It's not just that most of your regular shows are on holiday break this week; the rest of programming is also affected by marathons and special programming that you'd probably be better off avoiding.

Monday, for example? There's really not much to be looked for at all. Fasten your grump-belts: You're going to run into a lot of that this week.

Tuesday

It's not SF, but Dirty Jobs is at least weird enough to occasionally seem like urban fantasy, right? For those who don't believe me, Discovery is running a marathon of the show from 12pm through 12am to convince you otherwise. For fans of Robin Williams' later work, AMC has Jumanji at 1:45pm.

(Edit: There's also a new episode of Better Off Ted on ABC at 9pm, which I highly recommend and would've earlier if I hadn't accidentally thought it was a rerun. Sorry!)

Wednesday

We're still a couple of days before the holiday itself, but that doesn't mean anything to a time lord, which explains why BBC America has two Doctor Who Christmas Specials already: "The Christmas Invasion" (David Tennant's first episode) at 12pm, and "The Runaway Bride" (Catherine Tate's first episode!) an hour later.

Thursday

Dear Syfy, I know it gets a lot of viewers, but a Ghost Hunters marathon for Christmas Eve? Unless they're looking for the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, I'm not a big fan (8am through 5am the following morning). Just watch BBC America's rerun of Doctor Who's "The Next Doctor" (5pm) instead.

Friday

Dear Syfy, Twilight Zone from 8am, then some trashy movies (Monster Ark at 9:30am, Copperhead at 11:30, Ghost Town at 1:30pm and Stephen King's Desperation - sadly, not a film about the desperation of a horror writer with a face like a shaved lion - at 3:30) before Serenity at 6:30, Total Recall at 9pm and Star Trek: The Next Generation from 11:30 through until 4:30am on Saturday? You're forgiven for that Ghost Hunters thing.

And for those who'd rather watch something with a little more (admittedly dubious) educational value, Discovery has a Mythbusters marathon from 12pm until 6am the next day.

Maybe you shouldn't watch the whole thing.

Saturday

Awake post-festive revelry and wondering if there are old SF B-movies to stave off sleep? AMC has you covered, with a triple-bill of The War Of The Worlds (3:30am), The Day The World Ended (5:30am) and Earth Vs. The Spider (7:15am).

Alternately, Syfy has a horrorfest happening, starting with Stay Alive at 9am, Rest Stop at 10:30, The Descent at 12:30, Autopsy at 2:30, then the first three Saw movies (4:30, 6pm and 9pm, respectively) to scare you out of any post-Christmas Day bluster.

Of course, anyone who isn't watching Doctor Who: The End Of Time part one on BBC America at 9pm should consider themselves (a) not in America, (b) someone who may have watced it online the night before, but we won't talk about that or (c) not our friends. Sorry, it's just the way it is (For those concerned: It's an unedited version, at 1hr and 15mins, including commercials).

Sunday

Catch up with the first four episodes of weird, quasi-animation Outer Space Astronauts on Syfy at 9:30am and then just throw away the remote; the same channel has In The Name Of The King: A Dungeon Siege Tale at 11:30am, followed by Beyond Sherwood Forest (Monsters! Robin Hood! Together!) at 2pm and Dragon Wars at 4, before Men In Black II (at 6pm) and Nic Cage's "What if Indiana Jones was happening today and shit?" National Treasure at 8. What better way to end the week than with Cage, after all?

Faculty at the Southway Junior School in West Sussex hoped to improve their students' writing skills by giving them something exciting to write about about – front row seats to an alien invasion:

Diana Goss, the headteacher, informed pupils that an alien craft had crashed near the school and pupils were encouraged to "follow a trail of debris" before stumbling across the UFO.

A member of staff was then abducted by aliens before the children were sent back to class.

Sussex police not only approved the event, they participated in it, contributing sirens and flashing lights to make the crash more convincing. Unfortunately, it proved too convincing for some of the 370 students – some as young as seven – who witnessed the abduction. Parents, who were not informed about the "invasion" in advance, were less than pleased when their youngsters came home certain that they had witnessed an actual alien abduction. Said one parent:

"My daughter was deeply upset by it all and came home looking shell shocked.

"She wasn't sure what had happened and really wanted to know that everything was going to be alright."

Still, the school's creative goals might be met when the students use this childhood trauma as fodder for their eventual memoirs.

Children traumatised by 'War of Worlds' abduction of teacher [Telegraph via Xenophilia]

Too bad War Of The Worlds goes downhill a bit after that amazingly portentous opening. No movie could live up to the promise of Morgan Freeman reading H.G. Wells, more or less verbatim, but it's still a sad thing.

The greatest voiceovers tell you what kind of movie you're in for, and also give you the information you need to hit the ground running. Take Sean Connery's iconic voiceover from Highlander, which is so awesome, you need it written out for you to appreciate its greatness:

Sadly, most voiceovers that launch movies either try to pack in way, way too much backstory ("And then there was a man named 92ZorkX, who built a mega-cube in his pants") or go way, way overboard with the cheese. Here are 48 more voiceovers that mostly go way over the top, sorted by type:

In The Year 2727, Some Messed Up Shit Happened!

Perhaps my favorite kind of opening voiceover is the kind where the narrator starts out by intoning, "In the year 2027, we realized we had gone out of the house without any lower garments, and the Earth was reduced to rubble as a result. The survivors lived in caves, eating scraps of jerky. Until one day, a new hope appeared." Here are ten of the most awesome voiceovers that begin with a date and end with a sad recitation.

Anything Sounds Cool If You Say It In A Creamy English Accent

It's really true. You can narrate anything in a smooth English accent, and it sounds awesome. It's like spreading brie all over your frontal cortex, eliminating all of your B.S.-detectors. Someone with an English accent is saying it, so it must be brilliant. Right?

What The Hell Are You Talking About, Crazy Announcer Guy?

You know a science fiction movie is going to be totally absurd when it starts off with a voiceover that just throws a giant ball of crazy at your head. Someone who is trying not to giggle gives a little speech about how there was a guy named Zaark 795, and he rose up against his brother, the Bishop of Pluto, because they both wanted the power of the Dodecahedron-o-gram. Yeah. Anyway, here are the nonsensical opening voiceovers that make us happy to be alive.

You Can't Have An Apocalypse Without A Gloomy Speech

It's just the law of apocalypses: You can't feature the destruction of all (or most) life on Earth, without throwing in a gloomy monologue explaining exactly how we blew it all to hell. It's the way things work around here. Typically, these monologues include scenes of devastation as well as a droning voice talking about viruses or bombs or people not washing their hands. Here are some of the greatest.

Science Fiction Movies That Start With Deep Personal Monologues

Some science fiction movies start out with a more personal touch — one character giving an internal monologue about their feelings. Either it's a character being introspective, or it's some kind of noir deal, where the person talks about their pain in a hardcore, tough-guy way. Here are some of our faves.

Voiceovers That Turn Into Conversations, And Weird Voiceover Spoofs

This is sort of a catch-all for two categories that didn't quite deserve their own pages: monologues that start out as a voiceover, and then turn into someone talking to the camera; and voiceovers that are just sort of demented, silly or satirical. They're both a bit different from your standard science fiction voiceover, in any case.

Additional reporting by Alexis Brown.

Images from The War of The Worlds Book Cover Collection.

Taylor also does a terrific job with this image of War of the Worlds' red weed - the hideous plants that the invading aliens set loose to grow all over our planet. The Skiffy blog points out that Taylor's illustrations are just two of many by a number of artists available on a site devoted to the best concept art dealing with War of the Worlds.

UPDATE: For all the complainers in comments below (you know who you are), I will reiterate: This album is from the 1970s. That means Steve Jobs looked at it while on acid, and decided years later to create a musical device that looks like a horrendous robot trying to destroy the Earth. Make of that what you will.

Last week, the Croatian station Radio Antenna began broadcasting reports of an unidentified flying object, a bright spot of light seen moving through the sky. The reports were apparently a planned hoax by the station’s journalists and Kresimir Misak, the host of the local science fiction show, “On the Brink of Science.” Much as Orson Welles staged his radio broadcast of HG Well’s The War of the Worlds to expose the public’s gullibility, these hoaxsters claimed there was a point to their deception:

The Croatian radio journalists admitted only around noon that their report was a joke, aimed at ridiculing Mayor Milan Bandić’s plans to turn Zagreb into a police stronghold. Bandić intended to supply the police with a helicopter, an unmanned flying device, an armoured car and other special instruments, as well as to build a fortified command centre. The journalists behind the joke had decided to test the authorities by faking a Martian attack on the air.

But the mayor was not the only one deceived by the broadcasts. Zagreb residents jammed up the phone lines with calls to relatives, the authorities, and the local fire department. Police officials are currently investigating whether the reports resulted in any public harm and plan to file charges against those involved.

[Balkan Travellers via Marooned]

Openly Aggressive Alien Invaders
You know the type; they come with their guns and their bombs, to quote Dolores O'Riordan, and just try to blow shit up until we surrender. We've seen their kind in War Of The Worlds (whichever version you want), any Dalek-themed episode of Doctor Who, Independence Day or even Transformers, and they're the kind of alien invaders that the world expects - Straight, to the point, and despite their superior firepower, ultimately prepared to fall to our superior intellect, pluck and whatever contagious diseases may be going around at the time.

Passively Aggressive Alien Invaders
These aliens are much sneakier and more difficult to deal with. Oh, they come with promises of all manner of intergalactic treats and peaceful transactions, but behind their oddly perfect grins, they're really lizard people who eat mice whole. I speak, of course, of the aliens from V, but we've seen similar tactics from Secret Invasion's Skrulls ("Embrace change," indeed. The only change they want for us is the one from breathing to six feet under) and, memorably, Mars Attacks's big-brained psuedo-pacifists:

Secret Invaders
Where the Skrulls went wrong, of course, was coming out of the alien closet. If they'd just stuck to their original plan of being undetectably undercover, then world domination could've been theirs much more easily - if less profitably for Marvel Comics. Think of how successful the 1970s Invasion of The Body Snatchers was (and try to ignore Nicole Kidman's shameful The Invasion, while you're at it), or the fact that poor David Vincent never quite managed to completely save the day in The Invaders. Particularly popular in times of American foreign affair paranoia, secret invaders can also generally be identified by the nearby presence of a title that includes some variation on the word "invasion."

Accidental Invaders
It's not just The Day The Earth Stood Still's Klaatu who found himself mistaken for a hostile force; poor ET almost got himself dissected by an overzealous government with cell-phone handguns, as well, and don't get me started on those poor musical bastards from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind. Call it the human disease: seeing something different and just expecting the worst without provocation. I mean, sometimes, even those who do intend to cause destruction aren't really entirely bad guys: think about the Vogons in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, who destroy the Earth only because it's in the way, or Star Trek: The Next Generation's Borg, who only want us all to be brothers and sisters and share the same interests, likes and dislikes, and hive mind. Is it that wrong to condemn them?

Well, yes. After all, if we don't condemn them before they destroy our planet, how are we supposed to do it afterwards? If there's another thing that science fiction has taught us, after all, it's that whichever aliens are going to make contact with the human race, there's a very high percentage that their language's version of the words "widespread destruction and/or subjugation of the native population" are going to appear somewhere on their list of things to do. It may seem cruel and overly suspicious, but in this dog-obliterates-dog-with-raygun universe, the case can always be made that it's worth cutting open a couple of friendly aliens who just want to phone home if it means that we don't end up under the extra-terrestrial boot heel of some inhuman Space Hitler. Take my word for it, people: hope for the best all you want, but if you happen to make first contact with an alien, make sure that you do so with at least a knife handly, just in case. And whatever you do, remember: Don't cover your mouth when you sneeze.

I love the random toothy guy, and the picture of the Starship Enterprise zooming across the top of one of those books. Hey, if it's science fiction, it must have the Enterprise in it, right?

Check out more War of the Worlds covers for minutes of diverting amusement, and upload your own!

War of the Worlds Book Cover Collection [Chez Zeus via Core77]

Superman.
He's the last survivor (or one of the half-dozen last survivors) of the exploding planet Krypton. And he's invulnerable to just about everything in the universe, including nuclear bombs and the vacuum of interstellar space — but he can't come anywhere near a radioactive fragment of his own planet without dying. Or, if it's a red fragment, it'll turn him into a dwarf or a dragon. Of course. Also, Superman's pal, the Martian Manhunter, has a terrible vulnerability to fire — but it turns out to be mostly psychological.
Why it's poetic: Come on, he's lost his home planet... and now whenever he encounters part of it, it nearly kills him. The loneliness, the desolation.

Sontarans.
On Doctor Who, the Sontarans are cloned super-soldiers from the distant planet Sontar. They're almost unstoppable (although in their latest appearance they turned out to be pretty darn stoppable once you used non-copper bullets.) And their only weak spot is a small vent in the backs of their necks, which they use to recharge.
Why it's poetic: They're super-warriors, so they must always face their enemies. I mean, they could put a cap or a shield onto their neck-holes, but they choose not to. Because they need their fatal flaw to remind them who they are.

The Klowns.
In Killer Klowns From Outer Space. It turns out you can kill a killer klown by popping their red nose — it makes perfect sense!
Why it's poetic: They wear their most vulnerable part right in front of them, so they can see any attacks coming. Plus, it's like slapstick and murder rolled into one. Dude!

The Martians.
In War Of The Worlds, the invaders can clobber everything that humans can throw at them, and they scoff at our huge weapons systems. But then they're felled by the smallest enemy of all, the common cold.
Why it's poetic: Mostly because H.G. Wells gets so fancy and flowery talking about the "smallest and humblest of all God's creatures" and how it stomped the monsters' asses. (How does he know germs are humble?)

The Fithp
The Fithp are sort of weird super-intelligent elephants who use superior, if borrowed, technology to invade Earth in the 1986 novel Footfall, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. The humans are hopelessly outclassed, but they have one advantage. In the Fithp culture, when two herds fight, one eventually surrenders and gets absorbed into the other herd — so they're not prepared for humans to surrender and then mount a resistance or plan sabotage.
Why it's poetic: Because these super-elephant guys fail to understand the most human of behaviors... sneakiness.

The Colonists
In The X-Files, the aliens seeking to invade the Earth create super-soldiers who have only one weakness: their bodies are torn apart by the magnetic fields of large deposites of magnetite.
Why it's poetic: The alien soldiers are super-human because of their metallic bodies — but those same bodies make them vulnerable to magnetite. Woah.

The Crawling Eye.
Aliens who are basically just huge eyeballs with tentacles invade the Earth and nothing can stop them — until one human figures out the aliens have no defense against the awesome power of fire!
Why it's poetic: Because the eyes are burning! It's a tremendous metaphor for the blindness of power. Or maybe it's just a metaphor for how much you'll be rubbing your eyes with sleepiness as you try to pay attention to this movie.

The Signs invaders.
We've already talked about this a fair bit, but the aliens who decide to attack/invade/kidnap kids in M. Night Shyamalan's Signs have a terrible vulnerability to plain old water.
Why it's poetic: The humblest of beverages! Or maybe, the fact that the aliens can't protect themselves against water without giving up their shape-shifting abilities. So they rely on the chameleon thing, to the exclusion of protecting themselves.

The Alien Teachers
Aliens replace the teachers at Henderson High School in Robert Rodriguez's The Faculty. And it turns out the aliens' only weakness is Zeke the drug dealer's "homebake."
Why it's poetic: It's the humblest of drugs! Oh, wait. I mean, come on. They're impersonating teachers, and they're vulnerable to the students' drugs. That's awesome. Plus, it's proof that drugs really are good for you. And the school drug dealer is your friend. Etc.

Leto Atreides II
In Frank Herbert's God Emperor Of Dune, Leto lives for 3,000 years and becomes nearly unkillable because he's part sandworm. But then it turns out that he's gained the sandworms' vulnerability to water.
Why it's poetic: He inherits the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the worms. Dude, come on!

Stitch:
Stitch, from Lilo and Stitch, is a super-awesome alien koala creature. Except that he can't swim.
Why it's poetic: Stitch's super-dense body makes him indestructible, but also means he sinks like a rock. Oh noes!

The Tenctonese.
The aliens from Alien Nation could be burned, and even killed, if they came into contact with salt water. What is it with aliens and water of various types? (Thanks Roraz!) Science fiction author Robert J. Sawyer has an incredibly complicated explanation of how the Tenctonese's weakness actually makes sense.
Why it's poetic: You can't cry on their shoulders... or if you do, they'll definitely feel your pain.
Note: In the course of putting this blog post together, I found this post at Everything2, which was pretty helpful in coming up with some examples.

I. The Unexpected (But Basic) Weakness.

War Of The Worlds by H.G. Wells. One of the earliest classic science fiction tales has one of the most ridiculous miracles as well. I remember when I read this book as a kid, I threw it across the room when I got to the "and then they all got the flu and died, kthxbai" ending. Even as a kid, I felt totally cheated. And the 2005 Spielberg film jettisoned almost everything about the book — except the ending. Trust Alan Moore to fix the problem by making the deadly disease into biological warfare in his second League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel.

Signs. Along similar lines, we have the aliens whose one great weakness is water — so they invade a planet that's mostly water. It's just a tad convenient, but we've already ragged on this movie enough.

II. A Human Suddenly Touches The Soul Of The Machine.

Doctor Who, "The Parting Of The Ways." Almost every season of Russell T. Davies' Doctor Who series has ended with some kind of unlikely miracle fix, but the first one was by far the hardest to swallow. The Doctor is facing an army of 100 trillion Daleks, who are also religious fundamentalists (just to make them even scarier) and he's spent the whole episode building a weapon that he won't use because it'll kill everybody, even the nice humans. And then Rose sees some graffiti and figures out that if she looks into the heart of the TARDIS, something totally awesome will happen. Never mind that the last time someone looked into the heart of the TARDIS, she regressed into a baby. But this time, it totally turns Rose into a super-god! But only for about five minutes, just long enough for her to wipe out all the fundy Daleks, and resurrect the hunky Jack — but not the cute Lynda-with-a-Y, because Rose is glad she's dead. Rose is a mean God, sadly. And here's that video:

The Matrix: Revolutions. Is it still a deus ex machina if you call it "The Deus Ex Machina?" Mayyyybe. In the end of the third film, Neo journeys to the "machine city" and makes a deal with the personification of the meachines, which calls itself the Deus Ex Machina. Actually, this bit grows pretty logically out of the rest of the events in the film, so I'm inclined to give it a pass. If you think the Matrix sequels in general make sense, than this bit makes sense, too.

III. The Cavalry Arrives.

The Diamond Age by Neil Stephenson. The world is totally shitfucked, and then John Percival Hackworth creates a multimedia AI book as a "primer" for young ladies. Nell gets a copy of the book, and it teaches her how to become a super-genius ninja mastermind. At the end of the book, just when you think everything is completely screwed, it suddenly turns out someone has pirated and mass-produced the book, and squillions of unwanted Chinese girls have all read it and turned into an army of super-ninjas, aka the Mouse Army. Suddenly, everything's going to be fantastic!

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham. TK and his friends are psychic — which is an illegal mutation in this nasty post-nuclear Newfoundland, which persecutes mutants. It's basically like the X-Men, with less technology and better liquor. Just when all seems hopeless, one of the telepathic mutants manages to reach all the way to New Zealand, which turns out to be a technologically advanced, enlightened society where it's actually cool to be telepathic. The New Zealanders randomly show up and rescue our heroes just in the nick of time. Yay, New Zealand!

IV. God Actually Shows Up.

Babylon 5. Sheridan is killed at the end of the third season, and war is looming and everything seems lost and horrible... until the nice Lorien, who's the first being to have attained sentience in our galaxy and has a great skin-care routine, saves Sheridan by imbuing him with his own life-force... but only after Sheridan confronts his fear of death and has the specially mandated Near-Death Catharsis (TM).

Forever Free by Joe Haldeman. According to BookSlut, Haldeman's The Forever War used time dilation and "the cold immensity of the universe" as a metaphor for the Vietnam War. But in this quasi-sequel, the disruption of the universe's physical laws turns out to be "just the effects of a god messing about with his creation." Also, we discover that a reckless experiment could destroy the entire universe, and then a few pages later we learn that there's a way to make humans totally non-aggressive. "All the problems that are introduced are solved with a wave of the hand," says Evelyn Leeper.

V. It's All A Test

Space: 1999. I've been searching and searching for this episode I saw when I was a kid, where Moonbase Alpha hurtles into a weird void where everything goes strobeadelic and regular characters start dying randomly, and everybody keeps seeing freaky ghosts, and a bunch of their Eagle scoutships crash onto a mossy planet whose atmosphere is pure LSD. And just when Commander Koenig cant stand this trippy-ass shit any longer, it turns out it was all just a godlike entity yanking on the waistband of his poly-blend pajama bottoms, just to see how he'd handle it. And now that he's shown he's not going to put up with this shit, the Moonbase can go on its merry way. (I can't find this episode in any episode guides. Did it exist? Or did I invent it?) I feel as though there are twenty episodes of the original Star Trek that follow this formula, too. But since O.G. Trek is full of godlike entities anyway, it's not as if the gods on Trek come out of nowhere — they come out of the show's limitless supply of gods. It would be surprising if a godlike entity didn't randomly show up.

We've tried to stay away from sounds made by an actual character, like Soundwave's awesome voice from The Transformers, or Darth Vader's breathing from Star Wars. Note: click on the name to hear the sound effect.

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• Spaceships in the 1950s: Back in the heady days of early science fiction movies, the Theremin (probably one of the coolest instruments ever invented) would provide the "Ooooh-EEEEE-oooooh" sounds of spaceships flitting about in the sky and other spooky paranormal sounds. It tended to be overused, and instantly became identifiable with cheesy scifi. If we ever get our own office Theremin, this is the first sound we'd ever make on it.
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• The Alien Heat Ray from War of the Worlds: In the original 1953 movie, the alien heat ray has an awesome cycling sound buried within the sound of the beam. We hope a real heat ray blast sounds this way some day — and we may have found our new cell phone ringtone.
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• The Alien Probe from War of the Worlds: This terrifying sound is one of those things you'd imagine from under the covers as a kid. Nothing is more "wet the bed" inducing than a good, scary scifi sound effect. Cursed alien probes.
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• The automatic doors from Star Trek: These doors were one of the most iconic sounds from The Original Series, and were even parodied by Shatner himself in Airplane II.
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• The communicating whistles and doorbells of Star Trek: The Original Series and Star Trek: The Next Generation: While the old Star Trek communicator used to make a sort of wolf-whistle sound at you, the doorbells on The Next Generation were crisp and punctual. How many people out there are using these as ringtones today?
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• The transporter beam from Star Trek: Besides the doors, this was another one of the sounds most identified with Star Trek. The original beaming sound is a bit dated, but still retro cool and... long. It took so much time for them to appear that you wonder why their enemies were ever caught off guard.
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• The Bionic sounds of The Six Million Dollar Man: Whether he was using his bionic strength to toss a tree out of the way, spy on folks with his bionic peeper, or jumping over something with smooth Wonder Woman-esque bionic legs, Colonel Steve Austin cornered the market on iconic sound effects. Even though it's cheesy, we still love this sound.
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• The lightsaber from Star Wars: Even above blasting lasers and beeping droids, the lightsaber is the most identifiable sound to come out of the Star Wars universe. In fact, you've probably used a flashlight to make a lightsaber in the smoke from your campfire, and made these same noises with your mouth, admit it.
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• A TIE Fighter passing by from Star Wars: For some reason, the wailing sound of a TIE Fighter was much cooler than the whining engine sound of an X-Wing, or the "whoomph" sound effect of the Millennium Falcon. It still sounds very alien, and creepy cool.
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• This video shows off the Top 10 sound effects from Star Wars, but half of them are character based, which we've stayed away from in this post, i.e. Darth Vader's breathing, R2-D2's beeping and booping, etc. However, those seismic charges were admittedly pretty damn cool, and just check out the lightsaber montage at the end.
  
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• The Cylon Eye from Battlestar Galactica: Probably the most iconic sound from Battlestar Galactica, the 70s edition was the scanning sound of the Cylon eye. My brother and I used to hide behind the couch when they'd come onscreen and talk in their awesome vocoder voices.
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• The DRADIS from Battlestar Galactica: In the new series, they spend so much time staring at this thing that the sound becomes embedded in your head. Of course, it does tell them if something is about to vaporize their ass, so we can understand why.
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• K.I.T.T.'s scanner eye from Knight Rider: Owing a lot to those cyclops-esque Cylon eyes was the scanner that both signified that K.I.T.T.'s scanner was active, and also served as his "heartbeat."
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• The TARDIS taking off and landing from Doctor Who: The TARDIS had several sound effects: the whirring of the doors, the hum of the control room, the flying through space sound... but the most popular noise that endures to this day was the sound of it materializing and dematerializing. If you pick up this Electronic Flight Control Tardis, you can have them all at your fingertips on your desktop.
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• The Sonic Screwdriver from Doctor Who: The Doctor's multi-purpose tool that seems to be able to do just about anything has its own sound, and it's changed a bit over the years. In fact, you can pick up your very own sonic screwdriver, complete with sound effects. Just don't complain when it fails to make money spew out of the ATM machine.
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• The transforming sound from Transformers: Whenever Optimus Prime, Megatron, Jazz, or Soundwave would transform into their alter-egos, this sound accompanied them, and buried itself in the brains of billions of kids around the world. It still makes me think I can turn into something different whenever I hear it.
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• The Wonder Twin Powers, Activating, from The Superfriends: Okay, we're breaking our own rule with this one, since it's character based, but we just love the cheesy music/SFX behind Zan and Jayna activating their lame superpowers. They really need their own campy show these days.
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Radio Lab, an hour-long show where co-hosts Jad Abumraud and Robert Krulwich investigate the why behind subjects like The Ring Cycle, deceit and why we laugh, mixes soundscapes with conversation, humor and hard science to come up with something that's been called the best radio show in America. Their "War of The Worlds" episode - the first recorded live in front of an audience - may lack some of the more inventive remixing of interview and dialogue, but makes up for it with the amazing - and somewhat unbelievable - stories behind the various radio versions of HG Wells' story.

With guests including Blair Witch Project creator Daniel Myrick and the daughter of an Equadorian radio producer whose version of the play didn't end so well, creates an essential hour of listening that - as the show's website puts it - examines the "power of the mass media to create panic." Listen and wonder whatever happened to the power of science fiction.

War of the Worlds [Radiolab.org]

Really, it's impossible to recapture the era when something originated completely. The past is a foreign country, and all that. And the older the work in question, the more stuff there's likely to be that a 21st century audience would find bizarre or offensive. The best you can hope for is a kind of retro-futurist look back at the golden age.

(I was inspired to think about this by yesterday's discussion of the rumored John Carter movie, and how many people were violently opposed to a WotW-style update.)

How likely is it that film-makers will be able to reconstruct the look of a bygone era and make us understand the real-world issues that the old stories were dealing with metaphorically? (Even Watchmen, which only takes place 23 years ago, is going to have a hard time hauling our asses back into a Cold War mindset.)

And there's another dimension to the issue of filming Golden Age science fiction: stories set in the future, like the Lensmen saga or The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, both in development right now. Should movies of those books try to recapture a 1930s or 1960s vision of the future? How far should film-makers go in trying to pay a retro-futurist tribute to these classic works, maybe in a sort of Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow style?

Instead of doing a poll, I'm just throwing the question out there. On one level, it's just a yes-or-no question: should film-makers try to be faithful to the eras when classic SF texts were written? On another level, it's a much more complex issue. What do you think?

[/Film]

• Y: The Last Man: Every male on Earth, human or otherwise, has died from mysterious causes... except for Yorick Brown and his monkey. This all happens in the first issue, and the entire series is about how the remaining women deal with a planet devoid of men. The series will wrap up this year, so if you haven't checked it out, try out issue #1 and you'll have plenty of time to catch up.
• NYC2123: Set in 2123 in a Manhattan that was devastated by a tsunami 70 years ago, the post-apocalyptic survivors struggle to continue living. This comic was originally conceived for Sony's PlayStation Portable and distributed under a Creative Commons license, although you can now read it online and check out the fantastically stark artwork.
• The War of the Worlds: Dark Horse Comics has the entire graphic novel adaptation of this scifi classic online, and it looks pretty vibrant even on a laptop screen. The art looks similar to Kevin O'Neil's in The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and the Victorian-era story is a favorite of Moore's, so you'll only feel two steps slightly removed from one of his works.
• Doom Patrol: Grant Morrison's take on this superteam from DC Comics past went well beyond the envelope and into the realm of the bizarre. He had god-like supervillains, heroes who could only use their powers when asleep, and of course, Robotman... the lone holdout from the 1960s who has appeared in every version of Doom Patrol. This is some vintage Morrison at his best and most wacky.
• DMZ: This comic book about a civil war raging in the United States in the near future follows a journalist who has become trapped behind the Free States and the United States in the demilitarized zone that is Manhattan. It's not just a comic book, but it's also a harsh political statement about our current government practices.
• Swamp Thing: This title was fading fast and heading into obscurity when DC agreed to let relatively unknown scribe Alan Moore have a crack at it. He rewrote the origin of the character, so he no longer came from chemical origins but was instead a plant elemental. However, we'll forgive him that transgression, since he brought back The Floronic Man, who was bonded to plants through chemicals.
• Chaos PhD: This tribute to the silver age of comic books features very well-drawn art, tongue in cheek humor, and of course supervillains and capes. Plus, a well done web interface that makes it easy to read.
• 1984: George Orwell's classic novel about the future as a free webcomic? Big Brother would not be pleased. Particularly with those other websites you've been visiting on your filthy little computer.

Of course, if pointy things and big guns are your thing, check out Ryan's website where you can see the concept art he created for War of the Worlds and the second and thirdStar Wars prequels. We never thought we'd see the new Star Wars movies as cool, but his concept art sure looks a lot better than the films ever did. In fact, note to George Lucas, we'd buy a DVD with filled with this artwork.

Famous names: Alan "weirdgod" Moore, Kevin O'Neill

Crunchy goodness: 5
Spinoffs/Sequels/Copycats: The 2003 movie starring Sean Connery has been known to cause people's eyeballs to turn into projectile shit. Do not sit in the same room as someone watching this movie, or you'll wind up with shit-splattered clothes while your newly blind friend begs for death. Not nearly as fun as it sounds.

Sights you'll never unsee: Mister Hyde rapes the Invisible Man to death — and the gruesome results will make you wish the invisibility trick kept working posthumously.

The shit: You can literally spend hours poring over all the little in-jokes in the comic itself, while each issue comes with a ton of fake Victorian ads and little prose pieces that immerse you in a bizarre distortion of the era that gave us steampunk.

Notes on League of Extraordinary Gentlemen #1 by Jess Nevins and divers hands