Category: Science Fiction

David Bowie 1947-2016

From the “Heroes” photo session by Masayoshi Sukita

David Bowie died.

He was probably my first rock and roll hero. I remember seeing him sing Space Oddity on some early 70s TV show, then seeking out the song, finding it on cassette on ChangesOneBowie. From there it wasn’t hard to pick up the albums which had come before and stick with the man through permutations and variations. I identified with him. He was the ultimate shapeshifter, able to morph into whatever guise was required at the time. I knew I wasn’t alone in this, but it wasn’t until yesterday, when news of his death was made known that I realized just how many people identified with him. Continue reading “David Bowie 1947-2016” →

Omni

b2f7999da4b84b736b5978e27946a3bfWay back in the dark ages of the 70s, there was a magazine called Omni, put out by Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione. It was a great magazine which mixed science, pseudo science and science fiction all between the same, beautiful covers. It ran from 1978-1995 in a print version going another three years online.

Now, the entire print run is available, for free. you can find scans of every page, here. Of course, going through 17 years of a magazine can be difficult if you don’t know what you’re looking for, so here ya go, an index of the contents is here. It’s an amazing amount of work.

The FANTASTIC FOUR TV Series (1963-64) – Home

Thoughts for a Sunday MorningThe FANTASTIC FOUR TV Series (1963-64) – Home.

With the release of the latest movie next week, here’s a look at the original TV series from 1963. Such an amazing amount of talent… it’s a shame they couldn’t get it to work. It was the Firefly of its day.

Anyway, enjoy the detective work put into discovering so much about this “lost” show.

Sharing passions and Star Wars Machete Order

Star-Wars-Dad_o_132957I’m thinking about kids. My own specifically. No, I’m not pregnant (nor is anyone I know in a biblical sense) but it’s come up recently and it’s something on my mind. I’m thinking about how we, as parents, share our passions with kids. I wrote about it recently for David Magazine and how I thought it was missing from modern society. Continue reading “Sharing passions and Star Wars Machete Order” →

Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron

avengers-age-of-ultronAvengers: Age of Ultron, as far as I’m concerned, works. Now, to be fair, I’m a fanboy. I’m predisposed to like it and be far more forgiving than others who don’t know Marvel from marvel. This doesn’t mean I can’t find fault with certain elements (I do) but it does mean I’m more willing to give it a bit of lead. I’m also not so tied to the source material that I’m going to freak out becuase something happened on screen differently than the way it happend in issue #183 of the comic. Intention and execution count for a lot with me, as do target audiences and the desire of the writer/director (not to mention the studio) to please as many people as possible. Continue reading “Review: Avengers: Age of Ultron” →

Review: Ex Machina

Ex machinaWhat makes us human?

This is a question long posed by science fiction literature and films and Ex Machina is the latest to take a stab at answering the unanswerable. The plot itself is simple. Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a programmer working for a Google-like search engine company called BlueBook. He wins a company wide lottery to spend a week at the home of company founder Nathan (Oscar Isaac). While there, he discovers he’s been set-up and the real purpose of his visit is to “test” an android, Ava (Alicia Vikander) to see if she truly possesses artificial intelligence. This is done through a series of interviews, where Caleb and Ava exchange nuance-heavy dialogue.  Continue reading “Review: Ex Machina” →

Review: Jupiter Ascending

jupiter-ascending-posterI admit it. I walked into the theatre completely biased. I was not expecting to like this film. Honestly, I haven’t really liked a Wachowski (Andy and Lana) film since the first Matrix film and I still think their best film is Bound. I think their visual style is impressive though, even if I don’t like their story-telling (In this respect, I feel about them the same way I feel about Tim Burton). So it was with low hopes I went to see Jupiter Ascending, a science fiction story about reconstituted genetic sequences, lost heirs and a dog (there’s always got to be a dog).  Continue reading “Review: Jupiter Ascending” →

Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune

Jodorowsky’s Dune is billed as “The Greatest Film Never Made” and this film of the same title, which documents the first, makes a pretty good case for this statement to be true. The general conceit is that in the mid-70s, hot off another success of a cult film, producer Michel Seydoux offered to produce anything director Alejandro Jodorowsky wanted to do. Jodorowsky blurted out Dune, Frank Herbert’s seminal, award-winning novel.

Now, Dune had never been an easy sell. After it had been serialized in Analog no publisher wanted to touch it as a full novel. Finally, in 1965 Chilton (best known for publishing auto repair manuals) finally brought the book to the mainstream where it won all the awards and has gone on to be one of the most popular science fiction novels of all time.  Continue reading “Review: Jodorowsky’s Dune” →

Review: Big Hero 6

The latest Disney offering is based on a comic book although it retains little of its initial concept. In this incarnation, the main character of Hiro Hamada is a 14 year old robotics/computer genius who is recruited by Tadashi, his older brother, also a robotics whiz, to join him in a university robotics program. All Hiro has to do is impress the program’s founder at the annual robotics show and he’s in. Needless to say, he does.

What happens after that, though, is where things start to go wrong. When a fire breaks out at the show, Tadashi runs into the blaze to save his mentor. The subsequent explosion kills them both.  Continue reading “Review: Big Hero 6” →

Review: Lock In

Lock In
Lock In by John Scalzi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Lock In is an easy book to get through. I listened to the Wil Wheaton audio version (I’m specifying narrators for a reason I’ll get to in a second) and like most of the John Scalzi books Wheaton has given voice to, this one flew by. It was a fairly easy story to follow, even with all the tech speak, and was wrapped up in a nice, accessible way. There weren’t too many surprises and everyone gets what the deserve by the end. Like I said, easy. Continue reading “Review: Lock In” →

London 2014: Day Five – Hitching a ride with Hugo

hugo_smWhen Sunday morning rolled around, we weren’t sure what we were going to do. We had originally intended on spending the day at the Con, but the one main event we wanted to see, George R. R. Martin discussing Game of Thrones, had been cancelled by George the day before (and what a hassle that was to find out – It was listed in the printed program but then Ruta had shown me the Con’s app for making life easier and it was not listed there so we ended up at three different locations and talked to four different people before someone confirmed it had indeed been cancelled). And while there were bits of programming we wanted to see, we also wanted to see more of London (it’s a big place, after all). Continue reading “London 2014: Day Five – Hitching a ride with Hugo” →

London 2014: Day Three & Four – LonCon3

2014-08-15 21.30.37Ostensibly, the reason we were in London in the first place was to attend LonCon3, the World Science Fiction Convention for 2014. As reasons go, it’s not a bad one. Especially since I’m a dues paying active member of the Science Fiction Writer’s of America (SFWA) and make such little use of that it barely registers as more than a line on my CV. So, knowing I was going to the con (that’s what we in the “know” call conventions) I volunteered to be on a panel when they had an opening and got an invite to the SFWA reception and had decided to attend the SFWA informational meeting. I figure if I’m gonna get back into this writing thing, I need to start hanging out with people again.  Continue reading “London 2014: Day Three & Four – LonCon3” →