The Cult-Pop website is unassumingly cool. It’s a simple web page; there are no links and there’s no navigation because there are no sub-pages. There’s just a giant TV screen. The website is the online companion to the TV show that airs on Michigan cable.

What do they show? Their play list includes video interviews with authors like John Scalzi, Elizabeth Bear, Tobias Buckell, Karl Schroeder, Brad Meltzer, Nick Sagan and more. They also have a ComicCon report. The videos are cool, so hang in there through each show’s too-long intro.

There only seem to be about 8 video podcasts at this time, but the subject list promises good things to come. Check it out!

Below is Snarkerati’s list of Top 50 Dystopian Movies of All Time. A great topic for a meme!

You know the drill…copy the list and BOLD the movies you have seen. Post yours in the comments, or on your own blog (a link back here would be appreciated!)

1. Metropolis (1927)
2. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
3. Brazil (1985)
4. Wings of Desire (1987)
5. Blade Runner (1982)
6. Children of Men (2006)
7. The Matrix (1999)
8. Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981)
9. Minority Report (2002)
10. Delicatessen (1991)
11. Sleeper (1973)
12. The Trial (1962)
13. Alphaville (1965)
14. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
15. Serenity (2005)
16. Pleasantville (1998)
17. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
18. Battle Royale (2000)
19. RoboCop (1987)
20. Akira (1988)
21. The City of Lost Children (1995)
22. Planet of the Apes (1968)
23. V for Vendetta (2005)
24. Metropolis (2001)
25. Gattaca (1997)
26. Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
27. On The Beach (1959)
28. Mad Max (1979)
29. Total Recall (1990)
30. Dark City (1998)
31. War Of the Worlds (1953)
32. District 13 (2004)
33. They Live (1988)
34. THX 1138 (1971)
35. Escape from New York (1981)
36. A Scanner Darkly (2006)
37. Silent Running (1972)
38. Artificial Intelligence: AI (2001)
39. Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
40. A Boy and His Dog (1975)
41. Soylent Green (1973)
42. I Robot (2004)
43. Logan’s Run (1976)
44. Strange Days (1995)
45. Idiocracy (2006)
46. Death Race 2000 (1975)
47. Rollerball (1975)
48. Starship Troopers (1997)
49. One Point O (2004)
50. Equilibrium (2002)

• At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles Jeff and Ann VanderMeer, editors of Best American Fantasy.
• Bruce Sterling talks Mundane Science Fiction. [via Locus Online]
• Here’s Stephen King on What Ails the Short Story. “Last year, I read scores of stories that felt … not quite dead on the page, I won’t go that far, but airless, somehow, and self-referring. These stories felt show-offy rather than entertaining, self-important rather than interesting, guarded and self-conscious rather than gloriously open, and worst of all, written for editors and teachers rather than for readers.”

UPDATE: Ellen Datlow responds.

• Free fiction: “The Last Worders” by Karen Joy Fowler from Lady Churchill’s “Robot” Wristlet #20.
• Equal time: AfterElton lists the sexiest sci-fi hunks on the small screen. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…
• From the Heart of Europe has a scanned 1988 interview (and transript) with David Tennant (from a school yearbook>) where he expresses a desire to play Doctor Who.
• Starwars.com previews the Yoda stamp.

Confirming what was reported earlier, the Library of America will be releasing a second collection of Philip K. Dick’s work. The original collection included The Man in the High Castle, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Ubik. The second collection will include:

• Martian Time-Slip
• Dr. Bloodmoney
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said
• A Scanner Darkly
• Now Wait for Last Year

Also: Gabriel Mckee (SF Gospel) and Matt Cheney (Mumpsimus) have reports of the event where this was announced by Jonathan Lethem, LOA’s PKD series editor.

REVIEW SUMMARY: Still a great story.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: The rebellious Harlequin causes mischief in a society that is strictly punctual.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Engaging prose; interesting premise; a parable that’s effective 40 years after it was written.

CONS: If I think of any, I’ll let you know.

BOTTOM LINE: A classic short story that deserves its great reputation.

In 1965, Harlan Ellison sat down to write a story for submission to a writers’ workshop. The result after a mere 6 hours was “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman”, a story that went on to win both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and is reported to be one of the most reprinted stories ever. Underwood Press published a nice-looking, 48-page commemorative anniversary edition in 1997 – aptly late considering the story’s premise – to celebrate the story’s initial publication. This hardback edition comes with some nice looking illustrations by Rick Berry. You know what? Forty two years later, the original story holds up remarkably well.

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• Apparently he will be back…sort of. DVD Review reports that we can expect not just another sequel, but a whole new second Terminator trilogy! One of the films is likely to focus on the war of the machines.
• Wired has an interview with Ridley Scott, director of Blade Runner, the last sci-fi film to be made before sci-fi died. “You know, Alien is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by a great monster.” “I honestly couldn’t get into [Philip K. Dick's book, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep]. It’s so dense, by page 32 there’s about 17 story lines.
• Cinema Blend News has the teaser poster for Pixar’s WALL-E.
• File under “Why, God, why?”: Tom Green and Crispin Glover have been cast in the sci-fi comedy film, Freezer Burn: the Invasion of Laxdale, which tells the story of aliens from outer space disguised as Dutch oil company executives who buy a local grain silo and promise to create jobs for a failing farm town, but secretly plan to use crop circles to heat up the temperature of the planet and turn Earth into a Club Med for extraterrestrials.
• Interviews (The first 3 snagged from Swivet):
  • CHUD interviews Richard K. Morgan (Thirteen). “I’m about telling the story, and I’ll create whatever backdrop I need to do that as I go along. I don’t like info-dumping, and I try to avoid it.”
  • Columbus Dispatch interviews Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates). “I’ve never sympathized with the idea of covertly commenting on the social and political issues of today. That’s a fatal error. As soon as the reader notices the parallel, it prevents the suspension of disbelief.”
  • A Dribble of Ink interviews Brandon Sanderson (Elantris). “In my opinion a good book is a balance be-tween character, setting, and plot with character being the most important of the three. You can have the coolest magic system in the world, but if readers don’t care about the characters who are using that magic system, the book won’t be very fun to read.”
  • Simon Haynes interviews Tim Pratt (Blood Engines). “I’m not sure SF/Fantasy has a particular purpose that’s different from the purpose(s) of all literature, which are variously to edify, to entertain, and to illuminate the human condition.”
  • Amazon Daily interviews M. John Harrison (Nova Swing). “SF is an opportunity to have an intense relationship with your own imagination. It’s a kind of drive-by poetry, trashy and addictive; it’s fun.”
• In response to their earlier post Does Literary Fiction Suffer from Dysfunctional Pricing?, LitKicks looks at the pleasures of paperbacks.
• At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles Ben Bova, author of The Aftermath, the fourth and final book in his Asteroid Wars series.
• New at ManyBooks.net: “Pagan Passions” by Gordon Randall Garrett. “Adult Science Fiction, with the supernatural making complete sense.”
• Del Rey will be publishing new Indiana Jones books.
• Besides a mini-Seinfeld reunion, the video for Brad Paisley’s song “Online” features a cameo by William Shatner (at 3:14). [via Big Dumb Object via Deanna Hoak, who are hereby put on notice for making me listen to country music.]

OK, this is already a repeat tidbit, but Geekend reminded me of it gaian and I had a good giggle, so I’m going for a video three-fer.

• The premier of Bionic Woman pulled in decent ratings, especially considering it was scheduled against ratings juggernaut, Dancing With The Stars. It even managed to best Heroes ratings for Monday. We’ll see how well it keeps its viewers next week.
• Speaking of Heroes, haven’t had the time to read all of the online comics for the season? Well, no you don’t have to. George from OnOurTV has done the work for you and gives us the quick summaries for all 52 online comics. Truly a dedicated Heroes fan, and a heck of a developer too.
• NBC’s Digital Insights and Innovations team has done some research about viewer habits for online content. They found that a high number of people who watched Heroes online for the first time continued to watch the show later, both online and off. The take away being that there is an ‘opportunity’ for cross platform marketing to reach more people. In other words, viewers will be bombarded with more targeted ads on the NBC site. Just what we need. But I still think NBC’s online viewing capabilities are the best of the major networks.
• Michael Wentz gives us his review of Journeyman. In it, he takes to task those who compare it to Quantum Leap. Not having seen it yet, all I can say is the synopsis makes it sound like a personal QL.
• Blog Critics Magazine also has a review of CBS’ Moonlight, which premiers tonight at 9pm ET. Sounds bad.

Here’s a quick intro to space elevators courtesy of ISR and NASA.

[via Imagi-Nation]

• The Fantasy Review interviews Michael Moorcock (The Metatemporal Detective). On the proposed Elric movie: “We have a script. Chris Weitz will re-engage with it when publicity for The Golden Compass is completed.” [via Pyr-o-mania]
• Here’s a chart that shows sci-fi characters to scale.
• John Klima is offering electronic copies of Electric Velocipede to folks who are interested in reviewing it.
• Sony is releasing colorized version of 3 Ray Harryhausen flicks: It Came From Beneath the Sea, Earth vs. the Flying Saucers and 20 Million Miles to Earth.
• Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry Was a Big Hippie: And Star Trek Is The Better For It. “Like all intellectual sci-fi, Star Trek addresses more. Alien races substitute for ethnic groups or special interest groups. Those alien worlds stand in for other parts of our world or other times where slavery was never abolished, or animals are still slaughtered for sport.”
• Behold Franken Monkey! [via Optical Popitude]

Premier week marches on! Today we have only one interesting genre (and real SF) pilot, the oft mentioned Bionic Woman at 9/8C. SF Signal Scott kinda liked what he saw of the pilot and will be watching at least for a few more episodes. I haven’t seen the pilot yet, but I have it from Amazon’s Unbox so I won’t be recording it tonight. I’d be interested in seeing what others think of the show.

Again, if anyone is interested in talking about the show while it is on, or any time after, I’ll embed the chat room below the jump.

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I was going to title this post as “You, a Deserted Island and 5 Sc-Fi Movies…GO!”, but I wanted to bypass the “Is there a DVD player and electricity on the island?” snarkiness.

You know what to do here. Name the five sci-fi movies you would most want to have with you if you could only choose 5. These are not necessarily the ones you think of as “the best”, but rather the ones you can (or would like to) watch over and over again….

Here are mine:

• Aliens
• Independence Day
• Star Wars (Episode 4)
• The Day the Earth Stood Still
• The Matrix

There were so many others to choose from that I had to leave off this list because I have only seen them once (Serenity) or they were just overflow (Terminator 2, Back to The Future).

Now let’s hear from you!

As previously mentioned, yours truly had a guest-blogging gig at AMC TV’s SciFi Scanner blog. Here’s the final roundup of the posts I did there.

1. Ender’s Game Not Dead Yet
2. 7 Sci-Fi Movies For Parents to Share with Their Kids
3. Mmmmm…Rayguns…
4. Playthings for the Serious Doctor Who Fan
5. Bill Pullman’s Theatrical Space Odyssey
6. The Sci-Fi Blockbuster From Russia
7. Sci-Fi Scanner Weekly Roundup
8. Michael Bay Attached to 2012?
9. Geek T-Shirts
10. Avatar News
11. Two Stargate Direct-To-DVD Movies Due
12. 7 Superior Sci-Fi Sequels

There’s also another one that they are holding off until publishing until November so they can tie it in with a promotion.

See also: SciFi Scanner Post Roundup #1 and SciFi Scanner Post Roundup #2.

Here’s the video for the 1936 production of Things to Come. H.G. Wells wrote the screenplay (!) which is loosely based on his story, “The Shape of Things to Come“.

[via Drivers and Sundry]

• More Dick on the way: GalleyCat reports that The Library of America will release a second compilation of Philip K. Dick’s best novels from the 1960s and 1970′s. [via Andrew Wheeler]
• Mondolithic Studios shows off the cool cover artwork for the upcoming reprint of The SFWA Hall of Fame Volume 2B edited by Ben Bova.
• At SciFi Wire, John Joseph Adams profiles Daniel Abraham, author of A Betrayal in Winter.
• Amazon Daily covers the British Fantasy Awards.
• Jeff VanderMeer has posted the table of contents for his upcoming anthology The New Weird.
• Locus Online has excerpts from Locus Magazine’s September issue’s interviews with Guy Gavriel Kay and Kathleen Ann Goonan.
• Robin McKinley and Brandon Sanderson have been added to the list of sf/f authors who blog.
• The Space Review offers this detailed look at Heinlein in Hollywood.
• SciFi Scanner asks: Who really trusts George Lucas with the Star Wars television series?
• The NYT article When the Space Age Blasted Off, Pop Culture Followed shows how the space race affected on American popular culture and art. “Deciding which cultural offerings from those post-Sputnik years were deep and lasting and which were probably not (space-age bachelor-pad music? ‘The Jetsons’? ‘Barbarella’? Tang?) will always be topics of impassioned debate among space aficionados. But a half-century into that once-imagined orbital future, it has become a little easier to put the era into cultural perspective.”
• Scientists have worked out the properties of a variety of weird planet types that they say could circle alien suns. [via Futurismic]
• Geek Chic for your feet: Star Wars slippers.

• Entertainment Weekly has a spoilery interview with George Takei (Heroes).
• The Hollywood Reported looks at Monday night’s ratings. Dancing With The Stars and Heroes were the winners, while Chuck and Journeyman both tanked, comparatively. After one night, I’d have to say Journeyman is leading the pack for the deadpool, but the new season is still young, with many candidates still to air.
• Heroes: Origins has acquired two new writers: Michael O’Dougherty (Superman Returns) and Eli Roth (Hostel!). Roth, especially, is an interesting choice. At least NBC is taking a creative approach to the writers for this spin-off.
• The Helia Health Blog takes the occasion of the new Bionic Woman to wonder whether, with the aging of America, replacement parts for humans might become science fact. I’d say it’s almost a certainty. The only question is how long will we have to wait? And who will be the first cyborg?
• NBC will be producing a Masters Of Horror spin-off, called Fear Itself. Supposedly this will be a network friendly show, but how well will a horror show perform on network TV? To me, this is something for cable.

So, with the long wait finally over, NBC debuted season 2 of Heroes, to much fan anticipation. But did the writers and producers manage to shake off the disappointing finale and bring the zest back to the show?

(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)

Well, yes, and no. First, the good parts. I still like Hiro as a character, and I was interested to see his story. That thread was the one I wanted to see the most of, and I think they did a nice job introducing the situation in feudal Japan (but how much does modern day Japanese and English sound like their counterparts from way back when?). Although I do have some reservations about Hiro’s story going forward.

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• On Oct. 21, the Sci Fi Channel series, Taken, will be released on DVD. You can find out more about the set at TakenDVD.com.
• Monsters And Critics gives us their take on Journeyman. Kevin McKidd good, writing bad. For those who’ve seen the pilot, what did you think?
• MSN Canada investigates Hiro’s time travel ability and how you could use it to make money. Investing is involved. Me? I’d keep going back and forth and win all the high dollar lotteries. Or find some outrageous parlay bet.
• The Dodo Blog takes a closer look at the dodos of ITV’s Primeval series. Aren’t they cute? IT’s time to find me some Primeval to watch.
• Great White Snark tells us the secret formula for a great geek TV show. Put them all together and you have a hit geek show.

Starring Harrison Ford and Ricardo Montalban’s chest…

[via Geekend]

• Over at The Art Department, Irene Gallo micro-interviews artist Glen Orbik. I’m lovin’ that cool, retro-looking cover of Space Vulture.
• Baen Books will soon be releasing electronic versions of select Subterranean Press titles through their webscriptions service.
• James Patrick Kelly is podcasting his novel Look Into the Sun. Here’s Part 28.
• Andrew Wheeler reviews The Horror in the Museum by H.P. Lovecraft and Others.
• “Girlie” covers on young adult book are apparently turning boys away from reading. “Attempts by parents and teachers to persuade boys to read more are being undermined by publishers whose insistence on using lurid “Barbie” pink covers on books is turning away young male readers in their droves.”
• At Locus Online, John Shirley looks back at Soylent Green.
• Over at SciFi Wire, Michael Shanks talks about the Stargate movies; Stargate: Continuum and Stargate: The Ark of Truth.
• Michael Cassutt offers his “biased” review of The Masters of Science Fiction.
• Kunochan.com lists The Top Twenty Starship Captains.

And so the great genre ‘revitalization’ of 2007 begins! Tonight, NBC does it’s part to bring new genre shows to the masses, with two new shows, and one returning. Let’s see what they are offering:

8PM ET – Chuck kicks things off, bringing a lighter hearted look at being a Nerd working for a mass market electronics retailer. Mix in some stolen government secrets and special ops ninjas, and you have Chuck. Certainly something I’ll be checking out, hoping it can be entertaining in a Eureka-type manner. But of course, Chuck is really the lead-in for:

9PM ET – Heroes returns tonight, and I know its not a pilot but still, it’s the first episode of season 2, so consider it a pilot for this season. With many returning cast members and some questions left over from last season, this season has some explaining to do and, in my mind, needs to kick it up a notch to redeem itself from the let down of the season 1 finale. Can NBC keep the fire going this season? We’ll see. At least it isn’t Flash Gordon bad.

10PM ET – Journeyman follows Heroes in an attempt by NBC to get viewers to stay tuned for another hour. For me, the synopsis just doesn’t sound that interesting, being a Quantum Leap type clone that will focus more on characters than anything else. I’m not sure this one will last too long. Our reviewer Scott seems to agree.

So what will you be watching tonight and will you watch it live or recorded? Count me in the recorded group for Chuck and Heroes.

And because we here at SF Signal love our readers, we’ve created a chat room for everyone to join to discuss the new shows as you watch them! I know, exciting. You can find the room below. I’m not sure when I’ll be joining, probably sometime after 9pm CT, for kid based reasons. You’ll need to leave the browser set on this page to keep your chat name, but otherwise, the room is active right now so have fun!

See the expended entry for the chat widget!

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• The winners of the 2007 British Fantasy Awards have been announced. [via UKSF Book News]
• Matt Hughes will be giving away 50 signed copies of his books, plus three of the Night Shade limited editions. Watch his website, Archonate for details.
• More Hughes news: CBC Radio’s interview with Matt Hughes.
• SFX interviews P.J. Haarsma (Softwire). “I only see a few people in publishing embracing the purchasing habits and lifestyles of young adult readers. I hear the industry complaining that people don’t read anymore, especially boys (which tells me they’ve never seen a teenage boy pouring over a video game manual or cheat code magazine). It’s a crutch they use instead of thinking outside of the box to get new readers.”
• Julio Angel Ortiz interviews Keith R.A. DeCandido (Resident Evil: Extinction). “There are significant differences between fanfic and profic–not least being that fanfic is much more free-form and flexible in terms of format and plot and structure.”
• Groupee podcast-interviews Jay Lake.
• Gregory Frost talks about the writing process in his post Plots and Process and Samuel R. Delany. “Like the notion that by observing an experiment you affect the experiment, so too the act of writing down the imagined events changes them forever.”
• John Picacio previews the artwork he did for an upcoming set of Star Trek books.
• Adam Roberts shows off the cover of Swiftly, a new novel that spins off from the stories set in the Gulliver’s Travels universe that were in a previous story collection.
• Lou Anders shows off the cover of his upcoming anthology Sideways in Crime.
• SFX Blog has the contents of SFX issue #162, which features Milo Ventimiglia (Peter from Heroes) on the cover.
• Here are 10 reasons why Paul Levinson is looking forward to the return of Heroes.
• The LA Times profiles John Barrowman (Capt. Jack on Torchwood).
• Lifeboat Foundation lists the Top 10 Transhumanist Technologies.
• Marilyn Manson wants to be cast in the “Spider-man” musical. No, really. [via SF-Fandom]
• Fanboy points us to this Ultraman Toy Collection.

As previously mentioned, yours truly is currently guest-blogging at AMC TV’s SciFi Scanner blog. Here’s another roundup of the posts I did there.

1. Upcoming Sci-Fi DVDs to Get Excited About
2. I So Want an i-SOBOT
3. Monsters and Aliens Moved Up
4. H.G. Wells Takes Manhattan
5. Omega Returns with Jonathan Lethem
6. Lucas Loosens Up
7. What to Watch If a Meteor is Headed for Earth
8. Justice League of America Finally Coming to the Big Screen
9. Sci-Fi’s Law of Jude
10. Siskel and Ebert and Roeper, Oh My!
11. Alien Coffee Table
12. Caves Found on Mars
13. Lightsaber Game Comes to the Nintendo Wii

See also: SciFi Scanner Post Roundup #1.

Here are the results of the latest SF Signal poll.

QUESTION
Is a remake of Tron a good idea?

RESULTS

Comments this week:

“I don’t think Tron needs a remake. The original was great. That being said, if this was to be some sort of follow-up/sequel/whatever, I’d be pretty nervous about modern Hollywood screwing it up. And yet, you never know until it hits the screen.” – bloginhood

“The only thing going for the original were the special fx: the story was lame, the acting lame and really, the fx were lame as well. Might as well remake Buck Rodgers while we’re at it….” – platyjoe

“On the one hand, Tron is a classic piece of science fiction history. On the other hand, when I watched it as an adult, it seemed more like a bizarre piece of German expressionist filmmaking. So I’m not as against a remake as I would have first thought. Maybe it’ll take the science fiction out of the German expressionist and give us a really cool sci-fi movie. It depends on who writes it and how much they care about it. And if it does well enough, maybe we’ll get a sequel (the Tron 2.0 video game was stellar).” – Pete Tz.

“I forget…how was the first one any good?” – joshua corning

“Good or bad idea? I don’t know, but I’d prefer if the producers and directors have new ideas.” – Carles

Be sure to visit our front page and vote in this week’s poll on your favorit David Cronenberg film!

• Entertainment Weekly online has a lot of SF stuff this weekend. First up, a cover story on Battlestar Galactica. Aimed at the non-viewer, there are some interesting nuggets of info inside. Like blaming the ‘poor’ ratings for Galactica on the fact that it is science fiction. Apparently, Grace Park can’t even get her agent to watch the show. Good grief.
• Migel Ferrer has some interesting things to say about the upcoming Bionic Woman show. Such as saying Bionic Woman will be one of the best SF TV shows ever made. Well, maybe. But having to re-tool the show midstream doesn’t bode well for that assessment.
• Entertainment Weekly again, this time giving us the Top 10 Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes. I’m shocked they actually picked the best episode of TNG, I figured it would have been to science fictiony for them.
• I promise, this is the last mention of EW. They have season previews, with spoilers, for Heroes and Battlestar Galactica: Razor.
• TVBigShot is a fantasy TV game site where you can buy and sell TV shows in an attempt to win acquire money than anyone else. There’s also $100,000 on the line if you can prove you are the best.