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Rockin' a cappella group Novis mixed together a fantastic medley of various science fiction tunes and theme songs. There's something for every nerd in this music mix. More »
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Last night's Community reminded us why it's arguably the greatest nerd comedy of our era, with this devastatingly funny Doctor Who spoof. Is it wrong that I actually want to watch a few hundred episodes of Inspector Spacetime now? More »
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Did Apple invent the iPad? Or did Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke? Samsung is using the above clip as a piece of evidence in its defense against Apple's patent lawsuit over the Galaxy S and similar tablet computers. More »
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Remember Justin Van Genderen's throwback travel posters for locales in comic books and the Star Wars universe? He's now given 2001: A Space Odyssey a similar retro rehash. HAL comes preprogrammed with "Daisy Bell," I'm assuming. More »
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The Marines vs. aliens war story that is Battle: Los Angeles may not be a modern classic, but it does do one thing that's unusual (even admirable) for action movies, particularly scifi action movies: it takes its premise absolutely seriously. More »
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Carrie-Ann Moss copes with a zero-gravity fire in this stunning sequence from Red Planet. How do you put out a fire when the fire extinguisher sends you flying in the opposite direction? Trinity's on the case. More »
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Space epics almost always play fast and loose with science, treating the laws of physics like suggestions. But some movies dismember Newton and Einstein with way more gusto than others. Here's our report card for bad science in 18 movies. More »
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Back in September we showed you the trailer for Douglas Trumbull's insanely detailed 2001: A Space Odyssey documentary. Though the documentary is sadly in funding limbo, the filmmaker says he's seen 17 lost minutes from the original film! More »
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People often ask: how realistic is the scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where Bowman makes a space-walk without a helmet? How long could you survive in vacuum? Would you explode? Would you survive? How long would you remain conscious? More »
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There's still only one way to bring a new person into this universe. Many science fiction/fantasy stories have featured the drama of childbirth... and some have done it better than others. Here are the best and worst SF/fantasy childbirth scenes. More »
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Douglas Trumbull, director of Silent Running and Special Effects Supervisor for 2001: A Space Odyssey, is readying a documentary about his time with Stanley Kubrick. The detail in this undertaking is amazing. The filmmakers are literally crawling into never-before-seen-images. Watch. More »
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Science fiction has rocked cinemas for a century, and the genre has produced many undisputed classics during that time. But which movies are essential viewing for anyone interested in the genre? We broke down the 25 must-watch science fiction films. More »
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James P. Hogan, author of Inherit The Stars and 30 other hard science fiction novels, passed away yesterday. He talked in a 2004 interview about how 2001: A Space Odyssey made him a science fiction author... because it frustrated him. More »
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If you think Stanley Kubrick's films are mind-swirling in their weirdness, just check out some of the reams of concept art his teams generated. Dream sequences, bridges leading into women's faces, and innerspace astronauts await below. More »
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The debate over bad science in science-fiction movies has gotten a major new source of ammunition: Phil Plait, writing for Discover Magazine, has rounded up a fairly definitive list of the best and worst moments in movie science. More »
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What if Doctor Who had starred in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey? A new fan video shows a potential crossover between the two, and dodgy CGI-David Tennant aside, we like what we see. More »
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Brandon Schaefer's movie posters play with a single concept or image from a film, teasing them out into thoughtful, visually striking representations of the movies they advertise. More »
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With the middle of the year having fallen earlier this week (July 2nd for the curious), it's time to take stock, look back and wonder: What has 2009 taught us so far? More »
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The Romulan mining vessel Narada undulates as it prepares to claim another defenseless planet. Spaceship design has come a long way since the 1960s. Here's a gallery of five different eras in starships, battlecruisers and planet-destroyers, with 150+ images. More »
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In honor of Moon, opening today, we went kinda loony (get it?) coming up with our favorite lunar scenes in film and TV. (We restricted the list to our own planet's moon; sorry, Saturn and Endor fans.) Watch them here. More »
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At last, the most important works of science fiction are being determined scientifically. New Scientist magazine is doing a special science fiction issue on Nov. 15, and the magazine is polling its science-boffin readers as to the greatest books and movies in the genre. The magazine's own staff have already voted, and you might not be surprised by the books they put first. But you may have some issues with their most hated movies and books. More »
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In the late 1950s, animator John Whitney (perhaps most famous for assisting Saul Bass to create the opening title sequence for Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo) built a mechanical analog computer using the mechanisms from several WW II anti-aircraft guns. He used the resulting “cam machine” to produce short experimental animated films, releasing a demo reel in 1961 under the title Catalog. 2001 special effects artist Douglas Trumbull saw Whitney’s Catalog and was inspired by the artist's slit-scan technique, using it for the animated sequences in 2001. According to writer William Moritz, Whitney submitted “a proposal for a monolith as a computer-generated effect that would have looked different from anything else in the film. He was turned down.” Nevertheless, Whitney became IBM’s first artist-in-residence in 1966, and is considered one of the forefathers of computer animation. More »
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It's apparently official - The collected hive mind of global academia thinks that the world of tomorrow will turn out to be seven years ago. At least, that seems to be the message of a newly-released survey of over 50 academics, who judged 2001: A Space Odyssey the most realistic science fiction movie vision of the future ever. They also claimed it was the most "scientifically accurate." More »
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Forty years after its premiere, is the movie version of 2001: A Space Odyssey coming true? An article on science website PhysOrg.com claims that Stanley Kubrick's vision of the then-future of space travel and human existence was more prescient than it initially seemed, way back in the swinging '60s. More »
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Click to view Space epics almost always play fast and loose with science, treating the laws of physics like suggestions. Sound in space, unprotected bodies splatting in vacuum, and alien planets that all look just like Calabasas. But some movies dismember Newton and Einstein with way more gusto than others. We rated 18 movies based on how many laws of physics they mangled, and here's our report card. More »
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With Space Chimps officially the most anticipated monkey movie of the summer, it's time to take a serious look at our spacefaring simian cousins. (Especially after we discovered our readers are as obsessed with monkeys as we are.) And it turns out there are way more of them than we'd realized, including space-monkey entrepreneurs, superheroes, supervillains and half-monkey half-robot killers. Click through for the complete list of space-faring simians! More »
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Stanley Kubrick tried to stop Space: 1999 with a lawsuit in 1975 because he felt its title was too similar to his 2001: A Space Odyssey. "The deliberate choice of a date only two years away from 2001 is not accidental and harms us," he wrote in one of many frenzied telexes. (Somewhat optimistically, he also predicted the show would be "important" and run for years.) Was he worried people might think the campy rubber-monsters show was a continuation of his ape/fetus acid-trip? Or did he just want a monopoly on titles with "space" and a near-future date? Crazy obsessions like the Space: 1999 lawsuit kept him from finishing several movie projects — including one intriguing science fiction movie. More »
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Why do space explorers always wind up meeting some crappy pantheon? It never fails. You're cruising along, fighting monsters and bedding your crewmates (or vice versa) and then all of a sudden some annoying guys in tunics are talking Big Talk and rewriting reality to suit their moronic whims. As Crichton from Farscape says, "Godlike aliens! Man, do I hate godlike aliens. I'll trade a critter for a godlike alien any day." Amen, Crichton. Amen. Here's our round up of the most annoying space gods, with only one example from Star Trek. More »
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The knives are little more than a slender metal wedge and the three-tined forks so narrow you can barely spear a green bean, but what Arne Jacobsen's stainless steel flatware lacks in functionality, it makes up in futuristic style. That's why it was featured in 2001. I own a set of this famous flatware, and have the backstory scoop on the most elegant utensils ever used in a science fiction film. More »
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The decade that began with 2001: A Space Odyssey was the heyday of smart, socially relevant science fiction, writes Grady Hendrix in the New York Sun. Back then, science fiction films looked down on The Man. But today's corporate sci-fi spectaculars are The Man. The turning point came in 1982, when the candy-munching E.T. crushed the dark thriller Blade Runner at the box office. [NY Sun] More »
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