Tag: scifi

100 best star trek episodes

5) “Darmok,” The Next Generation, Season 5
A great episode to lure in people who wouldn’t ordinarily watch Star Trek. Fun and exciting but also deeply philosophical and smart. It’s a good story because it is loosely based on Gilgamesh which is, of course, the first story! So it’s vetted. Chaka, when the walls fell!

4) “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” The Next Generation, Season 3
TNG’s spiritual response to “Mirror, Mirror,” an alternate timeline in which our heroes are at constant war. Lt. Yar is back and the Enterprise-C has a woman captain. Plus Guinan kinda saves the day. The moment when the bridge darkens is the most badass lighting cue in television.

3) “Mirror, Mirror,” The Original Series, Season 2
I still remember seeing this at the age of 10. The ion storm near the Halkanian planet caused the ship to flip-flap back and forth for a moment and then — whammo — we’re somewhere else and Spock had a goatee. And instantly, somehow, I knew how the whole episode would play out. A bizarro world where the good guys are bad and ohmygod did I mention that Spock had a goatee. It’s so clever and so much fun and I went around saying “your agonizer, please” for years. I love Star Trek so much.

2) “The Inner Light,” The Next Generation, Season 5
Great men are adaptable, so when Picard just can’t get back to his ship he creates another life for himself. But is it reality? This episode is a 100x better and more insightful than The Matrix and the tones of a Ressikan Flute always make me cry. We love seeing our characters in places outside of where we expect them to be, and this is the humdinger of them all.

1) “The City on the Edge of Forever,” The Original Series, Season 1
Yeah, I know, everyone always picks this one, but I watched again to make sure and, yes, it really is the best. It just hums. Joan Collins’ Edith Keeler is a fascinating figure — someone so kind who, if left alone to promote pacifism at a key point in history, could potentially ruin the world. The ending just destroys me. Our 3 main characters, our eternal archetypes, are there. Kirk is clutching Bones after blocking him in his tracks. He’s holding on for dear life with his eyes shut. “I could have saved her!” Bones cries, as Edith now lies dead in the middle of the road. “He knows, doctor. He knows,” Spock replies, and even though the Vulcan is cold and logical, he’s hurting, too. Once they pop back through the Guardian and return to the planet, Shatner delivers the best line reading of his career. A simple “let’s get the hell out of here.” It’s a throwaway line, but the spin he puts on it is absolutely heartbreaking. This is science fiction at its absolute finest, using a way out and fantastical concept to address universal themes like loss and fate. It is, unquestionably, the greatest Star Trek episode of all time.

Iain Banks

The Culture represents the place we might hope to get to after we’ve dealt with all our stupidities: find and isolate/destroy the genes that code for xenophobia, should they exist. Plus we’d have to develop AIs and let them be themselves; another big task.

2018-02-07:

Banks’s conception of the Culture is driven by 3 central ideas. First, there is the thought that, in the future, basic problems of social organization will be given essentially technocratic solutions, and so the competition between cultures will be based upon their viral qualities, not their functional attributes. Second, there is postulation of Contact as essentially the reproduction mechanism of the Culture. And finally, there is the suggestion that the operations of Contact serve not just as an idle distraction, but in fact provides a solution to an existential crisis that is at the core of the Culture. This is what gives the Culture its ultraviral quality: it’s only reason for existence is to reproduce itself.

Swapping Roles

My daughter’s eyes went wide. She was sold on the idea. This could happen. But then she turned and looked at me, “But what are you going to be?” She thought for a second and said “Well, if I’m a Han Solo, you should probably be Princess Leia, I guess…” She looked at me with an implied question in her eyes. And, c’mon, if I immediately told her “YES, a girl can be Han Solo,” it would’ve been pretty hypocritical of me to say “Nope, a boy can’t be Princess Leia.” So, as quickly as I could, I said, “That would be FANTASTIC. I totally should be Leia.” And that’s exactly what I did. Because that’s what dads do.

Red Mars

the odds of this not sucking are very high. maybe we could get an establishing shot of

Vince Gerardis is moving from Westeros to Mars. The “Game of Thrones” co-executive producer is teaming with Spike TV to develop the scifi series “Red Mars,” an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy novels.

Shadow of the Swan

The Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf was born destined to lead the Concord, the 2 System’s ultimate empire, but to prevent it from imploding into a Third Dark Age, he surrendered his birthright of power to become Alex Ransom, leader of the outlawed Society of the Phoenix, and in the process, he surrendered the one woman he has ever loved, the Lady Adrien Eliseer. But the Lady Adrien proves her love for Alexand with unexpected and breathtaking courage in Shadow of the Swan.

Space junk

remember the premise of gravity?

Japan’s space agency will launch a space trawler that will drag a giant aluminium and steel net while orbiting Earth, hoping to bag itself some space junk.

there are 100m pieces of space junk.
2014-04-10:

Asteroids and comets that cross Earth’s orbit pose a credible risk of impact, with potentially severe disturbances to Earth and society. Numerous risk mitigation strategies have been described, most involving dedicated missions to a threatening object. We propose an orbital planetary defense system capable of heating the surface of potentially hazardous objects to the vaporization point as a feasible approach to impact risk mitigation.

including immediate applications like getting rid of space debris as you scale it up.

2014-05-03:

Abandoned artificial satellites. Tanks jettisoned from shuttles. Refuse generated during space station construction. This junk, space debris, is traveling around the Earth at speeds approaching 8 km/s. This is a story of 2075, a time in which this space garbage has become a serious problem. This is Planetes, a near-future hard scifi story that focuses on a small group of debris collectors who are part of a larger company. Both the original manga and the anime adaptation set small personal stories and dramas in the realistic context of near-future space exploration, complete with radiation sickness, impacts of growing up on the moon, and of course, the dangers of space debris.

2015-11-03: this is why we need giant lasers to vaporize that shit.

2019-04-24:

There are 130m tiny bits of debris floating in orbit that, due to their high velocity, can cause catastrophic damage to space vehicles and satellites. Researchers are developing a compact orbiting device to semi-autonomously seek out the debris and catch it in a net.

Movies Within Games

Creating a tool for designing well-sculpted, appealing protagonists who fit into the same consistent art style is surprisingly complex. However, the number of people out there who want to play an AAA computer game is massive – easily enough to justify the investment in a tool capable of churning out almost infinite numbers of beautifully sculpted, world-consistent protagonists. And so, suddenly, for an independent storyteller, the projected costs of any independent animated project plummet if they’re willing to use a “Machinima” approach.

It would be possible to tell almost any low to mid-fantasy story using Skyrim or World of Warcraft, with some minor modifications. The genre of science fiction, at least in its mainstream film-friendly incarnation, is similarly well-covered by EVE Online, Half-Life 2, Dead Space and 10s of other games. (It would take some thinking, but I could probably make a fair stab at adapting any of Charlie’s SF works using one, another, or a combination of game engines.) And of course, modern-day stories are thoroughly covered by everything from The Sims to Call of Duty.