SF Signal

REVIEW SUMMARY: Engaging space opera

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A bunch of refugees seek a way to defeat the Inhibitors, an ancient alien race of self-replicating killing machines.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Engrossing story; interesting characters; cool sense of wonder.

CONS: Quickly-resolved and open ending leaves the reader without closure.

BOTTOM LINE: This is still damn fine SF.

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Filed under: Book Review

I know, hard to believe, but check out the Sky Captin First Look video. Sweet.

I am so there on 9/17. I think I’ll buy my ticket now.

Filed under: Movies

Do spammers have no shame? Sending spam to millions around the world is one thing. But I draw the line at spamming Middle Earth.

[Free \./iagra to Website at the End of the Universe for the link]

Filed under: Computers

Has anyone heard of this movie: National Treasure? Apparently Nic Cage plays a treasure hunter trying to track a war chest the founding fathers hid somewhere and the map is on the back of the Declaration of Independence on display in the National Archives (I think). It looks like a cross between Raiders of the Lost Ark and 1776, although if Cage starts singing, I’m leaving. Although it would give us an opportunity to say: “For God’s sake John, sit down!”.

Filed under: Movies

From Avidly Dreaming comes word about a Sci Fi Channel Farscape marathon (all 88 episodes!) leading up to the new Farscape movie on October 17. 2004.

Filed under: TV

Here’s an article showing some of the behind-the-scenes workings of the StarGate franchise.

Filed under: TV

…on the fate of life in the Universe. Kevin in particular will like the Tipler Scenario since, as is well known, he “has a problem with whole Universe-expanding thing.”

Filed under: Space

So after seeing the mascot for Cheese Weasel, and finding out that there is a song for Cheese Weasel day . I now find out that the BSA will be using a ferret (a member of the weasel family) for thier new antipiracy campaign. Very convienent I think…

Filed under: Meta

After a discussion with JP on how woefully under-read I am in the arena of Sci-Fi (I read alot of them silly Fantasy novels), I feel that I would like get a list of about 10 books every sci-fi reader must read. Think of it as you are creating a college course on SciFi and you want to cover at least some of the basic foundation books for Sci Fi. I am pretty sure the list could be significantly larger as the field is quite extensive, but lets see if we could come up with a sci-fi primer of 10 top notch books that every fan should have read.

Also, I did take a science fiction class in high school that was part of our English and literature path, but it focused alot on Ray Bradbury but very little beyond that story wise…

Discuss…

Filed under: Books

SciFi Wire announces that the comic, Megacity has had its feature film rights optioned to Ronald Shusett (Alien) and Daniel Alter (comic book kinda guy). I posted this because Megacity looks cool. Check out the web site. The comic comes out in September and Alter discovered it during this past Comic-Con in San Diego.

Filed under: Books

For John, since we know he has a thing for pigs and space…

Amazon.com: Toys & Games: Muppets Series 4 6

Filed under: TV

James Lileks has posted several pages of Tom Swift bookcover scans in his Jetsam Cove. These look like the latter day Tom Swift books, as opposed to the real early ones. But still, the covers, and titles, are the main attraction here. Rather nice stuff. Also, don’t forget, that many Tom Swift books are available free at Project Gutenberg!

Filed under: Books

REVIEW SUMMARY: Part suspsense, part romance, and part sci-fi, this totally non-mainstream movie starring George Clooney surprisingly delivers some really interesting sci-fi. Written and directed by Steven Soderberg based on the novel by Stanislaw Lem (the second film to be based on that novel.)

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: Chris is a psychologist who is coaxed by an old friend out to a remote space station orbiting the planet Solaris. Something odd is going on there – the corporate owners of the station have lost contact other than the request for Chris. He goes out and finds his friend missing, 2 crew members dead, one hiding in her room, and another clearly acting strangely. Chris finally finds out what has driven them to this, and has to deal with it – finding that he has to deal with his own troubled past as well.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: This one honestly surprised the heck out of me. This is a tremendous risk taken by Clooney and Soderberg because the film isn’t traditional Hollywood in any way. Big kudos for that – and for pulling it off. The sci-fi elements are very interesting but I don’t want to give any of it away.

CONS: Parts of it are too slow, despite the fact that the film is only 99 minutes long. I almost felt like there was meant to be a connection between the tone of 2001: A Space Odyssey and this movie – interesting if true.

BOTTOM LINE: Worth a watch if you can catch this one on cable like I did.

Filed under: Movies

At home, not at work, and not with your parents or children nearby, or even your spouse if he or she is easily offended by certain langauge, you should really take a moment to listen to some tracks from mc chris.

My favorite is Fett’s Vette, but the others are good too. Oh, you need to go to Listen, then choose the album ‘Life’s a Bitch and I’m her Pimp.’ You can pick the individual tracks from there. Now if only mc chris and mc hawkings would duo up and we’d have some real mad rhymes baby!

Interestingly, lots of people have remixed his songs – there have to be over a 100 of those on the site as well – amazing really, that anybody would have that much time. Oh well – I’m amazed people have time to post on blogs too, so what do I know.

mc chris is involved with Sea Lab 2021, a show I find to be extremely funny on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. I think about it the same way I think about those episodes of Davey and Goliath I used to watch as a kid.

Filed under: Music

So I was driving this morning and saw a bumper sticker that said “I poke badgers with spoons”. I didn’t know the meaning of the phrase, but I immediately thought it was dirty, and then dismissed that when I saw taht the car had a man, woman and child in it (still, I guess that’s not beyond the realm of possibility these days.)

Anyway, I’m still not certain what it means, but I see you can get hats, t-shirts, stickers, etc. with this nifty catchphrase, some including graphics of a badger getting, well, poked by a spoon.

Google this up and let me know!

Filed under: Humor

I’m not sure why I didn’t cotton to these links at Gravity Lens the other day, but it took John at TexasBestGrok to get me to post them. For Pete of course.

Women in Spacesuits

Babes in Spaaaaaace

Barbabrella Tribute page

Ladies of Star Trek

Celebrities as Orion Slave Girls

I’m pretty sure these are work safe, although the Barbarella one scares me. I’ll let Pete investigate first then report back to us. That’s your homework Pete. Get to it!

Filed under: Meta

Would you believe that the movie Night of the Living Dead 4: Necropolis is filming at Chernobyl?

Filed under: Movies

AUTHOR: id Software

REVIEW SUMMARY: Best single-player game from id Software, lots of fun, tedious at times

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: This incarnation of id’s first person shooter actually has a plot you care about! You play a marine working for a global company exploiting Mars when all hell breaks loose – literally. You have to find out what is happening and put a stop to it. The game makes use of dark hallways, scripted events including awesome audio cues, and in-game cut scenes to move the story along.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Solid graphics, excellent use of in-game cut scenes, nice special effects, excellent audio (both music and special effects), some unique scripted events, and in-game computer terminal use are the new features this game brings to computer gaming. The best feature is probably the use of your PDA for video, email, and audio logs – it really makes the world seem alive with characters when, in reality, you don’t really get to interact with anybody. Oh, and did I mention the game was scary? Plenty of bang for the buck, I finished the game after approximately 30 hours of gameplay.

CONS: No interaction with characters, the levels in the first 75% of the game are WAY too repetitive with the formula of: lights go off, enemy jumps you from behind, killing enemy means another spawns behind you being repeated too often. Being scared is fun, being scared continuously is fatiguing. The levels are so dark you don’t really get to see how good the graphics engine is. Doom 3 is in no way an huge advancement of the genre – most of it is cribbed from Half-Life, and Far Cry also already had many of the elements presented here. I personally don’t have a big issues with this, but id has a track record of revolutionizing shooters, and at least in terms of what single-player brings to the table Doom 3 doesn’t do that.

BOTTOM LINE: Fun game, very scary, and interesting sci-fi plot. It certainly isn’t a dissapointment – unless you expect id to hit one out of the park every time (heck even Mr. Steroid doesn’t do that!)

Filed under: Games

TrekPulse has a trailer for the first season of ST:TOS on DVD. The music is really cheesy and makes it sound like a bad 70′s cop show (“Hooker’s a good cop!” Sorry, 80′s cop show flashback). Otherwise, these DVDs make my wish list.

Update: In another sign that the apocalypse is nigh, there is a web site for…..TJ Hooker! Aaaaaahhhhhhhh! But he’s a good cop. So I hear.

Filed under: TV

If you missed it while it was on TV, now is your chance to own The Tick on DVD! Yes, the live action one. I saw this at Walmart the other day and only the price, $25, kept me from buying it. But still, its on my Amazon wish list.

Oh, and a short trip in the way back machine brings another forgotten TV series to DVD, Sledgehammer!. I vaugely remember seeing this one on TV way back when. It would probably make more sense to me now. Sadly, Police Squad is NOT on DVD. Oh, the injustice!

Filed under: TV