SciFi: January 2008 Archive Page

When steampunk was speculative fiction, not charmingly retro... Edgar Allan Poe pulbished this mock news story in the New York Sun.

The Atlantic has been actually crossed in a Balloon; and this too without difficulty -- without any great apparent danger -- with thorough control of the machine -- and in the inconceivably brief period of seventy-five hours from shore to shore! By the energy of an agent at Charleston, S.C., we are enabled to be the first to furnish the public with a detailed account of this most extraordinary voyage...

Robots gloating, and occasionally philosophizing, over their decision to destroy the humans. Love the binary solo. The guy on the left does an excellent imitation of a standard PC speech synthesizer voice. Overall, this is a great send-up of the "arrogant humans create robots who turn on them" meme (which was first widely spread by the Czech play Rossum's Universal Robots, from which languages around the world acquired the word "robot.")

I don't remember where I was when I saw a link to Cursor*10.I thought "Cooperate by oneself" was a good example of "All your base are belong to us" English, but it actually makes sense.

It's like time travel. Very cool.