Sci Fi

There are always those who ask, what is it all about? For those who need to ask, and for those who need points sharply made, who need to know “where it’s at,” this: - from “Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman, Harlan Ellison Ellison leads into an excerpt from Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience, which ends: A very few, as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men, serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part; and that are commonly treated as enemies by it. ...

Whilst playing EvE Online today, it occurred to me that SF book authors are missing a real savings, book-cover wise, by not just finding a good screenshot in EvE and using that for their cover… Why, if more people did that, we could have books like… hmm… There’s a big seller for ya. Who wouldn’t buy a book by someone named Spock? One woman’s tale of reaching middle age and coming across a nest of Kilrathi in Beta Sector…! ...

Which will rank and which will stink? I’m probably the least qualified person to rank movies but… well, Next made me so mad… Spider-man 3: Tobey Maguire says SM3 lets him explore the web-slinger’s dark side. Well, Tobey doesn’t even HAVE a dark side. Special effects look phenomenal, but the hype is so thick. Stupid situation set up in first movie and gotten stupider in second reaches apex of stupid here (no, Spidey didn’t kill your dad. Your dad was EVIL.) It’ll make a ton of money and then be forgotten. ...

What really happened at the end of Battlestar Galactica? Here’s a frame-by-frame examination of the last few seconds. It’s full of spoilers, so DO NOT read further unless you have seen the episode, “Maelstrom”. In this episode, Kara “Starbuck” Thrace is haunted by visions that she is on the verge of a greater destiny. She comes to terms with the memories of her abusive mother and then deliberately dives into the eye of a storm on a gas giant that looks (to her) like the mandala she has been seeing since she was a child. Her ship explodes – but was she in it? ...

It’s a new year and time for all the shows that left us hanging last year to finally get around to rescuing us from that cliff. Read on for spoilers, rumors, speculation and rabid fangirl-ism for Avatar: The Last Airbender, Battlestar Galactica, and Doctor Who. Tomorrow I’ll finish up with Heroes, Lost, Robin Hood, and Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip. I went without television for more than five years. There was nothing on worth paying the cable company to see. A couple of years back I started hearing about shows that sounded really intriguing – I rescued an old 15" TV from my closet and watched a couple through layers of static. And yeah, they were good. They were incredible, actually. Last March I subscribed to cable and though I don’t watch a lot of television, there are shows I never miss. ...

My sister, Hillary (I need to make up a fantasy name for her. Dad called her Mint. Actually, Mint was just short for a much, much longer name, which could be embarassing, so I won’t write it here. My nickname was Scrub. I guess he saw me on my hands and knees scrubbing floors or kitchen sinks, which were some of my chores when I was a kid. Vallerie was Weeds, and Jennifer was G-g-g-g-Ginger. Kinda straying from the point… but it’s weird we all had botanical nicknames. From now on I’ll refer to my sisters by their nicknames, to preserve the fragile anonymity that this very post ruins.) ...

I’ve been in and out of the SciFi Channel’s website for the past couple of weeks working on my Who Wants to be a Superhero article; I’m surprised I didn’t see that Battlestar Galactica would be showing little “webisodes” leading up to the beginning of the third season on October 6th. The first one, posted yesterday, is Day 67 of the Occupation: Resistance. If you like seeing quality science fiction on television (my likes: ST:TNG, Firefly, Babylon 5, Farscape, The Prisoner, UFO (not Project UFO), Doctor Who; dislikes: Stargate SG-1, Andromeda, X-Files), you need to be watching Battlestar Galactica. And if you love BG like I do, you’ll want to see these webisodes. And if you want the SciFi channel to focus more on quality science fiction and less on wrestling or whatever, watch their good stuff. ...

What can I really say about WWtbaSH? It’s a pleasure, a really guilty one, but I’m wallowing in it. I’m not a big reality show fan; this is the first one I have ever watched start to finish. And it was obvious from the start that the show was at least partly scripted. The transformation of the Iron Enforcer into the supervillain Dark Enforcer. Come ON. Like THAT wasn’t there from the start. The other superheroes dissed him all the time, even Stan Lee ripped on him every single time they came to the roof of the lair for the elimination. ...

Poor Pluto. For nearly a century it had been sitting at the big table with the other planets. And did it complain? It did not. It was just happy to be here. But rather than admit potentially a dozen smaller planets to that exclusive club, the International Astronomer’s Union decided to demote Pluto to the status of a “dwarf planet”. Its crime? Having an eccentric orbit. Yeah. That’s been a felony in the Alpha Centauri system for about a million years. ...

I’m kinda actually enjoying the SciFi channel now and then. Since I have a reliable way to see TV listings, I can deftly avoid accidentally tuning into Stargate - it used to be “all Stargate, all the time”, and I just can’t watch that show. It’s a shame… I liked the movie. **Dead Like Me ** Last week I caught myself watching “Dead Like Me” before the premiere of “Eureka”. I said then that “Dead” looked a lot more intriguing than the show I’d tuned in to watch. This week, they showed two episodes in front of Eureka. ...