May 15, 2013
The Button Man and the Murder Tree
An all-new Wild Cards story
May 14, 2013
Shall We Gather
When one world brushes another, asking the right question can be magic…
May 8, 2013
Fire Above, Fire Below
The dragon below our city has died. What is to be done?
May 7, 2013
We Have Always Lived On Mars
They've never seen the sky. Or the sun. Or the stars. Or the moons.
There are two things we know television viewers like: family drama and ongoing story arcs. (Two and a half if you include cops.) And in 2011, Terra Nova gave us both of those things, plus dinosaurs and time travel. Also, just to be safe, the main character was a cop, and then later a dinosaur cop. How did this show get cancelled? It was ticking all the demographic boxes! But the sad fact is, Terra Nova passed most of us by, and then, brutally imploded into obscurity. Here’s what you missed.
My curmudgeon father had a huge influence on me in a variety of ways, but the impact of his subscription to the now defunct Omni may have been the most lasting. Featuring both science fiction and actual science articles, Omni was also chock-full of wonderful images which made it one of my favorite periodicals to be swallowed up by. Plus, it appealed to my interests: space, robots, and dinosaurs! But one particular article gave a me special shock and then, in adulthood, somehow snuck up behind me, and attacked me again. And it’s all about how dinosaurs did it.
If I were able to time travel 100 years into the future and find a descendant of mine writing about the never-ending popularity of vampires, I wouldn’t be surprised one bit. There’s nothing trendy about vampires because they are, in some ways, our greatest metaphor; able to stand in for nearly whatever our storytellers want to throw at them. Though according to Joseph Caldwell—one of the original writers on Dark Shadows—vampires are “a metaphor for compulsive sex!” And if that doesn’t explain the immortal popularity of the fanged ones, I don’t know what does!
Recently, I was lucky enough to sit down with Caldwell and discuss the origins of Barnabas Collins, how to write a good soap opera, and why the motto in the Dark Shadows writers’ room was “Stop me before I suck more!”
There are Star Trek fans who have never seen the original series, and contemporary Doctor Who fans who somehow started with Matt Smith, but the most brutally discarded sci-fi parent of them all is easily the 1978 version of Battlestar Galatica. I’d assert sci-fans today are more likely to watch the lukewarm BSG spinoff Caprica than the original Battlestar Galatica. Which is a shame, because old school Battlestar was an ambitious and fantastic show that, despite its kitschy trappings, deserves a little more respect than it gets. Here’s why.
If George Lucas is to be believed, then the big story of the Star Wars films is one of redemption. And not just the redemption of a certain someone who turned to the dark side and went on a bunch of killing sprees, but also smaller more relatable redemptions. From Han Solo, to Lando Calrissian, and even aspects of Obi-Wan’s story, Star Wars is replete with people screwing up really hard, and then, hopefully, doing the right thing in the end.
And in the final novel of Timothy Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy,” his best-written original character receives the coolest redemption story in all of Star Wars—counting the movies!
Yesterday, news was reported that Carrie Fisher is definitely, totally going to be in Star Wars Episode VII (presumably as Princess Leia.) But then today counter reports came out claiming she was “just kidding” about that and that nothing has been confirmed. But then George Lucas—a man who is not actually going to be directly working on Star Wars Episode VII and actually sold Star Wars in October—chimed in claiming Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, and Harrison Ford were all set to be in the forthcoming film.
What gives? Is Star Wars news driving us all insane? Is any of this real?
Sometimes our memory of cultural classics doesn’t always match up with the experience of the real thing. (Though many of us believe KISS’s one and only song is “Rock and Roll All Night,” it turns out their albums are somehow actually full of other songs.) Sadly, upon revisiting Dark Force Rising, the second book in Timothy Zahn's “Thrawn Trilogy,” we discover it's actually a book in which not much happened; a get-from-point-A-to-point-B tale sadly sandwiched between two, slightly better, more interesting volumes.
The ghost of Ghostbusters is one of the strangest and most unique specters haunting post-80s popular culture: it’s like that one perfect relationship we’re doomed to never get over and constantly long to recreate. Should a Ghostbusters 3 even be attempted? Probably not, but let’s get serious: it’s going to happen, no matter what. With that in mind, I’ve dug through Tobin’s Spirit Guide, Zundinger’s Magicians, Martyrs, and Madmen, plus my own headbox to come up a few ways of crafting the perfect Ghostbusters 3.
As part of our ongoing celebration of all things Star Wars, the next few weeks will see Tor.com contributors writing about Timothy Zahn’s game-changing “Thrawn Trilogy,” a book series that arguably revitalized, and reivented Star Wars forever. From Coruscant to clones, it's hard to imagine living in a Star Wars universe without these novels!
First up, was Heir to the Empire the moment when Star Wars veered more towards hard science fiction?
This past Friday, February 22nd marked the 20th anniversary of that little space station that almost couldn’t; Babylon 5. Early 2013 also marked the 20th anniversary of another science fiction show centered on a space station: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. And ever since then, the creators and hardcore fans of both shows have accused one of stealing from the other.
But which came first? The Babylon 5 chicken or the Deep Space Nine egg? Recently, a new piece of information has popped up that inexorably ties together the origins of DS9 and Babylon 5.
Signaling that we are finally, officially, living in the future, last night’s 85th Annual Academy Awards was simply broadcast as “The Oscars,” forever shucking those cumbersome extra words and numbers. Hosted by nerdy/raunchy Family Guy and Ted creator Seth MacFarlane, this glitzy Hollywood version of the Super Bowl was full of surprises, a bit of controversy, and a few truly special moments. And other than a totally unexpected eleventh hour appearance from First Lady Michelle Obama, the main thing you couldn't see coming was the way in which geeky SF/F really permeated the whole event. In fact...is it possible that the entire Oscars ceremony was really one big science fiction movie?
Here are the geeky highlights from last night’s Oscars.
Artist Angela Taratua (@alassieI89) took several screenshots from Sherlock’s “A Scandal in Belgravia” and rendered them as these amazing cartoon illustrations. We were so taken with these that we decided to put them together in the order in which (we’re pretty sure) they appeared in the episode, to form a little storybook! All credit to the artist. Also, thanks to The Mary Sue for bringing this to our attention.
Writing for Significance magazine, Matthew Brasalou has applied a Bayesian statistical analysis to the most important question in the original Star Trek universe: is wearing a red shirt a harbinger of an untimely death? Through several graphs and detailed breakdown of percentages, the research ultimately yields this: red shirts in general do seem to die more in terms of numbers of casualties, though his only seems to apply to those in the security department. Folks in Engineering or Operations seem relatively safe, and when isolated from their security counterparts and then compared against other colors, the gold color of Command gets a little more dangerous.
Brasalou based this data on the classic Star Trek series only, which is fair enough, as at a certain point in Trek history the color red becomes the only color everyone wears. And naturally, by the time of The Next Generation, Command wears red, which I bet would likely throw everything off.
But, the real question I have is this: what is the statistical mortality rate of the beige shirts of the Star Trek: The Motion Picture uniform era?
In the spirit of science fictional experimentation, I decided to write my initial review of A Good Day to Die Hard about two hours before seeing the film. I figured, why not? With a movie like this, there are a limited number of directions it could take, so why not test out the theory (or at least the suspicion) that all action films are really the same movie? How much of the review would I have to change after actually seeing the film?
In many ways the conception of Valentine’s Day feels a bit like a science fiction thing, or at the very least, an urban legend. Unlike Saint Patrick, who totally, for real, drove snakes out of Ireland (maybe), details about exactly what Saint Valentine did are dubiously muddled and/or non-existent. The essential fact is this: at some point there was a Saint Valentine who was certainly a martyr, so it might as well be for love!
But when you stop to reflect on it, science fiction and fantasy is lousy with martyrs, and we probably know much more about them than we’ll ever know about Saint Valentine. Here are seven martyrs who keep sci-fi and fantasy going, mostly because they seem to always come back after they’ve died!
Though we know in our heart of hearts that the true meaning of Valentine’s Day is all about brutal martyrdom, it’s a little disheartening that the common reaction to the holiday is often kind of cynical and negative. While we’re not recommending that you go read a Nicholas Sparks novel or spend a bunch of money on bad chocolate or greeting cards, we do wonder: what’s so bad about romance? Or to put it another way, aren’t we allowed to love good love stories? In that spirit, here are eight love stories in science fiction or fantasy narratives that still make us weak in the knees (even if those knees are robotic).
Released in 1987, the B. Gupta directed Superman doesn’t so much draw upon the mythos of the Last Son of Krypton but more mashes-up slapstick comedy with a kind of Grand Illusion meets Last Tango in Paris vibe. (Grand Illusion because people randomly start speaking in languages other than Hindi, Last Tango in Paris for a batshit drunken kidnapping scene towards the end which evokes Marlon Brando from that film. I mean, Brando was in the American Superman...) And now, some brave soul as uploaded the full movie to YouTube. For best results, head to 1:16: 29 for what I can only refer to as the “Superman Song.”
There are those among us who remember when the “real” Transformers had nothing to do with Shia LaBeouf, Megan Fox, or Michael Bay. This was a more innocent time, when instead of cynically trying to sell us Mountain Dew, Fords, or Burger King, Transformers was just trying to sell us some Transformers toys.
But was it that innocent? Were there hidden messages contained on the toy packages? Yes! Designed to be cut from the box with scissors (mind the dotted line!) these toys all came with “technical specs” for each Autobot or Decepticon. The specs charted their specific powers (on a downright confounding graph) and provided a brief bio.
Looking back, many of these character bios reveal some deeply troubled robots, most of whom come off as total emotional wrecks. How did we not notice this when we were kids?
Update: The news of stand-alone Star Wars films has now been confirmed by CEO Bob Inger in an interview on CNBC.
News is coming today from Harry Knowles at Ain’t it Cool that, in addition to the Star Wars sequel trilogy, stand-alone character-centric Star Wars films are also in the works. Knowles is claiming the first of these stand-alone movies will focus on Yoda, with other character-specific movies to follow. No source is being specifically cited and even aside from that the news seems a little weird, seeing as a project like this would likely head into potential prequel territory, a sensibility the now Disney-owned Lucasfilm probably wants to avoid. What could this mean? Do we want this?
In terms of public opinion, Lena Dunham’s HBO comedy Girls has run the gamut with critics, bloggers, and a lot of your friends. Is it racist? Is it brilliant? Is it representative of a generation? Does it contain enough velociraptors? And while all these questions may one day be answered, the real truth of Girls is that it is super compelling and highly watchable. And now that the show has cleaned up at the Golden Globes, I think everyone’s favorite genre TV show, Doctor Who should take some storytelling lessons from Lena Dunham and company. Because really, Hannah, Marnie, Jessa, or Shoshanna would all make better companions for the Doctor than anyone we’ve had yet.
