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eradicating camp
Ever since the first cheesy monster or goofy robot leered out from the cover of a pulpy magazine, science fiction has struggled to shake off a certain tinge of campiness. No matter how hard creators may try to tell cool stories, that slightly ironic silliness is always lurking just outside the frame. And there will always be science fiction which takes those little hints of camp and amplifies them a million-fold. A little campiness may be fun to get stoned and giggle at, but it also stands in the way of telling amazing tales about the impact of technology on humans. Here's a rulebook for rooting out the campiness from science fiction.
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21 Ways To Eradicate Campiness From Science Fiction
Ever since the first cheesy monster or goofy robot leered out from the cover of a pulpy magazine, science fiction has struggled to shake off a certain tinge of campiness. No matter how hard creators may try to tell cool stories, that slightly ironic silliness is always lurking just outside the frame. And there will always be science fiction which takes those little hints of camp and amplifies them a million-fold. A little campiness may be fun to get stoned and giggle at, but it also stands in the way of telling amazing tales about the impact of technology on humans. Here's a rulebook for rooting out the campiness from science fiction.
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rant
NASA Mission to a NEO: Bad Idea
Ever since the Columbia disaster, NASA's been hurting for some good press in the crewed spaceflight program. Agency scientists think they have the answer — sending a crewed mission to a Near Earth Object (NEO) once the new Orion spacecraft begins missions in 2015. What are they thinking?! It's hard to imagine a worse approach to fixing a a wing of the agency that has given the public little reason to be interested or confident in its capabilities since the Columbia disaster in 2003. More »
rant
The Empty Universe vs. Zillions of Aliens Debate
It's a big, dumb, empty universe, according to a new formula that estimates our chances of meeting non-human intelligent life. The odds have been estimated before, most famously by the Drake Equation, but now a British scientist has tried to throw a wet blanket over exobiologists and scifi writers by claiming that intelligent life is vanishingly rare. Here's why he's wrong. More »
rant
Future Scenarios that Don't Look Like SciFi Are Wrong
Science fiction is the go-to genre when you're looking for a glimpse of the future. Joel Achenbach makes a persuasive case in the Sunday Washington Post that the best way to stay in front of the dizzying pace of technological progress is to keep up on your Star Trek and take what Arthur C. Clarke wrote to heart. He also quotes Foresight Nanotech Institute President Christine Peterson, who says, "If you look out into the long-term future and what you see looks like science fiction, it might be wrong. But if it doesn't look like science fiction, it's definitely wrong." More »
rant
Learn the Rules of Crossover Comic Perfection
With Marvel's Secret Invasion in full swing and DC's Final Crisis mere weeks away, it's worth looking at just what it is about superhero comics' crossover summer events that make them the four-color equivalent of your first sexual experience. They're something you get all excited about ahead of time before the actual incident goes by quickly and leaves you ultimately unfulfilled. Or maybe that's just me. Experience has taught us that there are some easy steps to follow when creating a superhero crossover involving many fan-favorite characters that will, inevitably, lead to sales success. Utilizing them can take you from near obscurity to something approaching success or, at least, your own soon-to-be-cancelled spin-off from the Avengers. More »
rant
Is Sweding a Corporate Plot?
I hate to get all indie rock on your ass, but isn't it kind of lame that everybody is going apeshit over Sweding when the whole meme was invented by the marketing team for Be Kind Rewind to get people interested in the movie? I'm not saying Be Kind Rewind was a bad movie, nor that the spirit behind Sweding is bad either. I like the idea of people making cardboard light cycles to parody Tron, or making fun of Predator with an all-female cast like the Swede I've got for you right here. And I think it's great that people are figuring out that it isn't some kind of crime against copyright to create silly versions of their favorite movies. But every time I see a new Sweded flick, I feel like the person doing it is just advertising Michel Gondry's flick rather than making a new cool thing. More »
rant
Theatre World Thinks SF Is Too Dated
Of course, it's a question that all of us spend endless hours silently pondering, but now British theatre critic Andrew Haydon asks aloud: "Why isn't there more science fiction on the stage?" His answer suggests that those who spend their time creating stage plays may be slightly too blinded by their desire to be contemporary. Or, perhaps, that science fiction as a genre is just behind the times. More »
rant
Newest Book Covers Don't "Scream Scifi"
There's an interesting discussion going on over at Media Bistro's Galleycat blog about when science fiction books should have dignified covers that look less pulpy and "skiffy." Case in point: Clifford Simak's The Way Station, which has had a host of lurid covers over the years (see left) and now has gotten reissued with a nice pastoral grasslands scene, which looks more like a Willa Cather novel. Click through to see the new, classier cover, plus a selection of the old pulpy covers. More »
mars rover
The brave, unflagging Mars rover Spirit, who has lived on the Red Planet for almost four years, has been given a death sentence by the U.S. government. Right now, the little robot is resting on a sunny slope, waiting out the winter and preparing to do more tests on the Martian atmosphere. But now it looks like Spirit has rolled on its six wheels and done science experiments for the very last time. The U.S. government has forced NASA, this country's national space agency, to cut its budget by 4 million dollars. And that means only one rover, Opportunity, will survive. To say that this is a tragedy is an understatement.
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Spirit, the Mars Rover, Left to Die Before Its Time
The brave, unflagging Mars rover Spirit, who has lived on the Red Planet for almost four years, has been given a death sentence by the U.S. government. Right now, the little robot is resting on a sunny slope, waiting out the winter and preparing to do more tests on the Martian atmosphere. But now it looks like Spirit has rolled on its six wheels and done science experiments for the very last time. The U.S. government has forced NASA, this country's national space agency, to cut its budget by 4 million dollars. And that means only one rover, Opportunity, will survive. To say that this is a tragedy is an understatement.
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The Net Generation Loves Entrepreneurialism, MySpace, and Columbine
Were you born between 1974-83? Do you have implanted pop cultural memories of The O.C., Jackass, Britney Spears, online social networks, and high school shooters? Joshua Glenn, who spins the brilliant Brainiac blog at the Boston Globe, has just written an intriguing essay that explores the Net Generation as a glorious and weird cultural stereotype. What's cool about Glenn's writing is the way he effortlessly weaves together so many touchstones for this generation, from the highbrow journal n+1 to the lowbrow American Idol. These are 20- and 30-somethings who grew up in a world of violent media interconnectedness, Glenn suggests, and it's no wonder they tend to hit their prime young and flame out, in YouTube-is-watching Britney style. Check out the essay. It's a fun, provocative read about a generation that's just putting its stamp on the world. [Brainiac]
Were you born between 1974-83? Do you have implanted pop cultural memories of The O.C., Jackass, Britney Spears, online social networks, and high school shooters? Joshua Glenn, who spins the brilliant Brainiac blog at the Boston Globe, has just written an intriguing essay that explores the Net Generation as a glorious and weird cultural stereotype. What's cool about Glenn's writing is the way he effortlessly weaves together so many touchstones for this generation, from the highbrow journal n+1 to the lowbrow American Idol. These are 20- and 30-somethings who grew up in a world of violent media interconnectedness, Glenn suggests, and it's no wonder they tend to hit their prime young and flame out, in YouTube-is-watching Britney style. Check out the essay. It's a fun, provocative read about a generation that's just putting its stamp on the world. [Brainiac]
rant
Prequels Aren't Just Dumb, They're Evil
Star Trek and Star Wars keep venturing down the dreary route of prequels, and in the process, they've made the universe a way less interesting place. But prequels aren't just boring and predictable — they're also morally wrong and a scourge on humanity, because they portray people as helpless pawns of a history that's already set in stone. Click through for five reasons why prequels are actually evil. More »
rant
Philip K. Dick Books Are Extremely Popular with Bookstore Thieves
Apparently science fiction writer Philip K. Dick, who penned wrathful classics like A Scanner Darkly and Man in the High Castle, is very popular with bookstore thieves. His books are number three on the list of top-five most-stolen book authors, at least according to one thief who was interrogated by a writer for a recent issue of Seattle free weekly The Stranger. Not surprisingly, perhaps, William S. Burroughs is also on the list as are "any graphic novels." But what makes Dick in particular so stealable? More »
advertising
Stealth Marketing Campaign for "Shutter" Promotes Bullshit Science
Shutter, a horror flick opening next week, is a purely supernatural tale about spirit photography (taking pictures of ghosts). But it turns out the Shutter viral marketing crew is trying to suck in the sciencey/gadget geek crowd with a stealth media campaign: Fox reps are urging journalists to write about the "scientific causes" of ghosts, and push expensive spirit-photography cameras on people interested in the movie. An anonymous source passed me a fairly creepy email about this that was sent to a large, glossy magazine's editorial staff. More »
rant
Do Virtual Worlds Have to Make You a Psycho Loser?
A new documentary about virtual worlds called Second Skin debuted at the South by Southwest Festival over the weekend, and it's already causing controversy for portraying gamers as social defectives. Though the filmmakers clearly want to offer a positive view of massive multiplayer games like World of Warcraft, they nevertheless managed to focus the documentary almost entirely on people whose immersion in virtual worlds destroys their engagement with the real world. Either that, or the relationships that the gamers form via the virtual world are shown to be unstable and perhaps even illusory. C|Net's Daniel Terdiman wrote a fascinating essay about the movie after its debut, pointing out how strange it is that we're still getting these one-sided portraits of the "loser gamer" despite the fact that gaming is fast becoming the most popular form of entertainment in the world. More »
10,000 bc review
10,000 BC -- This Ain't Evolution
So we caught the new Roland "Independence Day" Emmerich vehicle 10,000 BC, opening in a theater near you today. It's a science fiction film in the most literal sense of those words. This flick takes the sciences of evolutionary biology and anthropology and turns them into fiction. Sadly, it wasn't the 300 style of anthropology fiction, where you know everything is wildly inaccurate but find yourself in a forgiving mood because the action is so terrific and the concept design kicks ass. 10,000 BC was actually so historically inaccurate that not even the giant ostrich attack scene made up for it. Spoilers and cranky comments about scientific accuracy ahead. More »
futurism
Virtual Reality Will Always Suck
Many futurists and science fiction writers are adherents of the theory that we're heading towards "Vearth," a state where the entire world is essentially replaced by a giant virtual reality made of "computronium." (Computronium is Charles Stross' jokey term for matter that's optimized for computing.) You see this fantasy cropping up in movies like The Matrix, where the world of 1999 has been completely replaced by a computer simulation; and in countless novels ranging from Greg Bear's Blood Music to Rudy Rucker's latest Postsingular. Now Rucker himself is railing against this idea of Vearth, in a terrific essay on why virtual reality will always suck compared to the real thing. More »
rant
