I don’t know what to say about this remake of a very good, very influential movie, other than to say you could see it coming with blinders on and it looks like utter crap.

Okay, okay. The movie itself doesn’t look bad, but that trailer. My god. I’m no rocket scientist but what is up with the Limp Bizkit score and the movie’s tagline: “Titans Will Clash”? The movie is called Clash of the Titans and the best the marketing department could come up with as a slogan/tagline is titans will clash. Jesus H. Christ someone should be fed to the guillotine.

Also? Is Sam Worthington the real deal or is he just the latest in a string of Hollywood male leads they are really trying to jam down my throat. It was hard to tell with the latest Terminator, but we’ll get a really good look with Avatar and now this. Still, if anyone has seen Somersault then you know the guy is capable of delivering a nuanced and subtle acting performance.

What’s better than one Slave Leia?  How about two catching some rays.  Kottke came across this photo of Carrie Fisher and her stunt double napping during the Tatooine shoot in Return of the Jedi. Enjoy!  But just know that I’m going to need a moment or two to catch my breath.  [via]

It seems like an excellent premise to be reimagined with better effects and acting and more weighty themes to explore.  Why then, did I feel ho-hum about the show after last night’s premiere?

You can read plenty of recaps elsewhere, but suffice it to say there’s a lot going on.  The FX look up to snuff, the acting is all pretty darn good (how could it not be with Elizabeth Mitchell, Alan Tudyk, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Scott Wolff, and Monica Baccarin) for a network television show and the themes are not disimilar from the recent Battlestar Galactica remake (religion, terrorism, identity, etc.). 

There were huge problems with the pilot episodes’s story arc: 1) the humans just accept the aliens with open arms, 2) the exposition/backstory is clumsily handled, 3) two of the main characters easily figure out that the lizard aliens are up to no good, 4) it’s too clean and polished.

Still, none of those complaints are what I’m having difficulty wrapping my brain around this morning.  I’ve never watched a show so anti-progressive as I did the one last night. 

And I’m not alone.  Both Time’s excellent James Poniewozik and Chicago Tribune reviewer Glenn Garvin made note of this: a telegenic messiah from a foreign and alien place comes to the United States with the promise of hope and change offers our citizens science, technology and — gasp! – universal health care. 

Make no mistake, the Obama parallel/allegory here is downright unnerving.  It’s so blatent I really thought some combination of Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh were show runners. 

Chew on this basic plot:  charismatic, attractive newcomers win the adulation of America’s youth with the promise of hope & change; they manipulate the braindead media and promise universal healthcare, but a group of real Americans are saavy to their evil (fascist?) hidden identity/agenda and will work to prevent the destruction of humanity. 

It would have been refreshing, or still can be, if the lizard aliens turn out to be the saviors of the human race.  But alas, I don’t think that will be the case.  And yet, and yet, I’m still going to tune in because there’s enough decent story threads that the show has my interest.

Here’s where to find print versions of the book for sale and an electronic version can be downloaded for free under a Creative Commons NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

I loved his previous novel, Little Brother, which was my first exposure to his fiction work.  Can’t wait to print off a copy of the PDF to read!

I’m stupified as to how John Vanderslice and The Mountain Goats (John Darnielle) released a seven-song EP with a horror/sci-fi bent to it (the central thrust of the album concern organ harvesting colonies on the moon) and I just found out about it today.  Turns out it was a tour-only affair on vinyl and is no longer available, though with half an effort you can surely find it.

Oh my god, so adorbz!  “Greatest cartoon ever? Greatest cartoon ever. I’m not kidding, if this was on TV, I would watch it every day until I began to gibber insanely… at its cuteness, of course.”

See also: io9 took the time to put together an introductory primer to H.P. Lovecraft — the man responsible for the tentacled Cthulhu creation.  He is considered, perhaps, the master of sci-fi-horror literature.

This is a much better trailer, at least now I get the gist of the story and it’s not so much “oh look at me and my fancy CGI” which was all the last trailer wanted to do.  I might be sold with this one — even if Cameron did plagiarize his story from an old pulp novel.

Not really much to go on here, but Elizabeth Mitchell was great on Lost. This premieres next Tuesday, so you won’t have to wait long to watch the entire episode.  To be honest, not much has grabbed me this television season, so I’m hoping V becomes that show.

Season two starts tonight and hopefully it’ll really find it’s sea legs.  Based on the adendum episode “Epitaph One” we know the show is eventually going in the direction of a fullblown apocalypse with zombie human wrecking havoc on the world. 

That’s where we are headed, but for now Alpha is still running wild, Echo is beginning to remember her life and hold on to her identity, Ballard is now working for the Dollhouse and given the way Joss Whedon tells stories it’s going to make for some juicy tv.

This is shaping up to be a big week of television for fans of science fiction. Monday we started with the two hour premiere of Heroes, which returns for its fourth season. Last year’s storyline was far superior to the lame second season, so it will be interesting how the show develops, especially given its ratings plummet since the first season.  I know a lot of people have jumped off the Heroes train, but it’s still be enjoyable for me. 

Tuesday saw the season finale of the pretty good–if not quite great–original SyFy series, Warehouse 13. They’ve done a decent job of mixing the world-in-peril stuff with the comic relief stuff, and the cast is uniformly appealing.  Not unlike Fringe and Dollhouse, the show struggled to define itself in the early going but really hit a good stride in the second half of it’s run.  Given that it’s the highest rated SyFy show ever, we will see a second season and that’s pretty exciting.  Especially how the season wrapped up on a good cliffhanger.

Tonight at 8 on ABC is the series premiere of Flash Forward, about what happens after the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds.  ABC has high hopes for the show and so far the previews have looked intriguing/promising. 

Following, on Fox, is actually the second episode of the second season of Fringe, a J.J. Abrams created series which is consistently intriguing and suspenseful and has one of the best characters on television. John Noble plays the goofably loveable (possibly insane) mad scientist, Walter Bishop. Again, an excellent cast throughout, in particular Anna Torv as a strong, yet vulnerable, FBI agent.  Now that the show is weaving a strong mythology into it’s weekly story arc, this one has become must watch tv for any lover of creepy sci fi.

For me, Friday is the cherry on the sundae. That is when we get the return of Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse. Admittedly, the first season was a little uneven. The appearance of Alan Tudyk toward the end definitely “kicked it up a notch.” BSG’s Tahmoh Penikett manages to play FBI agent Ballard as earnest and stoic without making him boring; and, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit I would probably watch Eliza Dushku reading the phone book.

Another Whedon Alumnus Finds a New Home

It looks as if Nathan Fillion has finally found a quality home after the ignominious loss (to us) of the brilliant Firefly. Since then–with the exception of Joss Whedon’s clever web vid. Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog, where Fillion did a great parody of the macho/heroic persona of Captain Mal–he hasn’t really had much to work with as an actor. Until this spring.

Castle was given a shortened (10 episode) first season, where it garnered decent ratings.

More importantly, it turned out to be good. Nathan plays Richard Castle, a wealthy and famous divorced novelist of murder mysteries, who manages to wangle his way into a squad of homicide detectives so he can observe the real cops in action. Stana Katic almost manages to out-Mariska Mariska Hargitay when it comes to playing the hard-assed and competent detective Beckett, who — just coincidentally, and often to her own frustration — happens to be heart-stoppingly beautiful. Of course, she finds the flirtatious Castle’s presence in the middle of her investigations to be a huge irritant; but, he’s a personal friend of the mayor’s, so what can she do?

Excellent cast of characters in support here, as well. Susan Sullivan is a kick as Castle’s mother, a one-time Broadway star. Molly Quinn is appealing as his pretty teenage daughter, who manages to be a good girl most of the time, while eschewing cuteness. Jon Huertas, Seamus Dever and Ruben Santiago Hudson are the other cops, who, to Beckett’s chagrin, all seem to enjoy having Castle around. I’m pretty confident that you’ll enjoy it, too.

Season premiere was last Monday, where it airs at 10 pm on ABC. You can also catch up with episodes on abc.com or Hulu.

She’ll make her debut in Episode 5.

My excitement meter just went up a tick, given all the other sci-fy actors joining the cast: Jamie Bamber and Michael Hogan (Apollo and Saul Tigh from Battlestar Galactica), among a few others.

Of the new shows, V and Fast Forward look the most promising; returning shows to look forward to include Dollhouse and Fringe. 

Ha! Red Leader sure does take his time dying.  (Thanx Scott)

It was through reading that novel that I was fully able to appreciate his contributions in his non-fiction writing.

All of that backhanded compliments are a way to say that I’m fully on-board with the man – his techie, copyleft, open-source, man against the bureaucracy view of life.  Using existing technology to set yourself free from government intrusion. 

His latest novel from Tor sounds as if it will make a nice companion piece to Little Brother. 

“I was lucky enough to score an early copy of Makers from Cory a few months ago, and it’s a fun, smart thought experiment that basically asks the question: What if the people who read MAKE: magazine became activists who wanted to subvert more than licensing agreements?,” writes Annalee Newitz of io9.  “In a near future of economic collapse, unemployed hardware hackers start setting up guerrilla amusement park rides and making the good kind of trouble that earns people a little more freedom. And of course, sinister representatives from major entertainment corporations are hot on their tails.” 

Makers is being serialized in 81 parts at Tor.com (also, they’ve created special feed just for the novel, which you can subscribe to here).  The book will be onsale in November.

In a new article in the Times Online article, David Hughes the author of a new book, The Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made, shares his 10 favorites. 

Among them, with some background about each project, are: Vincent Ward’s Alien 3, Wolfgang Petersen, Andrew Kevin Walker and JJ Abrams‘ Superman vs. Batman, Steven Spielberg’s Night Skies, Edgar Rice Burroughs‘ John Carter of Mars, Phil Kaufman’s Star Trek: Planet of the Titans, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Dune, Ridley Scott’s I Am Legend and The Outer Limits. 

I think I’m going to have to find a copy of David Fincher’s directors cut for Alien3. Ward, who was a producer on the film, had an interesting take, but I’m not sure it would have been in keeping with the franchise. I always thought it was an unfairly judged movie, regardless.

Recently, I’m a bit surprised they left off either Aronofksy’s or Greengrass’s version of Watchmen, Spielberg and Frank Darabont’s version of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of Crystal Skulls, and Wolfgang Peterson’s attempt at Ender’s Game. [via]

Unless, of course, you take that show to Fox, where they have a history of surrepititiously killing all of their quality sci-fi programming. Moore’s new show, Virtuality has been effectively killed before it was even given a chance. Instead of one season, the show will now be reduced to a single two-hour television event.

12-minutes of which, you can see below.

Now, according to Topless Robot, the show can basically be “boiled down” into five distinct plot lines:

• It’s about a crew on a 10-year mission to another solar system.
• The crew is being filmed as part of a reality show.
• The Earth has less than a century left to support life.
• The crew spends most of their time in virtual reality devices.
• Someone (or something) is screwing with those VR systems and producing nightmares.

That might be one of the problems. That unlike his previous show, which was about robots hunting humans through space, this show seems to be packing too much into its universe.

Immediately, I could do without the reality show angle and almost feel as though a show about the 100-year death sentence for Earth would be more compelling to watch.

With only 12 principle cast members aboard the Phaeton ship, it would be impossible for any of those characters to die, which means the suspense from the runaway VR modules is rendered moot.

Isn’t saving Earth stressful enough?

Here are a few more videos, including a “meet the cast” feature.

Virtuality airs June 26 at 8 p.m. on Fox.

Could go either way on this Disney-produced sci-fi flick, based on the graphic novel by Robert Venditti, and starring Bruce Willis. I’ve heard that the movie looks a little too pretty in comparison — that the movie should have been a bit more gritty, a bit more in the style of Blade Runner.

But it’s Disney, so you take what you can get. Bonus points for filming in Boston.

As such, it always seems like a fruitless endeavor to apply scientific principle to fictious time travel stories, but on the other hand, there are so many time travel stories going that we think there should be a commision to over see fictitious time travel.  There has to be a regulatory body. 

“But time travel isn’t magic; it may or may not be allowed by the laws of physics — we don’t know them well enough to be sure — but we do know enough to say that if time travel were possible, certain rules would have to be obeyed. And sometimes it’s more interesting to play by the rules,” they write.   
5. Black holes are not time machines.

Sadly, if you fell into a black hole, it would not spit you out at some other time. It wouldn’t spit you out at all — it would gobble you up and grow slightly more corpulent in the process. If the black hole were big enough, you might not even notice when you crossed the point of no return defined by the event horizon. But once you got close to the center of the hole, tidal forces would tug at you — gently at first, but eventually tearing you apart. The technical term is spaghettification. Not a recommended strategy for would-be time adventurers.

Wormholes — tunnels through spacetime, which in principle can connect widely-separated events — are a more promising alternative. Wormholes are to black holes as elevators are to deep wells filled with snakes and poisoned spikes. The problem is, unlike black holes, we don’t know whether wormholes exist, or even whether they can exist, or how to make them, or how to preserve them once they are made. Wormholes want to collapse and disappear, and keeping them open requires a form of negative energies. Nobody knows how to make negative energies, although they occasionally slap the name “exotic matter” on the concept and pretend it might exist.

The Star Trek reboot has been an unqualified success.  Everyone loves it, everyone’s going to see it! Star Trek is cool again!  This entire week there’s always been some discussion brewing regarding the movie: the lens flares, the science of the movie, the annoying quality of Kirk and his rapid ascent to becoming a captain, Tyler Perry, the significance of young Kirk driving a 1966 C2 Corvette over a cliff, etc.

It’s been all Star Trek all the time this past week for some people.  And that may be the biggest indication of the movie’s success.  People are talking about it.  This isn’t like the last few Trek movies where the die-hards would go to watch it on opening day and then have to go back into the Trek closet come Monday morning.

But there’s one thing that’s been bothering me and I finally put my finger on it.  It’s quite possible that the Beastie Boys inadvertently invented Mr. Spock’s Vulcan nerve pinch.

How so? 

We know the new movie takes place around Stardate 2248, which actually corresponds to our Gregorian calendar.  So it’s not inconceivable then that a young Kirk would have access to an antique Corvette.  But what was surprising about that early scene in the movie is not whether director J.J. Abrams was referring to the original Kirk, William Shatner, being unable to pronounce the word sabotage, but the manner with which he used the Beastie Boys song “Sabotage.”

In that scene Kirk hangs up on his rotten Uncle Frank and then flips out his fancy Nokia media player and picks the song in question.  By making this choice, Abrams has now created a universe in which The Beastie Boys exist in Star Trek canon.  The song wasn’t played over the scene, it was played in the scene.  There’s a big difference.  If the song was played over the scene, all of this speculation becomes moot.

If we accept that the Beastie Boys were a music group from the 1990s, still being listened to 200 years later when the new Star Trek movie takes place, then we must accept that their song “Intergalactic” also exists within the newly established universe. As we must accept that the music video for the song also exists.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you see where I’m going with this?  There’s no indication in the new movie that the Vulcan nerve pinch was taught to Spock by the Vulcan elders.  But we do know for a fact that around 1997 or so, The Beastie Boys wrote a song with the line: “If you try to knock me you’ll get mocked / I’ll stir fry you in my wok / Your knees’ll start shaking and your fingers pop / Like a pinch on the neck of Mr. Spock.”

There’s no indication that Mr. Spock, once traveling from Vulcan to San Francisco to attend Star Fleet academy, would have heard the Beastie Boys song “Intergalactic” but there’s also no indication that he didn’t overhear it as well.

Let’s assume for a moment that Mr. Spock was in the library or grabbing a sandwich in between classes. Someone is bumping the song on their fancy Nokia media player and he hears those last few lines. Now, Spock is rather intelligent, so maybe the idea becomes implanted in his head subconsciously and he tries it out for the first time right before he tosses Kirk out the backside of the Enterprise.

There’s also the obvious time travel aspect that could play a role in all of this  — that Mr. Spock went back in time to the 1990s and the Beastie Boys saw him do the Vulcan Nerve Pinch and thus led to the line in their song.

But at this point it’s a chicken and egg sort of thing, until we get more information.  Correlation doesn’t mean causality and all that.  But it’s too weird a coincidence for people to not be talking about.

I’ve seen the movie a few times, have pondered its timeline several times, but it wasn’t until stumbling onto this visual representation of that timeline that the movie absolutely clicked. I now have a good reason to revisit this awesome little movie. 

If you’ve never seen the movie, the rent it, read the timeline, and then watch it again.  Or just move along, as I realize that looking at the timeline might be a bit daunting. 

Nothing more to see here.

Fox has renewed Fringe for a full 22-episode second-season.  Hopefully, next year they won’t tinker with it — you know not airing episodes for weeks at a time, etc. 

“Fringe proved to be a notable addition to our schedule all season and it really has fans buzzing as it builds to a fantastic season finale,” said Fox’s president of entertainment, Kevin Reilly. “J.J. and the whole Bad Robot team have been phenomenal partners, and we look forward to years of making great television with them.”

It’s a solid show, certainly worthy of coming back.  It’s nothing special, doesn’t quite feel like appointment television like it should be.  Certainly John Noble as Walter Bishop has become one of television’s most fascinating characters. 

What I’d like to see happen is they pair this show with Dollhouse and see if Dollhouse gains viewers at all. 

Regardless, I’m curious at the direction the show will take.  If they would open the plotlines and let it breath some.  I know everyone wants to compare this to The X-Files, but the differences between the two shows is startling.  It doesn’t help using Boston as a background and having every case take place there, especially if you are going to cut to “Roxbury” or some such city and have it resemble nothing like the actual place. 

So, second season.  Get a consultant from Boston and give our characters cases across the globe/country.  Leave some plot lines dangling.  Say what you want about Joss Whedon, but the man knows how to build/payoff a story arc better than anyone working in television right now.  Fringe should follow his lead a bit.

District 9 has been out for a few days now, well the teaser trailer anyways, but it looks like it could be summer’s most promising sci fi movie. 

I’m not entirely sold on director Neil Blomkamp’s use of mockumentary style filmmaking, especially for a hard sci fi flick, but.  He’s earned Peter Jackson’s good graces and has visual style flowing out his pores, so I’ll trust he made the right decision for this story.

Just in case you were wondering.  I think I could watch authors talk about their work or give readings all day.  [via SF Signal]

Joss Whedon wins the Bradbury Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America at the 2009 Nebula Award ceremony.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean that Dollhouse is going to get saved.  But still, that’s become one of the best shows on television since the second half of its first season.

So Paramount pulled a fast one last night in Austin, Texas and instead of showing Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Alamo Drafthouse treated the audience to JJ Abrams’s Trek reboot in its entirety. 

All in all, it seems as if most people felt this was a solid, breezy summer tentpole movie.  Exactly what you want, but unfortunately nothing more. 

Neil Miller at Film School Rejects: “Some of the smartest work [Orci and Kurtzman have] done. They get these characters and when you combine that with the visual style that J.J. Abrams has brought to the franchise, it makes for a dangerously accessible and exciting film.” … “This is a big, fast-paced, sleek version of Star Trek that is unlike anything we’ve seen before — a new brand of space film that stretches what we thought possible in the realm of visual effects, and I don’t think that’s going to bother anyone.” … “J.J. Abrams, with the help of a few incredibly talented people, has created a very accessible, fun Star Trek film that is perfect for a new generation of sci-fi fans.  Sure, it plays to the fan base a little bit, but its real strength is in the fact that it is delivered with a ton of energy, it presents a story that is easily grasped by fans and newbies alike and is a big, kick-ass ride.”

Quint at AICN : “I like the world (or maybe universe is a better term considering the material) that Abrams and his team has created here. I like the cast he assembled, I like the way this new universe turns some old Trek landmarks on their heads, while keeping true to what’s really important to each character.” … “Without exception, I think the first 45 minutes of the movie is rock solid. The second act has a few problems, the biggest of which seemed to be a sequence of check-listing, making sure all the characters we know and love are on the bridge and the way they introduce Nimoy is a great hero moment”

Rodney Perkins at Twitch: “Abrams’ film is a very entertaining and reverential take on the Star Trek mythos. The acting and casting are spot on. The story mixes old and new elements of the Star Trek universe. The effects are breathtaking. Some people will inevitably nitpick this film but J.J. Abrams’ new work is as good as (and arguably better) than most of the Star Trek movies that preceded it.”

Man I wished I had this as a kid.  It certainly would have made reenacting Empire Strikes Back a bit easier.  From Think Geek:

In the sub-zero wasteland of the planet Hoth, only the strong survive… and of course those lucky Jedi protected by the thick skin of a Tauntaun. Now after exhaustive movie viewing research and analysis ThinkGeek Labs has isolated the exact synthetic compounds needed to re-create Tauntaun fur. What have we done with this supreme knowledge? Created a Tauntaun sleeping bag of course.

This high-quality sleeping bag looks just like a Tauntaun, complete with saddle, internal intestines and glowing lightsaber zipper pull. Now when your kids tell you their favorite Star Wars movie is “Attack of the Clones” you can nestle the wee-ones snug in simulated Tauntaun fur while regaling them with the amazing tale of “Empire Strikes Back”.

Use the glowing lightsaber zipper pull on the Tauntaun sleeping bag to illustrate how Han Solo saved Luke Skywalker from certain death in the freezing climate of Hoth by slitting open the belly of a dead Tauntaun and placing Luke inside the stinking (but warm) carcass. If your kids don’t change their tune on which Star Wars film is the greatest ever, you can do your best Jar Jar impression until they repent.

Of course, it was an April Fool’s Day joke, but then the overwhelming demand for this is making Think Geek reconsider if they can actually produce this.  You know with Lucas Film rights and all that jazzmatazz.  Curiously, I can’t believe merchandising hound George Lucas has never actually thought of this.

Right now, if you listen hard enough, you can hear the cash machines caching along the still waters of Skywalker Ranch.

If you’re like me and a terminator junkie, you’ve probably at some point tried to figure out all the different timelines.  Each time the terminators go back to hunt John Connor the future is changed, creating branching futures all related to one another. 

Seems that the nature of time is cyclical in this universe and the only way John Connor is going to change anything is to keep sending things back in time to change the future until there is a desirably outcome. 

Anyway, the awesome geeks over at io9 have been making sense of this and one of their readers sent in the above whiteboard, which lays out pretty clearly what’s going on in the terminator mythology.  Leland Rzepecki writes:

That scribbling at the bottom is from when I realized that time in Terminator must be cyclical, because that’s the only way to explain how Derek and Jessie can be from different futures but be in the same timeline now. The slash in the middle of the line is Judgement Day. Some of that stuff at the bottom was showing my roommate how Derek would have had to skip a timeline using my linear “domino” model, and I couldn’t think of a reason why that would happen.

As for the 12:00, 2:00. I was explaining how we could be seeing both futures in the show. The analogy I was using is that at 12:00 (the clock times are just to make everything relative, if that makes sense) Derek goes back in time, and causes changes to the timeline at 1:00. Then at 2:00, after Derek makes changes like killing Andy Goode, Jessie travels back in time. So even though Jessie came from the same time as Derek, she came later, in more than one way. Does that make sense?

The color coding: Black is pre-Judgement Day stuff I’m sure of, green is Future War stuff I’m sure of, and red is the blurry stuff I can’t really prove, but makes sense to me.

My major is Game Design, and I don’t recommend it, haha. I’ve always been a lot better at “fake” science than real science. I love movies like Primer where you have to keep a lot of timelines straight in your head though, so all of this came pretty naturally to me.

I don’t really have any complaints about last night’s Battlestar Galactica series finale.  It was wholly satisfying on a visceral and emotional level.  There’s always the fear of being disappointed, but that wasn’t the case here.  If you’re looking for reviews of the show, I suggest reading Annalee Newitz’s over at io9.

But I want to suggest that there is a counter-story here, too, which relies on the idea that any technology sufficiently advanced looks like magic. Though our “angels” and “God” come dressed in the trappings of spiritualism, they could just as plausibly be benevolent but meddlesome aliens who take a kindly interest in primitives like ourselves.

While these aliens help guide us, they do not control our destiny. In fact, BSG makes a pretty passionate case for human self-determination. The humans of the 12 colonies have all used science to create life, in the form of cylons. And although those cylons are humans’ downfall in the short term, they turn out to be humanity’s salvation in the long term. They’re the creatures humans must merge with in order to take civilization in a new direction. Looked at from that perspective, humans on Earth today are the genetically-engineered (or simply engineered) creation of an earlier species. They prove that our species is not the result of some kind of divine intervention, but is quite emphatically the result of scientific intervention mixed with a little random evolution.

Can these two accounts of humanity be hybridized, or are they simply contradictory? That we can ask that kind of question after watching Battlestar Galactica’s final episode is ultimately is lure of this series. It offers no pat answers. We must decide.

Interesting that ultimately the show was about reconciling the differences between science and religion.  Pretty heady stuff, but something you expect out of the best speculative fiction.

That’s great logo work.   

But, for a network best known for Battlestar Galactica, Stargate, and an assortment of ghost shows, reruns and made for television mutant animal movies you would think rebranding to encompass all aspects of the science fiction, fantasy, and other loosely affiliated genres would be a smart move. 

Unless, of course, you go for the rebrand FAIL.  Are you ready for this?  The channel is rebranding itself as: Syfy Channel.  And it’s new tagline will be “Imagine Greater.” 

Cue the jokes.  I’ve got none because I’m just flummoxed at how retarded this change is.  They changed the freaking spelling of the name.  That’s it. 

The New York Times reports that the network will roll out its new name in its advertiser upfronts todag, and officially make the switch on July 7.  The network’s genre-leading Web site, SciFi.com, will also make the switch.

According to Gateworld:

The main reason for the change, according to Bonnie Hammer, former head of the network and now president of NBC Universal Cable Entertainment and Universal Cable Productions, and her successor David Howe, is that the name “SCI FI” was too limiting.

“If you ask people their default perceptions of Sci Fi, they list space, aliens and the future,” Howe said. “That didn’t capture the full landscape of fantasy entertainment: the paranormal, the supernatural, action and adventure, superheroes” — areas of programming that have becoming increasingly important as the network has found ratings success with shows like Ghost Hunters, ECW: Extreme Championship Wrestling, and Destination Truth.

So you would think that the channel would change more than just the spelling of Sci Fi.  I don’t even want to know how much they paid someone to come up with this crap. 

I get the desire to rebrand (though they may want to concentrate on their programming), especially if they could serve as a sort of genre-friendly network, doing what FX (gritty dramas/absurd comedies), AMC (classy, cinema-esque television) and USA (quirky procedurals/characters)  do, but with science fiction, fantasy, paranormal, horror, etc. 

If they did that and rolled out quality shows on the level of Battlestar and anything those other networks offered they would put themselves into a very stable marketplace position.  There is a huge market of people that love this shit.  They would add value to NBC/Universal as their television genre division. 

Instead, the channel is left with a muddled, non-existent identity, their only original program leaving the air next Friday night, and a channel that clearly doesn’t undertand the power that branding and programming can have.   

I don’t think of anything particular when I think about SyFy’s programming.  Reruns perhaps and stuff I don’t really want to watch.  Which is unfortunate because I’m their target audience.  I’m the one who should be excited about this change. 

The biggest winner out of all this seems to be Airlock Alpha, the website formerly known as Syfy Portal, which sold the trademark to the cable channel for an undisclosed sum.

Katee Sackhoff rolled into Portland on Friday night for a lengthy question and answer session dropping curse words like a sailor and nearly causing a nerd riot outside the Baghdad Theater¹.

Sackhoff, who’s originally from the Portland-area, stopped by as a thanks for the crowds showing up week after week to watch BSG on the big screen. It helped that her mother’s birthday was the next day, so it was like killing two birds.

There were lots of “Iloveyouyou’rethebest” types of moments, but Sackhoff did reveal a few interesting tidbits.  Overall, the strength of the questions were top notch.  Kudos to you Stumptown BSG audience.

You can watch the entire session, or you can read the Cliff Notes.  Such as:

• She battled through Thyroid Cancer during the taping of the final season and was so fatigued by the end of taping.

• The ending for BSG was going to be slightly different, but costar Michael Trucco (Sam Anders – one of the final five Cylons) got into a horrible car accident in December 2007 and was nearly paralyzed.  The show was still filming, when Trucco’s accident happened, and since they couldn’t delay filming, the writers had to work with his accident.  Hence, why Sam Anders is in the hospital bed, then the Cylon gloop, his flashback was him in a sports therapy tub, etc. for the final batch of episodes.

• Sackhoff didn’t reveal how the show would have ended without Trucco’s accident.

• Sackhoff luckily passed the iPhone’s Cylong detector app and was discovered to be human.  It was probably one of the funnier moments of the night.

• Everyone is tired of Eddie James Olmos chanting “So Say We All!”

• Her future plans include a just finished Dick Wolf pilot with Brian Cox titled Lost and Found. It’s a more humorous detective show set in Los Angeles, giving her the chance to flex some comedy chops.  She’s also doing the voice for Ms. Marvel, an animated project from Marvel Entertainment.

• The scenes with her mother from the episode “Maelstrom” were her idea, but it wasn’t her idea to have Starbuck killed and then resurrected.

• Apollo and Starbuck will make out one more time in the series finale.

• She sung the praises of Doc Coddle and Saul Tigh, well the actors playing those characters.

• She had to learn to play the Cylon song on the piano, but she hates the piano from years of her parents trying to make her learn the instrument.

• She revealed how her and the Chief had a friendly rivalry to see who could work less.  Whenever Sackhoff wanted to take off and visit her boyfriend she would convince producers that Starbuck wouldn’t be in the scene or talking, etc.

• The best moment was perhaps talking about Eddie Olmos’s fascination for shooting a scene on the toilet.  All throughout the show he’s been trying to convince people to film a scene while pooping on the toilet.  He finally got Starbuck to do it in the scene between her and Gaius Balter a few episodes ago.  Sometimes it helps to be the director when you want to shoot a scene with one of the actors sitting on the pooper.

• Disappointingly, she skirted the discussion about being the new lesbian feminist icon.  Probably because she isn’t a lesbian, but it was unfortunate that she didn’t run with it when one questioner said she’s the new Xena Princess Warrior.

But enough about that.  Let’s go to the video evidence.  PART 1

Click here to view the embedded video.

PART 2

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PART 3

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PART 4

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PART 5

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PART 6

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1. Okay, so you might still be wondering about the nerd riot.  It almost happened.  The Baghdad Theater holds about 600 people.  There were about 1000 people in line, some showed up at 11:30 a.m. for this and some drove down from Seattle or came 1-3 hours away.  So obviously not everyone was going to get in.  Thems the breaks.  However, there was a comedy show at 7 p.m. unrelated to the BSG event at 10 p.m.  So what does management do?  It let the people from the comedy show stay in their seats for BSG.

When word got out about this, people were understandably upset.  Insults were hurled, boycotts were threatened and people tried to bumrush the people working the door.  It didn’t really get out of hand, but the situation was handled poorly by the theater.  It wasn’t fair or cool to the people waiting in line to let those at the comedy show stay.  Especially if there were there for the comedy show or using the comedy show to circumvent the age old tradition of waiting in a queue out in the cold.  On top of that, the people at the door didn’t even bother to let the hundreds of people know they weren’t getting in so they could go home or make other arrangements to watch the episode.

I didn’t get in for the episode but I was let in for the Q and A afterwards.  Still, if a few things went differently, the 800 or so people that didn’t get in were perilously close to acting out.  Well, acting out like nerds, which comes down to hurling witty insults and stomping their feet.

Star Trek is in theaters on May 8.

But take a closer look at Battlestar Galactica.  There is something else at work here. 

The most retrograde character is Cally, an air-maintenance specialist on the flight deck. For years, she’s harbored a girlish crush on her boss, Chief Tyrol, to no avail, until, at last, a breakthrough happens thanks to a broken jaw: Cally wakes Tyrol up from a nightmare and in a fit of angry confusion, he beats her to a pulp. Remorseful, he visits her in the hospital, and shortly thereafter, they marry. This sends the implicit message that the way to a man’s heart is through his fist—a heartily un-feminist concept—but the strange circumstances surrounding Cally’s marriage are less offensive than her death scene. On realizing that Tyrol is a Cylon, Cally tries to kill herself along with her child. Then another Cylon comes along, saves the baby, and tosses Cally out of an airlock. Presumably the writing staff is trying to grapple with postpartum depression—Tyrol doesn’t help enough with the baby, pushing Cally over the edge. Yet they do so in a melodramatic, and ultimately nonsensical, fashion. Here we have a society that permits divorce and seems to have plentiful free day care, and yet an otherwise functioning member of that society acts like a Victorian hysteric. The take-away is not that Cally has been driven to desperation by a sexist social order but that she can’t contain her feminine irrationality.

Cally’s death is an example of a worrisome trend: The main female characters are all dying, dead, or not human. Ellen, Sharon, D’Anna, and Tory Foster—all strong female characters, have all turned out to be Cylons, and Starbuck was recently revealed as a half-Cylon hybrid. Adm. Cain, for a time the highest ranking officer in the military, was assassinated; Cally was murdered; Dee, Capt. Lee Adama’s neglected wife, committed suicide; and Starbuck’s rival, Capt. Louanne Katraine, pretty much did, too—she sacrificed herself while guiding civilian ships through a dangerous star cluster. The president, perhaps the most-talked-about example of Battlestar’s great female leads, is dying of breast cancer. In isolation, none of these cases has much significance. But taken together they suggest a troubling, if unintentional message: Women—the human ones, anyway—just can’t hack it when the going gets rough.

I mean not that I wished Lizzie Bennet got her brain sucked but sometimes she could be really infuriating and don’t even get me started on Mr. Darcy’s social anxiety problems.  Good god, is all I can say.  You wonder how they ever ended up together at all.

Author Seth Grahame-Smith probably thought the same thing and decided to do something about it.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies features the original text of Jane Austen’s beloved novel with all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie action. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield as Elizabeth wages war against hordes of flesh-eating undead. Complete with 20 illustrations in the style of C. E. Brock (the original illustrator of Pride and Prejudice), this insanely funny expanded edition will introduce Jane Austen’s classic novel to new legions of fans.

Yes, yes it will. In music remixes and mashups are so common they are often released before the original recordings, but I do think this is the first time that a novel has been remixed or remashed into something different. [via]

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies will be released on May 13, 2009 from Quirk Books.

(Also be sure to check out Quirk Books’s new site Irreference. It’ll give you a better idea of the publishing company than their actual website, I guess.)

Also, The Rock ya’ll.  Definitely the action star we’ve been looking for since Arnold, Sly adn JCVD’s slide into irrelevance.

Official Plot Synopsis: Race to Witch Mountain is a thrilling action-adventure about a hard luck Las Vegas cab driver Jack Bruno (DWAYNE JOHNSON), whose life is thrown into chaos when apparent ‘runaway’ teenagers Sara (ANNASOPHIA ROBB) and Seth (ALEXANDER LUDWIG) jump into his taxi. He soon realizes his two fares are children with exceptional paranormal powers whom he must protect as they elude a collection of ruthless enemies.

Race to Witch Mountain hits theaters on March 13th 2009.

Of all the books I’ve borrowed, there�s one book that holds a seminal place within my personal canon. Neal Stephenson�s Snow Crash has not only made me friends (there’s something about the idea of a city franchise that’s an instant bonder with new acquaintances) but it actually got me my first job (the magazine was doing a story on Second Life, a virtual reality program inspired by the cyberpunk novel). The book was slow to start and the ending was close to nonsensical, but everything in the middle was nothing short of genius and I would be lying if I denied that Stephenson holds a special place in my heart.

Above is a video of Stephenson giving a lecture on literary genres at Gresham College in London last May. It’s a pretty interesting topic and if you’re a “SF kind of person” you will get a kick out of Stephenson’s referral to anything not of the SF world as the “mundane”.

[Neal Stephenson Lecture on Genres]
(via BoingBoing via Beyond the Beyond)

If you’re like me, and find the best thing about the Whedonverse is the way he crafts dialogue, I think you will not be disappointed.

The novel is My Own Kind of Freedom, which can be downloaded here.