Craig's Blog : SciFi

The final beam up

craigg75 — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 19:05:00 GMT

James Doohan died today after many health problems. He played Scotty, the chief of engineering, on Star Trek. I remember watching the movie Trekkies when he was interviewed. He said he was astonished at how many people he inspired to choose engineering as a career. St. Patrick is considered the patron saint of engineering. I never understood the connection other than St. Patricks day was an excuse to get drunk if you were an engineer. I say we change the patron saint to James Doohan, someone who is well deserved of that honor.

Charlie Jade

craigg75 — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 16:48:00 GMT

At the recommendation of Chris I decided to go ahead and add another tv series to my growing list. This one is called Charlie Jade and runs on the Canadian version of the SciFi channel. Very good so far, I love the film noir quality, awesome. Gritty, rainy, shadows, dark rooms, very Blade Runner like. Another thumbs up goes out to Chris for recommending that I use my lunch time to watch the show. So I decided to copy a show on to my thumb drive and watch it at work while I have lunch. Great idea!

Dr. Who

craigg75 — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 04:42:00 GMT

So they are making new Dr. Who episodes in the UK again. Yay! This is the ninth doctor to do the role. I did a little reading and this guy seems to be one of the more serious actors in the UK right now. Funny he should take this role. His assistant is a little nubile blondie who was a pop star in the UK. So I got wind that the first episode got leaked to the bt world. I'm sure it was a publicity stunt by the BBC to garner some interest in the show, see if anyone cares, etc. I grabbed it and watched it tonite. My take on it is, yes I like the new doctor and his teenybopper sidekick, good choice there. The storyline in this particular episode was crappy as ever, plastic monster invades Earth and animates plastic objects. Yes one guy gets killed by a plastic trashcan eating him <long heavy sigh>. Ok now that is out of the way, everything else was up to par. The TARDIS looks really funky inside now. Instead of being the clean white interior it's now like some biological entity. Could prove interesting in later episodes. It's a shame we won't be able to catch any of the episodes here in the US unless SciFi channel carries it. Thank god for bt...

Neandertal souls?

craigg75 — Wed, 13 Oct 2004 16:10:00 GMT

So I've been reading this book Hominids by Robert Sawyer. As usual he's put together a good story. About a parallel universe in which the Neandertals became the dominant Homo species instead of us. So one them gets transported over to our universe with a wave of the scifi author's magic wand and so ensues the story. The part I just read about was the Neandertal's discovering religion since his universe had no concept of religion. So my question is this -- If we all agree that all life evolved from self-organizing molecules, who was the first human to have a soul? Did the Neandertals (in our universe) have souls? If so why did god allow them to go extinct? So I guess we need to agree on what a soul is. My guess it is something only human beings have apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. So maybe it has something to do with self-awareness, foresight, enlarged cerebral cortex? Or maybe it has a lot to do with our godspot, our ability to perceive a god? I don't see too many dolphins going off to church or praying to the almighty oil tanker. So are souls another made up fairy tale that most religions like to espouse? So what if you were the first caveman to have a soul. You end up in heaven with god and ... well nobody else is there ... yet. Dang all of these clouds and angels, what am I going to do to pass the time? I'd rather be in hell, at least there I'd have something to do..haha. Which reminds me of a joke. Bill Gates dies, goes to heaven and god gives him a choice Heaven or Hell. Even better he says heck you can have a 30 day trial version of each. So Bill checks out Heaven first, seems to be nice and comfortable and well ..a bit boring. So he checks out Hell. Wall to wall babes, a sunny beach, women's sand volleyball, tropical drinks. Great he says, I choose Hell. So god says okay, and sends him to Hell, where he ends up being tortured endlessly by devils and the whole works. So god checks in on the fallen angel and Bill screams “hey this isn't what you showed me!”. God replies “oh hi Bill, sorry but that was the beta version”. Waw waw waaaaaaaw!!!

4400

craigg75 — Mon, 26 Jul 2004 21:29:00 GMT

I'm not sure if anybody out there in the cable TV ready world have had a chance to catch a new show on USA called The 4400. It's an ok scifi show, I've enjoyed the first 3 episodes so far. A reviewer on imdb.com hated it. Said it was poorly acted with terrible scripts. Well this is a made for cable tv show, which means low budget and scraping the bottom of the barallel for actors and script writers, so I try not to expect much from cable. However I thought the SciFi channel did a wonderful job with their Dune miniseries. Much better than David Lynch and his oversized movie budget could come up with. Anyway the 4400 is about 4400 people who were randomly “taken” by an unknown force starting in 1946 and continued up until today. Then overnight they all return to earth, with no memory of their “abduction” and not second older than when they were taken. However each of them are slowly discovering they have a unique special talent that was added to them. Like one guy could move super fast, another could cause local micro eathquakes, yet another could remove life or restore it by simple touch. Sort of X-men-ish but still it's enough to make a series out of -- each week we discover another of the 4400's powers and how it plays out. Of course the overriding question is “where were they this whole time and what happened to them?”. The Gilligan's Island conudrum, will they ever get off the island. However it does have that weird X-Files feel to it at times. No one has been able to step in and take over that weirdo tv show slot since XFiles exited TV a few years ago.

SciFi awards

craigg75 — Tue, 06 Apr 2004 16:50:00 GMT

As reported in SciFi Weekly:

`Ruff Wins Tiptree Award`

att Ruff has won the 2003 James Tiptree Jr. Award for his novel Set This House in Order: A Romance of Souls, it was announced yesterday by the James Tiptree Jr. Literary Award Council. Ruff will be presented with his award, $1,000 and other prizes at WisCon 28, to be held Memorial Day weekend in Madison, Wis.

The novel focuses on Andy Gage, a 28-year-old with multiple-personality disorder. His many personalities, or souls, as he calls them, reside in the house inside his head. The stability of Gage's house is threatened when he meets Penny Driver, a young woman who's not aware that she has multiple personalities.

The James Tiptree Jr. Award was created in 1991 to honor Alice Sheldon, who wrote under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr. and helped break down gender barriers in the literary field. The Tiptree Award is presented annually to a work that explores and expands gender roles in SF and fantasy.

So all it takes is $1000 to make up a book award? I say we pool our money and come up with one on our own. Any suggestions?

Best use of gratuitous sex (Robert Heinlein would of course get the lifetime acheivement award)
Most likely to be made into a movie (Michael Crichton would be disqualified since he does this intentionally)
Best story using new scientific ideas
Best use of drugs to produce a story (Philip Dick, lifetime achievement award there too)

Battlestar Galactica ... please R.I.P.

craigg75 — Fri, 14 Nov 2003 14:06:00 GMT

So the SciFi channel is going to bring back Battlestar Galactica to TV. I never cared for the first incarnation that much. It was definitely one of the many children that the Star Wars movies gave birth to. The writing in the show was what I found silly, even at 15 years old. My beef about bringing back a campy scifi show is that why can't they (who are owned by CBS) bring on some fresh, original stories to TV? There's plenty of scifi classics out there in books just waiting to be brought to life on tv. I guess real scifi just doesn't sell unless you include vampires, wizards and magic potions in with it. Fantasy sells these days. I'm not naive either, I know tv shows are about selling commercials and demographics and Neilson ratings. If you're going to plunk down a good chunk of change you want some guarantee that there will some ROI. Baby boomer shows are the best bet it seems these days to make that happen. So if we want to see any “new“ movies we get to watch reruns like Cat In The Hat with Mike Myers or The Six Million Dollar Man with Jim Carey. Doesn't anyone in Hollyweird have any balls anymore to try something new and original? I guess this is why I never see movies anymore and have lost faith in Hollyweird. See you at the foreign film festival!

Matrix Revolutions

craigg75 — Thu, 13 Nov 2003 07:52:00 GMT

I heard the latest Matrix movie sucked. I downloaded a cam version of it last night. Couldn't hear squat so I X'd it. I'll wait for the DVD to come out.