Posts Tagged: Science Fiction

Art

“Daddy, I’m gonna be a [        ] when I grow up!” A Gallery of Inspiring SFF Women.

By Aidan Moher October 11th, 2012
Qavah the Brave by Wes Talbott

Qavah the Brave (Art by Wes Talbott)

We’re all aware of the prototypical ‘tough’ heroine that floats perpetuates itself in the the Fantasy/Science Fiction/Superhero art world: clothes a-tatter, cleavage heaving, an uncomprehendingly contradictory air of both immense sexuality, helplessness and badassness. But, what about all those little girls (and boy) who are growing up and looking for a strong, female rolemodel. Whether a beautiful portrait, or an inspiring character, I’ve gathered together a collection of strong women who kids (and adults) can hopefully find some inspiration in.

When I grow up, I’m gonna be

I don’t have children, but when I do, I won’t mind one bit if they look up to characters like these and, just maybe, tell me, “Daddy, when I grow up, I wanna be a Knight, a Super Woman, A Wizard!” (Or even a Time Lord Lady.) For more art like this, check out my post on ‘Women Fighters In Reasonable Armor’

Who are some of your favourite inspirational women in Science Fiction, Fantasy or Comic Books?

News

The Jurassic Park 4 that almost happened.

By Aidan Moher October 9th, 2012

Jurassic Park 4
This is bizzare, and sorta fascinating. Ain’t It Cool News has a ‘review’ of the Jurrasic Park 4 script that has been floating around Hollywood for a few years. It’s the rumoured ‘Raptors with Guns’ script, and, well… just read it for yourself:

I’m pleased to report that this second Sayles draft of JURASSIC PARK 4 sees him working in full exploitation mode. I’ve talked to a number of people about this draft, and it seems to radically divide them in terms of reaction. Some people adore the premise and get excited as soon as they hear it. Some people (including the person who gave it to me) are convinced it’s the worst thing they’ve ever read and a signpost on the road to Hollywood Hell. Personally, I think it’s well-written and certainly inventive, but I also think it just might be the single most bugfuck crazy franchise sequel I’ve ever read, and I’m not sure we’re ever going to see this thing onscreen. It just doesn’t seem possible that Universal would make something this vigorously whacked out.

[…]

The script starts at a Little League game somewhere in America, an idyllic scene that quickly goes bad when pterosaurs attack the kids and their parents. It’s a cool scene, and I couldn’t help but immediately anticipate what might lay ahead. Dinosaurs in America. All-out warfare on home soil. This should be fun. In a series of television clips, we learn that this is the first attack on North American ground following months of this sort of thing in Central America and Mexico […] Hammond’s got a big idea: breed some new dinosaurs that can’t reproduce and introduce them into the wild population. A Judas strain that will kill off the dinosaurs within one generation. Easy enough, except the UN has outlawed any breeding of new dinosaurs by anyone and they’ve prohibited the sale, mining, or possession of amber worldwide. Hammond’s got scientists ready and waiting to go, but he needs genetic material to work with. As soon as Hammond mentions where that material might come from, I thought for sure that I was ahead of the script again. Oh, of course! The shaving cream can that Nedry stole. He’s going to hire this guy to put together a team of mercenaries, and they’re going to spend the whole film on Isla Nublar getting picked off one-by-one while trying to find the samples.

[…]

It certainly didn’t feel like it was just another rehash of the same formula. When Nick wakes up, he’s in the tower of a medieval castle in the Alps. […] There’s the eight-year-old-boy side of me that thinks that a DIRTY DOZEN-style mercenary team of hyper-smart dinosaurs in body armor killing drug dealers and rescuing kidnapped children will be impossible to resist. And then there’s the side of me that says… WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?! Nick is put in charge of training these five dinosaurs, X1 through X5, and the first thing he does is name them. “Any soldier worth his pay has a name to answer to, not a number,” he says. So we are introduced to Achilles, Hector, Perseus, Orestes, and Spartacus, each of them a specially created deinonychus, which is sort of like a miniature T-rex. They have super-sensitive smell and hearing, incredible strength and speed and pack-hunting instincts, and they have modified forelegs, lengthened and topped with more dextrous fingers, as well as dog DNA for increased obedience and human DNA so they can solve problems well. All of this is topped off with a drug-regulating implant that can dose them with adrenaline or serotonin as the situation demands.

I don’t know if it’s the infectious enthusiasm of Moriarty, the author of the ‘review,’ detailing the events of the script, and a natural storytelling in his own writing, or the script itself… but, I’m sort of sorry we never saw this. Yeah, it’s off-the-wall weird, and a total bastardization of Crichton’s original novels, but, well, they were sort of campy to begin with and, as Moriarty points out, at least it’s not just another rehash of the same ol’ script used in the previous two sequels. And just look at that art! In the hands of the right directory, with a firm grip on the necessary balance between horror, comedy, action and campy sci-fi, like, say, Joss Whedon, I think there could be something there that could succeed entirely on its bizarre relationship to the original Jurassic Park. Am I wrong in thinking this?

News

“No one is claiming that Heinlein is a social justice blogger,” a short essay on the importance of Science Fiction

By Aidan Moher October 1st, 2012

I came across this on Tumblr, and thought it was worth a read:

Science fiction, speculative fiction, whatever, is the perfect choice for that kind of behavior. Someone […] once wrote that poking fun at science fiction, as a genre, is so silly, considering that mystery novels (which are also great!) are about death and murder and crime, while sci-fi is about reimagining the world and making it better and new and different. And, honestly, these are the books and pulps and magazines and comics that have done more than any other genre to begin the process of playing with race, and gender. No one is claiming that Heinlein is a social justice blogger, or anything like that, and it’s not a super-great book, but ANY KIND of science fiction, even of the Tits in Tight Silver Outfits variety, is implicitly saying that the world we currently live in is not the only way a world could be, that things could change. That’s really revolutionary, when you think about it. And, jeez, if you want to talk about “the story not the storyteller,” let’s think about Orson Scott Card. The man is a bag of dicks, when it comes to his personal politics, but Ender’s Game, Speaker for the Dead, and Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus could actually make you a better person.

Science Fiction

This is an excerpted piece of from Nicole Cliffe‘s review of Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, I’ve always appreciated this aspect of Science Fiction and, like Cliffe, feel that the sensawunda, the insistance that the world, the universe, humanity has the potential to be better is a very strong reason why Science Fiction is so important to the history of human society and the future development of us as a people and a species. I’ve written something similar about Fantasy, come to think of it. Whether you agree with Cliffe or not, the whole review is worth reading, and I hope we can discuss some of these arguments that she raises.

Thoughts?

Feature Article

The 5 Most Influential Books in My Life

By Aidan Moher September 25th, 2012

Jumpboarding off of a recent article by Justin Landon of Staffer’s Book Review, also titled ‘The 5 Most Influential Books in My Life,’ I’ve compiled a list of the five books, novel or otherwise, that I feel most influenced me, my reading habits, and my life. As with lists of this nature, I’m sure it would be different if I compiled the list tomorrow, and different again if I compiled it a week from now, but, in this bubble of my life, the (unordered) list looks like:

  • Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton

    Jurassic Park

    by Michael Crichton

    I discovered Michael Crichton at a young age. I was nine, and a dinosaur nut. With the impending release of the film adaptation of Jurassic Park, excitement filled me in a way that can only happen to little boys and little girls. Jurassic Park was my life. My parents bought me the book, and I still remember sitting in the theatre, lights dimming, trying desperately to finish it before the movie began. I didn’t, the theatre grew too dark before I was able to turn the final pages, but then I became lost in Spieberg’s vision of the iconic novel. Nine might seem young to get into Crichton’s work (most of my friends were reading the books assigned in school, more inline with our grade level, if reading at all), but, to this day, I don’t think I’ve ever been so enveloped by a novel as I was with Jurassic Park. I went on to re-read the novel several times over the next handful of years. It was the first book that I was absolutely obsessed with and helped introduce me to the world of speculative fiction.

Read More »

News

Ustream to air entirety of 2012 Hugo Award Ceremony

By Aidan Moher September 7th, 2012

Hugo Awards LogoWhen the Ustream livestream video of the 2012 Hugo Award ceremony was taken down by overzealous copyright bots, cries of despair rang out through not only geekdom, but even mainstream news sites, like CNN, picked up on Ustream’s failure to broadcast the entirety of the ceremony, and their inability to react quickly enough to restore the stream when the issue was pin-pointed.

In response, Ustream has been working overtime to make up for the mistake, promising big changes to their procedures and offering additional support for upcoming Worldcons. In addition, they will be re-airing the ceremony this Sunday, September 9th, and will provide an on-demand version of the stream thereafter.

Details:

To makeup for the disruption to the original broadcast, Ustream will feature the full un-edited and bot-free ceremony on its homepage this Sunday, September 9, starting at 7 p.m. CT. Ustream will also run the broadcast ad-free on the Worldcon Hugo Awards channel at www.ustream.tv/channel/hugo-awards, and provide additional marketing and promotional support to raise the profile of the event. The broadcast will subsequently be available from the same channel on an on-demand basis. Ustream has also offered additional support and publicity for the streaming of future Hugo Award Ceremonies for upcoming Worldcons in San Antonio, TX (2013) and London, UK (2014).

I missed the live broadcast, due to family fun times, and all of the frustration that followed, so I’m glad to have a chance to watch the ceremony, especially since a few friends accepted awards that evening. Good on Ustream for doing everything they can to make right a very unfortunate situation.

You can read more from about the re-streaming of the event in the Chicon presse release, and Tor.com has more details about the event, the kerfuffle with the livestream, and Ustream’s response.