For those only familiar with Cory Doctorow through his writing as a Guardian columnist or as one of the five erstwhile editors of Boing Boing, it may be difficult to appreciate him. At times he comes off as too-self-promoty and almost like a socially functional Kaczynski-lite. But after devouring his novel Little Brother in three sittings, I’m head over heals for the guy.
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.”
One of the nerdier aspects of my life is jonesing over movies that never happened or could have happened or theorizing about movies that should happen (think of this as akin to fantasy baseball except you’re deciding on studios, directors, producers, designers, fx houses, screenwriters and actors, etc.).
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]
You would think that when Ron Moore, creator of Battlestar Galactica, comes to your network iwith another sci-fi show there would be no problems.
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.
• 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.
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.
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.
If you’ve ever seen Shane Carruth’s 2004 sci fi mindfuck Primer, about two scientists who build a time machine in their garage, then you’ve no doubt spent some portion of your time, immediately following the movie, trying to figure out its labyrinthine plot.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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. 
