SciFi: April 2005 Archive Page

Adams had a knack for describing thorny space-time problems and then squeezing them until they sprayed out juicy absurdity. The novels could be silly -- Adams was a comedy writer -- but they also made dark sport of humans' self-importance. We look pretty small, he constantly reminded us, against the backdrop of a nearly infinite galaxy. --Jason Silverman --One Thumb Up for Hitchhiker  (Wired)

A while ago I blogged a review that trashed the movie, so it only seems fair to blog a more positive one. I still think I'll pass on this one.

I discovered an abandoned deposit in my company owned by one of our Outer Rim customers who died along with his entire family as a result of an landspeeder crash. He actually deposited this funds amounting to IC12,000,000,000.00 (Twelve billion Imperial Credits), for safe keeping in my company here in Mos Eisley. Company file records shows that the funds was actually for a project our late costumer wanted to start in the near future (a multi million Dollar Spice plant in Kessel), before his sudden and untimely death. As such since his death none of his relations or next-of-kin has come forward to lay claims for this property as the heir, this is the basically the reason why I have contacted you. My company cannot release the roperty unless someone applies for claim as the next-of-kin to the deceased as indicated in our operating guidelines. --PRIVATE AND URGENT (The Darth Side)

Amusing comment posted to Darth Vader's blog. ("Tomorrow I may strangle General Veers.")

OTBs, or "Outside The Boxers," as they call themselves, are unconventional thinkers who believe "there are no stupid ideas," Lessjo says. "We really just wanted to know what would happen if Civil War soldiers fought the crew from 'Star Trek.' You never see that in the movies or TV reruns." --Tim Chitwood --A battle outside the box (Leger-Enquirer)

What happened? The unspoken hierarchy of obsessive-compulsive subcultures was laid bare for all to see.

First the Confederates said they wouldn't associate with "Trekkies," and the Star Trek fans said they preferred "Trekkers." The Confederates all laughed, and "that right there got things off on the wrong foot," Lessjo says.

(Make sure you read the fine print at the end of the article.)

The real appeal of the game is seeing Star Wars characters rendered in itty-bitty plastic form. By the end of the game, there are more than 30 different little guys you can be in Free Play mode.

The good guys are cute, but the evil folks are just adorable. Mini-Maul! Sen. Palpateeny! Bite-sized battle droids! --Lore Sjöberg --Lego Star Wars: The Game  (WIred)

Good writing... the game would probably appeal to my son. Check out the captions in the photo gallery, too... "Your Jedi powers allow you to pull apart doors as if they were made out of some sort of plastic interlocking brick toy."

The moon base landing dome opens in pie slices like eye muscles, or the jagged mouth of a cyclops. Pods are not designed strictly for function but thematic meaning: who would fly one without side ports? Tunnel vision. The dark port in the white pod body is very eye-ballish. Similar also is the deep socket of Discovery's bridge. It's lit red early on when Bowman inhabits this superskull, later it's dark/blind when HAL takes charge, signalling his dismissal of the astronauts, prefiguring his death. The space station shuttle bay was read as a vaginal slit by Freudian reviewers; the clipper ship entering can also read as a symbolic prestatement of the blinding of the Cyclops, an archer's arrow aimed at the widescreen audience. Similar blind slits are in the Orion moon shuttle and lunar surface flyer. --Mark Martel --Another Odyssey: Design and Meaning in 2001 (Visual Memory)

An interesting Homeric reading of Kubrik's version of Clarke's novel. It's only a stab at a full-fledged essay -- there's plenty listing of interesting parallels, but none of the "so what?" that turns a list of observations into a thesis.

--Star Trek Personality Test

Apparently I'm the middle-aged, toupee-sporting movie-era Kirk, though I'm 36 now, which is about the age of the TV-era Kirk.

Ah, well... I'm still Shatner, and to be Shatner is good! My wife picked up two more Star Trek paperbacks for me at the library booksale... one tells of Spock's first voyage on the Enterprise (under Capt. Pike), and the other tells of the end of the original five-year mission. I'm also reading the book that tells of Kirk's first mission on the Enterprise. I'm not expecting great things from these books, but since the wife and kids are off visiting grandparents in Texas, I've got a lot more time on my hands, even after doing the laundry, weeding the lawn, marking papers, reviewing a book for a publisher, and playing The Longest Journey for about four hours yesterday.

That's your lot. That's the movie we've been waiting 26 years for. And let me tell you, it was not worth the wait, not for this. The whole film is true to neither the letter nor the spirit of Douglas Adams' books and scripts. And it really seems that many of the changes have been introduced for no reason at all. For example, the novel leads us into the story by saying that the tale 'begins very simply. It begins with a house' whereas in the film Stephen Fry's narration tells us that it 'begins very simply. It begins with a man.' Even though, when Fry says this, we are looking at a house! --Hitchhiker's Guide Movie Review, Long Version (Planet Magrathea)

The quotation is from the conclusion to a depressing review of what might have been a good movie. From the review: "This is a terrible, terrible film and it makes me want to weep."

Sad. It was a great series of books, at any rate.

Q. If you could travel in time, where would you go and why?

A. I'd like to see what my 30s look like, not too far - we're talking about eight years down the line. I'd like to see what's going on in my life, that's quite interesting to me. --Q&A: Billie Piper (BBC)

My wife, who introduced me to Doctor Who, found this exchange in an interview with the actress who plays the companion on the new BBC series. Bear in mind, this actress has just completed filming a season of episodes about a guy who can travel in space and time. It's not like this kind of question was completely out of the blue.

Talk about self-centered!