SciFi: January 2003 Archive Page

Your name is Masakati, which means "White Queen" in the language of the Scorpion People. You were named this before you were hatched, when the serpent witches foretold to your mother Essekunit, the Tangeri Queen, that her child would be as great a ruler as had been not seen in this Age: that you would be Queen not only of the Tangeri but of all the Scorpion People, and take back the lands stolen by the Empire.

--The Wheel, Masakati Episode 1: The White QueenInterfable.net)

The beginning of a collaborative fantasy story. At the end of the chapter, readers vote on what happens next. Set in an interesting world that borrows mythology from the Zodicac. I rather enjoyed the multi-chapter story I read a few weeks ago... this is a new story.

"A recently leaked trailer for The Return of the King has Tolkien fans outraged over the apparent addition of a new character - Jar-Jaromir. The scene depicted in the trailer shows Jar-Jaromir shouting, 'Gondora gonna fallsa'; he then trips over a corpse and knocks down a couple of Uruk-hai." Brian Biggs --Fans Outraged at New Character in The Return of the KingBBspot [satire])

The comedy bits added for Gimli's scenes in The Two Towers do seem to have been a bit much, though I have to admit I laughed (or at least chuckled) when I first saw them. But if Lucas had done Tolkien, the satirical article linked above might not be too far-fetched. "Gondora gonna fallsa"? You could have come up with better spoof dialogue than that, Mr. Biggs. Still, the fake quote from a fan trying to rationalize the connection between Middle Earth and Star Wars is hilarious.

"There may well be people who abandon Neuromancer on the grounds that it's riddled with sentence-fragments, but, in a sense, the sentence-fragments are there to scare off readers who aren't ready for that, and to encourage those who want to see the envelope of language pushed even further, the pedal taken even closer to the metal? I do know how to write formal standard English without making a great many mistakes." --William Gibson's WeblogWilliamGibsonBooks.com)

In his novel Neuromancer, Gibson coined the term "cyberspace". Now Mr. Gibson has a weblog. Welcome to the blogosphere!

"Clonaid, linked with a group that believes life on Earth was originally cloned by aliens, said two women had given birth to babies it had cloned. It at first said it would present DNA evidence but has delayed doing so." --A Name for Clone Babies: 'Hoax' Wired)

More news from the department of "duh": the "cloned baby" reports are probably hoaxes. I'm amazed at the amount of press this "scientific" announcment has received, and how little skepticism I've seen in the mainstream media.

"In what will surely be regarded as one of the best science-fiction 'fan film' projects of all time, a pair of 'Star Trek' fanatics have created a new episode in exacting 1960s style using their own actors, sets and props." Julio Ojeda-Zapata --"Star Trek" Reborn in Online EpisodePioneer Press)

Sigh. I am such a Trek Classic geek. This news made me weep. Which is nothing compared to what will likely happen when the lawyers at Paramount Pictures hear about this flagrant breach of copyright. After the above link expires, you can still read the discussion on Slashdot.