and Ross Macdonald at his most trenchant in his observations of California society.

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek (1968)

Star Trek: Voyager (2000)

Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman's Trek / book (2024)

Star Trek

Season 2. Episode 24.

Episode entitled: The Ultimate Computer.

Released March 8, 1968.

Directed by John Meredyth Lucas.

Written by D.C. Fontana, Laurence N. Wolfe.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Alexander Courage.

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, William Marshall, Sean Morgan, John Duke / Barry Russo, Bill Blackburn, Frank da Vinci, Roger Holloway, Eddie Paskey.

Star Trek: Voyager

Season 6. Episode 19.

Episode entitled: Child’s Play.

Released March 8, 2000.

Directed by Michael/Mike Vejar.

Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor.

Written by Raf Green, Paul Brown, Bryan Fuller, Michael Taylor, Robert Doherty.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by David Bell.

Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Jeri Ryan, Manu Intiraymi, Tracey Ellis, Mark A. Sheppard, Scarlett Pomers, Marley McClean, Kurt Wetherill, Cody Wetherill, Eric Ritter, Majel Barrett, Michael Bailous, Tarik Ergin, Dieter Horneman, Nichole McAuley, Pablo Soriano.

Star Trek: Open a Channel: A Woman's Trek

By Nana Visitor.

Published by Insight Editions.

Published 2024.

Hardcover.

ASIN: B0C7P8NTH2

ISBN-13: 979-8886633016

Description:

Nana Visitor, Star Trek’s Kira Nerys, explores how the series has portrayed and influenced women. Interviews with the stars, writers, producers, and celebrity fans reveal the struggles and triumphs of women both behind and in front of the camera throughout the sixty-year history of Star Trek, and how they have mirrored the experiences of women everywhere.

The groundbreaking casting of Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura in 1966 was a paradigm shift for women and people of color. Pioneering is no picnic, and she planned to leave the show until none other than the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. contextualized her appearance in people’s living rooms across America as a way for people of color to know they were indeed an important part of the future.

Since then, each Star Trek show has both reflected the values of its time and imagined a future of equality. In her first book, Open a Channel: A Woman’s Trek, Nana Visitor sets out to discover both how Star Trek led the way for women, and how each show was trapped in its own era.

For Visitor, this is more than a book about Star Trek. It’s also about how society and the stories we tell have evolved in the last sixty years, and how the role of women has changed in that time.

STAR AUTHOR: Written by Star Trek: Deep Space Nine actor Nana Visitor, famous for playing Major Kira Nerys. This is both her story and her journey through the stories of other women involved with Star Trek from the 1960s to the 21st century.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS: Features interviews with more than a dozen women who starred in Star Trek, including Kate Mulgrew, Sonequa Martin-Green, Terry Farrell, Gates McFadden, Denise Crosby, Tawny Newsome, and Jess Bush.

INSPIRING STORIES: Explore how Star Trek has influenced women in the real world, including soldiers, scientists, and even astronauts. For the book, author Nana Visitor visited ESA HQ and interviewed astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti while she was in orbit around Earth on the International Space Station.

PIONEERING SERIES: Following the humanistic tenets of creator Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek, throughout the decades, led the way in promoting diversity. Youths who grew up with Captain Janeway on Star Trek: Voyager, for example, not only learned to accept a woman as a leader but were also able to expand what they could imagine for themselves. The book makes clear how important storytelling is, and how the storytelling of Star Trek has had a profound effect on its audience.

On this day in the Star Trek universe:

Star Trek (1968)

Star Trek: Voyager (2000)

Star Trek

Season 2. Episode 23.

Episode entitled: The Omega Glory.

Released March 1, 1968.

Directed by Vincent McEveety.

Written by Gene Roddenberry.

Created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Alexander Courage.

Cast: William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, Nichelle Nichols, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Majel Barrett, Walter Koenig, Morgan Woodward, Roy Jenson, Irene Kelly, Morgan Farley, David L. Ross, Lloyd Kino, Ed McCready, Frank Atienza, Bill Blackburn, Frank da Vinci, Ed Fury, Eddie Paskey, Frieda Rentie, Walter Soo Hoo, Adele Yoshioka.

Star Trek: Voyager

Season 6. Episode 18.

Episode entitled: Ashes to Ashes.

Released March 1, 2000.

Directed by Terry Windell.

Created by Rick Berman, Michael Piller, Jeri Taylor.

Written by Robert Doherty, Ronald Wilkerson, Bryan Fuller, Michael Taylor.

Based on Star Trek, created by Gene Roddenberry.

Music by Dennis McCarthy.

Cast: Kate Mulgrew, Robert Beltran, Roxann Dawson, Robert Duncan McNeill, Ethan Phillips, Robert Picardo, Tim Russ, Garrett Wang, Jeri Ryan, Kim Rhodes, Marley McClean, Scarlett Pomers, Kevin Lowe, Manu Intiraymi, Kurt Wetherill, Cody Wetherill, Majel Barrett, Carter Edwards, Tarik Ergin, Tom Miller, Louis Ortiz.

December in movie history - Assignment to Kill (1968):

Assignment to Kill

directed and written by Sheldon Reynolds,

was released in the United States in December, 1968.
Exact release date unknown.
Music by William Lava.

Cast:

Patrick O'Neal, Joan Hackett, John Gielgud, Herbert Lom, Eric Portman, Peter van Eyck, Oskar Homolka, Leon Greene, Kent Smith, Philip Ober, Fifi D'Orsay, Éva Szörényi, Cynthia O'Neal, Betty Bresler, Karl Bruck, Albert D'Arno, Walter Friedel, Walter Janovitz, Joanne Ludden, Martin Miller, Ann Prentiss, Charles H. Radilak, Erik Sorenson.

On this day in movie history - Lady in Cement (1968 movie & novel):

Lady in Cement

directed by Gordon Douglas,

written by Marvin H. Albert and Jack Guss,

based on the novel by Marvin H. Albert,

was released in the United States on November 20, 1968.

Music by Hugo Montenegro.

Cast:

Frank Sinatra, Raquel Welch, Richard Conte, Martin Gabel, Lainie Kazan, Pat Henry, Dan Blocker, Steve Peck, Virginia Wood, Richard Deacon, Frank Raiter, Peter Hock, Alex Stevens, Christine Todd, Mac Robbins, Tommy Uhlar, Rey Baumel, Pauly Dash, Andy Jarrell, Al Algiro, Robert 'Buzz' Henry, Lanita Kent, Joe E. Lewis, Charlene Mathies, Shirley Parker, B.S. Pully, Jilly Rizzo, Chris Robinson, Coz Serrapere, Dick Sterling, Bunny Yeager.

Recommended reading:

The Lady in Cement

By Marvin H. Albert.

Also published under the pseudonym Anthony Rome.

ASIN: B000MOWZWA

Published by Pocket Books Inc.

1st edition.

Published 1961.

Paperback.

Description:

The private-eye business was slow, so Anthony Rome when skin-diving. But instead of treasure he found a woman's naked body – her feet embedded in a block of cement! She had last been seen alive at a ritzy party given by wealthy heiress Gretchen Forrest. Also at the party had been bigtime tough Al Mungo, who claimed he'd quit the rackets. Anthony Rome started asking questions. And one morning he woke up swollen, bruised and beaten. He hadn't learned much – except that Mungo hadn't lost his heavy touch, and that somewhere along the line, Mungo had picked up a very special interest in lovely Gretchen Forrest!

On this day in movie history - They Came to Rob Las Vegas (1968):

They Came to Rob Las Vegas

directed by Antonio Isasi,

written by Antonio Isasi, Lluis Josep Comeron, Jorge Illa and Jo Eisinger, based on the novel by André Lay,

was released in Spain on October 31, 1968.
Music by Georges Garvarentz.

Cast:

Gary Lockwood, Elke Sommer, Lee J. Cobb, Jean Servais, Georges Géret, Jack Palance, Fabrizio Capucci, Roger Hanin, Gustavo Re, Daniel Martín, Maurizio Arena, Enrique Ávila, Gérard Tichy, Rubén Rojo, Ingrid Spaey, Carlos Ballesteros, Luis Barboo, Rossella Bergamonti, Antonio Casas, Beni Deus, Fernando Hilbeck, José Marco, Julio Pérez Tabernero, George Rigaud, Lorenzo Robledo.