Topics pertaining to science fiction and/or fantasy, in book, TV show, or movie formats.
I always wondered at the popularity of zombies in popular fiction. They have no skill and no intelligence, and they move very slowly, their only truly horrifying trait (other than their dire need of cosmetics) is that they won’t stop so long as they can move even a single digit in your direction. It requires …
Continue reading ‘“We like zombies… because we *are* zombies”’ »
In Michael Stackpole’s book I, Jedi, set in the Star Wars universe a few years after Return of the Jedi, the main character must develop his latent Jedi abilities in order to track down and rescue his kidnapped wife. Unfortunately, the late and unlamented Emperor has done a very thorough job of wiping out all …
I saw something in a science fiction book once (I don’t recall which one, but it might have been David Brin’s Earth, though I can’t locate my copy of it now to verify that). It described a young man’s first encounter with a printed book, after spending all his life with a World Wide Web …
Hm… could the world of Darrell Bain’s The Pet Plague be far behind? 😉 Or more seriously, the brain enhancements of Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy, or any of a dozen similar science fiction works? Scary stuff, but ooh so exciting, too.
Wow, talk about Back to the Future. Though at that price, it’s more like back to the bank’s loan officer… I don’t think I’ll be indulging in this one. (They’ll either make a mint or lose their shirts, depending on how many people are rich enough — and interested enough — to buy one. But …
Continue reading ‘“DeLorean goes electric for 2013 roll-out”’ »
A camera that allows you to snap the shot anytime and worry about focusing it later, and that automatically records true 3D-compatible images? It sounds like twenty-first century technology to me. 🙂 In fact, it sounds very much like the 3D imaging technology described in Asimov’s The Caves of Steel, that allowed detective Elijah Bailey …
Continue reading ‘Light-Fields, Megaray Sensors — Camera 3.0?’ »
I once read a science-fiction book (Poul Anderson’s The Boat of A Million Years) about a dozen or so unrelated people with genetic mutations that cause them to never age (though they can die in other ways). Something like six or eight of them make it to a point in our future when technology will …
More of science emulating science fiction: the “miracle pill” is similar in effect to one described in Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat series (as well as at least three other SF books I’ve read, though I don’t presently recall the names of the others). Harrison’s version is a little more poetic though: his pill “leaves …
Continue reading ‘“Boffins invent miracle pill that counteracts effects of booze”’ »
In another case of life-imitates-science-fiction, Bruce Schneier reports that someone has discovered the perfect description of today’s “security theater” in a 1956 Asimov story. (For those of you not following along at home, “security theater” refers to all the crap the TSA is doing that is trivial to get around, but that they’re doing just …
Ah, if only I were still a kid, with the unending free time that kids have. Of course, I’d have to be a rich kid. 😉