Keyword: sciencefiction
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From the whiz-bang and cheesy to the far-out and prematurely cancelled, sci-fi and TV have had a nice run. We locked ourselves in the basement with several milk crates of VHS tapes, laser discs, and back issues of Starlog to come up with the top 50 science-fiction television shows.
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Ahmed Best, the actor who played the first computer generated character in the franchise, revealed that Michael Jackson approached director George Lucas in hopes of taking on the Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace role with the help of prosthetics and makeup similar to that of his "Thriller" video. After meeting Jackson backstage at a concert with Lucas and co-star Natalie Portman, Best said, "George introduced me as 'Jar Jar' and I was like, 'That's kind of weird.' Michael was like, 'Oh. OK.' I thought, 'What is going on?'" ... Although it's up to speculation whether or not Jackson's...
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'Being a fan of Star Trek has given me a life', claims 69-year-old Steve Doman. The devoted trekkie has spent 14 years transforming his remote Colorado cabin into a Star Trek shrine complete with Klingon and Federation-themed rooms. Steve has spent a staggering $30,000 on the renovation project - which started as a winter hobby - and says there is still plenty of work to do.
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OK the time has arrived. Art Bell returns to American radio in two hours. Tonight.
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The first teaser for the new "X-Files" reboot offers a quick glimpse at the reboot along with some nostalgia and the assertion that "the truth is in there." While we've seen a few behind-the-scenes shots from the set of the forthcoming "X-Files" reboot, heard about Gillian Anderson's challenge in "waking up" Scully and even seen David Duchovny tear up over the "fantastic script," we haven't seen much in the way of a preview of the six-episode series due to air on the Fox network in January. Tuesday, with the release of the first official teaser for the show, that doesn't...
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We're exclusively premiering the new trailer for Syfy's miniseries "Childhood’s End," which just debuted at Comic-Con on Saturday morning. Get a good look at what Arthur C. Clarke’s sci-fi novel will look like in real life, right now. Set in a world that's already been conquered by aliens, this trailer actually shows the big "first contact" moment. "There’s no need to be afraid," says the alien voiceover. "We've come to help mankind. We are not conquerors."
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FAHRENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury This one, with gratitude, is for DON CONGDON. FAHRENHEIT 451: The temperature at which book-paper catches fire and burns PART I IT WAS A PLEASURE TO BURN IT was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed. With the brass nozzle in his fists, with this great python spitting its venomous kerosene upon the world, the blood pounded in his head, and his hands were the hands of some amazing conductor playing all the symphonies of blazing and burning to bring down the tatters and charcoal ruins of history. With...
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A Monday piece in IO9 contained some revelations about the upcoming sequel to 1996’s “Independence Day,” which is entitled “Independence Day: Resurgence.” 20 years after the great alien invasion flattened many of Earth’s largest cities and killed untold millions of people, the world is still united in building up its defenses against a return engagement. These defenses apparently include a moon base.
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A former child actor who starred in one of the “Star Wars” movie prequels faces charges after leading South Carolina deputies on a high-speed chase. Colleton County Sheriff’s Sgt. Kyle Strickland said Sunday deputies on Wednesday arrested a 26-year-old man they confirmed through a former talent agent was Jake Lloyd. He played young Anakin Skywalker in the 1999 movie “Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.”
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One day in the 1970s, George Lucas screened a rough cut of his new movie, Star Wars, for his influential Hollywood friends. And almost none of them liked it. The plot seemed incomprehensible, the made-up fantasy names absurd. Director Brian De Palma, who had just had a big hit with Carrie, made fun of everything about the film, including Princess LeiaÂ’s hairstyle: “Hey, George, what were those Danish rolls doing in the princessÂ’s ears?” Almost 40 years later, De Palma is mostly making low-budget movies, and the most-anticipated ï¬lm of the year is Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the first...
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I’m not sure if I’ll see Jurassic World but if I do, it will likely be for the reasons summed up by New York Post film critic Kyle Smith:
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Star Trek legend Nichelle Nichols suffered a mild stroke last night at her home in Los Angeles, according to a statement on her official Facebook page. "She is currently undergoing testing to determine how severe the stroke was," the statement read. "Please keep her in your thoughts." Nichols, who is 82 years old, earned her place in both Star Trek and entertainment history with her portrayal of Uhura in Star Trek: The Original Series and the six TOS feature films. She's also been a constant, joyous presence at Star Trek and sci-fi conventions all over the world. Additionally, Nichols achieved...
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Over the past month we here in the Sad Puppies Revolutionary Vanguard Party Ministry of Truth have received a number of questions about which classic works of SF do and don't exemplify the goals of the Party. While our cohort John Z. Upjohn has done a fantastic job identifying SJW-infused works, we do not wish to present ourselves as wholly negative, so today we're going to talk about one of the all time great works of SF, a classic of yesteryear which could never win a Hugo today. Yes, Isaac Asimov's Foundation. This is of course a story about a...
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Harlan Ellison is still an angry young man, except he'll be 81 on May 27. He has used this anger, fueled by childhood anti-Semitism, throughout his extraordinary career as a writer of speculative fiction. This year saw the publication of his 116th and 117th (so far) books: The Top of the Volcano, a collection of his awardwinning short stories, and a graphic novelization of his original script for "The City on the Edge of Forever," widely considered the best Star Trek episode ever written. Although Ellison's hundreds of published stories contain a wealth of Jewish characters, his most complex creation...
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Interstellar:Can You Do It?Circumnavigate the Many dimensions of Time, Space,Having Left Twenty Years Ago, Be Home For Dinner Tonight?http://endurance.interstellarmovie.net
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Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa’s career was cut short when he died at only 34 years old. But the illustrator left behind a small science-fiction legacy thanks to his 1906 artworks detailing the Martian invasion of London in H. G. Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds. Wells’ tale preyed upon turn-of-the-century fears about the apocalypse and other Victorian superstitions (and social prejudices) about the unknown. Corrêa’s fantastical, murky style is fitting of Wells’ dark themes. The Martian fighting machines resemble frightening legions of massive spiders. There were only 500 copies of the Belgian edition of Wells’ story with Corrêa’s...
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It appears that ‘Star Trek Beyond‘ may be the title of the upcoming Star Trek film, lucky number 13 in the franchise. As far as the storyline is concerned, the title suggests that the new film will venture farther out into the galaxy than we have seen in the previous two Abrams films, as co-writer Simon Pegg has been hinting at for some time now.
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Last Monday afternoon, Entertainment Weekly posted a story in its Books section with the ominous headline: "Hugo Award nominations fall victim to misogynistic, racist voting campaign." Within a few hours, the headline changed to: "Correction: Hugo Awards voting campaign sparks controversy." Both versions of the EW story were about the annual Hugo Awards given out to science fiction and fantasy writers. In the original version, EW's Isabella Biedenharn claimed that "misogynist groups lobbied to nominate only white males for the science fiction book awards," urging their followers to "cast votes against female writers and writers of color." Turns out that...
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This is the era in which we are all being drafted in the Culture War. It doesn’t matter if you’re secular or religious, political or apolitical, frat boys or geeks, hipsters or bros. Nobody gets to be neutral or sit on the sidelines, because we’ll all be expected to make our obeisance to the latest politically correct opinion handed down to us by a Twitter mob. By now, we know the basic ingredients of a typical skirmish in Culture War 4.0. It goes something like this: a) a leftist claque starts loudly pushing the “correct” Culture War position onto b)...
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Paul Krugman, a few years ago, wrote at length to extol the magnum opus of science fiction grandmaster, Isaac Asimov, theFoundation Trilogy. Prof. Krugman’s reflections thereon are of keen interest. I met Asimov once, 40+ years ago, at a world science fiction convention. I even got him to autograph my Science Fiction Book Club copy of “The Foundation Trilogy.” This compilation of three novels is an SF classic. I, then and since, found it too dull to read in full. (Asimov’s I, Robot then was much more engaging to this long-ago SF geek. But nothing Asimov wrote really rivaled Heinlein’s...
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