SF Signal

Man, I’ve wanted TiVo capability on my XM stereo since the day I bought it! Sadly it looks like there’ll be no legal avenues available for this in the near future.

Filed under: Science and Technology

In the Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle-inspired RPG, Empire of Man, players get to immerse themselves in The Mote in God’s Eye and the 1,000 year history of the CoDominium Universe.

Filed under: Games

The Guardian has posted a special science fiction issue (thanks to Locus Online for the pointer.) Notables are:

• NOVEL EXTRACT: The Algebraist by Iain M Banks, his first science fiction novel in four years
• ARTICLE: The Science of Fiction by Philip Pullman , author of the fantastic fantasy, His Dark Materials. In it, Pullman posits that the lure of SF is not the S but the F.
• Scientists name their favorite authors (repeat link, but hey, be complete, yah?)
• The Dream Tem of Scientists collects the greatest minds from the history of SF.

Filed under: Books • Meta • Science and Technology • Web Sites

Edward Castronova is a professor at Indiana University and a contributor to the Terra Nove blog. He has created a syllabus for an upcoming upperclass undergraduate course called Virtual Worlds 101. Its more of a discussion course than a course on how to build one. But the cool thing is part of your grade is actually participating in a virtual world then writing about it. Now that is something I could have gone for, a class that rewards playing games. Instead, I had to ignore homework to play Earl Weaver Baseball and Chuck Yeager’s Flight Simulator. I tell ya, kids today….

Filed under: Meta

For those of you who like building paper models and wished there were some of Transformers, I give you Paperformers! They even transform, after a fashion. Its too bad we can’t everybody interested in printing these up. Then we could sell them the ink!

Filed under: Web Sites

Get ready for the Girls of Video Gaming, an upcoming spread in Playboy. (Yes, “spread” is on my word list.)

Filed under: Games

Man, I didn’t know that you can sue Star Trek for sucking? Can you imagine how much better things would be if all the Trekkies were out suing for better Trek content? Maybe Wil Wheaton will still be flying a starship… or maybe Jolene Blalock would be sporting longer tresses and shorter dresses?

Filed under: TV

Here’s a single-panel comic (ala The Far Side) geared towards writers. It’s The Writer at Work by Richard Krzemien.

[Link via Locus Online]

Filed under: Web Sites

[Link courtesy of Locus Magazine] As regular readers know, I was not too thrilled over Blade Runner although I liked Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep quite a bit. So, to me, this is akin to voting Porky’s as the best flick. Scientists. [shakes head and sighs]

Filed under: Movies

What do you get when you combine Magic: The Gathering and Legos? You get Xevoz . Each kit comes with one or two action figures which you build yourself. Each part has a corresponding piece that fits on the battle wheel (a really elongated die) which is rolled to determine the outcome of attacks. Now, the M:tG think comes in in that you can mix and pieces from other sets to build a customized figure. I dont think there is rarity involved so that’s something anyway. They look kinda neat, maybe I’ll try and get the kids interested. Of course it would come on Cartoon Network when the kids are in the other room playing GameCube…

Filed under: Games

Imagine a world where the Roman Empire never fell – I will wait…

Okay, if you have an idea what it looked like – forget it because Imperator is coming from the same folks that brought us DAOC. The website came up yesterday and now you can enjoy it as well.

* Saladboy trademarked by JP

Filed under: Games

A disc format with a CD on one side and DVD on the other is planned for later this year. Imagine…the latest Vanilla Ice CD and all of his video hits in one convenient package!

Filed under: Science and Technology

In a sure sign the Apocalypse is nigh, and I think Pete will appreciate this, the search term “Kate Beckinsale” is now the number one search phrase used to find our site. It barely edges out “Revenge of the Sith” and Dan’s big ASCII head (actually, “jpg to ascii”) comes in a distant third.

Scary this is. Maybe Pete can supply us with more pics for the Beckinsale fanbois…

Filed under: Meta

Eidos has now acquired the distribution rights for Lego Star Wars title. Its shceduled for release in 2005 – Linkage for your perusal: The Adrenaline Vault | News |

Not that I seek out this Star Wars data…

Filed under: Star Wars

As if we ever needed more data to reveal the sham of a review engine that is Harriet Klausner, here’s her review of The Last Guardian of Everness. Compare this with the book’s ingram and you will see a virtual sentence-by-sentence rewording. No insight into what worked, what didn’t. I found this shortly after posting my own review, while vainly seeking meaningless validation that my impressions were concurrent with the general populace.

Filed under: Books

But Kevin feels fine. Or he will when he visits EmptyWorld, a web site dedicate to “Apocalyptic and End of the World Fiction, Film and TV”. Its a rather neat site, with descriptions and synopses of various end of the world stories. One small note, I only saw one zombie movie, 28 Days Later, so not enough zombie movies.

With thanks to Gravity Lens for the link!

Filed under: Web Sites

REVIEW SUMMARY: Engrossing fantasy fueled with high imagination and memorable action sequences.

MY RATING:

BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A battle of good and evil at castle Everness, the doorway between the real world and the magical dream world.

MY REVIEW:

PROS: Intriguing ideas; quick pacing; cool action scenes.

CONS: Not being a huge fan of fantasy, the “magical” parts were less interesting.

BOTTOM LINE: Although I’m not a fantasy fan, I still found the book to enjoyable. People who like high fantasy would do well to seek out this book.

Read the rest of this entry

Filed under: Book Review

Locus magazine online has some Neal Stephenson interview excerpts from the latest issue. I went ahead last week and took the Locus Magazine subscription plunge. I’ll let you know how it turns out. I also found a deal where they had a special offer to get the Alastair Reynolds back issue! Neat! (Although, the URL was not secure, so I wound up calling them directly where they happily gave me the offer over the phone.)

Filed under: Web Sites

Apparently George likes to change his tune – its 9 movies… no wait 6… Now according to this link: IOL: Lucas to make more Star Wars? It might actually be 9. My guess is he will change his story about a dozen more times between now and actually making the movies…

Filed under: Star Wars

Link via BoingBoing.

Not that I’m in favor of a new Cthulhu category or anything. Which I’m not. No…really. Beacuse then we’d have to have one for Wookies and Klingons and Zombies, etc. Don’t get me started on Gungans and Ewoks. It’s a maintenance nighmare. Although, I might go for a Klausner category where the world can air grievances over what is obviously a greedy ploy by unscrupulous publishers and booksellers to boost sales of otherise unnoticeable literary debris.

Not that I’m overracting or anything. Because people should take a stand against what is not right. Even if through the incorehent, albeit merlot-free, ramblings of a group blog author.

Not that blogging doesn’t provide a useful and powerful forum for expressing one’s views or anyhting. It does. It’s just that some people just use that power to do nothing else but post links to other stuff around the web. Like BoingBoing.

Not that SF Signal doesn’t do the same. Post in point.

Read the rest of this entry

Filed under: Cthulhu