Looks like eBay is catering to SciFi fans with their Sci-Fi-o-Rama page.

We’ve posted this before, but it never hurts to remind everyone of the excellent resource at ClassicSciFi where they list all of the science fiction showing on TV today…[echo on]…and in the fuuutuuurrre!

Attention cyberpunk fans!

Have you seen the Cyberpunk Book List? While you’re at it, check out the neo-cool info in Cyberpunk as a Science Fiction Genre. Downlink now…before EvilCorp caps you!

…it smells like…Chocolypse Now.

The website for Fantasy & Science Ficton Magazine has an article on what it’s like to be on Mars. And if you can’t get enough of Mars, visit The Eternal Golden Braid for a Martian Picture of the Day like this one.

A new BG website shows synopses for both the original and upcoming new series.

From Locus Online, it’s the Norman Roswell site, showing off the best from the Saturn Evening Post. You can even get a T-shirt.

The previously reported tidbit that Shatner was filming a movie in Iowa was actually part of a reality show stunt for Spike TV. Shatner and co-producers of the show donated $100K to the town after revealing the truth.

I finally got around to watching Episode VI tonight. Another fun movie, though the Ewoks dragged it down a bit more than I remember.

With Star Wars on my mind, it occurred to me that there might be some DVD Easter Eggs. Go, go gadget Google! Easter eggs are available from Movie Web.

SciFi Wire reports: The upcoming Clone Wars shorts will clock in at 12 minutes instead of 3 minutes. They will also tie in to Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith. And, lest we forget, the shorts will feature General Grievous.

According to IESB, Lucas has announced a Star Wars TV show. Kevin Smith was mentioned as a possible director for the TV series, but I don’t think it was anything official. So that takes us one step closer to SWSignal from SFSignal…

Thats right everybody – our favorite parody man, Mel Brooks, is talking about making a sequel to Spaceballs. The news was sent out on a couple web sites, but I have linked the details from Comingsoon.net.

REVIEW SUMMARY: Good collection of stories marred by one unreadable novella.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Anthology of 20 stories from 2003, all strictly SF (no fantasy).

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Lots of really good stories.

CONS: One novella was unreadable, dragging down the books rating.

BOTTOM LINE: Good collection of stories more than worth the price.

This is the ninth in the still-running Year’s Best series edited by David G. Hartwell. It attempts to cull the best SF published in 2003. Mostly, it succeeds. There was one story that, for me, was unreadable. Unfortunately, it was of novella length and thus, being weighted more heavily than a short story or novelette, brought down the books rating. One other story was mediocre. The rest though ranged from good to excellent. Standout stories include “Amnesty” by Octavia Butler, “The Waters of Meribah” by Tony Ballantyne, “Castaway” by Gene Wolfe, “Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers” by Cory Doctorow and “Annuity Clinic” by Nigel Brown.

Reviewlettes follow.

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While I was traveling in a 737 recently, the movie wasnt particularly interesting; so like the geek that I am, I wondered how an airplane really work. I know, your 10 year old kid can explained it to me about the air pressure differences created by an airfoil shape or deflection of air molecules against the surfaces of the wing. I’ve heard those before, but now that I’m an adult, I thought I would want the adult answer, so I turned to the HowStuffWork site.

As it turned out, neither one of those explanations was completely true… In the course of the article, there’s a reference to this neat little java applet over at the NASA site that lets you play with the design of an airfoil in their little virtual wind tunnel. Now the applet is not very fancy, but it tickled the inner geek inside of me, and I thought I share it with the rest of you geeks…

I’m looking forward to this one, in a Se7en horror film kind of way.

KongIsKing.net is an ongoing fan project to document Peter Jackson’s remake of King Kong. It’s got a ways to go, but it looks to be interesting as the movie production moves along.

As previously posted, The SciFi Channel will be airing all 88 episodes of Farscape leading up to the new Farscape movie The Peacekeeper Wars. The air dates for the discontiguous marathon are now October 1st to 15th, 4PM – 9PM EST on Mondays through Fridays. The movie airs Sunday, October 17.

In-costume cast pictures are out for the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. I’ll save Pete the trouble: When I look at Invisible Girl, it’s Flame On! [Insert rolling tongue sound here.]

I picked up the EQ2 preorder and popped in the character creator that it comes with. There is definitely a wide range of looks that can be achieved, so that hopefully characters will not look alike. However, it seems to me (and Scott also mentioned this) that they spent time on things that don’t really matter, like the curve of the eyebrows and the width of the nose. When I ran several characters through the random generator, I didn’t notice much of a difference within a race. Halflings all have the same shaped head and the little things like eyebrows and nose width don’t make much difference. Things like hair do, however. Also, each race seems to have it’s own configurable traits. Gnomes have different kinds of glasses they can wear, barbarians have tattoos, etc.

[Link via CNN] You know the thrill you get tracking your packages online when you order something from the Internet? Well, now you can experience the same feeling of joy as you Track Martha Stewart! Courtesy of the US government (the Federal Bureau of Prisons) and Martha’s inmate number (55170-054). Isn’t technology wonderful? (Note: The site was busy when I tried, otherwise I could have posted a direct link.)

TheLastMail.com is a website that allows you to arrange to have email sent on your behalf after you die. Costs and services range from free (for a single email, no attachments) to 200 Euros for lifetime enrollment in the Master Plan (unlimited emails + 5MB of attachments). There are even monthly payment plans (paid every month until your death, that allow you to update the emails

[Link via CNN]

The first weekly SF Signal poll is over. Here are the results:

QUESTION

How do you feel about the latest changes LucasFilm made to the Star Wars DVDs?

RESULTS

10% – Love the changes

60% – Don’t care

30% – Don’t like the changes

There were only a measly 10 votes. For a better sample size, we need to either increase our readership or stuff the ballot box.

I’m talking about, of course, the new Lord of the Rings Special Extended Version DVD, available for pre-order on Oct. 1st.

The new version of the film is 250 minutes long. That’s over 4 hours long! WTH is Jackson doing? There had better be some really cool battle footage left out. 4 hours, I can’t believe this. But the split character commentary by Gollum/Smeagol sounds funny, or corny…

REVIEW SUMMARY: Inventive, pulse-pounding space opera infused with action, intrigue and an intense sense of wonder.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The Empire sends war hero Laurent Zai to rescue the Child Empress, taken hostage by the nefarious and powerful Rix, a group of machine-augmented humans bent on seeing an AI hive-mind as ruler of the Eighty Worlds.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Engrossing; action-packed; interesting story; strong characters; political intrigue.

CONS: Political intrigue leaned too much towards politics at times.

BOTTOM LINE: An excellent example of space opera done to perfection. Highly recommended.

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Bowing to pressure by certain members of the SFSignal author community, a new category has been created to help us proudly display our Star Wars fanboy status: Star Wars Univerese. This new category is for all things Star Wars. So, on to the actual content of this post. All links here are from the cool Joystiq blog, which is dedicated to video games. From there, a list of upcoming Star Wars games!

• Republic Commando is a game in the Ghost Recon mold, where you command a squad of 3 members. It looks cool and you get to use the Star Wars weaponry. Sweet! PC and Xbox.
• Mercenaries is a GTA-clone set in the near future, in Korea it looks like. If it truly follows GTA, then you’ll be able to do some unsavory things. A first for Lucasarts? PS/2 and Xbox.
• Joystiq’s hands-on impressions of the upxoming Jump to Lightspeed expansion for Star Wars Galaxies. Flying around in space is cool, but does it address the ‘fun-factor’ lacking in SWG? I don’t know. PC only.