Tag: scifi

Blinking Tubes

You’ve probably seen it: a dual-tubed generator console that’s appeared in movies and TV shows like Star Trek (all of them, pretty much), Knight Rider, V, Austin Powers, The Last Starfighter, and even Airplane II. This prop was originally built in the 70s and in the decades since has been placed in scenes requiring an impressive piece of high-tech equipment. The video above is a compilation of scenes in which the console has appeared

Noah Smith scifi recs

The Vorkosigan saga, by Lois McMaster Bujold

This might be the greatest scifi book series of all time. It’s a series of intrigues, space adventures, mysteries, and comedies, centered around a liberal family struggling to reform a conservative empire. Astute observers will recognize that Tyrion Lannister was probably slightly inspired by Miles Vorkosigan. I’m truly amazed that no one has talked about making this into a Netflix series yet. I have several friends who read the entire series multiple times in a row after I recommended it. My advice is to start with Barrayar, then move on to The Warrior’s Apprentice.

Schismatrix Plus, by Bruce Sterling

This book gets lumped in with cyberpunk, but it’s really not cyberpunk. Instead, it’s a wild, episodic journey around a future Solar System in the middle of a technological Singularity. The protagonist, whom I identify with pretty deeply, is just a guy who goes around finding 1 thing after another to get involved with — always looking to sidestep the onrushing future and find the next cool trip. The sheer breadth of far-out cool scifi ideas and cultures he encounters on his rambling journey makes this feel like multiple books in one. This setting also somehow reminds me of Austin, Texas back in the 80s and 90s — the sort of Wild West feeling combined with techno-optimism and plenty of weirdos. Kind of a Slacker in space. Which makes sense, because Bruce Sterling is from Texas.

Internet-free Star Trek

But, as I watched the PADDs circulate around the show, I slowly realize that they’re not actually used like iPads at all. In fact, they’re more like fancy pieces of paper. Individual PADDs correspond to specific documents like the Earth guidebook shown above. To give someone a document, people carry PADDs around and then leave them with the new owner of the document. From a 2013 point of view, these uses seem completely inside out. Each PADD is bound to an individual document rather than a person or location. This is a universe where its easier to copy physical objects (in a replicator) than digital ones.

2020 Hugo Awards

Best Novel
A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Best Novella
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Best Novelette
Emergency Skin by N.K. Jemisin ( Forward Collection (Amazon))

Best Short Story
“As the Last I May Know”,by S.L. Huang

Best Series
The Expanse by James S. A. Corey

Ad Astra Reviewed

Those practicalities get especially glorious treatment in “Ad Astra.” Gray conjures the future in grandly imaginative touches that link it giddily to the present day while signaling its alienating strangeness. As travel to the moon and to Mars have become common practices, they’ve become infected with the oppressive trivializations of train stations and airports—a Subway franchise, a Hudson News kiosk, and a host of bureaucratic annoyances and intrusions. (Natasha Lyonne does a brief and brilliant turn as one of those bureaucrats.) Spaceships have all the charm of airplanes, complete with overpriced and doled-out extras.

Dawn of the Iron Dragon

the crew of the Andrea Luhman stranded on Earth in the middle ages faced a seemingly impossible challenge. They, and their Viking allies, could save humanity from extinction in a war in the distant future only by building a space program capable of launching a craft into Earth orbit starting with an infrastructure based upon wooden ships and edged weapons. Further, given what these accidental time travelers, the first in history, had learned about the nature of travel to the past in their adventures to date, all of this must be done in the deepest secrecy and without altering the history to be written in the future. Recorded history, they discovered, cannot be changed, and hence any attempt to do something which would leave evidence of a medieval space program or intervention of advanced technology in the affairs of the time, would be doomed to failure. These constraints placed almost impossible demands upon what was already a formidable challenge.

Love, Death & Robots

‘Beyond the Aquila Rift’ kind of blew me away. That’s probably my favorite thing I’ve seen—feature or short film, period—in a while. Alastair Reynolds was the MVP of this whole thing, because ‘Zima Blue’ was great too, in a totally different way. Just really cerebral, with interesting plot twists.”